VAMPIRES IN
DISNEYLAND
The mouse betrayed...
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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October 4, 2007
Disney Confirms Hawaiian
Resort Plans
800-Unit Resort To Open In 2011
HONOLULU -- Walt Disney Parks and Resorts announced on Wednesday that it will open a resort in Hawaii.
Disney said the hotel should generate about 1,000 new jobs.
Disney officials said that its team of designers is working with cultural advisors and local architects to finalize what the resort will look like. They hope to break ground for the project next year.
"This resort hotel will give our guests another way to visit an exciting part of the world with a brand they trust," Walt Disney Parks and Resort Chairman Jay Rasulo said in a written statement. "We are looking forward to building a special family resort that honors the cultural diversity of Hawaii and reflects the spirit of aloha that makes this location so unique."
"To have a company of this quality and caliber choose us when they could have chosen anywhere in the world, means a lot to us," Gov. Linda Lingle said.
Disney bought the 21-acre property for $144 million from The Resort Group, Jeff Stone's company that oversees the development of the Ko Olina area.
"I think it's incredible. As many projects as we try and bring to Hawaii, I think bringing in the Walt Disney Co. to Hawaii is the perfect fit. I think it's the perfect fit for the community, I think they're sensitive, I think they know exactly what needs to be done," Stone said.
It is the only Disney resort that will not be attached to one of its theme parks.
Part of the project will also bring in 1,000 parking stalls, which will add to the number of available stalls for the public, Stone said.
http://www.kcra.com/money/14267992/detail.html
From THE CATBIRD SEAT - Part II:
Walt Disney Corporation - Oh, no! Et tu, Pluto?
From Disney: The Mouse Betrayed —
When Walt Disney died in 1966, he left a company known as a bastion of family entertainment. Now, thirty years later, Disney has grown into a multi-national conglomerate selling pornography, violent song lyrics, and anti-Christian messages to your children. . . .
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From The Buying of the President (1996 ed): . . .
Bill Clinton:
The Telecommunications Companies - Of course, the financial industry has not been the only business group to capitalize on the Clinton Washington bonanza....
Of all the companies that will benefit from the new telecom laws, perhaps none has sought to become more “vertically integrated” than the Walt Disney Company. In the summer of 1995, Disney bought Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion....
“Most significantly,” the New York Times reported, “the move concentrates power even further among a handful of men, who will control not just the movie and television businesses but also enhance their influence over broader popular culture through their dominance of theme parks, publishing, and emerging new forms of interactive home entertainment expected to blend films, computer services, and telecommunications.”
In 1992 ... four executives of the Walt Disney Corporation— Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg (who has since left), John F. Cook, and the late Frank Wells— together contributed $158,672 to the DNC.
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From The Buying of the President 2000:
. . . In late Oct 1995, Sally Aman, Tipper Gore’s chief press aid, telephoned John Cooke, then the executive vice-president of the Disney Channel, to ask for a favor. The Gores had no costumes for their annual Halloween costume party, she explained. Could Disney help them out?
Disney did just that. A team of costume makers in Los Angeles made a pair of outfits, based on the main characters in Disney’s motion picture version of “Beauty and the Beast,” to the Gores’ exact measurements. The day before the party, the costumes arrived in Washington, along with a makeup artist to apply the mask that the Vice President would wear.
The total tab for Disney’s end of the Gores’ Halloween party topped $8,600. But the Gores didn’t ask for a bill, and Disney didn’t bother to send one. At the time, Disney was awaiting approval for its $19 billion acquisition of American Broadcasting Company, Inc. from the Justice Department and the FCC., chaired by Gore’s longtime friend Reed Hundt.
When the Washington Post reported on the gift of the costumes, the Gores claimed they had no idea what the costumes were worth and blamed an unnamed staff member for not finding out whether the gifts were improper. Under the Ethics in Government Act, neither the President nor the Vice President may solicit gifts. After they got caught, the Gores announced that the costumes would be paid for— by the Democratic National Committee.
The FCC approved Disney’s acquisition of ABC in February 1996.
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[John] Cooke isn’t the only Mouseketeer with a direct line to Gore. Michael Eisner, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, has also been a big contributor to Gore and other Democratic candidates . . .
On June 16, 1994, Gore accompanied Eisner to the Washington premier of “The Lion King.” At the time, Disney was seeking approval from the Interior Department, which oversees national parks, for its plans to build an amusement park called “Disney’s America” next to the site of the historic Battles of Bull Run, two of the bloodiest conflicts in the Civil War, in Manassas, Virginia. Eisner was in the nations’s capital to round up support for the project.
Eventually, public outrage led Disney to cancel its plans in late September 1994, but not before top officials of the Interior Department went on record as saying that the theme park could spark “a livable, vibrant community located between Disney’s America on the west and Manassas National Battlefield on the east.”
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Editorial Reviews
The Buying of the President 2000, by Charles Lewis
The essential fact of politics, writes Charles Lewis, is that "it takes mammoth sums of money to obtain power."
The Buying of the President 2000 reveals who is paying. Since 1976, the candidates who have raised the most money have become their party's nominees--and money has become increasingly important with each new election.
In 1999, George W. Bush raised $37 million in four months--before a single primary--more than Bill Clinton and Bob Dole raised for their respective campaigns in all of 1995 and 1996. Who is giving all this money to the presidential candidates, and what do they expect in return?
The Buying of the President 2000 reveals that the top 10 donors to the Democrats include the National Education Association, the Walt Disney Company, and Loral Space and Communications (which benefited from the Clinton administration's loosening of restrictions on selling high-tech equipment to China).
Among the top 10 Republican party donors: Philip Morris, AT&T, Atlantic Richfield, and Archer Daniels Midland. Bill Bradley's top donors include Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley; Al Gore also gets money from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as well as Ernst & Young and BellSouth. It's not surprising that George W. Bush's biggest career donors are companies with business in Texas, including the Enron Corporation and the Bass family, or that John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has donors with important business before his committee (US West, AT&T, Viacom, Boeing, and Bank of America). But The Buying of the President 2000 does not seek to make voters more cynical, just better informed. If you care about American democracy, it is an alarming, but very important, reference. --Linda Killian
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From Corporate Predators: Michael Eisner vs. Vietnamese Laborers
. . . As severe as the wage disparity is between U.S. workers, however, the differential between the executives and Third World workers, at whose expense they increasingly profit, is staggering.
Disney, to its everlasting shame, has in recent years outsourced production of Disney clothing and toys to sweatshops in Haiti, Burma, Vietnam, China and elsewhere.
Last year, the Asia Monitor Resource Center ... reported on operations of Keyhinge Toys, a factory based in Da Nang City, Vietnam that makes giveaway toys based on characters in Disney films which are distributed with McDonald’s Happy Meals.
According to the Center, the approximately 1,000 workers in the Keyhinge factory earn 6 to 8 cents an hour. . . . The workers— 90% of them young women 17-to-20 years old— are required to work mandatory overtime, with 9-to-10 hour shifts required seven days a week. In Feb 1997, a combination of exposure to toxic solvents, poor ventilation and exhaustion caused 200 workers to fall ill, and 25 to collapse. . . .
Less than one-fifth of Michael Eisner’s pay— $100 million— would be enough to quintuple the wages of each of the 1,000 Keyhinge workers— giving them a still inadequate, but at least living wage— and to pay them for 100 years! That would leave Eisner with $465 million for 1997 alone.
To call this kind of disparity “Dickensian” is to understate the nature of the problem dramatically. Globalization has wrought unprecedented and unconscionable gaps in income and wealth....
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Catbird Comments: It’s not confirmed, but a little bird told me that Hawaii’s Bishop Estate stood to benefit financially — BIG TIME — in “Disney’s America.” It seems the estate has majority ownership interest in Lake Manassas, LP, a real-estate development project that just might be “a livable, vibrant community located between Disney’s America on the west and Manassas National Battlefield on the east”.
The estate was also the developer and owner of nearby Robert Trent Jones Golf Club ... where Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan like to play (and sometimes even golf).
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One of Disney’s many political lobbyists is Mark McConaghy, of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP.
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For more GO TO > > > The Grand (and dirty) Ko Olina; A Flock of Donkeys; The Donkey Nests; Broken Trusts; Broken Trust: The Book; Confessions of a Whistleblower; Freedom To Sing; The Vultures in Maunawili Valley; Vultures in the Sandwich Isles; What Price Waterhouse?; David C. Farmer, Trustee vs. Harmon - Witnesses: Senator John McCain; Vicki Iseman; Governor Linda Lingle; Senator Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; Mark McConaghy; Jeff Stone; Richard Wong; Admiral Robert Kihune; Al Hee; Vernon Jordan
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MORE VAMPIRES IN DISNEYLAND TO COME
Meanwhile, you can check out the vampires in the following caves...
CONFESSIONS OF A WHISTLEBLOWER
DIRTY MONEY, DIRTY POLITICS & BISHOP ESTATE
JAMES NICHOLSON, TRUSTEE VS. HARMON
MARSH & McLENNAN: THE MARSH BIRDS
THE EAGLE HOODED: THE 9-11 COVERUP
THE GRAND (and dirty) KO OLINA
CENSORED >>> THE HARMON ARBITRATION <<< CENSORED
THE VULTURES IN MAUNAWILI VALLEY
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MORE OF THE CATBIRD’S FAVORITE LINKS
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Last Update March 8, 2009, by The Catbird