4/6/02
4:41:13 PM
Israel: Soldiers Who Say NO!
From: Institut für Globale Friedensarbeit, mailto:IGF@tamera.org
To the courageous soldiers who say "NO!"
2nd of April 2002
"We will not go on fighting beyond the 'green line' for the purposes of domination, expulsion, starvation and humiliation of an entire people".
[The above is] From the declaration of combat officers and soldiers of the IDF published in the Ha'aretz on the 27th of January 2002.
My name is Benjamin von Mendelssohn and I work at the "Institute for Global Peace Work" in Tamera, Portugal. We in Tamera read the declaration quoted above and hope began to rise.
I am not a young Israeli soldier who is asked to fulfil the inhuman orders of the occupation. I do not know what I would do if I were in this situation. I live in the relative safety of a peace project in Portugal.
From here I want to express my deep respect, my gratitude and my solidarity to the growing number of young men who refuse to serve in the occupied territories.
It is a service of peace to the world to take on the consequences that this decision brings along in a militaristic society.
I know the story of a friend of mine who served in the IDF. He realized the insanity of it when his best friend was blown to pieces right next to him. He quit the army and quit the country.
But he also told me about the fascination to hold a gun, the surge of power that one feels when you "can take somebody down from a 100 meters distance as a sniper".
This is the disease of a male society. We get trained what it means to be a man right from the beginning. We hardly get trained what it means to be a human.
But we young men should grow up instead of just growing old. We need to quit using violence to compensate the fear that we have inside. Fear that we project to the outside and then run fighting against it. Fear that threatens to strangle the whole globe.
I hope more and more young men start to become fighters against that fear, freedom fighters. What about using all our male strength in body and mind for the protection of our planet?
If this movement of courageous soldiers who say "NO!" to war - inside or outside - as the first Israeli soldiers do right now, would grow bigger, big enough that the discriminating punishments can not be kept up, then I could believe in a beginning peace process.
They need our support now. The support of their mothers, who do not want to loose their sons, of their fathers, who might serve in the army themselves but nevertheless recognize the new, of their friends who know that it is easier to be courageous together.
They need the support of international peace workers and peace initiatives who can provide rest, healing and a new orientation - simply through the advantage of not being involved directly.
And then we all need a perspective, a peace plan in which we can believe.
We need models for this peace. Places where peace can be researched, seen and felt. Places where peace and trust can grow between humans, between humans and animals, plants and all of creation.
May these courageous soldiers be the beginning of a stronger global peace movement.
May they grow into part of a movement for a free earth.
Shalom and Salaam!
Benjamin von Mendelssohn
The homepage of the objectors and their declaration:
http://www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp
* We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
* We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
* We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
* We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF¹s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
* We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
* We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
* We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
* We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel¹s defense.
* The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose -and we shall take no part in them.
There are 398 current signers of this Israeli soldiers' petition.
If you go to the site therre are links to addtional petitions to lend support to their cause.
http://www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp
See also: "The Courage to Refuse" - campaign
http://www.couragetorefuse.org
IGF - Institut für Globale Friedensarbeit
(Institute for Global Peace Work)
Monte do Cerro
P-7630 Colos
Tel: +351-283 635 3-06, Fax: -74
4/6/02
4:35:05 PM
It's Time That 'Woman Rise Up & Take Their Rightful Place In Government'
by Helen Caldicott
"We have it within our power to begin the world again."
Thomas Paine
Changing the Political Climate
Caldicott is convinced that the American people are hungry for real visionary leadership, and are ready for someone with integrity- perhaps a woman-to lead the electorate into a positive future, teaching and guiding and inspiring them with a prophetic voice. She encourages the implementation of quick, effective strategies to shift the balance of power into the hands of truly "wise, visionary, courageous leaders who will do the right thing for the people of this country-not the corporations, but the people, and by extension the entire world."
Caldicott is thrilled by France's recent 'parity law' requiring that 50% of all candidates running for office must be women. She believes the Equal Rights Amendment was nothing compared to this. "It's time that women rise up and take their rightful place in government. We are 53% of the world's population, we hold up 53% of the sky, yet we have no power at all. The three hormones-testosterone versus estrogen and progesterone-have very different and obvious effects upon the psyche. I could go on at length about the physiology of those hormones, how they affect the brain and behavior. It's imperative that there be gender balance now."
Counteracting the Corporations
Caldicott emphasized the importance of taking full advantage of the public broadcasting system to get the anti-nuclear point of view heard. "I'm setting up an institute equal and opposite to the Heritage Foundation so that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their other spokespersons never again go on television unchallenged and lie to the American people. I may need about $1 million a year, but I guarantee, we'll do them in. We'll just put the best, most brilliant people on news and talk shows all over the country to disclose the whole truth, to educate the citizens, and we'll end the Nuclear Age."
Caldicott has experienced censorship in attempting to get equal time on television and in print. GE, whose slogan is, ironically, "We bring good things to life," is one of the two American manufacturers (along with CBS-owner Westinghouse) of nuclear weapons, nuclear space probes, and nuclear reactors/power plants for domestic and overseas markets. "As they own NBC, they predictably would be antithetical to speaking about the medical problems of what they're actually doing. After writing a book called If You Love This Planet, in which I used GE as an example of a very bad corporation, I was scheduled to go on the Today Show and was very excited. Then they read the book and I was canceled.
"There is a conspiracy of silence in this country," she said. "The European Parliament has been up in arms, frantic because so many foreign soldiers who fought in Kosovo and the Gulf are getting leukemia. Articles are flooding the European press, yet there's nothing in this country at all."
Awakening the Numbed
According to Caldicott, the manic denial of reality, or "psychic numbing," is an epidemic state of mind amongst Americans when it comes to acknowledging the immediate and ongoing possibility of nuclear war. "'Displacement Activity' is described when you put rats in a cage and threaten them with a lethal situation. They then tend to run away and do something totally irrelevant to that which threatens them. Similarly, people are running around engaged in all sorts of insignificant, smaller activities that they can get their brains around." Such distractions and obsessions are not difficult to see embedded in daily American culture: addictions to technological toys such as television, computers, video games, gourmet food, designer fashions, and spectator sports.
"There can be no more important issue than saving the planet from nuclear destruction. If we set the priority of all moving together towards the abolition of nuclear weapons and power plants, that in itself will create a massive change of perspective within the country and empower the other groups to get going on their issues." In other words, first things first.
"Our children know they have no future. It's grim. Furthermore, they see no sign that the adults are willing to protect them or fix it for them. To be good parents and grandparents, it is implicit that we take responsibility to save their future. Certainly in Australia, where we only have 19.5 million people, the male teenage suicide rate is higher than ever before, and many are profoundly depressed. That's the time you're supposed to look forward with great passion and enthusiasm for life, to fall in love, to discover your dreams. The teenagers here are just as well educated-they watch television and listen to the radio, they hear who's lying, they know the truth. Talk to primary school children, they all know. If I were a teenager now, I would be deeply depressed."
Read The Full Article At:
http://www.wholelifetimes.com/Caldicott.html
4/6/02
4:10:55 PM
Florida Bill Threatens Civil Liberties, Gives 'Unprecedented Power To Unelected Officials'
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) today urged Gov. Bush to veto SB 1262, a bill that gives the State Public Health Officer powers to declare a public health emergency and to order forced drugging and treatment 'under the guise of responding to terrorism'.
In a letter sent to the Governor, Jane M. Orient, Executive Director, writes:
"AAPS is totally opposed to SB 1262 -- 'imposing medical treatments on unwilling citizens at gunpoint, or with threats of taking children from their parents, or with other coercive measures -- obliterating informed consent and due process of law'. Medical consequences could be disastrous.
"This bill gives the State Health Officer the sole, unbridled power to issue a public health advisory and 'take any action appropriate to enforce any public health advisory,' without oversight or accountability. The Legislature has abdicated its authority with respect to the alleged emergency altogether."
AAPS first sounded the alarm about these types of bills last December, gathering thousands of signatures on a letter of opposition to President Bush. 'The Model State Emergency Powers Act' (MEPHA) was drafted by the CDC and promoted to the states by the Department of HHS -- with promises of federal dollars for new programs, and threats of withholding funding for current ones.
The bills are so alarming that 'many legislators in other states are publicly opposing them', including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the nation's largest bipartisan, individual membership organization of state legislators. "We must take a much more deliberative approach in crafting effective policy without sacrificing the rights and liberties of individuals and families," ALEC's Director of the Health and Services told AAPS.
The letter to Gov. Bush continues:
"The Florida legislation is even more frightening. 'It bypasses the ballot box altogether, giving life and death powers to an unelected bureaucrat -- it is highly dangerous to entrust any human being with unlimited power'.
"The State Health Officer could use 'any means necessary to force vaccination or treatment on unwilling citizens', if 'there is no practical method to quarantine' such individuals, and 'if the individual poses a danger to the public health.' The degree of force, the assessment of what is 'practical,' and the definition of 'danger to public health' are all at the sole discretion of this Officer."
AAPS is also concerned that these powers could be used to invalidate all vaccine exemptions - including religious and medical -- that are now legal choices for parents who choose not to subject their children to dozens of immunizations required under blanket vaccine mandates for school attendance. Dr. Orient raises medical issues that the legislation fails to take into account, including:
The bill fails to mention smallpox by name, even though it is the only contagious disease that is a credible biological warfare threat and for which a reasonably effective vaccine exists. "In an outbreak of measles or whooping cough, with several dozen cases, is an unvaccinated child a 'danger to public health'?"
There are many scientifically valid arguments against mass smallpox immunization campaigns -- 'serious adverse effects, including death'.
The strain of smallpox used by terrorists may be vaccine resistant. "Thus, an entire population could be subjected to the dangers of mass vaccination while reaping no benefit at all." Dr. Orient urges Gov. Bush to veto the bill and demand that forced vaccination and treatment be removed from it. "Moreover, no unelected official should be permitted to declare a public health emergency, nor should such a state of emergency continue without ratification by the state legislature as soon as it can be called into session," concludes Dr.Orient.
AAPS, a national non-partisan, dues-supported professional association of physicians dedicated since 1943 to protecting the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship, opposes government-ordered vaccine mandates. While many vaccines are extremely useful and have saved many lives, patients and physicians should be free to determine the best course of treatment for an individual.
Read More At: http://www.aapsonline.org
Many AAPS Links re: Emergency Powers Legislation at:
http://www.aapsonline.org/testimony/emerpind.htm
Model State Emergency Health Powers Act Petition
http://www.aapsonline.org/alerts/petition.php
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc.
A Voice for Private Physicians Since 1943
Omnia pro aegroto
1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9
Tucson, AZ 85716-3450
Phone: (800) 635-1196
Hotline: (800) 419-4777
Dear President Bush:
We are writing to voice our opposition to the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) drafted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and being sent to state legislatures with a recommendation for passage.
While protecting citizens from biological and chemical attacks is a critical function of government, any laws passed to that end must take a deliberative approach in crafting effective policy without sacrificing the rights and liberties of individuals and families.
In contrast, this bill would give public health officials and governors sweeping new authority to quarantine and vaccinate individuals. Moreover, the proposal allows government authorities to ration and commandeer drugs and other items, including firearms and private property. And yet what constitutes a real or possible "emergency" is left subject to wide interpretation, leaving the governors little or no accountability.
The bill is so alarming that even state legislators are publicly opposing it. The nation's largest bipartisan, individual membership organization of state legislators, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has published numerous concerns.
We therefore respectfully request that you direct HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and all other officials from HHS and its divisions, to desist immediately from all efforts, plans and actions to promote and pass this bill. Further, we ask that no federal funds be used to promote or pass this bill.
Respectfully submitted, [Your Name]
Go to the following site to add your name to this petition:
http://www.aapsonline.org/alerts/petition.php
4/6/02
4:05:55 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS)
COURT RESTRICTS COAL MINES' SURFACE IMPACTS
WASHINGTON, DC, April 5, 2002 (ENS) - Coal companies should not be allowed to collapse the surface of the land over their mines, a federal district court has ruled. The decision overturns an Interior Department regulation that citizen groups have been battling since it was enacted in 1999.
http://click.topica.com/maaaj3naaRJlpa379Jrb/
POLLUTION LIMITS REQUIRED FOR LOUISIANA WATERS
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, April 5, 2002 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must set limits on pollution in Louisiana waters, a U.S. District Court ruled this week. The court ordered the agency to determine the total maximum daily load of pollutants that each of the state's waterways may carry and still meet federal water quality standards.
http://click.topica.com/maaaj3naaRJlqa379Jrb/
CANADA MOVES TOWARDS CLEANER MOTOR TRANSPORT
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada, April 5, 2002 (ENS) - Canada is imposing strict new emissions standards for on-road vehicles and engines that will come into effect for the 2004 model year.
http://click.topica.com/maaaj3naaRJlra379Jrb/
NEW SOUTH WALES DECLARES FIRST INDIGENOUS PROTECTED AREA
CANBERRA, Australia, April 5, 2002 (ENS) - The glossy black cockatoo, the masked owl and the spotted-tailed quoll are three of the threatened species that will be protected by the declaration of New South Wales' first Indigenous Protected Area on Thursday.
http://click.topica.com/maaaj3naaRJlsa379Jrb/
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: APRIL 5, 2002
Complete Rice Genome Published Online
Reid: Nuclear Shipping Containers Not Adequately Tested
Judge Bars New Road in Montana Wilderness
California Condors Could Produce Historic Hatchling
$3 Million Buys Wetlands for Waterfowl
Two More Nuclear Plants Boost Power Output
Wasting Disease Spreads in Western States
Gulf Fishing Charters to be Restricted
Court Supports Restrictions on Endangered Species Imports
http://click.topica.com/maaaj3naaRJlta379Jrb/
4/6/02
4:03:57 PM
t r u t h o u t | 04.06
BREAKING NEWS SPECIAL | Israel and Palestine in Mortal Conflict U.S. Envoy, Arafat Meet
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/03.31.BK.IDFvArafat.htm
Bush Abruptly Drops Demand for Israel Pullout
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06A.Israel.Pullout.htm
Israel Ignores Bush Appeal But Lets Envoy Meet Arafat
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06B.Envoy.Arafat.htm
Judge Refuses to Bar Secret Evidence
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06C.Secret.Evidence.htm
Jennifer Van Bergen | Repeal the USA Patriot Act
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06D.JVB.Patriot.htm
White House Stonewall: Day 42
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06E.Stonewall.htm
Sweeney Dismisses Bush Ergonomics Plan as "Meaningless"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06F.Bush.Plan.htm
John Pilger | Not In Our Name
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06G.JP.Name.htm
Study by Governors Calls Bush Welfare Plan Unworkable
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.06H.Bush.Unworkable.htm
t r u t h o u t, is a non-profit independent news source.
4/6/02
3:54:16 PM
New damning evidence on Bush, CIA complicity in 9-11, from BBC TV. Send below to all you know, and also to the list of NY State Senators and Assemblypersons. Urge all you know to do the same. Don't let New York's representatives get away with saying, "Golly, we had no idea."
Also, the full media and government email/fax lists are below, so you can send this new BBC Documentary clip, and other new info, like the Vancouver Sun article to them as well.
BBC, Canadian Television's Vision TV, Canada's Vancouver Sun article -- Point the finger at Bush and the CIA for complicity in 9-11 terror.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell
TELEVISION NEWS EXPOSE'S ON 9-11 (paste video URL's into your browser and they'll play in Real Player. Most computers have Real Player) Print media links are below if you can't open the video clips):
Canadian Television: 9-11 Overview by Vision TV, Bush / CIA Complicity in 9-11, Real Player Video Stream at:
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/mayday/mediafile.ram
BBC TELEVISION INDICTS BUSH / CIA IN 9-11 TERROR COMPLICITY:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/newsnight/attack22.ram
Reasonable Doubts About September 11th, 53 minute Real Player Video stream at:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/03/118760.php
"9-11 and Pearl Harbor, Real Player Video stream at:
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/mayday/visiontv1dial-up.ram
MAJOR NEWSPAPER EXPOSE' ON 9-11:
CANADA'S VANCOUVER SUN ARTICLE BLOWS THE 9-11 STORY WIDE OPEN !!
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=140623
FULL REPORTS ON 9-11 AND BUSH/CIA COMPLICITY IN THE TERROR:
SERENDIPITY EXPOSE ON 9-11
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wtc.html#other_docs
That 140 page report is at both of these links.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0202/S00079.htm
4/6/02
12:49:54 PM
"Pipeline Politics Taint U.S. War"
by Salim Muwakkil
An ongoing source of frustration and anger for many Americans is the lack of support the war on terrorism has received abroad. Other nations are considerably less enthusiastic about our use of "daisy cutter" and "thermobaric" bombs than we think they should be. Why is that? One reason is their media. Stories alleging imperial and commercial motives for the war on terrorism are rife.
Outside this country, there is a widespread belief that U.S. military deployments in Central Asia mostly are about oil. An article in the Guardian of London headlined, "A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the U.S. an Afghan route for Caspian oil," foreshadowed the kind of skeptical coverage the U.S. war now receives in many countries.
"The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism," wrote author George Monbiot in the Oct. 22, 2001, piece, "but it may also be a late colonial adventure."
He wrote that the U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. had been negotiating with the Taliban since 1995 to build "oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea." He cited Ahmed Rashid's authoritative book "Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" as a source for this information.
Rashid, who has reported on Afghan wars for more than 20 years as a correspondent for the Eastern Economic Review and the Daily Telegraph, carefully documents in his book how the U.S. and Pakistan helped install the Taliban in hopes of bringing stability to the war-ravaged region and making it safer for the pipeline project. Unocal pulled out of the deal after the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were linked to terrorists based in Afghanistan.
"The war against terrorism is a fraud," exclaimed John Pilger in an Oct. 29 commentary in the British-based Mirror. Pilger, the publication's former chief foreign correspondent, wrote, "Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth."
These harsh assessments are not just those of embittered ideologues. They are common fare. "Just as the Gulf War in 1991 was about oil, the new conflict in South and Central Asia is no less about access to the region's abundant petroleum resources," writes Ranjit Devraj in the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, a business-oriented publication.
A popular French book titled "Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth," which alleges that the Bush administration blocked investigations of Osama bin Laden while it bargained for him with the Taliban in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, is guiding much of the recent European coverage.
Written by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, the book adds another plank to the argument that America's major objective was to gain access to the region's oil and gas reserves.
According to the book, the Bush administration began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power. The parties talked for many months before reaching an impasse in August 2001.
The terrorist acts of Sept. 11, though tragic, provided the Bush administration a legitimate reason to invade Afghanistan, oust the recalcitrant Taliban and, coincidentally, smooth the way for the pipeline.
To make things even smoother, the U.S. engineered the rise to power of two former Unocal employees: Hamid Karzai, the new interim president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalizad, the Bush administration's Afghanistan envoy.
"Osama bin Laden did not comprehend that his actions serve American interests," writes Uri Averny, in a Feb. 14 column in the daily Ma'ariv in Israel. Averny, a former member of the Israeli Knesset and a noted peace activist, added, "If I were a believer in conspiracy theory, I would think that bin Laden is an American agent. Not being one I can only wonder at the coincidence."
Averny argues that the war on terrorism provides a perfect pretext for America's imperial interests. "If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean."
The Asia Times reported in January that the U.S. is developing "a network of multiple Caspian pipelines," and that people close to the Bush administration stand to benefit.
For example, the proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, linking Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, is represented by the law firm Baker & Botts. The principal attorney is James Baker, former secretary of state and chief spokesman for the Bush campaign in the Florida vote controversy.
In 1997, the now disgraced Enron Corp. conducted the feasibility study for the $2.5 billion Trans-Caspian pipeline being built under a joint venture between Turkmenistan, Bechtel Corp. and General Electric, the article noted.
There are many other connections, too numerous to recount here. No wonder the rest of the world is a bit skeptical about our war on evildoers.
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times
email: mailto:salim4x@aol.com
Source: http://www.ChicagoTribune.com
4/5/02
5:58:05 PM
May there be Peace on Earth
4/5/02
5:51:45 PM
FAIR
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
ACTION ALERT: In U.S. Media, Palestinians Attack, Israel Retaliates
April 4, 2002
The numbers will have risen by the time you read this, but more than 300 Israelis and 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the current Intifada began in September 2000 (Boston Globe, 3/31/02). Thousands more people have been injured.
U.S. media coverage of the conflict has been intense in recent weeks, as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) mounted a large-scale invasion of the West Bank and Palestinian militants carried out several major suicide bombings. Amnesty International (4/3/02) has condemned the targeting of civilians by both sides, voicing concern over "flagrant human rights abuses" by the IDF, including looting, mass detentions, the targeting of medical personnel and possible extrajudicial executions. Israel has tried to exclude the press from the entire area where the abuses are occurring; the Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed alarm (4/2/02) over the apparent targeting of reporters in "ongoing incidents in which IDF forces have opened fire on, or in the direction of, journalists attempting to cover events in the West Bank."
With thousands of lives at stake and reporters risking their own lives, it's increasingly difficult-- but perhaps more urgent than ever-- to step back and examine how U.S. media have framed the story. To this end, FAIR has surveyed how the language of "retaliation" has been used on the nightly news shows on ABC, CBS and NBC.
>From the start of the Intifada in September 2000 through March 17, 2002, the three major networks' nightly news shows used some variation of the word "retaliation" (retaliated, will retaliate, etc.) 150 times to describe attacks in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. About 79 percent of those references were to Israeli "retaliation" against Palestinians. Only 9 percent referred to Palestinian "retaliation" against Israelis. (Approximately 12 percent were ambiguous or referred to both sides simultaneously.) [Full data below.]
Both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict routinely present their attacks as being retaliation for previous attacks or actions. Both sides portray their struggle as essentially defensive. Whether one regards these justifications as credible explanations or self-serving rhetoric, the fact is that reporters make choices about whether to report them. The network news shows have characterized Israeli violence as "retaliation" almost nine times more often than Palestinian violence.
This disparity is meaningful. The term "retaliation" suggests a defensive stance undertaken in response to someone else's aggression. It also lays responsibility for the cycle of violence at the doorstep of the party being "retaliated" against, since they presumably initiated the conflict.
Among the three major networks, ABC's World News Tonight was the closest to being balanced, with 64 percent of its uses of "retaliation" referring to Israeli actions and 21 percent to Palestinian actions-- a three-to-one ratio. CBS Evening News came next, with 79 percent of its uses of "retaliation" referring to Israeli actions and 7 percent to Palestinian actions. NBC Nightly News was the most imbalanced, never once referring to Palestinian retaliation.
The devastating human toll of such "retaliations" makes these imbalances are all the more striking. According to the latest estimates from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, 897 of the Palestinians killed from September 29, 2000 though March 30, 2002 have been civilians. Israeli security forces killed 823 of those 897 people, including 192 children. B'Tselem records that 253 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians in the same period, including 48 children. At least 16 of those 253 people were killed by Palestinian National Authority security forces or persons reportedly linked to them. B'Tselem notes that these figures include neither suicide bombers nor Palestinians who "died after medical treatment was delayed" by Israeli forces. (See www.btselem.org.)
Figures like these, highlighting the targeting of non-combatants and even children, make clear that it is simply inaccurate to cast either side as acting purely defensively.
The language of retaliation is only one factor in reporting, of course, but FAIR's findings-- 79 percent to 9 percent-- are striking and indicate a tendency to define Israel's role as defensive, and the Palestinian role as aggressive. By doing so, ABC, CBS and NBC have oversimplified this complicated conflict and done a disservice to viewers.
ACTION: Please urge the networks to examine why they apply the word "retaliation" almost exclusively to one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings
Phone: 212-456-4040
Fax: 212-456-2795
CBS Evening News with Dan Rather
Phone: 212-975-3691
Fax: 212-975-1893
NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
Phone: 212-664-4971
Fax: 202-362-2009
4/5/02
5:49:13 PM
GET EDISON OUT OF BO NOK!
Irvine, CA, April 4, 2002 - Two Greenpeace activists were arrested today during the second day of protests against Edison Mission Energy's plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Thailand. The protest, which began Wednesday morning in Irvine, CA and continued through the night, escalated this morning when Greenpeace activists moved a school bus transformed into a massive, smoking coal power plant to block a portion of the employee parking lot on Edison's corporate campus.
The struggle over the proposed power plant is one of the most controversial political issues in Thailand. Over the last eight years, the people of Bo Nok, Thailand have told Edison and its partners that they don't want the power plant. The community of Bo Nok believes it is time for Edison to respect their rights and withdraw from the proposed power plant.
The Prime Minister of Thailand recently visited the site of the proposed coal-fired power plant in January and was met by 20,000 protestors. Under pressure, he has promised to decide once and for all whether or not to cancel the plants and will announce his decision by April 13th - the Thai new year. Members of the Los Angeles' area Thai community and Greenpeace supporters came out to today's demonstration to show solidarity with communities in Thailand fighting Edison.
Thanks to all of you who have already taken action, if you haven't, please join us in sending a message to Edison. Tell them you want them to abandon their plans to build a dirty, coal-fired power plant in Bo Nok, and instead, invest in renewable energy.
http://www.cleanenergynow.org/bin/takeaction.fpl?action_id=116
4/5/02
4:05:40 PM
The Environmental Movement--Part 4
REBUILDING THE MOVEMENT TO WIN
by Peter Montague
The environmental movement is a huge, powerful political force that would appear to be unstoppable. In 30 short years it has (1) passed a dozen pieces of national legislation, creating a government regulatory system that its adversaries dubbed "command and control;" (2) forced corporations to reveal each year that they routinely dump millions of tons of cancer-causing chemicals into our common property (our air and water); (3) launched a very fundamental critique of the entire industrial enterprise, that it is not "sustainable;" and even (4) challenged the bedrock idea that all human activities add up to "progress."
Furthermore, by publicizing evidence of environmental damage, the environmental movement has gained the support of most of the public. Large majorities of the public -- at least two thirds --when asked, say they want the environment protected, even at considerable expense.[1]
Yet despite these phenomenal successes and the political power of these issues, in recent years anti-environment forces have gained the upper hand. Progress toward environmental protection has stalled and in some instances slid backward. In Washington, the environmental movement has been on the defensive, really, since Ronald Reagan took office in 1980. Things improved only marginally during the Clinton/Gore years.
How did anti-environmental forces become so powerful? During 30 years of hard work, self-styled "conservatives" have mobilized a huge constituency that accepts a corporate-driven anti-environment agenda. Most such "conservatives" tend to hold traditional European beliefs: that nature was created, in a primitive and unfinished state, by a Christian God who also put humans on Earth, separate from nature and superior to it, with a sacred duty to improve the environment by dominating and controlling it. In this view, humans are entitled -- even obliged -- to exploit nature because God put them on Earth for that purpose. (The alternate view, that humans are the appointed stewards of God's creation, is a distinctly minor strain in Christian and secular European thinking.)[2]
This "conservative" constituency includes various groups that share one or more of the following goals:
(a) to reduce taxes to make government smaller (and as a consequence, intended or not, to reduce the number of government jobs, which tend to be union jobs and which tend to be available to non-white people);
(b) to increase U.S. military power, and to avoid entangling alliances (such as the U.N.) so that the U.S. can remain free to pressure any country, as needed, to protect access to foreign supplies of cheap labor and raw materials;
(c) through "free trade" agreements, to give U.S. corporations freedom and power to maneuver abroad, to evade taxes, to bribe public officials, to support private armies, to exploit indigenous labor, to extract natural resources and to dump toxicants, as needed to improve profitability;
(d) to stamp out abortion and homosexuality, to return women to their early 20th-century roles, and to enforce overt allegiance to selected Christian slogans in our public institutions;
(e) to keep the economic "playing field" tilted to the advantage of white people by denying the existence of white privilege, which gives unearned advantages to whites from birth onward (a subject to be explored in some detail in our next issue);[3]
(f) to imprison non-whites in numbers far out of proportion to their rates of involvement in various criminal behaviors, applying a different standard of justice to whites;[4]
(g) to punish the poor by making their lives difficult;
(h) to routinely violate international human rights agreements and standards by making it difficult or impossible for U.S. workers to form unions, bargain collectively and, if all else fails, to strike;
(i) to create and sustain an enormous industry devoted to distorting, ignoring and, in some cases, fabricating scientific "facts" without any basis, as needed to retain political advantage;
(j) to retain and expand the influence of private wealth in public elections;
(k) to slowly replace popular democracy with control by corporate elites.
Naturally few or no "conservatives" hold every one of these views, and some "conservatives" find some of these ideas utterly repugnant. Still the "conservative" movement is a huge tent holding many different people, some of whom hold each of these views, and because they can work together they create a potent political force that promotes the corporate anti-environment agenda in return for support on other "conservative" agenda items.[5]
Today the traditional environmental movement is not well-positioned to prevail against these pro-corporate anti-environmental forces because the traditional environmental movement was founded on the assumption that legal and scientific expertise, and rational debate, would suffice to protect the environment. Without detracting from the very substantial legislative accomplishments of the traditional environmental movement -- achieved through years of dedication, personal sacrifice and extraordinary effort -- it nevertheless remains true that the "traditional strategies and policy solutions being employed are proving to be increasingly limited," notes Professor Daniel Faber at Northeastern University.[6] This is something of an understatement. Traditional approaches have relied on lawsuits and on lobbying, and neither tactic is presently very effective. Legislatures and the courts are dominated by "conservative" activists who see the environment as something God intended us to exploit and who tend to believe that, since the corporate agenda works for them, it's good for us all.
In sum, to build on the successes of the traditional environmental movement and overcome the anti-environment forces now arrayed in Washington and in statehouses across the country, some new approaches will be needed.
Since 1980, an alternative to the traditional environmental movement has been slowly forming in the U.S., though so far it has gained little national visibility. It is called the "environmental justice" movement, and though it has some problems of its own, it represents a different approach to environmental protection, one that speaks to people about protecting the places where they live, work, and play.
As Daniel Faber has documented[6], the fabric of the environmental justice movement is woven from six strands:
(1) The civil rights movement. Apartheid officially ended in the U.S. in 1964, but environmental racism is still all too common. The environmental regulatory system created during the 1970s and 1980s had the unintended effect of funneling pollutants into communities of color. Well-off white people can usually buy their way out of polluted neighborhoods, but people of color and the poor often cannot. Pollution trading schemes, being promoted by some traditional environmentalists, may be economically efficient but they tend to heap additional burdens and injustices on the poor and people of color.
(2) The occupational safety and health movement. The U.S. passed its first national job safety law in 1970, but since then enforcement has been lax or nonexistent. Furthermore, the law excludes tens of millions of workers, such as farmworkers. At least 60,000 workers die each year as a result of injuries and illnesses related to dangerous working conditions. Another 850,000 are made sick. (See REHN #578.) At least 35 million non-union workers say they would join a union if they could, to protect themselves, but U.S. laws violate international human rights standards by making unionization an uphill battle. Added to existing unions, those 35 million would create the largest union movement the U.S. has ever known, effectively shifting the balance of power between the corporate elite and wage earners.
(3) The indigenous peoples' and native land rights movements, made up of Native Americans, Chicanos, African Americans, and other marginalized indigenous communities struggling to retain and protect their traditional lands. Partly these groups are fighting to control land resources, and partly they are trying to retain cultural lifeways that are threatened with extinction by the dominant society.
(4) The toxics movement (also known as the environmental health movement) has been fighting for the clean-up of thousands of contaminated waste sites across the country since 1978. The toxics movement has also taken the initiative in discouraging toxic technologies such as municipal garbage incinerators, pesticides, so-called "low level" radioactive waste dumps, coal-burning power plants, buried gasoline tanks, toxicants dumped by the military, and more.
(5) Solidarity movements, human rights movements, and environmental activists in the Third World are providing powerful allies and examples of extraordinary, fearless activism. In South Africa, Mexico, Burma, Indonesia, Nigeria, Central America, in the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere local groups are fighting the same fights being fought in the U.S. but with fewer resources and against greater odds -- sometimes sacrificing their lives in their persistent demand for environmental protection, sustainability, self-determination, and justice.
(6) Community-based activists working for social and economic justice have traditionally focused on issues of housing, public transportation, crime and police conduct, access to jobs, a living wage, redlining and lender practices, affordable daycare, deteriorating schools, and dozens of other neighborhood issues. They have not traditionally viewed their work as "environmental" but now when they work on lead poisoning, cleaning up abandoned toxic sites ("brownfields"), poor air quality, childhood asthma, and other issues with an environmental component, they are indisputably a part of the "environmental justice" movement.
In addition to these six strands, we see a powerful, burgeoning seventh -- people whose health has been affected by multiple chemical sensitivities, birth defects, breast cancer, endometriosis, lymphoma, diabetes, chronic fatigue, veterans affected by Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome, and many others.
An eighth strand includes the international "zero waste" and "clean production" movements, which are quietly revolutionizing the material basis of the industrial enterprise.
This powerful environmental justice movement -- which clearly has the potential to become a new political mass movement -- is still in its infancy. To grow to its potential it will need to be fed, nurtured, cared for. It will need resources. In their report, GREEN OF ANOTHER COLOR, Daniel Faber and Deborah McCarthy show that, of all funds available for environmental work during the period 1996 to 1999, some 96% went to the lawyers and scientists of the traditional environmental movement, and only 4% went to all the thousands of groups working to build the "environmental justice" movement.[6] To really protect the environment (and overcome the political power of the anti-environment "conservatives"), these funding priorities would have to change substantially.
Source: http://www.Rachel.org
4/5/02
4:02:12 PM
Worst Polluters Get Dirtier
by Erin Kelly
WASHINGTON -- Most of the nation's 500 worst polluting power plants are getting dirtier, says a report released Thursday by environmental groups.
"If you live near an old, coal-fired power plant, odds are you are being exposed to increasing levels of power plant pollution," said report author Rebecca Stanfield of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Stanfield, whose report was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, based her findings on data from the Environmental Protection Agency showing levels of smog, soot and global warming emissions from power plants from 1995 through 2000.
Utah's Intermountain Power Plant near Delta had one of the nation's largest increases in smog emissions, according to the report.
The report was released as the Bush administration is considering changes in the Clean Air Act that environmentalists fear could gut protections. The administration has said it is trying to come up with a plan that will provide incentives for utilities to clean up their plants.
Global warming pollution from the 500 dirtiest plants increased 8 percent during the six-year period, releasing 175 million more tons of carbon dioxide into the air, the report says. United Nations scientists predict that by the end of this century global warming could lead to massive flooding in coastal areas, intense heat waves and tropical storms, and drought. The 12 states with the biggest net increases in carbon dioxide emissions were: Texas, Minnesota, Indiana, Alabama, Arizona, South Carolina, North Carolina, Illinois, Virginia, California, West Virginia and Georgia.
There is no federal law limiting global warming emissions.
President Bush reneged last year on a campaign promise to support such a law, saying he was worried it would force coal-fired plants out of business and spark an energy crisis. A majority of the 500 dirtiest plants also increased their smog and soot emissions, the report said. However, the overall levels of those pollutants dropped as some plants decreased their emissions. Those reductions are a positive development that the report downplays, said a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents utility companies.
"The nation's air quality is steadily improving, and power plant emissions continue to decrease, facts this report goes to great lengths to hide," said institute spokesman Dan Riedinger.
He said the report ignores the fact that between 1994 and 1995 nitrogen oxide emissions dropped by 3 million tons when a federal program to reduce acid rain took effect.
The report also does not take into account the fact that smog and soot emissions are bound to drop further by 2010 as power plants work to meet tougher clean air standards under current law, Riedinger said.
Soot -- which can exacerbate heart and lung problems and cause premature death -- dropped about 5 percent nationwide despite the fact that 300 of the 500 dirtiest plants increased their sulfur dioxide emissions, the report says. Plants with the biggest increases in soot emissions were in Alabama, Indiana and Ohio.
Smog -- which damages lungs and can trigger asthma attacks -- also decreased by about 1 million tons a year. Still, 263 of the 500 worst plants increased their nitrogen oxide pollution. The top five plants with the biggest smog increases were in Mississippi, Alabama, Utah, Texas and Georgia. The states with the biggest smog increases were Arizona, Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia.
Source: http://www.sltrib.com/04052002/nation_w/725657.htm
4/5/02
3:58:51 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
SAY WHAT? What's the most outrageous, intriguing, inspiring, or simply off-the-wall thing that was said about the environment in the last week? Check out Grist's new quote-of-the-week section -- and send us your ideas for future quotes -- <http://www.gristmagazine.com/saywhat/default.asp?source=daily>
THE FINNISH LINE
From the department of creative activism: You've heard of hunger strikes, but what about baby strikes? Hundreds of Finnish women have signed a petition declaring that they will not bear children for the next four years unless the country's Parliament scraps plans to build a fifth nuclear reactor in their homeland. The protest has a precedent: In 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster, some 4,000 Finns signed a similar petition to block construction of a nuclear power plant. The government eventually caved and agreed not to build that reactor, but it now claims a new one is necessary to meet the country's growing energy demands without increasing greenhouse emissions. Elina Venesmaki, one of the organizers of the current petition, said, "This form of protest is logical because this issue doesn't concern just our generation."
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 05 Apr 2002 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15325/story.htm>
INFORMATION UNDERLOAD
So much for the information age: Some U.S. lawmakers are trying to limit access to data on the federal government's farm subsidy program. Last fall, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group touched off a political firestorm by posting on the Internet a database of farm subsidy recipients from 1996 to 2000. Information on the site was used by senators in a debate that resulted in a vote to reduce maximum farm subsidies by 40 percent. Now EWG says both chambers of Congress are crafting language for the Farm Bill that would restrict public access to information on subsidy spending. The Senate version, reportedly the more popular of the two, would allow access to aggregate data only and give the Agriculture Department the right to refuse to release names of individual recipients and the size of their subsidies. For their part, congressional staffers said the EWG was overreacting and no significant changes in the law were planned.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 05 Apr 2002 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15338/story.htm>
LOOK WHO'S TALKING
Did you wake up with that nagging sense that something was missing from your life -- like, say, an impassioned, informed, articulate community of progressive environmentalists? Never fear, Grist can fill the void. In our letters section, readers share their thoughts on nuclear energy, Middle East politics, the real price of a banana, the virtues of diesel, cultural norms in the South, winters in Canada, and everything in between. Look who's talking back, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: I want my nuclear energy -- Grist readers write letters to the editor <http://www.gristmagazine.com/letters/letters040502.asp?source=daily>
SEAM STRESS
After Sept. 11, the folks in the White House found a favorite tune -- the need to decrease U.S. reliance on foreign oil any which way but through conservation -- and it seems they just can't stop singing it. First it was used to promote drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; now, in a variation in a miner key, the Bush administration says our national security depends on increased coal-bed methane development in the Rockies. Yesterday afternoon, Interior Assistant Secretary Rebecca Watson said the Bureau of Land Management, which she oversees, is studying potential coal-bed methane development in five areas to help meet the goals of President Bush's energy plan. Methane gas is collected by pumping groundwater to relieve the pressure trapping the gas in coal seams. Because it harms both crops and other vegetation, the practice does not always go over well with landowners or environmentalists.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Judith Kohler, 04 Apr 2002 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/04/04/financial2251EST0432.DTL>
only in Grist: Methane to their madness -- coal-bed methane extraction threatens Wyoming's Red Desert -- by Hal Clifford <http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/clifford010902.asp?source=daily>
only in Grist: Put this in your pipeline and smoke it -- domestic oil and gas is not the ticket to U.S. energy security -- by Amory and L. Hunter Lovins <http://www.gristmagazine.com/imho/lovins112001.asp?source=daily>
DIRTY DUNCING
The majority of the nation's dirtiest power plants are getting even dirtier, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The report was based on U.S. EPA data on smog, soot, and global warming emissions from power plants from 1995 to 2000. It found that greenhouse gas emissions increased 8 percent, with a total of 175 million tons of carbon dioxide released in the six-year period. Smog and soot emissions also increased at the majority of the plants, although the overall levels of those pollutants dropped, thanks to reductions at some other plants. The report comes as the Bush administration weighs changes to the Clean Air Act that could dramatically relax pollution standards for power plants.
straight to the source: Salt Lake Tribune, Gannett News Service, Erin Kelly, 05 Apr 2002 <http://www.sltrib.com/04052002/nation_w/725657.htm >
do good: Take action to pass the Clean Power Act <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#power>
4/5/02
3:55:15 PM
Former New Zealand chief claims Quayle threatened him
Lange says he faced massive pressure to drop the anti-nuclear policy
By Joe Havely, CNN Hong Kong
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (CNN) -- Former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange has claimed that ex-U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle threatened to have him "liquidated" over his country's anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s.
The extraordinary allegation was first made in an interview with New Zealand's One News broadcast Tuesday night. Quayle rejected the claim. In an e-mail from Quayle's Phoenix, Arizona, office, Quayle said Lange's allegation was "complete and utter nonsense -- it's so ridiculous it deserves no further comment."
Lange's claim also was described as "preposterous" by the U.S. Embassy in Wellington.
"We would hate to challenge the memory of a former prime minister, but the suggestion that former vice president Quayle threatened to kill him is preposterous," a spokeswoman told CNN.
In the One News interview Lange said the apparent death threat was made by Quayle during a meeting with the Australian cabinet. CNN.com Asia More news from our Asia edition
"There were veiled threats and there were specific threats," he said. "It was announced at one stage to the Australian cabinet that I would have to be liquidated."
After being informed of the alleged threat -- it is unclear by whom --Lange said he then asked New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service to investigate.
"I enquired of our security sources and was told I shouldn't regard it as a credible threat because the vice president wasn't regarded as credible."
Anti-nuke policy
U.S. nuclear armed and nuclear powered vessels remain banned from New Zealand
As prime minister from 1984 to 1989 Lange brought in legislation banning U.S. nuclear powered and nuclear armed warships from New Zealand.
The move, which he says was galvanized by French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, sparked an angry reaction from Washington, which stripped New Zealand of its ally status, halting military cooperation and intelligence sharing.
Lange said at the time many people felt aggrieved at New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance and he faced extraordinary pressure to drop the policy, which remains in effect.
The revelation coincides with a visit to the U.S. by current Prime Minister Helen Clark.
On Tuesday she held talks with U.S. President George W Bush, for whose father Quayle was vice president.
She also met with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz both of whom confirmed disagreements persist over the nuclear ban.
"Disagreements between close friends are not that unusual," Powell said, adding that nonetheless New Zealand remained a " very, very, very close friend" of the United States.
Clark's office has made no comment on Lange's allegations against former vice president Quayle.
'I didn't feel at risk'
Former Vice President Dan Quayle made a failed bid for the U.S. presidency in 2000
In subsequent remarks made to the Evening Post newspaper Wednesday, Lange said he never felt intimidated by Quayle's alleged threat.
"He wasn't taken seriously by his own folk, that was the tragedy," the paper quotes him as saying.
"I didn't feel at risk from the U.S. Navy because they didn't come here anyway, and I certainly wouldn't be at risk from a chap who couldn't spell tomato," he added.
The comment was an apparent reference to a campaign blunder when Quayle made a schoolboy add the letter "e" to the end of the word "potato" during a school photo opportunity.
Quayle has largely retreated from U.S. political life after a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2000 campaign.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/03/26/nz.lange/index.html
4/5/02
3:39:05 PM
What I.F. Stone Knew And Why Dick Cheney Is Thankful
by Michael Ryan has written, directed and produced films, television, and theater, published several books of humor and satire, and worked as a Washington and foreign correspondent and editor for major magazines.
The late I.F. Stone, who might well have been the most important investigative journalist of my lifetime, didn't do a lot of legwork. He wasn't noted for stakeouts or ambush interviews, yet, every week, he filled his publication, I.F. Stone's Weekly, with amazing stories of government malfeasance or misfeasance. His method was simple: he read the newspapers -- especially the parts of the newspapers that many of us ignore.
"The great thing about The New York Times and The Washington Post, " he used to explain, "Is that you never know where you'll find a front page story."
What Stone knew -- and what the rest of us need to be reminded of on a regular basis -- is that a newspaper is only as good as its news judgment; the best story in the world won't make a big impact if it's buried on page 18.
Like, for instance, the report in The New York Times that much of the Bush-Cheney energy plan seems to have been dictated verbatim by the oil industry.
"It's very flattering to think that one e-mail can determine energy policy," a spokeswoman for the Southern Company told the Times. But, as the paper reported, a lot depended on where that one e-mail was coming from. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, for example, reportedly spoke only with energy industry officials and lobbyists -- and no consumer or environmental advocates -- while the policy was being formulated.
Yes, energy policy can seem boring -- except when you get your electric bill. California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein charged that their state's rates were so high last year because Enron's CEO, Kenneth Lay, put in a good word for abolishing price caps with Dick Cheney.
Maybe I can understand why the Minneapolis Tribune buried that story and Cheney's denial on page 18 -- it could be folks in the Twin Cities don't use electricity anymore; but what were the editors of the Sacramento Bee thinking when they put it on page 16? Were they afraid that a reminder of last year's prices might trigger post-traumatic stress among their readers?
To be fair, most media around the country gave pretty thorough coverage to the General Accounting Office's lawsuit against Cheney to get a look at the energy task force's papers; that's the kind of let's-you-and-him-fight flap between two branches of government that most editors can sink their teeth into. But why did the citizens of Wichita have to go to page seven of the Business Section to find out that 16 of the top 25 energy contributors to the Bush campaign had private meetings with the task force -- including Koch Industries, one of Wichita's biggest companies?
Now I could be a cynic, and suggest that some of these papers don't want to risk alienating big advertisers and community leaders by giving these embarrassing stories prominent display. But I would never do that. Because, in reality, they are simply observing the highest traditions of journalism.
They are following I.F. Stone's advice.
Source: http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5381
4/5/02
3:34:35 PM
TomPaine.com
"Independent, commercial-free public affairs reporting and commentary."
WHAT I.F. STONE KNEW
And Why Dick Cheney Is Thankful
by Michael Ryan
"The great thing about The New York Times and The Washington Post," I.F. Stone used to explain, "Is that you never know where you'll find a front page story."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5381
SPOILING FOR A FIGHT: MAD AS HELL, USED AND ABUSED
Origins Of The Perot Phenomenon
by Micah L. Sifry
In exploring the trajectory of the Perot phenomenon, it makes sense to start where it really began, two years before most Americans ever heard of the checkbook populist from Texas.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5377
WHAT DO MEN REALLY WANT?
Power Punches In The Male Ring
by Dr. Elizabeth Sherman
Acting Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift's biggest mistake may have been thinking that being governor made her powerful. The truth is, voters and the press judge women by a higher standard, especially in executive positions.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5382
BUSH DOCTRINE: WIN FIGHTS, LOSE WARS
The Perils of Unfinished Business
by Ehsan Ahrari
The U.S. risks re-enforcing its historic reputation of a nation that can win short-term fights but not achieve long-term solutions.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5379
4/5/02
3:28:58 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
THE STRANGE BATTLE OF SHAH-I-KOT
by Brendan O'Neill, Spiked-Online
-- How effective have Americans been with Operation Anaconda and the war in Afghanistan? Though U.S. commanders claim success, writer Brendan O'Neill argues otherwise.
DRUG WAR VICTORY
from the Marijuana Policy Project
-- Last week, a federal judge declared unconstitutional a 1998 amendment that prohibited District of Columbia residents from proposing, running, and voting on a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for medical purposes.
CUBA BANS PC SALES TO THE PUBLIC
by Julia Scheeres, Wired.com
-- Through its hardened restrictions on Internet access, the Cuban government has further isolated its public from the outside world.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
4/5/02
3:26:41 PM
If The Clock Strikes Twelve, Midnight Is Forever
by Douglas Mattern
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.''
This ancient Greek saying surely applies to the Pentagon's secret Nuclear Policy Review (NPR) that was ordered by President Bush and his team of reconstituted cold warriors. The Los Angeles Times acquired a copy of NPR and published it in their March 9th edition with the headline, "U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms."
NPR compiles a nuclear hit list of seven countries: China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia, and Syria. The review, which was delivered to Congress on January 8, also calls for the incorporation of nuclear capability into many conventional systems now under development. The report listed "targets able to withstand a non nuclear attack," or retaliation for use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, or "in the event of a surprise attack." Also recommended is to place nuclear warheads on cruise missiles.
When we combine this scenario with the Bush's decision to scrap the 1972 ABM Treaty and proceed with the Son of "Stars Wars" antimissile system, it's clear the gods have done their work. In England, some members of Parliament called the plan "warmongering lunacy."
The antimissile system is just the first step in the militarization of space. The Pentagon's Space Command's document "Vision 2020" emphasizes how the global economy will widen the gulf between the rich and poor over the coming years, and virtually states that the U.S. will need the military ability to control space in order to defend national and economic interests on the earth below.
The Center for Defense Information reports the U.S. currently spends $589,802 every minute on the military; 51.3% of the discretionary federal budget. Nevertheless, this criminal waste of our wealth and resources will increase by $120 billion over the next five years. The 2003 the Pentagon budget will equal the combined military budgets of the next 15 countries.
Steven Kosiak, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, reports that the planned military budget of $451 billion for 2007 will be 20 percent higher than the average expenditures during the Cold War.
This massive spending for new weapons and the deteriorating condition on nuclear arms has prompted the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to move hands of their famous "Doomsday Clock" up to seven minutes to midnight. George A. Lopez, a professor at Notre Dame University who chairs the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which publishes the clock, states: "Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces."
Seven minutes to midnight is exactly where the clock was set when it first appeared on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1947. This is another indication that little has changed; that over 30,000 nuclear weapons remain stockpiled in the world.
This genocidal stockpile includes thousands of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads on a hair-trigger alert, ready for launch in a few minutes notice.
Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman missile launch officer, and president of the Center for Defense Information, reports there are over 2,000 strategic nuclear weapons poised for launch on extremely short notice and set for targeting on over 2,000 Russian sites. We can be sure a similar amount of Russian warheads are targeted at the U.S.
Therefore, we continue to live every day under the utter lunacy of being only 30-minutes away from nuclear incineration. An intelligent visitor from another planet would surely conclude the gods have made us all mad.
Retired General George Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, says: "There is no security in nuclear weapons," and that "It's a fool's game." This brings to mind a statement by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that we must learn to walk the earth together as brothers, or die together as fools.
This fools game is perfectly symbolized by the Doomsday Clock, with its ticking hands imploring us to take collective action to end this nuclear madness before the clock strikes twelve, because midnight on this clock is forever.
Douglas Mattern is president of the Association of World Citizens (AWC); a San Francisco based international peace organization with branches in 50 countries, and with UN NGO status. The website for AWC is
Douglas is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant.
See also:
Bush Administration Orders New Generation Nuclear Weapons
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/03.28E.Nuclear.Weapons.htm
4/5/02
3:21:23 PM
'Earth Summit For All' online
The next Earth Summit ('Rio-plus ten') is taking place this year at Johannesburg. Over 60,000 people are expected to be attending this, the biggest conference Africa has ever seen. There will be delegates from governments and big business, as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Friends of the Earth and the World Development Movement. Ten years on from the last Summit at Rio in 1992, many people are calling the last decade one of missed opportunities. The catastrophic rates of climate change and species loss have not been arrested, in fact they have increased. The Jo'burg Summit is too important an opportunity to be missed.
The Open University is developing 'Earth Summit for All', a new web portal that aims to build partnerships for projects which can be launched at the Summit, the first one of the internet era. It will provide an opportunity for ordinary people and NGO delegates to hold on-line discussions and collaborate in advance of the Summit, as part of the 'multi-stakeholder' dialogues. It provides a tool for developing the all-important practical projects needed to solve the major environmental and social problems that the Summit will be tackling. A starting set of projects for discussion may include Global Green Information Networks with 'green ratings'; Co-operative and Community Networks; Fair Trade Networks; a Global Emergency Aid and Development Fund; Media Initiatives for Peace; Schools for Sustainability.
How will the on-line discussions work? Our software builds upon the innovative approaches to participative democracy developed by the Open Source Software community (see http://www.slashdot.org) 'Earth Summit for All' emphasizes public polls to promote consensus, and to enable people to make their views count, even if they prefer not to make written comments. The ethos is collaboration and consensus-seeking, rather than conflict and competition.
At earlier summits, Rio and Stockholm, the central focus was on governments and binding treaties between them. In Johannesburg, that will be much less the case. The preparatory meeting in New York that just ended puts a great emphasis on partnerships with civil society. 'Earth Summit for All' aims to be a catalyst to such partnerships. It uses the tools of internet technology to put the interested public and NGOs in touch with one another, to help develop practical projects for the Summit.
'Earth Summit for All' will be launched publicly in late April, 2002 and will be located at
http://www.earthsummit.open.ac.uk
For further information, email mailto:admin@earthsummit.open.ac.uk
SEE THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE FOR THIS EARTH SUMMIT II
http://www.joburgsummit2002.com
Check especially their latest fact sheet of updates! This is regarded as the biggest United Nations convention the world has ever seen and will shape the future of a globally defined, sustainable development agenda.
4/5/02
2:49:48 PM
Our Oceans Are At Risk
From: "Ted Danson @ Oceana" mailto:Ted.Danson@oceana.org
Dear Friends:
I just sent a free letter to protect the oceans at
Our whole world depends on having healthy oceans.
But our oceans are at risk.
Every day, thousands of fish, turtles, dolphins and other marine life are drowned, crushed, and suffocated after being caught on fishing hooks and nets meant for other species. Each year, an estimated 44 billion pounds of unwanted, dead or dying fish and countless numbers of turtles, porpoises, and sharks are simply thrown overboard.
Can you take 30 seconds to help stop this senseless destruction? Join me and send your FREE message at this link:
Oceans generate much of the world's oxygen, provide 95 percent of the living space for the earth's animals and plants, and feed billions of people around the world. We need healthy oceans to survive.
Like you, I love to swim in a healthy coral reef or watch whales and dolphins playing in the ocean. But in our lifetimes, the ocean abundance we treasure now could be gone.
As you read this email, hundreds of marlin, sea turtles, whales and porpoises are being caught and destroyed. Some of these species are endangered, and at risk of total extinction. We must act now to preserve the earth's web of life for future generations.
Four Federal laws clearly require the U.S. to end this senseless waste of our valuable ocean species. But, the government agency in charge has failed to enforce them.
That's why I'm helping to launch this campaign to tell President Bush to act now to enforce the law and protect ocean life. I've sent my letter -now you can send yours.
It only takes a minute to help. And once you've done your part, please forward this message along to other friends and family members. We take so much from the oceans; let's give something back.
Thanks for caring about our oceans
Ted Danson
Source: http://www.OceansAtRisk.com
4/5/02
2:43:02 PM
ACTION ALERT! HELP PROTECT CALIFORNIA'S ANCIENT FORESTS
An IMMEDIATE $1.6 million dollars is needed now for a ballot initiative to permanently protect California's 7+ million old growth trees for future generations. This ballot iniative requires 600,000 signatures by April 30th to qualify for the iniative for the November 2002 ballot in California. Your support is deeply appreciated. Please share with others. Thank You !!!
To Learn More Contact: mailto:susan@ancienttrees.org
4/5/02
2:41:06 PM
MANY NEW COMPELLING ARTICLES ON THE MIDDLE EAST CARNAGE
http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=28
Israel/Palestinian Authority: Protect Civilians, Allow Independent Reporting Human Rights Watch is alarmed that ordinary civilians are increasingly the main victims of intensified conflict in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
http://hrw.org/press/2002/04/isr-pa040302.htm
U.S. to Push Harder for Political Solution in Mideast
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/international/middleeast/04PREX.html
Israeli Armor Units Continue Sweeping Through West Bank
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/international/middleeast/04MIDE.html
REPORTS OF ISRAELI ATTACKS ON CHURCHES
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/04/27335.html
ISRAEL ISOLATES ITSELF
The policy of Ariel Sharon's government has managed to isolate Israel in the international community to an unprecedented level in recent history. Christians are starting to side with the Palestinians for the first time.
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/04/27333.html
HAMAS AND ISRAEL UNITE AGAINST ARAFAT
(...) Israel, which has already declared its intention to liquidate centers of terrorism, does not disturb Hamas, which claims responsibility for several recent acts of terrorism. This is rather strange.
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/04/27343.html
A US NEWS ANCHOR TAKES A STAND (4 Apr 2002)
Last evening on American television Peter Jennings of ABC News went out of his way to let Americans know that no other country in the world, except for the US, supports what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. It was a small news gesture in a sea of terribly biased and grossly inadequate American news coverage. It was an example of a small but valiant attempt to inform Americans at least a little bit through a nearly blinding fog of continual distortion and gross misrepresentation. At the same time on PBS, Public Broadcasting, the Lehrer News Hour continued its tradition of packaging Middle East commentary in a way always fit for liberal American Jewish sentiments. It was an example of the terrible slant and bias, no matter how "professional" and "sophisticated" in presentation, that is so prevalent in the US and which so badly serves the American people. At a time when the Palestinians are being pulverized with Yasser Arafat still symbolizing their predicament, for good or bad, the PBS producers chose to interview two Israelis, one of whom works directly for the Israeli/Jewish lobby, and one American Jew, whom they presented as "Arafat's biographer". No Palestinian, no Arab, no critic, nobody in fact other than their kosherized guests.
4/5/02
2:34:30 PM
Israeli Soldiers Shoot and Kill a US Citizen as She Holds Her 9-Month-Old Baby in Her Lap
With the Morgue Overflowing, the Family is Forced to Bury the 21-Year-Old Palestinian-American in the Ramallah Hospital Parking Lot
The US State Department Does Nothing
NEW YORK - April 3 - Israeli soldiers on Friday shot and killed Suraida Saleh in Ramallah as she was holding her 9-month old baby in her lap. She and her husband were driving to safety at her father's house after hearing shooting near their home. Suraida Saleh was a Palestinian-American, born in George Washington Hospital, in Washington, D.C.
Reached on the phone today in Ramallah, her father Farhan Mohammed Saleh, told Democracy Now! that Israeli soldiers asked the husband to stop the car and started shooting. He said they shot Suraida in the head and chest, and she died immediately. After shooting the husband repeatedly, they let him go. He took the baby from his dead wife's lap and stumbled up the road to the home of his father-in-law, where he collapsed.
With the Ramallah hospital morgue overflowing and Israeli soldiers preventing anyone from reaching the cemetery, Saleh said he was forced to bury his daughter in the hospital parking lot alongside dozens of other Palestinians.
Suraida's father, Farhan Mohammed Saleh, wept as he said: "I took her out of the hospital refrigerator [morgue] with my own hands, and my wife and my older son with me, we took her outside and put her in the ground, just temporary."
On Tuesday, Democracy Now! spoke to the Office of Consular Affairs at the State Department. The office said the State Department was aware that Suraida Saleh was a U.S. citizen, but did not plan to release a statement or take any action. Farhan Mohammed Saleh said that the State Department has done nothing.
As he spoke, you could hear his grandson crying in the background. "[My grandson] is with me now. He is 9 months old, I don't know what's going to happen with him without his mother. You know, he's crying all the time, that's what makes me suffer."
Details of Sureida's death were obtained by American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice (http://www.global-peace.org). They emailed, called and faxed major media for two days and no one picked up the story. Today is the first time the voice of Farhan Mohammed Saleh, the father of Suraida, will be broadcast nationwide. The following is a partial transcript of the interview that Amy Goodman, host of the radio and television show Democracy Now!, did with Farhan Mohammed Saleh in Ramullah:
Farhan Mohammed Saleh [FMS]: ...some of the neighbors, when they hear the shooting and saw her in the car, they call the ambulance... she stayed in the refrigerator [hospital morgue] from Friday morning up to yesterday evening [5 days]. ... I took her out of the hospital refrigerator with my own hands, and my wife and my older son with me, we took her outside and put her in the ground, just temporary, somewhere in the hospital, until they can take her to the cemetery.
Amy Goodman [AG]: You buried your daughter in the parking lot?
FMS: Yes, yes, she was with 2 more women, the men were buried separately. It is a temporary cemetery they make...
AG: How many other people are buried in the parking lot?
FMS: About 25 or 27 people. Three women were yesterday, and about 23 or 24 men.
AG: Why couldn't you get to the cemetery?
FMS: Nobody can go to the cemetery, there was shooting going everywhere. They just give 1 or 2 hours to the people to see their dead. We passed from the side of the tanks and the soldiers, and we was scared... [my grandson] is with me now. He is 9 months old, I don't know what's going to happen with him without his mother. You know, he's crying all the time, that's what makes me suffer. [Crying of baby in the background]
AG: Has the US embassy come to see you?
FMS: Nobody, nobody up to now. CLIP I called 2 or 3 times and I talked with some people working and nobody has shown up to now, nobody has seen me up to now. I don't know what I'm going to do with the baby now. [He begins to weep.]
It's a bad situation, a bad situation we have really, we just ask God to help her. It's killing people everywhere, in the streets, in the houses. They broke down the houses, the buildings, they get inside the houses and the apartments and they kill people and break down everything. That's barbarism. That's the situation we have. I don't know where are the human rights? The US and all the world, they're calling for human rights - where are the human rights? Civilian people, they're killing everywhere, in the streets and the houses and the apartments. Some buildings have 10 to 15 apartments, they get inside the apartments and houses and are killing everywhere,
For more information about this story, please contact "Democracy Now! "at (212) 431-9090. This show can be heard on mp3 at
4/5/02
2:21:54 PM
French lap up Pentagon crash 'fraud' (2 April, 2002)
A book which argues that American Airlines flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon on 11 September has become an immediate bestseller in France. (...) The book is currently the top of Amazon France's bestseller list and has made it to second place in the Livres Hebdo's list. (...) the whole truth about the flight 77 incident was yet to come out. "There is no official account of the crash...the lack of information is feeding the rumour." French lap up Pentagon crash 'fraud'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1907000/1907955.stm
BP CONTRADICTS BUSH ON CLIMATE CHANGE
The oil company has exceeded its emissions reduction target eight years ahead of schedule, and at no net cost. That undermines Bush's claim that the Kyoto Protocol would be too expensive.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12750
Fueling the Flames
Is the choice between the environment and economic justice a false one? Now more than ever before, labor and greens must join forces to stop Bush's assault on the planet.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12734
Washington Is Criticized for Growing Reluctance to Sign Treaties
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/international/04TREA.html
Food of the Future
When regional, fair-trade organic farms can rake in hundreds of millions of dollars for their products, it's obvious that the future of food is sustainable and organic. (...) Of the food we consume, how much is organic? Experts predict that $25 billion dollars of organic food will be consumed across the globe in 2002.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12732
Globalization Proves Disappointing
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/international/21GLOB.html
KILLING THE CAFE STANDARDS
Buckling under pressure from the auto industry, the Senate terminated an important bill which would have reduced our dependence on oil.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12665
Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegrating
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/03.22J.Ice.Shelf.htm
WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT U.S. FOREIGN POLICY: The War Against the Third World
http://www.addictedtowar.com/dorrel.html
Check also the cartoons at this website
Oppose Oil Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Please help by signing this petition. It takes 30 seconds and will really help.
http://www.thePetitionSite.com/takeaction/179485431
Petition to request that Yahoo Inc reconsider their decision to charge fees for pop mail, groups, and homepages:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/11213/petition.html
4TH APRIL, 2002: ANGOLA BREATHES SIGH OF RELIEF
After 27 years of a ruinous civil war, MPLA and UNITA sign a cease-fire in front of representatives of the governments of the Russian Federation, the USA and Portugal.
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/04/27338.html
4/5/02
2:17:03 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
SPECIES VANISHING ALONG LEWIS & CLARK TRAIL
SEATTLE, Washington, April 4, 2002 (ENS) - Many of the species discovered by explorers Lewis and Clark on their 19th century expeditions have either lost their historic habitat, have dwindling populations, or are near extinction, shows a new report by the Sierra Club. The list of vanishing species features some of the American west's most symbolic plant and animal species, including grizzly bears, bison and prairie dogs.
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-04-06.html
MYTH OF WORLD FOREST COVER SHATTERED
WASHINGTON, DC, April 4, 2002 (ENS) - From the temperate rainforests of Chile to Russia's northern taiga forests, researchers have evidence that the world's wooded lands are shrinking faster than even pessimists had thought.
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-04-02.html
NORSK HYDRO ICES ALUMINUM SMELTER IN ICELAND
OSLO, Norway, April 4, 2002 (ENS) - Norsk Hydro has decided to postpone indefinitely its plans to build a enormous aluminium smelter in Iceland. Conservationists are declaring victory against the facility which they say would destroy a highland wilderness area.
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-04-04.html
POACHERS KILL TEN ELEPHANTS IN KENYAN PARK
NAIROBI, Kenya, April 4, 2002 (ENS) - Ten elephants were gunned downed by a well organized gang of ivory poachers using automatic weapons in Tsavo East National Park, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has reported.
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-04-03.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: APRIL 4, 2002
Journal "Nature" Renounces Mexican Maize Article
Light Truck Fuel Standards Remain the Same
$85 Million Supports Local Wildlife Programs
Irrigation Water Delivered to Klamath Farmers
Computer Model Tracks Rainfall Sources
Flood Risks Underestimated by Current Models
$1.25 Million Supports New York Fishing Opportunities
College Students Honored for Saving Water
Animal Rights Advocate Rejects Leather Seats
Journal "Nature" Renounces Mexican Maize Article
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-04-09.html
4/5/02
2:13:44 PM
"I feel that my mission is, wherever I am,
to express my feeling about the importance of kindness,
compassion, and the true sense of brotherhood.
I practice these things.
It gives me more happiness, more success.
If I practiced anger or jealousy or bitterness,
no doubt my smile would disappear."
The Dalai Lama
4/5/02
2:11:06 PM
Litigation In The Wind
by Phillip B. C. Jones, PhD., J.D.
According to Darwin's theory, change has fueled the engine of evolution. Today, change is the spark that sets off lawsuits. The introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops has kindled its share of litigation, typically in the form of farmers and farm interest groups versus agbiotech companies. However, farmers who grow GM crops may not be immune from a lawsuit.
Farmers vs. Agbiotech Companies
In the fall of 2000, remnants of the GM corn StarLink were found in the human food supply. StarLink expresses Cry9C, an insecticidal protein that had not been approved for human consumption by the US Environmental Protection Agency and by various agencies outside the US. The discovery of StarLink "contamination" severely affected domestic and foreign markets for US corn products, which, in turn, spawned at least nine class action lawsuits in six states against Aventis CropScience USA LP (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina), the company that commercialized StarLink.
Last year, for example, a class action suit was filed in a Wisconsin federal district court on behalf of farmers who claim that they have lost money due to the depression in prices after StarLink was found to have entered the food supply (Southview Farms v. Aventis CropScience USA Holding, Inc.). Another class action suit, Mulholland v. Aventis Crop Science USA, was filed on behalf of farmers who did not grow StarLink. Here, the plaintiffs claimed that Aventis failed to take the appropriate measures to prevent the GM corn from entering the human food supply, and that, as a result, the plaintiffs lost significant domestic and foreign markets. The Mulholland complaint includes allegations of public nuisance, consumer fraud, deceptive business practices, and negligence. In Mudd v. Aventis Crop Science USA, non-StarLink growers filed a class action suit based on negligence and strict liability claims.
Concerns about GM crops also provoked the recent filing of a class action lawsuit against agbiotech companies in Canada. In this case, two farmers who specialize in organic produce initiated the lawsuit to recover compensatory damages for revenue lost by contamination of organic canola crops. The plaintiffs also requested an injunction to stop field trials of Monsanto's Roundup Ready wheat.
Larry Hoffman and Dale Beaudoin, two organic farmers in Saskatchewan, filed a statement of claim in the Court of Queen's Bench, seeking the class action lawsuit against Monsanto Canada, Inc. (Misssissauga, Ontario) and Aventis CropScience Canada Holding Inc. (Regina, Saskatchewan). They assert that the companies have ruined the province's organic canola market and must be prevented from doing the same to the organic wheat market. According to the complaint, Monsanto's Roundup Ready canola or Aventis CropScience's Liberty Link canola has been found growing on land for which it was not intended, and consequently, few, if any, seed suppliers will certify their seeds as organic. The farmers allege that the two companies are responsible for any GM contamination on the grounds of negligence, nuisance, trespass, pollution under the Saskatchewan Environmental Management Protection Act, and failure to conduct an environmental assessment. Estimates run to millions of dollars in damages for the loss of canola as an organic crop in Saskatchewan.
And what about the farmers who decide to produce GM crops designed by an agbiotech company?
Farmer vs. Farmer
Farmers who grow GM crops might find themselves as defendants in a lawsuit filed by neighbors who complain about crop contamination. For instance, plaintiffs might allege that pollen from the defendant's GM crops drifted over a property line (via wind, insects, etc.) and contaminated their non-GM crops.
Commentators have suggested that the plaintiffs of such lawsuits might assert claims of trespass to land, private nuisance, negligence, or strict liability. A claim of trespass to land can arise when someone crosses the legal boundary of another's land or causes something to cross that boundary. A private nuisance is often described as something that decreases the value of an individual's property or interferes with their use or enjoyment of the property. For a claim of negligence, a plaintiff must establish the existence of a duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, a breach of that duty, and an injury proximately resulting from the breach of duty. In contrast, strict liability is a type of liability without fault in which a person engages in an "abnormally dangerous" activity. Factors that a court may consider in determining whether an activity is abnormally dangerous include: whether the activity involves a high degree of risk of harm; whether the gravity of the harm that may result from the activity is likely to be great; whether the activity carries risk that cannot be eliminated by the exercise of reasonable care; whether the activity is a matter of common usage; whether the activity is inappropriate to the place where it is carried out; and the value of the activity to the community.
With regard to strict liability, commentators suggest that a court may compare a genetic contamination case to a pesticide drift case, such as the 1977 Washington State supreme court case, Langan v. Valicopters, Inc. (88 Wn.2d 855). In this case, the State supreme court affirmed an award of damages to an organic farmer who sued a crop duster in strict liability for the crop duster's use of a chemical pesticide on the organic farmer's land. Although this is characterized as a pesticide "drift" case, the Defendant had sprayed pesticide while he was flying over the Plaintiff's land in a helicopter. The pesticide did not simply float from one property to another. Courts will have to decide whether a short-term chemical drift is really analogous to the type of long-term process that would be required for genetic drift, and whether growing GM crops is the type of "abnormally dangerous activity" that is covered by strict liability. Determinations of trespass to land, private nuisance, negligence, and strict liability have nuances that can vary from state to state.
Dealing With Uncertainty
How can a farmer who grows GM crops manage the risk of a potential crop contamination lawsuit? Last November, a conference was held in Minneapolis to consider strategies for the co-existence of GM, non-GM, and organic crop production. Participants included representatives of the USDA, agbiotech companies, and academia. One recommendation from the Minneapolis meeting was to define legal responsibilities for compromised crop production. It would be helpful to establish an acceptable standard of behavior for a farmer who grows GM crops, and to identify the duty owed by that farmer to a neighbor who grows non-GM crops. Setting such a standard should provide more certainty in determining whether crop contamination was due to negligence.
Another recommendation was to establish a pilot program for an indemnity fund to reimburse losses caused by genetic contamination of non-GM and organic corn by GM corn. Many existing insurance policies do not cover pollution-related damages, and insurers may argue that pollen drift is a type of pollution. An alternative recommendation of the Minneapolis conference participants was to modify federal crop insurance programs to provide cross-contamination coverage. Farmers could also ask agbiotech companies that sell GM seed to indemnify them against liability in the event of a lawsuit.
New state laws might provide relief for certain types of GM crop-related lawsuits. Last year, at least four states considered the liability problem. The Massachusetts legislature, for example, had a bill (1789; "An Act Relative to the Liability for Genetically Engineered Food") that would shift liability to agbiotech companies. According to the legislation, a person (i.e., a natural person or business) who genetically engineers an organism for use as food shall be strictly liable for damages caused by the use of the product on the condition that the harm was not the result of another person violating reasonable safety precautions that were outlined in a signed agreement by both persons. The damages include loss of price due to crop contamination. Taking a different approach, the House and Senate of South Dakota passed a resolution urging Congress to create legislation that places all liability for damages caused by GM seeds on the companies that develop and manufacture the seeds. Currently, however, Congress is not considering this type of legislation.
Selected References
Hoffman and Beaudoin v. Monsanto Canada, Inc. and Aventis CropScience Canada Holding Inc. A copy of the Statement of Claim is available at the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate website
Iowa State University. 2001. Strategies for the coexistence of GMO, non-GMO, and organic crop production (meeting summary). (December). Available at Iowa State University's Biotechnology Home Page
http://www.biotech.iastate.edu/publications/IFAFS/coexistence.html
McInnis D. 2002. As more farmers plant GMO crops, legal issues multiply. (February 1). Available at the Checkbiotech.org website
Moeller DR. 2001. GMO liability threats for farmers. (November). Available at the website of The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Kades D. 2001. Lawsuit filed over genetically modified corn. Wisconsin State Journal D12 (February 17).
State Legislative Activity in 2001 Related to Agricultural Biotechnology. (2002). Available from the website of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology
4/5/02
2:05:37 PM
New Copyright Bill Heading To DC
by Declan McCullagh, Wired.com
WASHINGTON -- Music and record industry lobbyists are quietly readying an all-out assault on Congress this fall in hopes of dramatically rewriting copyright laws.
With the help of Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, they hope to embed copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs. All types of digital content, including music, video and e-books, are covered.
The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), scheduled to be introduced by Hollings, backs up this requirement with teeth: It would be a civil offense to create or sell any kind of computer equipment that "does not include and utilize certified security technologies" approved by the federal government.
It also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. Anyone who distributes copyrighted material with "security measures" disabled or has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection is covered.
Hollings' draft bill, which Wired News obtained on Friday, represents the next round of the ongoing legal tussle between content holders and their opponents, including librarians, programmers and open-source advocates.
Hollywood executives fret that without strong copy protection in widespread use, piracy will allow digital versions of movies to be pirated as readily as MP3 audio files once were with Napster. With the SSSCA enacted, the thinking goes, U.S. technology firms will have no choice but to insert copy-protection technology in future products.
The last legislative salvo in the content wars was the controversial 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which the SSSCA extends and expands. Under existing law, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov has been charged with allegedly selling "circumvention" devices, and 2600 magazine has been sued for distributing a DVD-decryption utility.
"The government is mandating what your technology has to do," says Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation of the SSSCA. "The government's now in some ways effectively writing code that anyone who makes anything with a microprocessor has to implement in anything they make. I'm unaware of any other requirement like that."
Hollings' aides could not be reached for comment on Friday. One lobbyist opposing the legislation said Disney, which markets movies and TV shows, is the measure's most ardent supporter among industry groups.
The SSSCA and existing law work hand in hand to steer the market toward using only computer systems where copy protection is enabled. First, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act created the legal framework that punished people who bypassed copy protection -- and now, the SSSCA is intended to compel Americans to buy only systems with copy protection on by default.
The SSSCA says that it is illegal to create, sell or distribute "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies" that are approved by the U.S. Commerce Department. An interactive digital device is defined as any hardware or software capable of "storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving or copying information in digital form."
Jessica Litman, a law professor at Wayne State University who specializes in intellectual property, likened it to the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act that slapped restrictions on digital audio recorders.
"This appears to be an attempt to expand the concept to anything that has a microprocessor in it and to have everyone agree or to have the government set technological standards that will enforce copyright owners' preferences," Litman says.
"Forgetting all the reasons why this is bad copyright policy and bad information policy, it's terrible science policy," she says.
Sonia Arrison, a technology policy analyst at the free-market Pacific Research Institute, said, "Some parts of this go too far.... Would this mean that if I distributed a file that I received from someone who had broken security technology that I would be breaking the law? Sounds like it."
Under the SSSCA, industry groups have a year to agree on a security standard, or the Commerce Department will step in and decide on one. Sunshine laws would not apply to meetings held in conjunction with the law, and industry organizations would be immune from antitrust prosecution.
Source: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46655,00.html
4/5/02
1:42:17 PM
t r u t h o u t | 04.05
BREAKING NEWS SPECIAL | Israel and Palestine in Mortal Conflict Israeli Defense Forces continue their offensive into the Palestinian controlled West Bank
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/03.31.BK.IDFvArafat.htm
Bush Says U.S. Is to Assume Stronger Role in Ending Violence
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.05A.Ending.Violence.htm
Imprisoned American Indian Activist Sues FBI for Violating Civil Rights
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.05B.Peltier.htm
Conyers on Haddad Ruling : "A Victory for Fundamental Fairness"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.05C.Conyers.Haddag.htm
Jennifer Van Bergen | Repeal the USA Patriot Act
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.05D.JVB.Patriot.htm
Washington Is Criticized for Growing Reluctance to Sign Treaties