Earths.net

The ongoing revelations of scandals in the Catholic church are appalling. That one child was ever hurt, much less thousands or even tens of thousands, is unconscionable. That they were hurt by priests who were supposed to be serving them, and that the church has continued to cover up these abuses, are a grave injustice.

Like everyone, I am deeply saddened by the hurt that has been done by church people, and with everyone in the church, apologize to anyone who was hurt. I hope that the church indeed makes sure this violence never happens again, and that our church finally learns to reject its love of power, domination, secrecy and sexism to become the community of peace and nonviolence that Jesus calls us to be.

If the church is finally to become a community of peace and nonviolence, following in the footsteps of its nonviolent founder, then it must of course ordain women and married people and include everyone in its embrace. It must always side with the poor and the oppressed in the struggle for justice.

But the acid test of the church’s transformation will be its final rejection of the so-called just war theory and its complete embrace of Gospel nonviolence. Until the church absolutely rejects its support of war and nuclear deterrence, it will not reflect the nonviolence of Jesus, and will continue to support the ultimate child abuse, the murder of children through warfare.

Today, the church reflects the culture’s false spirituality of violence, the belief that war is necessary, that war is justified, that war is even blessed by God. Over the centuries, the church modeled itself on the empire, created a similar leadership based on domination and “lording it over others,” rejected the Sermon on the Mount as impractical, invented the just war theory, and lived off the comforts of the culture of violence instead of risking the challenge of Gospel nonviolence, the cross and the resurrection.

Last November, nearly all the U.S. Catholic bishops voted to bless and support the bombing and mass murder of the people of Afghanistan. We know that some 4000 civilians were killed during the first two months of that U.S. war. Hundreds of children were killed by the United States, and the Catholic bishops condoned their murder.

Talk about child abuse!

The church cannot condemn child abuse by pedophiles and yet bless the government’s murder of children in its wars, if it wants to be consistent and faithful to Christ. Until the church rejects war once and for all, and adopts the consistency of Gospel nonviolence, it will continue to lose any moral credibility, and children around the world will continue to suffer and die.

The heart of Christianity is the nonviolent Jesus who commanded that we not only love one another, but that we put away the sword and love even our enemies. His teaching is too radical for any of us to handle. Yet if Christians would sincerely follow Christ, they must renounce killing and violence in whatever form they take.

Gandhi said Jesus was the most active practitioner of nonviolence in history, and the only people who don’t know that Jesus was nonviolent are Christians.

There is no way around the difficult, radical nonviolence of Christ. It is the center of all his teachings, and until we fully embrace his nonviolence, we will continue to fall far short of his vision.

But if the church and all Christians adopt Christ’s nonviolence, love our enemies, and resist our country’s wars, we will not only learn integrity and fidelity, we may even help stop the killings and destruction of the planet.

In the end, all communities of faith, including the churches, synagogues and mosques, will play a critical role in saving us from the brink of global destruction. The religious communities can dare to stand with our country’s enemies, see the humanity in their eyes, love them and defend them.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement showed, the churches can play a key role in practicing active nonviolent resistance to systemic injustice and war, and build the grassroots movement for social change. They can become prophetic communities that denounce war and injustice, and announce the vision of a more just, peaceful society where war, poverty and nuclear weapons no longer exist.

The church must renounce its complicity in the ultimate child abuse of war, beginning with our government’s mass murder of children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Colombia. When the church gives itself in the prophetic defense of all victims of war, and confronts the Pentagon and Bush’s war, then it will discover true integrity and authenticity, and resemble the radical vision of its founder.

John Dear is a Jesuit priest, peace activist and author of 17 books on peace and justice, including LIVING PEACE (Doubleday) and JESUS THE REBEL (Sheed and Ward).

Source: http://www.fatherjohndear.org

4/28/02
1:23:08 PM

`In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.'

Why?

TO THE WTC SURVIVORS OF 911

Why did 40,000 or more of you NOT show up for work at the WTC that morning? It's very bizarre. Were there any directives given out in advance - something about work on elevators, for instance or other possible unusual interruptions - something that would lead your businesses to innocently suggest a late start that morning? Most of you worked for international finance related companies. That's not 9 to 5 - it's round the clock. See, the fact is, it took over 7 hours to evacuate PART of one of the WTC buildings in '93 when there was much less havoc in the stairwells. It was simply not possible to evacuate thousands of people down multiple narrow flights of stairs in under one hour - but that did not happen. You survived because most of you were not there in the first place. How come? PART 6 - Why?

Why? a 6 part series posted APFN message board 4/27/02 by Anonymous

http://disc.server.com/Indices/149495.html

Why - part 1

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24767

Why - part 2

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24768

Why - part 3

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24769

Why - part 4

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24770

Why - part 5

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24771

Why - part 6

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24772

This Message was Posted on APFN Message Board 04/27/02 why....?

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wtc_why.htm

Why? Bush Seeks To Restrict Hill Probes Of Sept. 11 Intelligence Panels' Secrecy Is Favored

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24621

-- This SHOCKING interview will not be shocking to some of us, as it only confirms what we have known since September 11th. That such a highly connected, professional GOVERNMENT-LINKED SOURCE makes this CONFESSION of the HOAX OF 9-11 is what makes it newsworthy.

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24708

911 picture site (Don't miss this one)

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24760

I have also done a page exclusively about the Pentagon

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24763

More details on our future - gordie shoholm

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24757

'Id Rather Die then Be Your Slave'

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24748

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do."

Edward Everett Hale

http://www.apfn.org/old/apfncont.htm

4/27/02
1:45:36 PM

How Wal-Mart Is Remaking Our World

by Jim Hightower, April 26, 2002

Bullying people from your town to China

Corporations rule. No other institution comes close to matching the power that the 500 biggest corporations have amassed over us. The clout of all 535 members of Congress is nothing compared to the individual and collective power of these predatory behemoths that now roam the globe, working their will over all competing interests.

The aloof and pampered executives who run today’s autocratic and secretive corporate states have effectively become our sovereigns. From who gets health care to who pays taxes, from what’s on the news to what’s in our food, they have usurped the people’s democratic authority and now make these broad social decisions in private, based solely on the interests of their corporations. Their attitude was forged back in 1882, when the villainous old robber baron William Henry Vanderbilt spat out: "The public be damned! I’m working for my stockholders."

The media and politicians won’t discuss this, for obvious reasons, but we must if we’re actually to be a self-governing people. That’s why the Lowdown is launching this occasional series of corporate profiles. And why not start with the biggest and one of the worst actors?

The beast from Bentonville

Wal-Mart is now the world’s biggest corporation, having passed ExxonMobil for the top slot. It hauls off a stunning $220 billion a year from We the People (more in revenues than the entire GDP of Israel and Ireland combined).

Wal-Mart cultivates an aw-shucks, we’re-just-folks-from-Arkansas image of neighborly small-town shopkeepers trying to sell stuff cheaply to you and yours. Behind its soft homespun ads, however, is what one union leader calls "this devouring beast" of a corporation that ruthlessly stomps on workers, neighborhoods, competitors, and suppliers.

Despite its claim that it slashes profits to the bone in order to deliver "Always Low Prices," Wal-Mart banks about $7 billion a year in profits, ranking it among the most profitable entities on the planet.

Of the 10 richest people in the world, five are Waltons—the ruling family of the Wal-Mart empire. S. Robson Walton is ranked by London’s "Rich List 2001" as the wealthiest human on the planet, having sacked up more than $65 billion (£45.3 billion) in personal wealth and topping Bill Gates as No. 1.

Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way—by roughing people up. The corporate ethos emanating from the Bentonville headquarters dictates two guiding principles for all managers: extract the very last penny possible from human toil, and squeeze the last dime from every supplier.

With more than one million employees (three times more than General Motors), this far-flung retailer is the country’s largest private employer, and it intends to remake the image of the American workplace in its image—which is not pretty.

Yes, there is the happy-faced "greeter" who welcomes shoppers into every store, and employees (or "associates," as the company grandiosely calls them) gather just before opening each morning for a pep rally, where they are all required to join in the Wal-Mart cheer: "Gimme a ‘W!’" shouts the cheerleader; "W!" the dutiful employees respond. "Gimme an A!’" And so on.

Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for they’re held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70% of its workers are full-time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year.

Health-care benefits? Only if you’ve been there two years; then the plan hits you with such huge premiums that few can afford it—only 38% of Wal-Marters are covered.

Thinking union? Get outta here! "Wal-Mart is opposed to unionization," reads a company guidebook for supervisors. "You, as a manager, are expected to support the company’s position. . . . This may mean walking a tightrope between legitimate campaigning and improper conduct."

Wal-Mart is in fact rabidly anti-union, deploying teams of union-busters from Bentonville to any spot where there’s a whisper of organizing activity. "While unions might be appropriate for other companies, they have no place at Wal-Mart," a spokeswoman told a Texas Observer reporter who was covering an NLRB hearing on the company’s manhandling of 11 meat-cutters who worked at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Jacksonville, Texas.

These derring-do employees were sick of working harder and longer for the same low pay. "We signed [union] cards, and all hell broke loose," says Sidney Smith, one of the Jacksonville meat-cutters who established the first-ever Wal-Mart union in the U.S., voting in February 2000 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers. Eleven days later, Wal-Mart announced that it was closing the meat-cutting departments in all of its stores and would henceforth buy prepackaged meat elsewhere.

But the repressive company didn’t stop there. As the Observer reports: "Smith was fired for theft—after a manger agreed to let him buy a box of overripe bananas for 50 cents, Smith ate one banana before paying for the box, and was judged to have stolen that banana."

Wal-Mart is an unrepentant and recidivist violator of employee rights, drawing repeated convictions, fines, and the ire of judges from coast to coast. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has had to file more suits against the Bentonville billionaires club for cases of disability discrimination than any other corporation. A top EEOC lawyer told Business Week, "I have never seen this kind of blatant disregard for the law."

Likewise, a national class-action suit reveals an astonishing pattern of sexual discrimination at Wal-Mart (where 72% of the salespeople are women), charging that there is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation."

Workers’ compensation laws, child-labor laws (1,400 violations in Maine alone), surveillance of employees—you name it, this corporation is a repeat offender. No wonder, then, that turnover in the stores is above 50% a year, with many stores having to replace 100% of their employees each year, and some reaching as high as a 300% turnover!

Worldwide wage-depressor

Then there’s China. For years, Wal-Mart saturated the airwaves with a "We Buy American" advertising campaign, but it was nothing more than a red-white-and-blue sham. All along, the vast majority of the products it sold were from cheap-labor hell-holes, especially China. In 1998, after several exposes of this sham, the company finally dropped its "patriotism" posture and by 2001 had even moved its worldwide purchasing headquarters to China. Today, it is the largest importer of Chinese-made products in the world, buying $10 billion worth of merchandise from several thousand Chinese factories.

As Charlie Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee reports, "In country after country, factories that produce for Wal-Mart are the worst," adding that the bottom-feeding labor policy of this one corporation "is actually lowering standards in China, slashing wages and benefits, imposing long mandatory-overtime shifts, while tolerating the arbitrary firing of workers who even dare to discuss factory conditions."

Wal-Mart does not want the U.S. buying public to know that its famous low prices are the product of human misery, so while it loudly proclaims that its global suppliers must comply with a corporate "code of conduct" to treat workers decently, it strictly prohibits the disclosure of any factory names and addresses, hoping to keep independent sources from witnessing the "code" in operation.

Kernaghan’s NLC, acclaimed for its fact-packed reports on global working conditions, found several Chinese factories that make the toys Americans buy for their children at Wal-Mart. Seventy-one percent of the toys sold in the U.S. come from China, and Wal-Mart now sells one out of five of the toys we buy.

NLC interviewed workers in China’s Guangdong Province who toil in factories making popular action figures, dolls, and other toys sold at Wal-Mart. In "Toys of Misery," a shocking 58-page report that the establishment media ignored, NLC describes:

13- to 16-hour days molding, assembling, and spray-painting toys—8 a.m. to 9 p.m. or even midnight, seven days a week, with 20-hour shifts in peak season.

Even though China’s minimum wage is 31 cents an hour—which doesn’t begin to cover a person’s basic subsistence-level needs—these production workers are paid 13 cents an hour.

Workers typically live in squatter shacks, seven feet by seven feet, or jammed in company dorms, with more than a dozen sharing a cubicle costing $1.95 a week for rent. They pay about $5.50 a week for lousy food. They also must pay for their own medical treatment and are fired if they are too ill to work.

The work is literally sickening, since there’s no health and safety enforcement. Workers have constant headaches and nausea from paint-dust hanging in the air; the indoor temperature tops 100 degrees; protective clothing is a joke; repetitive stress disorders are rampant; and there’s no training on the health hazards of handling the plastics, glue, paint thinners, and other solvents in which these workers are immersed every day.

As for Wal-Mart’s highly vaunted "code of conduct," NLC could not find a single worker who had ever seen or heard of it.

These factories employ mostly young women and teenage girls. Wal-Mart, renowned for knowing every detail of its global business operations and for calculating every penny of a product’s cost, knows what goes on inside these places. Yet, when confronted with these facts, corporate honchos claim ignorance and wash their hands of the exploitation: "There will always be people who break the law," says CEO Lee Scott. "It is an issue of human greed among a few people."

Those "few people" include him, other top managers, and the Walton billionaires. Each of them not only knows about their company’s exploitation, but willingly prospers from a corporate culture that demands it. "Get costs down" is Wal-Mart’s mantra and modus operandi, and that translates into a crusade to stamp down the folks who produce its goods and services, shamelessly building its low-price strategy and profits on their backs.

The Wal-Mart gospel

Worse, Wal-Mart is on a messianic mission to extend its exploitative ethos to the entire business world. More than 65,000 companies supply the retailer with the stuff on its shelves, and it constantly hammers each supplier about cutting their production costs deeper and deeper in order to get cheaper wholesale prices. Some companies have to open their books so Bentonville executives can red-pencil what CEO Scott terms "unnecessary costs."

Of course, among the unnecessaries to him are the use of union labor and producing goods in America, and Scott is unabashed about pointing in the direction of China or other places for abysmally low production costs. He doesn’t even have to say "Move to China"—his purchasing executives demand such an impossible lowball price from suppliers that they can only meet it if they follow Wal-Mart’s labor example. With its dominance over its own 1.2 million workers and 65,000 suppliers, plus its alliances with ruthless labor abusers abroad, this one company is the world’s most powerful private force for lowering labor standards and stifling the middle-class aspirations of workers everywhere.

Using its sheer size, market clout, access to capital, and massive advertising budget, the company also is squeezing out competitors and forcing its remaining rivals to adopt its price-is-everything approach.

Even the big boys like Toys R Us and Kroger are daunted by the company’s brutish power, saying they’re compelled to slash wages and search the globe for sweatshop suppliers in order to compete in the downward race to match Wal-Mart’s prices.

How high of a price are we willing to pay for Wal-Mart’s "low-price" model? This outfit operates with an avarice, arrogance, and ambition that would make Enron blush. It hits a town or city neighborhood like a retailing neutron bomb, sucking out the economic vitality and all of the local character. And Wal-Mart’s stores now have more kill-power than ever, with its Supercenters averaging 200,000 square feet—the size of more than four football fields under one roof! These things land splat on top of any community’s sense of itself and devour local business.

By slashing its retail prices way below cost when it enters a community, Wal-Mart can crush our groceries, pharmacies, hardware stores, and other retailers, then raise its prices once it has mono-poly control over the market.

But, say apologists for these Big-Box megastores, at least they’re creating jobs. Wrong. By crushing local businesses, this giant eliminates three decent jobs for every two Wal-Mart jobs that it creates—and a store full of part-time, poorly paid employees hardly builds the family wealth necessary to sustain a community’s middle-class living standard.

Indeed, Wal-Mart operates as a massive wealth extractor. Instead of profits staying in town to be reinvested locally, the money is hauled off to Bentonville, either to be used as capital for conquering yet another town or simply to be stashed in the family vaults (the Waltons, by the way, just bought the biggest bank in Arkansas).

It’s our world

Why should we accept this? Is it our country, our communities, our economic destinies—or theirs? Wal-Mart’s radical remaking of our labor standards and our local economies is occurring mostly without our knowledge or consent. Poof—there goes another local business. Poof—there goes our middle-class wages. Poof—there goes another factory to China. No one voted for this . . . but there it is. While corporate ideologues might huffily assert that customers vote with their dollars, it’s an election without a campaign, conveniently ignoring that the public’s "vote" might change if we knew the real cost of Wal-Mart’s "cheap" goods—and if we actually had a chance to vote.

Much to the corporation’s consternation, more and more communities are learning about this voracious powerhouse, and there’s a rising civic rebellion against it. Tremendous victories have already been won as citizens from Maine to Arizona, from the Puget Sound to the Gulf of Mexico, have organized locally and even statewide to thwart the expansionist march of the Wal-Mart juggernaut.

Wal-Mart is huge, but it can be brought to heel by an aroused and organized citizenry willing to confront it in their communities, the workplace, the marketplace, the classrooms, the pulpits, the legislatures, and the voting booths. Just as the Founders rose up against the mighty British trading companies, so we can reassert our people’s sovereignty and our democratic principles over the autocratic ambitions of mighty Wal-Mart.

More of Jim Hightower's writing can be found in his monthly newletter, The Hightower Lowdown.

Source: http://www.JimHightower.com

4/27/02
1:19:44 PM

September 11th Environmental Hypocrisy

by Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

"Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest." -- Benjamin Franklin

Two key figures have resigned from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the last month. Both officials, the chief investigator for the EPA's Ombudsman Office and the Ombudsman himself, stated in their resignation letters that the EPA has covered up the existence of deadly pollution in the area of the destroyed World Trade Center towers in New York.

While this issue is debated, emergency workers who were sent to the scene and residents of Lower Manhattan are developing serious, and in some cases, life threatening health problems.

We don’t even hear much about the area around the World Trade Center towers – or Ground Zero as it was dubbed by the news media - on the TV news or in the newspapers any longer. From the point of view of the corporate controlled mainstream media, the story is old. But for some firefighters and other personnel who worked or are still working at the scene, the trauma of the terrorist attacks has now become very personal as their own health is threatened.

At a New York public hearing in February, Hugh Kaufman, then chief investigator for the EPA's Ombudsman Office, told a group of scientists, residents, and small business owners that he believed the EPA was deliberately not testing the air quality in the World Trade Center area properly and covering up the reasons why.

"I believe EPA did not do that because they knew it would come up not safe and so they are involved in providing knowingly false information to the public about safety," Kaufman said at the hearing.

While the EPA continues to claim that the air around the site is safe, scores of rescue workers, cleanup crews, and residents are reporting respiratory problems. Many believe something in the air from the collapse of the towers is making them sick.

U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes the site, said at a public meeting he called at the Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, "It's remarkable. Either they have something to hide or they don't give a damn."

In November, 2001, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued an order to dissolve the ombudsman's position, an office created to give the public a forum for complaints about the agency’s actions. The Congressional order that established the office expired last fall, and she decided not to ask for renewal. In light of what we are now learning of the effects of the Bush administration on the EPA, it is no surprise that the public oversight function would be eliminated.

Many workers from FEMA, New York Fire Fighters and Urban Search and Rescue teams wore no protective masks.

The risks have been greatly magnified for many residents, rescue workers, and cleanup crews, because many did not wear any breathing protection sufficient to protect their lungs at ground zero and in the surrounding community. In fact, many day laborers, including large numbers of immigrants who spoke little or no English, were hired to clean up buildings covered with toxic dust.

We won’t hear about their ailments on the TV evening news.

Not widely reported in the news media is the fact that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) gathered data early on about the pollution levels at the site. The Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), a scientific instrument designed to view the site in many different wavelengths, was flown on an aircraft by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA over the World Trade Center area on September 16, 18, 22, and 23, 2001.

A two person crew from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collected samples of dusts and debris from more than 35 localities within a distance of one kilometer from the World Trade Center site on the evenings of September 17 and 18, 2001.

While not by any means a complete study, the data showed elevated levels of asbestos and many other pollutants, including the heavy metals, aluminum, chromium, antimony, molybdenum, and barium.

Government officials have tried to downplay the asbestos threat by claiming that mostly chrysotile asbestos, a form of the mineral considered to be less carcinogenic than other forms, was found. The USGS document describing the results of their tests points out that such a claim, “has not been universally accepted by the scientific community.” But it is convenient politically.

What studies done to date will not show are the localized toxic clouds of multiple substances that have been formed as millions of pounds of chemical compounds from the debris combine in unexpected ways. Many rescue and cleanup workers feel they have become ill from these invisible toxic clouds.

A reader of my weekly commentaries contacted me about her friend and colleague, a rescue worker from a fire department in another state who was ordered to the World Trade Center right after the disaster. She became progressively sicker soon after this work and has been shuttled from doctor to doctor.

A bone marrow aspiration revealed a huge level of toxic mercury in her system that could only have gotten there from an intense outside exposure. The only place she could have gotten such an exposure was at the World Trade Center.

Increased pressure inside her skull has developed, and she is having severe headaches, nausea, and nosebleeds. Her friend reported to me that, “She has a horrible rash all over her body. She has horrible cramps in her legs and back. Her lung capacity is greatly diminished and she has had major changes in her vision, and was told she is going blind. The government doctor who was sent to treat her told her to take a six month leave of absence and get her life in order because in six months she would no longer be able to perform her duties as a firefighter.”

The supervisor of this 12 year veteran rescue worker told her "all of this medical testing is fine, as long as it does not get in the way of you doing your job." With the EPA downplaying any toxic effects, she is getting little sympathy from agencies and insurance companies.

In EPA Ombudsman Robert Martin's Earth Day resignation letter, he accused EPA Administrator Whitman of withholding data about the toxic air at the World Trade Center for personal gain. He discovered that Whitman is married to a man who served for years as an officer of Citigroup and who now manages about $800 million of the firm's investments.

Martin said he later discovered that Citigroup owns Traveler's Insurance, the insurance company of many buildings in World Trade Center area. He feels that because Whitman issued a statement assuring people that everything was fine, Traveler's saved a lot of money by not having to pay claims.

These accusations are now being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department.

While studies and investigations continue, people suffer from an environmental catastrophe. I challenge a group of attorneys to come forward, find the rescue and cleanup workers who have been poisoned by working at the World Trade Center site, and force the government to accept responsibility for their health care.

We will never end terrorism in the world if we can’t eradicate injustice and greed from our own government agencies, political leaders, and industries.

RESOURCES

1. The complete USGS report on NASA’s flight over the World Trade Center at:

http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/pub/open-file-reports/ofr-01-0429/

2. A collection of links related to health effects from the World Trade Center cleanup by the New York Committee on Occupational Health & Safety at:

http://www.qc.edu/CBNS/WTChealthinfo.html

3. Read the full story about the EPA ombudsman’s resignation at:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/67576_ombudsman24.shtml

4. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Demand that they reveal the true nature of the danger at the World Trade Center site and compensate all injured workers, emergency personnel, and residents."

http://www.emailcongress.net

5. See a fact sheet on pollutants at the World Trade Center site from the NY Committee on Occupational Health & Safety at:

http://www.nycosh.org/wtc-catastrophe-factsheet.pdf

6. Visit the website of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project. They want the area to be declared a Superfund site. See their activities at:

http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/WTC-index.htm

7. A “USA Today” story about the anxiety over toxic substances at the WTC site at:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/02/07/usat-wtc-acov.htm

8. Visit a collection of news reports on this issue on Immune Web, a website for people who suffer from environmental diseases, at:

http://www.immuneweb.org/911/news/

8. Read a critique of the EPA studies by “Worker’s World” at:

http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/pollute0307.php

Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of “Healing Our World, A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light,” available at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html.

Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at:

mailto:jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at:

http://www.healingourworld.com

4/27/02
1:06:08 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

MOSCOW POLICE BEAT ANTI-NUCLEAR DEMONSTRATORS ON CHERNOBYL DAY

MOSCOW, Russia, April 26, 2002 (ENS) - Anti-nuclear activists and journalists documenting their protest were roughed up by police Thursday on Red Square in front of the Kremlin. More than 20 activists from Moscow, Kaliningrad, Voronezh, Vladimir, Yekaterinburg, Ryazan, Orel, and Ozersk were arrested.

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-26-03.html

MORATORIUM ON PACIFIC LONGLINING COULD SAVE LEATHERBACKS

PACIFIC GROVE, California, April 26, 2002 (ENS) - A moratorium on longline fishing in the Pacific Ocean is urgently needed to keep the world's largest living marine turtle from extinction, a conference of sea turtle experts declared Thursday.

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-26-01.html

ARMY CORPS SUSPENDS DELAWARE RIVER DREDGING PROJECT

WASHINGTON, DC, April 26, 2002 (ENS) - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has suspended a dredging project on the Delaware River after a Congressional review raised questions regarding whether the project is financially justified. Conservation groups, who have opposed the project for almost a decade, called the decision a "victory for common sense conservation."

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-26-06.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN

Carnival Cruise Company Fined $18 Million

House Committee Votes to Override Yucca Veto

Energy Department Itemizes Withheld Documents

Western Air Pollution Plan Wins Initial Approval

Suit Seeks Protection for Beluga Sturgeon

Conservation Groups Seek Special Status for Wild Fish Expedition Plumbs Depths of Pacific Sanctuaries

Algae Blooms Fuel Ocean Food Web

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-26-09.html

HEALING OUR WORLD: WEEKLY COMMENT

By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

September 11th Environmental Hypocrisy

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-26g.html

4/27/02
1:00:48 PM

Justice Department Uses Drug Law To Target Low Income Students

When Congress passed a law four years ago taking federal financial aid away from college students who had been convicted of drug crimes, it was hailed as a miracle cure. "The best thing we can do for education is to get somebody clean and then get them back into school," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., the law's chief sponsor.

Not a bad goal. But the supposed benefits haven't materialized.

Instead, the law has sparked countermeasures at several universities and protests on more than 80 campuses by students who are seeing other results.

Among the most problematic:

* While the most trivial drug offenses can cost students their chance for a college education, students who commit rape, robbery and murder face no such outcome. So the sponsors' stated goal of showing that actions have consequences is scoffed at.

* By withholding federal financial aid, the program hurts low-income students with drug convictions who can't afford to attend college without aid. Wealthier students with similar convictions are not penalized if they don't depend on federal financial aid.

* By refusing aid to students who have already been punished for drug crimes, the law "undermines the process" in which colleges offer students a fresh start, says Hampshire College President Gregory Prince Jr.

After the Bush administration began aggressively enforcing the law, which had been largely ignored, more than 15,000 students with drug records lost financial aid for all or part of this year. Another 10,000 who failed to answer a question on government loan applications about whether they had a drug conviction also were denied aid. The vast majority of the students penalized have family incomes of $30,000 or less.

To counteract the lost aid, Yale decided this month to make up the dollars while a student undergoes a rehabilitation program that can reopen the door to federal aid. A handful of other schools have set up similar scholarship or loan programs. Hampshire, for example, has a loan fund of $10,000 available to students hurt by the drug law. Meanwhile, student governments, from George Washington University in the nation's capital to the Berkeley in the West, have passed resolutions denouncing the law.

But such efforts don't touch the vast majority of students at the nation's 7,000 colleges. Students who attend schools that can't or won't compensate for this faulty federal statute miss out on the college education the federal aid programs were designed to provide to the neediest students.

The law's supporters argue that if aid goes to a student with a drug record, less money is left for law-abiding students. Their reasoning is a stretch. The aid is from an "entitlement program," and no student eligible based on family income is turned away.

Even Souder recognizes its problems and favors amending it so that it applies only to students already in college when they commit a drug offense.

Better to get rid of the law altogether. Otherwise, college students are taught a damaging lesson: that low-income students must pay twice for their crimes.

4/27/02
12:55:41 PM

It's an Angry, Violent, Warmongering World Out There Right Now.

You Just Live In It

by Mark Morford, April 26, 2002

And all you really have to do is step away for just a short period of time, break away from the daily news grind and the everyday wars and the talking-head alarmism and the commonplace unrests and the wagging fingers of hissing foreign leaders and then come back, and you can see it clearly.

It dawns on you rather suddenly, especially if you've just taken a relatively lengthy hiatus/vacation where the pressures of the world all deliciously fell away and then you calmly return and peel your suntan and open the paper and scan the wires like you always have and suddenly it hits you, smacks your anima like a brick: There are no peacemakers in the world right now.

Crusty macho hawks run the planet like never before in our generation. Violent money-addled males with far too much power and far too little perspective are in charge of far too many corporations and lobbies and governments.

You are appalled. You are saddened. You are blackened at the karmic level. You realize you don't have nearly enough wine or painkillers or warm socks for the imminent nuclear winter.

But you are not naive. You are not stupid. You realize this is essentially the same as it ever was. It's a tragic cliche: Wars and violence and hatred and injustice and cruelty and angry old men ordering their tribes to kill each other in the name of oil and money and land and dogma. Film at 11.

Yet not all is bleak and bitter and Bush, of course. Plenty of good remains, you tell yourself. It's just your average, bitter, ultraconservative, anti-everything leadership right now and while it certainly feels more sinister and savage than usual that's just the way the cultural pendulum swings, you tell yourself, hopefully, trying to shrug it off.

But then again, not. Then again, it all seems much worse than it ever has in your lifetime. You don't want to believe it but you look and look and cringe and wince and it's all renewed nuclear strategy this and bloody Israeli conflict that, heightened tensions with Iraq here and brutal civil war there and far too much hey get your holy hands off me, Father, just about everywhere.

You can feel it. We're aching to annihilate Iraq. Craving some nuclear explosions in any of seven newly minted enemies. Actively avoiding the Middle East conflict like the plague, terrified our alliances could be imperiled, our oil interests compromised, Bush family friendships endangered.

World War III will not be two egomaniacal superpowers battling for supremacy and bragging rights. It will be scattershot and bewildering, a hundred different battles fought on a hundred different fronts for a thousand ever-shifting reasons, each and every one twisted and distorted by regulation GOP spin doctors who somehow convince the bulk of the populace that it's somehow patriotic to be cavity searched and fingerprinted and beaten with a stick when you buy groceries.

We are so close. We are on the verge of something very dangerous and irreversible. You can hear Dick Cheney breathing hard, just aching to press The Button. The human animal is capable of staggering atrocities and deadly choices and the thick-necked frat boys in charge right now are the most darkly capable we've suffered in decades.

No one is preaching peace. No one striving for genuine camaraderie or balance or compromise. And too few of us seem willing to believe that 9/11 has mutated into a brutish hollow excuse for the Bush administration to perpetuate a war for oil and to proclaim new enemies and to chip away at the Constitution and your civil liberties in the name of increased federal control and fewer dissenting voices.

And you have two choices, given your rather privileged American status allowing such choices at all: You can either quickly close the paper and turn off the TV and thank goddess that the world is variegated and colorful enough that you can live in relative happiness without having your soul pummeled on a daily basis by people who seemingly have zero connection to any sort of healthy spiritual reality or perspective. You can detach. Spin down. Avoid.

Or you can carefully dive back in, try to make sense of it all, get informed and slog through the macho muck and try to keep your soul from getting overly tainted, make a valiant attempt to make it though the day without slapping both hands to your head and screaming and jumping in front of a speeding ideology.

All the while realizing that if there's one thing the world needs right now, it's positivism and laughter and good sex and connective energy and an enlightened populace to counteract the forces that would drag us down to cesspools of thin-lipped white-knuckle rage. Too simplistic? Too naive? Hardly. Peace is always much braver and more difficult than war. Just try it.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

4/27/02
12:41:13 PM

t r u t h o u t | 04.27

Did Bush Lie About Policy on Plant Emissions?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27A.Bush.Lies.htm

FEMA Snubs NY Victims of WTC Attacks

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27B.FEMA.Snubs.htm

Senator Murray/Sierra Club | Energy Bill Fails America

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27C.Energy.Fails.htm

Bush Will Allow Coal Mining to Fill Waterways

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27D.Pollution.htm

Mark Morford | Frat Boys Rule The Earth

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27E.MM.Rules.htm

Naomi Klein | Old Hates Fuelled by Fear

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27F.NK.Fear.htm

Justice Department Uses Drug Law to Target Low Income Students

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27G.Drug.Target.htm

The Graying of the Black Panthers

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27H.Black.htm

Parks Under Siege

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.27I.Under.Siege.htm

t r u t h o u t, is a non-profit independent news source

http://www.truthout.org

4/26/02
6:19:11 PM

LOVEARTH NETWORK

Connecting Through 1000+ EcoHumanePolitical Websites

http://www.Lovearth.net

4/26/02
6:10:54 PM

The Nation

In recent weeks, "moral clarity" has become the buzz-phrase for conservatives upset with President Bush's attempts to revive Middle East peace talks and unforgiving of his failure to formally sanction anything that Ariel Sharon decides to do in the Occupied Territories.

But this attractive-sounding concept is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to turn the Middle East conflict into a comic-book face-off with only one policy option: all-out war.

For a thorough deconstruction of "moral clarity," see the latest installment of "Capital Games" -- David Corn's exclusive Nation web feature -- currently available at:

http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/

Meanwhile, in Palestine, the stand-off between Israeli troops and Palestinians taking refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem continues. Two Palestinians were wounded in a gun battle outside the Church this morning. The exchange of fire took place after four other Palestinians - some of whom are thought to be policemen - had given themselves up. Meanwhile an Israeli army spokesman said Israel was prepared to use force to end the siege, which has been going on since April 2.

At the same time, the United Nations is resisting Israeli demands for a delay in its investigation of the Israeli army's devastating military operation in the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin.

The Nation has created a special page of resources on the Middle East. You can find links offering news and background, a recommended-reading list, Nation archival articles, and a complete collection of recent relevant Nation commentary, including essays, reports and editorials from Edward Said, Richard Falk, Jerome Segal, Robert Fisk, Russell Banks, Wole Soyinka, Breyten Breytenbach, Robert Friedman, Meredith Tax, Mouin Rabbani, Neve Gordon, Amos Oz and Charmaine Seitz.

All available at:

http://www.thenation.com/special/2002middleeast.mhtml

LE PEN'S SUCCESS

Fresh on the heels of his stunning electoral success, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right National Front candidate for the French presidency, used a news conference in Paris this morning to rail at immigrants, saying they were an EU-wide problem.

Popular protest at his success in reaching the run-off in the May 5 general election shows no sign of abating with French students preparing for a weekend of mass demonstrations nationwide.

Few doubt that Le Pen will lose heavily to President Jacques Chirac in the final contest but, in a sign of uncertainty, one leading French polling group has abandoned attempts to predict the outcome.

For an analysis of Le Pen's shocking success, check out Doug Ireland's editorial from the May 13, 2002 issue of The Nation:

DOUG IRELAND: The Center Folds (May 13,2002)

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=ireland

And for historical insight, we've made available a 1991 essay by The Nation's late Europe Correspondent Daniel Singer:

DANIEL SINGER: Le Pen's Pals -- Blood and Soil (Dec. 23, 1991)

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=archive&s=19911223singer

RALLY AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY IN NEW YORK CITY SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 2:30

The New York Civil Liberties Union, The New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty and The Nation Institute are co-sponsoring a rally this weekend in Union Square Park at 14th Street in Manhattan to show support for a moratorium against the death penalty. So please join other New Yorkers on the eve of the first New York City Council hearings calling for a resolution on a state moratorium on capital punishment.

For more information go to http://www.nyclu.org, call 212-344-3005 x248, or email to: jwnyclu@aol.com.

And, don't miss Robert Sherrill's National Magazine Award-nominated essay, "Death Trip," which makes a comprehensive and compelling case for the complete abolition of the death penalty.

ROBERT SHERRILL: Death Trip: The American Way of Execution (Jan. 8, 2001)

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010108&s=sherrill

NEW NATION ARTICLES

You can also find numerous new articles and editorials currently available from the May 13, 2002 issue of The Nation:

MICHAEL MASSING: Losing The Peace?

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=massing

WILLIAM GREIDER: The Enron Nine

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=massing

JASON LEOPOLD: Bill Simon's Enron Ties

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=leopold

LIZA FEATHERSTONE: Strange Marchfellows

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=featherstone

WILLIAM F. SCHULZ: Shouting Fire (Review)

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=schulz

4/26/02
5:58:21 PM

CHAVEZ COMEBACK EXPOSES U.S. GOVERNMENT & MEDIA LIES

To paraphrase an old proverb: "Celebrate in haste; repent at leisure."

On April 13th the New York Times rushed to gloat that one more opponent of the US Empire had been crushed.

Never you mind that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been elected by overwhelming popular vote. (In contrast, might we note, to George Walker Bush.)

An editorial in the Times described the Venezuelan military/big business coup d'Etat as an effort to reassert democracy:

"Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator...[because] the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader." - N Y Times (1)

And the Times added:

"But democracy has not yet been restored, and won't be until a new president is elected." (1)

In the bad old Cold War days, the US Establishment used to attack its opponents for not holding multiparty elections.

Well, Venezuela did hold multiparty elections and Chavez won by a landslide. But this was not sufficient.

In the New World Order, democracy is not defined any longer as holding elections. Democracy is defined as supporting US polices. No matter how many elections Chavez won by how many landslides, his resistance to US Diktat made him by definition antidemocratic, that is, "a would-be dictator."

Thus when the military took over Venezuela three days ago and installed a pro-Washington big business leader as President, the Times did not describe this military coup d'Etat as a threat to democracy. Rather, they described it as *ending* a threat to democracy.

Similarly, in the past, NY Times editorials have immediately applauded coup d'Etats in Yugoslavia (overthrowing elected President Slobodan Milosevic) and the Philippines (overthrowing elected President Joseph Estrada).

But this time the Times gloated a bit too soon.

EVERYBODY IS IN SUCH A HURRY

Since the New World Order has re-defined democracy as subservience to US diktat, it is only fair that the democratic content of every event should be given a rating by the US government.

Thus it is by no means surprising that the US State Department issued a Press Statement rating the democratic content of the Venezuelan coup d'Etat.

The only problem is, the State Department, like the New York Times, published a bit too soon.

Within hours of the coup, a State Department Press Statement declared unqualified support for the coup. This document praised the military, which had just seized power, for acting with "restraint" and blamed Hugo Chavez for the coup d'Etat because under his government:

"essential elements of democracy...have been weakened in recent months." - State Dep't Statement (2)

To what "essential elements of democracy" might State be referring? They didn't say, but all the newspapers have pointed out that the big dispute in Venezuela has been over the State-owned oil company.

Venezuelan President Chavez had weakened "essential elements of democracy" by appointing as leaders of the state-owned oil company people that were (horrors!) loyal to his administration rather than to Chevron Oil and, perhaps even worse, by selling oil to Cuba at an affordable price.

Chavez must not have been aware that that willingness to strangle Cuba is a crucial component of the New World Order's definition of "democracy."

The State Department declaration repeated the common media line, without introducing a shred of evidence, that:

"Chavez supporters, on orders, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in more than 100 wounded or killed." (2)

And:

"The results of these provocations are: Chavez resigned the presidency. Before resigning, he dismissed the Vice President and the Cabinet. A transition civilian government has promised early elections." (2)

So let's get this right.

First, Chavez ordered his supporters to kill a few opponents. This could hardly have been expected to disperse a large demonstration which had been called by leading TV stations and part of the military. But it could certainly have been expected to assist military leaders who were openly looking for - or trying to manufacture - an excuse to stage a coup d'Etat.

Having provided this excuse by murdering said opponents Chavez then switched character and acted with remorse by firing himself and everyone else who was (we are told) involved. This Chavez is very mercurial, no?

We can now state with certainty that a) Chavez never resigned; b) he never dismissed his vice president and cabinet. In other words, the State Department, confident that Chavez had been silenced for good, was lying.

But why?

Because they wanted the military takeover to appear as a "Change of Government" (which, by the way is the title of the State Department declaration) rather than what it was: a US instigated military coup d'Etat.

To allow this, it was necessary that before departing the scene Chavez should dismiss every single top government official, and then himself.

Mind you, it would have been entirely unacceptable for Chavez to begin by firing himself. Once he dismissed himself he would no longer have had the authority to dismiss the vice president and all cabinet members. This would have violated prescribed State Department procedures, making it undemocratic.

Since we know for sure that the State Department was lying through its teeth when it claimed Chavez had resigned and fired everyone, isn't it reasonable to believe they were also lying through their teeth when they claimed he ordered supporters to shootsome opponents?

Keep in mind that shooting opponents was an act which (like dismissing his government) could only have helped his opponents by giving them a seeming justification for the coup d'Etat which had been openly called for by some military officers, appearing on "opposition" TV stations.

Even as the Mighty and their Media congratulated themselves on the "democratic" coup and admired this reassertion of their invincibility, another voice was heard.

The wretched of this earth, residents of the slums of Caracas, whose suffering is the ugly secret of the glossy US Empire, came in their thousands, in from the countryside, down from the hills around Caracas, and with loyalist soldiers they took Venezuela back from the hands of what the CIA boys like to call "Civil society," and all we can say is this is how the current worldwide empire of lies will end: by just such actions of the ordinary, wonderful, decent people of this world, God bless them.

FOOTNOTES

1) The New York Times April 13, 2002, Saturday, Late Edition - Final Section A; Page 16; Column 1; Editorial Desk "Hugo Chavez Departs"

2) Press Statement Philip T. Reeker, Deputy Spokesman Washington, DC April 12, 2002 "Venezuela: Change of Government"

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/9316.htm

See also:

IRISH FILMMAKER'S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF VENEZUELAN COUP D'ETAT (16 April)

http://emperors-clothes.com/news/witness.htm

BUSH'S MASTER OIL PLAN The aborted coup in Venezuela is just one piece of a broader plan to secure a global oil empire, stretching from Colombia to Uzbekistan.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12946

Venezuela: Not a Banana-Oil Republic after All

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=11560&group=webcast

Bush Officials Met With Venezuelans Who Ousted Leader

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.17B.Bush.Ousted.htm

Pentagon to Investigate Its Own Role in Venezuela

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.25D.Pentagon.htm

HOW THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) GUTTED ITS VENEZUELAN COUP D'ETAT SCOOP (A MUST READ!)

http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/distort.htm

4/26/02
5:49:15 PM

Israel Begins Expansion of West Bank Settlements

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.25E.West.Bank.htm

Israel must not be allowed to upset the Jenin investigation

http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=288614

What a difference 20 years make The time is now to speak out for justice and peace in the Middle East

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=13203

Saudi to Warn Bush of Rupture Over Israel Policy

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.26B.Warn.Bush.htm

STRIKING BACK AT THE EMPIRE A perspective on the ongoing saga called the War on Terror

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12893

Congressman Dennis Kucinich on Stopping Open Ended Permanent War

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/04.25A.Kucinich.htm

If you want a free vote, ask nicely

http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4398412,00.html

Did you know that...

SOURCES OF U.S. OIL

1. U.S. - 41%

2. Canada - 9%

3. Saudi Arabia - 8.5%

4. Venezuela - 8%

5. Mexico - 7%

6. Iraq - 4 %

7. Nigeria - 4%

4/26/02
5:46:26 PM

DAILY GRIST

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

THE AGENCY FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE EPA

Perhaps belying its name, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing revisions to some of its own rules in order to allow mining companies to dump dirt and rock waste from mountaintop-removal coal operations into rivers and streams. In mountaintop-removal mining, companies raze mountains to access coal veins and then dump the leftover debris into nearby valleys. Environmentalists say the practice causes unacceptable damage, particularly to rivers and streams, and they have challenged these mining operations in court. The new rules are designed to make winning such lawsuits more difficult for enviros and to erase other impediments to mountaintop-removal mining. Because changing the rules entails redefining what constitutes "fill material" that can be legally dumped in waterways, certain kinds of trash -- such as old cars and refrigerators -- could also legally be dumped to serve as artificial reefs or berms.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 26 Apr 2002 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51114-2002Apr25.html>

straight to the source: Charleston Gazette, Ken Ward, Jr., 26 Apr 2002 <http://wvgazette.com/news/News/2002042547/>

CHERIGNOBLE

Sixteen years ago today, a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl exploded, resulting in the worst atomic accident in the history of the world. The explosion affected 3.3 million Ukrainians as well as untold numbers of other people, and sent a radioactive cloud drifting over much of Europe. All of the area within 18 miles of the plant has been a no-man's-land since the accident, but last year, under urging from the U.N. to focus on redevelopment, the Ukrainian government began contemplating building in the area. That move provoked an outcry from victims groups, who point to ongoing ill effects from the explosion. The number of thyroid cancer cases, for example, has risen from 119 in 1986 (prior to the explosion) to 3,022 last year.

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Tim Vickery, 25 Apr 2002 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/04/25/international1456EDT0663.DTL>

only in Grist: Insane in the Ukraine -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha030501.stm?source=daily>

DON'T YOU HATE YOUR ENERGY BILL?

After some two months of debate, the Senate energy bill passed by a vote of 88 to 11 yesterday, but no one's very excited about it. Environmentalists and many Democrats say the bill would do little to encourage energy conservation or the use of renewable resources, while most Republicans and energy industry reps say it would not promote enough oil and gas exploration in the U.S. What would have been two of the most significant features of the bill -- drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks -- were voted down earlier. The version approved yesterday contains only modest pro-environment measures, such as a requirement that utilities produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2020, and another banning the use of the gasoline additive MTBE. The bill will now go to a conference committee to be reconciled with the House version, which passed last year and is backed by the Bush administration.

straight to the source: New York Times, David E. Rosenbaum, 26 Apr 2002 <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/politics/26ENER.html>

VOLUNTEARS

Thanks to strong leadership, a new day is dawning in the U.S. A new civic spirit is rising. It's ... volunteerism! And President Bush is looking to Corporate America to lead the way, with voluntary caps on emissions, voluntary cleanups of waste sites, and voluntary improvements in worker safety. We wish we were joking, but since we're not, at least we've found a way to laugh about it. Check out a short (we promise) animated cartoon on volunteerism in action, complements of editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore, on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: Catch the spirit of the Bush administration -- satire by Mark Fiore in our Soapbox section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/soapbox/fiore042602.asp?source=daily>

TROUT KILLING IN AMERICA

Dam operators could flood part of the Colorado River next year in an effort to save an endangered fish species, rebuild beaches, and kill part of an excessively large trout population. The flood plans were approved yesterday 17 to 1 by a federally appointed panel composed of every major group with an interest in the river. Wildlife officials, archaeologists, and rafting company operators all favor creating beaches along the river, which would be accomplished by allowing floods to deposit sediment along the water's edge. After the flooding, river managers would alternate high and low flows every day to dry out the spawning grounds of the rainbow trout and destroy its eggs. As the final part of the plan, scientists would kill thousands of trout in a five-mile stretch of the river where the endangered humpback chub spawns. If approved by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the experiment would be the fourth attempt to alter river conditions by dam manipulation. Some scientists feel that prior attempts to create beaches along the river resulted in short-lived successes at best.

straight to the source: Arizona Republic, Shaun McKinnon, 26 Apr 2002 <http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0426river26.html>

straight to the source: New York Times, Sandra Blakeslee, 26 Apr 2002 <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/26/national/26RIVE.html>

BAD AIR DAY

As if California didn't have enough of a smog problem all by itself, now it and other parts of the nation are suffering from air pollution blown in from China. Toxic pollutants from power plants, factories, and farms travel on wind currents across the ocean and mingle with our own less-than-perfect air to create an international smog blanket that is particularly acute on the West Coast. The smog is associated with a wide range of health problems, including heart attacks, respiratory difficulties, and premature death. U.S. air quality officials fear that the foreign smog will complicate attempts to regulate pollution and meet clean air standards in California and elsewhere. This week, a team of scientists is launching the Intercontinental Transport and Chemical Transformation 2002 Project, which will collect and analyze air pollution samples through late May to try to trace the path of pollutants across the Pacific.

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Gary Polakovic, 26 Apr 2002 <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-000029703apr26.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dscience>

only in Grist: Another one bites the dust -- China's dust bowl is growing at an alarming rate -- by Lester R. Brown <http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/brown052901.stm?source=daily>

4/26/02
5:42:13 PM

East Timor, The World's Newest Democracy

I wanted to let you know about an important event occurring in our world on May 19 and 20, and give you the opportunity to celebrate with us.

After 24 years of occupation by one of the most brutal regimes in history, East Timor is getting ready to stand on its feet as the world's newest democracy. East Timor is a small island, just North of Australia, with a population of only 800,000 people. But internationally, it holds an important message for the rest of the world.

Through the occupation, the people of East Timor lost 20% of their population to the Indonesian military occupying their country - through execution, starvation, "disappearances", and more. They continued a largely non-violent struggle. Two of their leaders were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Right through 1999, when the Indonesian military and their militia ravaged the country, burning 85% of their buildings, slaughtering hundreds more civilians, these people kept faith in their cause. And their leaders continued to work with the international community toward a resolution.

In September, 1999, UN peacekeeping forces arrived and stopped the near genocide that was in progress. For the last two and a half years since, the UN and Timorese leaders have been working together to put a democracy in place in the country. And they have succeeded. Last August, they held their first ever Parliamentary election. They are on the verge on the first Presidential election in the country's history.

Now, on May 19 and 20, the United Nations will formally turn over power in East Timor to the new government. The flag of the United Nations administration will come down in front of the government building, and the newly adopted flag of the nation of East Timor will go up.

It's an exciting time. It's a celebration of a human rights victory, and a strong statement of how the international community can work together to resolve conflict and war. But as important, this is the launch of the next phase for the country, the stage of nation building. A strong government structure has been put in place by both the Timorese leaders and the United Nations for this, with accountability and transparency. Their constitution guarantees basic human rights and non-discrimination. 31% of the newly elected Parliament members are women.

Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta, one of the two Nobel Peace Prize winners from East Timor, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation in the new administration, has lent support to TheCommunity.com for more than a year. One of the more Internet-savvy Nobel Laureates, he was integral in starting The Peacemakers Speak, our section on September 11 with the other Nobel Laureates.

This is a time when we can stand with him, and with the Timorese people, and welcome them into the international community as our newest nation.

TheCommunity.com will be involved in the production of the webcast of the events. We will let you know when and how to access the events via our site. The webcast is also going to be used to launch an international online fund raising campaign for malaria control, health and technology training, small enterprise, and other vital projects in the rebuilding of the country. We are working with World View Rights, a non- profit in Norway, the United Nations Foundation, and others to make this happen.

We also host and develop http://www.easttimor.com which will give you ongoing information on events in the country, and

http://www.fundforeasttimor.com

which is building projects to meet vital needs in the country.

I'd like to invite you to help make the events happen.... For more information, please see the events page on easttimor.com, and the get involved page.

Please feel free to distribute this to your friends and if appropriate, your mailing list. And continue to follow events on

http://www.easttimor.com

to watch the birth of a new democracy in progress.

4/26/02
5:37:49 PM

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."

Leonardo Da Vinci

4/26/02
2:37:51 PM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

PARACHUTE JOURNALISTS

Jumping In To Cover A Story, Then Getting Out

by Jennifer Bauduy

Journalists know their profession is risky, but they can leave a dangerous place when the story is done. Not so the translators, drivers and other local people who help reporters get the story.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5488

NO MORE MR. NICE GUY?

And Other Musings From Our Roving Critic

by Publicus

One depressing clue of the limits of Gore's and the Democrats' imagination -- a wholesale embrace of Bush's "war on terror." If Democrats can't figure out how to dissent responsibly from the GOP's Grand Old War, there may not be much of a domestic agenda left to argue over.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5519

ONLY CHRISTIANS KNOW WHAT'S BEST FOR AMERICA

So Says Tom Delay, The Most Powerful Republican In The U.S. House

by Michael Ryan

If Rep. Delay is right, our commentator wants to spend his Earthly hours in the company of those who aren't guaranteed a place in Heaven.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5518

TOTALLY RADICAL DECONSTRUCTION

Meet Eco-Architecture's Less-Sexy Cousin, Eco-Demolition

by Bill McKibben

There is no dynamite or wrecking ball on this demolition site, even though it's the tallest building ever demolished in Vermont. Instead, T-Rex Demolition is taking the building down slowly and softly -- and recycling every single bit.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5514

And from our CHECK IT OUT! department:

WHERE YOU SMELL SMOKE...

Philip Morris is trying to change its name to "Altria," from the Latin root for "altruism." It overcame one hurdle on April 22, when it settled with a health-care company that had already laid claim to the tobacco giant's preferred new moniker, and shareholders will have their say over the name change in a meeting this Thursday.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, for one, doesn't think Philip Morris has earned such a self-congratulatory new name. They point out that, despite an expensive public-relations campaign by the company in the United States -- including the much-hyped name change -- Phillip Morris still markets cigarettes to kids and plays unethical games with the public's health.

CHECK IT OUT!

http://www.tompaine.com/check_it_out/

4/26/02
2:23:24 PM

Congressman Too Truthful

By: Congressman Ron Paul - House of Representatives

203 Cannon - Washington D.C. 20515

The other day, I made a huge "gaffe" on national TV: I told the truth about the crimes of the U.S. government.

As you can imagine, the ceiling fell in, and a couple of walls too. Congressman are supposed to support the government, I was told. Oh, it's okay to criticize around the edges, but there are certain subjects a member of the House of Representatives is not supposed to bring up. But I touched the real "third-rail" of American politics, and the sparks sure flew.

I was interviewed on C-SPAN's morning "Washington Journal," and I used the opportunity, as I do all such media appearances, to point out how many of our liberties have been stolen by the federal government. We must take them back. The Constitution, after all, has a very limited role for Washington, D.C.

If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no Nafta, Gatt, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; and no income tax. We could get rid of most of the cabinet departments, most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited.

That system is called liberty. It's what the Founding Fathers gave us. Under liberty, we built the greatest, freest, most prosperous, most decent country on earth. It's no coincidence that the monstrous growth of the federal government has been accompanied by a sickening decline in living standards and moral standards. The feds want us to be hamsters on a treadmill--working hard, all day long, to pay high taxes, but otherwise entirely docile and controlled. The huge, expensive, and out-of-control leviathan that we call the federal government wants to run every single aspect of our lives.

Well, I'm sorry, but that's not America. It's not what the Founders gave us. It's not the country you believe in. It's not the country I believe in. So, on that TV interview, I emphasized not only the attacks on our property, but also the decline of our civil liberties, at the hands of the federal police. There are not supposed to be any federal police, according to the Constitution.

Then I really went over the line. I talked about the Waco massacre. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno claim those 81 church members, including 19 children, burned down their own church and killed themselves, and good riddance. So they put few survivors on trial, and threw them in prison for 40 years.

We're not supposed to remember that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms--talk about an unconstitutional agency--rather than arrest David Koresh on his regular morning jog, called in the TV stations for big publicity bonanza, and sent a swat team in black masks and black uniforms to break down his front door, guns blazing. They also sent in a helicopter gunship, to shoot at the roof of a church full of innocents.

The Branch Davidians resisted, and after a heartless siege of almost two months, and after cutting off food, water, and electricity, and playing horrible rock and roll through huge speakers 24 hours a day, the feds sent in the tanks to crush the walls of the church, and inject poisonous CS gas.

Now, CS gas is banned under the Paris Convention on Chemical Warfare. The U.S. could not use it in a war. But it could and did use it against American civilians.

After the tanks did their work on the church, the place burst into flame, and all 81 people--men, women, children, and babies -were incinerated in a screaming horror. Did some feds set the fire? Did the flammable CS gas ignite, since without electricity, the parishioners were using lanterns? Did a tank knock over a lantern, striking one of the bales of hay being used against the thin walls as a "defense" against bullets? Or did the Davidians, as Clinton and Reno claim, kill themselves?

A new documentary- -Waco: The Rules of Engagement- may show, through FLIR infrared photography, FBI snipers killing the Davidians by shooting through the back of the church, where no media cameras were allowed. This film won a prize at the famed Sundance Film Festival. It was made by people who took the government's side, until they investigated.

Whatever the truth, there's no question that an irresponsible federal government has innocent blood on its hands, and not only from Waco. And the refusal of corrupt and perverse liberals to admit it means nothing.

In my r~interview, in answer to a caller's question, I pointed out that Waco, and the federal murders at Ruby Ridge- especially the FBI sniper's shot that blasted apart the head of a young mother holding her baby- caused many Americans to live in fear of federal power. Then I uttered the sentiment that caused the media hysteria: I said that a lot of Americans fear that they too might be attacked by federal swat teams for exercising their constitutional rights, or merely for wanting to be left alone.

Whoa! You've never seen anything like it. For days, in an all-out assault, I was attacked by Democrats, unions, big business, establishment Republicans, and- of course- the media, in Washington and my home state of Texas. Newspapers foamed at the mouth, calling me a "right-wing extremist." (Say, isn't that what George III called Thomas Jefferson?)

I was even blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing! And by the way, I don't believe we've gotten the full truth on that either. All my many opponents were outraged that a Congressman would criticize big government. "If you don't like Washington, resign!" said a typical big-city newspaper editorial.

But the media, as usual, were all wet. (Do they ever get anything right?) The average Congressman may go to Washington to wallow in power, and line his pockets with a big lobbying job for a special interest (so he can keep ripping-off the taxpayers). But that's not why I'm in Congress. It's not why I left my medical practice as a physician. It's not why I put up with all the abuse. It's not why I refuse a plush Congressional pension.

I'm in this fight for a reason. I want to hand on to my children and grandchildren, and to you and your family, a great and free America, an America true to her Constitution, an America worthy of her history. I will not let the crooks and clowns and criminals have their way. I'm in Congress to represent the ideas of liberty, the ideas that you and I share, for the people of my district, for the people of Texas, for the people of America. That's why I'm working to stop federal abuses, and to cut the government: its taxes, its bureaucrats, its paramilitary police, its spending, its meddling overseas, and every single unconstitutional action it takes. And not with a pair of nail scissors, but with a hammer and chisel. Won't you help me do this work?

Not much of the federal leviathan would be left, if I had my way. But you'd be able to keep the money you earn, your privacy would be secure, your dollar would be sound, your local school would be tops, and your kids wouldn't be sent off to some useless or vicious foreign war to fight for the UN. But Jefferson and the other Founders would recognize our government, and our descendants would bless us. By the way, when I say cut taxes, I don't mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing.

Recently, I asked a famous Republican committee chairman-who's always talking about getting rid of IRS- why he engineered a secret $580 million raise for the tax collectors. "They need it for their computers," this guy told me. So the IRS can't extract enough from us as it is! The National Taxpayers Union says I have the highest pro-taxpayer rating in Congressional history, that I am the top "Taxpayer's Best Friend." You know I won't play the Capitol Hill games with the Capitol Hill gang, denouncing the IRS while giving the Gestapo more of your money. Or figuring out some other federal tax for them to squeeze out of you. I also want to abolish the Federal Reserve, and send Alan Greenspan out to get a job.

The value of our dollar and the level of our interest rates are not supposed to be manipulated by a few members of the power elite meeting secretly in a marble palace. The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional, pure and simple. The only Constitutional money is gold and silver, not notes redeemable in them. Not fed funny money. Without the Federal Reserve, our money could not be inflated at the behest of big government or big banks. Your income and savings would not lose their value. Just as important, we wouldn't have this endless string of booms and busts, recessions and depressions, with each bust getting worse. They aren't natural to the free market; they're caused by the schemers at the Fed. President Andrew Jackson called the 19th-century Fed "The Monster" because it was a vehicle for inflation and all sorts of special-interest corruption. Let me tell you, things haven't changed a bit. I also work to save our schools from D.C. interference. Thanks to the feds, new curriculums not only smear the Founders as "racist, slave-owning elitists," they seek to dumb down our students so they will all be equal. "Look-say" reading and the abolition of phonics has the same purpose, and so does the new "fuzzy" math, in which there are no right and no wrong answers. That must be what they use in the U.S. Treasury! It's certainly what they use in the U.S. Congress.

But ever since the beginning of federal aid to education and accelerating with the establishment of the rotten Department of Education, SAT scores have been dropping. Schools, with few exceptions, are getting worse every year. To save our kids, we must get the sticky fingers of the feds off our local schools, and let parents rule. That's what the Constitution says, and the Bible too.

And then there's my least favorite topic, the UN. World government is obviously unconstitutional. It undermines our country's sovereignty in the worst way possible. That's why I want us out of the UN, and the UN itself taking a hike. After all, the UN is socialist and corrupt (many votes can be bought with a "blonde and a case of scotch," one UN ambassador once said). It costs many billions, and it puts our soldiers in UN uniforms under foreign commanders, and sends them off to unconstitutional, undeclared wars. When Michael New, one of the finest young men I've ever met, objected to wearing UN blue, he was kicked out of the American Army. What an outrage! Not one dime for the UN, and not one American soldier! Not in Haiti, not in Bosnia, not in Somalia, not in Rwanda. I know its radical, but how about devoting American military efforts to defending America, and only America?

Such ideas, said one newspaper reporter, make me a maverick who will never go far because he won't go along to get along. Darn right! What does "go far" mean? Get a big government job? To heck with that. And I won't sell my vote for pork either. When I walked through the U.S. Capitol this morning, I got angry. The building is filled with statues and painting of Jefferson, Madison, and the other Founders. Those great men sacrificed everything to give us a free country, and a Constitution to keep it that way. When I was first elected, I placed my hand on the Bible and swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. That's exactly what I'm fighting for. But such ideas drive the liberals crazy. That's why I badly need your help. I've been targeted nationally for defeat. The Democrats, the AFL-CIO, the teachers union, big business PACs, the trial lawyers, the big bankers, the foreign-aid lobbyists, the big media, and the establishment Republicans want to dance on my political grave. The Fed, the Education Department, and the UN are anxious to join in. They can't stand even one person telling the truth. And they're terrified when that truth gains the people's support.

Right now, four well-funded Democrats are competing to try to beat me, and a Republican is rumored to have been offered money at a secret meeting in Mexico(!) if he would try to knock me off in a primary. Won't you help me stay up here to fight? Frankly, I am in trouble if you don't. My Texas district has 22,000 square miles (not a misprint). I've got to travel all over it, set up small offices to be manned by volunteers, advertise, pay phone bills, and distribute video and audio tapes to the people to get around the big-media lies. As I know from my last election, which I won by the skin of my teeth, the media will carry any smear, repeat any libel, throw any piece of mud, no matter how untrue. In fact, the less true, the more they like it. They are determined to silence me. But you can help me overcome all this. Together, we can beat the bad guys arrayed against our country and our freedom. We can support the Constitution. We can win. Your generous contribution of $25 or $50 would be great... $100, $250, or even $500 or $1,000 would be magnificent. Of course, any amount would help, and in return, I will keep you up-to-date on this fight as a member of my "kitchen cabinet." What great men founded this country! What great people have carried on their fight! That fight is not lost, not if you will join it.

Washington, D.C. is a loser, but among the people, our ideas are gaining every single day.

Keep the tide turning in our direction. Please make your most generous contribution. Join this fight for the Constitution, and stop those who want to rip it up, and throw it in the Potomac. Together, we can join the Founders' fight. Together, we can make history.

Sincerely, Ron Paul U. S. Congressman 203 Cannon, Washington D.C. 20515

Committee to Re-elect Ron Paul - 837 W. Plantation - Clute, Texas 77531

Source: http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=24626

4/26/02
2:14:18 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

HOW THE GOP HARVESTS ITS ACTIVISTS AND REWARDS THEM WITH NIFTY PRIZES

by George Sanchez, Mother Jones

-- Republicans are taking the first step toward revolutionizing grassroots Internet campaigns through a reward system based on member recruits.

TV IS A TURN ON

by Andy Dehnart, Reality Blurred

-- As TV Turnoff Week is coming to a close, maybe it's time to evaluate its success.

EDIBLE HIV VACCINE BREAKTHROUGH

by Emma Young, NewScientist.com

-- A U.S. company may have found in an ancient food the source of a more effective, safer, and more easily-administered HIV vaccine.

Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch

4/26/02
2:08:54 PM

U.S. Military Seeks Broad Exemptions From Environmental Laws

by Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, April 25, 2002 (ENS) - In a hearing today before a House subcommittee, Defense department officials argued that the U.S. military needs blanket exemptions from environmental laws for almost all military activities in order to protect national security. Conservation groups lashed back in a press conference this afternoon, calling the proposal "unacceptable" and warning that the military is asking for carte blanche to pollute.

More than 20 of the nation's leading conservation groups sent a letter to Congress today urging lawmakers to oppose proposed legislation that would allow the Department of Defense (DoD) to ignore certain environmental laws. The groups oppose amendments to the defense funding bill, which they say contains "broad sweeping exemptions ... [that] would likely result in irreparable harm to public health and the environment."

The DoD is seeking exemptions from some of the nation's most important environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Superfund law, among others.

"The American people have long supported these important environmental and public health laws," the groups wrote in their letter to Congress. "While we support U.S. military efforts to prepare for military action, such as efforts to protect national security, additional exemptions are not necessary to accomplish this goal."

"Many of these laws already have specific provisions that allow requests by the Department of Defense for waivers in the interest of national security," the groups continue. "We firmly believe no government should be above the law including the laws that protect the air and water in and around our military facilities, the health of the people who live on bases and nearby, and America's wildlife and public lands," the groups state in their letter.

The amendments offered by the DoD could prevent the enforcement of most environmental statutes on military bases. The exemptions from hazardous waste statutes, for example, would change the definition of hazardous waste to exclude munitions and their exploded parts.

In addition, the military would not be required to clean up contamination on a base, or stop its migration, until someone documented that the pollution had moved beyond the boundaries of a military site. That could allow extensive pollution of underground drinking water aquifers, environmental groups warn.

Even then, the proposed exemptions are "so broad that it is hard to predict how it could be interpreted," said Aimee Houghton, associate director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight.

According to the groups, changes allowing military exemptions were proposed by the Department of Defense just last Friday, allow little time for the House Subcommittee on Military Readiness to consider the proposed amendments.

"Because the language only came in on Friday, it left little room for an open and inclusive dialogue on these proposals," said Houghton. "And even today, the Defense Department couldn't make a good case for the amendments."

On March 14, the subcommittee held a hearing to solicit input from the DoD and various federal regulatory agencies regarding the environmental restrictions facing the military. Many public interest groups, including the National Governors' Association, the National Association of Attorneys General, and the National Conference of State Legislatures requested and were denied the opportunity to testify at the March hearing.

Conservation groups say they support a process in which military representatives and other parties can work together to develop creative and collaborative solutions to potential environmental problems at military installations, or from military training.

The groups charge that the legislation reviewed today could result in toxic contamination of air and water, destruction of endangered species critical habitat, threats to migratory birds and their nests, and harm to marine mammals. The groups claim that this laundry list of exemptions is both damaging and entirely unnecessary.

"Our existing laws already provide the proper balance between military readiness and environmental protection," today's letter to Congress concludes. "Issues need to be addressed under our current laws."

Military officials and their supporters argue that the exemptions are needed in order for the military to properly protect the nation.

"From my first day as chairman of the Military Readiness Subcommittee, I have heard one consistent theme from both the top officials at the Pentagon as well as the men and women in uniform whom I have met from military installations throughout the country," said Joel Hefley, the Colorado Republican who heads the subcommittee, in prepared remarks before the hearing. "The ability of the Department of Defense to fulfill its primary mission to safeguard national security has been dramatically challenged - and in some instances diminished - due to its obligations to satisfy several important federal environmental laws."

"The land, waters and air space in which the Department can train its soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have been restricted or lost due to the presence of endangered species, complaints about noise, urban encroachment and so forth," Hefley added.

Environmental experts at today's press conference noted that there has never been a case where the Clean Air Act, the Superfund law, or any of a myriad of other environmental statutes have kept the military from training.

At a press conference this afternoon, Brock Evans, executive director of Endangered Species Coalition and a former Marine, said that while conservation groups are sympathetic to the military's concerns, and eager to help solve specific problems, "blanket exemptions are very wrong."

"At a point in time when the military services have the highest standing in the public mind since World War II, it is unfortunate that the military is choosing now to seek exemptions from the nation's most important environmental laws," Evans said.

Today, the subcommittee considered giving the military exemptions from the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In a statement released Tuesday, the Pentagon said that lawsuits brought under the Endangered Species Act could potentially restrict military training on several bases, including California's Camp Pendleton and Washington's Fort Lewis.

A lawsuit filed under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act recently halted live fire bombing exercises on Farallon de Medinilla, a Pacific island where thousands of sea birds nest.

Sandra Schubert, legislative counsel at Earthjustice, said the Defense Department "is not able to come up with a single example where the Clean Air Act has hindered, either as a practical matter or in theory," military training activities. But the Pentagon warns that strict new emissions limits under the Clean Air Act could put many military jets in violation of air pollution regulations.

The subcommittee declined today to consider the other exemptions that the DoD is seeking, noting that the DoD has not made a strong enough case to include those exemptions.

"Given the time that the Department has given the Subcommittee to consider these significant adjustments to existing environmental statues, it would not be responsible for this Subcommittee to address these changes, at this time," Helfey said.

Additional exemptions could be added during the markup by the full Armed Services committee, or on the House floor.

Source: http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-25-07.html

4/26/02
2:03:11 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS)

http://ens-news.com

U.S. MILITARY SEEKS BROAD EXEMPTIONS FROM ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

By Cat Lazaroff

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-25-07.html

CONGRESS HEARS "SHOCKING" EVIDENCE AGAINST YUCCA MOUNTAIN

WASHINGTON, DC, April 25, 2002 (ENS) - Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn today testified at a Congressional hearing that a repository for disposal of high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada is "the product of extremely bad science, extremely bad law, and extremely bad public policy.

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-25-04.html

POTATOES, GRAINS ON HIGH FRY CAN CAUSE CANCER

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, April 25, 2002 (ENS) - Potato chips, french fries, baked potatoes and bread may contain high levels of a probable human carcinogen known as acrylamide, Swedish researchers said yesterday. No acrylamide has been found in boiled foods.

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-25-01.html

INVASIVE BUFFELGRASS THREATENS GIANT SAGUAROS

TUCSON, Arizona, April 25, 2002 (ENS) - The saguaro cactus, a symbol of the American West, may be losing a battle against invasive plants. Exotic grasses like buffelgrass, an African native, fuel frequent wildfires that kill the centuries old giant cacti and many other native desert plants and animals, and disrupt the fragile ecosystem of this arid region.

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-25-06.html

NASA'S AQUA SPACECRAFT TO STUDY EARTH'S WATER CYCLE

PASADENA, California, April 25, 2002 (ENS) - Exactly what takes place as water circulates from the oceans through the atmosphere onto the land and back to the oceans again is the subject of a multi-million dollar, three country research project in space.

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-25-02.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: APRIL 25, 2002

Sierra Club Lawsuit Seeks Regulation of Air Pollutants

Senate Passes Renewable Energy Tax Incentives

Marshall Center Cleanup Attracts NATO Attention

Ecosystems Depend on Wide Diversity of Species

Energy Department Makes Record Renewables Purchase

Fire Altered Ecosystems in Prehistoric Times

Wood Chip Trenches Filter Nitrate Runoff

Wet Wastes Could Become Fuels

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-25-09.html

4/26/02
1:55:22 PM

Perspective On 9-11

by John Rappoport

As I and many others pointed out after 9/11, the OP against the Trade Towers and the Pentagon provided a hyped-up justification for Sharon to make war against the Palestinians. Since then, at least a few of the suicide bombings carried out against Israel have been add-ons to this OP. The bombings were carried out by people whose handlers were Israelis. Israel then proceeded to launch its war against the Palestinians. It's called provocation.

But of course there is more. Certain Israelis who ARE part of this overall OP are not leading the way. They are not the bosses. Much heavier players on the power ladder are in charge.And it must be inferred that THEY, the ones in charge, are willing to risk EVERYTHING. Including a massive war which will take place in the Middle East, drawing in a number of nations. Part of the fallout will be a choking off of oil supplies to the West. But these high-level planners are not, in their own eyes, risking anything more than they want to. The kind of chaos and destruction that may occur is right up their alley. This is not an OP which has gone off the rails. Understand this.

At the level of Bush and Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, there is massive anxiety, there is terrible risk. Because they are down the ladder of power from the real planners, the real bosses.

For several years, I have been writing about what I call the PLAN B people. These are high-level ice-cold fascists who have always thought that chaos was the proper end-game, which in turn would become a prelude to a world run by a de facto government bent on erasing freedom on every front. Swiftly. I have spelled this out in as much detail as possible in my newsletter. And we are now seeing the results of their handiwork spread out before us. Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat are strategic pawns on the chessboard. Nothing more.

Among the cartels which run this planet, the PLAN A people, who have the same goal of a slave world--but want it to happen gradually, by the drip-method--are attempting to wrest control of the current OP away from their PLAN B brethren.

The key here is this. If 9/11 and its aftermath were planned from a very high position (and they were), it is silly to assume that the current spreading chaos in the Middle East was an unforeseen consequence. These PLAN B men may be crazy, but they aren't stupid. They knew and know exactly what kind of blood-drenched carpet is unrolling on the world stage.

For those citizens of many countries who have preferred to take their news from the trough of major media--well, that is now completely untenable. On that corrupted level, nothing makes sense. Nothing adds up. You have to go higher. You have to comprehend major segments of history as a series of rigged provocations, designed to create what appears to be the necessity of "the stronger ones" stepping in to take charge. To stop the chaos. This has always been the way. Put such fantastic pressure on the citizenry that it finally sits up and cries uncle. "Do what you want to. Give us any excuses, we don't care. Just stop the madness. We give you our souls, our lives, our futures. Take over. Run the whole show. Kill the scapegoats. Bring in the peace with chains, and we will wear them." This is the real OP. Which only adds to the urgency of decentralizing the power of the cartels which envelop this world.

SUNDAY, APRIL 7

Very little media coverage accompanies the opening of a major conference today in Washington. I'm talking about the annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission, that group founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller. Terrorism is at the top of the agenda. Globalism will be emphasized as the solution.

This "modest organization" will number among its conference attendees Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Alan Greenspan, Henry Kissinger, and Paul Volcker. Quite a list for a private non-governmental meeting. If you happen to be part of a private group, try to get these men to show up at the same time and place.

The Trilateral Commission had two dozen people in top posts in the Carter administration. Carter was a creation of the Commission, which, in effect, ran his foreign policy. That is, America's foreign policy. Hamilton Jordan, Carter's top aide, said just after Carter's victory in the 1976 presidential election, "If after the inauguration you find Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of national security, then I would say we failed. And I'd quit." Jordan's prediction about Carter's appointment of these Trilateralists came tr