Earths.net

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-04-06.html

"We Cover the Earth For You"

BUSH RETAINS ROADLESS RULE, BUT PLANS REVISIONS

By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, May 4, 2001 (ENS) - The Bush Administration announced today that it is not overturning the Clinton era roadless protection rule for national forests. However, the administration opened up the possibility for future decisions that could open the nation's last unbroken forest tracts to logging and mining.

For full text and graphics, visit:

HERBICIDE RESISTANT WEEDS SPRING UP IN BIOENGINEERED SOY FIELDS

ST. LOUIS, Missouri, May 4, 2001 (ENS) - Reliance on the Monsanto herbicide Roundup to kill weeds in fields of genetically engineered Roundup Ready soybeans has led to increased herbicide use because the weeds have become herbicide resistant, according to a new study.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-04-04.html

SWEDEN LEGISLATES FOR SUSTAINABILITY

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, May 4, 2001 (ENS) - The Swedish government today underlined its determination to make Sweden the world's most environmentally sustainable nation by proposing a series of legal targets and deadlines for implementing 15 over-arching environmental quality objectives adopted in 1999.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-04-01.html

ARGENTINA TO ELIMINATE PCBs

By Alejandra Herranz

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, May 4, 2001 (ENS) - Argentina has taken the first steps down the long road to elimination of polychorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the country.

Argentine Minister of Social Development and Environment Juan Pablo Cafiero and National Secretary of Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy Dr. Oscar Massei, today announced the start of a National Plan for the Elimination of Polyclorinated Biphenyls.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-04-02.html

AUSTRALIA ORDERS DINGO CULL AFTER FATAL MAULING

BRISBANE, Australia, May 4, 2001 (ENS) - Australian Aborigines and environmental groups are seeking an injunction to stop the cull of dingoes on Fraser Island, off the Queensland coast. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie ordered the cull after the animals mauled nine year old Clinton Gage to death on Monday.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-04-10.html

United States Voted Off UN Human Rights Commission

Entergy, Environmental Defense Team to Reduce Greenhouse Gases

Environmental Coalition Sues Over Salmon

Report Finds No Support for Dam Licensing Claims

Navy Transfers 3,100 Acres on Vieques for New Refuge

Suspects Charged in Massive Illegal Ivory Haul

Critical Habitat Designated for Great Lakes Piping Plovers

New Resource Centers Opening for Energy Workers

Acid Rain Conference Concludes More Action is Needed

Rainforest Alliance Supports Sustainable Tequila Research

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-04-09.html

5/5/01
4:36:12 PM

Bush Keeps National Forest Road Building Ban in Place

http://capitolhillblue.com/Article.asp?ID=1684

The Bush administration will keep in place a contentious ban on road building in much of the nation's federal forest lands while it revises the regulations to give more say to local officials on what forests should be affected, according to government sources.

The road ban, a pivotal part of former President Clinton's environmental legacy, ropes off 58.5 million acres - about a third of the federal forest land - from developers, loggers and mining companies. These industries are lobbying to have the measure reversed.

While the road ban could still be scrapped, congressional and administration officials said Thursday the White House has decided to keep the ban in place while new rules are developed. This process could be lengthy since it would require formal rule making, including public comment periods.

The revised regulations, about which additional details may be announced Friday, are expected to give a greater say to state and local officials. Also the restrictions would likely be imposed on a forest-by-forest basis, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We are going to be reviewing it for a while, but at least we are going to be doing it on a site-specific basis where real land considerations can be made," a congressional source said.

Exactly how the new rule would be crafted was still fluid late Thursday, but more details could emerge when the Bush administration files a brief Friday in response to a lawsuit brought by the state of Idaho seeking to block the rule.

Clinton's policy, announced Jan. 5, was supposed to take effect in March. The Bush administration delayed implementation until May 12 while it conducted a review.

An announcement of the decision to revise the plan was expected Friday at a news conference with Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.

The Clinton administration began creating the rules about three years ago, but did not issue them until just weeks before President Clinton left office.

The road ban on much of the federal forest in the West was praised by environmentalists as a way to protect the nation's most pristine forest lands from developers and preserve critical wildlife habitats. Opponents, including the timber and mining industries, say the rules needlessly place valuable resources off-limits.

The state of Idaho and timber company Boise Cascade sued in federal court in Boise seeking to block the rule from taking effect. The Bush administration had until Friday to file a brief with the court outlining its analysis of the rule.

In an interim decision, U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge rejected a call for an immediate blocking on the policy, but said there was "strong evidence" that the process was hurried and the Forest Service was not prepared to produce a "coherent proposal or meaningful dialogue and that the end result was predetermined."

While awaiting the judge's final decision, Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, said he would be disappointed if the Bush administration kept the ban in place while a new rule was created. Such a move could put forests in the West at risk to insects, disease and fire because the roadless areas will be inaccessible, he said.

"What has us worried is what they are going to be doing in the interim," said West, whose Portland, Ore.-based group represents timber interests.

Jim Lyons, an agriculture undersecretary in the Clinton administration who oversaw the Forest Service, said the only way the Bush administration could legally change the rules was through the rule-making process, which could be lengthy and provides the opportunity for public comment.

"Clearly, the people close to this process have a strong philosophical problem with protecting roadless areas," said Lyons, now a professor at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Marty Hayden, legislative director for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, said he thought the expected revisions would take the Bush administration back to where the government started three years ago - trying to maintain 380,000 miles of roads that have an $8.5 billion maintenance backlog.

"They have chosen not to suspend it because they are feeling the heat of the public support that was behind the rule in the first place," Hayden said. "But they are still heading down a path for undoing it."

The vast majority of roadless federal forests are in the West, including parts of Idaho's Bitterroot range and Alaska's Tongass, viewed by environmentalists as North America's rain forest.

Smaller sections are scattered across the country from Florida's Apalachicola National Forest and Virginia's George Washington National Forest to New Hampshire's White Mountains.

5/5/01
4:34:24 PM

From the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC) <lpdc@idir.net>

Dear Friends,

Below is a statement from Leonard Peltier in support of the Redwood Summer Justice Project. The Redwood Summer Justice Project is suing the FBI and the Oakland Police for falsely accusing Earth First! Activists, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney of carrying explosives, after their car was bombed in 1990. The bombing crippled Judi Bari permanently and caused minor injuries to Cherney. The bomb had been placed under Judi Bari's seat. Rather than finding the perpetrator, the FBI launched a major disinformation campaign against the staunchly nonviolent activists, and blamed them for bombing themselves. Since then, FBI materials released through discovery have proven that the FBI was infiltrating the organization and that they withheld photos illustrating the bomb's position in the car, thus discounting their allegations. Sound familiar?

In fact, Richard W. Held, who was also involved in the framing of Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt) and Leonard Peltier, headed this "investigation" as well. A hearing on the civil rights case is set for October 1st of this year. The trial will essentially challenge the FBI's use of COINTELPRO tactics. This is truly a case for solidarity. Check this site for more information:

http://www.judibari.org

Statement from Leonard Peltier in support of the Redwood Summer Justice Project

Dear Friends,

No one can return the twenty-five years I have spent in prison based on an orchestrated frame-up at the hands of the FBI.

The Redwood Summer Justice Project is struggling for all of us who have been targeted for our work in defense of our people and the land.

In May of 1990, as Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were on their way to an organizing event, they were nearly killed in an assassination attempt. A pipe bomb wrapped in nails for a shrapnel effect and triggered by a motion device exploded under the seat of Judi's car. The force of the blast buckled the car frame and blew a hole in the floorboard. The blast crushed Judi's coccyx and pelvis and left her crippled. Darryl escaped with cuts and broken eardrums.

Within minutes of the explosion, the FBI was on the scene and orchestrated a massive disinformation campaign designed to discredit and imprison these Earth First activists. Equally sinister, the FBI never tried to find the real bomber who to this day, remains at large.

There can be no healing without truth, and the greatest love is that which is based on justice. Together we must guarantee the First Amendment rights of all activists who courageously defy corporate control of our environment.

I urge you to support Judi Bari and Darry Cherney's historic lawsuit that will finally put the FBI on trial.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier

http://www.freepeltier.org

5/5/01
4:29:16 PM

The Nation

Last February, the AFL-CIO passed an historic resolution calling for a legalization program that would allow the country's approximately 9-11 million undocumented immigrants to normalize their citizenship status. Since then a grassroots campaign has gathered strength across the nation, uniting the labor movement and immigrant communities around a common demand for amnesty for undocumented workers.

At the same time, however, the Bush administration and many U.S. employers are seeking to expand "bracero" contract labor programs, which would transform undocumented workers into an even cheaper and more vulnerable labor force of guestworkers while denying them the full rights of citizenship. The stage is set for a showdown over the fate of these workers, with the labor and immigrant movements facing off against an emboldened business community suffused with Republican support.

At this pivotal political moment, David Bacon and Julie Quiroz-Martinez report on the hopes, strengths and challenges of the campaign for immigrant legalization in the May 21 issue of The Nation. These pieces are also currently available on The Nation's website:

DAVID BACON: Labor Fights for Immigrants

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=bacon

JULIE QUIROZ-MARTINEZ: "A Fair and Just Amnesty:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=quiroz-martinez

5/4/01
5:47:32 PM

The Brief Origins of May Day

by Eric Chase

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and Jack London's "The Iron Heel". As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8 hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit.

Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1. We can draw many parallels between the events of 1886 and today. We still have locked out steelworkers struggling for justice. We still have voices of freedom behind bars as in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier.

We still had the ability to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the streets of a major city to proclaim "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" at the WTO and FTAA demonstrations.

Words stronger than any I could write are engraved on the Haymarket Monument:

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE THROTTLING TODAY.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.

Eric Chase

http://www.iww.org

5/4/01
5:40:27 PM

News on the National Marine Fisheries Service public hearings in Hawaii about whether the US Navy should be allowed to kill more whales and dolphins with its Low Frequency Acoustic Sonar (LFAS)

In the spring of 1998 I was living on the magical Big Island of Hawai'i. For several nights in a row I was having a dream about a humpback whale that was swimming with me eye to eye. In these unusually lucid dreams the whale continued to share with me her unconditional openness, peace and wisdom. It changed me profoundly and inspired a new relationship with these wise beings. One day I was out for a run and came to the bay near where I was living. Often there are dolphins in the bay and many of us would be down there shortly after dawn to slip into the water and go swimming with our dolphin friends. That day I was given a special greeting as a humpback whale and her calf were breaching repeatedly. Another day I was out on the ocean with friends and a whale did two swan dives right in front of us when we were swimming and deep inside I knew that the show was for me and the work I was about to do.

Shortly after the whales came to visit with me I was told that the US Navy was conducting sonar experiments in the whale's breeding ground. They were deliberately targeting four species of whales including the humpback and the grey whales to determine how loud they could blast the sonar (LFA or LFAS) before the whales showed some sign of avoidance or unusual behaviour. What deeply alarmed me was the loudness of the equipment. The US Navy Low Frequency Active Sonar is millions of times louder than a 747 taking off and causes great damage to the immune system with injuries similar to being microwaved. At the Navy testing volumes, let alone full deployment volumes, it shears tissues, collapses organs and causes adrenal and brain damage. At close range it can pulverize any living being.

The US Navy equipment can produce well in excess of 240 dB sound levels. By "blasting" the sound into the oceans they have been killing whales, these sound levels depending on the frequencies will cause internal bleeding and death and in human much lower levels around 160 dB have permanently debilitated USN divers. Anybody out on the waters saw how distressed the whales had become and one team observed a calf flipping out in the water for hours until it presumably died. All the autopsies done on the whales have not been made available for independent evaluation and the evidence has been destroyed. To this date the US Navy continues to deny this evidence despite court hearings, testimonials and the evidence that they must have seen for themselves.

As a result of these experiences I began to write emails every week to the 2000 people on my list detailing what I could find out about the tests. The emails passed around the world as many others forwarded the message to their lists and friends. I wrote protest letters to every one I could find associated with the project. I went out on the ocean and swam in the waters next to the sonar vessel so that they could not conduct the tests and I developed a web site that featured the latest information about the sonar program, and co-formed a movement called Stop LFAS Worldwide. However in the beginning, no matter how much I researched I could not find any reports showing conclusively that the sonar was damaging the whales. One day I found what I was looking for ... an article published in Nature Magazine (the author a zoologist has since been fired from the University of Athens for writing this) and widely reported in the British press that a 1996 sonar test in the Mediterranean had killed 12 Cuvier beaked whales. Finally I had the evidence that I knew had to be there ... and wondered why none of the marine mammal researchers had written anything. Then I found out that the main players in that field were employed indirectly by the US Navy!

At that time the sonar was a black operations top secret project. The press would not cover any of my stories or even listen to me. Then as we protested in the waters some of us got sick, myself included. Slowly the news teams were allowed to cover the story ABC Channel 7 http://www.dreamweaving.com/realav/index.html and most recently (April 2001) 60 Minutes II covered the recent Bahamas strandings. http://www.dreamweaving.com/lfas/av

Last week I protested, attended, spoke and video taped the National Marine Fisheries Service public hearings about US Navy application for a permit to kill more whales with the sonar devices. It was a fiery emotional meeting with the US Navy continuing their disinformation stories about it being necessary for enemy submarine detection.

I hope you understand the worldwide and even cosmic ramifications of this destructive sonar device. Its effect is not only destroying the habitat of the whales but also the very vibrations within our living oceans and coastal communities. The deeper effect is potentially even more devastating because the sonar is to be deployed in over 80% of our oceans.

Please take a look at the 60 Minutes video and my video of the hearings called Resounding Jericho - Stop LFAS - it will be our cries that will crumble the walls of our modern day establishment at http://www.dreamweaving.com/lfas/av

Please, please, please protest via the link to the National Resources Defense Council's protest form.

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/nlfa.asp

We need another 500,000 protests so pass this message onto everyone that you know.

These have to be received before May 15th in writing or fax to:

Donna Wieting, Chief;

Marine Mammal Conservation Division;

Office of Protected Resources;

National Marine Fisheries Service;

1315 East-West Highway;

Silver Spring, MD 20910-3226, USA

Fax number: 301-713-0376

Sincerely,

Benedick Howard

benedick@dreamweaving.com

Sonar Links http://www.angelfire.com/ca/fishattorney/links1.html

5/4/01
5:27:14 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=schell

1. THINK GLOBALLY, LOG LOCALLY The Bush administration said last night that it will let stand President Clinton's rule to ban road-building and logging on 58.5 millions acres of national forestland. Sort of. It seems the White House intends to give local officials (the folks who don't like the rule) the power to modify the ban on a case-by-case basis to allow logging, mining, and drilling to occur. The administration said the planned changes would address concerns raised by a federal judge in lawsuits brought by the state of Idaho and the timber giant Boise Cascade to block the ban. But environmentalists said the changes were meant to erode the rule while giving President Bush cover -- under the pretense that the lawsuits gave him no choice but to revise the policy.

straight to the source: New York Times, Douglas Jehl, 04 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/politics/04FORE.html>

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 04 May 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/568612.asp>

do good: Take action and tell Boise Cascade to stop logging old-growth forests <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/forests.stm#boise>

2. U SEXY MOTHER NATURE **SATIRE** What if we began sexying environmentalism up a little for 2002, to the tune of, say, boy bands? Or X-vironmentalizm. It's crazy and wild! We don't hug trees -- we rock them! And no more "Save the Whales." From now on, we "Save the Extreme Whales," or we save nothing. Read 10 ways to make environmentalism phat on the Grist Magazine website.

read it only in Grist Magazine: 10 ways to make environmentalism phat -- satire in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho050401.stm>

3. WHASSUP? ... TRUE, TRUE More than a dozen environmental groups sued the federal government yesterday, saying its plan to manage hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest fails to provide adequate protections for salmon. Todd True, an attorney with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, said, "We have a lot of ways to meet our energy needs. These salmon only have one river forever. If we do not support them, they will go extinct." Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., ruled early this week that the federal government must pay property owners when it takes water away from them to help fish listed under the Endangered Species Act.

straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Associated Press, Landon Hall, 04 May 2001 <http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/21559_salmon04.shtml>

do good: Take action and ask the feds to fund salmon recovery <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/species.stm#recovery>

4. THE 2 PERCENT SOLUTION Ford said yesterday that a team of top executives would begin looking at ways to reduce the company's greenhouse gas emissions. Ford's second-annual corporate citizenship report estimated that its vehicles and factories contribute about 2 percent of all such emissions caused by people. Still, Ford said it did not support the Kyoto treaty on climate change or tougher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. In other thrilling corporate news, Entergy Corp. yesterday became the first private power generator to agree voluntarily to cap its carbon-dioxide emissions, according to Environmental Defense. The company says it will keep emissions at current levels while increasing power production from its plants by 25 percent over the next four years.

straight to the source: New York Times, Keith Bradsher, 04 May 2001 <http://nytimes.com/2001/05/04/business/04FORD.html>

straight to the source: Washington Post, Frank Swoboda, 04 May 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41930-2001May3.html>

do good: Take action and ask Ford to make a gas-electric hybrid car <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/autos.stm#ford>

5. PREZ AND THE NEW POWER GENERATION President Bush launched a two-week campaign yesterday to prepare the country for the recommendations of the secretive White House energy task force. Bush said, "What people need to hear loud and clear is that we're running out of energy in America." Building on a comment made by Vice President Cheney earlier this week that conservation is little more than a "personal virtue," Bush said, "[W]e can't conserve our way to energy independence, nor can we conserve our way to having enough energy available. So we've got to do both." Got it? The Natural Resources Defense Council began an ad campaign yesterday that describes Bush's energy plans as the "more pollution solution."

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin and Dana Milbank, 04 May 2001 <http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39513-2001May3.html>

do good: Take action and ask the White House for a conservation-based energy policy <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/climate.stm#cheney>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: The Bush energy policy -- in the comic adventures of Zed, last of his species <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/zed/zed041001.stm>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

Oiled again! -- a day in the life of Roslyn Cameron, Charles Darwin Research Station <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/cameron050301.stm>

Barton finks -- Austin is losing the battle to protect the Barton Springs salamander -- in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/oko042401.stm>

The nerds and the bees -- profile of a scientist creating a buzz -- in our Out on Limb column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/limb/limb092399.stm>

5/4/01
5:19:56 PM

The Nation

Recent allegations that former senator Bob Kerrey ordered the willful and delibrate killing of civilians in the South Vietnamese hamlet of Thanh Phong in 1969 have fostered a national debate on the nature of war crimes. Most of the media though have rushed away from judgement as Jonathan Schell notes in "War and Accountability" from the May 21 issue of The Nation.

Far from steering clear of the blame-game, Schell, a former Vietnam War correspondent, finds the disclosures a useful departure point to take up broader issues of blame and accountability. "If as a nation the United States...cannot investigate, cannot condemn, cannot assign responsibility for the killing of the women and children of Thanh Phong, then state-licensed murderers everywhere will take heart and those who are seeking to bring them to justice will be discouraged. The United States cannot condemn in others what it covers up when committed by its own."

Read Schell's powerful and instructive essay in its entirety at:

You can also find many other new Nation editorials, columns, articles and reviews on a wide-range of topics currently at The Nation's website:

DAVID CORN: Colin Powell's Vietnam Fog -- WEB ONLY

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=corn20010502

BENJAMIN L. MCKEAN: Harvard's Shame

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=mckean

WILLIAM GREIDER: Strom Watch

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=greider

JULIA QUIROZ-MARTINEZ: "A Fair and Just Amnesty"

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=quiroz-martinez

AMY BACH: Justice on the Cheap

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=bach

ERIC ALTERMAN: Without Fear, Favor or Ombudsman

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=alterman

ROBERT BOYNTON: Marjorie Garber, P.I. (Review)

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=boynton

NAME THE PRESIDENT:

The 24,136 votes have been counted and the winners have been announced. Click below for details:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010521&s=editors2

ACTNOW: Just Say No -- to Abstinence-Only Education!

Later this year, Congress is likely to reauthorize an "abstinence education" bill that insists, among other things, that a "mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity" and that "sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful pyschological and physical effects." Furthermore, under this proposed law, publicly funded programs would be forbidden to discuss birth control or safe-sex techniques, except to highlight their shortcomings.

Use The Nation's online activist tool, ActNow, to blast off an informed letter of protest to U.S Senators Bill Frist (R-TN) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the ranking members of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Health, letting them know that "abstinence-only" education deprives youths of critical health information.

The letter is available at:

http://www.thenation.com/alert/actnow/

And read Majorie Heins's recent Nation article, "Sex, Lies and Politics," for more information. Accessible at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010507&s=heins

RECENT NATION ARTICLES:

Also still available are numerous recent articles of interest, including The Nation editors on Bush's first 100 days; Barbara Kingsolver on the new administration's assault on the environment; Bill Moyers on journalism and democracy; John Lantigua and Gregory Palast on the purging of African-American names from the Florida voter rolls; William Greider on global sweatshops and Eric Alterman, Alec Dubro and Peter Kornbluh on tainted Bush appointee Otto Reich. All accessible at:

http://www.thenation.com

5/4/01
5:15:11 PM

Photographer to Sue Over Julia Butterfly Hill's Book

By John Driscoll

The Eureka Times-Standard

Local photographer Doug Riley-Thron said he was stunned to find two of his photos gracing the pages of tree sitter Julia "Butterfly" Hill's best-selling book after repeatedly refusing to donate the photos.

Now, after a year of fruitless negotiation, the Arcata resident most known for his photos of the Headwaters Forest plans to sue publisher HarperSanFrancisco for alleged copyright infringement. Riley-Thron said he has not been compensated for his work, despite the best-selling status of "The Legacy of Luna."

The two photos used in the book were acquired by a third party, Riley-Thron claims.

"Nobody's quite clear where they got them," Riley-Thron said.

Riley-Thron's work has been featured in major magazines and in dozens of books. He declined Hill's publicity agents' requests to use his work for free, he said. Regardless, his work showed up in the book, which has now been translated into five languages and has sold more than 50,000 copies. It also appeared on the Amazon.com bookseller website, without Riley-Thron's copyright. The paperback sells for $11.20 on the website.

"I've donated hundreds of times to environmental groups," Riley-Thron said. But he said he draws the line at multi-billion dollar corporate publishing houses.

Harper Collins spokeswoman Lisa Herling would not comment since information from Riley-Thron strongly suggested a suit would be filed.

Hill became famous -- or infamous, depending on one's perspective -- during the two years she perched in a redwood on Pacific Lumber Co. land on a ridge above Stafford, south of Scotia. She came down after buying the old-growth tree and its surrounding grove for $50,000. Hill has since been heavily booked for appearances on talk shows and the international lecture circuit.

Times-Standard photographer Shaun Walker was paid by HarperSanFrancisco for inside and back cover photos for the book and again for the back cover on its paperback edition.

The quality of reproduction for the book could likely have been achieved without having actual photographic slides to work from.

Riley-Thron said he has supported Hill's work, but is somewhat insulted that she has put no effort into clearing up the matter.

Hill's agent, Paul Bassis, did not return the Times-Standard's phone call.

5/4/01
11:20:32 AM

EcoNet News

This Week's Headlines and Alerts from EcoNet

http://www.igc.org/igc/gateway/enindex.html

EcoNet Alerts: May 4, 2001

Demand That the Moratorium on New Rainforest Logging Be Maintained in Face of Worsening Conditions

There has been a complete breakdown in forest sector management in Papua New Guinea. It is absolutely incumbent upon the World Bank and Australia, as well as other donor participants in the structural adjustment loans, to insist that the Papua New Guinea government maintain the moratorium on new logging as a condition for further loan disbursements. Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enalerts/988945035/index_html

Registration for the Communities Working for Wetlands Conference and the Assessing the Health of Wetland Life Conference closes on May 9. That is next Wednesday! Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enalerts/988945254/index_html

EcoNet Headlines:

Independent Media Center in Free Speech Battle in Wake of FBI/Secret Service Visit

On the evening of Saturday, April 21, a day during which tens of thousands demonstrated against the FTAA in the streets of Quebec City, the Independent Media Center in Seattle was served with a sealed court order by two FBI agents and an agent of the US Secret Service. The terms of the sealed order prevented IMC volunteers from publicizing its terms. Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/988942837/index_html

Poll Shows Americans Want Roadless Forests Protected

A new national poll of American voters discloses there is widespread bipartisan support for protecting roadless wild areas in national forests from logging, mining, and drilling. Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/988943014/index_html

Genetic Contamination Issue Threatens World Organic Trade

Organic produce such as corn and canola produced in North America can no longer be guaranteed free from genetically modified (GM) organisms, according to US certifier Farm Verified Organic. Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/988943278/index_html

Seed Industry Warns Corn Growers about GE-Free Claim

Corn producers in the United States are being warned to avoid swearing in writing that they are planting seed which has not been genetically engineered or that it is "non-GMO." Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/988943528/index_html

UK Government Challenged over Secret Nuclear Plans

Friends of the Earth today challenged the Government to "come clean" on secret plans by state-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) to build new nuclear power stations in the UK. Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/988943717/index_html

Eastern Europeans Agree to Protect Their Habitat

Eastern European countries have agreed to work together to protect their environment which is being threatened by the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/988943857/index_html

GREEN: Paper Warns of "Draconian Action" to Combat Foot and Mouth Disease

An editorial in the Denver Post 5/1 warns that an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the state "might require Draconian action, including the possibility of slaughtering wildlife herds." Read More...

http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/988944262/index_html

5/4/01
11:12:55 AM

Wall Street Weak

By Scott Shuger

The NYT leads with the White House's decision, to be announced today, to modify a late Clinton administration rule (never put into effect) that would have banned all new roads and most logging throughout dozens of national forests, so as to allow local officials to authorize such activities on a case-by-case basis. USAT leads with its analysis that the Bush administration is rewarding Republican donors and loyalists with ambassadorships at an "unprecedented pace"--22 of 27 nominated so far have political or personal connections to President Bush, but no diplomatic experience. The paper notes that 21 of the first 23 Clinton ambassadorial nominees were from the foreign service. The LAT leads with House and Senate budget negotiators accepting a plan that would extend health insurance to parents of children already covered by a federal program for low- and moderate-income households. The paper notes that the White House has not objected to the plan, and that were it to go into effect alongside the Bush-favored tax credit for heath insurance expenditures made by low-income families, the result would be "the biggest boost in the government's effort to help the uninsured since Medicare was created in 1965." The WP leads with Thursday's unexpected pledge by North Korea's Kim Jong Il to continue his country's missile testing moratorium at least until 2003. The North Korean leader told Sweden's prime minister that he will see if the Bush administration wants to resume progress towards better relations before deciding whether or not to resume testing. The Post notes high in the story that fear of a missile attack by North Korea has been a factor in the U.S.'s interest in building a missile defense system. None of the leads makes any other paper's front.

The top story in the WSJ's front-page news box, also fronted by the WP and on USAT's "Money" front, is yesterday's arrest by federal agents of three Chinese-born men, two working in the U.S. for Lucent under high-tech visas and the other a U.S. citizen, on charges of stealing trade secrets from Lucent for use by their own company, which had formed a partnership with a Chinese firm controlled by the Chinese government. The papers all note the recent increased tensions between the U.S. and Chinese governments, and the WP even quotes a former Reagan DOD type noting that the source code of the voice and data networking software the three are charged with hijacking and making available at least indirectly to the Chinese government could have snooping possibilities. But everybody notes that the charges filed are industrial espionage, not espionage espionage.

The NYT's Richard Berke files a Friends-of-Bill-based (most of them unnamed) account of what former president Clinton thinks of his successor thus far. Scorecard: He assesses President Bush as a formidable politician, who is far shrewder than many Democrats think. When he met with Bush during the transition, he was impressed with Bush's saying he would not repeat his father's mistake as president of neglecting domestic issues. The story says Clinton admires the discipline of the Bush White House. But Clinton believes too much of Bush's agenda is based on undoing Clinton administration actions. Apparently Clinton was especially distressed by the Bush proposal to cut money for the program helping cities hire more police officers. Oh, and he was stunned to learn that Bush spent but five hours on his budget proposal, compared to the 75 hours Clinton aides said the ex-president put in on his first one. One FOB is quoted saying of Clinton that "how Bush gets away with stuff with the media--that could be his No. 1 issue."

The WSJ's "Washington Wire" reports that conservative Republicans are worried that President Bush might appoint White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court if a seat becomes vacant because they fear Gonzales' short judicial track record makes him a unknown quantity who could turn out moderate, like Justice David Souter. The column also reports that not every part of the nation's bidness complex feels wired in to the new administration. One big brokerage exec is quoted saying, "Wall Street is feeling shut out."

The WP and NYT front the ouster of the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Commission--where such rights bastions as Sudan and Pakistan serve--for the first time since the commission's 1947 founding. One key reason cited in both for the development: the Senate hasn't yet confirmed the Bush administration's nominee for UN ambassador, so there was no one in place working the halls before the vote.

The NYT fronts word that tonight New York University will honor at a dinner for the school's athletes seven students it suspended in 1941 for leading a campus protest against the school's practice of agreeing to withhold black players from intercollegiate games if the other school (usually Southern) objected to their participation. But here is the part that reminds the reader that even so, NYU still has a lot to learn: "The university is not calling the recognition an apology..." A school spokesman is quoted saying that the university decided not to apologize for actions administrators took in 1940 and 1941 because "we can't put ourselves in their shoes, and we can't turn back the hands of time."

JAPAN CALLS FOR AMUSEMENT PARK DEFENSE SHIELD Everybody goes inside with reports that a man believed to be the eldest son of North Korea's Kim Jong Il was deported from Japan today after he allegedly was caught traveling into the country under a fake name and on a fake Dominican Republic passport in the company of two women and a small child. He has widely been viewed as being groomed to eventually take over North Korea. Apparently he told Japanese authorities he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

The NYT's Gail Collins has great fun with the Army's beret problems. (First the quick decision to put all soldiers in black berets made the elite Rangers mad because they had been the only ones wearing them. Then they made everybody a little nuts because a lot of them turned out to be made in China. Now the Army has promised not to issue the 618,000 black berets of Chinese origin it bought.) But Collins also has a great point: "When you hear the president promise to have some sort of a missile shield in place by 2004, remember that there is nothing so disaster-prone as a large military organization attempting to do something really, really fast."

5/4/01
11:06:33 AM

Still MAD

"Mutually assured destruction" hasn't gone away, and neither has its logic.

By Michael Kinsley

It used to be the left that ridiculed MAD, the nuclear strategy of "mutually assured destruction." The anti-nuclear movement of the early 1980s blindsided the political establishment like the anti-global-trade movement of the past couple of years. Ronald Reagan's original Star Wars proposal was an act of political jujitsu, attempting to co-opt public fear of the nuclear standoff on behalf of military hardware instead of treaties or (worse) unilateral disarmament.

This didn't work—mainly because the hardware didn't work. But strategic defense, and ridicule of MAD, became essential elements of the American conservative theology. The flame of faith was kept alive through the cold 1990s by movement monks at Washington think tanks and devotional conferences around the world. Silent prayers were said in the offices and boardrooms of defense contractors throughout the land.

Now, the second coming. President Bush doesn't pretend or imagine, as Reagan did, that strategic defense can be an "invisible shield" that would free us from all physical danger of nuclear attack (and thus, if we wished, from all moral danger of having to threaten one). Nevertheless, in his speech Tuesday, he twice described the "grim premise" of MAD as a historical relic.

It is not. As long as we have no Reaganesque perfect shield, we still live in the world of MAD. And as long as we live in that world, MAD complicates the case for strategic defense in ways Bush does not acknowledge. MAD is underappreciated. It is not simply a matter of the nuclear powers agreeing to hold each other hostage. In fact "agreeing" has almost nothing to do with it. The 1972 ABM Treaty, which is getting so much attention, did help to make the nuclear stalemate somewhat less costly and nerve-racking. But the stalemate itself—our ability to destroy any other nation in the world, and at least one other nation's ability to destroy us—would exist without the ABM Treaty and will exist even if we walk away from it.

Furthermore, under the theory of MAD, we leave ourselves vulnerable in certain ways not because we have no choice, and not because we've agreed to do so, and not because protecting ourselves might upset the Europeans, but because it is in our own unilateral self-interest. Specifically, it is important to be vulnerable to a "second strike"—that is, a retaliatory strike by an arsenal crippled by your potential "first strike." Why? Because you don't want anybody with nukes pointed at you to think they have to use 'em or lose 'em. As long as they can rain cataclysmic damage on us by striking second, they have no more incentive than we do to strike first.

The concern in the 1980s was that strategic defense would never be good enough to protect against a massive first strike but might be good enough to protect against a crippled second strike. If America had the ability to strike first and then be invulnerable, any nuclearized enemy in a crisis would face the choice of either starting a nuclear war or accepting defeat. The approach of such American invulnerability might even cause such a crisis, as other nuclear powers faced the prospect of being effectively demoted out of the nuclear club.

It's true that the world is different now. Russia is hardly the enemy that the Soviet Union was, and there are new—or at least newly noticed—threats from so-called rogue nations and kooky dictators. But that also does not change the basic logic of MAD. President Bush says he wants to negotiate radical mutual reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia. Good luck to him, by all means. But is he prepared to negotiate away our ability to launch a damaging first strike? If not, any defense that might work even against a crippled retaliation is a danger to the United States as well as to Russia.

And then there's China—a major unofficial target of the whole Star Wars II enterprise, and leading contender for the starring role in Cold War II, which hopeful ideologues are penciling in for later this decade. If that should happen, the perverse-but-solid safety-from-vulnerability logic of MAD will apply in full force.

So, we can't have a perfect invisible shield. And we don't, or shouldn't, want an imperfect invisible shield good enough for Round 2 against Russia or China or any other grown-up nuclear power. It would be nice to have a strategic defense system just good enough to be able to snare a nuke incoming from an Iraq or Afghanistan—and no better. But even that dream defense would only work if the bomb is delivered via ICBM, which may be less likely than BMW or UPS.

There's no good reason for theological objection to strategic defense. But when you add up all the situations where it can't or shouldn't be allowed to work, factor in the odds that it won't work at all, and start thinking about the cost, its theological enthusiasts seem to be making a leap of faith the country needn't follow.

http://www.enn.com/index.asp

5/4/01
10:59:46 AM

Hemp car to make record 10,000-mile trip

A hemp-fueled car, scheduled to begin a record-breaking 10,000-mile trip around North America July 4, debuted Thursday April 19th in Washington at a conference devoted primarily to legalizing marijuana.

The car is a white, modified 1983 Mercedes diesel station wagon festooned with colorful hemp-related logos and the Virginia license plate "HEMPCAR." It is the creation of Grayson and Kellie Sigler, who plan to use roughly 400 gallons of hemp biodiesel during their trip. The trip will take the Siglers through 40 cities over three months, to the West Coast and then back east through Canada. The drive should set a world distance record for a vehicle using hemp for fuel.

Hemp oil converts into a biodiesel fuel fairly simply once mixed with caustic lye dissolved in methanol, a technique which makes the oil less viscous and more combustible.

"Hemp oil can be burned directly, but this is much cleaner," explained environmental defense attorney Don Wirtshafter, proprietor of the Ohio Hempery, the Athens, Ohio-based company providing the oil. "You get fuel and glycerine from the process, and the glycerine can be used to make soap or candles. We like to use potassium hydroxide as the caustic agent, because it results in a beautiful fertilizer."

Biodiesels can be made from any vegetable oil or animal fat and burn in any unmodified diesel engine. The only modification made to the hemp car was the replacement of rubber hoses with synthetic rubber tubes of biodiesels erode rubber.

"Hemp oil has the same energy as diesel," Wirtshafter said. "Whatever your car does on diesel, it'll do on hemp. It's even possible to process hemp for a gasoline engine, but it's more complex."

When asked why one should use hemp for fuel, Wirtshafter responded, "What humanity is doing on a massive scale right now is pulling carbon out of the ground in the form of fossil fuels and spewing it out as carbon dioxide gas, adding to global warming. Biofuels, hemp included, give us the chance to grow our fuel, thereby living off the energy from the sun rather than spending our 'savings bank' of hydrocarbons. At the same time, like all plants, hemp would absorb carbon dioxide as a natural life process."

Hemp is legal in some 30 countries, including all of Europe, Canada and China. As a crop, its fiber yields textiles such as paper, cloth and rope, while its oil is used for paint, varnish, lubricants and highly nutritious food. Cultivating hemp has been illegal in the United States since 1937, because marijuana is made from hemp's flowers, buds and leaves. This ban was briefly suspended during World War II, when the United States could not import hemp fiber from the Far East for use in rope.

Hemp legalization advocates argue that the plant is ideal for biofuel use." It yields about four times more seed oil than soybeans," Greyson Sigler said. "It grows widely in all climates with little fertilizer or pesticides needed than most crops. It's cheap, drought-resistant and very easy to cultivate. Hemp is, in my opinion, the world's most prodigious renewable resource. It could help California out with its power problems and keep the U.S. from drilling for oil in Alaska."

Sigler added that biodiesel releases 80 percent less emissions on average than gas." There are no sulfur byproducts, although there are slightly increased nitrogen oxide emission, most of which can be tuned out," he said. Sulfur and nitrogen oxides are pollutants and common byproducts of combustion.

While the conference at which the hemp car debuted was more focused on legalizing marijuana for responsible adult recreational use, the meeting's director, Allen St. Pierre, stressed the hemp legalization debate should expand to include the plant's industrial applications. "It's just so hard to get beyond the giggle, the public trivialization of this," said St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "We call it the 'rope vs. dope debate.'"

"But I have great faith that the pragmatism of big oil companies will move legalization forward," he added. "You'll start to see a cultural eraser or it's not the hippies in the park that are asking for it to be legal, but people who will note at least six or seven of the founding fathers were prolific hemp growers, including Jefferson and Washington." The hemp oil used for the record-setting trip comes from Canada. Though hemp oil currently costs some $50 per gallon, Wirtshafter hopes legalization could drive the cost down in the United States to as low as pennies per gallon. "We're not going to be economical until we're able to produce hemp oil without our handcuffs on," he said.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws gave $1,000 to subsidize the hemp car and may sponsor more funds in the coming months. "We were very impressed. We thought they were very well-versed and serious-minded. They weren't full of hyperbole, and they weren't naive -- they knew this was going to be difficult."

The Sigler's car is not the first hemp-fueled vehicle. In fact, Gatewood Galbraith, who ran for governor of Kentucky in 1991 on a pro-hemp platform, drove around in a retrofitted Mercedes Benz during his election campaign. The Siglers expect to get a warm reception during their trip. "Most people are really happy about it," Grayson Sigler said. "We got truckers blowing their horns and people flashing their lights on the way here. We even ran into some police officers who think it's fun."

St. Pierre noted that the only distinctive side effect bystanders may experience from the car is "a funky odor. Most people who are familiar with the smell of burning seeds of marijuana will sniff and say, 'Hey, it's an odd smell.'"

Environmental News Network

5/4/01
10:56:09 AM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

ATTENTION WAL-MART WORKERS: PLEASE DO NOT REPORT INJURIES

by Mark D. Fefer, Seattle Weekly

-- America's number one employer is not number one when it comes to paying worker's compensation and has come under fire from a Washington state agency.

COMMUNITY HARVEST

by Adam Rock, Resurgence

-- City dwellers in London unite to grow their own food. Urban agriculture projects like these are a small but growing phenomena that reduce London's ecological damage.

BOMBING BIG SUR

by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Counter Punch

--The U.S. Navy, which can't even bring a submarine to the surface of the ocean without hitting something, wants to drop test bombs on land inhabited by endangered species.

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

5/4/01
10:53:06 AM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-03-04.html

"We Cover the Earth For You"

BUSH DIRECTS FEDERAL AGENCIES IN CALIFORNIA TO SLASH ENERGY USE

WASHINGTON, DC, May 3, 2001 (ENS) - All federal agencies in California must now reduce their peak hour electricity use, President George W. Bush announced today in a press conference at the White House. As the hot weather approaches and people turn on their air conditioners, the energy starved state is bracing for more of the rolling blackouts that have been imposed from time to time since last year.

For full text and graphics visit:

FINE PARTICLES OF AIR POLLUTANTS HARMFUL AS PASSIVE SMOKING

LONDON, United Kingdom, May 3, 2001 (ENS) - Long term exposure to fine particle pollution is likely to be as dangerous as passive smoking, UK government scientists said today. They were releasing details of their first attempt to quantify effects of long term exposure on life expectancy.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-03-01.html

SCIENTISTS, INUIT STRUGGLE TO BRIDGE IQ DILEMMA

IQALUIT, Nunavut, Canada, May 3, 2001 (ENS) - The idea of uniting science and traditional Inuit knowledge is all the rage in Canada's newest territory Nunavut, but no one seems quite sure how to do it.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-03-11.html

TAP VERSUS BOTTLED WATER DEBATE BOILS OVER

GLAND, Switzerland, May 3, 2001 (ENS) - Is bottled water really no better than tap water? Conservation group the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) thinks so, which is why it is urging consumers to forego bottled water for the sake of the environment and their wallets.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-03-12.html

AUSTRALIA TACKLES TOXIC SHIP PAINT AHEAD OF BAN

BRISBANE, Australia, May 3, 2001 (ENS) - When the Iron Monarch docks in Brisbane Sunday it will be the first vessel in Australia to have new tin-free, anti-fouling paints applied to its hull. It will not be the last if a convention to outlaw toxic tributyltin (TBT), used as an anti-fouling agent in ship paints, is adopted by the International Maritime Organisation this year.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-03-10.html

AUSTRALIA OPENS WORLD'S FIRST TITANIUM SOLAR CELL FACTORY

CANBERRA, Australia, May 3, 2001 (ENS) - The government of Australia is committed to meeting its international climate change obligations, but is not prepared to sacrifice economic growth and Australian jobs, Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Senator Nick Minchin said Wednesday.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-03-02.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

Ford Acknowledges Importance of Climate Change

House Votes to Allow Hunting in Idaho Monument

Bill Would Lift Restrictions on Family Planning Funds

Moratorium on Gulf Drilling Could be Lifted

Seabirds Still Not Recovered from Exxon Oil Spill

Biodiesel Fuel Earns Credits in Government Fleets

Turning Environmental Data into Knowledge

Endangered Fish Returned to the Clinch River

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-03-09.html

5/4/01
10:40:31 AM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

UPDATE - Ford seeks environmental leadership role - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10703

UPDATE - Groups sue US to protect salmon from NW power dams - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10704

Turtles safe from shrimp trawl in 43 countries - US - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10706

Californian regulators adopt steps to save electricity - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10708

California says clean air not power crisis cause - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10716

Popular birds spotted less in gardens, says RSPB - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10705

Piracy against tankers soars in Q1 - investigator - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10711

UPDATE - UK to issue final emission trading rules in July - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10712

UPDATE - Pyres, mass graves spark foot-and-mouth fears - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10717

US team prepares to clean up Ogoni oil spill - NIGERIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10713

Greenpeace finds pollution in India shipyard - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10709

Chirac targets green voters with "ecology charter" - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10714

FEATURE - Floods reach chest level in waterlogged Somme - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10715

UPDATE - Czech Temelin plant to shutdown for two months - CZECH REPUBLIC http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10707

UPDATE - China landslide kills 65, more feared dead - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10710

5/4/01
10:38:40 AM

New at TomPaine.com...

http://www.TomPaine.com

REVENGE OF THE "WEAK SISTERS"

by Steve Cobble

Republican moderates have been dubbed "weak sisters" and are being penalized by their more staunchly conservative colleagues for not toeing the GOP line. Addressing two of those moderates -- Senators Lincoln Chafee and Jim Jeffords -- our essayist suggests a way they can strike back -- switch parties!

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/05/03/4.html

DO WINDMILLS EAT BIRDS?

by David Case

Ever since wind power emerged as a viable alternative to fossil-fuel power, some very unlikely bird lovers have emerged... like Jerry Taylor at the CATO Institute.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/05/03/1.html

UPROOTING LEGAL AID

by The Brennan Center for Justice

The Farm Bureau is attacking the lawyers who protect vulnerable migrant workers from unscrupulous employers paying illegally low wages and maintaining dangerous workplaces.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/04/24/2.html

A GREEN MUGGING IN BLACK AND WHITE

by David J. Ledermann

WALL STREET JOURNAL editorialists are intent on serving up environmentalists as scapegoats for the problems ensuing from wrong-headed energy policies that the editorialists once endorsed. The proof that they're wrong comes from the news pages of... the WALL STREET JOURNAL!

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/05/03/index.html

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

by YOU, our readers.

This week: Sir Solomon ... Common Nonsense ... Free Traders Beware ... and Thomas Pained.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/05/03/index.html

5/3/01
7:10:52 PM

A Message For Direct Action From Robert Redford

Keep The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Wild And Free

Dear Friend,

I wanted to pass along to you the following message describing my feelings about President Bush's plan to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the urgent need for us to fight back. I know you've visited the SaveBioGems.org website and, most likely, already taken action on behalf of our priceless Arctic wilderness -- and I thank you. Now, please do me the great favor of forwarding my message to everyone you know -- your friends, family, co-workers, discussion groups -- encouraging them to join us in this critical battle.

I've never circulated this kind of email before. But I am so appalled by President Bush's plan to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to massive oil development that I feel I must do whatever I can to help stop it.

To me, the Arctic Refuge represents everything spectacular and everything endangered about America's natural heritage: a million years of ecological serenity . . . vast expanses of untouched wilderness . . . an irreplaceable sanctuary for polar bears, white wolves and 130,000 caribou that return here each year to give birth and rear their young. For 20,000 years -- literally hundreds of generations -- the native Gwich'in people have inhabited this sacred place, following the caribou herd and leaving the awe-inspiring landscape just as they found it. Our own presidents going back to Eisenhower have kept a bipartisan promise to safeguard this world-class natural treasure. But not THIS president.

It is a sad day indeed when our president and congressional leaders would sacrifice America's largest wildlife refuge for the sake of a possible six-month supply of national energy. A six-month supply! We could save that little oil by improving the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks by a mere one mile per gallon.

Only one group of Americans will benefit from the destruction of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge: the oil giants. Everyone else loses. Arctic wildlife populations will decline, the Gwich'in people will see their land marred by pipelines and poisoned by oil spills, you and I will become even more dependent on oil, and the planet will suffer catastrophic global warming from the burning of even more fossil fuel.

Unless we get millions of Americans to lodge a protest right now, this nightmarish scenario may well come to pass in the next two months. The Republican energy bill, which would fulfill the president's promise to drill the Arctic Refuge, is moving through Congress today. House and Senate leaders may also try to sneak through the Arctic drilling provision by attaching it to a "must-pass" appropriations bill. These votes will be decided by the moderates in both parties. We must reach those moderates and hold them accountable.

Here's what you can do: go to

http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has set up this new website to make it extremely easy for you to send messages of protest to your senators and represenative. It will take you only a minute.

I've been on NRDC's board for 25 years, so I know how effective they are at waging and winning environmental campaigns. Last year, NRDC used web activism to help generate a million messages of protest to Mitsubishi and stopped the company from destroying the last unspoiled birthing ground of the Pacific gray whale.

We'll win this time too if each of us does our part for the Arctic Refuge. Please go to http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic right now. And forward my message to your family, friends and colleagues. Congress cannot ignore millions of us.

If we let them plunder our greatest wildlife refuge for the sake of oil company profits, then no piece of our natural heritage is safe from destruction.

Please go to http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic and help keep the Arctic wild and free.

Sincerely yours,

Robert Redford

5/3/01
5:54:32 PM

The Nation

Watch The Nation's peace and disarmament correspondent Jonathan Schell tonight, May 3, on PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer." Schell, a former Vietnam War reporter, will discuss the recent revelations of Bob Kerrey's alleged war crimes. The program airs at 7:00pm on the east coast and at other times nationally. Check local listings for broadcast and repeat times. Or check out PBS's website at:

http://www.pbs.org

And look at The Nation's website tonight for Schell's new article "War and Accountability," available by 8:00pm this evening at:

http://www.thenation.com

5/3/01
5:52:15 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

1. GREEN BERETS After spending 12 million dollars, the U.S. Army has come up with a nifty new something -- a more eco-friendly bullet (rad!) that is just as effective at killing as past lead-based ones. The "green ammunition" uses a less toxic tungsten composite that the Army says will significantly reduce the soil contamination caused each year by the millions of slugs fired at practice ranges. The Army makes all the ammo for the U.S. military and hopes the switch to lead-free bullets will be completed in 2005; this year, it is sending 50 million bullets to practice ranges in Alaska and Massachusetts.

straight to the source: ABCNews.com, Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, 03 May 2001 <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/greenbullets010503.html>

2. JACQUES BE NIMBLE French President Jacques Chirac was expected to woo green voters today and propose that the public be granted a constitutional right to a clean environment. In a speech released ahead of time, Chirac was planning to call on parliament to draft language for the French Constitution that would put environmental protections "on a par with civil liberties." The speech also reaffirmed Chirac's support of the Kyoto treaty on climate change and urged a country-wide debate "without taboo" on whether France should continue to rely on nuclear energy for half of its electricity. Chirac will likely face the leftist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in next spring's presidential race. Jospin's coalition includes the Green Party, but strategists for the conservative Chirac feel he can lure voters to his side by running strong on the environment.

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Reuters, 03 May 2001 <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environ/20010503/tCB00a2535.html>

3. GREEN OLD PARTY? While their party's standard-bearer, George W. Bush, goes about dismantling environmental protections, some GOP governors are actually garnering praise for their efforts to protect the environment. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Ridge (R) was named the state's Conservationist of the Year by the Audubon Society for winning support for a program to spend $650 million over the next five years to preserve open space and clean up mines. Massachusetts under Gov. Jane Swift (R) has become the first state to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from old power plants. Gov. George Pataki in New York is known as a green-leaning Republican, and, further south, even Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the president's brother, has helped to advance some environmental causes.

straight to the source: ABCNews.com, Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, 03 May 2001 <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/greenbullets010503.html>

read it only in Grist Magazine: A decidedly anti-enviro Republican governor in Michigan -- by Keith Schneider in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/schneider042501.stm>

4. PIONEER HYBRID Despite the five-month waiting list for Toyota Priuses in the U.S., Toyota has no plans to boost production numbers for its four-door gas-electric hybrid, which gets between 45 and 52 miles per gallon of gasoline. Toyota and Honda (its two-door Insight rates between 61 and 68 mpg) are planning to build fewer than 20,000 hybrid cars for sale this year in the U.S., where 17 million vehicles were sold last year. Although hybrid cars won't be competing with SUV sales anytime soon, some celebrities and politicians have flocked to them (Leonardo DiCaprio has two!). General Motors, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler say they will begin selling hybrid SUVs in 2003. Meanwhile, the world's first sports car running on rotting vegetables -- 220 pounds of the stuff powers the car for 62 miles -- is on tour at motor shows around the world.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Frank Swoboda, 03 May 2001 <http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35041-2001May2.html>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Oh, what mixed feelings -- the Toyota Prius sounds great, but why is it so hard to get one? -- by Edward Flattau in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho101800.stm>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Hot wheels -- politicos cruising the streets of D.C. in hybrid cars -- in our Muckraker column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/muck/muck032901.stm#hotwheels>

straight to the source: BBC News, 03 May 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1309000/1309201.stm>

5. REAL GOOD! President Bush today is ordering employees at all 500,000 federal buildings to dim lights, turn off office equipment not in use, and conserve energy in other ways to reduce the chance of energy shortages this summer. Casual dress will even be allowed on hot days, to limit the need for air-conditioning. A spokesperson for California Gov. Gray Davis (D-Calif.) urged Bush to go even further and match the state's pledge to reduce energy use in state buildings by 20 percent. Californians used 9 percent less electricity in the past two months compared to the same period last year. Solar power has a new cache in the state, and sales have doubled at Real Goods, a Northern California company that specializes in solar and energy-saving products.

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Richard Simon, 03 May 2001 <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environ/20010503/t000037346.html>

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Lynda Gledhill, 03 May 2001 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/05/03/MN202545.DTL>

straight to the source: New York Times, Evelyn Nieves, 03 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/national/03CONS.html>

6. HITTING THE BOTTLE Bottled water is no safer than tap water, but it can cost as much as 1,000 times more, according to a study released today by the World Wildlife Fund in Geneva. The group said that bottled water sales are soaring because people are concerned that tap water may be polluted. However, the study found that the only significant difference between the two types of water is that bottled water is not distributed by pipes but instead sold in, yep, bottles. In fact, WWF said regulatory standards for tap water in the U.S. and Europe are tougher than those for bottled water, and that low-income families would be better off boiling or filtering any contaminated tap water rather than ponying up the bucks for bottled water. And the group had this fun fact to share: About 1.5 millions tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.

straight to the source: Tacoma Tribune, Associated Press, Jonathan Fowler, 03 May 2001 <http://www.tribnet.com/frame.asp?/news/health_science/0503a53.html>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

When is a caribou an albatross? -- the Arctic Refuge could become Bush's gays-in-the-military -- by David Helvarg <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho030901.stm>

Lonesome George, last of his species -- a day in the life of Roslyn Cameron, Charles Darwin Research Station <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/cameron050201.stm>

This just in -- the latest climate change news -- in our Heat Beat section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/heatbeat/thisjustin042701.stm>

5/3/01
5:40:19 PM

MORE ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS STORIES:

GREENPEACE USA'S NEW OFFICES ARE A GREEN BUILDER'S DELIGHT

This innovative renovation showcases many outstanding green features. For details on the above four stories, click here.

WHITE HOUSE POSES GREATEST THREAT TO WILDLANDS

The current administration in the White House poses the biggest threat to the nation's national parks, national forests, national monuments and other public lands, according to an annual report released on Friday by The Wilderness Society. Click here.

HEMP CAR TO MAKE RECORD 10,000-MILE TRIP

A hemp-fueled car scheduled to begin a record-breaking 10,000-mile trip around North America July 4 debuted Thursday in Washington at a conference devoted primarily to legalizing marijuana. Click here.

NEW THREATS TO EASTERN FORESTS OF THE U.S.

After having been severally depleted, Eastern forests have had several decades - and in some cases over a century - to partially recover. Many forests are now becoming mature and are achieving late-successional characteristics. However, the marauding and rapacious industrial timber industry is returning to clear out these forests yet again, as supplies from old-growth forests in the US are exhausted. Read More.

COLORADO FRONT RANGE TREES PROVIDE MILLIONS IN BENEFITS

Trees in Denver and seven other Northern Front Range cities of Colorado are providing services equivalent to a $44 million stormwater management system and removing 2.2 million pounds of air pollutants (such as particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone) valued at $5.3 million per year. Read More.

ENVIRONMENTAL EXCELLENCE ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

Eight environmental activists will receive the world's most prestigious environmental award, the Goldman Environmental Prize. Awards of $125,000 will be given to Oscar Olivera, a Bolivian labor leader working for clean and affordable water. Yosepha Alomang, an Indonesian activist trying to preserve land and culture in West Papua. Giorgos Catsadorakis and Myrsini Malakou, two Greek biologists who have helped to save wetlands in the Balkans. Bruno Van Peteghem, a New Caledonian enviro campaigning to protect one of the world's largest coral reefs. Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two U.S. journalists who have called attention to the possible health dangers of genetically altered milk. Eugene Rutagarama, a Rwandan who saved 355 mountain gorillas during a genocidal war in the country.

Counting this year's recipients, the Goldman Prize has been awarded to 80 recipients from 51 countries over 12 years. straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Glen Martin, 23 Apr 2001 straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 23 Apr 2001

5/3/01
5:36:45 PM

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS STORIES:

TAX CREDITS FOR ENERGY EFFICIENT CARS IN THE WORKS Ford, Toyota, and Honda are working with environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists to urge Congress to pass tax credits for people who buy vehicles that are better for the environment. Legislation introduced in the Senate would create tax credits that range from $1,000 for gas-electric hybrids to much more for heavy-duty trucks that runs on electricity or fuel cells. Ford President Jacques Nasser said the bill "will help accelerate demand for cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles in the marketplace and put them on the road earlier and in higher volumes." DaimlerChrysler and General Motors say they support tax incentives, but they disagree with the way the bill calculates fuel improvements. The Sierra Club, on the other hand, supports higher requirements for gas mileage rather than tax credits. Straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Nedra Pickler, 24 Apr 2001

EARTH WEEK WITH NOBEL LAUREATE WOLE SOYINKA OF NIGERIA Nigerian Nobel Prize winning author Wole Soyinka has an Earth Week message for the world about his homeland - at least a third of the entire country is polluted in some way. Now writer in residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Soyinka is the first holder of the university's newly established Endowed Chair of Creative Writing. He shared some insights on the environmental and political problems of Nigeria. For full text and graphics visit: Click here.

SMALL POWER PLANTS ARE BIG OZONE PRODUCERS New research on ozone pollution has found that power plants can't be judged by size alone, scientists said Thursday. Click here.

BUSH SCUTTLES CLINTON ROADLESS AREA PROTECTIONS In a stunning blow to wilderness protection in the United States, the President Bush is moving to scuttle protection of America's last roadless national forests. Read More.

JAPAN'S INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR TIMBER IMPORTS Japan is the largest importer of timber in the World. Japan has just 2 percent of the world's population but imports 33 percent of internationally traded wood products. This level of wasteful and excessive consumption marks Japan as the World's greatest contributor to global deforestation. Read More.

LOGGING STANDARDS: SEEING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES Alves Sobrinho handles external relations for Gethal Amazonas, a plywood exporter with logging and sawmill operations in the Brazilian rain forest. In October Gethal became the first old-guard logging firm in the Amazon to earn certification for sustainable forestry management. Click here.

5/3/01
5:31:49 PM

Global Warming / Kyoto Protocol News

News on the Global Warming Front

JAPAN VOWS TO SUPPORT KYOTO PACT Japan's environment minister vowed to help achieve a world consensus in the fight against global warming but acknowledged that success would be difficult given U.S. opposition to the Kyoto climate treaty. Click here.

GREENPEACE TARGETS U.S. OIL FIRMS ON CLIMATE CHANGE The environmental group Greenpeace said Thursday it would seek to hurt the businesses of five U.S. oil companies until they agreed to back an international treaty designed to slow global warming. Click here.

EUROPEAN ASSEMBLY BLASTS U.S. ON KYOTO PROTOCOL The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly questioned on Thursday whether the United States remains a "reliable partner" for Europe following President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto climate accord. Click here.

GREENHOUSE GASES MAIN REASON FOR QUICKER NORTHERN WINTER WARMING Greenhouse gases are the main reason why the northern hemisphere is warming quicker during winter-time months than the rest of the world, according to new computer climate model results by NASA scientists. Read more.

MOON SHEDS LIGHT ON CLIMATE CHANGE ON EARTH Studies of the moon conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Western Center for Global Environmental Change are giving scientists another tool to measure climate change on Earth. Click here.

PACIFIC ENVIRONMENTALISTS SEEK U.S. GOODS BOYCOTT South Pacific climate activists want a region-wide boycott of all U.S. goods to protest against President George W. Bush's decision to ditch the Kyoto protocol on global warming, a regional umbrella group said on Thursday. Click here.

CALCULATE YOUR PERSONAL GLOBAL WARMING IMPACT ONLINE The World Resources Institute has launched a Web site where visitors can calculate individual actions that contribute to global warming. Click here.

5/3/01
4:42:44 PM

eMail And / Or Write The EPA

Tell Them You Want Safe ( 10 parts per billion or less )

Arsenic Levels In Our Drinking Water

The Bush administration has given the public an appallingly short time period of only14 days to officially be heard on its plan to yank the new rule that reduced the acceptable level of arsenic in our drinking water and re-open the issue to further study. Please email and / or write the EPA now.

On March 20th Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christie Todd Whitman announced that the Bush administration would suspend the revised arsenic standard for drinking water issued by the outgoing Clinton administration in January. More than a month passed, however, until the EPA announced an official comment period concerning it's decision. To make matters worse, the agency is giving the public an absurdly short time frame of only 14 days to speak out on this critical issue.

The current U.S. arsenic-in-drinking-water standard of 50 parts per billion (ppb) was set in 1942, before health officials knew that arsenic causes cancer. The revised rule would have lowered the acceptable arsenic level to 10 ppb, the same international standard adopted several years ago by the World Health Organization and the European Union.

The National Academy of Sciences has determined that arsenic in water causes bladder, lung and skin cancer, and may cause kidney and liver cancer, birth defects and reproductive problems. Arsenic also harms the central nervous system and heart.

Send your email to ow-docket@epamail.epa.gov

Please use "Arsenic Docket #W-99-16-IV" as your subject line.

Send your letter with this message to the official EPA comment address.

Subject: Arsenic Docket #W-99-16-IV

Water Docket (MC-410)

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Whitman and EPA staff,

I strongly oppose your decision to suspend the new 10 parts per billion arsenic-in-drinking-water standard and re-open this issue to further study. The new standard was a result of more than a decade of scientific reviews, public hearings, and discussions with health experts and industry. In addition, the 10 ppb level is the international standard adopted several years ago by the World Health Organization and the European Union.

Delaying implementation of the standard only serves to increase profits for polluters, such as the mining industry and other corporate interests, at the expense of the public's health. I urge you to reverse your decision and immediately implement the 10 ppb standard. If you do decide to re-open this issue for further study, however, you should adopt an even stronger standard (3 ppb), not a weaker one.

Sincerely,

your name and full address

5/3/01
4:05:14 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-02-11.html

"We Cover the Earth For You"

CONFERENCE TO TACKLE NUCLEAR TRAFFICKING THREAT

VIENNA, Austria, May 2, 2001 (ENS) - The threat of illicit trafficking in nuclear materials and radioactive sources will bring more than 300 officials from over 70 countries to Stockholm next week.

For full text and graphics, visit:

RUSSIANS EYE ANTARCTICA'S FORBIDDEN MINERALS

MOSCOW, Russia, May 2, 2001 (ENS) - A Russian prospecting vessel is reported to have just collected data on oil and gas reserves in Antarctica, a global nature reserve where minerals exploitation is forbidden.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-02-04.html

INTERNATIONAL BAN ON SUBMARINE MINE TAILINGS DISPOSAL URGED

MANADO, North Sulawesi, Indonesia, May 2, 2001 (ENS) - An international conference here on the dumping of mine waste at sea, known as submarine tailings disposal, concluded Monday with a declaration calling for an international ban on the practice.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-02-03.html

NAVY'S LOUD OCEAN SONAR DRAWS INTENSE OBJECTIONS

SILVER SPRING, Maryland, May 2, 2001 (ENS) - Tomorrow, the last of three public hearings will be held on the U.S. Navy's application for permission to "take" marine mammals during a five year deployment of low frequency active sonar (LFAS) in 80 percent of the world's oceans.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-02-05.html

ILISU ACTIVISTS DAMN PROTOCOL AT BALFOUR BEATTY AGM

LONDON, United Kingdom, May 2, 2001 (ENS) - Shareholders of construction company Balfour Beatty can expect a little extra from their annual general meeting in London today. Kurdish music, dancing, a symbolic dam made from shareholder certificates and a resolution challenging the company's role in the Ilisu Dam project in Turkey are all on the agenda.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-02-10.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 2, 2001

Former Fish and Wildlife Head Joins National Wildlife Federation

Senate Considers Bill to Privatize Fishing Quotas

Turtle Protection Lawsuit Against Longliners Filed in California

Pepsi Shareholders Pressured to Support Recycling

Oak Ridge Boys Sing to Attract Wildland Fire Fighters

Nick Brown Takes a Long Walk for Bay Area Youth

Cranes Learn to Migrate by Following an Ultralight

Vortechs Stormwater Treatment Tests Well in Upstate New York

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-02-09.html

5/3/01
4:02:33 PM

Bush's Anti-Logic Shield

By Robert Wright

Building the ambitious missile-defense system outlined yesterday by President Bush would mean abandoning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but that has never much bothered the Bush administration. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld puts it, "The Soviet Union, our partner in that treaty, doesn't exist anymore."

One thing Rumsfeld doesn't bother to add is that when the Soviet Union died, its successor states—most notably Russia—agreed to inherit its treaty commitments. Another thing he doesn't add is that they did so at the insistence of the United States.

In fact, they did so at the insistence of a president named Bush. I guess American officials forgot to tell the Russians that, though the Soviet Union's offspring would be expected to keep treaty commitments, Bush's offspring wouldn't be.

I don't want to make too much of this. After all, George W. Bush now seems to be suggesting not unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty but a negotiated withdrawal—forging a new "cooperative relationship" with Russia. And I guess there's a chance that he means this more sincerely than he meant his pledge to forge a new cooperative relationship with Democrats.

Besides, the main problem with missile defense isn't the legal niceties. The problem is that it lies somewhere on the spectrum from useless to counterproductive. That is, it would either not affect the chances of my dying prematurely or increase them. I don't consider either of these outcomes worth the price tag—which, realistically, is somewhere between $60 billion and $1 trillion.

Exactly how effectively a missile-defense system would fend off missiles is open to debate, but one thing it has already proved its imperviousness to is logic. Bush yesterday trotted out a series of bullet-ridden rationales and held them up proudly, as if oblivious (which he probably is) to the withering criticism they've already been through. For example:Barbarians at the gate: The basic rationale for missile defense has long been that people like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il are savages not subject to the deterrent logic of mutually assured destruction. These men are "gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States of America. They hate our friends. They hate our values. … Many care little for the lives of their own people. In such a world, Cold War deterrence is no longer enough."

But of course, Cold War deterrence was never premised on enemy leaders sharing our values, liking us, or even caring whether their own people died. As I've noted before in this space, deterrence assumes only that enemy leaders don't want to die themselves. If Bush thinks Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il don't care about their own survival he should say so, but so far the evidence suggests pretty strongly that these guys are survivors. Of particular relevance: During the Persian Gulf War, after Secretary of State James Baker made a veiled threat to respond with nuclear force to the use of chemical weapons, Hussein kept his ample supply of chemical weapons sheathed.

Nuclear blackmail: In light of this Persian Gulf episode, it's ironic that Bush yesterday cited the war with Iraq as an argument for missile defense: The alliance that rolled back Iraqi aggression "would have faced a very different situation had Hussein been able to blackmail with nuclear weapons."

Of course, it's possible that, even though Hussein would have been bluffing, the bluff would have worked. If enough European and American citizens decided there was at least a tiny chance he'd deliver on his threat, their fear might have proved politically paralyzing. But if a tiny chance of successful nuclear attack is paralyzing, then missile defense isn't going to help. After all, not even supporters of missile defense think it will be 100-percent effective, and most observers think its success rate would be much lower. And, as an extremely perceptive critic of missile defense once wrote, "In the psychology of paralyzing fear, a small but appreciable threat of massive destruction is a small but appreciable threat of massive destruction. If our allies are worried that there's a 5 percent chance of London or Paris going up in flames, it won't help to say, 'Actually the threat is only 2 percent.' " Or 1 percent, or one-half of 1 percent.

Deterring nuclear buildups: Bush said yesterday that missile defense can "strengthen deterrence by reducing the incentive for proliferation." What an odd claim! China has already warned that it would respond to missile defense by accelerating its nuclear missile program—and, unlike Russia (which has made similar noises), China has the money to do so. This would then give India an incentive to accelerate its nuclear program, which would give Pakistan the same incentive.

Even as it provokes weapons proliferation, missile defense will distract us from the longstanding U.S. goal of negotiated nonproliferation. Bush claimed yesterday that part of his "broad strategy" would be "active nonproliferation." Yet the official Bush administration policy is to refuse to discuss nonproliferation with North Korea. After all, if we're going to be snuggled up under our missile-defense blanket, why bother trying to lure North Korea into the modern, civilized world? (And, if you're trying to build political support for missile defense, why give North Korea a chance to show that it's civilizable?)

Maybe the biggest problem with missile defense is that it will distract us from what everyone agrees is a more serious threat than ballistic missiles—nuclear or biological weapons smuggled into the United States by boat, plane, or car. In fact, missile defense may expand that threat. Let's suppose that, in the case of the "rogue states," missile defense did have the "deterrent" effect that the Bush administration claims, inducing them to shift resources away from missile construction. What do you think they're going to do with those freed-up resources—give money to the Red Cross? They're going to focus on alternative ways to deliver weapons of mass destruction to the United States. Last night on PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, a missile-defense booster said that "a credible U.S. commitment to missile defense" would "discourage countries from building missiles." These countries, he predicted, would say to themselves: "We're going to put millions of dollars into missiles and the United States is just going to counter them. Let's do something else." Yeah, and I think I know what the "something else" is.

Alluding to the option of smuggling nukes into the United States, someone once compared missile defense to locking just one of your car doors to prevent theft. But, actually, that's too kind to the logic of missile defense. If you don't lock a car door, it is as likely a route of entry as the other door. With missile defense, we're trying to lock a door that was never the preferred route of entry to begin with. Saddam Hussein would rather smuggle a nuke in anonymously than send one over on a missile, since the latter option will get him killed and the former won't.

I live in the Washington, D.C., area, a few miles from ground zero. So I'm all for spending money to reduce the chances that the United States will be subject to nuclear attack. But missile defense is just not the smart way to spend that money.

http://www.arkinstitute.com

5/3/01
3:06:44 PM

Why Don't We All Just Cut the Crap Right Now

by Michael Moore

Well, 101 days into the Junta and the fear mongers are having a heyday, aren't they? Even good liberals and Democrats have joined in the mantra. To listen to them, you'd think George W. Bush had opened the gates of hell and unleashed the legions of Satan upon the American people.

These good people actually believe Junior has put the arsenic back in the water, given the go-ahead to spew massive CO2 emissions into the air, torn up our national forests, and raped the Alaskan wilderness. With all the fury that has been whipped up, I'm sure any minute we'll also hear that Baby Face Bush recently held up a 7-11 in Denver, and now plans to release bubonic plague into the atmosphere over Ohio.

Now, don't get me wrong. There's no doubt that this illegal squatter in the Oval Office is not to be trusted farther than you can throw Katherine Harris. But, please, let's cut the crap and tell the truth: George W. Bush has done little more than CONTINUE the policies of the last eight years of the Clinton/Gore administration. As hard as that is for many to swallow, that is the truth -- and the sooner you stop the scare campaign, the sooner we'll be able to fight Bush in a way that will stop him for good.

For eight long years, Clinton/Gore resisted all efforts and recommendations to reduce the carbon dioxide in the air and the arsenic in the water. Just last October, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle and sixteen other Democrats successfully led the way to STOP any reduction of arsenic in the water. Why? Because Clinton and the Democrats were beholden to the very industries who had financed their campaigns --- and who were responsible for high levels of arsenic in the water.

On top of that, Clinton/Gore became the first administration in twenty years NOT to demand higher fuel efficiency standards from Detroit. Millions of barrels of oil that did not need to be refined and spewed out into our air were guzzled unnecessarily. It wasn't that way under Reagan. His administration ordered that cars had to get more miles per gallon. Under Bush I, the standards were made even stricter. Under Clinton -- zip. Nothing. How many more people will die from cancer, how much faster will global warming be sped up thanks to Bill and Al being in cahoots with one of their chief patrons, the top lobbyist for the Big 3 auto companies -- Mr. Andrew Card, currently the chief of staff for the man occupying the federal land at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Am I the only one who remembers one of the most lavish inaugural parties thrown for Clinton after his election? The host: General Motors and its man-about-town in DC, Andrew Card.

Yes, there is a difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats say one thing ("Save the planet!"), and then do another, quietly and behind the scenes with all the bastards who make this world a dirtier place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. In some ways, maybe it's better we see the evil out in the open rather than covered up in a liberal sheep's clothing that seems to fool a lot of people.

Bill Clinton waited until the final days of his presidency to suddenly sign a number of presidential decrees and regulations to improve our environment and create safer working conditions. It was the ultimate cynical move. Wait 'til the last 48 hours of your term to finally do the right thing so that your "legacy" will be improved. Every one of these regulations Bush has "overturned" was signed by Clinton in December and January. And that's ALL he did -- sign worthless pieces of paper.

Do you believe Clinton removed the arsenic from the water? Not only did he NOT do that, not only did he make us drink arsenic-laced water for the last 8 years, this order he signed stipulated that the arsenic was not to be removed from the water "until 2004." That's right. Look it up. Clinton's big environmental do-good act in the last minutes of his term guaranteed that we would be drinking the same levels of arsenic we've been drinking since 1942 -- the last time a REAL Democrat had the guts to stand up to the mining interests and reduce the levels of this poison. The Canadians and Europeans did it long ago. Clinton made it official that we would all be drinking arsenic during the entire Bush administration. Maybe he was doing us a favor.

And how about those COO emission regulations that Bush II overturned? Did I say "overturn?" Overturn what? All Bush did was maintain the Clinton status quo. He said, in essence, that "I'm going to pollute the air at the very same levels Clinton did during his entire eight years, just as you are going to drink the same arsenic in the water under my watch as you did under Clinton's."

And, like the built-in three-year delay in his arsenic reductions, Clinton's orders on the toxic emissions in his last days specified that they were not to be totally reduced '"until 2008, per the Kyoto agreement." So, after violating the Kyoto accords he had signed by doing NOTHING about CO2 in the past few years, he then tries to look good by doing NOTHING about CO2 for another seven years! So the air that was dirty is still dirty and will remain dirty, just as Clinton had ordered.

The list goes on and on. For eight years Clinton did NOTHING about carpal tunnel syndrome as it relates to OSHA regulations. Then, in the middle of pardoning some rich guys during his all-night kegger on January 19, he decides to finally do some good for all those women who sit at keyboards all day and who, with their crippled hands, went to the polls TWICE to make him their President.

Friends, you are being misled and hoodwinked by a bunch of professional "liberals" who did NOTHING themselves for eight years to clean up these messes -- and now all they can do is attack people like Ralph Nader who has devoted his ENTIRE life to every single one of these issues. What unmitigated gall! They blame Nader for giving us Bush? I blame THEM for being Bush! They suck off the same corporate teat and they support stuff like NAFTA which, according to the Sierra Club, has DOUBLED the pollution along the Mexican border where the American factories have moved. And then they wring their hands over Bush and his "reversals!" Where is Orwell when we need him? How much slicker can the doublespeak get?

Had Clinton done the job those of us who voted for him in 1992 expected him to do, we wouldn't be in the pickle we're in. Imagine if on his first day in office over eight years ago Clinton had ordered a reduction of the arsenic in the drinking water -- and all of America had been drinking cleaner, safer water for the last eight years. Do you think there is any way in hell this Junior Bush would have been able to say, "OK, America, you've been drinking water without poison in it long enough. Time to go back to the good old days of sucking down that ol' arsenic!"? Hell no! The public -- no one -- would have stood for it. And he'd know that. He wouldn't even have tried it. But because Clinton waited to the last minute and never removed any of this crud from the water or the air, there was no political or popular support base for the decision. So it was easy for Bush to do what he did. He figured, you're not going to miss what you never had removed in the first place.

Finally, a word about that order Bush issued to ban money for abortions overseas. Wrong again. Pro-choice Clinton, like the three presidents before him, had already signed an order banning any American funds to pay for abortions in foreign countries. What Bush did was to expand the order to include cutting off any monies to foreign birth control groups that offer abortion as an alternative. Worse, yes -- but he only got away with it because our Democratic president had laid the groundwork in continuing the abortion-funds cut-off, placing his "liberal" approval on a piece of the right-wing agenda. If you give the devil a bone, he doesn't just go away -- he wants the whole damn leg.

So spare me all the hand wringing and indignant moralizing. Those who want to turn Bush into some sort of cartoon monster have an agenda -- to keep most of us from seeing the beast that they themselves have become. Of course they hate Ralph Nader. He's an ugly reminder that they sold out a long time ago -- and he didn't. Blame Nader, blame Bush, it's all part of the same distraction, to keep you from focusing on this one, very important fact: Republican arsenic or Democratic arsenic, it really is the same damn crap being forced down your throat.

I am committed to changing that, either within or without the Democratic Party.

Please feel free to pass this letter on to anyone you know who believes that Bush "overturned" what Clinton did. Thanks.

Yours,

Michael Moore

mmflint@aol.com

P.S. Well, a miracle of sorts happened in Texas a few weeks back. Michael Moore, the inmate on death row, got a last-minute reprieve! This never happens in that kill-happy state. Thanks to all of you who wrote a letter to the Texan officials. His fate is now up in the air.

A bill is also pending in the Texas legislature calling for a moratorium on executions -- and, surprisingly, it is receiving a lot of support. I'll keep you informed of its progress, and in the meantime, please write to the Texas House and Senate and demand its passage.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma will execute a woman later today who was convicted, in part, on the testimony of a police forensic expert who has just been found to have falsely supplied evidence in at least a half-dozen death row cases -- including this woman's. Some of those who were the victims of this forensic "expert" have already been put to death. It now appears they may have been innocent. Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 Oklahomans. Today, the people of Oklahoma and its governor will murder one more.

5/3/01
2:54:57 PM

For Immediate Release

Contact: Alfred Webre 604-733-8134 Dr. Steven Greer 540-456-8302

Wednesday, May 9th, 2001

8 - 9 AM - Continental Breakfast/ 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Press Conference

The National Press Club Ballroom

529 14th Street NW Washington DC

MILITARY, GOVERNMENT WITNESSES TO PROVIDE TESTIMONY ON UFO / EXTRATERRESTRIAL PRESENCE;

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION SOUGHT

On Wednesday, May 9th, over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses will come forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena, according to Dr. Steven M. Greer, director of the Disclosure Project which is hosting the event.

The Disclosure Project, a non-profit research organization, is calling for open Congressional hearings on the UFO/Extraterrestrial presence, and for legislation that will ban space-based weapons. Congressional hearings were last held in 1968 by the House Science and Astronautics Committee (90th Congress, 2nd Session, Committee Print No. 7. "Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects.")

The Project has identified several hundred witnesses throughout the world and spanning every branch of the armed services, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), DIA, CIA, NASA, Russia. UK, and other agencies and countries. Over 100 have been videotaped; 70 have been transcribed into edited testimony. Videotaped summary of the testimony and an in-depth briefing document with witness transcripts will be available at the press conference.

Among the witnesses attending the event are: John Callahan, former Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch, FAA; Master Sergeant Dan Morris, former US Air Force and NRO operative with cosmic top secret clearance; Dr. Carol Rosin, space missile defense consultant and former spokesperson for Wernher Von Braun; Major George A. Filer III, former Air Force Intelligence; Graham Bethune, retired Navy commander pilot with a top-secret clearance; Michael Smith, former Air Traffic Controller, US Air Force; Sergeant Clifford Stone, United States Army; Lt. Col. Robert Salas, former SAC Launch Controller, US Air Force and FAA.

Participants in this phase of the disclosure effort are asking for Congressional, White House and UN action to allow witnesses to testify under oath in open hearings. The group is requesting a Presidential Executive Order to protect witnesses afraid of violating security oaths and to declassify documents and secret projects for the benefit of all world citizens.

"These testimonies establish once and for all that we are not alone. Technologies related to extraterrestrial phenomena are capable of providing solutions to the global energy crisis, and other environmental and security challenges," says Dr. Greer.

The Disclosure team and selected witnesses will be meeting with members of Congress and conducting briefings to address these issues and call for legislation.

Wednesday, May 9th 8 - 9 AM Continental Breakfast 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM - Overview by Dr. Greer; Witness Presentations; Release of Statement for Congress; Questions Ballroom - The National Press Club 529 14th Street NW - 13th Floor Washington, D.C

DISCLOSURE PROJECT CALLS ON U.S. CONGRESS FOR HEARINGS & LEGISLATION:

To hold open, secrecy-free hearings on the UFO/Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth.

To hold open hearings on advanced energy and propulsion systems that, when publicly released, will provide solutions to global environmental challenges.

To enact legislation which will ban all space-based weapons.

To enact comprehensive legislation to research, develop and explore space peacefully and cooperatively with all cultures on Earth and in space.

The recorded testimony of scores of military, government and other witnesses to Unidentified Flying Objects and Extraterrestrial events and projects from around the world establishes the existence of a UFO/Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth. This recorded testimony consists of dozens of first-hand, often top-secret witnesses to UFO and Extraterrestrial events, internal UFO-related government projects and covert activities, space-based weapons programs, Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and covert, reverse-engineered energy and propulsion system projects. The technologies that are of an Extraterrestrial origin, when publicly released within a planned transition period, will provide solutions to global environmental and security challenges.

These numerous recorded witnesses constitute only a small portion of a vast pool of identified present or former military, intelligence, corporate, aviator, flight control, law enforcement officers, scientists and other witnesses, who will come forward when subpoenaed to testify at Congressional hearings. Without a grant of immunity releasing them from their security oaths, many such unimpeachable witnesses fear to speak out.

The legislation to ban space-based weapons will prohibit acts of war against Extraterrestrial civilizations. The comprehensive legislation will transform the terrestrial war industry into a world cooperative space industry. This will provide unprecedented benefits and opportunities to all on Earth and in space.

BACKGROUND BRIEFING POINTS FOR CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS & LEGISLATION

* The Disclosure Project is a non-profit research effort that has, since 1993, been identifying top-secret military, government and other witnesses to UFO and Extraterrestrial events.

* To date, several hundred such witnesses have been identified throughout the world and spanning every branch of the armed services, the NRO, DIA, CIA, NASA, the former USSR, and other agencies and countries. Over 100 have been videotaped, thus far; 70 have been transcribed into edited testimony. A four hour videotape summary of testimony and an over 500 page briefing document is available that contains excerpts of this historic testimony.

* The weight of this testimony, along with supporting government documents and other evidence, establishes beyond any doubt the reality of extraterrestrial life forms, UFOs, or extraterrestrial vehicles, and advanced energy and propulsion technologies resulting from the study of these vehicles.

* The testimony and evidence proves that these vehicles have been tracked on radar on many occasion, have landed and/or crashed on terra firma, and have been retrieved and studied by specialized and compartmentalized projects. Advanced technologies which have been identified from the study of these vehicles, once disclosed, will replace currently used forms of energy generation and propulsion. These technologies will enable the earth to attain a sustainable civilization without pollution, energy shortages, or global warming. These technologies are already fully operational. They have been developed within super-secret, unacknowledged special access projects. In short, the definitive solution to the world's energy, pollution, and poverty problems exists within compartmentalized projects that need planned disclosure and relevant legislation.

* The programs controlling this issue are operating outside of legally required Congressional oversight. Even Presidents have been left out of the loop, deliberately deceived, and denied access. Therefore, urgent action is needed on the part of Congress, the White House, and other institutions to obtain the necessary oversight and control of these operations to ensure that these now-classified technologies are prepared for disclosure and the eventual near-term application for world cooperative energy generation and propulsion.

* A clear and on-going threat to the national security and world peace has arisen because of unauthorized covert actions that have led to the targeting and downing of these extraterrestrial vehicles and to related covert plans to weaponize space. Since it can be proven that we are sharing space with other civilizations, it is critical that a full disclosure of this long suppressed information take place, and that the National Missile Defense System (NMD/BMD/SDI.) be re-evaluated by policy makers in light of these revelations.

* There is no evidence that these extraterrestrial civilizations are hostile to humanity or the earth. Rather, the testimony shows that they are very concerned about nuclear and space-based weapons systems, and human warfare. Therefore, a cooperative world policy and law must be immediately established to prohibit the targeting and striking of these vehicles.

* Urgent Congressional, White House and UN action is needed to allow any and all witnesses to testify under oath so that a full, honest and open disclosure may occur this year, 2001, including witnesses with high level security clearances.

* A US Presidential Executive Order is needed to protect these military, government, and other witnesses, and to declassify secret projects and their related technologies.

* The world community needs to research and develop diplomatic programs and protocols, laws and treaties to address this issue and to interface with these civilizations in a manner that is peaceful, non- violent and mutually beneficial.

* WE, THE PEOPLE, CALL ON THE U.S. CONGRESS;

* To hold open, secrecy-free hearings on the UFO/Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth.

* To hold open hearings on advanced energy and propulsion systems related to the subject that, when publicly released, will provide solutions to global environmental and other challenges.

* To enact legislation which will ban all space-based weapons.

* To enact comprehensive legislation to research, develop and explore space peacefully and cooperatively with all cultures on Earth and in space.

5/3/01
12:56:37 PM

Geri Guidetti

The Ark Institute's Seed

As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The Ark Institute's work was similarly begun by a small "group"--of one--and is now perhaps hundreds of thousands strong. Our non-hybrid, non-GMO seeds is now growing in backyards and even on small farms across the entire country, including Alaska and Hawaii! My email and snail mail letters tell me how they are being multiplied, saved, and shared with others, precisely what we have hoped would happen. There is hope!

arkinst@concentric.net

5/3/01
12:36:58 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

It's 15 years since the Chernobyl disaster. At Planet Ark we have 226 news stories about the disaster and the impact that it's had on the environment.

Check them out at: http://www.planetark.org/chernobyl/

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

New US business group says cheap energy crucial for economy - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10693

Oil industry asks White House for environmental flexibility - WSJ - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10689

Ford to say global warming serious issue - WSJ - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10690

WRAPUP - Refiners in deals to make patented Unocal gasoline - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10691

Legislation seeks to make nuclear power more attractive - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10692

White House unlikely to ease dirty air rules in Calif - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10687

USDA to issue statement on US forest roads ban on Fri - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10699

UK's BNFL says E.ON nuclear deal helps Mox plant - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10697

UK nuclear sub in Gibraltar to sail in 7-10 days - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10698

Bottled water drinkers may pour money down drain - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10688

Shell says oil spill in Nigeria's Ogoni manageable - NIGERIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10701

UPDATE - Shell says unsecured Ogoni oilwells "time bombs" - NIGERIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10700

Canada crash spills radioactive iridium, kills two - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10702

INTERVIEW - Canada worried by idea of heavy US coal reliance - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10695

EBRD to help Bulgaria fund closure of old reactors - BULGARIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10694

UPDATE - Argentina approves GMO seed, first in 3 years - ARGENTINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10696

5/3/01
12:27:56 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

http://www.wilderness.org/ccc/southeast/island.htm

1. DUTCH OVEN Royal Dutch/Shell said yesterday that a significant oil spill had occurred in Ogoniland, Nigeria, where the company has volatile relations with local residents. The company said it did not yet know the volume of the spill, but suggested the cause was arson near one of its facilities. Ledum Mittee, president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni Peoples, said the spill was a serious one and the group will "insist that there should be a proper cleanup and not a cover-up." Meanwhile, residents in the Nigeria Delta have to deal on a daily basis with more than 100 natural-gas flares, a waste byproduct from the oil-drilling process. Enviros and human rights groups say the flares, 300 feet in height, threaten air quality and are a big source of greenhouse gases.

straight to the source: Nigeria Guardian, 02 May 2001 <http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news2/nn820206.html>

straight to the source: Christian Science Monitor, Greg Campbell, 01 May 2001 <http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/05/01/p1s4.htm>

do good: Take action to help out Nigerian enviros <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/mining.stm#chevron>

2. MCCAIN IS ABLE Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized the Bush administration yesterday for rejecting the Kyoto treaty on climate change. McCain said, "I don't agree with everything in the Kyoto Protocol, but I think it is a framework we could have continued to work with. We could have fixed it." In other climate news, Ford is expected to release a report this week saying that global warming is a major problem that merits a serious response from the company. Meanwhile, five senators, including Maine's two Republican senators, introduced a bill yesterday to require SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans to meet the same fuel-efficiency standards as cars by 2007.

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Ball and Norihiko Shirouzu, 02 May 2001 (access ain't free) <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB988755304733122320.htm>

straight to the source: Portland Press Herald, Bart Jansen, 02 May 2001 <http://www.portland.com/news/state/010502suv.shtml>

do good: Take action and tell the U.S. EPA that cars contribute to global warming <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/climate.stm#comment>

3. PUGET SOUND SCIENCE Environmentalists petitioned the feds yesterday to protect Puget Sound orca whales under the Endangered Species Act. The National Marine Fisheries Service has 90 days to review the request. If it thinks the petition is warranted, the agency will then have one year to decide whether to list the killer whales as threatened or endangered under the act. In the petition, the Center for Biological Diversity says overfishing, pollution, and whale-watching vessels are pushing the whale population to the brink of extinction. Only about 83 Puget Sound orcas are still living.

straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Lisa Stiffler, 01 May 2001 <http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/20999_orcas01.shtml>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: Whale antics -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha011601.stm>

4. LOG ROLLING Twenty Republicans in the U.S House, led by Reps. Sherwood Boehlert (N.Y.) and Constance Morella (Md.), joined with more than 100 Democrats yesterday in asking President Bush not to roll back the plan approved by the Clinton administration to ban road-building and logging on 58.5 million acres of national forestland. Boehlert said, "I believe our forests should be open to multiple uses, but we still must protect the last remaining pristine areas." The White House needs to make a decision this week on whether to defend the logging ban in a court case in Boise, Idaho. Word on the street is that the Bush administration is exploring ways to delay the Clinton plan indefinitely.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 02 May 2001 <http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29808-2001May1.html>

straight to the source: New York Times, Douglas Jehl, 02 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/02/politics/02FORE.html>

do good: Take action to defend Clinton's roadless plan <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/forests.stm#roadles>

5. THE POLITICAL CLIMATE IS CHANGING, TOO The coal and utility industries are lobbying Vice President Dick Cheney's secretive energy task force to ease a clean-air rule so that major upgrades can be made at power plants without setting in motion tough pollution-control requirements. The Clinton-era U.S. EPA sued eight big utilities for upgrading power plants without also improving pollution controls. But the White House could direct the EPA to change its interpretation of the Clean Air Act rule, effectively ending the lawsuits and saving the utility industry tens of billions of dollars in potential fines. "The current political climate is the best we've seen in many years," said a major coal-company lobbyist. Meanwhile, the oil industry is asking the task force to relax EPA regulations to make it easier for the industry to expand refineries and pipelines.

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, John J. Fialka, 01 May 2001 <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB988667079916235517.htm>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

What does a giant tortoise eat for breakfast? -- a day in the life of Roslyn Cameron, Charles Darwin Research Station <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/cameron050101.stm>

Michigan seems like a scheme to me now -- Bush's attack on federal resources and rules was honed in the states -- by Keith Schneider in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/schneider042501.stm>

Earth Day, my foot! -- the latest in the comic adventures of Zed, last of his species <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/zed/zed042001.stm>

5/3/01
12:17:54 PM

JOHN HAGELIN FEATURED ON WISDOM TELEVISION IN MAY

The Natural Law Party's 2000 Presidential Candidate, John Hagelin, will be showcased on WISDOM® Television in May. John Hagelin shares his views on politics, the environment, and much more as he joins Corinne Edwards for "Book Tours." The interview debuts May 3rd at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time and will re-air throughout the month of May (see schedule below). Dr. Hagelin will then join Chantal Westerman for an in-depth discussion about his life and his views on "Conversations with Remarkable People." The show airs May 5th at 7 p.m. Eastern time and will re-air throughout May (see schedule below).

Dr. Hagelin will also be working with WISDOM Television to develop possible future shows and projects. So if you don't have WISDOM Television, please call your local cable operator and request the only Life Improvement channel--WISDOM Television.

Or call WISDOM at 1-800-700-2212 to learn about getting WISDOM in your home.

ATTENTION: You are receiving this email because you requested to be included on our news flash list. If you'd like to remove yourself from this list, please see the instructions below. We respect your electronic privacy and will NOT give out or sell your email address under any circumstances.

For more information, please visit the John Hagelin website at:

http://www.hagelin.org

5/2/01
6:45:34 PM

WILD ALERT

Off the coast of Georgia is one of the least developed barrier islands in the world, Cumberland Island. Nearly 18 miles long, the island possesses a broad diversity of biological communities. It is well known for sea turtles, shore birds, dune fields, maritime forests, salt marshes, and tidal flats.

The National Park Service has issued a draft plan that will, when final, direct the management of Cumberland Island. Your comments are needed to ensure that the Wilderness Management Plan will protect the wilderness values of the island. Comments will be accepted through 5/04/2001.

Take action now from

BACKGROUND

In the late 1960's the island was threatened with development. Wanting to maintain its wild character, many island residents banded together to seek ways to protect it. They, along with environmental organizations and the Department of the Interior, succeeded in having Cumberland Island set aside in 1972 as a national seashore. Many of the residents sold their property to the NPS with the stipulation that they had the right to use or occupy the property for noncommercial residential purposes for 25 years or for a term ending at the death of the owner, whichever was later. These residents hold retained rights that are unique and that allow for driving within the wilderness. The enabling legislation also allows hunting, fishing and trapping within the national seashore.

In 1982 the Cumberland Island Wilderness Area was established. Congress charged the Secretary of Interior with administering the Wilderness Area in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Wilderness Act subject to valid existing rights. Congress directed the NPS to "restore" the designated area to wilderness. Recognizing the interim period would be one of transition, Congress allowed the Park Service to use roads for emergency, law enforcement, and administrative purposes. But the intent was to phase out use of the roads.

TAKE ACTION

The National Park Service has issued a draft plan that will, when final, direct the management of Cumberland Island. We've analyzed the draft plan and have drafted some suggestions.

Any U.S. citizen can have input into the plan, since Cumberland Island National Seashore is owned by all Americans. Your comments are important and are needed to ensure that we have a Wilderness Management Plan that will protect the wilderness values to the greatest extent possible given the valid existing rights of landholders. Comments will be accepted through 5/04/2001.

See our suggestions and send your own comments online from:

http://www.wilderness.org/ccc/southeast/island.htm

Or contact the National Park Service directly at:

Richard H. Sussman

National Park Service

100 Alabama Street SW

Atlanta, Georgia 30303

email: rich_sussman@nps.gov

Here are some points to make to the NPS for improving the draft plan:

* Eliminate all employee driving in the wilderness except for emergencies.

* Reduce the risk of more roads or vehicles in the wilderness by building a dock at the north end of the island and using it to transport visitors to the north end, eliminating the need to drive through the wilderness.

* Prohibit the construction of telephone cell towers in the wilderness.

* Refrain from widening trails for feral hog containment. Elimination of the hogs can be done by hunting and carrying lightweight traps into the wilderness.

For a full list of Action Items, visit

http://www.wilderness.org/whatcan/takeaction.htm

5/2/01
1:32:09 PM

Presentation to Members of the British Parliament

by Karl Grossman

London

May 3, 2001

The United States is seeking to make space a new arena of war--and is looking to the United Kingdom to be a "partner" in this venture.

The Bush administration would--as President George W. Bush attempted in his speech two days ago--have the world believe this is all about "missile defense."

This is untrue. A broad U.S. space military program is involved, indeed revealed in U.S. government and military documents such as the recent report of the "Space Commission" chaired by the new U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the blueprint for the space military program of the Bush administration.

As the report of the commission's report, issued January 11, says: "In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on the earth and in space."

"Power projection in, from and through space" is advocated by the "Space Commission," formally called the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization. It urges the U.S. president "have the option to deploy weapons in space" and the U.S. Space Command be made a quasi-independent U.S. armed service, a Space Corps, like the U.S. Marine Corps.

The Rumsfeld "Space Commission" report follows a series of U.S. military reports in recent years that call for the U.S. to "control space" and from space "dominate" the Earth below.

I have brought copies of pages from these reports for you. You will see that "missile defense" is a "layer" in a far wider program.

As the U.S. Space Command's "Long Range Plan" declares: "The time has come to address, among warfighters and national policy makers, the emergence of space as a center of gravity for DoD [Department of Defense] and the nation …. Space power in the 2lst Century looks similar to previous military revolutions, such as aircraft-carrier warfare and Blitzkrieg."

But the U.S. is hard-pressed to do this alone. We need you and a few other nations for sites for command-and-control facilities and other assistance--"Global Partnerships" as the "Long Range Plan" puts it to "strengthen military space capabilities." And also there in the "Long Range Plan," above an oval with the words: "Potential Initiatives To Enable * Control of Space * Global Engagement * Full Force Integration" and below the word "Partnerships" are the flags of nine nations. Among the flags: the Union Jack.

The United Kingdom shouldn't be involved in this U.S. scheme.

It is a scheme involving, in part, money. President Bush, for example, spoke in his speech about three emissaries he'll be sending around the world to promote the U.S. space military plan. He identified one as Stephen Hadley.

Stephen Hadley? Before joining the Bush administration, Hadley was a partner in the Washington law firm of Shea & Gardner which represents Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons manufacturer and a corporation central to the U.S. Star Wars program. The U.S. recently gave the go-ahead for development of the Space-Based Laser, a $20 to 30 billion program. The Space-Based Laser's builders: Boeing, TRW--and Lockheed Martin.

And it is a scheme involving power. When President Ronald Reagan first announced the U.S. Star Wars program in 1983, he said it was about fending off what he considered the "evil empire," the Soviet Union. There is no Soviet Union any longer. Why Star Wars now?

The U.S. space military documents, as you will note, stress the "global economy." As the U.S. Space Command's "Vision for 2020" report, its cover depicting a laser weapon shooting a beam down from space zapping a target below, says: "The globalization of the world economy will also continue with a widening between ‘haves' and ‘have-nots.'" From space, the U.S., the engine of the global economy--would keep those "have-nots" in line.

"Vision for 2020" further declares the mission of the U.S. Space Command as "dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict." And it compares the U.S. effort to "control space" and Earth below to how centuries ago "nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests," referring to you and the other empires of Europe which once ruled the waves.

The "Long Range Plan" states: "The United States will remain a global power and exert global leadership. The United States won't always be able to forward base its forces…Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of life--contributing to unrest in developing countries… The global economy will continue to become more interdependent. Economic alliances, as well as the growth and influence of multi-national corporations, will blur security agreements. The gap between ‘have' and ‘have-not' nations will widen--creating regional unrest. One of the long acknowledged and commonly understood advantages of space-based platforms is no restriction or country clearances to overfly a nation from space."

Of power, when I was last here at the British Parliament, the Honorable Alan Simpson took the copy of "Vision for 2020" I was showing and declared: "Professor Grossman, we understand. We, too, were once an empire--drunk with power."

That is the situation my dear Members of Parliament. I regret to inform you that your former colony is out of control. Its government and a segment of its military--plus more modern entities called corporations--are drunk with power.

Your other North American progeny, Canada, not too incidentally, has been trying hard to stop the U.S. Star Wars program. It has been moving at the United Nations for a strengthening of the basic international law on space, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Canada is proposing a ban on all weapons in space (the Outer Space Treaty presently bans nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction in space).

At the UN in October Marc Vidricaire of the Canadian delegation declared: "Outer space has not yet witnessed the introduction of space-based weapons. This could change if the international community does not first prevent this destabilizing development through the timely negotiation of measures banning the introduction of weapons into outer space. It has been suggested that our proposal is not relevant because the assessment on which it rests is either premature or alarmist. In our view, it is neither. One need only look at what is happening right now to realize that it is not premature."

"There is no question that the technology can be developed to place weapons in outer space," said Vidricaire. "There is also no question that no state can expect to maintain a monopoly on such knowledge -- or such capabilities -- for all time. If one state actively pursues the weaponization of space, we can be sure others will follow."

The United States has been blocking the Canadian initiative.

Weeks later, on November 20, 2000, because of the U.S. space military program, a vote was held on a resolution for "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space." It sought to "reaffirm" the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and specifically its provision that space be reserved for "peaceful purposes." Some 163 nations--including the United Kingdom--voted in favor. The U.S.--an original signer of the treaty--abstained. We have become quite the rogue state.

But getting drunk with power can do strange things. The legislation which got the Rumsfeld "Space Commission" established in 2000 was authored by U.S. Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire. Of the U.S. "controlling space," Smith in a new TV documentary"Star Wars Returns"that I have written and narrate (copies of which I have for you today) says: "It is our manifest destiny. You know we went from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States of America settling the continent and they call that manifest destiny and the next continent if you will, the next frontier, is space and it goes on forever." Yes, now it's U.S. Cosmic Manifest Destiny.

No, the United Kingdom shouldn't be involved in this U.S. scheme.

What the U.S. is up to will destabilize the world. Canada as well as China, Russia, indeed basically the rest of the world, seek to keep space for peace and are agreed on banning all weapons in space.

As, after the horror of chemical warfare in the First World War when nations said we can no longer allow chemical warfare, the world for nearly 35 years has agreed--and successfully managed--to keep war out of space. The Outer Space Treaty should be strengthened to ban all weapons in space. Verification mechanisms should be added. And space be kept for peace.

But there is only a narrow window to do this--for if the United States moves ahead with its Star Wars scheme there will be no putting this genie back in the bottle. Other nations will respond in kind and there will be an arms race and ultimately war in space.

This weekend, people from around the United Kingdom--indeed from all over the world--will gather in Leeds because of the proximity of Menwith Hill, an important component in the U.S. space military program. The meeting is titled "No Star Wars: An International Conference to Keep Space for Peace."

I urge you distinguished members of Parliament to join in helping stop this move by the United States to turn the heavens into a war zone.

Karl Grossman is full professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. He has specialized in investigative journalism for 35 years

He is a principal of EnviroVideo, a New York-based company which produces news, interview programs and documentaries for television and the Web.Video documentaries he has written and hosted for EnviroVideo include "Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens," "Nukes In Space 2: Unacceptable Risks" and his new video documentary, "Star Wars Returns," just released by

EnviroVideo 718.318.8045 or http://www.envirovideo.com

His books include "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet" and "Weapons In Space," to be published in June 2001 by

Seven Stories Press 212.226.8760 or http://www.info@sevenstories.com

Grossman is the recipient of the George Polk Award, James Aronson Award and John Peter Zenger Award along with six citations from Sonoma State University's Project Censored for his journalism on space issues.

Grossman's home address:

Box 1680, Sag Harbor, New York, USA 11963

E-mail: kgrossman@hamptons.com

The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power In Space can be reached at 352.337.9274.

Its website: http://www.space4peace.org

globalnet@mindspring.com

PO Box 90083, Gainesville, Florida, USA 32607

5/2/01
1:18:08 PM

UFO Witnesses at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., May 9th

Military, Government, witnesses to provide testimony on UFO/Extraterrestrial presence; hearings & Space Weapons Ban Sought

http://www.ecologynews.com/cuenews22.html

On Wednesday, May 9th 2001, over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses will come forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena, according to Dr. Steven M. Greer, director of the Disclosure Project which is hosting the event.

The Disclosure team and selected witnesses will be meeting with members of Congress and conducting briefings to address these issues and call for legislation.

Wednesday, May 9th 8 – 9 AM Continental Breakfast 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM – Overview by Dr. Greer; Witness Presentations; Release of Statement for Congress; Questions Ballroom –

The National Press Club 529 14th Street NW - 13th Floor Washington, D.C.

WEBCAST: http://www.connectlive.com/events/disclosureproject

Website: http://www.disclosureproject.org

Email: Disclosure2001@cs.com

Contact: Alfred Webre 604-733-8134 econews@ecologynews.com

Dr. Steven Greer 540-456-8302 Disclosure2001@cs.com

5/2/01
1:10:14 PM

Solar Festival Brings Together a Healthy Mix in the Vermont Hills

SolarFest is the best of what New England offers, lush green hills and forests, clean innovative technologies, creative arts and education for a sustainable future.

Mark Your Calendar!

SolarFest 2001

Saturday & Sunday, July 14 & 15

Small is not only beautiful, but sustainable. Those who have discovered the SolarFest community, its beauty and intimate feel, the excellent performances on two solar-powered stages, the renewable energy displays and workshops, the myriad vendors and the opportunities for networking. Come join some good folk July 14 and 15, 2001 for a positively quirky blend of outstanding performances.

Some of this year's performing artists include: Laura Love - groovelily - Shake Senora - Black Rebels - Greg Douglass - Seth Yacavone Band.

Visit the SolarFest website at:

http://solarfest.org

Note: Tickets purchased prior June 15 receive a 25% discount Daisy Hollow Road, Middletown Springs, Vermont info@solarfest.com

5/2/01
1:06:52 PM

Bush To Propose Missile Defense

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The missile defense favored by President Bush - a shield of global reach rather than covering only U.S. territory - bears a striking resemblance to the approach his father's Pentagon was pursuing a decade ago The Clinton administration quickly killed it.

Bush will outline his intentions for missile defense in a speech Tuesday that aides say will link the concept to his desire for substantial, perhaps unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear missile arsenal.

The question Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been mulling is how to go beyond the current missile defense approach that is focused on a land-based intercept system designed to protect just the 50 U.S. states.

One approach reported to be under consideration by Rumsfeld and Bush is known as a ``layered'' missile defense.

It might combine the Clinton approach, which would use ground-launched rockets to intercept missiles midway through flight, with sea- and space-based weapons that would make the intercept during the hostile missile's ascent phase, or while its rocket plume was still burning inside the atmosphere.

The result - if it worked - would be a missile defense system with global reach.

Brig. Gen. Michael Hamel, director of space operations for the Air Force, said last week he supports that approach.

``Layered missile defense is absolutely the right way to go,'' he said.

More than 30 scientists and missile experts who oppose the administration's push for missile defense planned to gather at the Capitol on Wednesday to assert that the science of missile defense is too immature to justify moving ahead with a project expected to costs tens of billions of dollars.

The administration has made clear it will press ahead; when, at what cost and with what blueprint are the only questions.

How far-reaching a missile defense should be is a sensitive issue.

For one, it affects the degree of political support by Canada and U.S. allies in Europe. It also bears on the prohibitions against certain missile defenses spelled out in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. The first Bush administration believed that with the demise of the Soviet Union the emphasis in missile defense should shift from protection of the United States against an attack by thousands of nuclear missiles to protection of America and its allies against perhaps several dozen missiles of any origin.

It was called Global Protection Against Limited Strikes, or GPALS, and was made public at a Pentagon news conference Feb. 12, 1991.

The official who presented the $32 billion plan was Stephen J. Hadley - then an assistant secretary of defense, now a deputy national security adviser to Bush. The defense secretary at the time was Dick Cheney, now the vice president.

Rumsfeld may come up with a different acronym, but the concept of global protection is likely to be a key aspect of whatever missile defense program the administration decides to pursue, in the view of many private analysts who follow the subject closely.

``After the president's speech we will no longer talking about national missile defense,'' but instead a global or international approach that is much broader - and probably much more expensive - than the Clinton administration was developing, said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Alan Frye, an arms control expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believes, based on his contacts with administration officials involved in the matter, that Bush will adopt a GPALS-like approach. He also thinks it highly unlikely Bush will announce a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty, but rather that he is willing to discuss possible missile defense cooperation with the Russians.

Morton Halperin, director of policy planning at the State Department during the Clinton administration, said he believes the Russians would be more likely to engage in missile defense talks if Bush also committed to reducing the U.S. offensive nuclear arsenal to 1,500 or 1,000 warheads.

The United States now has about 7,200 active warheads and is committed to cutting to 3,500; Clinton favored cutting to 2,500, although that has not been made a binding commitment.

Rumsfeld has made a point lately of saying that he has stopped using the term ``national missile defense,'' because ``what's `national' depends on where you live,'' as he put it to reporters March 8. His point was that if a U.S. missile defense is capable of protecting, say, Japan, then it is ``national'' to the Japanese but is global to everyone else.

5/2/01
12:58:30 PM

Uniting with the World to Stop Star Wars

The following letter to President Bush and the governments of NATO and US allies is to be sent by fax on June 12 in Washington, London, and Sydney. Please consider signing and also sending to your newspaper. This action is being sponsored by Friends of the Earth, Sydney - Nuclear Campaign

Dear Presidents, Prime Ministers, Secretaries and Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense:

We, the undersigned organizations, representing millions of people world-wide, write to express our opposition to current US plans to deploy a national ballistic missile defense network.

We urge instead that the United States proceed with deep cuts to the US arsenal and de-alerting of nuclear weapons -- promised by President George W. Bush during his campaign -- in order to move toward the total and unequivocal elimination of nuclear arsenals, to which the United States, Russia, and other nuclear weapons states are obligated under binding and repeated international commitments.

The deployment of missile defense will undercut these measures, making the fulfillment of those commitments more difficult.

In our view, the deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) network is deeply-flawed and reckless, decreasing rather than increasing overall international security.

President Bush says that the United States will propose modifications to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for US national missile defenses. If Russia does not agree to the US proposals, the Bush Administration has said the United States is prepared to withdraw from the ABM treaty. President Bush may decide as soon as this year whether to begin construction of a key NMD radar site in Alaska, which could violate the treaty.

Russia has stated clearly in the recent session of the Conference on Disarmament that its offer of deep reductions in warhead numbers is conditional on the integrity of the ABM treaty. Russia's ratification of START-II was also conditional on the maintenance of the integrity of the ABM treaty, and therefore the non-deployment of US missile defenses.

It is our strong view that the deployment of even so-called limited missile defenses will undercut the possibility of deep reductions in US and Russian nuclear weaponry, and could foreclose the possibility of removing US and Russian missiles from their current, dangerous hair-trigger alert status.

Military planners react to capabilities rather than intentions. The deployment of even limited missile defenses could lead to Russian re-deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and multiple warhead missiles. It also may accelerate a Chinese build-up of strategic nuclear weapons, which could include deployment of multiple nuclear warheads on long-range missiles, and a dramatic increase in the now limited number of those missiles.

A Chinese build-up could easily result in a dangerous acceleration of Indian, and in turn, Pakistani nuclear weapons deployments. This escalation of offensive capabilities is likely to lead to nuclear arsenals poised at even higher levels of alert.

Furthermore, missile defense systems, particularly the NMD network now being contemplated by the United States, are extraordinarily expensive and have not been proven to work in an operational environment.

No NMD system, even a limited one, can be deployed for at least six to 10 years. Two out of three US NMD flight tests so far have failed, yet in order to be effective, NMD (or TMD) must intercept incoming nuclear warheads with close to 100% reliability.

Even if an NMD system could be designed to defeat countermeasures, could be engineered to be operationally effective, and would not prompt a state to build additional offensive missiles to over-saturate missile defenses, neither NMD nor TMD can guard against less sophisticated and more reliable means of delivering weapons of mass destruction.

Likewise, various systems of proposed Theatre Missile Defense, possibly to be deployed in Taiwan, Japan, Europe or the Middle East, suffer from many of the same technical problems, and may have the same effect as NMD in creating a dangerous action-reaction cycle leading to offensive missile build-ups.

The deployment of missile defense/TMD in Taiwan is particularly likely to result in a Chinese build-up.

The problems associated with missile defenses require that the international community work together to make effective use of diplomacy, trade and assistance, and new mechanisms to control and reduce existing and potential ballistic missile proliferation. Near-term efforts should be focused on securing a lasting and enforceable framework agreement freezing the North Korean missile program.

Further efforts to enforce and strengthen the Missile Technology Control Regime, and control and reduce missile stockpiles on a global and regional basis, should be pursued on an urgent basis.

In light of the above:

--We respectfully urge the United States not to seek to deploy such missile defenses, and to support more effective methods to prevent missile proliferation.

--We urge governments of NATO and other US allies not to enable US deployment of such missile defense systems by allowing the upgrading of joint facilities at Menwith Hill, Fylingdales, Pine Gap, Thule, or elsewhere, for NMD- or TMD-related purposes, and to use their diplomatic influence to continue to dissuade the US government from the pursuit of missile defense.

To address the most immediate and dire missile threat:

--We urge that the United States and Russia remove all nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert as part of a policy of eliminating launch-on-warning from their strategic war plans. This will serve as the most immediate step to increase global security and stability, and reduce the risk of unintended nuclear attack.

--We urge the United States and Russia, with the support of other states, to proceed toward immediate, verifiable and irreversible reductions of strategic and tactical nuclear stockpiles to less than 1,500 warheads each through implementation of START-II, START-III, and/or by other means.

The above measures would help fulfill their solemn commitments as expressed in the final declaration of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Review Conference to "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all states parties are committed under Article VI."

The undersigned organizations believe that these measures, and not the deployment of missile defense, constitute the way forward to the elimination of nuclear arsenals to which the nuclear weapons powers are committed, and which the overwhelming majority of the world's peoples and governments expect.

( Signed by almost 500 organizations / parliamentarians including Lovearth.net )

Say No Star Wars

Organizations can sign this letter by forwarding it to <nonukes@foesyd.org.au> John Hallam, Friends of the Earth, Sydney, Australia. Please include your name, position, organization, and location, (including country). Individuals are encouraged to forward this to Organizations and copying and sending it as a letter to the editor to your local newspaper.

5/2/01
12:53:23 PM

Star Wars Returns

This Great Video Is Now Available at

http://envirovideo.com

This powerful documentary reveals how the United States is moving to make space a new arena of war. It presents military documents declaring the U.S. intention to "control space" and from space "dominate" the world below. It exposes U.S. development programs now underway to produce space-based laser weapons. And, it shows how the George W. Bush administration and, especially, its Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is pushing ahead rapidly with Star Wars--that far more than "missile defense" is involved. It tells how, at the UN, because of the U.S. program for space warfare, a vote was recently held to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty--the basic international law which sets aside space for "peaceful purposes." Some 163 nations voted yes. The U.S. abstained. Star Wars Returns explores the international opposition to Star Wars. It spotlights the strong challenge to Star Wars being made at the grassoots level worldwide by the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power In Space.

5/2/01
11:28:58 AM

MediaChannel.org

NEW BOOK! "MEDIAOCRACY - Hail to the Thief" How the Media "stole" the U.S. Presidential Election 2000 MediaChannel e-book available May 3 from electronpress.com. See below for details.

THE MEANING OF FREEDOM For World Press Freedom Day, May 3, voices from across the former Soviet Union and the United States speak out on freedom of speech.

http://www.mediachannel.org/views/roundtables/pressfreedom.shtml

MEDIASCAPE GUATEMALA: FROM WAR TO CENSORSHIP Alfonso Gumucio Dagron describes the rebuilding of Guatemala's media institutions after 36 years of civil war.

http://www.mediachannel.org/views/oped/guatemala.shtml

MEDIA READER The best media about the media. MediaChannel's international, biweekly, multimedia magazine

* Advertising Drugs

* Joey Ramone, Activist

*Cambodian Press Paradox

And much, much more... Plus: Streaming audio and video

http://www.mediachannel.org/news/mediareader

NEWS DISSECTOR: NKOSI'S STORY-- AIDS' UNREPORTED VICTIMS Danny Schechter tells the story of a little friend, Nkosi Johnson, and the all-too-underreported plight of children orphaned by AIDS.

http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/nkosi.shtml

DAILY MEDIA NEWS Breaking news stories about the media internationally, from mainstream and alternative sources.

http://www.mediachannel.org/news/today/

**FROM OUR AFFILIATES**

CONCENTRATION CRISIS OR CONSPIRACY NONSENSE? Is journalism imperiled by corporate interests? Media critics and top professionals from leading news companies take up the debate.

http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#conspiracy

PRESIDENTIAL COVERAGE: PLENTY CLINTON, NOT MUCH BUSH President Bush got less positive coverage of his first 100 days than Bill Clinton did for his, finds a new study. In fact, Bush got over 40 percent less coverage, period.

http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#bush

RESISTING THE POWERS THAT BE Bill Moyers reminds us that confronting the powerful is the journalist's struggle - and mandate.

http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#moyers

NEW MEDIACHANNEL E-BOOK!

Available May 3, World Press Freedom Day

http://www.electronpress.com

"MEDIAOCRACY 2000: HAIL TO THE THIEF" How the Media Stole the US Presidential Election Edited by Danny Schechter, MediaChannel and Roland Schatz, MediaTenor.

Hard-hitting analysis of the role of the U.S. media during the 2000 presidential election. Featuring commentary and reporting by MediaChannel affiliates with an original introduction by Danny Schechter. Forward by Crocker Snow, editor of the World Paper.

Sales of this book will benefit MediaChannel.org.

167 pages. German Edition published by Innovatio, January 2001 U.S. edition published by Electron Press, May 2001

http://www.electronpress.com

5/2/01
11:00:32 AM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

http://www.utne.com/webwatch

TODAY'S PICKS:

http://www.utne.com/webwatch/archive.tpl?d=05/02/2001

FEDS GAG ON INDY MEDIA CENTER

by Leif Utne, Utne Reader Online

-- On April 21, as the FTAA protests raged in Quebec, agents from the FBI and Secret Service served the Seattle IMC an order demanding all user connection logs for the website of its Montreal auxiliary -- or so the Feds thought. The order also gagged the IMC from disclosing the order's existence.

NOAM CHOMSKY: CONSCIENCE OF A NATION

by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian

-- British newspaper The Guardian offers this contemplative profile of Noam Chomsky, the renegade social critic whom the New York Times calls "arguably the most important intellectual alive today."

LIBERAL SLANT: AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE "LIBERAL MEDIA"

website review by Al Paulson

-- "The so-called Liberal Media are owned by large Conservative corporations that dictate control over biased news reporting in major newspapers and on major television networks," say the editors of LiberalSlant.com.

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

5/2/01
10:57:03 AM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-07.html

"We Cover the Earth For You"

U.S. STICKING WITH FOSSIL FUELS, CHENEY SAYS

TORONTO, Ontario, Canada, May 1, 2001 (ENS) - The United States will focus on increased domestic production of oil and greater use of coal for electricity generation in a new national energy strategy to be announced in a few weeks, Vice President Richard Cheney said Monday. The new policy will not emphasize energy conservation, Cheney said in a speech to the Annual Meeting of the Associated Press in Toronto.

For full text and graphics visit:

FINANCIAL CRACKS APPEAR IN PORTUGESE DAM PROJECT

LISBON, Portugal, May 1, 2001 (ENS) - The controversial dam under construction on the Guadiana River at Alqueva, Portugal faces new legal challenges this week as European Commissioners prepare to visit the site to investigate alleged financial mismanagement.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-01.html

U.S. ALLOWS ATLANTIC SCALLOP DREDGING, LIMITS GROUNDFISHERY

GLOUCESTER, Massachusetts, May 1, 2001 (ENS) - Ignoring advice from fishery scientists and environmental organizations, the National Marine Fisheries Service gave final approval Friday to a measure allowing scallop fishing vessels to drag heavy, metal dredges through environmentally sensitive marine habitats off New England and the Mid-Atlantic. The measure becomes effective May 1, 2001.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-06.html

DANUBE RESTORATION PLAN TAKES FLIGHT AT SUMMIT

BUCHAREST, Romania, May 1, 2001 (ENS) - The Danube river is the subject of a new agreement on environmental protection and sustainable development following a two day summit organized by the Romanian government and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-10.html

LUFTHANSA DEPARTS FROM ANIMAL CARGO TRADE

FRANKFURT, Germany, May 1, 2001 (ENS) - One of the world's biggest airlines has announced it will no longer transport wild animals for commercial purposes. In an announcement made with conservation groups in attendance, representatives from Lufthansa said the decision is effective today.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-11.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 1, 2001

Antibiotic Resistant Genes Traced from Farms to Groundwater

Bush Budget Cuts Environmental Enforcement

Bush Nominates Monsanto Official as EPA's Deputy Administrator

Team Spawns Rare White Abalone

Shooting Ranges Poison Children, Study Warns

Petition Calls For Restoring Wolves To California, Oregon

Limited Firefighting Funds Should Focus on Protecting Homes

Recommendations for Nuclear Regulatory Research Published

Asthma Awareness Month Starts Today

Peregrine Falcons Welcome Newborns on Seattle Skyscraper

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-09.html

5/2/01
10:53:43 AM

AlterNet Headlines

Brief summaries of leading stories from AlterNet -- the independent news and syndication service -- for May 2, 2001.

MORAL POVERTY AND BODY COUNTS

Mike Males, AlterNet

Moralistic drug-czar nominee, John Walters, is a veteran of drug policy shambles. In other words, he's the perfect man for the job.

GOODBYE COLD WAR, HELLO RESOURCE WARS

Tamara Straus, AlterNet

In the wake of the Cold War, a familiar object of war has reemerged -- resources -- only this time the world has fewer of them.

AFTER THE FTAA: EXPERTS WEIGH IN

Jennifer C. Berkshire, AlterNet

Views on the movement to institute fair trade after "The Battle of Quebec."

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10803

CLITS GET THEIR MARKETING DAY IN THE SUN

Lara Riscol, AlterNet

Are you down? Do you suffer from Female Sexual Dysfunction? Well, help's on the way, thanks to the brave new world of clitoral marketing.

GEORGE HASN'T DONE ANYTHING AL WOULDN'T HAVE

Michael Moore, AlterNet

Hey liberals, let's cut the whining about how awful Bush is and tell the truth: Junior has done little more than CONTINUE the bad policies of Clinton/Gore.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10801

TAKE YOUR SPECTACLE FOR REALITY!

Tamara Straus, AlterNet

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's new reality TV show on ABC, "The Runner," bombs to bits the last barrier between commerce and culture.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10799

THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF JAIL

Philip Smith, DRCNet

A recent Human Right Watch report on male rape in prisons could finally force policy-makers and the public to confront the epidemic.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10822

ALABAMA CIA AIR CONTRACTOR: WE DON'T KNOW NUTHIN' 'BOUT NO PERU

Jason Vest, In These Times

The U.S. government has been waging a stealth counter-narcotics war in South America through private military contractors, including one tied to the downing of a civilian plane in Peru.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10791

IMMIGRANT LABORERS ARE HERE TO STAY

James E. Garcia, AlterNet

Immigrant day laborers are not a threat to the "American way of life." Willing to work hard to get ahead, they are its very embodiment.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10798

THE NEW BLACK POLITICS

Manning Marable, AlterNet

The proliferation of racial and ethnic identities in America is forcing African Americans to negotiate new terms for coalition- building and civil rights advocacy.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10800

MEMOIRS OF A FORMER UNIMPEACHABLE SOURCE

Bill Moyers, The Nation

What's important in journalism is not how close you are to power but how close you are to reality.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10808

MEDIA MASH: SUPPORT SALON; TEXAS OBSERVER AND MOJO PLAUDITS

The Masher, AlterNet

This week from the Masher: Support online journalism at Salon.com ... Mother Jones and Texas Observer get big love.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10802

SUPERBABE VACATION

Mary Spicuzza, Metro Silicon Valley

D. Tim Thomas coaches Silicon Valley men to find fulfillment, glamour and excitement, with the help of Bond Girl babes and his European Supermodel Vacations tours.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10812

FASHION TIPS FROM ANGRY ANARCHISTS

Jenny Marx, AlterNet

The Ins and Outs of hipness at the Quebec City Protests.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10819

CYBERPUNK: GEEKZ 4LIFE

Joab Jackson, Baltimore City Paper

Pimpwar traffics in some of the worst gender and racial typecasting possible. Yet, despite the online game's bad-ass signifying, Pimpwar is essentially a numbers game. To win, you have to have the correct ratio of hos to thugs.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10796

5/2/01
10:46:18 AM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

http://www.moveon.org/callmade.html

1. RUNOFF SENTENCES Runoff from fertilizers and other nutrient-rich chemicals is posing a major threat to Canada's water bodies, according to a government report conducted over five years. The report, completed in January 2001 and obtained under public access rules by a private citizen, says farming and municipal sewage systems are the biggest source of the nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich chemicals that lead to the algae growth choking off oxygen supplies and other life forms in inland waters. The report also details problems with the country's air quality.

straight to source: Ottawa Citizen, Tom Spears, 01 May 2001 <http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/010501/5009899.html>

2. THAT'S WHY HE'S CALLED THE "VICE" PRESIDENT Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday rejected the idea that "we could simply conserve or ration our way out" of what he described as an energy crisis. Instead, he said the U.S. must increase its supply of fossil fuels, open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, and build one new power plant a week for 20 years to keep up with the demand for electricity. He said, "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." Cheney, who is leading a White House energy task force that is expected to issue policy recommendations later this month, said those who want to reduce the use of coal in this country because it is a major source pollution "deny reality." The vice president went on to say that the most environmentally friendly way to increase energy supplies in the U.S. would be to expand the use of nuclear power.

straight to the source: New York Times, Joseph Kahn, 01 May 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/politics/01CHEN.html>

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, Miguel Llanos, 30 Apr 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/566483.asp>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Just say no! -- a review of Arctic Refuge -- in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books041101.stm>

3. THE LUNG AND SHORT OF IT More than 140 million Americans live in areas that flunk air-quality tests for ozone pollution, according to a report by the American Lung Association. The number rose 9 million since the group issued a similar report last year, in part due to hot summer conditions that could become par-for-the-course because of global warming. The group ranked areas based on U.S. EPA data from 1997-1999. The 10 worst metro areas in order were: Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Fresno, and San Joaquin Valley, Calif., Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Ga.; Washington, D.C., Charlotte, N.C.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Philadelphia, Penn. Looking for a breath of fresh of air? Try Spokane, Wash., Duluth, Minn., or Lincoln, Neb.

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, Miguel Llanos, 01 May 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/566883.asp>

straight to the source: Charlotte Observer, Bruce Henderson, 01 May 2001 <http://www.charlotte.com/observer/local/pub/badair0501.htm>

4. FIRST 100 DAZE About 200 protesters from at least 22 environmental groups marched at the White House yesterday, claiming that President Bush had the worst environmental record of any president at the 100-day mark of an administration. In front of the White House gates, they lifted a big sign decorated with a spewing oil well; smaller signs read "No nukes," "Don't plunder the planet," and "Stop the rollbacks." Wenonah Hauter of Public Citizen said, "First they stole the election -- now they are stealing our children's futures."

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Patrick Connole, 01 May 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10672>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: What would Dubya do? -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha040201.stm>

5. NOTE TO SELF: DON'T FEED LEAD TO KIDS Children with levels of lead in their blood that are now considered safe scored significantly lower on intelligence tests than children with almost no lead in their blood, according to a study presented yesterday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting. Lead author Bruce Lanphear said the research suggested that one in every 30 children in the U.S. has been negatively affected by lead. Currently, 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood is considered a safe concentration level, but experts predicted that Lanphear's research would cause regulators to lower the standard.

straight to the source: Cincinnati Enquirer, Associated Press, Jeanne A. Naujeck, 01 May 2001 <http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/05/01/loc_even_little_lead.html>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

Galapagos rush hour -- a day in the life of Roslyn Cameron, Charles Darwin Research Station <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/cameron043001.stm>

School days, school days, dear old diesel-fuel days -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha043001.stm>

Growth me out -- The state of the planet is grim. Should we give up hope? -- by Donella Meadows <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/citizen/citizen042001.stm>

5/2/01
10:40:15 AM

Planet Ark World Environment News

It's 15 years since the Chernobyl disaster. At Planet Ark we have 226 news stories about the disaster and the impact that it's had on the environment.

Check them out at: http://www.planetark.org/chernobyl/

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

Democrat seeks to force Bush on forest roads ban - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10676

Green groups slam US decision on scallop fishing - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10677

US could decide Calif. fuel waiver in May - Veneman - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10678

Mining firms lobbying to ease clean-air rules - WSJ - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10681

Bush names Monsanto executive for senior EPA job - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10683

UPDATE - US lawmakers seek to boost SUV, truck mileage - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10684

US air quality worsening, lung association says - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10686

Climate change may brighten future for nuclear - IEA - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10679

BA Cargo flies in Norwegian beavers to Britain - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10680

UPDATE - Shell reports major oil spill in Ogoni, suspects arson - NIGERIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10685

Danish windpower shares up on forecast in newspaper - DENMARK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10682

5/2/01
10:37:37 AM

WEAPONS IN SPACE: A MEDIA BLACK-OUT

By Karl Grossman

Presentation at Press Freedom Conference

San Francisco April 28, 2001

The United States is seeking to make space a new arena of war--but you wouldn't know that from mainstream media which limits its coverage to U.S. plans for "missile defense."

The wider space military program is laid out in publicly available documents--easily accessible to media--such as the recent report of the "Space Commission" chaired by the new U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and thus a blueprint for the space military program of the new Bush administration.

"Power projection in, from and through space" is advocated for the U.S. in the report by the 13-member "Space Commission," formally called the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization.

Its report, issued January 11, says: "In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on the earth and in space." It urges the president "have the option to deploy weapons in space." It recommends the U.S. Space Command--which now coordinates Army, Navy and Air Force space divisions--become a "Space Corps" modeled after the Marine Corps and then possibly a separate "Space Department" equal to the Army, Navy and Air Force.

The Rumsfeld "Space Commission" report follows a series of U.S. military reports in recent years that call for the U.S. to "control space" and from space "dominate" the Earth below.

As the U.S. Space Command's "Long Range Plan" declares: "The time has come to address, among warfighters and national policy makers, the emergence of space as a center of gravity for DoD [Department of Defense] and the nation..Space power in the 2lst Century looks similar to previous military revolutions, such as aircraft-carrier warfare and Blitzkrieg."

A key rationale for Star Wars now is the global economy. When it first emerged under Ronald Reagan in 1983, the U.S. Star Wars program was purportedly needed to fend off what Reagan regarded as the "evil empire," the Soviet Union. But there is no Soviet Union any longer. Now the U.S. would, from the "ultimate high ground" of space, "dominate" the planet below in part to keep the global economy on track.

Says the U.S. Space Command's "Vision for 2020"[http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace] report, its cover depicting a laser weapon shooting a beam down from space zapping a target below: "The globalization of the world economy will also continue with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots.'" From space the United States, the engine of the global economy, would keep those "have-nots" in line.

"Vision for 2020":http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace declares the mission of the U.S. Space Command as "dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict."

"Vision for 2020" compares the U.S. effort to "control space" and Earth below to how centuries ago "nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests," referring to the great empires of Europe that ruled the waves and thus the Earth to maintain their imperial economies.

The "Long Range Plan" states: "The United States will remain a global power and exert global leadership. The United States won't always be able to forward base its forces. Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of lifecontributing to unrest in developing countries.The global economy will continue to become more interdependent. Economic alliances, as well as the growth and influence of multi-national corporations, will blur security agreements.The gap between 'have' and 'have-not' nations will widencreating regional unrest.One of the long acknowledged and commonly understood advantages of space-based platforms is no restriction or country clearances to overfly a nation from space."

The U.S. Space Command seeks to become "the enforcement arm for the global economy," as Bill Sulzman, director of Citizens for Peace In Space put it at the international conference last year of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power In Space.

"Missile defense" is described in the "Long Range Plan" and other U.S. plans for space warfare as a "layer" in a broader program. "It is the foot in the door," says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network.

Who can be against "defense?" And so the Rumsfeld "Space Commission" report raises the specter of a "Space Pearl Harbor" without missile defense.

Missile defense has been the spin--"to get a deployment OK," says Gagnon, "then to be followed up by the real Reagan Star Wars program that includes space-based weapons."

And mainstream media have succumbed to the spin.

Retired Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr., vice president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., speaks of trying to get journalists to understand the broader space military program involved. Carroll, for a story that will appear in next month's "Extra!" magazine of the media watch group FAIR: "Missile defense doesn't make any sense and everybody realizes that. The least likely threat we face is some third-rate nation developing an ICBM and launching it at the United States knowing they will get back 50 times what they send. There are all kinds of ways that are cheaper and more reliable--smuggling in a suitcase bomb, for example--to inflict harm and not be subject to instantaneous retaliation."

Says Carroll: "You look at the Rumsfeld report and his [Rumsfeld's] statements and the other reports and you have to realize that they are thinking in terms of militarizing space, of space warfare." But "the media just doesn't get it," declares the retired admiral.

And this is all far more than reports and rhetoric. The Pentagon--under Clinton--gave the go-ahead in December for development of the Space-Based Laser, a joint project of TRW, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Public Affairs Office at the Army's Redstone Arsenal describes it as having a "lifecycle budget" of $20 to $30 billion.

Says Admiral Carroll: "We are going into space with lasers. Space is seen as a new place to wage war. Already, we are underwater, over-water, on-the-land, in-the-airand now we want to go to another dimension: space."

The admiral says that journalists he has asked why they're not reporting the wider space military program explain that "as long as The White House doesn't present it that way, as long as there is no talking about this in Congress, it is a non-event."

"The news flag has to be up so they can report on it," says Carroll.

Gagnon of the Gainesville, Florida-based Global Network sees corporate power as the major influence for media not reporting on the broader space military program. I quote him in the "Extra!" article as saying: "The difference between now and the 1980s when Reagan first pushed Star Wars is the greater corporate control of media. Today the media is more manipulated by corporate forces and so the aerospace industry and their corporate media allies can keep the real plans of 'space control' and 'domination' suppressed."

Gagnon says: "My experience is that the staffs from the top to the bottom of newspapers, TV and radio are timid to report on the U.S. program for space warfare because of fear that their corporate sponsors will pull the money strings. The result is that this vital information is being censored. It is a sin of media omission." He adds that the current "downsizing of media outlets" has exacerbated media people's "fear for their jobs."

Mike Moore wrote a lengthy story on the Rumsfeld "Space Commission" report which appears in the current issue of "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." States the article: "The heart of the report lies in the bald assertion that it is time to weaponize space."

The "Space Commission" report, the story by Moore, a senior Bulletin editor and up until last year in editorial charge of the "Bulletin" goes on, "Apparently, Rumsfeld will push vigorously for the weaponization of space, sooner rather than later."

Before the "Bulletin," a reporter for the "Kansas City Star," "Chicago Daily News," "Chicago Tribune" and "Milwaukee Journal," Moore says for the article in "Extra!" that it "amazes me" that other journalists have "missed" the central message of the report. His view: under the pressure of time and other tasks "very few reporters looked at the entire document" and instead did "superficial" pieces following the lead of government "briefers." He says: "Rumsfeld is our defense secretary and this report should be looked at quite carefully."

Rumsfeld is a key to the new Star Wars push.

Bill Hartung, director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York, did extensive research on Rumsfeld and his ties with "the Star Wars lobby" and offered to share it with media. The material was also included in an article"Star Wars II: Here We Go Again"by Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca in the June 19th, 2000 issue of "The Nation." A main focus: Rumsfeld's links with the Center for Security Policy, a right-wing "think tank" in Washington, D.C. whose advisory board includes such Star Wars promoters as Edward Teller and executives of aerospace companies including Lockheed Martin. Rumsfeld, who received the Center for Security Policy's "Keeper of the Flame" award in 1998, has been described by it as a "trusted adviser" and financial supporter.

But, complains Hartung in the "Extra!" article, "none of the mainstream articles talked about Rumsfeld's connection to the Star Wars lobby."

Still trying to get the information out, he says "I sent several letters to the New York Times since he was tapped as secretary of defense but no response." Says Alice Slater, president of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, mainstream media have given Rumsfeld "a free ride.It's appalling. The U.S. is opening up a new battleground in space but the mainstream media just keeps reporting on it as a 'protective shield.' Never is it put in the context of the sweeping program to militarize and weaponize space."

Slater also sent a letter-to-the-editor to the "New York Times" which went unpublished. Her letter scored "U.S. efforts to take military control of outer space" and linked this to Rumsfeld"the driving force for a new 'Son of Star Wars' which is causing a new arms race with Russia and China."

Rumsfeld has a media connection, too: board membership beginning in 1992 of the Tribune Company which owns the "Chicago Tribune," "Los Angeles Times," "Newsday." It describes itself on its website as "a leading media company with operations in television and radio broadcasting, publishing and interactive." The people involved in the situation can be as blunt as the documents.

Bruce Jackson, vice president of corporate strategy and development of Lockheed Martin, told me in an interview in December: "I wrote the Republican Party's foreign policy platform." I got him on the phone for an interview while researching a book on Star Wars for Seven Stories Press. He proudly noted he had been selected chairman of the Foreign Policy Platform Committee at the Republican National Convention where he was a delegate.

Jackson's declaration called out for immediate dissemination and with Judith Long I wrote an article highlighting it which appeared in the January 29th, 2001 issue of "The Nation." Meanwhile, using all the search engines on the Web, I looked for any mainstream media reference to Jackson and the GOP foreign policy platform. I found just one article. The piece, in the "Washington Post" on August 22, 2000 reported that Jackson was chairman of the Foreign Policy Platform Committee at the GOP convention and it included a series of comments by him. Left out: his day job at Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons manufacturer and major player in U.S. space military activities. Jackson is also on the Center for Security Policy's advisory board.

Although U.S. citizens, due to U.S. media lazy--and worse--are unaware about what the U.S. is up to militarily in space, other nations do know.

Because of U.S. space military plans, last November 20 at the United Nations, a vote was held on a resolution for "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space." It sought to "reaffirm" the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the basic international law on space, and specifically its provision that space be reserved for "peaceful purposes." Some 163 nations voted in favor. The U.S.--an original signer of the treaty--abstained. Did you read or hear about this in U.S. media?

Virtually but, let me note, not totally all of mainstream media have missed the import of the Rumsfeld "Space Commission report. Larry Wheeler, Washington correspondent of "Florida Today," which covers the "Space Coast," wrote on February 9, 2001: "In a matter of weeks and without presidential appointment or decree, the nation's policy toward space appears to have shifted from one of civilian exploration and commercial exploration to one dominated by war fighters. In the weeks since President Bush was sworn in, four-star generals and their aides have stepped forward to flex their new-found muscle, driven largely by recommendations contained in [the] recent [Rumsfeld] report."

The legislation that got the Rumsfeld "Space Commission" established in 2000 was authored by Senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican. Of the U.S. "controlling space," Smith in February said for a TV documentary--"Star Wars Returns"--I'm making with EnviroVideo said: "It is our manifest destiny. You know we went from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States of America settling the continent and they call that manifest destiny and the next continent if you will, the next frontier, is space and it goes on forever." Now it's U.S. Cosmic Manifest Destiny.

Canada, our neighbor and in no way a potential rival, has been a leader internationally in seeking to stop the U.S. plan to make the heavens a war zone. At the UN last October, Marc Vidricaire of the Canadian delegation declared: "Outer space has not yet witnessed the introduction of space-based weapons. This could change if the international community does not first prevent this destabilizing development through the timely negotiation of measures banning the introduction of weapons into outer space. It has been suggested that our proposal is not relevant because the assessment on which it rests is either premature or alarmist. In our view, it is neither. One need only look at what is happening right now to realize that it is not premature."

Where have you seen this reported?

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his first address at the UN, to the "Millenium Summit" in September, stated that "particularly alarming are the plans for the militarization of the outer space" and, in Canada in December, Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chetrien issued a joint statement announcing that "Canada and the Russian Federation will continue close cooperation in preventing an arms race in outer space."

From around the world, representatives of governments and NGO's gathered in Moscow for a conference this month--between April 11th and 14th--entitled "Space Without Weapons" and pressed the effort to continue to keep space set aside for "peaceful purposes." Where have you seen this reported?

The U.S. government, meanwhile, boycotted the "Space Without Weapons" conference. And U.S. mainstream media have, in turn, stayed away from reporting on the U.S. program to arm the heavens.

There is only a narrow wind to strengthen the Outer Space Treaty and ban all weapons in space--to stop this move on the heavens by the U.S., to keep space for peace. "Just" missile defense? It's far more--although U.S. citizens aren't being informed.

USA Space Command: http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace

Karl Grossman is full professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. He has specialized in investigative reporting for 35 years. He is an associate of the media watch group FAIR.

He is a principal of EnviroVideo, a New York-based company which produces news, interview programs and documentaries for television and the Web. Video documentaries he has written and hosted for EnviroVideo include "Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens," "Nukes In Space 2: Unacceptable Risks," "Three Mile Island Revisited" and "The Push To Revive Nuclear Power," all of which have received video festival awards. His new video documentary, "Star Wars Returns," has just been released by EnviroVideo

1-800-ECO-TV46 or http://www.envirovideo.com

His books include "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet," "Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed To Know About Nuclear Power," "Power Crazy," "The Poison Conspiracy" and "Nicaragua: America's New Vietnam?" His new book, "Weapons In Space," is forthcoming from Seven Stories Press

http://www.info@sevenstories.com or 212-226-8760

Journalism by Grossman on the nuclearization and weaponization of space have been included six times on Project Censored's annual lists of the ten most "under-reported," "best-censored" stories. Grossman is the recipient of the George Polk, James Aronson and John Peter Zenger Awards.

5/1/01
6:51:37 PM

If more reactors are built to meet growing energy demands, the waste volume could increase to between 500,000 tons and 700,000 tons, he said. [From 77,000 tons of HIGH LEVEL Rad Waste]

By Mary Manning

<manning@lasvegassun.com>

LAS VEGAS SUN

If nuclear power use expands, a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain could end up with five to 10 times the amount of radioactive waste that has been set by law, an Energy Department official said.

But it would take an act of Congress to increase the amount, Russ Dyer, DOE Yucca Mountain project manager, said this week during a tour of the mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"That suggestion is the reason that nuclear waste must never come to Yucca Mountain," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who was on the tour and asked Dyer about expansion.

Yucca Mountain, the lone site chosen to contain commercial reactor and defense wastes, is under study to determine whether it can contain up to 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

Congress set the amount of waste in the 1980s, when it singled out Yucca Mountain from three sites that were being examined.

About 7,000 tons would come from weapons-related activities, including Navy submarine reactors. The other 70,000 tons would be spent nuclear fuel from 103 commercial reactors.

However, nuclear regulators are extending the operating life of the nation's nuclear reactors, Dyer said.

Five operating reactors have received 20-year license extensions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. License renewals for another five reactors are pending.

Another 32 reactors are expected to apply for license renewal by 2005.

If all of those extensions are granted, about 120,000 tons of waste would have to be buried over the next 40 years just from existing reactors, and Yucca Mountain is the only repository expected to be open, Dyer said.

"There's no appetite in Congress to find a second repository," Dyer said.

If more reactors are built to meet growing energy demands, the waste volume could increase to between 500,000 tons and 700,000 tons, he said.

A repository at Yucca Mountain would have space to expand, he said. It would require a vote of Congress.

That might not be so easy, one congressional watcher said. "I wouldn't say it would be an automatic win in Congress these days," said Lisa Gue of Public Citizen, an environmental watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader.

Spokesmen for the nuclear industry and former Sen. Bennett Johnston, D-La., author of the bill that singled out Yucca Mountain, said they had not heard that the repository might need to expand.

"I have not heard that, since the amount of nuclear waste is set by law," said Johnston, now a Washington lobbyist representing international concerns including energy companies. The former senator authored an amendment in 1987 known as the "Screw Nevada" bill, which eliminated any other option for managing nuclear waste except burying it in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

The nuclear industry has never projected such high numbers for its wastes or expanding a Yucca Mountain repository, Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, said.

"I have never heard that," Kerekes said. "Right now it's an open question."

However, nuclear utilities are hoping that if the energy crisis spreads from California across the country this summer, it will revive a demand for nuclear power, he said.

"While we're very confident there will be some nuclear reactors built in the coming years, I have not heard of any numbers of that kind," Kerekes said of the waste amounts suggested by Dyer.

Berkley has supported research funds for alternatives to Yucca Mountain. Scientists are developing new techniques to reduce the amount of nuclear waste using advanced accelerators in Los Alamos National Laboratory. UNLV received $3 million of the $34 million secured for accelerator research this year.

A million dollars a day is being spent on research on Yucca Mountain's suitability, and getting more to study alternatives has been a hard sell in Congress, Steve Frishman, technology coordinator for the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said.

DOE officials oppose spending a lot of money on alternatives such as advanced accelerators, saying that they would take too long and be cost prohibitive.

But, Berkley said, more must be done.

"I am opposed to any attempt to expand nuclear energy in this country until we figure out what to do with the nuclear wastes," Berkley said.

5/1/01
5:08:20 PM

The Future of Healing: How the age of ecological medicine will keep you healthier.

Utne Reader¹s May/June 2001 issue offers a special report on the rise of Ecological Medicine. The issue builds on the public interest created by the Academy Award-winning movie Erin Brockovich and furthered by Bill Moyers¹ recent acclaimed PBS special on the chemical industry.

Read Kenny Ausubel's cover story at http://www.utne.com

5/1/01
5:05:42 PM

"Please protect our last wild forests by fully and immediately implementing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule." Bush wants more logging, mining, and drilling in our National Forests. He's likely soon to scrap a ban ordered by President Clinton unless we speak up now.

The Bush administration is now reviewing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. It would protect the last of our wild National Forest lands as a haven for wildlife and a heritage for our children.

A decision is due by this Friday, May 4th. Last week, Bush asked administration lawyers to find a way to scrap the rule (1).

* Please call the White House today at 202-456-1414, and ask the President to:

"Please protect our last wild forests by fully and immediately implementing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule."

* Then, please call your Senators at:

Senator Bob Graham Phone: 202-224-3041 Fax: 202-224-2237

Senator Bill Nelson Phone: 202-224-5274 Fax: 202-228-2183

Ask them to urge Bush to do the right thing and implement the Roadless Area Conservation Rule this week.

Please let us know you're making these calls at:

We'd like to keep a count.

President Bush has already rolled back safeguards keeping arsenic out of our drinking water, broken a campaign pledge to cut US greenhouse gas emissions, pulled back from a major treaty on global warming, asked for less federal spending on energy-saving and clean energy programs, and promised to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

He even tried to end testing our kids' school lunches for salmonella.

He knows he has a problem. Recent polls show we don't like how he's handling the environment (2). That's why he has announced that he would let a few other Clinton environmental rules stand. Let's make sure he keeps Roadless Area Conservation Rule too.

Thank you. This may be our last chance to save these forests.

Sincerely,

Wes Boyd

MoveOn.org

Once they're gone, they're gone forever.

Sources:

(1) "White House Seeks to Scuttle Clinton Ban on Logging, Roads,"

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1831-2001Apr25.html

(2) "Bush Criticized as Fear for Environment Grows,"

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/whitehouse/lat_poll010430.htm

5/1/01
5:01:19 PM

Public Citizen May 1, 2001

Public Citizen Applauds Introduction of Schumer-McCain Bill to Make Less Costly Generic Drugs More Widely Available

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Public Citizen today applauded Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) for introducing legislation to provide consumers with much more timely access to less costly generic prescription drugs. The legislation is called the "Greater Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals Act."

"This much-needed legislation will make it harder for the major drug companies to use legal tricks to deny consumers the ability to purchase more affordable generic drugs," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. "It will save consumers billions of dollars in coming years from lower drug costs."

Schumer-McCain closes loopholes in the Drug Price Competition and Patent Restoration Act of 1984 (Hatch-Waxman Act) that have allowed brand name drug companies to keep generic drugs off the market.

Hatch-Waxman was designed to increase timely access to generic drugs while ensuring that drug manufacturers have adequate patent protection to justify their investment in research and development. But loopholes in the act have allowed drug companies to delay generic drugs from coming to market by doing such things as paying firms to withhold generic drugs from the market and filing nuisance lawsuits that automatically delay the introduction of generics. Although the Hatch-Waxman Act has succeeded in opening the prescription drug market to generic competition, generics now constitute less than 10 percent of the dollar value of all prescription drugs sold in the United States, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management.

Solutions in the Schumer-McCain bill include:

· Eliminating the automatic 30-month stay in current law that has allowed brand name drug companies to keep generic drugs off the market by filing nuisance suits. The bill would require that brand name drug companies, just like patent holders in any other industry, prove in court why they ought to be granted a temporary restraining order preventing a competitor's product from coming to market;

· Limiting collusion between brand name companies and generic firms that agree to withhold their drugs from the market. The bill would deny 180-day exclusivity to a generic company if it does not aggressively attempt to bring a generic version of the brand name company's product to market; and

· Requiring entities filing citizens' petitions to disclose if they are acting on behalf of a brand name drug company to keep a generic off the market. Such petitions can be filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by anyone seeking to prevent a drug from being marketed. Brand name drug manufacturers increasingly using these petitions to keep generic competition at bay. Such petitions can delay the introduction of a generic alternative for a long time because the FDA is required by law consider each one.

"Brand name hegemony is partly due to the manipulation of the Hatch-Waxman Act by the major drug companies that successfully extend their lucrative patents beyond what was intended by the law," Clemente said. "Loopholes have led to ever greater profits for brand name firms but exorbitant costs for consumers. The manipulation of the market has to be stopped and this bill will do it."

The new legislation comes at an important time. Brand name drug companies often charge U.S. consumers nearly twice as much as they charge consumers in other industrialized nations for the same prescription drugs. In the next five years, prescription drugs with annual sales of approximately $20 billion will be coming off patent. Given that generic drugs cost, on average, less than a fifth of what brand name drugs cost under the Medicaid program, the potential savings to taxpayers, consumers and patients from the timely availability of generic drugs is substantial.

Despite the Hatch-Waxman Act's loopholes, the legislation has been successful in saving consumers huge amounts of money by increasing their access to generic drugs. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the first year a generic drug becomes available, it offers consumers a 25 percent savings, on average. The CBO has concluded that Americans saved $8 billion to $10 billion in 1994 alone by purchasing generic drugs. But if the act's loopholes were closed, consumers would save even more, Clemente said.

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org For more information about Public Citizen's work on prescription drug issues go to http://www.citizen.org/congress/fda/index.html

5/1/01
4:58:43 PM

Bush Energy Policy: The Oily Years

By Scott Shuger

The NYT leads with Dick Cheney's speech yesterday providing a first look at the energy policy being planned by the Bush administration. Bottom line: There is an energy crisis and its solution will come, not from lessening demand, but by increasing supply. Yesterday's NYT lead was that the Bush administration was planning to speed up work towards a missile defense system and today's LAT lead gives the target date: 2004. The top non-local story at the WP is one the paper and several others have visited often in recent months: how the U.S. Marine Corps is struggling to decide what to do about its crash-prone tilt-rotor aircraft, the Osprey. USAT, which fronts Cheney's speech (also fronted at the Post and stuffed at the LAT), leads with Evenflo's recall of its "Joyride" combination car seat and baby carrier. (For info, call 800-557-3178 or go to www.joyridecarseat.com.) The paper explains they've worked fine in cars, but as carriers they've left 97 infants with skull and other fractures when the handles failed. The NYT lead says Cheney's energy remarks seemed in part to be a "combative response to Democrats and environmentalists." Highlights: 1) Former oil exec Cheney "left little doubt of his support" for commencing oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness; 2) Coal has been "neglected" and people who seek to phase it out because of air pollution "deny reality"; and 3) Extending the life of existing nuclear plants and granting permits for new ones is "the most environmentally friendly way" (the NYT's words) to increase energy supplies. Cheney's comment about conversation is quoted widely: It "may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." The NYT says that Cheney did not mention the merits of raising government auto fuel efficiency requirements, adding that a study coming out later this week says that doing so by a modest amount could do far more to reduce reliance on imported oil than drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. One thing missing from the Cheney speech stories: How many years worth of fossil fuel do experts think are left on the planet? The WSJ reports that coal and utility companies are lobbying Cheney's energy task force to recommend easing clean air regulations, and that an unnamed administration official confirms that "we are taking a look at it." The LAT lead says that advisors are telling the secretary of defense that it is vital to field the missile shield by 2004 "even if the system has limited effectiveness in destroying incoming warheads." Way too low down, the story adds that in March one DOD advisory committee said the Pentagon should "accept program risk to facilitate early deployment." And the comment is not satisfactorily explained, either. Is that risk to the program (as in the country cancels it) or from the program (as in it cancels the country)? The WP Osprey piece contains a comment from a Marine officer that applies here: "The problem is, we fielded the aircraft before it should have been." The LAT notes that deployment of a missile shield before the next presidential election has political advantages for President Bush: it would shore up his conservative support. The WP says that the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative group that among other things opposes the Violence Against Women Act and Take Our Daughters to Work Day, operates at "the highest levels of the Bush administration." Labor secretary Elaine Chao, her predecessor nominee Linda Chavez, Lynne Cheney (wife of Dick), and Barbara Olson, (wife of then-Bush election lawyer and now-solicitor general Theodore), are all associated with the outfit. The NYT fronts word that shortly before Marc Rich and his business partner Pincus Green got pardoned by Bill Clinton, the two businessmen pledged $1 million a year to the charity run by Rich's ex-wife Denise. The paper points out that in recent interviews, Denise Rich never mentioned the pledges as a reason for her involvement in Marc Rich's pardon effort. The story also reports that Marc Rich has been reluctant to leave Switzerland for fear of arrest in connection with the federal investigation into his pardon. He has even had to cancel a vacation to Sardinia! The NYT's Tom Friedman, filing from Accra Ghana, writes that the four most democratic countries in West Africa--Benin, Ghana, Mali and Senegal--have privately funded, flourishing FM talk radio stations. Friedman makes the case that right now, FM talk can play the information dissemination role in Africa that the Internet does most everywhere else. Conclusion: "[M]ake all I.M.F.-World Bank loans, all debt relief conditional on African governments' permitting free FM radio stations." But thank God there are no nude photos on the Web of Hugh Downs. Today's Papers' favorite television reporter, the WP's Lisa de Moraes, has a refreshing take on those complaints from TV news folk that Andrea Thompson, former NYPD Blue actress, doesn't have the news cred required for her new gig at CNN: Sure, she's a high school drop out--just like Peter Jennings. And sure, she doesn't have a journalism background--just like Hugh Downs, Susan Molinari, Catherine Crier, Phyllis George and Joan Lunden.

5/1/01
4:50:19 PM

Belarus brought to its knees by 'invisible enemy'

by Eugene Cahill

The Irish Times

April 26, 2001

Fifteen years after Chernobyl, the world has moved on. But for Belarus the problems are only beginning. Thyroid cancer rates have risen by 2,400 per cent since the explosion, writes Eugene Cahill

At 1.23 a.m. on April 26th, 1986, an explosion occurred in the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. Some 190 tons of highly radioactive uranium and graphite were blasted into the atmosphere.

The radioactive cloud released from the burning reactor travelled north into the neighbouring country of Belarus. It then moved east over western Russia and west across Europe.

The fallout from the disaster has directly affected over nine million people in Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia. The people of these countries were exposed to radioactivity 90 times greater than that released by the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The UN has declared the disaster the worst environmental catastrophe in history.

It is the country of Belarus which has suffered, and continues to suffer, most from the disaster: 70 per cent of the radiation has fallen on its land and people.

Mr Vladislav Ostapenko, head of Belarus's Radiation Medicine Institute, told a recent press conference that "science cannot yet completely assess the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, but it is plain that a demographic catastrophe has occurred in our country.

"We are now seeing genetic changes, especially among those who were less than six years of age when the accident happened and they were subjected to radiation. These people are now starting families."

Medical research has shown that radioactive elements (primarily caesium 137 and iodine 131) cross the placental barrier from mother to foetus, contaminating each new generation. Faced with soaring levels of infertility and genetic changes, the gene pool of the Belarussian people is now under threat.

The rates of thyroid cancer have increased by 2,400 per cent in the 15 years since the disaster and this figure is expected to continue to rise. There has been a 1,000 per cent increase in suicides in the contaminated zones and a 250 per cent increase in congenital birth deformities.

With 99 per cent of the land of Belarus contaminated to varying degrees, the people of this stricken country are forced to live, eat, drink and breathe radiation.

Ms Adi Roche, executive director of the Chernobyl Children's Project, which has initiated 14 aid programmes for the stricken regions, has travelled on many humanitarian aid convoys to Belarus. She has found it to be "a country on its knees, struggling to fight against the invisible enemy of radiation, an enemy that is slowly destroying its people".

The Chernobyl disaster has financially crippled Belarus. It has cost the country 25 per cent of its annual national budget and it is estimated that by 2015 the fallout from the accident will have cost Belarus $235 billion.

Because there is no international law governing an accident such as that which occurred at Chernobyl, Belarus has received no compensation for the damage to it from either Ukraine or Russia.

In a vicious and toxic cycle, the country cannot afford to minimise the effects of the disaster because it is so economically crippled as a direct result of it.

Within the world's most radioactive environment, some 2,000 towns and villages lie eerily silent and empty. These towns were evacuated in the weeks and months following the disaster because of the extremely high levels of radioactivity.

Yet, in a very worrying development, the Belarussian authorities are attempting to change the existing laws relating to the protection of citizens suffering from the disaster to reduce the financial burden on the state.

Prof Nesterenko is a Belarussian scientist who carries out independent research into the effects of the contaminated land. His research is crucial to all aid work relating to the disaster carried out in Belarus.

He has warned that the authorities are propagating a return to living in contaminated zones instead of giving objective information to the population about the dangers to health of living in contaminated areas.

In spite of such a large-scale tragedy, the issue has been largely forgotten or ignored by the international community and the voices of the victims remain largely unheard.

Fifteen years after the disaster - at a time when its full consequences have not yet peaked - there is a growing complacency within the international community about it.

There is an urgent and vital need for the Chernobyl issue to be placed back at the top of the international agenda.

Most of the aid to the affected regions is collected and distributed by international non-governmental organisations. If the problems are to be correctly tackled, it is imperative that increased financial commitments be given by UN member-states to the relief effort. Every government and every country has a crucial role to play.

Although the Chernobyl power plant was finally closed down last December, it is by no means the end of the problem. An omnipresent threat of nuclear apocalypse still hangs over much of Europe.

Within the last few weeks, a former director of security services in the Chernobyl region, Mr Valentine Kupny, has warned that radiation is still seeping from the entombed reactor.

Speaking in last week's German weekly *Focus*, he alerted people to the fact that the steel casing entombing the nuclear reactor was crumbling and in imminent danger of collapse. When this casing collapses, much of what will happen will depend on the wind.

Mr Kupny has said that nobody knows exactly what is happening inside the reactor. "In September 1996 we recorded the last atomic chain reaction but it is very possible that something is happening now. We don't know."

Mr Kupny was dismissed from his post shortly after his interview for the article. Many people do not want to hear the truth.

Isn't it about time that we did?

Eugene Cahill is press officer of the Chernobyl Children's Project.*

http://www.ireland.com

5/1/01
4:36:32 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-30-06.html

"We Cover the Earth For You"

PRESIDENT BUSH RATES POORLY IN 100 DAY REVIEW

By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, April 30, 2001 (ENS) - If there were any lingering doubts about President George W. Bush's political leanings, his first 100 days in office have laid them soundly to rest: Bush is a conservative. Environmentalists, public interest groups and most Democrats are giving the president a thorough tongue lashing for the host of environmental rollbacks Bush has made in his first weeks in office.

For full text and graphics visit:

POLL SHOWS AMERICANS WANT ROADLESS FORESTS PROTECTED

WASHINGTON, DC, April 30, 2001 (ENS) - There is widespread bipartisan support for protecting roadless wild areas in national forests from logging, mining, and drilling for oil and gas, according to a new national poll of likely voters.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-30-03.html

ENLARGING THE EUROPEAN UNION SAVES LIVES BY CUTTING POLLUTION

By Alexandru R. Savulescu

BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 30, 2001 (ENS) - Compliance with European Union environmental legislation could improve the health and quality of life of citizens across the candidate countries that are applying to join the bloc, a new research study finds. Thousands of lives would be saved in a cost effective way, the report shows.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-30-04.html

WORLD OIL TANKER SAFETY DEAL STRUCK

LONDON, United Kingdom, April 30, 2001 (ENS) - International talks on speeding up a global phaseout of single hulled oil tankers came to a successful end on Friday in London. Members of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed to a 2015 deadline for almost all such vessels. The deal means that previously threatened unilateral action by the European Union is now very unlikely.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-30-05.html

CANADA RELEASES WILD SPECIES REPORT CARD

OTTAWA, Canada, April 30, 2001 (ENS) - Canada has released Wild Species 2000, the first national report card on the state of the country's species.

Among the highlights of the report is that 65 percent of about 1,600 assessed species are secure while five percent of wild species are "known to be at risk" and five percent "may be at risk."

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-30-10.html

COMPOSTING'S VIRTUES EXTOLLED ACROSS THE UK

LONDON, United Kingdom, April 30, 2001 (ENS) - Despite being known as a nation of gardeners, most British homeowners lack crucial knowledge about the lifeblood of every green yard - compost. That is according to a study published Monday, the beginning of International Composting Awareness Week.

For full text and graphics, visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-30-11.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: APRIL 30, 2001

Living Free of Pollution Called Basic Human Right

Energy Bill Would Roll Back Environmental Protections

Rhode Island Moves to Protect Horseshoe Crabs

Individual Efforts Needed to Clean Up Charles River

Metal Finishers Fined for Air Pollution

Developers' Lawsuit Attacks California Smart Growth Bill

Miniature Unmanned Planes Descend on Arctic for Research

Off Road Vehicles Threaten Florida Panther

Pennsylvania Launches River Sojourns

Salmon Smolts Monitored on Journey to the Sea

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens.lycos.com/ens/apr2001/2001L-04-30-09.html

5/1/01
4:33:16 PM

Lions face new threat: they're rich, American and they've got guns

Schwarzkopf and Bush Snr mobilise opposition as Botswana moves to save its big cats

You might call the lions of southern Africa potential Bush meat. The former American president, George Bush senior, and his old Gulf War ally, General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf, are pleading with the government of Botswana to be allowed to revive their old alliance, this time in pursuit of Africa's endangered big cats.

Mr Bush is among prominent members of Safari Club International (SCI) who have written to the Botswanan authorities asking them to lift a ban slapped on trophy hunting of lions in February.

Arizona-based SCI describes itself as the largest hunting organisation in the world and people who do not like what it does as "animal protection extremists".

Mr Joubert estimates that the number of lions in Botswana has declined by about two-thirds in 10 years. That is average for the continent.

Exact numbers of lions are notoriously difficult to measure but there is broad consensus among conservationists and governments that the population in Africa has fallen from about 50,000 to less than 15,000 over the past decade. The surviving lions are largely confined to four viable populations in southern and east Africa.

The nature of lion hunting has changed from colonial days. Faster vehicles and high powered rifles have further reduced the already bad odds against the animals. On top of that, the idea of three week hunts deep into the bush in the hope, but not necessarily the expectation, of bagging something big have given way to the concept of a sure kill.

"It's very difficult for a professional hunter to turn around to some guy who's paid $30,000 to kill a lion and say: 'Don't shoot that one he's too young, he's not ready'. The guy's going to say, I came here to kill a lion and that's what I'm going to do," said Mr Joubert.

At least there is still something of the hunt left in Botswana. South Africa offers the notorious "canned lion" service in which a trapped animal is virtually delivered to the barrel of a gun.

Many of the lions are bred in captivity solely as bait for hunters and then hardly pursued at all. They are released into what are no more than fields surrounded by fences and "hunted". They have no chance of escape.

On one occasion captured on video a lioness was separated from her cubs and shot just yards away. Last year a pride of problem lions - they had been eating livestock - in the state-owned Kruger National Park was sold to a hunting tour operator for delivery to his clients.

Tales of horrendous suffering by the animals abound. Some supposed hunters are so inexpert with guns that they take a dozen shots to kill a lion.

Sometimes the killing takes place on the same game farms that foreign tourists believe to be conservation centres. While the parks emphasise the breeding of lions to the visitors waving cameras, over the hill the hunters are shooting them with guns. The state-run South African tourist board even advertised "canned lion" hunts.

"Go for the ultimate trophy and score in South Africa," said one advert. "It is always in season in South Africa, where the world's finest hunting is in the bag."

Under threat from the gun

Rhinos

There were once hundreds of species but only five exist today and four of them are endangered. During the 1970s as many as half the world's remaining rhinos disappeared. Now fewer than 12,000 survive in Asia and Africa. The northern white rhino is reduced to only 30 individuals in the wild. In Africa poaching has been so ruthless that black rhino numbers have fallen from 60,000 to 2,500 in 22 years. Horn from African rhinos is worth£1,300 to £3,300 per kg, and horn from Asian rhinos up to £32,000 per kg.

Elephants

The demand for ivory was behind the decline of the African elephant, which fell from 2m animals in 1970 to between 286,000 and 543,000 today.

The number of Asian elephants have been reduced to between 34,000 and 51,000 animals in the wild. Hunting for meat, hides and bones has affected both breeds.

Orang Utans

Fewer than 30,000 exist in the world today, a 30% to 50% decline which has occurred in the past decade. The vast majority can be found in Borneo, where they are protected. Hunting for food and body parts has taken its toll and the trade in body parts, particularly skulls, continues despite the efforts of the authorities to eradicate it.

Tigers

A population estimate in 1996 was between 4,600 and 7,200 in the wild, and there are now no more than 4,500 Indian tigers. The Siberian tiger is the world's largest cat but only 200 remain, mostly in Russia. The demand for tiger products has increased with the bones and other body parts being used for traditional Chinese medicines and as tonics or cures for ailments.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,479327,00.html

5/1/01
4:23:16 PM

George Bush's favours to big business - All the president's businessmen

The Republican election campaign was the most expensive in history and required big donations from big business. Since moving into the White House, George Bush has had only one concern - returning the favours. Julian Borger on how corporate America bought itself a president

Special report: George Bush's America

Friday April 27, 2001 -- The Guardian

Buried in the Bush administration's first budget was a routine-looking salaries estimate for the justice department. But one particular group of government lawyers saw it immediately for what it was - a signpost to a new era. The lawyers were a specialised team, put together in the Clinton years to take on the big tobacco companies for lying about the safety of their product for five decades. They had worked out that the sprawling, groundbreaking case would cost about $57m (£41m). They were allocated less than $2m.

In desperation, the lawyers leaked a memo earlier this week, in which they pointed out that the budget would kill their prosecution. In response, the attorney general, John Ashcroft, counter-leaked his plans to replace the litigation team on the grounds that it had done a shoddy job. The message could not be clearer if it was a neon sign on the White House roof: the war on Big Tobacco is over.

The list of defendants who now appear to have escaped federal prosecution is also a list of big donors to the George Bush election campaign. At the top is Philip Morris, which gave $2.8m to the new president's war chest, his inauguration and his party. Big Tobacco as a whole gave $7m to Bush and the Republicans, 83% of the industry's total election spending. If the federal lawsuit against them is allowed to die, which now seems almost certain, the cigarette companies will have saved themselves up to $100bn in damages and compensation - an impressive rate of return by any standards. Philip Morris would argue, of course, that there is no direct connection between its donation and the apparent demise of the government lawsuit - and that its support for the president is entirely down to his policies.

In Washington, this is not some isolated, government-rocking case of support for corporate interests. In his first 100 days in office (the milestone passes on Sunday) Bush has made this straightforward form of corporate payback the defining trait of his administration. This simple fact has been obscured by the snickering over his frequent and clunky gaffes.

For Bush, the first US president with an MBA, the election was a straightforward business proposition in which American corporations acted as venture capitalists. They were invited to take a moderate risk and put the bulk of their political funds behind the Republican dauphin in the most expensive campaign in history. The returns, in the form of abandoned lawsuits, relaxed federal regulations and the scrapping of at least one major international treaty, are heavily loaded with short-term profit. Whatever the economic climate in the world outside, for big business it is truly springtime in Washington.

Naturally, the Democrats have lined up to declare that they are shocked to discover that business wields such influence in politics. The corporate world did not do too badly in the Clinton years, but it was one of many voices echoing around the Oval Office. In the Bush administration, business is the only voice.

Thus, whereas Clinton devoted much of the energy of his first 100 days to a messy fight over gays in the military, the Bush administration has briskly run through a veritable corporate shopping list of swift anti-regulatory measures.

In his first few days, Bush scrapped a raft of work-safety measures, which had been negotiated between the federal government and the unions for much of the past decade, in an attempt to address the new work injuries of the computer age, such as repetitive strain injury, affecting an estimated 1.8m employees.

The scrapping of the new rules was a triumph for the US Chamber of Commerce and a crushing defeat for the AFL-CIO union federation, which had of course overwhelmingly backed Al Gore and the Democrats. At the same time, Bush lifted regulations on federally funded works which gave preference to contractors who used union labour.

Next on the list was a bankruptcy bill, long demanded by the banks and credit card companies (who sponsored Bush and his party to the tune of over $25m). Its effect will be to strip Americans who have declared themselves bankrupt of some of the legal protection they have from their financial creditors.

The bill's proponents portrayed the targets of the bill as scam artists and irresponsible spendthrifts, but subsequent press reports and surveys suggested that the majority of the victims will be poor families who have lost jobs and fallen foul of the rapacious US health system. Clinton had vetoed a similar bill on the grounds that the poor should be allowed to pay their rent and hospital bills before their credit card charges.

The impact of the Bush era has fallen heaviest, however, on the environment, where the legal constraints on business had been the most expensive. In short order after his inauguration, Bush lifted rules which would have made mining companies (who donated $2.6m to his campaign) pay for the clean-up costs if they contaminated the public water supply, and then scrapped safety limits on arsenic levels in drinking water imposed by the outgoing Clinton White House.

Meanwhile, another Clinton-era regulation aimed at protecting 60m acres of national forests from logging and road building is also about to be scuttled, according to justice department sources quoted in yesterday's Washington Post. The ban had been one of the last acts of the outgoing administration, but it had been a consequence of more than a year of open hearings held by the Forest Service in which the views of 1.6m members of the public had been taken into account. For its part, the timber industry contributed $3.2m to the Bush campaign in the 2000 elections. The money, it seems, is talking louder.

The most important environmental victories for US industry came in March, when the new president abandoned a campaign pledge to impose legal limits on carbon dioxide emissions. The obvious consequence of that decision arrived a few days later, when the administration let it be known that it considered the Kyoto protocol on global warming dead and buried, summarily ending five years of transatlantic efforts to agree on how the accord should be implemented.

The head of the environmental protection agency, Christine Todd Whitman, has promised that the US is ready to go back to the negotiating table and start again from scratch. But meanwhile, the cost of cutting emissions has been removed for the foreseeable future from the corporate balance sheets of the coal, electricity, oil and gas industries, all of them major Bush contributors. The oil sector alone put over $25m into Republican coffers for last year's election, compared to the $7m backing it provided to Democratic candidates.

It is hardly surprising that the mood on K Street, the home of Washington's industrial lobbyists, is triumphant these days. "We have come out of the cave, blinking in the sunlight, saying to one another, 'My God, now we can actually get something done,' " Richard Hohlt, a banking lobbyist, recently told the Wall Street Journal.

Paradoxically, the only major setback the industrial lobby has suffered under Bush so far has been the old-fashioned cold war exchange of sabre-rattling with China. It has been redolent of an older, more ideological strain of Republicanism, but it cuts against the interests of corporate leaders, who view China as a vast opportunity for expansion. Consequently, there were few protests from the usual cold warriors in the party ranks when Washington sent a delicately worded apology to Beijing over this month's spy plane standoff. On every other front, the K Street army has emerged from its trenches to find that there is hardly even token resistance to its relentless advance.

In his former role as Clinton's labour secretary, Robert Reich had frequently complained that corporate America seemed to gain the upper hand more often than not in the corridors of power. Now, he says, there is not even a fight. "There's no longer any countervailing power in Washington. Business is in complete control of the machinery of government," he wrote in the New York Times. "It's payback time, and every industry and trade association is busily cashing in."

The transaction has not been so much a purchase as a corporate merger. The distinction between business and government has simply been blurred to near invisibility. The White House has made much of the fact that the new MBA-equipped president is running the administration along sleek corporate lines. Key officials, meanwhile, are being recruited straight from the nation's boardrooms.

The treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, came from the giant aluminium manufacturer Alcoa. Dick Cheney was headhunted from the oil services company Haliburton. Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, performed the same function for Philip Morris from 1991 to 1996. The new "regulations czar", John Graham, charged with overseeing the further dismantling of government controls on industry, has arrived from John Hopkins University, where he once oversaw a study concluding that there were no health risks from secondhand cigarette smoke. At the same time, according to the watchdog group Public Citizen, Graham was soliciting $25,000 in funding from Philip Morris.

The list of business alunmi is endless. Mitchell Daniels, the head of the White House office of management and budget, is a former vice-president of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. He represents an industry which contributed $18m to the Bush electoral effort and now expects the administration to distance itself from its predecessor's plans to impose price caps on prescription medicine.

The only risk to the mega-corporations' control over Washington appears to come from within - the danger of overreaching and provoking an electoral backlash against their greed and environmental damage. "At some point - perhaps as soon as the 2002 midterm elections, surely no later than the next presidential election - the public will be aghast at what is happening," Reich argues. "The backlash against business may be thunderous."

There are already signs that Bush and his advisors realise the danger, and there have been attempts to soften the president's image, particularly on the environment. He has signalled his readiness to sign a treaty on curbing the industrial release of particularly noxious chemicals and may think again on arsenic limits in drinking water. After all, Bush will need people's votes as well as corporate money if he is to win re-election in 2004. But all the signs from the first 100 days suggest that the moderating non-corporate influences on the administration are likely to be kept to a minimum. This is as close as it is possible to get in a democracy to a government of business, by business and for business.

Funding for favours: Bush's paybacks

Table shows amount paid (in millions of dollars) to the Republican election campaign and that amount as a percentage of each industry's election spending.

Industry | $m | % | The payback

Tobacco | 7.0 | 83% | Killing off federal lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers

Timber | 3.2 | 82% | Restrictions on logging roads scrapped

Oil and gas | 25.4 | 78% | Restrictions on CO2 emissions abandoned; Kyoto scrapped; moves to open Arctic refuge to drilling

Mining | 2.6 | 77% | Scrapping of environmental clean-up rules; arsenic limits in water supply

Banks and credit card companies | 25.6 | 60% | Bankruptcy bill making it easier for credit card companies to collect debts from bankrupt customers

Pharmaceuticals | 17.8 | 68% | Medicare reform without price controls

Airlines | 4.2 | 61% | Federal barriers to strikes; backpedalling on antitrust legislation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,479212,00.html

5/1/01
4:16:15 PM

A Call to Religious Witness

We rejoice in God's creation. Now we are called to defend it.

We come from diverse religious traditions, but we stand on common ground. Every religious tradition teaches us to hold sacred the wonders of creation, yet wantonly we desecrate them. Every religious tradition cautions us to temper our cravings for sensation and material things, yet we pursue them addictively, vainly hoping to fill our spiritual emptiness. Every religious tradition forbids theft, yet every day we live unsustainably, we steal from our children and our children's children.

"Beginning Tuesday, May 1, all of us who can will gather in Washington, DC for three days of Prayer and Witness for the Earth -- to protect the Artic Refuge, to promote conservation and renewable energy, to stop global climate change, and to stand for environmental justice for all. We will seek to meet with Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, charged with stewardship of the Refuge, and with members of Congress... . We will urge them to spare the Refuge and to support conservation, fuel efficiency, and renewable sources of energy. On Thursday, May 3, we will gather at a federal site to pray, meditate, sing, and bear witness. In the nonviolent tradition of Gandhi and King, some of us will choose to risk arrest in defense of God's creation. All who are committed to nonviolence and a loving spirit will be welcome among us.

"For information and to add your name to our Call, please visit

http://www.religiouswitness.org/

"Please share this Call with your religious community and others.

Blessings upon you, your descendants, and the earth."

Religious Witness for the Earth Schedule of Events May 1-3, 2001 Washington, DC

5/1/01
4:12:18 PM

For a complement of information on the negative impact of aerial chemical fumigation (mentioned in the last Meditation Focus) of illicit crops on social, environmental and health issues in Latin America, visit the Transnational Institute and Acción Andina website at

http://www.tni.org/drugs/research/fumigaci.htm

CHEMICAL FUMIGATION AND DRUG ENFORCEMENT. You may also want to download "Death by Coca" at

http://www.journeyman.co.uk/real/758.rm

Here is at Preview Outline:

Deep in the Colombian jungle, a lethal chemical snow falls from an unidentified plane. Ironically, it looks vaguely like the processed result of the valuable illegal crop it's meant to kill. It's all part of the ruthless civil war in Colombia waged between the government and guerrilla-run cocaine empire. To the coca farmers, this is simply a way to eke out a living. But Clinton's 1.7 billion dollar plan to crack down on cocaine production has done more than threaten their livelihood. Even farmers who have tried to substitute coca with rubber have had their crops ruined by planes that fumigate their land anyway. Alfredo Bocanegra, a coca farmer and father, recalls the day his daughter Bianei Garzón Zuniga was killed by fumigation on January 14th this year. "Two planes came and fumigated around 10 o'clock in the morning. My little girl got poisoned...and I found her dead. She was just 17 months old."

5/1/01
4:01:43 PM

In The News...

May 9th Set For ET Contact Disclosure

USA - Washington, DC. - The Center For The Study Of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) announced this week that the long awaited public disclosure of concrete evidence and proof regarding extraterrestrial intelligence, UFOs and covert government projects related to the subject will be held on May 9th. The Press Conference for this disclosure event is scheduled for 9 a.m. at the National Press Club in Washington, DC

Since August of 2000, the CSETI Disclosure Project has recorded the testimony of over 100 military, government and related witnesses to UFO events and projects from around the world. This testimony includes dozens of first-hand, often top-secret witnesses to UFO events, internal UFO-related government projects and covert government activities related to UFOs, Extraterrestrial Intelligence and exotic energy and propulsion system projects. These 100 witnesses constitute the tip of a larger pool of over 400 prospective witnesses from a dozen countries, many of whom are prepared to come forward initially in formal Congressional hearings -- which organizers hope will result from the upcoming planned disclosure event.

CSETI staff are now conducting private briefings for key leaders in society, government and related institutions in preparation for the disclosure event. They have found that during previous briefings at the Pentagon and with senior congressional leaders and Executive Branch staff, this civilian effort to disclose this matter has been repeatedly green-lighted and even encouraged.

Dr. Steven Greer, director of CSETI, has led research teams throughout the world investigating the existence of ETI, and on several occasions has successfully established preliminary contact and communication with extraterrestrial spacecraft at close range. He has met with and provided briefings for senior members of government, military and intelligence operations in the United States and around the world. These have included senior CIA officials, Joint Chiefs of Staff, White House staff, senior members of Congress and congressional committees, senior United Nations leadership and diplomats, senior military officials in the United Kingdom and Europe, and cabinet-level staff members of the Japanese government.

The disclosure press conference comes on the heels of an April 23 ABC News Report by Peter Jennings, in which he very seriously introduced a story on "Making Contact With Alien Life" by asking what would we do if we were contacted by aliens and who would represent us.

For more information: CSETI: http://www.cseti.org

5/1/01
3:50:03 PM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

For an unusual take on the Harvard University living-wage protest, read the following mother-daughter opinions...

INSIDE THE HARVARD SIT-IN: A DAUGHTER'S REPORT

by Madeleine Elfenbein

Why sit-in at Harvard? Calls for "increased dialogue" by university officials over the past two years have deferred action by turning a matter of simple justice -- a living wage -- into an academic debate.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/04/30/1.html

HARVARD TO WORKERS: LET THEM EAT CULTURE

by Andree Pages

With an endowment of $19 billion, Harvard University is the richest university on the planet. It pays top portfolio fund managers up to ten million dollars, but keeps 1,500 workers at the federal poverty level. This mother is proud that her daughter is one of the sit-in protesters.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/04/30/index.html

AMERICANS WON'T ACCEPT DIRTY FOOD

by Louis Clark

For over 100 years, the federal government has had a mandate to watch over meat and poultry processing. As the marketplace has become ever more dangerous, the public expects increased protection, not less, and is making its wishes clear.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/04/25/3.html

Economics Reporting Review

LABOR STANDARDS, ROUND TWO

by Dean Baker

For the second time in ten days, the New York Times ran a front-page article implying that efforts to improve labor conditions in developing nations are misguided. Unfortunately, evidence in the article contradicts its headline.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/04/30/index.html

5/1/01
3:49:40 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

US to pay farmers to protect 'prairie potholes' - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10666

INTERVIEW - Astropower future looking sunny - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10669

Green groups demand Bush ease up on the Earth - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10672

EPA reviews NH request to exit gasoline program - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10673

UK trawlermen put to sea again as cod ban ends - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10670

Pesticide firms to aid removal of Ethiopia dumps - ITALY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10667

Lufthansa Cargo stops commercial wild animal shipments from May - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10671

Key points of German SPD policy paper on Europe - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10674

UPDATE - Cheney says US will rely on oil, coal - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10668

Storms kill 21, injure dozens in Bangladesh - BANGLADESH http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10675

5/1/01
3:49:12 PM

BALTIMORE SUN

New book on NSA sheds light on secrets

U.S. terror plan was Cuba invasion pretext

By Scott Shane and Tom Bowman

WASHINGTON - U.S. military leaders proposed in 1962 a secret plan to commit terrorist acts against Americans and blame Cuba to create a pretext for invasion and the ouster of Communist leader Fidel Castro, according to a new book about the National Security Agency.

"We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," said one document reportedly prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," the document says. "Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of indignation."

The plan is laid out in documents signed by the five Joint Chiefs but never carried out, according to writer James Bamford in "Body of Secrets." The new history of the Fort Meade-based eavesdropping agency is being released today by Doubleday.

NSA regularly picks up the conversations of suspected terrorist financier Osama bin Laden, says Bamford, and has monitored Chinese and French companies trying to sell missiles to Iran. He provides new details about an Israeli attack on a Navy eavesdropping ship in 1967, suggesting that the sinking was deliberate. And he reveals the loss of an "entire warehouse" full of secret cryptographic gear to the North Vietnamese in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War.

Bamford, a former investigative reporter for ABC News who wrote "The Puzzle Palace" about the NSA in 1982, said his new book is based mostly on documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act or found in government archives. "NSA never handed me any documents," he said. "It was a question of digging."

He said he was most surprised by the anti-Cuba terror plan, code-named Operation Northwoods. It "may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," he writes.

The Northwoods plan also proposed that if the 1962 launch of John Glenn into orbit were to fail, resulting in the astronaut's death, the U.S. government would publicize fabricated evidence that Cuba had used electronic interference to sabotage the flight, the book says.

A previously secret document obtained by Bamford offers further suggestions for mayhem to be blamed on Cuba.

"We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). ... We could foster attempts on lives of Cubans in the United States, even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized," the document says. Another idea was to shoot down a CIA plane designed to replicate a passenger flight and announce that Cuban forces shot it down.

Citing a White House document, Bamford writes that the idea of creating a pretext for the invasion of Cuba might have started with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the last weeks of his administration, when the plan for an invasion by Cuban exiles trained in the United States was hatched. Carried out in April 1961, soon after Kennedy became president, the Bay of Pigs invasion proved a fiasco. Castro's forces quickly killed or rounded up the invaders.

Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, presented the Operation Northwoods plan to Kennedy early in 1962, but the president rejected it that March because he wanted no overt U.S. military action against Cuba. Lemnitzer then sought unsuccessfully to destroy all evidence of the plan, according to Bamford.

Lemnitzer and those who served with him in 1962 as chiefs of the nation's military branches are dead. But two former top Kennedy administration officials said yesterday that they were unaware of Operation Northwoods and questioned whether such a plan was ever drafted.

"I've never heard of Operation Northwoods. Never heard of it and don't believe it," said Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy's White House special counsel. "Obviously, it would be totally illegal as well as totally unwise."

Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary, said: "I never heard of it. I can't believe the chiefs were talking about or engaged in what I would call CIA-type operations."

Bamford writes that besides the Joint Chiefs, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze also favored "provoking a phony war with Cuba."

"There may be a piece of paper" on Northwoods, said McNamara. "I just cannot conceive of [Nitze] approving anything like that or doing it without talking to me."

The book contains many other revelations in its detailed account of NSA, the biggest U.S. intelligence agency and Maryland's largest employer, with more than 25,000 personnel at Fort Meade, site of its global eavesdropping efforts.

Among them:

In recent years, NSA has regularly listened to bin Laden's unencrypted telephone calls. Agency officials have sometimes played tapes of bin Laden talking to his mother to impress members of Congress and select visitors to the agency.

In the late 1990s, NSA tracked efforts by Chinese and French companies to sell missile technology to Iran, particularly the C-802 anti-ship missile. The eavesdropping led to U.S. protests to the Chinese and French governments.

When U.S. troops evacuated Vietnam in 1975, "an entire warehouse overflowing with NSA's most important cryptographic machines and other supersensitive code and cipher materials" was left behind. It was the largest compromise of such equipment in U.S. history, Bamford writes, but the agency still has not acknowledged it.

When Israeli fighter jets attacked the NSA eavesdropping ship USS Liberty in the Mediterranean in 1967, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171, an NSA aircraft was listening in and heard Israeli pilots referring to the American flag on the ship. U.S. officials, including President Lyndon Baines Johnson, decided to forget the matter, Bamford writes, because they did not want to embarrass Israel. To this day, Israeli officials say their forces mistakenly attacked the U.S. ship.

Bamford says the reason for the strike was Israel's desperate effort to cover up its attacks on the Egyptian town of El Arish in the Sinai. The Liberty was sitting offshore and the Israelis feared that the ship would detect the operation, which included the shooting of prisoners.

Yesterday, an NSA spokesperson questioned a point made in the book about the USS Liberty.

"We do not comment on operational matters, alleged or otherwise; however, Mr. Bamford's claim that the NSA leadership was 'virtually unanimous in their belief that the attack was deliberate' is simply not true," the spokesperson said.

When he wrote "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, Bamford was attacked by some NSA officials, who said his revelations gave the Soviet Union and other U.S. adversaries too much information on the secret agency. One former director referred to him as "an unconvicted felon."

With the end of the Cold War, the agency has been less guarded. NSA's current director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has granted a number of interviews. Hayden "cracked the door open a tiny bit," said Bamford, partly to burnish NSA's public image and correct misconceptions.

Sun staff writer Laura Sullivan contributed to this article.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.md.nsa24apr24.story

5/1/01
3:48:37 PM

Public Citizen

National Bioethics Advisory Commission Report Dangerously Weakens International Protections

Report Provides Less Protection for Participants in International Research Than Declaration of Helsinki

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) today released a report that would put the U.S. in the unenviable position of endorsing ethics standards for American researchers that are lower than those required by the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki. Whereas the recently revised (October 2000) Declaration actually strengthened protections in a number of critical regards, the NBAC has undermined some of these important steps forward, Public Citizen said today.

In three critical areas, the NBAC recommendations are inadequate:

* Treatment for patients during clinical trials: While the Declaration made it clear that patients in the comparison groups in research of new therapies had to receive the "best current" therapy, regardless of where the research was conducted, the NBAC has created a loophole likely to be exploited by researchers who wish to provide only those therapies that are locally available: "Any study that would not provide the control group with an established effective treatment should include a justification for using an alternative design." (Recommendation 2.2)

* Availability of treatment at trial completion: The NBAC would allow research to take place in a developing country even if there was no guarantee that any intervention proved effective during the trial would become available in the country of testing: "In cases in which investigators do not believe that successful interventions will become available to the host country population, they should explain to the relevant ethics review committee(s) why the research is nonetheless responsive to the health needs of the country and presents a reasonable risk/benefit ratio." (Recommendation 4.2)

* American ethical review of American research: The NBAC report clearly states that, for the first time, studies submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would require ethical review both in the U.S. and in the country in which the research is conducted, as opposed to the current situation where only foreign approval is required. While this appears to be a step forward, the NBAC has again made a loophole in its recommendation: "However, if the human participants protection system of the host country or a particular host country institution has been determined by the U.S. government to achieve all the substantive ethical protections outlined in Recommendation 1.1, then review by a host country ethics review committee alone is sufficient." (Recommendation 5.3) The requirements of Recommendation 1.1 are extremely vague; we are therefore concerned that in the future this will be used to permit research subject to U.S. government regulation without ethical review by American ethical committees.

"In each of these areas, the NBAC has carved a loophole that presents the real possibility of exploitation of developing country patients in trials subject to U.S. regulation," said Dr. Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "It is ironic that the very country that placed research ethics on the world agenda, by conducting the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi doctors for their experiments on prisoners, should now be leading the charge to weaken ethical protections."

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit www.citizen.org

5/1/01
3:48:14 PM

World Peace & Prayer Day

June 21, 2001

In the Spirit of the White Buffalo Calf Woman I am calling upon all Spiritual Leaders, Ancient Storytellers and All People Of Good Will to work together in promoting World Peace and Prayer Day! We encourage you to create your own ceremony at your own sacred site(s) and join us, in peace, on June 21, 2001 for World Peace and Pray Day.

Since we began this ceremony in 1996 on Turtle Island (the Americas), other Nations are joining together with us in Spirit at other sacred sites throughout the world. Our plans are to continue to journey around our Mother Earth beginning this year at the Hill of Uisneach in Ireland... Subsequently, from here on, we will journey to Africa, Australia, and Asia and return home to Turtle Island (the Americas) for a thank you ceremony!

I pray that as we visit the different Nations on their Homelands, we will continue to awaken each other to our spirituality... and emphasize the importance of Sacred Sites and Sacred Ceremonies...Together, through The Power of Synergy, we have an unprecedented opportunity to heal and regenerate our Mother Earth and Thus each other...

Within The Sacred Hoop of Life, There Is No Ending And No Beginning!

Mitakuye Oyasin, (All My Relations)

Chief Arvol Looking Horse,

19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe

To Learn More Contact

www.worldpeaceday.com/2001

A Beautiful 4 Color Poster 11x17 is Available By Contacting Us With Your Address @ Lightparty@aol.com.

YOUR NETWORKING SUPPORT IS DEEPLY APPRECIATED

5/1/01
3:47:50 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

http://www.citizen.org/hrg/PUBLICATIONS/1570.htm

1. RANT AND RAIL Germany's first shipment of nuclear waste in three years to a British reprocessing plant arrived quietly in the U.K. yesterday, a sharp contrast to the protests that marked the beginning of its five-day journey. Protesters in Germany succeeded briefly in delaying the shipment, and demonstrators in northern France threw smoke bombs on the rail line to slow down the train, which was carrying five containers of spent fuel rods from two German nuclear plants. Meanwhile, anti-nuke activists in Poland yesterday blocked train tracks to the Baltic seaport of Szczecin to protest planned shipments of nuclear fuel to a controversial Czech power plant just over the border from Austria.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Marta Karpinska, 30 Apr 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10650>

2. SURVEY SAYS ... Fifty percent of Americans believe that improving the environment should take priority over economic growth, according to a Los Angeles Times poll completed last week. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said protecting plants and animals should trump protection of property rights. Fifty-six percent opposed President Bush's decision to overturn a rule to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water, and 59 percent disagreed with Bush's move to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Four of 10 respondents in the poll claimed to be environmentally active in some way.

do good: Take action and demand less arsenic in drinking water <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/air.stm#arsenic>

do good: Take action and tell Bush not to abandon Kyoto <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/climate.stm#kyoto>

3. NEWT ROCKME The environment "has been the most obvious public relations failure" of the Bush administration so far, but the issue offers President Bush one of his best opportunities to truly change the country, writes former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in the New York Times. Bush could chose to "create the most conservative regulatory policies the current political system could tolerate" and "grudgingly give the left those environmental victories [he] could not block." But Gingrich suggests instead that the president adopt a "transformational" style and "develop a vision of a healthy environment with maximum biodiversity that would attract the support of the vast majority of Americans and would use a high-technology, scientifically based, locally implemented and cooperative approach to problem-solving" (whatever that means).

straight to the source: New York Times, Newt Gingrich, 29 Apr 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/opinion/29GING.html>

4. DASCHLE, DANCER U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) last week said he would support dramatic changes in the Kyoto treaty on climate change, including a move away from mandatory to voluntary targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Faced with immediate criticism by environmental groups, however, Daschle on Saturday backed away from his earlier statement and issued a clarification saying voluntary emissions controls "are not a substitute for binding measures." Meanwhile, in the month since President Bush said that the U.S. would withdraw from Kyoto, top officials in his administration have been meeting on a weekly basis to figure out how to move forward on climate change. Most of the speakers at the meetings have been scientists and policy wonks who believe that humans bear at least part of the blame for global warming.

straight to the source: New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin, 28 Apr 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/28/politics/28CLIM.html>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: How's the weather? -- taking the Earth's temperature -- in our Heat Beat section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/heatbeat/weather042701.stm>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

All the world's enraged about the Bush administration's moves on climate change -- in our Heat Beat section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/heatbeat/thisjustin042701.stm>

Just say no! -- a review of Arctic Refuge -- in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books041101.stm>

Yalta come back now, hear? -- a day in the life of Rhys Roth, Climate Solutions, writing from the Crimea <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/roth042301.stm>

5/1/01
3:46:09 PM

Public Citizen, Medical Resident and Student Organizations Petition OSHA to Limit Work Hours for Medical Residents

More Auto Crashes, More Depression and More Pregnancy Complications Among Sleep-Deprived Medical Residents

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The federal government should limit the number of hours worked by medical residents and fellows because sleep-deprived students are at increased risk of being in auto crashes, suffering depression and giving birth to premature infants, according to a petition filed today with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The petition was filed by Public Citizen, a 150,000-member national consumer advocacy organization; the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR/SEIU), a union representing more than 11,000 medical residents and a national affiliate of the Service Employees International Union; the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), an organization representing more than 30,000 physicians-in- training; Bertrand Bell, M.D., who wrote a New York state health code restricting resident work hours; and Kingman P. Strohl, M.D., director of the Center for Sleep Disorders Research at Case Western Reserve University.

Currently, there is no national work-hour limit for medical residents. American residents regularly work 95 hours a week, sometimes logging as many as 136 out of the available 168 hours in a week. Like a New York state regulation promulgated in 1989, the petition seeks a work-hour cap of 80 hours per week, with shifts not to exceed 24 hours. However, compliance with the New York regulation has been inadequate.

"By not capping the hours for these residents, OSHA is abdicating its responsibility to ensure a safe workplace and protect those who care for the nation's sick and dying," said Anandev Gurjala, a second-year medical student at Northwestern Medical School currently doing research for Public Citizen. "The hours required now can endanger the health of the residents and the patients they are treating."

In addition, the petition calls for a limit of on-call shifts to every third night, a minimum of 10 hours between shifts, and at least one 24-hour period of off-duty time per week. To ensure compliance, the petition requests strict enforcement of work-hour regulations, including frequent unannounced inspections. Resident schedules should be recorded and kept as public records, an official and confidential procedure should be established to report violations, and violations should lead to strict penalties, the petition states.

The petition departs from previous efforts to reduce hours through state or federal legislation. Instead, it attempts to address the problem through regulations by OSHA. The petition points out that in protecting the health of residents, the regulations also would protect the health of patients from overworked, error-prone residents.

The petition is based on a multitude of studies. For example, emergency medical residents are almost seven times more likely to be in auto accidents during their residencies compared to before their residencies. Sleep-deprived residents reported greater rates of depression, with rates as high as 32 percent while working in the intensive care unit. Research also shows that high levels of work-related fatigue are associated with obstetric complications among women residents. In one study, pre-term delivery was nearly twice as common among women residents with heavy work schedules as among those with lighter work schedules.

"When we became physicians, all of us promised to devote ourselves to improving our patients' quality of life," said Sonya Rasminsky, M.D., a resident in psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts and co-president of the Cambridge branch of CIR. "But it is a painful irony that we are forced to treat our own lives with less respect as a result."

Added Josh Rising, a medical student and AMSA's legislative affairs director, "State and federal government have abrogated their responsibility to ensure the health and safety of the nation's health care workers and patients. In addition to the dangers that this poses to resident health, over-fatigued physicians pose a health risk to the patients that they are forced to treat while in an impaired condition. These reasonable limitations will ensure that hospitals are safe places for all who enter their doors."

The closest thing to a national standard is a set of requirements drawn up by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), an organization responsible for overseeing residency programs. The organization has drawn up work-hour requirements that vary by specialty, but compliance with even these often weak requirements is voluntary.

The petition notes that the government has set strict work-hour limits for truckers, pilots and railroad operators.

"Our government rightly recognizes the importance of capping work hours for those who could kill people if they get too tired, such as truckers and pilots," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "The government's obligation should be no less for doctors-in-training, who usually work even longer hours."

To read the petition, visit

5/1/01
3:45:42 PM

Ten Year Study Reveals Nuclear Weapons Unlawful And Military Documentation

U.S. Newswire

Contact: Barbara Marx-Webber, 301-390-1114

NEW YORK, April 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- New York litigator and former St. John's law professor Charles Moxley is catching the attention of leaders in the fields of politics, law and international relations due to the provocative conclusions in his recently released book, Nuclear Weapons and International Law in the Post Cold War World (Austin & Winfield, Publishers, University Press of America). Both the Professional's Network for Social Responsibility and the Middle Powers Initiative have invited Moxley to be their keynote speaker at upcoming events in New York (on April 29th and May 3rd).

Moxley will discuss the results of his ten-year study on the legality of nuclear weapons as well as implications of the U.S. Administration's Missile Defense Program. He says, "The use of nuclear weapons under established rules of international law is unlawful, even according to official U.S. and military documentation."

Moxley will be the keynote speaker at a private strategy conference for the Middle Powers Initiative (April 29th) as well as for the Professional's Network for Social Responsibility. (Thursday May 3, 2001 at 5:30 p.m. 15 Rutherford Place, East of Third Ave.) For press coverage, to arrange an interview or obtain a press copy of the book, contact Barbara Marx-Webber at 301-390-1114.

Experts in the fields of politics, law, and national security are calling Moxley's work groundbreaking, comprehensive and of the utmost importance. In an indictment that Columbia Law School Dean David Leebron concludes, "requires a response" and Robert McNamara says should call on the President and Congress to investigate, Moxley expertly challenges the U.S. position on legality. Moxley also reveals that, to stave off an ICJ decision recognizing such total unlawfulness, the United States, acting through State and Defense Department attorneys, resorted to misrepresenting the facts and law to the Court.

Robert McNamara describes Moxley's book as "the best exposition I have seen of the irrationality of the U.S. policy in this area, the irrationality of the policies of the other nuclear weapons states, and the irrationality of the human race in permitting the potential use of these weapons to continue." (Note: The April 29th event is closed to the press, however interviews can be arranged and copies of the speech can be made available.)

MPI is a campaign of international citizen organizations launched in 1998 to influence and assist middle power governments to encourage and educate the nuclear weapon states to commit to immediate practical steps to reduce nuclear dangers and commence negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons. PNSR is a non-partisan network for professional organizations that share a concern about human and environmental needs and a desire to build a strong civilian economy through redirection of national priorities away from Cold War militarism and weapons protection.

5/1/01
3:44:52 PM

My husband and I have a small business providing rehydration and cooling to firefighters. Seven years ago we developed a new simplified low cost fire fighting foam system with the help of firefighters in the field. We were told by the USDA Forest Service that before our equipment could be purchased for use in the field that it needed to be evaluated by the USDA FS Technology and Development Center in San Dimas and that they would write a new standard for procurement. Well here it is, seven years later and we're still trying to work through the bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. What we've come to learn through our struggles is that the USDA FS has an ongoing history of holding back small business - going to great lengths to put them out of business. For greater detail about our struggles, please go to the following story link," Burned by the USDA Forest Service":

http://americafire.com/articles000001.htm

Our situation has now escalated to far more serious than just our struggles to help in the combat of Wildland Fires. It seems that the USDA/FS somehow has taken a personal letter addressed to my husband and our company from (then) Senator Cathie Wright and made this personal letter to be the cover of the newest USDA Guidelines for Employees, Dealing with Workplace Conflicts and Concerns (see scan of cover below) which was distributed throughout the USDA. How this happened, we're not sure. A letter was written on our behalf to Secretary Veneman of the USDA (see below) which explains in greater detail the severity of our situation.

It is very important that taxpayers are aware of the great lengths that our government will go to alienate small business from providing new technology even though their own people in the field have documented the value and the need for such equipment.

Please take the time to read the following letter below as well as the link to our story in American Fire. I think you'll find it worth the read. We really need the media's support in order to help in exposing the abuse small business and the privacy of each and every one of us. Please contact either Maureen Lee at: biss@internetcds.com or myself at: profiretek@earthlink.net for further information and/or supporting documentation. (attached is a scaned copy of the USDA manuals cover)

Thank you in advance for your time.

Sincerely,

Marti Soskin

Mister Breeze

5/1/01
3:43:59 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Doing environmental research? Search our news archives at: http://www.planetark.org/searchhome.cfm

BIZFEATURE - US wheat farmers see biotech as friend and foe - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10656

FEATURE - Alaska politicians try to block rival gas project - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10662

A thorn in his side, Bush hurting on environment - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10657

Clinton accused of secret meetings in forest case - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10655

UPDATE - Bush says he off to good start after 100 days - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10653

UPDATE - N. Hampshire asks to withdraw from gasoline program - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10651

WWF calls for massive investment in rural Britain - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10659

UK biotech firms demand protection from activists - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10660

Swiss end ban on sending nuclear waste to Britain - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10664

Radioactive waste found at Swedish rubbish dumps - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10654

Nuclear fuel shipment sparks protest in Poland - POLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10650

Hungary claims $95 mln damages from Romanian Aurul - HUNGARY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10661

Greenpeace targets Esso in climate change protest - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10658

Finnish paper recycling rate rose in 2000 - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10665

Green group urges EU ban on Aventis gene corn - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10652

World shipping body close to tanker safety deadline - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10663

4/30/01
6:30:55 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

FCC MOVES TO INTENSIFY MEDIA CONSOLIDATION

FAIR Action Alert, Fair.org

-- One regulation at a time, the FCC eliminates the few remaining broadcasting rules that protect some degree of media diversity: the "dual network" rule being the most recent victim. In protest, FAIR has released this action alert.

STARLINK CORN FOUND IN MORE FOODS THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

by United Press International, Environmental News Network

-- The manufacturers of genetically engineered corn have conducted their own research and claim it poses no health risks in human consumption. But, there are differing points of view.

NATIONALIZING THE WEST...AGAIN

by Daniel Kemmis, Colorado Springs Independent

-- George W. Bush came to Washington promising to decentralize government. However, his administration's energy policies are imposing a whole new layer of national policy on the public lands of the Mountain West, says Daniel Kemmis, an Utne Visionary and former mayor of Missoula, Montana.

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

The links are also in our archive at:

http://www.utne.com/webwatch/archive.tpl?d=04/30/2001

4/30/01
6:26:03 PM

The Nation

"During his first 100 days, George W. Bush's principal accomplishment, indeed his only one, was to demolish any too-generous illusions about who he is. The mild and moderate character who ran for President, claiming to want more or less the same things Al Gore wanted, has been replaced by a hard-edged, rather maladroit right-winger. Bush brushed aside his own rhetorical flourishes toward bipartisan civility and has engaged in a bare-knuckle (and politically tone-deaf) style of governing that most resembles the notorious theft in the Florida recount operation."

Read the rest of "The Worst 100 Days," from the May 14 issue of The Nation, available currently at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010514&s=editors

4/30/01
4:57:20 PM

Conspicuous Consumption

By Justus Nieland

The papers all lead with the results of a government report yesterday that the U.S. economy grew roughly 2% in the first quarter of the year. The New York Times headline calls the growth "STEADFAST ALTHOUGH MODEST"; the Washington Post header avoids adjectival commitment: "ECONOMY BEATS EXPECTATIONS"; while the Los Angeles Times names an agent: "CONSUMERS HELP GIVE SURPRISE JOLT TO U.S. ECONOMY." The WP asserts that the pace of growth is "about twice as fast" as most forecasters had predicted, and quotes an economist who calls these "great numbers." The NYT's economic pundit is more circumspect, saying that the report "belies the idea that we're in a recession, but it doesn't mean that we're out of the woods yet." And the LAT reminds us of the economy's 5.2% annual growth rate just a year ago, noting higher up than anyone else (3rd graf) that the economy is "still vulnerable." In response to the report, the Dow Jones closed up over 100 points and the Nasdaq rose nearly 40 points.

The papers all point out that while consumer spending (especially for durable goods like new homes, cars, and appliances) rose 3.1% in the first quarter and government spending rose 4%, business investment fell 11.5%, with companies curtailing expansion plans and shrinking inventory. The papers agree that these productions cuts are essential for more rapid growth later this year. But the NYT warns that decreased business spending amidst increased consumer spending is atypical and potentially troubling: normally, when the U.S. economy slows (as in the start of the last three recessions), the consumers rein in their spending before businesses do.

Everybody notes that the consumer spending increases occurred alongside recession rumors and a falling stock market, but nobody speculates on why consumers kept on buying. Was this consumer denial? A little pre-recession hoarding? And while consumers bought more last quarter, the savings rate of American households dropped, causing economists to speculate that spending may drop later in the year as consumers start paying off debt. This speculation finds some confirmation in the University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment, cited by both the LAT and the WP, which is down five points from March, and nearly 20 points below its high a year ago. In light of these more uncertain signs, the papers agree that the Fed will probably still drop interest rates by at least a quarter-point when it meets next month.

A WP front-pager details a change of heart among Senate Democrats unhappy with President Bush's denunciation of the 1997 Kyoto global warming accord last month for its potential to threaten U.S. economic prosperity. While the Bush administration has yet to detail an alternative plan, it is considering industry proposals for a voluntary, incentive-based approach and an emphasis on new technologies as a way around the deadlines and strict emission guidelines of the Kyoto accord. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said he "would not be adverse" to Bush's proposal to switch from mandatory to voluntary compliance with emission standards, provided there would be an incentive program for countries to change their industries' current practices. The WP calls the Demos change of tack "the first indication of an evolving bipartisan policy on one of the most contentious foreign policy issues Bush has confronted in the first months of his presidency."

An NYT front reports on the angry protests yesterday on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, where hundreds of Puerto Ricans demanded that the U.S. Navy stop the bombing exercises it has practiced on a local Naval camp since 1941. Many Puerto Ricans claim that contamination from spent shells has caused unusually high rates of cancer on the island (home to 9,400 people) as well as a rare heart condition linked to high noise levels. The protests led to the arrests of 65 demonstrators, who breached a fence and moved into restricted Navy land in an attempt to dissuade the Navy from resuming the shelling. Naval officials have long maintained that the site--alone on the Atlantic coast in accommodating joint training in aerial, amphibious, and ship bombardment--is a crucial for the preparation of sailors and marines. (Question: is the site unique in this respect due to geography, or climate, or because the local efforts to stop the bombing exercises over the years have failed?) The site's future will be determined by a local referendum on November 6th.

The NYT goes above the fold with a special report on heightened efforts by law and drug enforcement officials to combat the popularity of club drugs like Ecstasy by imposing criminal penalties on the owners of the clubs who can be proven to have knowledge of illegal drug use in their establishments. The test case for such efforts is pending in New Orleans, where the U.S. attorney is prosecuting two club owners under the 1986 federal Crack House Statute, used "against those who maintain a property where they know drugs are sold and used." The New Orleans case has also attracted the attention of the A.C.L.U., which asserts that the defendants in the case are being targeted for the sort of music they provide, speech protected under the First Amendment.

Both the LAT and the WP front the latest in U.S.-Russia squabble over American millionaire Dennis Tito's attempt to become the world's first paying visitor (an astronomic $20 million) to space. Tito was scheduled to lift-off in a Russian spacecraft Soyuz bound for the International Space Station (ISS) early this morning. But NASA, which had argued that the rudimentary space station was not yet ready for tourists, requested that Russia delay the trip to give a U.S. space shuttle attached to the ISS time to repair a glitch in the station's computer command and control system. The issue was resolved when Russia agreed not to dock the Soyuz to the space station until after the U.S. shuttle had departed. While the U.S. was unable to stop Tito from joining the Russian crew, it did get him to promise to pay for anything he might break during his six days on the station.

Dazed and Confused: The WP coverage of Tito's fantastic voyage reefers (and everybody else stuffs) the latest in the bizarre case of American Fulbright Scholar, John Tobin, who was arrested on drug charges in Russia in early February and later suspected of being an American spy by Russian counterintelligence. Yesterday in a Russian court Tobin was convicted of possessing and distributing two ounces of marijuana and sentenced to 37 months in prison. The case is headed for appeal. Any U.S. ravers who think their passion for trip-hop makes them unfair targets in misguided national drug war might consider that, should his appeals fail, Tobin will spend over three years in a Mordovian penal colony.