8/25/02
1:45:09 PM

Pax Christi Urges Civil Disobedience If Bush Escalates War On Iraq

by Tom Kelly, National Catholic Reporter, August 25, 2002

Pax Christi USA has served notice that escalated war on Iraq by the United States will trigger civil disobedience throughout this country. The international Catholic peace organization's board committed itself to that action at the Pax Christi USA National Assembly held at the University of Detroit-Mercy July 26-28. Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton urged the assembly's 600-plus participants to sign a pledge of resistance against U.S. military action in Iraq.

"The war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 was an unjust war condemned by Pope John Paul II," said Gumbleton, who was founding president of the U.S. branch of the peace organization and headed it from 1972 to 1991. "Any new war against Iraq will be an unjust war. We must say 'No!' "

The civil disobedience pledge was sponsored by eight national peace groups. In addition to Pax Christi USA they include the American Friends Service Committee, Education for Peace in Iraq Center, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Lutheran Peace Fellowship, National Network to End the War against Iraq, and Voices in the Wilderness. The petition, which was circulated for signatures at the assembly, indicates willingness "to join with others to engage in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience at U.S. federal facilities in order to prevent or halt the death and destruction that U.S. military action causes the people of Iraq."

Gumbleton proposed that next year Pax Christi members gather Aug. 6, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, at a place like Oak Ridge, Tenn., "where they are making the new nuclear weapons that we will be preparing to use. We must have our bodies there, do civil disobedience there, and say no to nuclear weapons in a very dramatic way," he said. He also called for a 22-day fast starting on July 16, anniversary of the first nuclear device explosion in Nevada in 1945.

In his keynote talk, Gumbleton contrasted choices between Pax Americana -- "the peace of America" as represented by Bush administration foreign policy -- and Pax Christi, the peace of Christ. He recalled that when President George Bush announced the war strikes in Afghanistan Oct. 7 he said, "We are a peaceful nation." Gumbleton then listed 19 military conflicts involving "this peaceful nation" since 1945, adding "and now Afghanistan."

The Bush administration's proposed nuclear missile defense is not a defensive strategy, but rather part of a first-strike capability, Gumbleton said. "Pax Americana: bombing, killing, wherever we decide."

Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister, the assembly's first keynoter, touched on the assembly's theme, "Casting Out Fear, Building on Hope, Living Nonviolence," when she recalled the gospel narrative of the Transfiguration. She noted that Jesus identified himself with Moses, who led people out of oppression, and with Elijah, whom King Ahab called "the troublemaker of Israel," the one who "exposed to the people the underlying causes of their problems, so they could both heal the present and have hope in a better future."

"Our ministry must be not only to comfort but to challenge church, state and community; not just to attend to the pain but to advocate for change; not simply to care for the victims of the world but also to change the institutions that victimize them," Chittister said

At one orientation session, first-time attendees were asked why they were there.

Gloria Dugay of Chicago said she was impressed by the ecumenical participation in a peace march against the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was held recently in Oak Park, Ill. Dugay said the march motivated her to be an ongoing part of such efforts.

Joe Walker, of East Grand Rapids, Mich., said he has been affiliated with Pax Christi since the Gulf War but hasn't been active beyond sending e-mails. Now, he said, it's really time to educate Catholics that peace and social justice are essential elements of their faith, "because most Catholics I know, they'll tell you about transubstantiation and the Virgin Mary, but they do not want to hear about peace and justice."

Danise Jones Dorsey, a member of the Black Catholics Congress in Baltimore, said she wanted to learn more about Pax Christi's anti-racism strategy because she was concerned about what "seemed to be an epidemic of violence in the African-American community." She said she wonders if the same elements that cause people of different countries to war against each other are taking hold in black America, and whether "the same strategies for conflict resolution would be effective in my community."

The Detroit gathering devoted one plenary session to launching its 20-year anti-racism initiative, "Brothers and Sisters All." David Robinson, Pax Christi USA's national coordinator, said one key focus of the program will be "dealing with the hidden racism within our own movement and developing ways of being accountable to our brothers and sisters in communities of color, especially those who are Catholic."

"We are essentially a liberal white peace movement," Tom Cordaro, a member of Pax Christi's anti-racism team, told NCR. "We're not going to find many people who think of themselves as being racist. But I think for white middle-class people the issue we really have to deal with is white entitlement and white privilege, and how that has guided the way we think about, frame and do our peace work. For a lot of white folks, they're not even aware of that."

The 2002 assembly marked the U.S. peace organization's 30th anniversary by recognizing six "faithful witnesses to the 'Peace of Christ,' " as Pax Christi USA Ambassadors of Peace: Helen Casey, Jesuit Fr. John Dear, Ray LaPort, Colman McCarthy, Megan McKenna and Nancy Small.

The final plenary session ended with participants extending their hands in blessing over a family from Wall, N.J. Tom Mahedy, the husband and father, faces three months in federal prison for crossing the line into the former School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, in Fort Benning, Ga. Mahedy was one of 43 nonviolent demonstrators who were arrested and sentenced for protesting the human rights abuses in Latin America carried out by graduates of the U.S.-run military training school.

"[Going to prison] is hard as a father," Mahedy told NCR, "but I've come to realize that while love begins at home, it has to flow forth into the world as well."

Tom Kelly is a freelance writer in Toledo, Ohio.

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives/081602/081602k.htm

8/25/02
1:30:19 PM

Bonfire for the Constitution - part one

http://moxnix2.homestead.com/bfire.html

June 3, 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order #12919 gathering together into a single document all the power and authority of a multitude of Executive Orders issued by preceding presidents from John Kennedy on. Recent examination of this Executive Order has brought to light that the consolidation of previous presidential orders deliver unprecedented authority into the hands of the Chief Executive that exceed those powers granted him under the U.S. Constitution.

Incorporated under the aegis of President Clinton's EO #12919 are powers originally claimed by President Kennedy in a series of Executive Orders signed into "law" in February of 1962 which, if invoked, would virtually suspend the greater portion of liberties guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

Make note of the date Feb 1962 this is when traitors 1st started coming out in the open

In Section 3 of Kennedy's original EO #10995 entitled, "ASSIGNING TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS" there is the vague statement, "Such authority shall include the power to amend modify, or revoke frequency assignments." Innocuous as this sounds, it embodies the power of the Chief Executive, in time of "national emergency", to seize control of all radio and other telecommunications.

On the same day that President Kennedy signed EO #10995, he also gave birth to four successive Orders that Clinton included in his EO containing provisions to disable constitutional rights. Executive Order #10997 empowers the Secretary of the Interior to seize all energy production facilities--specifically, "electrical power", "petroleum", "gas", "solid fuels", and "minerals". Section 3, subsection (d) of that order, entitled " Claimancy" states:

Prepare plans to claim materials, manpower, equipment, supplies and services needed in support of assigned responsibilities and other essential functions of the Department...to insure availability of such resources in an emergency. [emphasis and supplied]

Note the word "claim" in reference to "materials, manpower, equipment, supplies and services". The legal definition, as supplied by Black's Law Dictionary is, "To demand as one's own or as one's right...means by or through which claimant obtains possession or enjoyment of a privilege or thing. Demand for money or property as of a right...." This means that the government may, upon declaration of a state of local or national emergency, seize any of the above, private or otherwise, including "manpower".

As to what constitutes a national emergency again Black's definition is quite revealing:

"A state of national crisis; a situation demanding immediate and extraordinary national or federal action. Congress has made little or no distinction between a "state of national emergency" and a "state of war." Brown v. Bernstein, D.C.Pa., 49 F.Supp. 728, 732. [emphasis supplied]

EO #10998 places all food resources under authority of the Secretary of Agriculture.

EO #10999 invests the Secretary of Commerce with control over all means of transportation, public and private.

EO #11000 provides for the establishment of manpower resources at the discretion of the Secretary of Labor, with the authority to "claim" services (labor) and involuntary relocation of workers. Collateral authority for this conscription of labor is given in Title 50 app. United States Code, Section 2153 "WAR AND NATIONAL DEFENCE" under the section addressing civilian disposition entitled, "DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT OF 1950" in which is set forth that civilian personnel may be assigned work without regard to payment or reimbursement.

It is important to note that according to the "War and Emergency Powers Act" the United States has legally been under a state of national emergency since its enactment in 1933. It has never been repealed, thus leaving the president with instant powers to suspend the constitution. Most legal scholars and legislators who have studied the matter concur that the War and Emergency Powers Act has, in reality, already suspended the Constitution since the moment the act was signed into law by President Roosevelt. The actual suspension of those consitutional rights awaits only the impetus of a national emergency requiring it.

In 1933 a U.S. Congressman entered the following statement into the Congressional Record:

"I think of all the damnable heresies that have ever been suggested in connection with the Constitution, the doctrine of emergency is the worst. It means that when Congress declares an emergency, there is no Constitution. This means its death. It is the very doctrine that the German chancellor is invoking today in the dying hours of the parliamentary body of the German republic, namely, that because of an emergency, it should grant to the German chancellor absolute power to pass any law, even though the law contradicts the Constitution of the German republic. Chancellor Hitler is at least frank about it. We pay the Constitution lipservice, but the result is the same....the Constitution of the United States, as a restraining influence in keeping the federal government within the carefully prescribed channels of power, is moribund, if not dead."

The introduction to Senate Report 93-549, entered into the Congressional Record forty years later in 1973 states:

"A majority of the people of the United States have lived all their lives under emergency rule....For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency....And, in the United States, actions taken by the government in times of great crisis have from, at least, the Civil War, in important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency."

Following the introduction the report's opening statement goes on to say:

"Since March the 9th, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency....This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes. Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."

Not overlooked by those drafting the Constitution was the possible need to address national emergencies. The document contains certain provisions indicating that its signatories conceived of the possibility that some guarantees of personal liberties may, in the national interest, require suspension.

Article 1, Section 9 states: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion [an internal occurrence] or invasion [external] the public safety require it." This grants the citizen the freedom from imprisonment or detention without due process. The proviso "unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety require it" indicates the necessity to provide for some contingencies that may also carry with them the possibility for abuse. No document of liberty, however, could possibly proscribe all potential for misuse of those liberties without actually eliminating them in the process. It has been said that communism is nothing more than democracy with all potential for abuse legislated out.

As a result of the Executive Orders listed above, in concert with the War and Emergency Powers Act, there exists within the United States a government within a government. It is hidden, semi-covert in nature, and does not recognize the U.S. Constitution or its constraints. It functions autonomously as a form of totalitarian regime in suspended animation, awaiting its time of activation. It is a government driven by presidential Executive Orders to be executed by federal agencies run by non-elected officials.

Executive Orders amount to ready-wired buttons by which the president can suspend constitutional rights at any moment he determines that a "national emergency" exists. The great problem inherent is that no binding legal definition exists as to what constitutes a "national emergency". That definition lies entirely with the Chief Executive. When he declares a state of emergency, the aforementioned documents can be used to activate whatever federal agency is most suited to address the emergency. Those agencies include, but are not limited to, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA).

Because this nation is under a continual state of emergency due to the War and Emergency Powers Act, and the Constitution granting somewhat elastic powers of emergency in "cases of rebellion or invasion", the president can circumvent such fundamental protections as the Posse Comatatus Act which forbids the use of the military against U.S. citizens.

This slow motion decay of constitutional rights was not unforeseen by the Founding Fathers. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison once wrote, "I believe there are more instances of abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations...."

The Constitution of the United States of America, once the hub of American law and freedoms, has been moved to the position of the hub cap. It has become merely an ornamental relic that serves no real function other than that of making the American people feel as if the document still matters to those who govern.

Bonfire for the Constitution - Part two

In the event of a national emergency declared by the President of the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), would be invested with the power to suspend the U.S. Constitution and is positioned to take control of the United States government and its citizens. As discussed in Part I of this report, the authority of eleven preceding Presidential Executive Orders (1939 through 1991) has been consolidated into Order #12919. This concentration of executive authority invests FEMA with absolute power over:

a.. All United States communications facilities (EO 10995)

b.. Electrical power, petroleum, gas, fuels and minerals, public and private (10997)

c.. Food supplies, agricultural lands and facilities (10998)

d.. Transportation of any kind, including private, and control of seaports, waterways and highways (10999)

e.. Civilian labor forces without regard to financial remuneration as authorized under the "DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT OF 1950" (11000)

f.. Health, education and welfare institutions (11001)

g.. All airport and air transportation, public, private and commercial (11003)

h.. Railroads, inland waterways, and public storage facilities (11005)

Additionally, FEMA, under Executive Order #11002, can order the postmaster general to begin a national registration of all residents of the United States for purposes of control of population movement and relocation.

All of the aforementioned powers can be invoked with the stroke of a presidential pen and are free of congressional restrictions or intervention for a period of six months. The practical expression of these powers can be the equivalent of a sentence without trial or jury with no recourse to appeal for at least a half a year. Many legal and paralegal analysts have seen, in the powers delegated to FEMA during any declared national emergency, the authority to forcibly relocate entire families into federal work camps, even as to the dividing of families and of children from parents.

FEMA was created by President Carter under Executive Order #12148. Its legal authorization is Title 2, United States Code 5121 called the "Stafford Act." Within the text of that piece of "legislation" in Subchapter IV, section (B) is contained the wording:

"Measures to be undertaken during a hazard (including the enforcement of passive defense regulations prescribed by duly established military or civil authorities, the evacuation of personnel to shelter areas, the control of traffic and panic, and the control and use of lighting and civil communications)."emphasis supplied

In a telephone interview with FEMA attorneys, The Winds asked the legal definition of "passive defense regulations" as "prescribed by duly established military or civil authorities." Even FEMA's Counsel General, Michael Hirsh, was unable to give us any definition of those terms. The ambiguity of that wording veiled its meaning from even the highest ranking lawyer in the agency.

KEEPING THE LAWS UNCLEAR

http://www.thewinds.org/library/protocols_of_zion.html

In the principle document by which the New World Order is implemented, the ambiguity of legal terms is set forth as a necessary quality by which any interpretation desired may be secured. In the nebulous breadth of those ambiguities lies the latitude of interpretation to make laws and regulations say whatever those in authority want them to say. Concerning those laws they claim "...have twisted their interpretations so as to make them contradict each other. We have succeeded in erecting great and magnificent results by perverting the laws. The first result was that the interpretations of the laws actually masked their true intent. Afterwards, those laws were entirely hid from eyes of the governments because it became impossible to make anything out of the tangled web of legislation." emphasis supplied

The Winds also asked FEMA's public relations office the primary reasons for the forced evacuation of residents during the recent flooding in North Dakota and the orders (not requests) for some residents to remain in their homes following the recent hurricanes in the southeast. FEMA's response, strangely, did not indicate concern for the safety and well-being of the citizens involved, as one might expect of an agency tasked with the oversight of America's domestic security in time of disaster. Rather, their reasons for violating the constitutional rights of those citizens was a hedge against being sued by them or their survivors if they were injured or killed as a result of not being evacuated. Money, not lives, was their expressed justification for removing owners from their homes, in one instance, and commanding them not to leave them, in another.

Executive Order #11051 assigns responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning (later to become FEMA), and authorizes all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis or national emergency. emphasis supplied

Again, the vagueness of the wording leaves wide the door of interpretation. As to what constitutes an "emergency" the Stafford Act defines it as thus:

"Emergency--'Emergency' means any occasion or instance for which, in the determination of the President, Federal assistance is needed to supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States." emphasis supplied

KEEPING DISSIDENT GROUPS QUIET

Former Chief of FEMA's Civil Security Division, General Frank Salzedo, once stated that his interpretation of FEMA's role is, among other things, "prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis." The Constitution, on the other hand, states:

"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The question arises as to how General Salzedo's statement could survive being filtered through the First Amendment. What he said amounts to "government-speak" for the potential of creating an American Tienanmen Square. One of the Executive Orders gathered into Clinton's EO #12919 was an Order signed by President Nixon known as the "Omnibus Emergency Preparedness Decree". Howard J. Ruff, economist and publisher of The Ruff Times says "Since the enactment of [that] Order, the only thing standing between us and dictatorship is the good character of the President, and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it." The former slave and Civil War activist, Fredrick Douglas, once said that the limits of a tyrant's power are set by the willingness of the people to tolerate him.

During activation of these Executive Orders, FEMA answers only to the National Security Council which answers only to the President, and, as mentioned previously, once these powers are invoked even Congress cannot intervene or countermand them for six months.

GUN MOUNTED OVER THE MANTLE

The command and control structure for the oversight and administration of these extra-constitutional powers (the teeth to execute and enforce the above orders) is already in place. FEMA is the administrating agency for several top secret facilities. The most notable is burrowed deep into the bedrock beneath Mount Weather near Berryville, Virginia. Also known as the Western Virginia office of Controlled Conflict Operations, this underground command post was originally constructed for the purpose of housing top officials of the U.S. government during a national emergency such as imminent nuclear war. It is still contained within the "black" budget that does not appear in FEMA's published budgetary documents. Mt. Weather, along with other such secret installations as the one beneath a luxury resort in West Virginia called Greenbrier, officially does not exist.

Wallace Stickney, former FEMA director under George Bush, recalled that even the members of Congress approaching his agency to question some budget expenditures were not allowed access to the knowledge of where the money was directed--and they were the ones responsible for budgetary oversight. Even more astonishing is the fact that Stickney himself was denied such access. He said, "I was aware funding was being passed through but didn't know where it was going--nor did Congress, which demanded to know. Normally, as I understood it, nobody questioned the arithmetic."

If a nuclear attack occurred during Stickney's tenure in office, he was not to be included among those privileged to partake in the safety of the underground complex. He would have been required to remain at his post and, in the parlance of the nuclear disaster planners, be cindered. That insecurity for FEMA's current director, James Lee Witt, ended when President Clinton conferred cabinet status on him in February of 1996.

There is within government a quasi-legal concept called the "Rule of Necessity". Simply put, this doctrine says that whatever is necessary to preserve the nation against its foes, whether external or internal, will be done--apparently without regard to any violence done to the Constitution. It is to address the Rule of Necessity that Executive Orders are created. EOs did not have their beginnings in the desires of American presidents to transform the executive office into a de facto dictatorship. The first Presidential Executive Order was issued by George Washington in 1789, but no numbering system or uniformity was applied until 1907 when the Department of State retroactively designated an EO issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 as Executive Order 1.

What has become of this executive privilege since the Civil War has been rather like an insidiously introduced, systemic infection aimed at the total debilitation of the U.S. Constitution. As to whether these extreme powers of the Executive Branch will actually be implemented--there is an old saying in the theatre that if there is a gun mounted over the fireplace mantle in the first act, it will be used before the end of the final act. It ain't hangin' up there for nothin'

Today many experts claim we are one short step away from World War Three

Knowledge is part of being prepared

http://moxnix2.homestead.com/index2.html

8/25/02
1:15:57 PM

"We Are Not The Enemy!" - The Battle Of Portland

by William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Report, August 24, 2002

The image is chilling. A middle-aged woman, plainly dressed, with a puff of auburn hair, is clutched in a hammer-lock by a Portland police officer dressed in full riot gear. His riot baton is jammed high under her chin. Around her, three more armor-clad police officers swarm in, face-masks down. The woman's face is contorted in terror. In her hand is a sign protesting George W. Bush.

This was the scene on the streets of Portland, OR, on the evening of August 22nd as captured by a photographer for the Associated Press. Thousands of peaceful protesters had descended upon the Hilton Hotel where Mr. Bush was attending a political fundraiser for Senator Gordon Smith. They held signs reading, "Drop Bush, not Bombs," and other similar slogans. Among the protesters were pregnant women, parents with infants and small children, elderly citizens, and citizens in wheelchairs

According to a report by CBS News, the protest became unruly when some of the fundraiser attendees were "jostled" as they moved through the crowd towards the entrance to the hotel. At that point, the riot police swarmed in, swinging clubs and dousing the crowd with pepper spray. Rubber bullets were also fired into the crowd, and snipers were seen on the roofs surrounding the scene. The protesters responded by hammering on the hoods of police cars and screaming, "We are not the enemy!"

A man named Randy, who attended the protest, reports the sequence of events as follows:

"I was between 5th and 6th on the sidewalk. Maybe the ones in front were warned to move, but I didn't hear any warning. It had been a peaceful protest. Suddenly the police came forward spraying pepper spray. A man nearby with an infant in a backpack got hit real good. The baby's face was so red I thought it had quit breathing. From the other direction came cop cars through the crowd and rubber bullets were fired at those closest to the cars. I kept retreating but the cops kept spraying. Lots of people were sprayed, including the cameraman from Channel 2 KATU."

Other eyewitness accounts from the streets of Portland similarly describe what appears to have been a terrifyingly violent response from the police to a peaceful protest by assembled American citizens.

This is a profoundly disturbing turn of events. Mr. Bush is protested wherever he goes these days, and the crowds which attend them are growing. These are not black-clad anarchists kicking in windows, however. The woman who was attacked by the police looked as ordinary as any small-town librarian, and anarchists are smart enough to leave their children at home if there is a riot in the offing. The streets of Portland were filled on August 22nd by average American citizens seeking to inform the President of their disfavor regarding the manner in which he is governing their country. They were rewarded with the business end of a billy club, a face-full of pepper spray, and the jarring impact of a rubber bullet.

If America needed one more example of the cancer that has been chewing through the guts of our most basic freedoms since Mr. Bush assumed office, they can look to Portland. The right to freely assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances has been rescinded at the point of a gun.

The imperative is clear. Such violence by the authorities cannot go unchallenged. The next time Mr. Bush appears in public, there must be even more concerned Americans to greet him. They must face the baton and the pepper spray, they must stare into the shielded faces of the police, and they must stand in non-violent disobedience of the idea that they are not allowed to be there. The men and women who faced the brunt of police fury in Portland are to be lauded as American patriots, and their actions must be duplicated by us all. The groups which organized this protest, and the ones to come, deserve our praise.

The media, which spent much of the evening reporting that only a few hundred protesters were in attendance, must be browbeaten into reporting the facts from both sides - from the police, who reportedly detained people like the woman in the picture "for their own safety," and from the protesters who took a savage beating for daring to stand against Mr. Bush. If the battle of Portland is allowed to cast even more fear into the hearts and minds of Americans, we have lost yet another swath of freedoms. Stand and be counted if you can.

The whole world is watching.

William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. His new book, 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence,' will be published soon by Pluto Press.

mailto:william.pitt@truthout.org

Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.25A.wrp.portland.htm

8/25/02
1:11:35 PM

PLEASE urge EVERYONE you know to begin watching Donahue on MSNBC regularly. He is an oasis in a corporate media wasteland and we need to all do what we can to promote his show and KEEP IT ON THE AIR!! [If you are outside the US urge your TV to carry Donahue.]

mailto:donahueideas@msnbc.com

mailto:donahue@msnbc.com

Tonight he had:

1) Anti-globalization protestor denouncing Bush's pro-bombing mentality (AND she gave indymedia.org's website -- and so did Donahue!!)

2) Hollywood actors supporting farmworkers struggle for worker rights

3) Ben (of Ben n Jerry's icecream) showing our government's obscene glut of money going to military, and how a tiny percent of that shifted to education, health, headstart, and alternative energy, could make our nation fully educated, have complete healthcare, END WORLD HUNGER and be completely energy independent. He also showed that if we did so, our military would still vastly dwarf Russian, Chinese, Iraqi, Iranian, N. Korean, and other rogue states COMBINED.

Where can you get this kind of truth? PLEASE DEDICATE YOURSELF TO URGING ALL YOU CAN TO SUPPORT DONAHUE. HERE'S WAYS TO DO IT:

- Post this appeal on ALL indymedia.org websites on a weekly basis urging all indymedia.org readers to spread it to all they can

- Post weekly at michaelmoore.org site, and all other activist sites

- Write letters to the editor to magazines, and newspapers urging people to watch Donahue to get some REAL news

- Email everyone you can every time you see something of interest coming on Donahue to remind people to tune in.

- EMAIL DONAHUE AND THANK HIM OVER AND OVER AND OVER donahueideas@msnbc.com, donahue@msnbc.com

- Join activist discussion groups and urge all to urge everyone to watch Donahue regularly (Reply to this email with SEND DISC LISTS, and we will send you 800 activist discussion group email contacts you can join to urge them to promote Donahue).

8/25/02
1:08:15 PM

The Climes They Are A-Changin

The Indisputable Science Of Global Warming

by Mike Romoth, Village Voice, July 31 - August 6, 2002

ot to suspect that a dirty little word lies at the center of the controversy spawned by the most recent Bush administration document on climate change. In the June EPA policy paper "Climate Action Report 2002," the government admitted that climate change is not only real but getting worse, that human activities are the most likely cause, and that the negative consequences are real and dangerous, a clear and present threat. This dirty little word may have been the reason conservative leaders have privately pressed to have EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman fired from her position—for producing a document that provides the most realistic, scientifically accurate picture of the problem available from current research. This dirty little word may be the main reason President Bush is eternally trying to distance himself from this itchy environmental problem, this foreign cause touted by Russians, Europeans, and Japanese. The word: liability.

In terms of scale, the climate change issue will make any sort of environmental liability lawsuit filed in national or international courts to date seem like tarts and gingerbread. Human pressures on the global climate—what scientists call anthropogenic forcings—represent a problem orders of magnitude larger than the impacts of even the most notorious environmental catastrophes of modern times—the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, or even the disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, which suffocated 10,000 people in their beds.The Netherlands faces undeniable threats from rising seas, and Bangladesh will not survive. Symptoms are already apparent in the daily headlines—islands in the South Pacific abandoned by their residents as their ground water turns salty; Connecticut-size bergs calving off the antarctic ice mass; record floods in Europe followed by more record floods. Across northern India this year, record-breaking heat storms arrived before the monsoon, raising the temperature to 123 degrees in the shade—so hot that the birds were dropping dead from the trees. Exactly as the scientists have been warning. And much earlier than most had expected, save those branded doomsayers only a few years ago. Considered in this context, the EPA document may represent the most important mea culpa of all time. The line between an "act of God" and an "action of Man" has just become significantly more blurry, with all the associated legal implications.

And then there's that sticky bit. Things are only going to get worse. Expert opinion varies widely on the time frame for the most dramatic impacts. It could be next week—certain important factors may hang on a hair trigger. Record-breaking fires, droughts, and floods have already become annual events around the nation. It could be in a decade. Agreement is nearly universal that current trends will continue to worsen. It probably will occur within the century. This fact is largely accepted as a given even under many of the more benign scenarios for a changing climate. What is abundantly clear in the science of the matter is that we as a society are at the beginning of a long journey.

The science of climate change begins with the geological record of the paleoclimate—records of past sea-level changes, telltale signs of the cycle of glaciation and retreat, firestorm signatures carved into the skin of the earth over tens of thousands of years. Data from Greenland ice cores and sediment samples collected from bogs around the globe. Pollen records maintained over the millennia. Tree rings counting back thousand-year records of rain and drought. Geology, biology, ecology, and chemistry all working together to create a picture of the climatological history of the planet—a turbulent history marked by mass extinctions, sudden and dramatic changes in sea level, large-scale migrations of forests, storms to dwarf any of the minor maelstroms recorded in the human histories.

Today, networks of sampling buoys monitor sea surface temperatures, floating along gridworks mapping the oceans of the world. Satellite eyes peep down on cloud cover, identifying and enumerating the gases in the atmospheric column that runs from outer space to surface Earth. Global maps made to shift with time mark the changes in water resources, rivers running dry before they reach the ocean, the disappearance of the Aral Sea. In nightside snapshots, with each passing year, the ring of Amazon fires eats closer to the heart of darkness—the unconquered lands. Pollutant plumes emitted by each city on Earth stretch for tens of miles, forming confluent rivers of contaminants that flow in the winds, crossing ocean-scale distances to poison the remotest sites on anyone's map.

Over the course of the past decade, many interests have entered the melee of debate on the issue of ongoing anthropogenic climate change. Energy companies arguing that nuclear power is the only acceptable answer. Advocates of wind power, sun power, wave power, volcano power. Oil producers. Automobile manufacturers. Coal men. The stakes involved in the debate over climate change do not come any higher. The largest industries of humankind, energy and transportation, are directly implicated. Virtually every activity in the life of the global, modern-day consumer is involved. Many natural responses to the changes we cause act only to exacerbate the problem—for example, the recent thaw of northern permafrost exposed a new source of greenhouse emissions. In the media, conventional scientific thinking is denounced as extremist, while members of the smoke-'em-if-you-got-'em school of scientific inquiry are awarded the chairmanships of well-heeled think tanks and lobbying empires to quibble, to hem and haw, to delay and filibuster.

However, as the Bush administration discovered, scientific theories have a way of proving themselves, regardless of whether policy makers and corporate heads believe them or not. And the daily news is beginning to heap ample evidence that the unequaled hubris at the core of this ever expanding, all-consuming 21st-century technotopia has stirred forces that are well beyond any sort of normal climatic fluctuation or temporary readjustment of weather patterns. One cannot wish away elementary thermodynamics, basic geophysics, fundamental biology, or essential fluid dynamics.

Already we have seen the unfolding of many of the events described by some of the climate change "extremists"—massive wind storms that pummel Europe, leading to hundreds of deaths, and the destruction of millions of acres of established forest. Unusual winter tornados ripping through the U.S. Latin America struck by storms that killed tens of thousands and destroyed decades of infrastructure over the course of a few days. Entire nations sinking into famine as unprecedented droughts choke crops in the fields. Record-breaking floods becoming annual events in mainland China. The permafrost under northern Europe beginning to melt from under vast regions that have not known a real thaw for tens of thousands of years. These are the milestones many experts consider symptoms of problems that can only grow worse as the Leviathan Climate gains more thermal momentum, growing more turbulent, more unpredictable as established climatic patterns change and shift.

Even some of the largest energy corporations on Earth have begun to accept the science of climate change, quietly withdrawing their support for rabidly anti-climate-change PR campaigns and beginning to trumpet their investment in renewable fuels. The response from the international insurance industry has been as mercenary as would be expected. Many large insurers have begun advising industrial clients with facilities in low-lying coastal regions to begin armoring their plants with systems of protective dikes and coastal constructions. The need for action is no longer questioned by the wise investor.

The uncertainties and confusion over climate change bear comparison to a series of scientific discoveries and theories that culminated in one of the highlights of the end of the 19th century: the discovery of radiation. The scientists who first worked with radioactive materials knew they were onto something, but they were working in the dark—manipulating and adjusting their notions to suit anecdotal evidence. When a researcher suffered burns to his leg from a vial of radium carried in his trouser pocket, scientists discovered that there was some danger involved in handling these new types of materials. Rapid commercialization of the technology led to the development of fluoroscopes, which allowed customers in shoe stores to examine the bones of their feet with live-action viewing devices—subjecting even passersby to massive doses of radiation. Health drinks were concocted that contained uranium, the new wonder of wonders and miracle cure-all. In beauty shops, women with excess facial hair could have their faces bathed in X rays until the hair fell out. Only years later, as the cancers began twisting the jaws of women around the country, did the public become aware of how dangerous radiation could be—and that was years too late for anyone to wish away their troubles.

And despite the occasional media attention to climate change, real responses and actions remain fairly hard to come by even among countries that support the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, aimed at limiting human emissions of greenhouse gases. Most national governments face significant economic obstacles to the implementation of the guidelines, with no nation currently on track to achieve compliance. Continuous growth of national economies is absolutely mandatory for survival in the highly competitive markets evolving under current trends toward globalization. Economic growth is linked directly to energy consumption and higher emissions of greenhouse gases. Emission limits for individual nations under Kyoto are set at 5 percent below those of 1990, but in virtually every country on Earth, economic growth has raised emissions to well above those ancient figures. Compliance with Kyoto would entail substantial shifts in the largest national economies, with the U.S. taking the biggest hit of all as the biggest polluter of all.

As a result, most national governments have failed to establish the aggressive regulations needed to achieve the greenhouse emissions reductions required for real progress. Even in nations that have attempted to take the lead on climate change, enforcement of lofty policy initiatives has proved a nearly impossible task. In the single remaining superpower on Earth and the confirmed largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the sitting administration blindly refuses to have anything to do with climate change. Its recommendation? Pretend the problem does not exist. Act as though the science is not valid. We'll all adapt. You know . . . somehow.

In the long term, the symptoms of the disease will become pronounced enough to convince even the most reluctant Americans that climate change is not some sort of flim-flam invented by a bunch of grant-greedy eco-kooks. Perhaps some sort of limit should be established for the level of destruction we will allow before action is taken on climate change. The destruction of agriculture in California, say, or the permanent loss of New Orleans, Miami, and a few other coastal cities by the year 2050. Of course, by the time these limits have been reached, the time to do anything about the climate problem will have long passed. The Leviathan Climate will have awakened then, and there will be no apologizing to the grandchildren or turning back. No amount of money will prove sufficient. No amount of spin doctoring will be able to stem the mounting losses. Issues of liability will become moot as the planetwide catastrophe gathers steam.

Recent data obtained from the tens of thousands of monitoring buoys networked across the world's oceans have underscored the critical role played by a phenomenon known as the Thermohaline Circulation—a massive conveyor belt of heated water carried from the tropics to the northern latitudes via the currents of the Atlantic Ocean. Some researchers believe that this current system may be the trigger that initiates the cycles of glaciation, the ice age trigger. Certain evidence suggests that this circulation may be extremely sensitive to changes, shutting down in response to minor pressures. Other evidence suggests that the thermohaline may be disrupted by the formation of a large lens of freshwater sitting atop the saline waters of the oceans around Greenland and Iceland. Such a lens is currently forming in the North Atlantic as a result of the melting of glaciers and ice sheets in the north. There is no way of currently knowing or predicting what may come next.

However, given the consensus for action on climate change expressed by the majority of the other industrialized nations, the U.S. will find itself in an increasingly difficult position as the lone holdout against responsible and progressive action on the climate problem. Already, international accord on the Kyoto Protocol in the absence of U.S. support signals a shift in the post-Cold War paradigm that has dominated the international political arena for a decade. The Kyoto agreement was formulated based on a fundamental tenet of democratic public law, the concept of the commons—property belonging in equal measure to all citizens for all time. Leadership on this issue must value the hard commitments required of democratic thinking, and not simply trot out the term to justify the current mania for saber rattling. Perhaps "superpower" status is no longer a given for any individual nation. Radical backlash against U.S. policy, or rather lack of policy, on the climate change problem can only be expected to grow as the symptomatic evidence grows, as the record-breaking storms unleash their fury, as the droughts consume the harvests of dozens of nations, as the rivers either flood beyond all parallel or run dry as a bone, as coastal regions lose their war against the encroaching sea. Not the stuff of science fiction. The stuff of Science.

And as all the proponents of action on these issues agree, the Kyoto Protocol is really nothing more than a symbolic gesture, a nod to the fact that future agreements will be required, that more extensive regulations will be established, and that the problem has only begun to be addressed. Responsible and mature leadership will be required to guide nations around the globe through the admittedly difficult adjustments that will be expected of each and every citizen, every local government office, and all levels of the federal government of each nation on Earth. Unfortunately, for an alarming number of Americans, the "environment" has been reduced to the strip of lawn and the manicured shrubs they pass on the way from the parking lot to their climate-controlled office buildings, or between their climate-controlled automobiles and their climate-controlled homes.

A serious tremor in the accepted order of things would arise from the multinational imposition of economic sanctions against the U.S. for failure to comply with the regulatory regime to be established under Kyoto. The most obvious medicines for the problem, such as aggressive energy conservation and protection of forested regions, are direct threats to the de facto capitalist economic principle of infinite economic growth to meet ever increasing demand in a world of infinite space and resources. Humanity, as a species, has reached a time in its evolution when it must begin to consider its own limits—beyond race, beyond economic politics, beyond any form of enlightened thinking of the past. The Bush administration is right on one thing: Adaptation is the only answer to these new realities. Rigid ways of thinking, old ways of thinking, no longer apply. A new paradigm is needed, at the very root of the culture. Those who fail to bend will be broken. The science of the matter will see to that.

Source: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0231/romoth.php

8/25/02
1:03:56 PM

Petition: NO IRAQ WAR

The Bush White House is aggressively promoting war on Iraq, against the advice of its diplomats, and without strong support from Congress, the American public, or our allies. The organization, MoveOn is launching a petition to oppose a war that would likely undermine both national and world security. Let's show our representatives that they have strong public support to stop this war. If you sign today, your comments will be hand-delivered to your Senators as part of a national day of action next week. They're organizing constituent meetings with Senate offices everywhere.

Sign the petition at: http://www.moveon.org/nowar

8/25/02
1:01:50 PM

Regressive Progressive?

by Katha Pollitt, The Nation, May 27, 2002

As chairman of the fifty-nine-member Congressional Progressive Caucus and potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has been quite visible lately. At a time when few Democrats are daring to question the war aims of the Bush Administration--or even to ask what they are--Kucinich has spoken eloquently against the Patriot Act, the ongoing military buildup and the vague and apparently horizonless "war on terrorism." From tax cuts for the rich and the death penalty (against) to national health insurance and the environment (for), Kucinich has the right liberal positions. Michael Moore, who likes to rib progressives for favoring white wine and brie over hot dogs and beer, would surely approve of Kucinich's man-of-the-people persona--he's actually a New Age-ish vegan, but his website has a page devoted to "Polka, Bowling and Kielbasa."

One thing you won't find on Kucinich's website, though, is any mention of his opposition to abortion rights. In his two terms in Congress, he has quietly amassed an anti-choice voting record of Henry Hyde-like proportions. He supported Bush's reinstatement of the gag rule for recipients of US family planning funds abroad. He supported the Child Custody Protection Act, which prohibits anyone but a parent from taking a teenage girl across state lines for an abortion. He voted for the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which makes it a crime, distinct from assault on a pregnant woman, to cause the injury or death of a fetus. He voted against funding research on RU-486. He voted for a ban on dilation and extraction (so-called partial-birth) abortions without a maternal health exception. He even voted against contraception coverage in health insurance plans for federal workers--a huge work force of some 2.6 million people (and yes, for many of them, Viagra is covered). Where reasonable constitutional objections could be raised--the lack of a health exception in partial-birth bans clearly violates Roe v. Wade, as the Supreme Court ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart--Kucinich did not raise them; where competing principles could be invoked--freedom of speech for foreign health organizations--he did not bring them up. He was a co-sponsor of the House bill outlawing all forms of human cloning, even for research purposes, and he opposes embryonic stem cell research. His anti-choice dedication has earned him a 95 percent position rating from the National Right to Life Committee, versus 10 percent from Planned Parenthood and 0 percent from NARAL.

When I spoke with Kucinich by phone, he seemed to be looking for a way to put some space between himself and his record. "I believe life begins at conception"--Kucinich was raised as a Catholic--"and that it doesn't end at birth." He said he favored neither a Human Life Amendment that would constitutionally protect "life" from the moment of conception, nor the overturning of Roe v. Wade (when asked by Planned Parenthood in 1996 whether he supported the substance of Roe, however, he told them he did not). He spoke of his wish to see abortion made rare by providing women with more social supports and better healthcare, by requiring more responsibility from men and so on. He presented his votes as votes not against abortion per se but against federal funding of the procedure. Unfortunately, his record does not easily lend itself to this reading: He voted specifically against allowing Washington, DC, to fund abortions for poor women with nonfederal dollars and against permitting female soldiers and military dependents to have an abortion in overseas military facilities even if they paid for it themselves. Similarly, although Kucinich told me he was not in favor of "criminalizing" abortion, he voted for a partial-birth-abortion ban that included fines and up to two years in jail for doctors who performed them, except to save the woman's life. What's that, if not criminalization?

"I haven't been a leader on this," Kucinich said. "These are issues I would not have chosen to bring up." But if he plans to run for President, Kucinich will have to change his stance, and prove it, or kiss the votes of pro-choice women and men goodbye. It won't be enough to present himself as low profile or, worse, focused elsewhere (he voted to take away abortion rights inadvertently? in a fog? thinking about something more "important" than whether women should be forced to give birth against their will?). "I can't tell you I don't have anything to learn," Kucinich told me. OK, but shouldn't he have started his education before he cast a vote barring funds for abortions for women in prison? (When I told him the inhumanity of this particular vote made me feel like throwing up--you're not only in jail, you have to have a baby too?--he interjected, "but there's a rape exception!") Kucinich says he wants to "create a dialogue" and "build bridges" between pro-choicers and anti-choicers, but how can he "heal divisions" when he's so far on one side? The funding issue must also be squarely faced: As a progressive, Kucinich has to understand that denying abortion funding to poor women is as much a class issue as denying them any other kind of healthcare.

That a solidly anti-choice politician could become a standard- bearer for progressivism, the subject of hagiographic profiles in The Nation and elsewhere, speaks volumes about the low priority of women's rights to the self-described economic left, forever chasing the white male working-class vote. Supporting an anti-choice Congressman may have seemed pragmatic; trying to make him President would be political suicide. Pregnant prisoners may not vote, but millions of pro-choice women do.

Source: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020527&s=pollitt

8/25/02
12:43:48 PM

The Soul Of The Worker And The American Restoration

A speech by U.S. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich

Delivered at the Iowa AFL-CIO State Convention on Wednesday August 14, 2001

I was born into the House of Labor. My father was a Teamster who drove a truck for 35 years. He died with his first retirement check in his pocket, uncashed. He and my mother raised seven children, of which I was the oldest. We lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17. Having a job doesn't solve all of a family's problems. One of my first jobs was at the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland. As a copyboy I joined the American Newspaper Guild. Years later, working at TV 8, I belonged to AFTRA. Today I am a member of the cameraman's union, the IATSE of the AFL-CIO.

This is my membership card. I am of the House of Labor and still building. This is my card of membership in the House of Representatives. This card (House) is where my work is. And this card (IATSE) is where my heart is.

The hopes and dreams of the men and women who sent me to congress are the stars by which I journey. Whenever there is an organizing campaign, a picket line to walk, jobs to save, working conditions to improve, laws to champion, I'm there. This is my purpose: To stand up and to speak out on behalf of those who have built this country and who want to rebuild this country. This is my passion: To raise up the rights of working people. Workers' rights are the key to protecting our democracy.

Workers' rights embody spiritual principles which sustain families, nourish the soul and create peace. Worker's rights are human rights.

Today, let us begin anew to rededicate our efforts to bring economic justice to those who have created the wealth through their work. A re-energized labor movement will reenergize America's politics and create a more just society. Your cause is the cause of our nation. Your dream is the American dream. The cause of union, of brotherhood and sisterhood is felt in the worker's anthem. Solidarity can be the song which echoes across this land. It can be the music which lifts up the hearts of all those who dignify work with their toil.

For decades labor has been telling the nation about the dangers of unchecked corporate power. Organizing campaigns have brought the lessons home:

Employers firing union supporters. Forcing workers to listen to anti-union propaganda from company supervisors. Bringing in outsiders to run well-funded anti-union campaigns. Threatening loss of jobs and even threatening to move out of town.

Often in these struggles labor stands alone. But we need to change this. We need a Democratic Party which will ensure the right to organize by establishing an automatic union once half the workers sign up. You know, sisters and brothers, that when workers can choose a union, free of fear and intimidation, they choose to have the collective voice a union provides. As a member of the Cleveland Jobs With Justice workers rights board I have seen the community help nearly 2,000 workers to join unions. We need a national labor law which provides for democracy in the workplace.

Labor has stood almost alone while corporations have cut wages and benefits, slashed working hours, tried to undermine wage an hour provisions, reneged on contracts, jettisoned retirements through bankruptcy strategies. The current clamor for corporate accountability calls for honesty in stating the numbers, and faithful custody of shareholders money.

Yet there needs to be equal concern for those who created the wealth through their labor. Because the attacks on unions are a means of redistributing the wealth upwards. As union membership has declined, the disparity of wealth has increased. Since 1973 union membership has dropped from 24% to 14%. And the share of aggregate income of the poor, the middle class and the upper middle class has declined.

It's an old saying that the rich get richer. But it's a new convention in the American political economy that a class of working poor has emerged, including the working homeless. More than 1/2 the homeless families in Iowa are headed by someone who is employed. Congress will not pass an increase in the $5.15 minimum wage even though the inflation adjusted minimum wage is 21% lower today than in 1979.

Since 1981 the share of income of the richest 5% of this country has increased more than 40% while that of the lowest fifth has decreased more than 20%. An even starker contrast arises. According to Business Week, the average CEO made 42 times the average workers pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990 and 531 times in 2000. Forbes Magazine points out that the number of billionaires increased from 13 in 1982 to 149 in 1996.

In the past 20 years you sat at the negotiating table, you fought for fair wages and benefits, you were told you were just asking for too much, that your demands would make the company less competitive. And all the while the wealth kept getting accelerated upwards, with the help of NAFTA and other trade agreements which were designed to undermine workers rights and lower wages world wide.

I'd like to read a quote to you. ". . . working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. . . the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself." Pope Leo XIII said this 111 years ago in his encyclical On Capital and Labor.

I quote a great spiritual leader because standing behind the daily efforts to lift up the human condition through improving standards of work is a great moral cause. It is about the intrinsic worth of each and every human being. When both work and workers are valued, when all men and women are given a chance to earn their daily bread; when all are paid a living wage, when hands strong and weak can clasp in common enterprise, to seek and to build a newer world, then every day will belong to workers. And every voice will praise the moment when human toil has lifted up the human condition. It is a high cause which brings us together, which causes us to put ourselves on the line.

We need to feel in every cell of our bodies that power which comes from union: the power which confirms our purpose, the power when focused and directed will save our nation by saving the Democratic Party from the clutches of corporate interests. Enlightened self-interest requires labor to make the Democratic Party accountable. Labor must rally the Democrats to the workers' banner. Labor must begin now to build the Democratic Party platform for 2004 to ensure that solid principles of economic justice prevail and to inspire millions of Americans, who would otherwise stay home on Election Day, to vote to save our democracy.

Labor cannot afford to settle for half-hearted nominees or half measures which keep in place a system which is destroying our democracy through trade agreements which transfer sovereign power to the World Trade Organization, undermine our economy and devastate workers' ability to defend themselves. "All that harms labor is treason," said President Lincoln. "If any man tells you that he loves America (but) he hates labor, he is a liar."

Supporters of the decaying system of injustice continue to advance propositions which are an offense to basic fairness and workers' dignity. With the Team Act they attacked the right to organize. With the Rewarding Performance in Compensation Act, they wanted to strip workers of overtime. In the name of workplace flexibility, they wanted to repeal the Fair Labor Standards Act. With the Paycheck Protection Act they attacked union dues as compulsory and political. They wanted workplace safety rules set by corporate consensus and not by OSHA. They would take us back to the days when workers had no protections nor rights. Back to the days of "Sixteen Tons."

"You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St.Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store."

No more 16 tons in America! The soul of the worker is not for sale. It will not be sacrificed upon the corporate altar, nor annihilated by a hostile or indifferent government. The soul of the worker will be redeemed by the enshrinement in law of workers' rights. If in 2004, Labor goes up to the Mountaintop of our nation's Capitol, it must bring back engraved in stone these rights of working people:

"People have a right to a job. A right to a safe workplace. A right to decent wages and benefits. A right to organize and be represented. A right to grieve about working conditions. A right to strike. A right to fair compensation for injuries on the job. A right to sue if injured by negligent employers. A right to security of pension and retirement benefits. A right to participate in the political process."

These basic rights ought to be inviolate in a democratic society. There can be no true corporate accountability unless corporations are accountable to workers. There can be no accountability to workers unless workers rights are protected. And workers rights cannot be protected unless the Democratic party makes it the centerpiece of its legislative program, and its drive for the White House in 2004. The Democratic Party must be challenged by Labor to truly be the party of all the people.

When the Democratic Party rises it must be with the ranks not from the ranks. "The future of labor is the future of America," said John L. Lewis.

It is the restoration of the rights of workers which will put us at the dawn of a new political age. The rights of workers are core of principles of an American Restoration. These aren't mere political principles. These are timeless moral principles, about fairness, about equality, about justice.

In the 1660s the English Restoration brought back the royal family to power. The American Restoration will be about restoring the American working family to economic power, to ensure that all have jobs, that all have meaningful work and that all make a living wage. "The enthusiasm of falling welfare numbers," said Cardinal Mahoney, "should be tempered by the reality of persistent poverty and wages too meager to provide for a family's needs. Many may be leaving welfare, too few have left poverty." Twenty-five percent of all workers in Iowa earn poverty level hourly wages. Who can live at $5.15 an hour? The campaign for a living wage is fundamental to making certain that people have more than crumbs when they sit down to eat their daily bread.

The restoration of the rights of workers in America and throughout the North American continent will begin when we repeal NAFTA. NAFTA has spurred a $360 billion trade deficit, costing 363,000 high paying jobs, most in manufacturing. This is called free trade. But where is freedom when jobs are lost? Where is freedom when industries threaten to move out of the country unless wages are cut? Where is freedom when the right to bargain collectively is crushed? Where is freedom when a union is broken? Where is freedom when you can't make a mortgage payment? Where is freedom when you can't send your children to college? An economic democracy is a precondition of a political democracy. Where is freedom?

NAFTA has attacked federal laws meant to protect worker rights, human rights and environmental quality principles. It is time to repeal NAFTA. It is time to reclaim state and local sovereignty which NAFTA has usurped. No NAFTA, no Fast Track. No more back track on democracy. No more back track on workers' rights. No more back track n human rights. No back track on the bill of rights.

"The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world," said the founder of the AFL-CIO Samuel Gompers in 1887. It is time to return to bilateral trade agreements, nation to nation. It is time for humane trading partnerships where the living wages, benefits and retirement security of workers of each nation constitute a centerpiece of trade pacts.

The American Restoration will be about restoring the physical health of our people with universal health care. I worked with the SEIU and all of organized labor in Cleveland to save two urban hospitals from closure. A market-based system of health care has brought about closure of hundreds of community hospitals, limited access to health care, denied specialized care, driven up the cost and made health care a bargaining chip in negotiations, forcing trade-offs for wage increases. A universal health care system, with prescription drug coverage will protect quality of life and reflect the improved health of our democracy. Our nation has the money to do this.

The questions are do we have the political freedom, do we have the will, do we have the courage to transform a system where for tens of millions every accident and every illness carries with fear of being unable to afford health.

We must restore the American dream of home ownership through lowering and regulating lending rates, ending predatory lending practices, increasing the percentage of the home mortgage deduction for middle income people, and stopping home insurance redlining.

"The practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion rejected by the minds and hearts of men." said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1933. Under FDR the government took responsibility for the economic vitality of consumers. Today, the government protects credit card companies, banks, and insurance companies.

Our nation will be restored with new manufacturing policy, where the maintenance of our industrial base is understood to be vital to our national economic welfare. We can fuel domestic steel production and consumption by rebuilding our nation's infrastructure with American made steel, utilizing the productive capacity of our mills. We need to spend at least $500 billion to rebuild our schools, roads, bridges, ports, sewer systems, water systems, our government buildings. A highly trained, highly skilled workforce backed by Davis-Bacon guarantees will make it happen. A federal bank of infrastructure modernization can be created to fund this program with zero interest loans to the states.

America needs a great new public works program to restore the dream of a full employment economy, to restore the physical health of ournation. When the American economy faltered, President Franklin Roosevelt created the WPA. Labor, inspired to rally the disaffected, the dispirited, the disenfranchised can provide new hope for our country through bringing forth new leadership responsive in word and deed to the task of rebuilding our nation.

A rebuilt infrastructure will help restore American commerce. America cannot come through crisis of confidence in corporate America simply through improving accounting practices and imprisoning wayward executives. Our country must restore the American economy by restoring competition, by breaking up monopolies, by genuine anti- trust enforcement, re-regulation, by the federal chartering of corporations and by the repeal of Taft-Hartley which deprives the American workplace of a strong, co-equal relationship with labor. "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." said FDR.

Anti-trust enforcement is needed in all areas of the economy, especially in agriculture where unfair practices,from seed to retail are driving our family farmers out of business. We must free the family farmer from the market dominance of agribusiness and its predatory policies which set prices so farmers can't survive.

Americans are learning hard lessons about the dangers of monopolies in energy. When Americans learn the difference between the price the producer gets and what the consumer pays for food, when Americans realize the risk of becoming dependent on imports or corporate mega-farms for our national food supply, we will be on the path of reform which will protect independent farmers.

The largest roadblock toward the American Restoration is a corrupt campaign finance system which promotes plutocracy allowing laws, and regulations to be steathily auctioned to the highest bidder. Less than one percent of the US population contributes 80% of the money in federal elections. The top one percent in income also received more than half the tax cuts. Tax policy has become an engine for transferring wealth upward. Enron had been poised to dominate energy markets world wide because it controlled the White House, and gave to 71 senators and 186 house members.

Private control of campaign financing leads to private control of the government itself and schemes like the privatization of social security which would put nearly seven trillion dollars in retirement funds of Main Street workers at the disposal of Wall Street speculators over the next twenty five years. Public control of the political process requires public financing. The restoration of our American Democracy depends upon public financing.

The Supreme Court, equating money with free speech, will not restrict the power of corporate interests to own government. The establishment of our democracy began with the Constitution. Let us renew the Constitution by amending it, requiring public financing to redeem from the perishable fires of corporate control an imperishable government of the people, by the people and for the people."

Today, as we meet in Iowa, riveted upon uplifting the conditions of workers, on a day when IBM will cut another 15,000 jobs, and Ames Department Stores will close, throwing 22,000 out of work, and American Airlines announces they will cut 7,000 jobs, some of our nation's leaders are distracted by a desire to control oil markets and a lust for war. In his farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower gave this warning: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," You know and I know that it will be the children of the poor and of working men and women who will become cannon fodder unless we demand our leaders give up the arms build up, end the war talk, stop the saber rattling, and work with our allies to take up the burden of global security.

We need a new vision of America, as a nation among nations, as a strong presence but not as king of a unipolar world dictating policy on behalf of global corporate interests. We need a vision which connects workers and all people in the highest causes of the human spirit: peace and justice. This will be the crowning achievement of an American Restoration, the liberation of people all over the world.

As we face the challenges ahead, let us recall the plea of the Prophet Isaiah. ". to unlock the shackles of injustice? To break every cruel chain? . Then shall your light shine in the darkness. Your people. shall lay the foundations for ages to come. You shall becalled repairer of the breach. Restorer of the streets to dwell in."

You, the men and women of labor. It is your light which will shine in the darkness. It is you who will lay the foundation for ages to come. It is you who will repair the breach. It is you who will lead the American Restoration.

Thank you.

Source: http://www.house.gov/kucinich/press/sp-020814-souloftheworker.htm

8/25/02
12:35:01 PM

Bold Kucinich Leaves Tepid Dems Behind

by John Nichols, Madison Capital Times, August 13, 2002

Dennis Kucinich is using his summer vacation to stir up working people across America. Come fall, he might just find that he is a serious contender for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004.

Indeed, while every Democrat who is even pondering a presidential run angled for a prime speaking slot at this week's Iowa AFL-CIO dinner - in hopes that the right message will kick-start their campaigns in that state's critical caucuses - Kucinich has been awarded the coveted keynoter spot. [see Flyby link for complete transcript of this speech at end of this article (1)] Later this month, he'll address the conventions of the United Steelworkers and Service Employees unions.

None of this means that the labor movement is ready to throw its considerable weight behind a still relatively obscure congressman from Cleveland. But it does suggest that Kucinich, whose passionate defense of workers' rights, civil liberties and sensible foreign policies recalls William Jennings Bryan more than it does most contemporary politicians, is certainly getting noticed.

Kucinich is in some senses an unlikely Democratic presidential prospect. He has cast votes against abortion rights protections, [(2)], he has an intensely spiritual side and he is entirely unafraid of speaking his mind and standing his ground - even when it costs him politically. The former mayor of Cleveland was forced out of office at the dawn of the 1980s Reagan era when he refused to buckle under pressure from bankers and corporate power brokers who wanted to privatize the city's municipal utilities.

After Kucinich lost he was written off as a political ghost. But in the mid-1990s, he returned to haunt the corporate interests that had driven him from office more than a decade earlier. In 1994, Kucinich won a seat in the Ohio legislature as one of the few Democratic challengers to prevail in that Republican landslide year. Two years later, in 1996, he beat a Republican congressman and headed for Washington.

Unlike most politicians who suffer early in their careers, however, Kucinich did not come back cautious. Rather, the current chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus may well be the boldest member of the current Congress.

His courage was on display earlier this year when, in a speech to the Southern California chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, the congressman delivered the speech heard round the world. At a time when few members of Congress were willing to challenge a president with 90 percent approval ratings in the polls or that president's military adventuring abroad, Kucinich dared to demand that the United States stop and reflect on strategies that had led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, inflamed tensions in the Middle East, estranged the United States from European allies and undermined constitutional rights at home.

The talk of a Kucinich presidential run started after that speech, as dissenters from the Bush administration's military and economic policies hailed him as one of the few Democrats who was willing to challenge not just a popular president but the direction in which the nation was headed.

Whether Kucinich actually makes a run, and whether that run draws the support of powerful unions, remains a big "if." But there is no question that the congressman will continue to be the sort of outspoken dissenter from a dreary status quo that his party desperately needs.

"I believe the world is a profoundly creative place where we can turn war into peace, where we can turn famine into plenty, where we can turn fear into hope. But that does require us to speak up," says the Cleveland Democrat. "When we limit ourselves to the fears of the moment, we often miss opportunities to change the whole debate."

Source: http://www.madison.com/captimes

8/25/02
12:29:22 PM

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

James Madison, while a United States Congressman

8/24/02
12:45:21 PM

Alzheimer's In America: The Aluminum - Phosphate Fertilizer Connection

By Lynn Landes, AlterNet, August 22, 2002

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are 18 million people with Alzheimer's. Over 4 1/2 million Americans have the disease. We account for 25 percent of all Alzheimer's cases, even though we represent only 4.6 percent of the world's population. Europe is experiencing half our rate of disease. For Americans over 85 years of age, 50 percent are thought to have Alzheimer's.

The question is, "Why?"

Alzheimer's was first discovered in 1906. It is not a part of normal aging, says the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH contends that the cause of Alzheimer's is "not known." They say, "Prior theories regarding the accumulation of aluminum, lead, mercury, and other substances in the brain have been disproved."

Don't believe that. Federal agencies have a talent for not finding environmental causes for many diseases. They live by the motto, "Do not seek and thou shall not find." Genetic triggers and lifestyle choices get the research dollars for pretty obvious reasons -- their findings don't hurt polluters' profits.

The world's scientists and government researchers have not taken aluminum off the scientific table as a causal factor in Alzheimer's. Research scientists with the International Aluminum Network report, "Aluminum has been implicated ...as a potential factor or cofactor in the Alzheimer's syndrome, as well as in the etiopathogenesis of other neurodegenerative diseases, Parkinsonism, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and other diseases." That's a mouthful, but you get the picture.

Initially, it was thought that aluminum might be the sole cause of Alzheimer's. Persons with Alzheimer's have been found to experience increased absorption of aluminum in the brain, as well as exhibit densities of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. However, there are reports that suggest plaques and tangles do not always signify Alzheimer's, and vice versa.

Further clouding the issue are patients on kidney dialysis machines. They are unable to excrete aluminum, plus they may also be treated with medicines that include aluminum. However, reports say that dialysis patients don't develop Alzheimer's, although they can develop dialysis dementia if the equipment doesn't filter out aluminum. And therein lies a clue.

The process of kidney dialysis requires very purified, non-fluoridated water. What does this mean? Perhaps fluoride is aluminum's partner-in-crime.

In 1998, Julie Varner and two colleagues published research on the effects of aluminum-fluoride and sodium-fluoride on the nervous system of rats. They concluded, "Chronic administration of aluminum-fluoride and sodium-fluoride in the drinking water of rats resulted in distinct morphological alterations of the brain, including the effects on neurons and cerebrovasculature." In layman's terms, it looked like fluoride and aluminum could cause Alzheimer's.

That was not a definitive study, but they may have been onto something. Aluminum is in our drinking water, foods, and many consumer products. Adding fluoride to drinking water in the U.S. started in the 1950s. America's drinking water is now over 60 percent fluoridated. Fluoride appears in many processed foods and beverages made with fluoridated water. Keep in mind, Europe has half our rate of Alzheimer's. They don't fluoridate their water supplies, but they do use fluoride supplements and dental products. Is there a connection?

There are other intriguing issues. Why do people with thyroid disease have an increased risk for Alzheimer's? In the U.S., thyroid disease has reached even greater epidemic levels than Alzheimer's, with as many as 20 million American victims. Besides problems with iodine intake, a common cause of thyroid disease is radiation.

There are also striking similarities between Alzheimer's, Creutzfeldt-Jacob-Disease (CJD), and mad cow disease. Mad cow has been linked to livestock feed and fertilizer.

So, what do radiation, livestock feed, fluoride, and fertilizer have in common which may have led to the emergence of the Alzheimer's epidemic? The phosphate fertilizer industry.

"Fertilizer use was not a common practice in the United States until after 1870, when phosphate and lime were applied to crops like cotton and tobacco. By the end of World War II, an era of intensive agriculture began," says Cargill Fertilizer. "Of the phosphate produced in Florida, about 95 percent is used in agriculture (90 percent goes into fertilizer and 5 percent into livestock feed supplements)." The remaining 5 percent is used in a variety of foods and beverages, plus personal care, consumer and industrial products.

George Glasser writes in the Earth Island Journal, "Radium wastes from filtration systems at phosphate fertilizer facilities are among the most radioactive types of naturally occurring radioactive material wastes ... Uranium and all of its decay-rate products are found in phosphate rock, fluorosilicic acid (fluoride) and phosphate fertilizer."

The Florida Institute of Phosphate Research says, "Removal of uranium as a product is no longer profitable and all of the extraction facilities have been dismantled. The uranium that remains in the phosphoric acid and fertilizer products is at a low enough level that it is safe for use." That's not reassuring. Chronic exposure to low levels of contamination can be as dangerous, or more so, than chronic high levels of exposure or acute occurrences.

Of particular interest is calcium silicate, another byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer industry. One of its uses is as an anti-caking agent in iodized table salt. Is calcium silicate also radioactive? Would that have a significant impact on the thyroid? Given the relationship between Alzheimer's and thyroid disease, Alzheimer's may be destined to increase exponentially.

The phosphate fertilizer industry seems to be the common thread in Alzheimer's -- and maybe also in thyroid and mad cow type diseases. Aluminum by itself may not cause Alzheimer's, but in combination with the radioactive products of the phosphate fertilizer industry, it could be wreaking havoc on our health.

Whatever the cause, we deserve real answers to the Alzheimer's epidemic, not the red herrings of research on genetics and lifestyle. The number of American victims is totally out of proportion to the incidence of Alzheimer's worldwide. Something truly has gone terribly wrong.

Lynn Landes is a freelance journalist specializing in environmental issues. She is the founder of Zero Waste America, a Web-based environmental organization, and posts her work on http://www.EcoTalk.org Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13895

8/24/02
12:36:13 PM

Presidential Hubris

by Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, August 8, 2002

The Bush Administration is a lawless one, and there is no clearer example of this than its approach to the so-called American Taliban.

I'm not talking about John Walker Lindh. He's had his day in court.

I'm talking about Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, who may never get theirs.

Hell, they can't even get to see a lawyer.

The U.S. military has seized Padilla and Hamdi and slammed them in a military prison, where they are being denied their basic rights as American citizens.

What's more, the Bush Administration says it is above judicial review on this matter. "Courts may not second-guess the military's determination that an individual is an enemy combatant and should be detained as such," it said in a brief in the Hamdi case.

Last week, the Justice Department stiffed U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar, who is presiding over Hamdi's request to obtain legal counsel. Ashcroft's team flat out refused the judge's order to provide additional documents justifying its labeling of Hamdi as an "enemy combatant." This is an extraordinary act of Presidential hubris, and it places the executive branch beyond any check and balance provided for in the Constitution.

And as the Hamdi and Padilla cases demonstrate, the president of the United States is now exercising the power to unilaterally determine whether a U.S. citizen is a military combatant and to throw that person into military detention, without criminal charge and without legal representation.

That's not how our legal system is supposed to work, at least that's not what Mr. Hayes taught me back in high school. None of us is safe if Bush can get away with this.

Padilla and Hamdi are U.S. citizens, and as such, deserve to have their full legal rights, including the right to counsel, the right to be charged if they are detained, and the right to trial in our civilian courts.

Come on! Zacarias Moussaoui, who is not even a U.S. citizen, is being afforded this opportunity.

Why not Padilla and Hamdi?

George Bush the Second is acting more and more like King George the Second. The American people ought to rebel against such authoritarian rule.

Source: http://www.progressive.org/webex/wx081302.html

8/24/02
12:20:01 PM

Scientists Find Signs Big Meteor Hit Earth 3.5 Billion Years Ago

by Kenneth Chang

rom the decay of uranium in tiny ancient crystals, geologists have dated the earliest and probably largest known meteor impact on Earth.

Writing in today's issue of the journal Science, researchers from Louisiana State University, Stanford University and the U.S. Geological Survey report that an asteroid, estimated to be 12 to 30 miles wide, slammed into Earth nearly 3.5 billion years ago.

That asteroid was probably at least twice as wide as the meteor thought to have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and the impact probably released at least 10 times as much energy, the scientists said.

The heat would have killed all single-cell microbes, the only life on Earth at the time, on land and in the upper ocean, which would have boiled into steam. The impact appears to have sent giant tsunamis coursing around the world's oceans, scouring the early continents.

"The only thing that would have survived would have been bacteria in the deep ocean," said Dr. Gary R. Byerly, a professor of geology at Louisiana State and the lead author of the article.

Because of the scarcity of fossils from the era, scientists cannot say how the cataclysm changed the course of life.

Giant craters on the moon indicate to scientists that even earlier and larger impacts occurred on Earth. A heavy rain of meteors large enough to boil off the oceans would probably have delayed the advent of life until 3.9 billion years ago at the earliest, scientists say. But no rocks that preserve evidence of those early impacts have been found.

No crater from the crash 3.5 billion years ago remains either, but Dr. Byerly and Dr. Donald R. Lowe, a professor of geology at Stanford, found hints of the impact two decades ago: perfectly spherical sand grains about the size of BB pellets in ancient rocks from South Africa and western Australia. The grains probably condensed from the cloud of rock vapor sent up by the impact, the two scientists said.

Later research showed that the layers of rock containing the grains were also rich in iridium, a metal more abundant in asteroids and comets than in rocks on Earth. The layers of debris are 8 to 12 inches thick, compared with less than an inch for the impact that killed the dinosaurs.

Analysis of the minerals from the older impact indicated that the rock was an asteroid that had once orbited between Mars and Jupiter.

Scientists dated the impact by measuring the decay of uranium in zircon crystals in the rock. Zircon is a durable mineral formed from the force of the giant tsunamis crashing ashore.

The crystals in the both Australian and the South African rocks formed about 3.47 billion years ago, give or take a couple of million years, leading the scientists to conclude that they formed from the same impact.

Source: http://www.NYTimes.com

8/24/02
12:16:36 PM

What Makes An Anarchist

by Meria Heller

I read the sad news about the police over-reaction and brutality at a mostly peaceful protest in Oregon this past week. To know that rubber bullets fully capable of making a hole through your body and killing you if you are shot in the head were used on American citizens, young, old and babies sickened me. Pepper spray as well, regardless of the fact that there were women, children and elderly in the crowd. The police are "doing their job", the same as the Nazi's did "their job". The same as Mugabe's henchmen are doing "their job", Musharraf the dictator doing "his job". Their job all seems to be the same to me - global terror on innocent civilians and freedom. When I warned of a police state in the U.S. many thought I was crazy or a conspiracy theorist. Neither. I am well informed with a keen eye to put the "real pieces" of the puzzle together. Today the National Guard was called on in Iowa to come out in the name of National Security. Against who? Us? Peaceful protesters? American citizens exercising what they still believe is their right of free speech, free press, the right to assembly peaceably? News of Ashcroft's citizen camps has made the papers as well.

I began reading a new book sent me by someone I will interview next month. The book's title is "The Hydra of Carnage: Bush's Imperial War-Making and the Rule of Law. An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire" by Craig Hulet. He makes a very strong case against Empire, and points to the Empire having been "hit" on September 11th, not the Country of America. The World Trade Center was the symbol of the World Trade Organization itself, the monster that is killing democracy worldwide. It's a very interesting view on the world situation. I am not condoning what happened on that day, just giving another view of it. With the fall of communism, the poor in nations around the world did not benefit at all. They did not and still do not benefit from the U.S. being the one and only "super-power" on the planet. This is part of the reason I feel that people turn to anarchy.

They try getting laws changed and doing things the "legal way" only to find that multi-national corporations run their meetings in secret and NOT for the benefit of humanity. They then try to make changes through peaceful protests. When that doesn't work either, what choice is left them? To continue watching as their rights are taken from them? Their jobs? Their homes? Their children? Sooner of later, when left with nothing they realize they have the upper hand against those who have "plenty to lose". That type of heart and passion could never be defeated. Not by an army, a missile, or a "war on terrorism". The war as I see it is on FREEDOM, as Nafeez Ahmed writes so eloquently in his book "The War on Freedom".

The only way to defeat an anarchist is to take away his gripes by alleviating his suffering. I don't feel that with the "Global One World Order" this will be achieved. When the goals are privitisation of every countries natural resources which should belong to "the people" of that country, how can they expect anything less than anarchy or freedom fighters?

The entire planet did not sign up for One World Order, one world religion, one world culture, and the dismissal of their own sovereignty and culture. It has been the multi-national corporations who have chosen the fate of the entire planet without any debate or discussion. All in the name of the Almighty Dollar. The bottom line. Profit margins and to hell with the lives of millions of people.

I am not encouraging anarchy. I am simply trying to understand it. What makes a person do the things they do? How long before our troops are used against our own people here in America? How long before regular citizens who have a differing opinion than the "administration" end up in the citizen camps of Mr. Ashcroft? We are under a tyranny right here in America and most Americans don't even know it. None of us voted for it. It was forced on us by the Supreme Court in 2000. Forced on us by the Lockheed-Martin Administration running America as Dr. Helen Caldicott points out so well in her book "The New Nuclear Danger, George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex". I had a wonderful interview with Dr. Caldicott (in my archives at www.meria.net) that would make the whole world stop and think if they would just listen.

Many people are now gearing up to "sweep them out of office" in the elections of 2002. Who will we sweep out? What will be left after the sweep? How will we sweep them out? How does one erase corruption and greed from the souls of people who have been bought on both sides of the coin? How do you instill love and fairness for all humanity into humans who have proven for decades and decades that the bottom line is their only concern?

How do you even know your vote will be counted? What proof do we have that our votes have been counted since the advent of computer voting? I interviewed a brave young woman on my show - Victoria Collier, daughter of James Collier, co-author of "Votescam". We discussed the fact that although her Dad and uncle had paper proof, video proof and more that our votes have been stolen, discarded, manipulated since 1970, no one has cared to do anything about it. As they say over and over again in their book :"we can't vote the bastards out, because we never voted the bastards in". So what is left to the citizen? How do we effect change? What will we do when we are no longer allowed to peacefully assemble in protest as all signs are pointing to today? Will our own armed forces, and police have to turn on their own brothers and sisters in America? What will happen when the PEOPLE stop paying the salaries and taxes for the armed forces and the police? Will any of them show up for work when they aren't getting paid to "do their job"? I doubt it. It all comes down to the only vote we have. We MUST vote with our money. Stop supporting war without end, stop our taxes from going to support a war-mongering administration. Demand changes and answers from our government or just use our constitutional right to throw them all out of office and start over. Obviously the signers of the Constitution knew this type of tyranny was coming and put into words what we can do when our government gets drunk with power.

As we approach what could be the end of America as we know it, imminent war in Iraq, escalation of war in Israel, droughts, fires, famines, earthquakes, global warming, sinking of land into the sea it couldn't be clearer what "OUR JOB" is. Our job is to make sure life will continue on this planet with a secure future for every living person regardless of where they are. If we don't take the necessary action, putting our bodies on the line if we must, how we will answer the future generations who will be forced to live in a hell worse than any science fiction writer could ever imagine? Are you up for the "job"? All of civilization depends on us qualifying for it.

The Meria Heller Show, now in it's third year, sans any corporate sponsoring or censorship.

Write the author at mailto:Meria@Meria.net

"THE MERIA HELLER SHOW "- Now in Over 60 Countries!

Check it out at : http://www.Meria.net

8/23/02
7:27:02 PM

S.U.V. Haters Pitch A Curbside Battle

By Aaron Donovan

With people crowding the sidewalks and music from clubs and cars in the air, it was the kind of summer night in Greenwich Village when energy seems to emanate from the pavement. Joseph Edmonds, in a dark baseball cap and a white polo shirt, might have been looking for the right nightclub. Instead, he was studying the rows of parked cars.

Halfway down the block from a busy corner, he spotted one that towered above the others, its shiny gray paint reflecting light from the streetlamp overhead. "I'm going to get that Excursion down there," he told Renée Benson, a young woman who was scanning the curbsides with him.

"Please do," she replied.

He walked to the car and, from a stack in his hand, took out a card colored the bright orange of a New York City parking ticket and imprinted with the word "violation." He slipped it under the windshield wiper.

The owner of the car was in for a bout of that stomach-dropping feeling that accompanies the discovery of a ticket. But Mr. Edmonds and Ms. Benson, friends in their 20's, are not with the Police Department. The card was a message from people who hate sport utility vehicles, and the "violation" was owning one.

"Did you get excited when you saw that ad for an S.U.V. in the remote wilderness?" the text on the fake ticket read. "Did you want to sue the manufacturer for false advertising when you started driving it to the shopping center instead?" It went on — at some length — to castigate S.U.V.'s for their gasoholic tendencies and S.U.V. drivers for buying them.

"Think about it!" the flier said. "Why do you need such a HUGE car? This is not a militarized zone!" It accused the driver of "polluting more than your fair share."

Challenging the owners of S.U.V.'s isn't new. In Manhattan, vigilantes have been putting crude fliers trumpeting accusations like "Your car is a killer" on S.U.V.'s for at least two years, and in Brooklyn, a magazine editor organized a protest in which a number of "No S.U.V. Parking" signs were placed on a street last December.

But the phenomenon appears to be growing in size and intensity. Mr. Edmonds and Ms. Benson were working with Earth on Empty, a group concerned about air pollution and global warming that has begun distributing professionally designed and mass-produced ticket look-alikes in a score of states.

Trying a different tactic, two women let the air out of the tires of S.U.V.'s parked at Johnson Ford, a dealership in Kingston, N.Y., last year. This month the were sentenced to 50 hours each of community service.

"There are many of us at the dealership who are environmentally aware," said Vincent Martello, the marketing manager of the Johnson Auto Group, which owns the dealership. "I just think that the strategy that they chose was not an effective one."

Some responses to anti-S.U.V. activism are less restrained. In Greenwich Village, Mr. Edmonds and Ms. Benson didn't wait around to see their victims' reactions, but it's a safe bet they were not warm ones. What the protesters see as activism looks to some on the receiving end like harassment.

"We get really, really nasty e-mails all the time," said John, a founder of Earth on Empty who monitors messages to the group's Web site, www.earthonempty .com. The Web address is printed plainly on the phony tickets.

John, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., would give only his first name because, he said, he has been receiving hostile phone calls from people who have somehow found out about his anti-S.U.V. work. But he did share a sampling of the e-mail messages. In just a dozen of them, S.U.V. proponents called Earth on Empty members tree-huggers, time-wasters, socialists, elitists, litterers, blue-collar workers, freedom-removers, leftists, losers, homosexuals, Democrats and filthy people. And those were the printable epithets.

John himself once met an S.U.V. owner face to face while he was ticketing. The owner and his girlfriend were inside, but not visible from a distance. The owner got out and chased John away from the car, shouting profanities. The group advises its helpers not to give out the tickets before 10 p.m. and not to confront drivers.

The sneak-and-strike policy may be prudent, but it leaves some of the S.U.V. owners incensed. "I don't want to say it's cowardly, but it's leaving something and running," said Darren Thayer, 29, whose Ford Explorer was ticketed in Cape Elizabeth, Me., on Aug. 3.

Christina Allen, 18, who was with her boyfriend when his '88 Jeep Cherokee was ticketed this month in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Eagan, Minn., said they both thought at first that the flier was a real parking ticket. "Once we figured out what it was," she said, "we were really mad."

The thrust of the Earth on Empty message is about fuel economy. But some of the ticketers have other concerns. Candice Manson, 23, another New York activist, hates being trapped behind outsize cars when she's on the road herself. "When you're stuck in traffic behind an S.U.V.," she said, "you don't know why you're stuck in traffic."

John, who runs the Earth on Empty Web site, says the group wants to stigmatize S.U.V. owners the way militant animal lovers have stigmatized women who wear fur coats.

In Greenwich Village, Ms. Benson and Mr. Edmonds cast their net widely; they ticketed a Toyota RAV4, a small S.U.V. that gets 22 to 31 miles per gallon. But Earth on Empty officially advises "Go for the monsters!"

It hands out a guide listing 14 of the "hugest S.U.V.'s": the Cadillac Escalade, GMC Denali, Land Rover Range Rover, Ford Excursion and Expedition, Toyota Land Cruiser and Sequoia, Lincoln Navigator, Mercedes M-Class, Dodge Durango, Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, Mercury Mountaineer and Lexus LS 470.

In general, the ticketers are proudest when they snag the big fish. "I like the Excursions because they're so huge for no reason," Mr. Edmonds said. And when Ms. Manson spotted a stretch limousine made from a Navigator, she gave it two tickets.

The stretch may be hard to justify, but many drivers who send e-mail messages to Earth on Empty's Web site are quick to defend their S.U.V.'s.

"We are a family of six with three dogs, often driving eight," one wrote. "What else should we drive? Three cars?"

Another wrote, "We have a home in the country, and the dirt roads can be hard to drive on, especially in the winter and mud season."

One man told a sobering story. "You have no idea why I drive the vehicle I have," his message said. "Maybe, just maybe, it's because my wife and myself have lost a son in an accident and want my family to be safe. Try losing a child."

But in at least one case, an Earth on Empty flier brought about a conversion. Janice Gilmer, 50, a massage therapist from the Upper West Side, said that when she read the fake ticket left on her Nissan Pathfinder, she had a moment of epiphany.

"I never would have bought my S.U.V. if I had any idea about the pollution and the waste of gas and unnecessary size and strength of it," she said. "I've never put it in four-wheel-drive once."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/automobiles/23AUTO.html

8/23/02
7:21:41 PM

Secret Court Says F.B.I. Aides Misled Judges In 75 Cases

By Phipip Shenon, The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 The nation's secret intelligence court has identified more than 75 cases in which it says it was misled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in documents in which the bureau attempted to justify its need for wiretaps and other electronic surveillance, according to the first of the court's rulings to be released publicly.

The opinion by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was issued in May but made public today by Congress, is stinging in its criticism of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department ( news - web sites), which the court suggested had tried to defy the will of Congress by allowing intelligence material to be shared freely with criminal investigators.

In its opinion, the court rejected a secret request made by the Justice Department this year to allow broader cooperation and evidence-sharing between counterintelligence investigators and criminal prosecutors. The court found that the request was "not reasonably designed" to safeguard the privacy of Americans. The court generally operates in secret and is responsible for approving warrants to eavesdrop on people suspected of espionage or terrorism.

The opinion may be important in documenting why the F.B.I. was hesitant last summer to seek court authority to search the computer and other belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota last August, and F.B.I. officials have acknowledged that their failure to investigate him more fully was among the mistakes that allowed the Sept. 11 hijackers to operate in the United States undetected in the weeks before the attacks.

Officials have previously acknowledged that at the time of Mr. Moussaoui's arrest, the F.B.I. was wary of making any surveillance requests to the special court after its judges had complained bitterly the year before that they were being seriously misled by the bureau in F.B.I. affidavits requesting surveill