7/22/01
8/12/01
8:56:47 PM
This is supposedly an actual letter sent to Ryan De Vries from The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, State of Michigan. Wait till you read this guy's response. But read the entire letter before you get to the response.
*****
Mr. Ryan De Vries 2088 Dagget Pierson, MI 49339
Dear Mr. De Vries:
SUBJECT: DEQ File No. 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Montcalm, County
It has come to the attention of the Department of environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity: Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond. A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity. A review of the Department's files shows that no permits have been issued. Therefore, the Department has determined that this activity is in violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, annotated. The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations. We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted. The department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition by removing all wood and brush forming the dams from the stream channel. All restoration work shall be completed no later than January 31, 1998. Please notify this office when the restoration has been completed so that a follow-up site inspection may be scheduled by our staff. Failure to comply with this request or any further unauthorized activity on the site may result in this case being referred for elevated enforcement action. We anticipate and would appreciate your full cooperation in this matter. Please feel free to contact me at this office if you have any questions.
Sincerely, David L. Price
District Representative Land and Water Management Division
~~~~~~
RESPONSE
Dear Mr. Price:
Re: DEQ File No. 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Montcalm County
Your certified letter dated 12/17/97 has been handed to me to respond to. First of all, Mr. Ryan De Vries is not the legal landowner and/or contractor at 2088 Dagget, Pierson, Michigan. I am the legal owner and a couple of beavers are in the (State unauthorized) process of constructing and maintaining two wood "debris" dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond. While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of natural building materials "debris." I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic. As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity. My first dam question to you is: 1) Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers or, 2) do you require all beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?
If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, through the Freedom of Information Act I request completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits that have been issued. Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, annotated. I have several concerns. My first concern is-aren't the beavers entitled to legal representation? The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said representation, so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer. The Department's dam concern that either one or both of the dams failed during a recent rain event causing flooding is proof that this is a natural occurrence, which the Department is required to protect. In other words, we should leave the Spring Pond Beavers alone rather than harassing them and calling their dam names. If you want the stream "restored" to a dam free-flow condition-please contact the beavers-but if you are going to arrest them (they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter being unable to read English) -- be sure they are read the Miranda rights first. As for me, I am not going to cause more flooding or dam debris jams by interfering with these dam builders. If you want to hurt these dam beavers -- be aware I am sending a copy of your dam letter and this response to PETA. If your dam department seriously finds all dams of this nature inherently hazardous and truly will not permit their existence in this State, I seriously hope you are not selectively enforcing this dam policy or once again both the Spring Pond Beavers and I will scream prejudice!
In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream. They have more dam right than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond. If the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection lives up to its name, it should protect the natural resources (Beavers) and the environment (Beavers' Dams). So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now. why wait until 1/31/98? The Spring Pond Beavers may be under the dam ice by then and there will be no way for you or your dam staff to contact/harass them then.
In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention a real environmental quality (health) problem in the area. It is the bears!! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone. If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your step! (The bears are not too careful where they dump!)
Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office via another government organization - the dam USPS. Maybe, someday, it will get there.
Sincerely, Removed for purposes of anonymity
8/12/01
8:40:29 PM
Christopher Hitchens, author of "The Trial Of Henry Kissinger"
http://www.c-span.org or http://www.cspan.org
I didn't catch the whole announcement but I assume Christopher Hitchens, author of "The Trial Of Henry Kissinger" will discuss his book and deliniate Kissinger's litany of crimes against humanity-Angola, East Timor, Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile/Pinochet, etc. The show is scheudled to air at 12:30 AM Monday morning August 13th- that's just after midnight Sunday into Monday.
8/12/01
7:54:42 PM
U.S. Air Force Linked To Electronic Warfar Attack In Tennessee
by Alfred Webre, EcoNews Service (Vancouver, BC)
HARTSVILLE, TENN - Newly released documentary and eyewitness evidence now links an apparent July 6, 2001 electronic warfare attack on a radio station and weekly newspaper in Hartsville, Tennessee to a nearby unacknowledged secret access project. This secret project, eyewitnesses say, includes the U.S. Air Force as paymaster, U.S. government aircraft as transportation and security craft; military troops in black uniforms; and black unmarked triangular aircraft. The project may also include a secret electronic warfare unit capable of disabling nearby media outlets with destructive electromagnetic energy.
It has now known that an official U.S. Air Force cheque was used to pay for the clandestine installation of massive telephone switching equipment at a defunct Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power plant about five miles from the target media outlets. The private contractor who installed the unusually large switching system at a former nuclear power plant that is still officially defunct reported this to the WJKM investigators on condition of anonymity.
Historically, the U.S Air Force has pioneered in the development and use of electronic warfare against civilian targets and populations, notably in the NATO war in Yugoslavia.
Speaking to a live radio audience on July 21, WJKM general manager Ted Randall for the first time publicly released the results on his station's official on-going investigation of the attack. Dan Fluehe and Matt Aaron of WJKM, host Clyde Lewis along with this reporter, Alfred Webre, participated in the radio program.
WJKM's investigation has eliminated other possible causes of the electromagnetic blast, such as power transformer malfunction caused by birds or internal mechanical problems. Centrexnews reporter Joel Skousen, who initially reported that birds caused the electronic attack, declined to participate in the radio program.
Although the nuclear facility has been officially closed for some time, eyewitnesses now testify to clandestine activities going on at the site. These include sightings of tractor-trailer trucks entering and leaving the former nuclear power plant at 2 or 3 AM; sightings of C-130 military aircraft flying over the facility as if to land; sightings of unmarked black helicopters monitoring the area; sightings of military troops in unmarked black uniforms; and - yes - multiple witness reports of black triangular craft hovering over the former power plant. Civilians venturing near the site have also reported being aggressively ejected by a private police force of about 30 plain-clothes men.
Randall presented live and audiotaped eyewitness testimony of the destructive effects of the electronic attack, including a tell-tale flashing blue pulse that accompanied the destruction, and usually accompanies the discharge of electromagnetic pulse weapons. He also presented audio recordings of the audible electronic hum that accompanied the alleged attack, a clear electronic signature of an electromagnetic weapon attack.
The accompanying surges during the event fit the pattern of an electronic attack. According to WJKM, " These surges are not just coming into the power lines. They are also entering the radio station through phone lines and the antenna system. This is evident in blown telephone equipment. Sometimes the equipment is not destroyed but the program settings are scrambled or wiped out."
On the air, Randall described photographs of dead, electronically-fried birds that littered a mile-square area around the radio station, now posted on the station's Internet website at
Randall stated that local residents are experiencing adverse health effects. Randall said, "It is also interesting that according listeners have called in, there has apparently been an increase in what they are calling fibromyalgia. This is a disease name appointed to the unexplainable severe and disabling pain throughout the entire body over recent years, as well as, an increase in headaches mimicking migraines that are not actual migraines."
Randall documented the 2.4 Richter underground seismic earthquake that struck the area on July 7, the day after the electronic attack, from 10-10:30 PM.
Randall also posted the HAARP magnetometer readings on the WJKM website for the two days - July 6 and July 7. Both the electronic attack and the unusual earthquake were accompanied by massive, anomalous bursts of electromagnetic pulse energy from HAARP, the U.S. Navy's electromagnetic pulse military facility and possible environmental weapons system in Gakona, Alaska. Coincidentally (and perhaps causally) HAARP's magnetometer showed massive spikes of electromagnetic energy for both days.
According to Randall, " At about 10:45 AM Friday [July 6], radio station WJKM and CMR (Country Music Radio), with studios in Hartsville, Tennessee was knocked off the air by a very powerful strange energy blast! There was a crystal clear blue sky, no clouds or rain. It was not lightning"
According to WJKM, in the attack, "All the radio station's lines were knocked out. Several power transformers were blown several blocks away from the studios (smoke seen billowing out of one). All phone lines at the newspaper (The Hartsville Vidette), the local farm co-op and all other phones in this small radius were knocked out! Radio station transmitter lost all MOSFETS and the output - tuning network. All computers at WJKM lost motherboards, network cards etc. ISDN was knocked out. Most all the equipment Zephyr codec and EAS all knocked out."
These effects on radio transmission systems closely resemble the effects on urban radio, television, power transmission and generation facilities attacked by U.S. Air Force electronic bombing in electronic warfare missions in recent military operations worldwide, including Yugoslavia and Iraq.
How and why was electronic warfare carried out in rural Tennessee?
From the known profile of electronic weaponry, the electronic attack upon WJKM appears to have been caused by a tactical electromagnetic weapon, emitting a directed electromagnetic plasma, beam, pulse, etc. at the target. Electronic weapons with this capability are known, and can be land mounted in a facility like the former power plant, mounted in portable facilities like vans, trucks, helicopters or airplanes.
Electronic weapons may even be space-based, on satellite platforms. This reporter has personally met with an Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon who confirmed the existence of such secret space-based weapons as early as 1977.
An alternative electronic warfare delivery system may involve newly constructed relays for the HAARP installation in Alaska. The potential tactical electronic warfare applications of HAARP are under investigation. Serious public interest researchers maintain that HAARP's electromagnetic energy may cause effects such as earthquakes, such as occurred on July 7 in Hartsville. Electromagnetic weapons have been used in tectonic warfare, intentionally causing earthquakes. Electromagnetic pulse energy accompanies most earthquakes. Research shows that ultra low frequencies emitted by the HAARP installation may affect the human limbic system, and be used for mood management and mind control.
The close resemblance of the Hartsville attack to other U.S. Air Force electronic warfare led to speculation that radio station WJKM may have been chosen as a test target for a clandestine electronic warfare unit located within the power facility, or to which the power facility serves as electronic relay point. The likelihood that the electronic attack was accidental, rather than an intentional military test, is low, given that the targets were media outlets.
One purpose of such test could be to evaluate the physical impact of electronic warfare on U.S. domestic radio installations, a well as the impact of intimidating the local community, as well as the U.S. media reporting of such attacks. The U.S. military has a long history of secretly testing weapons on its unsuspecting civilian population, a practice that is illegal.
Another clue to the motive behind the disinformation attacks may lie in eyewitness accounts of military troops in black uniforms, wearing light blue patches, and military vehicles bearing license plates with the letters "UN" on them. This scenario would be consistent with a disinformation mission, in which United States government troops would be disguised with mock United Nations insignia in order to spread propaganda rumours regarding the actual source of this state terror. In fact, it would appear that U.S. paramilitary troops are carrying out military attacks on the U.S. civilian population. This modus operandi has been characteristic of Central Intelligence Agency sponsored warfare in developing countries, notably Guatemala.
Randall, Dan Fluehe, Clyde Lewis, and this reporter, Alfred Webre, all noted that the electronic attacks targeted two media offices directly - a radio station and a newspaper - both protected entities under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Randall indicated that station WJKM and its parent corporation are pursuing an official investigation of the electronic attack, including surveillance of activities at the former TVA power plant. The U.S. Congress has legislative oversight over the many federal agencies that may be involved in this secret project, including the U.S. Air Force, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and other defense "black budget" agencies.
Asked if his company intended to contact its members of Congress to seek a congressional investigation, Randall responded that WJKM is taking this attack and its investigation most seriously. WJKM's Congressperson is Bart Gordon, Dean of the Tennessee Delegation, and currently serving his ninth term in Congress, representing the Sixth District, which includes 15 Middle Tennessee counties.
KEY LINKS:
WJKM's Report on the Electronic Attack
Real Audio archive of GROUND ZERO radio programs, Clyde Lewis host
Environmental War Desk: Electronic warfar! e
http://www.ecologynews.com/cuenewsdesk.html
Was the Seattle-Vancouver earthquake triggered by environmental (electronic) war?
http://www.ecologynews.com/cuenews12.html
U.S. Air Force Linked to Electronic Warfare Attack in Tennessee
http://www.ecologynews.com/cuenews31.html
Alfred Webre, JD, MEd, was a member of the Governor's Emergency Taskforce for Earthquake Preparedness for the State of California, 1981-82.
Source: http://www.ecologynews.com/cuenews31.html
8/11/01
5:27:07 PM
Hoof And Mouth Disease In England
A Conspiracy To Kill Off The Countryside?
by Christopher Booker
To those of us who have been trying to follow the details of the foot-and-mouth crisis since it began in February, there have always been two great mysteries.
The first is why the Government response has been so astonishingly incompetent. Everything it has done has seemed designed, not to bring the disease rapidly to an end, but to kill as many animals as possible and so inflict maximum damage on Britain's small livestock farmers.
The second mystery has been why the Government's propaganda machine has been so consistent in it's efforts to blacken the farmers and, wherever possible, blame them as the real cause of the problem.
In recent days, we have seen the spin doctors upping the ante, with off-the-record-briefings about farmers paying money to have their farms infected in order to get compensation. Then followed leaks about the '37 farmers who have become millionaires' on cheques from the ministry.
But this has only been the latest installment in a black propaganda campaign which goes back to March, when, repeatedly, it has been claimed farmers themselves were somehow the villains of the story.
Most bizarre has been the Government's continued accusation that farmers were spreading the disease by failure to observe strict hygiene precautions, while evidence has poured in from every affected area that no one has been more recklessly irresponsible about 'bio-security' than the Government's own officials and employees.
And all this has taken place against the background of a strategy for tackling the disease which has left every International authority on foot-and-mouth totally baffled by its nonsensical Impracticality.
Experts such as Professor Fred Brown, an Englishman who now works for the American government, have been nonplussed by the Government's unprecedented 'continuous cull policy', under which millions of animals have been killed just because they are on farms within 'three kilometres' of a case of infection.
Mysteries
They have also been amazed by the Government's refusal to use a full-scale vaccination programme, which, they argue, was the only conceivable way to end what has now mushroomed into the worst epidemic of foot-and-mouth ever recorded.
The more these two mysteries are puzzled over, the more they always seem to come down in the end to one question: Is the real explanation for the Government's seemingly inexplicable conduct that it is working to a hidden agenda?
As the epidemic enters its seventh month, there is no longer any doubt that - despite those much-vaunted compensation payments - tens of thousands of live-stock producers have been so traumatised that they will be getting out of farming for ever.
Already the total number of animals destroyed is over six million - one in ten of all the farm animals in Britain.
If the epidemic continues well into next year, as seems likely, the eventual reduction in Britain's livestock population could be as high as one in five.
And is this, we have to ask, what the Government is really after? Is the real, unspoken purpose of the way it has played this crisis to ensure a massive reduction in the numbers of both animals, particularly sheep, and the farming families who depend on them for their livelihood?
Long before foot-and-mouth appeared, it was clear that this Government was not only unsympathetic to Britain's countryside, but actively hostile to much of what it was thought to represent. The rural areas of Britain were the very embodiment of those 'forces of conservatism' which Mr Blair's Government was to destroy.
It just happened this ideological prejudice dovetailed very neatly with what had long been the scarcely veiled conviction of senior officials In the former Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Flood (MAFF now the Department. for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs or DEFRA) that British agriculture needed 'radical restructuring', to make it more 'efficient' and 'productive'.
Strategy
What they meant by this was that Britain's farming should be concentrated Into larger, more 'efficient' units.
And nothing stood in the way of this more than those hundreds of thousands of small 'inefficient' livestock farmers of the kind who have been in the frontline of this disaster.
In this overall strategy for the future of British agriculture, MAFF has had no closer ally than the National Farmers Union (NFU).
The NFU is often misunderstood as representing British farming as a whole. In fact, it is an organisation wholly controlled by large farming interests, from the 'barley barons' of East Anglia to big intensive livestock producers, who regard farms as factories. They have nothing whatever in common with those impoverished hill farmers of Cumbria or Wales.
The tragic fact is that the foot-and-mouth epidemic has appeared to MAFF and the NFU as what is known as a 'beneficial crisis', an event which may look in the short-term like a disaster, but which actually provides the catalyst for achieving longer term benefits.
In this respect, the long-term strategists of MAFF and the NFU could not have found a more natural ally than the Government, combining hatred of the countryside with a sentimental fascination for anything presented as 'modern` and 'efficient.
It was particularly telling that the only moment when ministers briefly flirted with the Idea of vaccination, as the way of bringing the epidemic quickly to an end, was back in March and April when Mr Blair began to panic that the crisis might interfere with his General Election plans.
But this was scuppered by MAFF and the NFU who forced vaccination back off the agenda, accompanied by a massive disinformation campaign in which almost every point they made to discredit it either had no scientific basis or was simply a lie.
There was never any intention in MAFF or the NFU that this crisis should be solved in the way the genuine scientific experts were recommending because this would not satisfy that hidden agenda, that as many of Britain's small livestock farmers should be driven out of business as possible.
Slaughter
That is why, even now, tens of thousands of animals are still being killed every week on the hills of South Wales and Cumbria, and why ministry officials are preparing to test Countless more, from Yorkshire to the West Country, well aware they will find enough 'antibodies' to justify continuing the slaughter for months to come.
What they may not have reckoned with is the appalling environmental and social cost, which will follow the wiping out of the animals, which keep those areas looking picturesque for the tourists, or the wider costs to Britain's economy already estimated to have reached £20 billion.
But it is only appropriate that the Government's contempt for the countryside should have led it into a catastrophe for which, one day, it may have to pay a terrible political price.
From the "Daily Mail² (UK), Tuesday, August 7th 2001
8/11/01
3:52:59 PM
Decision Won't Stem Debate
by Caroline Benner
The New York Times lead reports that major U.S. airlines will no longer require a Saturday night stay in return for a low-priced ticket on some popular flights. The Washington Post leads with news that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in an effort to reduce the time available for potentially violent protests, will shorten their annual fall meeting from a week to a weekend. This next battle in the war between agents of globalization and anti-globalization protestors is scheduled for Sept. 29 and 30 in Washington D.C. According to the Los Angeles Times lead, California is now facing a surplus of electrical power. The state bought too much electricity through long-term contracts when it was trying to alleviate power shortages a few months back.
According to the NYT lead, for the last 20 years, business travelers have been willing to pay steep prices for tickets that don't require a Saturday night stay and thus have become the airlines' most profitable flyers. Recently though, business customers have been choosing cheaper regional carriers. Now that the domestic airline industry is facing an expected $1.5 billion in losses this year, the biggest airlines hope to entice business travelers to return by dropping the mandatory Saturday night stay.
The WP lead calls the IMF/World Bank decision to cut short their meeting a "major change" in the wake of the police killing of a protestor in Genoa, Italy during the recent G-8 conference. While the financial institutions should have time to approve policy changes at the meeting, much of the socializing and business dealing between government officials and private financiers will be sidelined. Protestors have assured the Post that the reduced schedule will not affect their agendas. D.C. officials are asking the federal government to put up the $38 million they anticipate spending on securing the city for the event.
The LAT lead reports that electricity is likely to remain an expensive problem for Californians. If demand doesn't rise, energy experts say, ratepayers may have to make up for the losses the state is taking in selling unused power. Last month, California sold extra power for one-fifth the price it paid, and if such rates of loss continue, the state could be out $500 million by this time next year.
The papers all front follow-ups to President Bush's decision to grant federal funding for research on existing stem cells. The NYT reports above the fold that the administration will move quickly to implement its plan for funding stem cell research and that federal funding will begin by early 2002. The National Institutes of Health started compiling a list of stem cell lines eligible for federal research grants. The White House thinks there are 60 such lines but specialists believe there aren't so many. The WP off-lead points out that though Bush's stem cell rules are more restrictive than President Clinton's overall, Bush's ethical guidelines for obtaining colonies of stem cells from fertility clinics are less demanding. Bush requires that donors of stem cell-filled embryos give "proper informed consent," but he doesn't describe exactly what this means, whereas Clinton gave explicit guidelines for such consent. This policy change might free up more stem cell colonies for research. The LAT front concludes that the debate on the future of stem cell research will continue.
The WP front and reports reefered by the NYT and LAT reveal that eight Marines, including a general, have been charged with violating military law for keeping fraudulent maintenance records on Osprey aircraft. Two Ospreys crashed and killed soldiers last year, and according to the charges, the accused Marines misrepresented the aircraft's problems on maintenance reports in order to maintain funding for the fleet.
The LAT fronts and the WP and NYT go inside with Bush's first high-profile decision on affirmative action. The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to back a federal program that gives a percentage of government transportation contracts worth billions of dollars to disadvantaged minorities and women.
Everyone reports inside that the DOJ has asked a federal appeals court not to honor Microsoft's request to postpone a decision on appropriate remedies for the company's monopolistic behavior. Microsoft doesn't want to be punished until it finds out if the Supreme Court will review its case. The government argues that drawing out the proceedings further would hurt consumers.
Inside the WP and NYT is news that Britain has temporarily taken away Northern Ireland's self-governing privileges. This arrangement gives the region's political factions more time to devise a new governing arrangement after the leader of its government quit several weeks ago. A major sticking point in negotiations between the parties is the Irish Republican Army's reluctance to disarm.
The WP reports online that a graduate student is protesting materialism by selling everything he owns on eBay. Among the items he has sold are Christmas gifts he intended for his family--his stepmother outbid competitors to collect her presents--and his birthday party. The stranger who bought the party became friends with the attendees. The paper doesn't say whether this man's quest for freedom from material goods means that he has considered giving up the $5000 he made selling his things.
Source: http://www.Slate.com
8/11/01
3:47:01 PM
Pacifica Campaign News
To All Supporters of the Pacifica Campaign:
The systematic harassment by Pacifica management against Amy Goodman and her national news show, Democracy Now!, which began more than one year ago, has reached a crisis stage.
On August 2nd, Steve Yasko, the director of national programming, ordered Amy in an official memo to stop signing off each day with the words she has used since the infamous "Christmas Coup" of last year: "From the embattled studios of WBAI, from the studios of the banned and the fired, from the studios of our listeners. I'm Amy Goodman, thanks for listening to another edition of Democracy Now!"
Yasko had been pressuring Amy verbally for weeks to discontinue the sign-off, but she has steadfastly refused his demands as an overt attempt to censor her work. Amy maintains that from a journalistic viewpoint her words are an accurate reflection of the reality at WBAI, where interim station manger Utrice Leid has been conducting a dictatorial purge and a reign of terror against staff, volunteers and listeners who object to her policies. Amy has told management that she will gladly end the sign-off when they stop the banning and the firing, but to remain silent would compromise her integrity.
When Amy continued to use the slogan the next day, Yasko notified her in writing that she was guilty of "deliberate insubordination" and her union representative told her that she could be fired at any moment.
Early this week, Yasko came to New York from Washington and was at the WBAI station moments before Amy and her staff were about to begin a live broadcast of DN!. With Yasko looking on, Leid ordered the DN! staff out of the station's main studio and made them broadcast from an inferior sub-studio, one without a clock and terrible phone lines.
The national show, the most popular and acclaimed in the history of the network, has now been permanently relegated to this sub-studio without any explanation by either Leid or Yasko as to why.
In addition, the expensive new security and surveillance system installed by Leid in recent weeks has created a virtual fascist atmosphere at WBAI. Not only must every employee use a card key to enter the station, but Leid has mandated that each card key be programmed so that they provide access to the station for only certain time periods -- typically one hour before a producer's show begins and one hour after it concludes. Amy and the other employees cannot gain entrance to the station at other times unless Leid approves it.
Even major capitalist corporations don't have such stringent security access and so many surveillance cameras. The work environment at WBAI today more resembles the Pentagon and the CIA than a radical, community radio station. In addition, the open hostility against Amy by Leid's loyal followers at the station has reached the point where some have taken to shouting her down at staff meetings and physically intimidating her to leave. Amy's written complaints to Pacifica management about racist and sexist remarks made by Leid and her loyalists, and the violent undercurrent, are routinely ignored. Her complaints about Leid's sabotaging of Democracy Now! by denying Amy's team access to the main studios have gone unanswered.
Pacifica management has the gall to periodically ask listeners to donate money to support Democracy Now! while it is doing everything possible to make life impossible for the program and its staff. The reason for this contradictory stance is simple --Amy, like many past and present employees at Pacifica -- refuses to go along with steady destruction of independent programming, free speech and progressive news coverage at the network. And precisely because Democracy Now! is so popular, Leid, Yasko and network director Bessie Wash, are determined to set an example by breaking her.
It is amazing that she has managed to survive and continue producing a quality daily show under such conditions. But no one should have to tolerate such harassment.
In recent weeks, Leid has fired, suspended or banned a new group of WBAI producers, among them Polk Award winning journalist Robert Knight, and producers Bob Lederer and Kathy Davis, and more firings are bound to occur. Just as we in the Pacifica Campaign have warned, Leid, Wash and the corporate clique are seeking to create a macabre new reality on the ground while they desperately attempt to hold off the listeners' intifada for democracy.
This new round of "assassinations" by this renegade clique only reflects how rabid they are becoming the closer they get to defeat.
We don't know what the coming week will bring for Democracy Now!, but we do know that the systematic harassment has become intolerable for Amy and her staff. We urge you to call and/or e-mail Bessie Wash, Utrice Leid and Ken Ford, the vice-chair of the Pacifica Board, as well as other Board members. You can get their contact information on the Pacifica Campaign web site at (See below). Tell them to stop the harassment of Amy immediately. Be civil, but be firm and insistent. And while you're at it, tell Ken Ford to read the handwriting on the wall. Pacifica is not his plaything. It is a peoples' institution and a public trust. His time is up and he should resign.
Venceremos,
Juan Gonzalez
*****
CONTACT INFO
Stop the Harassment of Democracy Now!
WBAI Acting GM Utrice Leid
Tel: 212-209-2800/2820 Fax: 212-747-1698
E-mail: uleid@escape.com
Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash
Tel: 202-588-0999 x 348 or 888-770-4944 x348
Fax: 202-588-0561
E-mail: bmwpacifica@aol.com
Pacifica Board Vice Chair Ken Ford
Tel: 202-822-0228 Fax: 202-822-0369
E-mail: kenfordpacifica@aol.com, kford@nahb.com
Pacifica Board member Wendell L. Johns
Tel: 202-752-5355 Fax: 202-752-4281
E-mail: wendell_L_johns@fanniemae.com
Pacifica Board member Valrie Chambers
Tel: 361-825-6012 Fax: 281-655-0266
E-mail: Valrie.Chambers@mail.tamucc.edu,
valriechambers@aol.com
Cut the below list of email addresses, paste it into the To: line of your email composition form. Also go to:
http://www.progressiveportal.org/letters/pacifica/resign/
Bmwpacifica@aol.com, uleid@escape.com, kford@nahb.com, KenFordPacifica@aol.com, jmurdock@ebglaw.com, wendell_L_johns@fanniemae.com, Alfigo@aol.com, valriechambers@aol.com, Valrie.Chambers@mail.tamucc.edu, pacificacampaign@yahoo.com
*****
The Pacifica Campaign is a grass-roots organization representing listeners and staffalike, fighting to preserve Pacifica's 50-year tradition of progressive, community-based radio.
For more info to to:
http://www.pacificacampaign.org
Pacifica Campaign
51 MacDougal St., #80
New York, NY 10012
(646) 230-9588
8/11/01
3:39:35 PM
Human Arrogance And The Decline Of The Earth
by Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever. -- Horace Mann
Recent scientific studies have made it clearer than ever before that the Earth was once filled with balanced ecosystems, teeming with abundant life in numbers that are almost beyond our comprehension. Historical evidence clearly suggests that the oceans were filled with whales, sea turtles, fish, and other forms of life that seem more like a science fiction fantasy than reality.
This new information clearly suggests that today's fishing and hunting quotas may be nearly meaningless. Such quotas are based on estimates of how many animals would be present if not subjected to human pressures of but a few years ago. The historical evidence is now showing that the actual populations - before human predation began - were exponentially greater than they are today.
This new research, presented in the journal "Science" in a special July 27, 2001 issue, confirms what many ecologists and archeologists have suspected for some time - coastal human settlements have been depleting ocean resources for the last 10,000 years. This challenges the popular notion that native peoples had a small impact on the environment and lived in relative harmony with nature.
The reality is that once humans began hunting, their appetite was insatiable and a pattern of imbalance started that may culminate in the complete collapse of some ecosystems.
For example, the California coastline was once thick with underwater kelp forests and teeming with nearshore fishes. Predators like the sea otter, once numbering in the hundreds of thousands along the California coast, ate sea urchins, whose major diet is kelp. Native peoples hunted the sea otters in vast numbers and Europeans in the late 1800's hunted them nearly to extinction. As a result, the urchin populations skyrocketed, decimating the kelp.
This started a destructive pattern that turned much of the California coast into the barren rocks and sand we see there today. There are fewer than 1,100 California sea otters surviving today, yet some people actually think that there are too many. Fishermen often falsely blame them for the decline in abalone numbers when historical records clearly show that human predation killed off the stocks of that animal.
There were so many sea turtles in the Caribbean that Christopher Columbus worried that his ship would run aground!
Examining the middens, or kitchen refuse piles, that have been unearthed along the coastlines, the decline in marine populations can be clearly seen as fishing pressures increased. Studies of the refuse piles of the Amerindian peoples who first settled the area around the Caribbean show that they depended heavily on sea turtles for food as long ago as the seventh century. It is easy to catch the slow moving animals when they come ashore to lay eggs.
Sea turtle populations that once measured in the tens of millions now are measured in the thousands.
But with the passage of time, the presence of turtle shells in the middens decreases until they disappear almost completely. Clearly, the nesting colonies were wiped out. Species after species were fished out as the early peoples, and later the European settlers, moved from one food source to another, without any concern for sustaining anything into the future.
In Chesapeake Bay, clear evidence exists of a once balanced ecosystem that was teeming with life. Oyster beds were so thick that they posed navigational hazards to passing ships. But the huge oysters made fine eating and they were soon gone. Their key place in the ecosystem as water filters was ignored and lost, and the Chesapeake has become murky green and unhealthy. The oysters once filtered the water so effectively that it was crystal clear.
Without the oysters, the chemical content of the bay changed and became inhospitable to the once abundant manatees, giant sturgeon, alligators, and whales. Attempts are underway to try to regrow some of those beds, but they will never reach historic levels.
It is now clearer than ever that every animal and every organism, no matter how small, plays a vital role in keeping the systems of the Earth healthy and functioning. Removing any species from the complex web of life disturbs the balance of the entire system, resulting in the impoverished life zones left today.
The 19 authors of the "Science" article, "Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems," examined data on the exploitation of our coastal resources that went back as far as 125,000 years. This allowed them to challenge the ideas that previously had been based on a few studies in the 1950s that had lasted only a few years.
Without taking into account the lifespans of the sea creatures and the historical abundance of life, the assumptions that have been in science textbooks since those early inadequate studies may be quite wrong. Generations of people have grown up with a poor view of what the impact of humanity has been on the environment.
The implications of this new data are sweeping and should change the way we view our interactions with the natural world. For example, quotas that have been established by the International Whaling Commission for the killing of whales must now be recognized as meaningless and be completely revised. Japan is given permission to kill 400 whales annually. They call it "research," but critics say it is just a front for commercialized whaling, since the meat is sold in Japanese restaurants. Norway also continues to hunt whales.
Historically, whale populations numbered in the millions, a number that was necessary to insure the health of our oceans. Today, there are a few hundred thousand of these animals left so to suggest, as Tokyo claims, that it is acceptable to continue to hunt them because there are so many is ludicrous. Japanese ships recently returned from their summer hunt in the northwestern Pacific after killing 158 whales.
In the United States, numbers used to determine when it is OK to remove a species from the endangered list must be considered ridiculously low. For example, in 1994, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the gray whale "recovered" and took the species off the Endangered Species List, declaring arrogantly in the June 16, 1994 edition of the Federal Register that the whale "has recovered to near its estimated original population size. Today there are about 21,000 individuals in the wild.
The estimates used to determine the "original" population numbers are from the 19th century, just before commercial whaling began. The new information in the "Science" study could mean that we shouldn't be content to cease protecting a species until it once again numbers in the millions.
Once again, we are reminded that our perception of the true extent and importance of the web of life is woefully inadequate. We must erase any notions we have of how many individuals of a species are enough and try to remember that the Earth is a complex, living organism where every plant, every animal, every microbe evolved for a reason. The presence of large numbers of an animal should not be considered license to kill it, but rather an indication that we might have a chance to restore health to a threatened ecosystem.
Human arrogance and our perception that we are the most important species has once again been challenged. In fact, we may actually be one of the least important species on the planet. How rarely we hear about a human actually contributing to the health of an ecosystem rather than its destruction.
Let's get it straight once and for all, and start teaching our children that the raping and plundering of the Earth in the name of economic growth has taken us to the brink of disaster and must stop.
RESOURCES
1. Check out the July 27, 2001 issue of "Science" at
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol293/issue5530
Access to articles online is by subscription only, but you can access their web links at
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/ecology2001.shtml
2. Keep track of whaling with the help of Greenpeace at
http://www.greenpeace.org/~oceans/whaling/index.html
3. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species program is at
4. Learn about the gray whale from the Marine Mammal Center at
http://www.tmmc.org/graywhal.htm
5. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society tries to stop whale hunts.
6. See many resources on Native Americans and the environment at
http://cnie.org/NAE/index.html
7. Track sea otter issues with Friends of the Sea Otter at
8. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them it is time to stop making policy based solely on the current state of the world. We must consider the historical content of ecosystems. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html
Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle. trying to imagine how Puget Sound must have appeared with whales and seals everywhere you looked.
Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at
jackie@healingourworld.com
Visit his web site at http://www.healingourworld.com
Source: http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-10g.html
8/11/01
3:32:11 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
BUSH APPROVES LIMITED STEM CELL RESEARCH
CRAWFORD, Texas, August 10, 2001 (ENS) - In a nationwide televised address from his ranch Thursday night, President George W. Bush delivered his long awaited position on the use of federal funds for stem cell research. He will permit federal monies to be used for research on existing stem cell lines, but not to create new lines.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-10-02.html
SEVEN EU COUNTRIES IN COURT OVER TRANSGENIC MICRO-ORGANISMS
BRUSSELS, Belgium, August 10, 2001 (ENS) - Keeping transgenic micro-organisms from escaping into the environment is critical for the health and safety of the European population and environment, but seven countries have failed to pass laws requiring their containment that incorporate modern standards.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-10-03.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: AUGUST 10, 2001
East Coast Traffic to Ease with Potomac Bridge Upgrade
Rhode Island Photo Supply Plant Fined for Air Pollution
Algae Eating Sea Urchins May Reverse Coral Reef Decline
Intensive Monitoring Planned for Peregrine Falcons
Coffee Company Plants Trees to Limit Global Warming
Protecting Bird Would Not Harm Hawaiian Economy
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-10-09.html
HEALING OUR WORLD: WEEKLY COMMENT
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
HUMAN ARROGANCE AND THE DECLINE OF THE EARTH
Recent scientific studies have made it clearer than ever before that the Earth was once filled with balanced ecosystems, teeming with abundant life in numbers that are almost beyond our comprehension. Historical evidence clearly suggests that the oceans were filled with whales, sea turtles, fish, and other forms of life that seem more like a science fiction fantasy than reality.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-10g.html
8/11/01
3:28:16 PM
WILD ALERT
We are forced by the Bush Administration to once again ask you to take action to help save roadless areas on our national forests. As we've mentioned here before, the Bush Administration is ignoring over a million public comments in support of roadless area protection and has set up a fast-track, technically-focused comment period. This process was designed to disenfranchise the typical American who is concerned about his or her forests and wishes to speak out in support of roadless protection.
But we're determined to make it simple for you to take action and to send your comments to the Forest Service, stating, in no uncertain terms, that you want protection for the last remaining 58 million acres of wild places on our national forests.
If you are already a WildAlert member, please just REPLY to this message and then hit your SEND button and a letter similar to the one below will be emailed automatically to the Forest Service on your behalf. If you have received this email from a friend, please follow this link to take action on this issue:
http://www.wilderness.org/takeaction/?step=2&item=584
BACKGROUND
An historic number of Americans took part in the original, 3-year public process determining how the last of the best of our national forests should be managed. Both the scientific community and the majority of the American public want these remaining wildlands protected from industrial development. The Bush Administration quickly determined that the roadless conservation rule did not fit with its agenda to open national lands to Big Oil and other developers. First, the Administration failed to defend the Rule in court (we're appealing). Now, the Administration is asking for detailed comments within an impossibly short timeframe.
TAKE ACTION
Please don't let the Bush Administration subvert your wishes in the future protection of roadless areas. Hit REPLY to this message and then hit your SEND button and a letter similar to the one below will be emailed automatically to the Forest Service on your behalf. Or go to our site to take action and tell your friends:
http://www.wilderness.org/takeaction/?step=2&item=584
You can also use the sample letter below as a model for comments you send yourself.
SAMPLE LETTER
USDA-Forest Service-CAT
Attention: Roadless ANPR Comments
P.O. Box 221090
Salt Lake City, Utah 84122
EMAIL TO: roadless_anpr@fs.fed.us
Dear Chief Bosworth,
I am writing to ask, as an official comment to the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, that the Forest Service's Roadless Area Conservation Rule be implemented in full and without exception, as published in the Federal Register on January 12, 2001.
Modifying the Roadless Area Conservation Rule through individual forest plans would return the management of these vital wild areas to a decision-making process that has not adequately protected or conserved roadless areas in the past.
QUESTION 1: What is the appropriate role of local forest planning as required by NFMA in evaluating protection and management of Inventoried Roadless Areas?
Forest planning has clearly failed to provide adequate protection of roadless areas and will continue to do so in the future, especially given that the Administration is also weakening forest planning regulations. Under current forest plans, about 60 percent of the remaining roadless areas are available for road construction and logging. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule is needed to prevent further incremental loss of roadless areas. The appropriate role for forest planning is to provide additional protection of roadless areas, such as preventing off-road vehicle damage, and identifying roadless areas omitted from Forest Service inventories.
QUESTION 2: What is the best way for the Forest Service to work with the variety of States, tribes, local communities, other organizations, and individuals in a collaborative manner to ensure that concerns about roadless values are heard and addressed through a fair and open process?
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule was developed through the most extensive public involvement in the history of federal rulemaking, with more than 600 public hearings nationwide. More than 1.6 million Americans submitted official comments, 95% of which supported strongest possible protections for remaining roadless areas. States, tribes, communities, and the general public had ample opportunity to review and comment on the proposal. The final Rule addressed many views expressed during the public comment period and incorporated many suggested changes.
QUESTION 3: How should inventoried roadless areas be managed to provide for healthy forests, including protection from severe wildfires and the buildup of hazardous fuels as well as to provide for the detection and prevention of insect and disease outbreak?
The best way to maintain healthy roadless areas is to keep them roadless. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule already provides exceptions for roadbuilding and logging to address wildfires and forest health. According to the Forest Service, less than 2% of inventoried roadless areas are at combined risk of insects, disease, and fire. The Forest Service has successfully controlled 98% of wildfires in inventoried roadless areas without building roads into those areas.
QUESTION 4: How should communities and private property near Inventoried Roadless Areas be protected from the risks associated with natural events, such as major wildfires that may occur on adjacent federal lands?
See answer to Question 3, above. Also, the rule gives forest managers discretion, on a site-specific basis, to thin small-diameter trees where needed to restore ecological processes, provide habitat for endangered species, and avert catastrophic wildfire. Wildfires are much more likely to start in areas with roads, due to increased public access.
QUESTION 5: What is the best way to implement the laws that ensure States, tribes, organizations, and private citizens have reasonable access to property they own within Inventoried Roadless Areas?
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule has no effect on access to state and private land inholdings. Roadless areas are no different from any other national forest lands regarding inholding access. The Bush administration should not be perpetuating the myth that the Rule denies access to property inholdings.
QUESTION 6: What are the characteristics, environmental values, social and economic considerations, and other factors the Forest Service should consider as it evaluates IRAs?
The Forest Service has already identified roadless area values through the public process for the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, including clean drinking water, fishing and swimming, rare wildlife habitat, large undisturbed landscapes, barriers to weeds and pests, scientific research, open space and unspoiled vistas, Native American religious and cultural observances.
The real economic value of National Forests comes from recreation and environmental quality of life. Approximately 85 percent of the revenue generated from America's national forests comes from recreational activities, more than five times the amount generated by logging.
QUESTION 7: Are there specific activities that should be expressly prohibited or expressly allowed for Inventoried Roadless Areas through Forest Plan revisions or amendments?
Road building and commercial logging should generally be prohibited in roadless areas, with exceptions for forest health and public safety. Allowing forest plans to make additional exceptions would completely undermine the Rule, causing continued incremental destruction of roadless areas. Roadless areas should receive additional protection through the forest planning process, especially from destructive off-road vehicle use and hard-rock mining.
QUESTION 8: Should Inventoried Roadless Areas selected for future roadless protection through the local forest plan revision process be proposed to Congress for wilderness designation, or should they be maintained under a specific designation for roadless area management under the forest plan?
By law, forest plans must evaluate the wilderness potential of all roadless areas and make recommendations for wilderness designation by Congress. The Rule doesn't change that. Forest plans also designate roadless areas for continued roadless management, regardless of wilderness recommendations.
QUESTION 9: How can the Forest Service work effectively with individuals and groups with strongly competing views, values, and beliefs in evaluating and managing public lands and resources, recognizing that the agency can not meet all of the desires of all the parties?
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule enjoys the overwhelming support of the American people, which the Bush administration needs to respect. The Rule represents a balanced approach to managing National Forests, most of which are already open to logging, mining, and drilling, while just 18 percent is designated wilderness. The Rule will protect the remaining 31 percent for future generations.
QUESTION 10: What other concerns, comments, or interests relating to the protection and management of inventoried roadless areas are important?
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule should be retained and implemented as is. The Bush administration needs to do all that it can to ensure protection of America's remaining roadless areas. In particular, the Forest Service should stop preparing timber sales in the Tongass National Forest in violation of the Rule. The administration should also stop undermining the legality of the Rule and vigorously defend it against lawsuits. In addition, the administration should call off its efforts to weaken the environmental safeguards and public participation opportunities in the forest planning regulations.
8/11/01
3:04:17 PM
Fascism's Face In Genoa
by John L. Allen Jr., The Nation
hile violence generated by the radical "black bloc" dominated initial headlines during the G-8 summit in Genoa, it is now Italy's men in blue who find themselves at the center of criminal investigations and political debate. Using physical evidence and eyewitness testimony, critics charge that the Italian police engaged in systematic beatings and human rights abuses, leading some to compare the conduct of the Italian police to the Chilean security forces under Pinochet. At an August 3 press conference, lead investigator Francesco Meloni said, "The reports of violence, and the identical testimony of scores of persons who passed through jails in diverse hours and days during the G-8, suggest a systematic method of torture and genuine violations of human rights."
Most pointedly, Italian magistrates, journalists and politicians are demanding to know how a July 21 midnight police raid on the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum, organizers of the antiglobalization protests, was authorized, and who is responsible for the wide range of abuses alleged to have taken place. A police review, a parliamentary inquest and at least four judicial investigations are looking into accusations. In all, ninety-three people were arrested, and all but one released without charges. Photos taken of protesters show broken teeth, bruises and head wounds. Police are also said to have confiscated videotapes and computer hard drives that the Genoa Social Forum had been using to document misconduct.
Police justified the raid on the grounds that the Genoa Social Forum was aiding and abetting the violence of the "all blacks." Only two Molotov cocktails were actually found, however, along with a handful of sticks, iron bars and pocketknives, which strained credulity as a "cache of weapons." Many observers believe the raid was in fact a calculated reprisal against leftist organizers, blamed by police for giving cover to the violent protesters, despite the fact that the Genoa Social Forum had called for nonviolent modes of resistance. "It was probably a sort of vendetta--of a Chilean type," said Riccardo Barenghi, editor of Il Manifesto, which has been following the story closely.
Initially the new, right-wing Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi, for whom the G-8 summit was supposed to be a kind of debut, blocked calls for a parliamentary investigation. Berlusconi later changed course. The first casualties of the probes came August 2, when three top police officials were removed from office by Interior Minister Claudio Scajola, who himself had just survived calls for removal from Italy's center-left opposition. Opposition leaders want the scope of the investigations to include political responsibility for the violence. Most important, they want a close examination of the role of Berlusconi's deputy prime minister, the neo-Fascist Gianfranco Fini, who was in Genoa during the G-8 and maintained close contact with the police and security forces. For at least some of this time, Fini was actually ensconced at police headquarters. Was he involved, investigators want to know, in the decision to raid the Genoa Social Forum or in encouraging police to take a hard line?
Barenghi said he believes that the ascent of Fini's National Alliance Party, with its roots in Italy's Fascist past, helped shape the climate in which the police operated. "Certainly the most violent among the police felt themselves authorized to beat people from the fact that today in Italy we have a government of the right, which has within itself the heirs of Fascism," he said in an interview. A related issue is exactly who made up the "black bloc." Spokespersons for the Genoa Social Forum charge that some black-clad protesters were drawn from the far right and infiltrated the antiglobalization movement to discredit it. Italian newspapers have published documents revealing that police had knowledge of such plans. One high-profile observer, Italian activist-priest Fr. Vitaliano Della Sala, has said he believes that some far-right elements had tacit police support.
What impact such charges may have on Berlusconi's government, if they are confirmed, is unclear. The story has dominated Italian newspapers and television broadcasts. Three Italian bishops issued a statement saying they had not seen such violence in Italy since World War II, and that the beatings suggested that police were "punishing the expression of ideas someone doesn't like." Polls by the respected firm Datamedia show, however, that most Italians are less outraged by the police, even if accusations of misconduct are true, than by the protesters, whom they blame for an estimated $40 million in property damage. Many Italians are terrified of a resurgence of the violent radicalism of the 1970s and the Red Brigades. Berlusconi has said he is "100 percent with the police," and in a sense he may be reading the national mood about right.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=allen
8/11/01
2:59:34 PM
The Nation
Long before demonstrators and police battled it out on the streets of Genoa during the G-8 summit, a potentially more influential attempt to guide the direction of globalization was slowly evolving about two hours' drive away in the countryside of the neighboring region of Piedmont in the foothills of the Italian Alps.
Read "Slow Food" by Alexander Stille from the August 20/27 issue of The Nation for the full story. Currently available at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=stille
You can also find other new editorials, columns and articles of interest at The Nation's site:
JOHN L. ALLEN, JR.: Fascism's Face in Genoa
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=allen
WILLIAM GREIDER: Pat's Social Security Trap
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=greider
KATHA POLLITT: Baby, It's Cold Inside!
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=greider
BILL WEINBERG: Bio-Piracy in Chiapas
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=weinberg
DAVID SARASHON: Impeach The Supremes
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=sarasohn
GENE SANTORO: American Buffalo (review of Buffalo Springfield)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010820&s=santoro
ALAN JENKINS: Race Matters (web only)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=jenkins20010809
NICHOLAS WOOMER: The Student-Labor Alliance (web only)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=woomer20010809
ROBERT SCHEER: The Persecution of Wen Ho Lee Redux (web only)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=scheer&s=20010807
THE NATION ONLINE INTERVIEW SERIES
Read an exclusive interview with author Eric Scholsser on his new book, Fast Food Nation, in this second installment of The Nation's new interview series. Schlosser outlines an often horrifying saga of how ground beef gets processed and made into the burgers we so eagerly consume as well as telling us how his children feel about being deprived of Happy Meals. Exclusively available at:
http://www.thenation.com/special/schlosser.mhtml
THE ONLINE BEAT
Read the two latest installments of John Nichols' web only feature on the recent deaths of two public figures who many may not know much about: Maureen Reagan, the daughter of our 40th president and actress Jane Wyman, and Jim Corbett, the dynamic force behind the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s and an important thinker on human rights issues and U.S. policy in Latin America. Both obituaries available at:
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/
DEATH ROW ROLL CALL
This month, Texas once again proves itself the nation's standardbearer in doling out capital punishment. Of the nine executions scheduled nationally for August, the Lone Star state has five. One of those slated for execution is Napoleon Beazley, who was 17 years old when he committed his crime.
See The Nation's exclusive web feature Death Row Roll Call to get more information on Beazley's case and to send a letter protesting his death sentence--as well as those of the eight other inmates scheduled to die in August. Available at:
http://www.thenation.com/deathrow
RECENT NATION ARTICLES
Read recent articles of interest, still accessible at The Nation's site, by Katha Pollitt, Christopher Hitchens, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Victor Navasky, David Corn, Jason Vest, Bruce Shapiro, Walden Bello, JoAnn Wypijewski and Tim Robbins, among many others. All at:
DISCOUNTED NATION SUBSCRIPTIONS
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This special offer is exclusively available at:
https://ssl.thenation.com
8/11/01
2:47:24 PM
Call the White House at: 202-456-1414 or 202-456-1111 and fax them at: 202-456-2461 and tell them NO to more corporate welfare for the nuclear industry. You might ask them why they're so lenient with welfare for the rich and cozy up to corporate crime while loving the death penalty for average citizens that aren't rich.
Nuke Plant Tax Break Criticized
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration wants to change the tax code to make sure all owners of nuclear power plants can write off the cost of decommissioning.
Utilities that have rates set by government agencies already can deduct the money they must set aside in special funds for decommissioning, typically hundreds of millions of dollars. The tax break is not automatically transferred, however, when a plant is bought by a company without regulated rates.
In those cases, the Internal Revenue Service must approve a tax break. The IRS has done that routinely since a flurry of nuclear plant sales began two years ago. Even so, opponents who don't want to see the tax break written into law contend it will do nothing but guarantee more revenue for plant owners.
``This won't produce a single more megawatt of electricity to meet summer reliability needs,'' said Howard Learner of the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center. ``All it will do is transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from consumers' wallets to nuclear plant owners'.''
Supporters say it makes no sense for a tax break already in place for a plant not to be automatically transferred to a new owner.
``There's absolutely no reason for any distinction to be made here,'' said David Brown, lobbyist for Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the largest private nuclear operator in the United States.
The issue is growing in importance because more nuclear power plants are likely to be sold as electricity is increasingly deregulated across the country. New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., for example, has said it plans to spend up to $1.5 billion to acquire as many as a dozen plants in the next five years.
Like private companies, most ``public'' utilities are owned by investors. The difference is they are obligated to provide power to everyone in their service areas. In exchange for their monopoly status, their rates and earnings are regulated by states.
The tax break was vetoed in 1999 by President Clinton but was revived by the Bush administration and approved last week as part of the House energy bill. It faces an uncertain future in the Senate, which will consider its own energy package this fall.
Now, when nuclear power plants are sold from rate-regulated to nonregulated owners, the decommissioning money doesn't retain the ``qualified'' tax status and thus are no longer tax deductible.
The new owners still are required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to maintain the funds to ensure that money is on hand to close and clean the plants safely after they stop generating power.
Electric companies, which contributed more than $18.5 million to Democratic and Republican candidates and parties in the 1999-2000 election cycle, say it's a case of tax law not keeping up with changes in the electricity marketplace.
Since Entergy bought the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., from Boston Edison Co. in July 1999, eight nuclear reactors have been sold from rate-regulated to nonregulated owners.
The biggest deal was closed four months ago, when Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Resources Inc. bought the Millstone nuclear power complex in Waterford, Conn., for $1.3 billion.
A change in the law, said Ron Clements, a power industry lobbyist, would help facilitate deals that might otherwise fall through, keeping nuclear plants online to churn out much-needed electricity for homes and businesses.
In cases where deals go through anyway, customers will end up paying more for power, he said.
``Rates will go up,'' said Clements, of the Edison Electric Institute, the main trade association of private power companies.
Critics say it's wrong to give a tax break to corporations that want to maximize their profits and thus could bear the costs of decommissioning.
``Fair is fair,'' Learner said. ``It's part of the cost of doing business.''
The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the change, and other tax changes related to nuclear decommissioning, would cost the federal government $1.93 billion in revenue from 2002-2011.
On the Net: Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Tax-Break.html?searchpv=aponline
8/11/01
2:37:33 PM
The online "Interview with God"
Treat yourself to a singular online experience.
Go to: http://www.reata.org and click on "Interview with God."
Simple, yet profound. A good way to start your day.
8/11/01
2:31:34 PM
NEW YORK CONFERENCE ON ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY & SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Aug. 17 - 19th: Living Earth/Living Faith Conference on Ecology, Spirituality & Sustainable Living, at St. Bridget's Church, Copake Falls, in rural Columbia City., NY. With David Toolan, Michael Dowd, Finley Schaef, Manna Jo Greene, & many more. Saturday concert with Kim & Reggie Harris and Magpie - benefiting family farmers in Nicaragua.
IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO REGISTER.
Full details, call Bruce Gardiner at 518-325-5546
Visit our website: http://www.encampment2000.org
8/11/01
2:27:20 PM
Q: What is globalization?
A: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend, using a Swedish mobile telephone, crashes in a French tunnel in a German car with a Dutch engine driven by a Belgian driver, who was high on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by an Italian paparazzi on a Japanese motorcycle, treated by an American doctor, assisted by Filipino para-medical staff, using Brazilian medicines, dies.
- Anonymous Net circulator
8/11/01
12:17:41 PM
Oceans Could Thrive Again
By David Suzuki
Looking at the state of our oceans today, it's hard to imagine what they were like just a few hundred years ago. Back then, the seas literally teemed with life. Herds of tens of thousands of dugongs (sea cows) grazed off the coast of Australia. Oyster reefs grew so large that they were a hazard for ship navigation. And huge sea turtles numbering in the tens of millions flourished in the Caribbean. Today, many of these species are ecologically extinct from their former ranges, and large mammals are absent from most coastal ecosystems. Once-abundant fisheries have collapsed, and two-thirds of those that are still harvested are at risk. What happened?
According to a recent historical analysis in the journal Science, severe human overfishing has been the dominant force behind the collapse of marine ecosystems — more than pollution, declining water quality, or climate change. The groundbreaking paper by more than a dozen scientists from a variety of fields argues that if we are to seriously address the ecological crises that our oceans face, we have to look at how these crises developed.
The authors conclude that recent marine ecosystem collapses, including die-offs of seagrass beds, kelp forests, and coral reefs, often had their origins decades or even centuries earlier. And the paper reveals how intricately interdependent different parts of ecosystems are.
For example, off the coast of Florida, turtlegrass, which provides important habitat for manatees, sea turtles, fish, sharks, and other creatures, has been dying off recently due to disease and other problems. But the cause of these problems can be traced back two centuries ago when European colonists slaughtered green turtles to near extinction. Without the turtles, which ate turtlegrass, seagrass beds grew longer, baffling currents, shading the sea bottom, and decomposing on site, providing a perfect habitat for slime moulds that cause turtlegrass wasting disease. The authors conclude, "Thus, all the factors that have been linked with the recent die-off of turtlegrass beds in Florida Bay, except for changes in temperature and salinity, can be attributed to the ecological extinction of green turtles."
Similarly, the huge oyster reefs of Chesapeake Bay on the U.S. East Coast used to effectively filter the water of the entire bay every three days. But after mechanical fishing dredges destroyed the oyster reefs early in the 20th century, the water became increasingly turbid and oxygen deficient. Today, many species that once thrived in the bay, from sturgeon to sharks to dolphins, have been virtually eliminated.
Although mechanization has vastly increased humanity's ability to pick the seas clean, the authors point out that even ancient aboriginal societies drove many marine species to the verge of extinction. The Stellar's sea cow, for example, which was once widely distributed along the Pacific Coast of North America, from California to Alaska, is thought to have been eliminated from most of its range by aboriginal hunting well before European contact.
Today, the situation is obviously much different because marine ecosystems face an array of threats. And unfortunately, the ecological extinction of entire food levels caused by human overfishing also makes ecosystems much more vulnerable to other disturbances, including everything from water pollution to climate change. This does not bode well for the future. In fact, the authors of the report say estimates of the number of threatened fish stocks are probably far too low, and more ecosystem collapses should be expected in the near future.
However, rather than simply lamenting about all that we have lost, we must look ahead in hopes of finding ways to help bring back that richness of marine life. The authors feel that there is still hope, because most marine species that have been eliminated from particular areas currently survive in sufficient numbers to rebuild stocks. It will take a massive, coordinated international effort, but with careful fisheries management, including strict catch limits and the creation of marine protected areas where fishing is prohibited, the oceans could thrive once again.
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/08/08102001/oceans_44593.asp
8/11/01
12:15:42 PM
Scientists Call For Development Of Ecological Forecasting
By Environmental News Network
A broad consortium of scientists has proposed a concerted effort by researchers and policymakers to develop the ability to forecast ecological change in areas ranging from small plots to the entire globe. The scientists say advances in science and technology could enable forecasts guiding policy to forewarn of invasions of exotic species and disease epidemics; to protect the ecology of lakes, rivers and estuaries; and to predict the ecological impacts of global warming.
"Planning and decision making can be improved by access to reliable forecasts of ecosystem state, ecosystem services, and natural capital," the scientists wrote in an article in the July 27 issue of the journal Science. Availability of new data sets, together with progress in computation and statistics, will increase our ability to forecast ecosystem change."
The consortium called for an initiative in which policymakers would work with ecologists and other scientists to define ecological systems in which it would be both useful and possible to make forecasts.
"This paper is a response to a problem that many ecologists perceive in making our work more relevant to societal needs," said first author James Clark of Duke University. "We devote much effort to understanding the biosphere, and we communicate our findings to the scientific community. But society faces a great number of environmental problems, and if it can't come to us for help and knowledge, there is no place else to go. The federal agencies by themselves can't provide much of the basic scientific understanding of these issues that people need."
Clark said he and his colleagues are emphasizing the necessity of a collaborative effort with decision makers.
"If we as ecologists just begin making forecasts without understanding what will be useful to policymakers, governments will pay little attention," Clark said. "Thus, this paper represents the beginning of a discussion on how to make our science useful to policymakers."
The authors emphasized the difficulty of making forecasts, given the inherent uncertainties and complexity of ecosystems.
Many ecosystem properties are inherently uncertain because they are sensitive to things that cannot be known precisely, or there are too many variables that simply cannot be known. On the other hand, identification of variables that can dependably forewarn of consequences years in advance can, in some cases, lead to improved forecasting.
In other cases, techniques of averaging the results of ecological models will increase the usefulness of such forecasts.
"Many ecologists are leery of prediction, because they feel that there is much uncertainty about their models, and that most predictions are going to be wrong," Clark explained. "But we have to weigh this uncertainty against the costs of not trying to anticipate. We also need to examine why traditional modeling strategies can fail, and we must be willing to exploit indicators and slow variables that can be related to ecosystem change in rather simple ways. Moreover, efforts can help us identify the possibilities for change, if not to actually 'predict' it."
The authors wrote that ecological forecasting depends on large-scale ecological studies, extensive gathering of ecological data, and effective use of technologies such as satellite remote sensing. Unfortunately, they wrote, ecological data are often inadequate.
"Due to abandonment of precipitation, stream height, and discharge gauges, the capacity to forecast droughts and floods was greater 30 years ago than it is today," the authors said. "Countries with the poorest hydrological networks, such as sub-Saharan Africa and arid regions of the former Soviet Union, have the most pressing water needs."
Of the need for large-scale ecological studies, Clark said, "There has been a tradition in ecology of rather fine-scale studies. But it is hard to use that fine-scale information to make predictions on a regional scale because there are different processes that operate at these coarser scales. So these larger and longer term data sets will prove invaluable," he added.
According to the paper, the next steps for launching an ecological forecasting initiative include defining priorities for forecasting and the scientific research needed to better understand ecological systems and the uncertainties underlying them.
"Focus should be on the problems for which forecasts are now possible and those that are not presently forecastable but could become forecastable within a decade," the scientists said.
Advances in computer sciences and in statistics could help scientists create useful predictive models, Clark said. In developing a forecasting ability, ecologists can take a lesson from the problems that climatologists have encountered in predicting climate change, he added.
"There have been some significant difficulties in communicating what a forecast really means," he said. "For example, when climatologists run models to predict future climates based on expected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, they don't necessarily view any of those models as predictions. Rather, they are explorations of what could happen based on a particular scenario."
In contrast, a weather forecast is intended to be the best estimate of what the weather will be tomorrow or the next day, Clark said.
"Unfortunately, there has been miscommunication in how scientists view the outputs of such models versus how the general public or decision makers see them," Clark said. "Those miscommunications have in some cases resulted in confusion, a situation we hope to minimize by working closely with a broad range of experts, including the policymaking community."
It will become increasingly important for responsible, scientifically valid groups to provide the environmental forecasts that policymakers need to make long-range decisions, Clark concluded.
"Someone is going to make forecasts, and if the scientists won't do it, then other groups will," Clark said. "We'll likely do a better job, and so we should be involved, using our understanding to anticipate possible change in a critical way. Otherwise they will be done in a less critical way, possibly producing misguided policies."
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/08/08102001/forecast_44615.asp
8/11/01
12:00:44 PM
Filibuster The Bush Energy Plan
by Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - To colleagues who plan to filibuster US President George W. Bush's energy bill if it allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Sen. Ted Stevens says he will do the same if it does not.
"I intend to go back and organize a group that will say, 'We will filibuster if (a provision authorizing drilling is) not in there,'" the Alaska Republican told a news conference in Anchorage on Wednesday. "Two sides can play this game."
Stevens was referring to plans by three Democratic senators - Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut - to use parliamentary procedures to block drilling in the wildlife refuge.
A proposal to allow exploration for, and production of, oil in the northeastern Alaskan refuge has been narrowly approved by the US House of Representatives and is now up for consideration in the Senate. It is the most controversial part of Bush's energy strategy.
Oil companies, along with the state of Alaska and some Alaskan Eskimo organizations, which depend heavily on oil revenues, have long pushed to permit drilling on the refuge's coastal plain.
According to US Geological Survey estimates, there could be as much as 16 billion barrels of oil in the refuge and adjacent state and Eskimo lands. Drilling advocates say the oil could be extracted with minimal adverse effect.
But environmentalists and a far-flung tribe of Alaskan and Canadian Indians vehemently oppose the development plans.
They say the refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, a relatively narrow strip wedged between the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean, is unlike the rest of the flat Arctic Alaskan tundra, where drilling has been allowed.
They also call it key to the entire refuge's ecology and population of caribou, musk oxen, bears and other wildlife.
But to Stevens, one of the longest-serving members of the Senate and the ranking Republican on its Appropriations Committee, assertions of the coastal plain's biological importance are exaggerated.
As he has many times before, Stevens complained about portrayals of the refuge's coastal plain as a tree-filled, mountainous, wildlife-rich region.
"The North Slope is one of the most barren places I know of on the face of the earth," he said. "As a matter of fact, in the wintertime, it IS the most barren place on the face of the earth."
8/11/01
11:50:26 AM
His Gift To Us
by Bill Hangley Jr.
So when the President was here on July 4, I had the opportunity to shake his hand. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not but I did it anyway, and said to him, "Mr President, I hope you only serve four years. I'm very disappointed in your work so far."
He kept smiling and shaking my hand but answered, "who cares what you think?" His face stayed photo-op perfect but his eyes gave me a look that said, if we'd been drinking in some frathouse in Texas, he'd've happily answered, "let's take it outside." A nasty little gleam. But he was (fortunately) constrained by Presidential propriety.
But that was the end of it, until I turned away and started scribbling the quote down in my notepad, so as to remember The Gift forever. When he saw me do that he got excited and craned his neck over the rubberneckers to shout at me, "who are you with? Who are you with?" People started looking so he made a joke: "make sure you get it right." But he kept at it: "Who do you write for?"
I told him I wasn't "with" anybody and pointed to one of his staff people, who knows me a little, and said, "ask him, he'll tell you." Then I split.
Half an hour later, my boss (who had helped organize the event we were at) came up to me and said, "did you really tell the President that he was doing a 'lousy fucking job'?" No way, I said, I was very polite, I just told him what I thought.
Fortunately, he believed me. He wasn't happy with me, but he believed me.
But anyway, if you ever wondered if the Prez really was kind of a jerk, I'm here to tell you, he is, and I got The Gift to prove it.
I'm thinking of making up t-shirts so we can share The Gift with everyone:
"Who cares what you think?" - President George W. Bush
Bill Hangley is a Philadelphia writer who writes for Philly Tonite, the Weekly Press, City Paper, and many others. This is his original post, apparently to a newsgroup.
billhang@email.msn.com
8/10/01
12:31:49 PM
WHY CAN'T AMERICANS SWIM IN EFFLUENT?
Iceland's 21st Century Energy Policy
by David Case, the executive editor of TomPaine.com
Reykjanesbaer, Iceland -- On this dramatic black lava-lain and volcano-dotted peninsula, the sub-arctic Atlantic mist can chill the air even on a sunny spring day. So I strip off my clothes, don my favorite bathing trunks and jump into the steaming wastewater of the local electric power plant.
No, I don't risk harming my health in any way. The effluent pool -- known as the Blue Lagoon and frequented by locals and transcontinental travelers alike -- is pollution free. So is the adjacent Sudurnes power plant.
As I bask up to my neck in the turquoise, silica-rich water, I curse the fact that no one in America will be swimming in utility effluent any time soon. That is, if the Bush administration has its way.
Compared to the what Icelanders have been doing for the past several decades, the Bush administration's national energy plan seems nothing more than a vintage example of bad linear thinking. Build, drill and burn is the mantra of the plan, which was unveiled in May and is now working its way through Congress. There's an energy crisis, the administration argues, and what we're doing today isn't working, so we ought to do even more of it. Caribou be damned, we need petroleum from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Global climate change be damned, voters in key swing states have coal to sell. The American lifestyle is sopping up unprecedented quantities of electrons, so we must build 1,300 new power plants! Build, drill and burn.
But the Blue Lagoon and the Sudurnes power plant that feeds it are proof that there is vast potential for creativity in the energy sector if we're willing to look beyond fossil fuels.
The plant produces cheap, reliable and sustainable electricity by tapping geothermal steam from thousands of feet below the Earth's surface to drive its turbines. Unlike conventional utilities, it doesn't burn anything. You could live next door, breathe the air, and bathe in its effluent for decades without worrying about the lung disease or nerve damage that you might get from one of the dirty coal-fired power plants that generate most of America's energy.
In addition to generating electricity, the Sudurnes plant makes hot water for local communities. It does this through "cogeneration," a simple technology which heats fresh water using the waste steam. In the U.S. most utilities discard this steam, and as a result they are only about half as efficient as Sudurnes. In other words, an American power plant burns about twice as much fuel per unit of energy produced.
Iceland intends to be the first nation to convert to a hydrogen-based economy.
Sudurnes is not unique in Iceland. Reykjavik Energy, which powers the capital, also exploits geothermal energy and makes hot water. Not only do residents pay low energy rates for their clean energy, but the company has enough water left over to supply an extensive network of heated public pools -- complete with Jacuzzi-like "hot pots" where, legend has it, most of the country's important decisions are made.
Iceland has spent the last half century doing precisely what the Bush administration's plan treats as a far-fetched dream of eco-quacks: reducing pollution; weaning itself from fossil fuels and building a sustainable, locally self-sufficient energy infrastructure. In recent years, every electron that has coursed through Iceland's grid has been produced without fossil fuels. The country is prospering, not in spite of, but because of these efforts, which have been good for the environment, but also for national security and the economy. This resource-poor country no longer spends billions importing stuff to burn.
Skeptics might point out that, thanks to its location on the crest of the volcanically active Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland has extensive geothermal capacity. But Icelandic engineers argue that any project in their country is complicated: imagine what it's like on a sparsely populated island on the Arctic Circle and in the middle of the Atlantic that has almost no natural resources. There's hardly even a tree to be found.
Icelandic engineers can only dream of the vast resources we have in the U.S. There's huge potential in the ceaseless wind of the Great Plains and the irrepressible sun of the Southwest. There are the mass-production economies of a market nearly 270 million people strong -- a thousand times bigger than Iceland. And then there's the human capital of MIT, Stanford, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a other great research institutions. It's not that Icelanders have been dealt a plum hand, engineers say. It's that they've made the most of the hand they were dealt.
Maybe it's time for Vice President Dick Cheney to lead a fact finding mission here.
Engineering an End to 'Hydrocarbon Man'
Having conquered power plant pollution, Iceland last year declared that it intends to be first in the world to convert to a hydrogen-based economy, and to eliminate its net emissions of greenhouse gases. That means doing away with the country's last remaining major source of pollution: the engines in automobiles. How will they do this?
An hour's drive through the lava fields from Sudurnes, in a barren second floor office in an industrial section of Iceland's capital city, Jon Skulason busies himself engineering the transition from Hydrocarbon Man to Hydrogen Man. Commercially viable hydrogen fuel cells, Skulason says, are within reach, and are poised to replace the fossil fuel-burning internal combustion engines that revolutionized life in the 20th century.
Hydrogen fuel cells promise to be no less revolutionary. They harness electricity generated when hydrogen gas is exposed to oxygen. Since hydrogen and oxygen form water, there is no pollution, Skulason explains. And these highly efficient motors are quiet and powerful.
Strewn across his desk are the plastic folders with correspondence from multinational corporations: Ballard Power Systems, which engineers fuel cells, DaimlerChrysler, which has incorporated them into vehicles, and Shell Hydrogen, which will provide the fuel. The project will start modestly. Next year, three fuel cell buses will ply the streets of Reykjavik. Skulason shows me a schematic for the first fuel cell filling station, which will produce the hydrogen gas on location, eliminating the need to transport fuel.
In 2004, Iceland will begin buying cars from DaimlerChrysler. Initially the cars will belong to businesses or government fleets that can be fueled centrally, before enough of the country's 250 filling stations provide hydrogen. Eventually, Skulason sees Iceland building the world's first fuel cell fishing vessels. The country earns 70 percent of its export revenues from fishing, so converting the ships to hydrogen will help cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Moving beyond fossil fuels has long been an urgent matter for Iceland, and for good reason.
In geologic time, Iceland is a mere infant. At 2 million years of age, the volcanic island is among the world's youngest landmasses, so there are no fossil fuels. Importing every hunk of coal and drop of petroleum was a strain on the economy in the first half of the 20th century, and became particularly risky during World War II. Moreover, Reykjavik had a major smog problem, and the pollution was harming the vital fishing industry.
Bush offers a fossil fuel promotion policy that entrenches the status quo. Americans will be worse off for it.
The U.S. today suffers from problems similar to Iceland's: our energy consumption is environmentally destructive, and we are precariously dependent on foreign sources of fuel. While the Bush administration has largely been hostile to the first issue, its energy plan makes the latter one abundantly clear, with multiple graphs projecting yawning excesses of demand and shortfalls of capacity.
Fossil fuels are the bedrock of our economy and lifestyle, and right now that bedrock is crumbling. Formerly the world's biggest oil producer, we now import more than half of what we consume, contributing more than $90 billion in 2000 to the $375 billion trade deficit, far more than any other single import. That hands OPEC a choke collar around the U.S. economy.
The prospects for natural gas aren't much better. Prices are already volatile, and while no one knows how much we have left, the imported portion is growing each year, leading analysts to ask whether we will soon be precariously dependent on foreign suppliers.
Coal is cheap and abundant. But miners must resort to increasingly desperate measures -- like removing the tops of whole mountains in West Virginia. Worse yet, it is an implacable source of air pollution, contributing to smog and, more than any other fuel, to climate change.
The administration also advocates nuclear power (perhaps because the industry generously supported President Bush's campaign). But no one has filed a permit application for a new nuke in 20 years, and it's unlikely that, in the deregulated market, any investor could raise financing for this dangerous and costly technology. Meanwhile, the nation already faces a nuclear waste disposal tab that will exceed $50 billion -- that is, if a long-term solution is ever really found.
By the administration's own estimates, energy demand will grow 32 percent by 2020. That means that the environmental and economic problems from fossil fuels will only get worse. Imagine how bad the situation will get if, as the energy plan suggests, we build a conventional power plant every week for the next 20 years, yoking future generations with last century's technology. Building, drilling and burning might forestall the problem, but it won't solve it.
Instead, the administration would do well to take a close look at Iceland's accomplishments.
For starters, the federal government could help bring hydrogen vehicles to market. Washington supports some research, but it lacks a national policy to promote fuel cell commercialization, like California's zero-emission vehicle standard, which will no doubt be needed as a catalyst.
Moreover, the country could exploit more geothermal energy. Karl Gawell, the executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association in Washington, D.C., points out that with today's relatively crude know-how, the U.S. could economically increase tenfold the 2,200 megawatts of geothermal energy we currently tap. And with some basic research we could increase that supply far more. Gawell laments that the federal government spends only $20 million per year on geothermal research (a pittance compared to the 15-year, $5.4-billion "clean coal" boondoggle or other breaks for the fossil fuel industry). Yet, the Bush administration has actually tried to cut funding for these technologies, preferring to pour billions into a missile defense system (betting, of course, that when the next generation of oil-wealth-spoiled Osama bin Ladens vents its "implacable hatred for the U.S." they choose missiles rather than dinghies).
Iceland has an energy policy, and the Icelandic people are better off for it. Bush has offered us a fossil fuel promotion policy that entrenches the status quo. Americans are worse off for it.
And yet the administration's policy is hardly surprising, guided dutifully as it is by the compass of the fattest campaign contributors. If this were the end of the Stone Age, and stone magnates were the biggest political donors, Bush and company would no doubt advocate on their behalf as well.
Source: http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/31/1.html
8/10/01
12:19:12 PM
Building A Nonviolent Army
by David Hartsough and Mel Duncan
For decades people have dreamed, strategized, and organized around the vision of a nonviolent peace force. Mahatma Gandhi was building the Shanti Sena (Peace Army) when he was assassinated. More recently, Peace Brigades International (PBI), Witness for Peace, and others have advanced the concept of nonviolent intervention with important successes in Central America. For example, after two grassroots leaders were murdered in the mid-1980s, Peace Brigades provided unarmed bodyguards to human rights activists in Guatemala; no more leaders of the grassroots organization were killed.
The courageous work of that grassroots organization—known as the Mutual Support Group—led to a reopening of civil society in Guatemala. "Thanks to their presence, I am alive," said Nineth Garcia Montenegro, formerly a leader of the group and now a member of the Guatemalan congress. "That is an indisputable truth."
Peace Brigades International, recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, has 35 unarmed accompaniers in Colombia who are effectively protecting human rights workers and others in the zones of peace. Christian Peacemaker Teams has two small teams providing a peaceful presence in Israel/Palestine. Germany has begun fielding a civilian peace service.
The vision of a global nonviolent peace force came to Mel Duncan in a Buddhist monastery where Thich Nhat Hanh teaches. "We have too many people taking sides," Thich Nhat Hanh explains. "See that the most essential thing is life." A similar vision came to David Hartsough in a Serbian jail where he had been locked up for supporting the Kosovar Albanian nonviolent movement. When Kosovo exploded in early 1998, the world did not respond to the invitation of the Kosovar nonviolent movement for international nonviolent observers.
We (Mel and David) first met almost a year later, in May 1999, at the Hague Appeal for Peace. There, as U.S. bombers pounded Serbia and Kosovo, activists began to explore how to create larger-scale nonviolent intervention. Based on our meetings at The Hague, we developed a proposal for a global nonviolent peace force.
The mission of the Global Nonviolent Peace Force is to organize and train an international standing peace force that could be sent to conflict areas to prevent death and destruction and protect human rights, thus creating the space for local groups to struggle nonviolently, enter into dialogue, and seek peaceful resolution. A dynamic research team led by Christine Schweitzer of Germany, former head of the Balkan Peace Teams, is analyzing conflict situations where large-scale nonviolent intervention would be effective, reviewing nonviolent "best practices," and cataloguing training resources.
In Asia, Hartsough found Japanese activists, Filipino religious leaders, and Cambodian monks ready to join the effort. The Dalai Lama heads an impressive list of endorsers from six continents that includes Nobel Peace Prize laureates Mairead Maguire, Oscar Arias, Rigoberta Menchu, and Jose Ramos Horta.
The People's Millennial Assembly at the United Nations included the Peace Force as part of its formal recommendations. Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, urged her colleagues to support the Peace Force at the Head of State Millennial Summit last September. She wrote, "There will be no better legacy that we can leave... than to have in place an effective Global Nonviolent Peace Force by the end of the decade."
The organizational, communications, and funding capacities to sustain a large-scale global nonviolent peace force are being gathered and an international convening event next spring will officially launch the operation. At that time we will also begin recruiting the first corps for a two-year commitment. We anticipate the first group will be sent to a conflict area by early 2003.
Profound questions remain about the use of nonviolence in large-scale conflicts—but even more disturbing questions surround the reliance on military force "for peace." Surely it is time to devote our energies to a way of preventing and ending violence and wars that honors life and leaves hope for the peaceful development of human destiny.
David Hartsough is executive director of the San Francisco-based Peaceworkers. Mel Duncan is chief operating officer of the Global Nonviolent Peace Force.
Source: http://www.sojo.net
8/10/01
11:48:20 AM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
TAKING ACTION: BUILDING A NONVIOLENT ARMY
by David Hartsough and Mel Duncan, Sojourners
"For decades people have dreamed, strategized, and organized around the vision of a nonviolent peace force." Could such an idealized entity finally be in the works?
THE CHENEY DAILY
Web site review by Leif Utne
-- This satirical Weblog, the brainchild of humorist Patrick Misterovich, gives you a daily peek at what goes on in the gray matter of the most powerful man in the free world.
The Essence of Sneaky Marketing
by Rob Walker, Slate
-- Slate's Moneybox columnist uncovers the latest in stealth marketing. Bribing fans with free tickets to get them to spread the word about their favorite musician, Lucinda Williams.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
8/10/01
11:42:18 AM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
AUSTRALIA, ARGENTINA SIGN LEGALLY UNSTABLE NUCLEAR WASTE PACT
Bob Burton
CANBERRA, Australia, August 9, 2001 (ENS) - Argentine environment groups are considering the possibility of legal action against the Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade after he signed an agreement Wednesday with the Australian Government allowing nuclear waste to be imported into Argentina for processing.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-09-02.html
LOS ANGELES CREATES SMOKE FREE ZONES IN CITY PARKS
LOS ANGELES, California, August 9, 2001 (ENS) - Pushed out of workplaces, bars and schools, now Los Angeles smokers who want to light up in a city park will have to watch where they inhale.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-09-01.html
MEXICO'S CYTRAR HAZARDOUS WASTE DUMP FOCUS OF PROBE
MONTREAL, Quebec, Canada, August 9