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, 2001 (ENS) - The environmental agency that operates as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is seeking more information about the establishment and operation of the Cytrar hazardous waste landfill near the city of Hermosillo, in the state of Sonora, Mexico.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-09-03.html
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED TOMATO PLANT GROWS IN SALTY WATER
DAVIS, California, August 9, 2001 (ENS) - Plant biologists have developed the first truly salt tolerant crop - a genetically engineered tomato plant that thrives in salty irrigation water and may hold the key to one of agriculture's greatest dilemmas. The tomatoes offer hope that other crops can also be genetically modified for planting in many areas of the world that have salty irrigation water and salt damaged soils.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-09-04.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: AUGUST 9, 2001
Iowa Fish Farmer Fined for Violating Wildlife Laws
Florida Nurse Arrested for Dumping Biomedical Waste
Hot Peppers Pack an Evolutionary Punch
Energy Department Promotes Wind Power in Illinois
Glowing Molecules Reveal Metal Pollution
Zone Management Planned for Dry Tortugas National Park
Turning Soybean Oil into Car Parts
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-09-09.html
8/10/01
11:39:40 AM
TomPaine.com
WHY CAN'T AMERICANS SWIM IN EFFLUENT?
Iceland's 21st Century Energy Policy
by David Case
Looking for a visionary energy policy? Forget the White House energy plan. Iceland intends to be the world's first hydrogen-based economy, eliminating fossil fuels and the greenhouse gas emissions they produce.
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/31/1.html
SOCIAL SECURITY: IF IT AIN'T BROKE, IT'S CERTAINLY IN A FIX
by M. W. Guzy
"Does anybody really believe that turning rookie traders loose on Wall Street with a fraction of their payroll taxes is going to provide them with a secure retirement? Give me a break."
A TomPaine.commentary -- AUDIO and TEXT -- produced by Sharon Basco.
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/08/07/1.html
NEIGHBORS VS. NEIGHBORS
by Michael King
A central Texas community organization has latched onto the tail of mighty Alcoa Corporation, the world's biggest aluminum producer. Its goal: to stop Alcoa's proposed strip-mining operation.
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/08/01/1.html
SPINNING A WAR
by Maggy Zanger
American coverage of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has almost always been sympathetic to Israel. For most U.S. news organizations, "objective" has long meant "pro-Israeli."
http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/07/24/1.html
IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
We Scan the Internet for Tips, Leads and Links
by Andrew Werbrock
This week: Honoring a beer pioneer... Cheney vs. the GAO... Bush vs. the trees... And more!
http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/08/08/index.html
8/9/01
9:56:59 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
US EPA panel to review new diesel sulfur rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11962
Oregon bald eagles get some water after compromise - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11964
New York sees record power demand amid unrelenting heat - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11965
Study finds much older origin of first land plants - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11968
Alaska senator threatens pro-drilling filibuster - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11978
UN - How the world's 6 billion people get counted - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11981
Canada, Nigeria to begin work on G8's Africa plan - NIGERIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11963
NZ sets September 2002 target to ratify Kyoto pact - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11983
Joint venture formed to progress NZ sheep research - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11975
Kenya greens urge donors to help preserve forests - KENYA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11971
Japan undecided on Kyoto but prepares to ratify - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11980
Japan seeks US go-ahead to return MOX fuel to UK - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11984
Indian wildlife group to oppose bail for Russians - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11979
EU power markets must avoid US-style tightness - DIW - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11972
UPDATE - Paris, Berlin press crusade for global cloning ban - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11970
Canadian food inspectors warn about wieners - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11982
Canada's protection of Pacific salmon to be probed - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11966
UPDATE - Canada faces probe of its Pacific salmon rules - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11961
Brazil backs off approving GM soybeans - papers - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11969
Australia Stanwell says targets 450 MW wind power - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11977
UPDATE - OECD calls for Australia to adopt pollution taxes - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11976
Australia report urges tax breaks for environment - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11973
GM grains likely to dominate - ABARE - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11974
8/9/01
7:53:04 PM
Mothersalert Home Page: http://www.mothersalert.org
http://www.mothersalert.org/bertell2.html
Comments on the History of Permissable Dose Standards
by Dr. Rosalie Bertell
In October 1945, after the US Occupation Force had taken over Japan, it was officially announced that there would be no more deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the atomic bombs. Under the Occupation Force direction, no Japanese physicians or scientists were allowed to study the atomic bomb survivors, and no reporting about the survivors was allowed until the 1951 treaty was drawn up and signed in Tokyo.
In spite of these prohibitions and difficult circumstances, a Japanese Haematologist discovered the increase in leukemia among the survivors. It began within a year of the bombing. He reported this at a professional meeting and was roundly denounced by the US researchers in Hiroshima and Atomic Bomb Casualty Commissiion (now called the Radiation Effects Research Foundation).
The physician was sure he was right, and he persuaded a medical student to take two years off from his studies and document all of the atomic bomb victims with leukemia. This was a difficult job since they were being treated at many different hospitals. The student obtained blood slides for each patient and also verified where they were when the bombs were dropped. After two years of study, it was about five years after the boming at that time, the results of this study were released. The US researchers could no longer deny the fact, and they turned around and claimed credit for the research.
When the atomic bomb studies were actually set up, using persons identified in the1950 Japanese census, they omitted counting these early, significantly increased number of cases. The Atomic bomb studies were not actually published with dose information until after the1965 doses were devised by John Auxier of Oak Ridge Labs. These doses were, in 1980, denounced as wrong, and a new set of doses constructed in 1986. Although the justification for the new doses was improvement of the science, the journal Science gave a wonderful description of John Auxier's inability to produce the worksheets which showed the derivation of the dose estimates he had assigned. It seems that he lost these work sheets accidently to a shredder when he moved offices. This lead to the unanimous recommendation to lower permissible doses of radiation by the ICRP in 1990.
The US has still not lowered the permissible doses, and it also claims wrongly that its radiation protection standards, set in 1952, were based on Atomic bomb studies. This is, of couse absurd. Most people in the nuclear industry equate "legal" with "safe", and if you try to explain that even within permissible levels of exposure there is significant risk of radiation damage, they think you are "emotional" and "unscientific".
The US appears to have used its 1952 estimates of permissible doses for nuclear workers for the DU exposure in the Gulf War.
More about this history can be found in my book: "No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth". The Women's Press, London UK, 1985. There are still copies around in libraries, but it was taken off of seller's shelves in 1995 because I hope to update it. I have copies available for $12.50 US if anyone would like one.
Dr. Rosalie Bertell
8/9/01
7:51:03 PM
FAIR
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
ACTION ALERT:
Diversity Gap in Online Journalism
Yahoo! News Op/Ed skews male, white and right
August 9, 2001
While the Internet has revolutionized how some people get their news-- for example, through alternative sites such as IndyMedia.org, AlterNet.org and CommonDreams.org-- corporate media still wield great influence over the range of journalistic debate online. Many web surfers rely on for-profit search engines and web directories to guide them to news items of interest.
Yahoo!'s daily journalism site Yahoo! News http://dailynews.yahoo.com/, for example, directs visitors to headline reports and columns largely drawn from wire and syndication services, streamlining the search process and providing what is presented as a customizable one-stop shop for a quick and easy overview of news content online.
But while web directories' news sites can eliminate tedious searches, they also sometimes replicate the lack of diversity present in traditional mainstream media. The Yahoo! News Op/Ed section suffers from this problem.
Of Yahoo! News' 21 featured Op/Ed columnists, 62 percent are conservatives like William F. Buckley, Robert Novak and Bill O'Reilly, 14 percent are centrists like David Broder and Mark Shields, and 24 percent are progressives or liberals like Molly Ivins, Robert Scheer and Ellen Goodman.
(See http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/cm/cm/?u for complete list.)
The gender and racial breakdown of Yahoo! News' Op/Ed roster also leaves much to be desired: 67 percent are male, 90 percent are white, and not one progressive person of color is a contributor. Additionally, five of the seven female columnists are conservatives, including Linda Chavez, Ann Coulterand Phyllis Schlafly.
The following are just some of the many writers regularly publishing left-leaning columns for national newspapers, magazines and syndicates. If Yahoo! News is interested in broadening the range of debate among their featured columnists-- as well as opening their Op/Ed page up to more women and people of color-- they might consider featuring such columnists as Farai Chideya ("Pop and Politics"), Alexander Cockburn ("Beat the Devil"), Laura Flanders ("Spin Dr. Laura"), Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez ("Column of the Americas"), Bob Herbert (New York Times), Derrick Jackson (Boston Globe), Naomi Klein (Toronto Globe and Mail), Sheryl McCarthy (Newsday), Salim Muwakkil (Chicago Tribune), Judy Mann (Washington Post), Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman ("Focus on the Corporation"), Katha Pollitt (The Nation), Deb Price (Detroit News) or Norman Solomon ("Media Beat").
This is, of course, just a sampling of the wide variety of progressive and liberal voices available.
Yahoo! News Op/Ed's op-artists list also cries out for more diversity: Of the 25 comics and editorial cartoonists featured in this section, not one is a woman. While it's true that cartooning is largely a male-dominated field, a pool of talented and witty female artists is certainly available to editors, from Pulitzer Prize winners editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Signe Wilkinson to alternative cartoonists like Alison Bechdel ("Dykes to Watch Out For"), Barbara Brandon ("Where I Am Coming From") and Nicole Hollander ("Sylvia").
When it comes to directing readers to resources available elsewhere on the Internet, some Yahoo! sections offer more balance than Yahoo! News' Op/Ed site: For example, the "Political Opinion" page
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/Politics/Political_Opinion/
includes links to civil disobedience, socialist and anarchist websites. This diversity of viewpoints suggests that the lack of balance on Yahoo! News' Op/Ed page may be an oversight. Either way, the imbalance should be corrected.
ACTION: Encourage Yahoo! News to bring political balance, and gender and race equity, to their list of contributing Op/Ed columnists and cartoonists. Feel free to mention names of columnists from the list above, or suggest your own.
CONTACT:
Yahoo! News editor:
mailto:news-admin@yahoo-inc.com
Fax (408) 349-3301
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone.
Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.
8/9/01
7:46:07 PM
ANWR
I just got this narrative written by Mark Herndon. Mark is an oilman from Oklahoma who has worked with us for many years on our storm intercept projects as a volunteer. He just spent a month trekking ANWR... read what he has to say. Pass it on to your friends if you are so inclined.
Erik Rasmussen Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies NSSL/OU
Hi everyone,
For those of you who don't know, I returned yesterday from a month alone in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in far northeastern Alaska. I'm really beat. I lost 25 lbs and basically feel like I have been beaten up. It was a really tough trip.
I want to share a little bit about the place with you while it is still fresh in my mind; things that I feel are very important. I want to grab you by the lapels and tell you a few things that are true, because I have seen them.
ANWR is probably the biggest chunk of absolute wilderness left in this country. I've also been in part of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Noatak National Preserve, two other large protected areas in the Brooks Range. ANWR is huge compared to those places; it's a place where you could walk your whole life and never see it all. Contrary to what you may have heard about the place in the media, it is not a vast wasteland. It is like heaven on earth, and hasn't been touched by man. There is not a single building, not a single trail, in an area that I've heard is about comparable to South Carolina. It's 19 million acres and there ain't no visitor center.
Very few people go there. It is difficult and committing to get there. Since I have been there, and with the current political situation about ANWR's coastal plain, I emphatically want to tell you what it is like. And feel free to tell your friends.
First, I paddled the Canning River, on the west side of the Refuge. I started up high in the glaciated Brooks Range and hiked for a few days. Craggy mountains and a two day snowstorm on the fourth of July. It looks wilder than the wildest part of Colorado without the trees. That part of the refuge is far north of treeline.
As I floated down I saw gyrfalcons, peregrines and golden eagles. I saw musk ox and had a long, close encounter with a grizzly bear. Everywhere were tracks of caribou, muskox, grizzly, wolf and wolverine.
I hiked up side valleys that were miles wide and absolutely flat tundra covered with lupines and arctic poppies. A close examination of the tundra reveals hundreds of tiny flowers and lichens. Everywhere were old caribou antlers and skulls poking up through the tundra. Wolf killed caribou skeletons also dot the tundra, often skulls with huge antlers attached. I saw more muskox, and managed to walk pretty close to some of them, before they got a little agitated.
As I floated out of the mountains to the coastal plain I began to see caribou in earnest. More than you could ever count. It was like being in a herd in Africa. This is also where I came out of the wilderness part of the refuge and the river became the boundary between state land on the left (where oil exploration goes on) and ANWR on the right bank. On the state land I began to see many abandoned fuel drums and huge tracks on the tundra where cat trains shoot seismic in the winter. The tracks don't go away any time soon. I saw abandoned drums on the tundra constantly after a while over on the state land.
As I crossed the coastal plain I saw many smaller caribou herds and began to see lots of birds; geese, ducks, tundra swans, and many strange types of birds that I have no idea what they were, probably migrating up from Hawaii or Chile to nest.
All this time, I saw more and more garbage on the left bank. Most of the animals were on the right bank. In this day and age, I would think that BP-Amoco, Exxon, and Phillips would go clean all that crap up.
I made my way to the delta of the river where it empties into the Beaufort Sea, and in a 2:00am lull in the wind paddled a roundabout 10 miles across the four mile lagoon to an island that is about 6 miles long. There were many small icebergs about thirty feet across. I saw old sod huts that the eskimos used to live in on the island, and found that the entire north side of the island was still fast against the sea ice which continues to somewhere in Russia, I guess. I walked out on it for a ways, and it is really rough. One day I watched ringed seals (polar bears staple food) sunning on the ice through binoculars. I saw a huge set of polar bear tracks around the lagoon side of the island, but they were pretty old. The island was just a few miles outside of the ANWR boundary, and Exxon had drilled a dry hole on it in the past two years. It was one of the filthiest locations I have ever seen in my 15 years working in the oil industry. I was really surprised, because Exxon drillsites in the lower 48 are usually the cleanest of them all. I was not impressed with what I saw of the oil industry in Alaska.
Then my bush plane landed on a sandspit and took me to the headwaters of the Jago river, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. I spent ten days in this valley, hiking up to the glaciated peaks at it's headwaters. Part of the Porcupine caribou herd had gone south up the valley a couple of days before my arrival and there were millions of tracks, all heading south. Interspersed were the occasional wolf or grizzly track. I saw a few stray cow caribou, but the show had already moved south for the winter.
On the Jago, I was trapped for two days waiting for a rain swollen river to come down so I could wade across. I fell in the same river on the way up, and wet gear up there is serious trouble because of the cold. The only way to describe this valley is to take the prettiest valley in Montana or Idaho and double it. It just took your breath away. It was so different that it may as well have been the moon. One night while I slept a grizzly walked by my tent. There was a set of fresh tracks there that weren't there the night before. He paid me no mind.
Anyway, I was picked up on a gravel bar on the lower river and flown out to Kaktovik, on the coast. I heard there were nine white people in Kaktovik, but the Inupiat eskimos who live there were very nice people. You'd see someone cleaning a freshly killed bearded seal in the front yard of their house. A local hunter (they basically all hunt and whale) heard I'd been on the Canning and sought me out for skinny on where the caribou still were. From there, I made all of the flights home.
Before I went to see ANWR for myself I already had some conceptions. After last year in Alaska I thought that modern oil exploration could be done responsibly. Certainly most Alaskans were for it. They got $1600 each last year from the north slope oil money.
After seeing ANWR....seeing that coastal plain myself, I realized that there are a lot of lies being told about this place. It is not a vast wasteland. It is achingly beautiful, and if you value wild places, the refuge could be considered a sanctuary or a cathedral. To me, it was an intense experience far beyond what I expected. I have been going to wild places most of my life, but I have never been to a place like this. Not even close in the lower 48.
There are a few places that are just not appropriate for large scale oil exploration. This place is far more fantastic than Yellowstone or Grand Teton, but it is far away and few care.
If we put a bunch of drill pads on that coastal plain we will be making a terrible mistake. Our country will never again be energy independent anyway. Those numbers don't lie. Drilling in ANWR will only help about 4 major oil companies and the state of Alaska (which is completely addicted to the oil tit). The numbers don't lie. It will only make a few percent difference to the nation.
The first morning back, I read in the paper that the House approved drilling in ANWR. I felt like crying. That coastal plain is very narrow, and the most environmentally sensitive exploration would put a giant blot on it.
Most of you will never meet anyone else in your life who has actually been to ANWR. Fewer still who have crossed the coastal plain. I emphatically urge you to listen to what I am saying and take it into account as you form your own opinions. The vote to open ANWR still has to make it through the senate, and those of you in Oklahoma are wasting paper by writing to our senators; to those of you in other states, maybe you can help.
And remember. I AM in the oil industry. I'm all for drilling in many, many places. Not here. The price is way too high.
I can't emphasize enough how special this place is. I don't believe the promise that they will only disturb 2000 acres. When they get through shooting seismic in that place it will look like a chessboard from the air. It's kind of like a football field. 22 players standing on their feet probably occupy far less than 100 square feet of that football field. But they sure do make an impression. The coastal plain is the living part of the refuge. The rest is very mountainous and almost sterile by comparison. To go stomping on the coastal plain with a series of industrial sights is just too much.
I don't want to have to say that I saw ANWR way back BEFORE it got all messed up.
Thanks for listening (for those of you who made it through this).
Mark Herndon
8/9/01
7:42:34 PM
AREA 51
You've all heard of the Air Force's ultra high security, super secret base in Nevada, known simply as "Area 51?"
Well, late one afternoon, the Air Force folks out at Area 51 were very surprised to see a Cessna landing at their "secret" base. They immediately impounded the aircraft and hauled the pilot into an interrogation room.
The pilot's story was that he took off from Las Vegas, got lost and spotted the Base just as he was about to run out of fuel. The Air Force started a full FBI background check on the pilot and held him overnight during the investigation.
By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really was lost and wasn't a spy. They gassed up his airplane, gave him a terrifying "you-did-not-see-a-base" briefing, complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison, told him Las Vegas was that-a-way on such-and-such ahead and sent him on his way.
The next day, to the total disbelief of the Air Force, the same Cessna showed up again. Once again, the MP's surrounded the plane ... only this time there were two people in the plane.
The same pilot jumped out and said, "Do anything you want to me, but my wife is in the plane and you have to tell her where I was last night!"
8/9/01
7:41:00 PM
GREED
(A story of Men or Nations)
There were two men who had a dispute
Over a boundary line.
One said, "This land belongs to me!"
The other said, "It is mine!"
So they fought and fought like two wild beasts,
And oh, the blood that was shed.
Till one of the men was crippled for life
And the other man was dead!
Then the cripple lived in misery,
And he cried in his despair,
"What fools we were so greedy to be!
There was plenty for both to share!"
- Peace Pilgrim
8/9/01
7:38:52 PM
The Travails Of Zimbabwe
All of southern Africa has an interest in seeing a free and fair election next year in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe seems prepared to reduce his once hopeful nation to violent ruin in a desperate bid to cling to power. Washington and its friends in the region and beyond need to take steps now that will make possible a level playing field throughout the campaign.
Mr. Mugabe, who has been in power for 21 years since he led Zimbabwe to independence from white rule in what had been Rhodesia, will be seeking a fifth term in April 2002. He has allowed violent attacks on the independent press, the courts and white-owned factories and farms. Nearly 50 farmers, farm workers and opposition activists, black and white, have been killed in the past year and a half.
To its credit, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change remains dedicated to constitutional procedures. Its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has called on the outside world to send observers now to begin monitoring the campaign. Western nations and their African friends should find a way to respond to his plea. They should insist on the establishment of an independent electoral commission and on the ability of the independent media to operate unhindered.
Zimbabwe's political turmoil has already exacted a terrible cost. Joblessness approaches 60 percent, inflation is close to 70 percent, and the health care system is collapsing in the face of one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics. Most multilateral aid has already been suspended.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, on his trip to Africa in May, set the right tone when he forthrightly called on Mr. Mugabe to "submit to the law and the will of the people" in a free and fair election. There is bipartisan support in Congress for legislation that would condition any resumption of aid on fair elections, restoration of the rule of law, a demonstrated commitment to a lawful land reform program and withdrawal from the war in Congo. Washington needs to follow through in the coming months, working closely with South Africa and other regional democracies whose own economies and political stability are closely tied to Zimbabwe.
The fact that Zimbabwe has journalists who risk bombing and torture, judges who risk beatings and opposition activists who risk jail and murder is evidence of the enormous courage of Zimbabweans who want to rid their country of an obsolete tyranny. They will need the scrutiny of the outside world if they are to stick to their strategy of constitutional change.
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/25/opinion/25WED4.html
Full Coverage on Zimbabwe From:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World/Zimbabwe/
8/9/01
7:37:03 PM
The SECRET of the UNIVERSE
The best way to begin our exploration into this subject is to look at our universe and how it works. Einstein's equation E=mc2 tells us that all matter is energy. Physicists have proven that everything in our world that appears solid is actually made up of swirling molecules. These molecules are vibrating at different frequencies, which mold them into their current forms. And most importantly, our own bodies are energy. Here's where it gets interesting. You actually have the ability to control the frequency at which your body vibrates. Scientists have measured the body's vibrational frequency when people are in various physical and emotional states. And the results have been eye opening.
For example, a man named David Hawkins conducted a 29- year study that demonstrated that the human body becomes stronger or weaker depending on a person's mental state. He created a scale from 1-1000 that mapped human consciousness. Any state that causes a person to vibrate at a frequency below 200 (or 20,000 cycles per second) weakens the body, and from 200 to 1000 makes the body stronger. The lowest vibration rate is shame. When you have a shameful thought, you weaken yourself. The next is guilt, and then apathy, grief, fear and anxiety, craving, anger and hate. All these will weaken you. But at 250 on the scale you have neutrality (trust), which strengthens you. Then going up on the scale there's willingness, optimism, acceptance and forgiveness, reason and understanding, love and reverence, joy and serenity, peace and bliss at 600, and enlightenment and ineffability at 700-1000. The highest calibration during his study was Mother Theresa at 700. One thousand is called God's consciousness, or spirit. This is the frequency of absolute power.
And it gets better. Because when the highest and fastest frequencies of spirit are brought to the presence of lower and slower frequencies, they nullify and dissipate those things we call problems. They said Jesus that just his presence in the village and nothing more would raise the consciousness of everyone around him. When Mother Theresa walked into a room, everyone was suddenly filled with a feeling of bliss, and thoughts of hatred were almost impossible in her presence. I'm telling you right now: You have the capacity within you to emanate the same energy as these saints. You have the ability and the power to increase your vibration rate and access the highest and fastest energies for the purpose of eradicating any problems in your life. You can negotiate the presence of higher, faster spiritual frequencies at any time.
8/9/01
7:33:19 PM
BBC staff are told not to call Israeli killings 'assassination'
By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent 04 August 2001
In a major surrender to Israeli diplomatic pressure, BBC officials in London have banned their staff in Britain and the Middle East from referring to Israel's policy of murdering its guerrilla opponents as "assassination". BBC reporters have been told that in future they are to use Israel's own euphemism for the murders, calling them "targeted killings".
BBC journalists were astonished that the assignments editor, Malcolm Downing, should have sent out the memorandum to staff, stating that the word "assassinations" "should only be used for high-profile political assassinations". There were, Mr Downing said, "lots of other words for death".
Up to 60 Palestinian activists - and numerous civilians, including two children killed last week - have been gunned down by Israeli death squads or missile-firing Israeli helicopter pilots. The White House has gently chided Israel about these attacks, but already this week the BBC has been using the phrase "targeted attacks" for the policy of murder. The Palestinian killing of Israelis, however, is regularly referred to - accurately - as "murder" or "assassination".
Mr Downing's memorandum suggests that the murder of a leading Israeli - the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, killed by an Israeli extremist - is worthy of the word "assassination" while the killing of Palestinians is not.
The memo apparently says that "assassination" can only be used "sparingly" and with "attribution". The ban resulted from a discussion between Mr Downing and Vin Ray, deputy head of newsgathering at BBC World TV. Israeli diplomats have been lunching with BBC officials and complaining that the cor poration's coverage was anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian.
The Israeli murder campaign is, in fact, far from "targeted". In the first such killings, two middle-aged Palestinian women were killed. After the initial reporting of the incident, the BBC dropped all reference to the female victims.
8/9/01
7:32:05 PM
Police Use of Force in Genoa Raises Outcry Weeks Later
European newspapers have been filled with accounts of police brutality during the recent Group of 8 summit talks, where one man was fatally shot and 200 people were injured.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/08/international/08ITAL.html
New Ulster Setback: Protestant Chief Rejects I.R.A.
The Ulster Unionists' dismissal of the disarmament proposal leaves little hope of saving the three-year-old peace accord from collapse before a weekend deadline.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/08/international/08IRIS.html
8/9/01
7:27:59 PM
August 9, 2001 Nagasaki Day, Nuclear War Week
Mothersalert Home Page:
USA Space Command, "Vision 2020":
http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace
http://www.mothersalert.org/stewart.html Alice Stewart, A Pioneering Heroine, discovered that low level radiation caused more health damage than previously thought, and spent a life-time devoted to clarifying and sharing this critical information..... Alice Stewart Interview: A-Bomb Data Wrongly Interpreted
The Survivor
In the 1950s, Alice Stewart found that exposing pregnant mothers to X-rays doubled the risk of cancer in their children. Ever since, the physician and epidemiologist has argued that low doses of radiation might be harmful. It's a view that has put her at odds with governments, the military and the nuclear industry. This week, Stewart, who is 93, publishes new research supporting her claims. Michael Bond spoke to the maverick of radiation epidemiology and found her in fighting form.
What new evidence do you have to support your claims that low-level radiation could be dangerous?
Radiation safety standards are derived from studies of the A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These studies were food for people supporting hormesis, the theory that a little bit of radiation can be good for you--that it stimulates the immune system. When it was found that a small number of the A-bomb survivors were living longer than they ought to, this was seen as proof that radiation had done them good. But we have new data that should put paid to that. We have proof that the A-bomb data have been wrongly interpreted. (See "Radiation: how safe is safe?")
What does your research show?
It shows that cancer was not the only effect of the A-bomb radiation. People died from immune system damage as well. Our paper also shows that the A-bomb survivors were not a normal, homogenous population. They were the best athletes--the top 10 per cent--and did not include the young and the old. This means that we cannot base standards of radiation safety on such an elite cohort.
Do you think that the authorities will now reassess the idea that radiation at low doses is not harmful?
I think this new paper will do it. But I don't think it will lead to an immediate reaction.
Why do you think your findings always take so long to be taken seriously? Take your work in the 1950s showing that a fetus exposed to X-rays has a higher risk of cancer. Or your findings in the 1970s that workers at the Hanford weapons complex in the US were getting cancer after supposedly safe levels of exposure.
The trouble is that I've always had a very small set-up, with only just enough money to employ people to do the research. I've never had a department that's out selling the message to other people. So it's been a bit slower than usual.
When it came to my work on X-rays, nobody wanted to believe it. X-rays were a favourite toy of the medical profession. But much more than that, it was just the moment when the nuclear industry was taking off. If we were right, the industry couldn't develop properly.
Your work has tended to attract a lot of criticism from scientists, one of whom is the leading epidemiologist Richard Doll. Why do you think he doesn't like your work?
I moved to Birmingham University for that reason. I knew that if I stayed at Oxford I would always be under the thumb of Doll. But that is the extraordinary thing. I can have reason to be angry with him because he was powerful and I was weak. He can have no reason at all to be angry at me, and yet he must resent me for some reason. Something irks him about me, and I'm conceited enough to think he suspects I'm a better epidemiologist than him. Now, he will tell you he has never had any quarrel with me at all.
Doll has criticised your methodology on the Hanford Studies. Why?
He's criticised my methodology from the word go. I don't know why. He's even criticised the mathematics of George Kneale, my statistician. But Doll doesn't know a fraction of the mathematics that George knows. I don't know what he means when he says our method is wrong, but he should be called to account.
The main objections to my X-rays study was that the mothers were lay informants --that they weren't scientists, and they could have made up stories. We always knew there were weaknesses in our story. But we'd done our best to check this through the hospitals where they had their X-rays.
You've been described as "an avowed opponent of the nuclear industry". Are you?
Well, I've never avowed it to anybody. But if by the nuclear industry you mean the war and energy industries, then yes I'm against it. If you mean, do I think we should stop using X-rays, then no, but you must use them knowing they are a dangerous toy. I think the medical profession has quite a lot of uses for it. Take, for example, irradiated food. If this was going to prolong the life of food that you could send to a country to save it from starving, it would be excellent. But what you've got to be careful of is not to allow industry to indiscriminately use this radiation and to find it's going down your back drains.
I'm automatically against it for war, and you have to remember that the nuclear military and energy industries have always been far more intimately connected than most people realise.
The discovery that made your name in 1956 was that a fetus exposed to an X-ray is twice as likely to develop cancer within 10 years as one that is not. Did this finding come as a complete surprise to you?
Yes. We weren't particularly looking for a link between cancer and X-rays. We were comparing the medical records of children who had died from leukaemia with those of healthy children from the same regions. And in the questionnaire, we had asked mothers if they'd been X-rayed. It looked to me as if there had been something before birth that produced a little epidemic at a certain age group that never repeated itself. But the risk was so small that if we'd tackled it any other way we'd never have discovered it.
We were lucky, but it wouldn't have been thought of by someone who hadn't had some experience of medicine, and it might have been wrongly interpreted. So if you hadn't found the link it might have been another 20 years before someone else did?
No, not 20 years. To this day we would be thinking X-rays were safe. This is because, as I've indicated, the A-bomb survivor studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was the only other study on this, was saying it was safe, and this would have been considered satisfactory to the point where everybody would have been quite happy about X-rays.
How much do you think being a woman helped or hindered your career? When you first walked into the lecture hall as a medical student at Cambridge in 1925 you were met with 200 male students stamping their feet at you.
I'm sure my sex made a tremendous difference. But thanks to my family--my mother was a doctor--and thanks to the war, rather than being a crippling difficulty it actually proved to be rather a helpful one. I found I was constantly thinking of things in an unusual way. I didn't expect to be allowed to get to the top rung, which is something a man would expect, and so perhaps that made it easier to stay with a subject that wasn't very popular.
Has that bothered you?
Not at the time, but in retrospect I think it's the one thing I rather regret . . . that I should have pressed for something more. But I was stuck, I could only do one or other of two things: I could either be fighting the battle for women or I could be getting on with my job. I couldn't win both. And I chose to go on with my job. But I think a braver person might have done something about it.
Were you ever bitter about being sidelined?
No, I think I personally had everything to gain by it. It's always worked in my favour. An element of uncertainty is always a good thing. It's been a constant help. You need some resistance and criticism to bring out the good work. One of the reasons it's been so interesting for me is that no one has ever lost interest in what I've said about radiation. They may despise me, they may hate me, but the problem is there and will stay there if nobody's solved it.
Most people think about cutting back on work when they reach seventy. Did you miss out on anything by carrying on in your nineties?
I stayed working because I was enjoying it, and it was all voluntary. It became obvious early on that we had hit on something that was going to take more than a lifetime to resolve. It wasn't just the radiation thing that interested me. I was really interested in where the other cancers were coming from. You need to follow it for a long time.
Who will carry on your fight in the radiation debate?
I've got a voice in the next generation in Steve Wing and his department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mind you, they're going to make life difficult for them, with grants and everything. People in the nuclear industry will do their very best to stop it. But I'm a great believer that in the end, they'll get caught up in their own machinations and the truth will emerge from an unexpected quarter.
Further reading:
"A bomb survivors: factors that may lead to a re-assessment of the radiation hazard", International Journal of Epidemiology, volume 29, no 4 (4 August 2000) The Woman Who Knew Too Much by Gayle Greene, University of Michigan Press, £19.99, ISBN 0472111078
Radiation: how safe is safe?
The A-bomb database--a record of the health and mortality of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs--is considered the gold standard when assessing the health risks of radiation. Alice Stewart, however, has spent much of her career arguing that it cannot be trusted. Her latest research, published this week in the International Journal of Epidemiology (vol 29, no 4), strengthens that argument.
The database is used to compare the mortality rates of A-bomb survivors with other Japanese citizens born at the same time. The results have always been the same: people exposed to low doses do not have a higher than average risk of cancer. Stewart says these conclusions are unreliable because the bomb survivors are not truly representative of Japanese society.
In her latest paper, she focuses on the 2600 people who suffered severeradiation injuries even though most received only a small radiation dose. In particular, she wanted to compare their incidence of cancers and other diseases with that of around 60 000 low-dose survivors who did not suffer from serious injuries.
Stewart found the minority group had a much higher incidence of cancer and heart disease. She says these findings were reported to the European Parliament two years ago (see New Scientist, 28 February 1998, p 12) but that the assembly, curiously, decided not to make them public.
Stewart's detractors have pointed to a series of studies showing that certain survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs lived slightly longer than people who had not been exposed.
But research published in The Lancet (vol 356, p 303) at the end of last month casts doubt on these results. Researchers from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima examined the effects of radiation on the 120 000 A-bomb survivors and found that people who received low doses did not live longer than average.
From New Scientist magazine, 05 August 2000.
8/9/01
7:23:27 PM
Sir,
We are receiving a flurry of news reports back from the State of Kerala in India relating to multi colored rains falling in different parts of the state. There have been numerous reports in the past 1 month of red, black, green and yellow colored rains falling all over the state. Kerala is sparesely industrialised state.
In some parts of the state , after the rains, the leaves on the trees and the trees themselves have died suggesting acid rains. Laboratories have analysed rain samples of colored rains, and some report a variety of minerals and fungus present in the collected rain samples. Reports say the pollutants have come from across continents carried by winds and clouds.
This needs looking into by international agencies. At the very least, it reinforces our view that no continent is free from effects of pollution by other countries and even other continents.
Radhakrishnan Ambat
8/9/01
7:19:41 PM
Public Citizen
New evidence of deaths in people using defective asthma inhalers bolsters the argument for criminally prosecuting drug maker Schering-Plough.
Read Dr. Sidney Wolfe's Aug. 9 letter to Tommy Thompson, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. It's at
http://www.citizen.org/hrg/PUBLICATIONS/1586.htm
8/9/01
7:16:13 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
HUMAN CLONING INEVITABLE, NATIONAL PANEL TOLD
WASHINGTON, DC, August 8, 2001 (ENS) - The contentious matter of cloning human beings was the focus of a blue ribbon panel hearing in Washington on Tuesday. A joint panel of the National Academies' Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy and the Board on Life Sciences has undertaken a review of the scientific and medical research on human cloning and related issues of scientific and medical ethics.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-08-02.html
TRANSGENIC STARLINK CORN CALLED POTENTIAL HEALTH HAZARD
By Cat Lazaroff
WASHINGTON, DC, August 8, 2001 (ENS) - An independent scientific panel says there is a "medium probability" that a protein in genetically engineered StarLink corn is a human allergen. In a report submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the panel said that because it could not rule out potential harmful effects from exposure to the protein, it would not recommend a minimum tolerance level for Starlink in other foods.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-08-03.html
NEW EUROPEAN DETERGENT RULES FLOATED
BRUSSELS, Belgium, August 8, 2001 (ENS) - The European Commission's industry directorate has proposed an overhaul of European Union detergents legislation, including stricter standards for surfactant biodegradability and mandatory labelling of products causing skin sensitization or irritation.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-08-04.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: AUGUST 8, 2001
EPA Feared Ready to Weaken Clean Air Rules
Pennsylvania Issues Drought Watch for 23 Counties
War Over Wolves in Idaho
San Francisco Gets New Environment Director
Potomac River Shoreline Preserved in Virginia
Conservationists File Suit Over Water for Klamath Basin Eagles
Minnesota Wind Power Tickets for Sale Nationwide
Biodiesel, Ethanol Fuels Favored by Agriculture Department
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-08-09.html
8/9/01
6:41:17 PM
AlterNet Headlines
CAPITALIZING ON THE ANTI-CAPITALIST MOVEMENT
Alicia Rebensdorf, AlterNet
Corporations have become expert at co-opting even the most subversive of cultural movements. But can they capitalize on today's radical anti-capitalist protests? Nike hopes so.
THE HAVE-A-NICE-DAY PRESIDENT
David Corn, AlterNet
Once a week, Bush should feed the press a new, sunny headline that reflects his new, sunny strategery. How about, "Another Day Passes Without Nuclear War," or "HMO Negligence Kills Only A Few Unlucky Americans a Year"?
EARTH, WIND, FIRE & VIAGRA
Lara Riscol, AlterNet
The legal love drug Viagra is the proud sponsor of Earth, Wind & Fire's next tour. Finally, baby boomers can get their sex, drugs and rock & roll all in the same concert again!
THE ANTI-MARIJUANA FORCES, AND WHY THEY'RE WRONG
Rich Lowry, National Review
When all of the faulty arguments for marijuana prohibition are stripped away, it comes down to cultural prejudice.
* In Drug Reporter: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=17
POLICE AND THE ART OF PROPAGANDA
Tim Wise, AlterNet
In the wake of police brutality scandals like those in Cincinnati and Nashville, cops across the nation are cranking up their propaganda mills to counter the trend of bad press.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11277
THE G8 NEVER EXPECTED EWOK WARRIORS...
In June of 2002, the G8 will hold a summit in the very remote Canadian town of Kananaskis. The terrain is ideal for hippies, crappy for cops. What were they thinking?! Don't they remember Vietnam?! Don't they remember Return of the Jedi when the Ewoks kicked Stormtrooper ass in the forest of Endor?
* Originally posted in our message boards:
http://www.alternet.org/forums/G8.html
2600 HACKERS VS. THE CORPORATE WET DREAM
Melissa Lane, LiP Magazine
Since it launched in 1984, hacker 'zine 2600 remains the focal point of a subculture hated and feared by Microsoft, the military and the MPAA.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11251
ALIEN WORSHIPERS MAY SUE FDA OVER CLONING FREEZE
Kate Silver, Las Vegas Weekly
A group of Raëlians (folks who believe we were created by nearby aliens), may sue the FDA for putting "an illegal freeze on the cloning process." This planet is friggin weird.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11259
MICHAEL POWELL, OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT?
Brendan I. Koerner, Village Voice
How Michael Powell rose from GOP obscruity to a shot at taking his laissez-faire politics all the way to the Oval Office as our first black president.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11305
BUSH MUST NOT OBSTRUCT WORLD RACISM CONFERENCE
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Pacific News Service
While Bush should not boycott the upcoming World Racism Conference, organizers also must not permit the controversial issues of reparations and Zionism to sink the conference.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11283
BLOGGING -- THE REAL WORM THREATENING WEB "SECURITY"
Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org
Personal Web sites, or Weblogs, are gaining traffic and credibility each day, dashing Microsoft's hopes of keeping control of Net surfers in their powerful grasp.
* In Media Culture: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=19
PHILIP MORRIS SEES THE LIGHT
Wayne Grytting, AlterNet
After decades of sticking their heads in the sand about the hazards of tobacco, Philip Morris has found a new tactic -- promoting the benefits to society of premature deaths.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11298
QUEER AS YOUR FOLKS
Michael Bronski, Boston Phoenix
A new study says gay parents create gay kids. How will this research be used by conservatives -- and liberals in the debate over same-sex marriage?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11304
TECHSPLOITATION: BIOPUNKS CRY, "FREE OUR GENETIC DATA!"
Annalee Newitz, Metro Silicon Valley
Patents on protiens and genes that make up the human genome have biopunks up in arms as corporations and public interestes vie for our genetic future.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11278
TORTURE U.S.A.
The U.S. is #1 -- in torture devices. All over the world people are suffering and human rights are violated using Made-in-the-U.S.A. stun guns, restraints, and chemicals.
* In Human Rights USA: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=22
BUSH SAYS GLOBALIZATION IS GOOD FOR THE POOR
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, AlterNet
Last month in Genoa, Italy, George Bush decried the activists, saying corporate globalization will advance the interests of the world's poor. Unfortunately, it is frighteningly easy to prove him wrong given the facts.
* In Globalization: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21
SOLOMON: A GREEN PARTY CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004?
Norman Solomon, AlterNet
The Green Party has gained strength by fighting against the consequences of anti-democratic corporate power but party members disagree on plans for the next election.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11280
HUFFINGTON: 6 MILLION DISENFRANCHISED VOTERS? PERHAPS WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING
Arianna Huffington, OverthrowTheGov.com
Election 2000 cast a shadow across America's entire electoral system but Jimmy Carter's Commission on Election Reform thinks states should handle the problem on their own.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11294
GARCIA: BUSH'S LATINO PLAY IS A SIGN OF THE TIMES
James E. Garcia, PoliticoMagazine.com
The president has done much to court Latino-Americans even after the election, but the outreach consists of more pandering than substance.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11300
HIGHTOWER: AMERICA THE WORKAHOLIC
Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Americans need a real vacation (like the one-to-two months provided by our European competitors), and they want and deserve a 35-hour work week.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11289
DRUG WAR BRIEFS: CORRUPTION DU JOUR
Kevin Nelson, AlterNet
Seattle's D.A. Norm Maleng shuts down the Green Cross Patient (Marijuana) Co-op on the same day that Canada "legalizes" medical marijuana nationwide. In separate stories, the DEA, CIA, and UN Office of Drug Control are under scrutiny for a wide range of fraudulent activities.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11301
8/9/01
6:28:05 PM
McDonald's promotes deadly machinery as toys in "Monopoly" game
GROUPS ASK COMPANY TO SUBSTITUTE SAFE, NON-POLLUTING ALTERNATIVES FOR SWEEPSTAKES PRIZES
San Francisco, CA -- Leaders of 26 organizations representing the environment, consumer advocates, and concerned parents from across the nation blasted McDonald's Food Corporation for offering as sweepstakes prizes three of the deadliest and most environmentally harmful recreation vehicles currently on the market -- snowmobiles, personal watercraft (PWC, or "jet ski"), and all-terrain vehicles (ATV). In a joint letter sent today to McDonald's CEO Jack Greenberg in Oak Brook, Illinois, 23 organizations called on the fast-food magnate to substitute safer and less environmentally-destructive products for the company's nationwide "Monopoly" sweepstakes game.
"The McDonald's Corporation promotes itself as caring about 'safe fun for children' and protecting the environment, but the Monopoly game prizes contradict those corporate values," said Katy Rexford of Bluewater Network. "We're shocked that McDonald's would offer to children prizes that are responsible for so many injuries and deaths."
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, ATVs alone sent over 95,000 Americans to the emergency room in 2000; snowmobiles were responsible for over 14,000 emergency room visits.Moreover, while PWCs comprise only 10 percent of the United States' recreational boating population, they are responsible for over 40 percent of injury accidents.
The National Park Service (NPS) recently agreed to ban PWCs from most national parks, and a subsequent federal court settlement agreement with NPS calls for a possible ban on PWCs at all other park units, including Lake Mead and Lake Powell on the Colorado River.
"Jetskis are unsafe and contribute to the pollution of water supplies for more than twenty million people in the Colorado River alone," said David Orr, of Living Rivers in Moab, Utah, a co-plaintiff with Bluewater Network on the NPS lawsuit. "While citizens struggle to protect their families and their drinking water from these destructive machines, McDonald's is busy serving them up as good, clean fun."
Not only do these motorized "thrillcraft" have abysmal safety records, they are bad for the environment.Almost exclusively powered by dirty two-stroke engines, these machines dump between 25 and 30 percent of their unburned fuel mixture directly into the water, or onto the land or snow over which they ride.
Joining Bluewater Network and Living Rivers in the letter to McDonald's were groups from Alaska to Virginia. CLIP In their letter, the groups expressed their desire to work with Mr. Greenberg to "change the emphasis of the Monopoly game from one of dangerous, disruptive, and disproportionately polluting motorized recreation to a wholly different set of values that respects the environment and promotes the 'safe fun for children' theme that McDonald's proudly proclaims."
8/9/01
6:24:57 PM
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, s/he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Robert F. Kennedy
From his speech on June 6, 1966 at the University of Capetown in South Africa
8/9/01
6:22:29 PM
The Genoa Experience
by Andrew Arendt Wegerif
This is my story of what I experienced in Genoa before, during and after the G8 summit that was held there on 20 to 22 July. A lot of what I saw was deeply shocking and disturbing to me, hence it has taken a while before I felt able to put it down in writing, which I will now try to do.
CLIP - This is too long to be included in its entirety. You may request the original version from Boudewijn. Here are some excerpts:
After some dancing and music and a good deal of gas we moved back from the Red Zone, to regroup at a square about 500 metres from the fence. Here we sat down and had a bit of a meeting and a rest. This square, the Piazza Manin, was also the meeting point for a number of pacifist organisations, so there were several thousand people there at the time.
All was calm for a few minutes, until a group of perhaps 50 to 100 'Black Block' activists came running down the street towards us, closely followed by a large number of police. The Blacks crossed straight over the square, desperately retreating from the police lines, and the police moved in on us with their truncheons and gas. There was total chaos, as everyone tried to get away and police bore down on those that weren't quick enough. I was pushing a shopping trolley full of water and food at the time, and so couldn't really run very fast, and didn't really feel like it anyway. Instead I moved up towards a wall and started walking calmly away from the mess.
A police truncheon then got me on the head and I fell over and was beaten and kicked on the head, back, arms and legs, maybe 15 times by what must have been at least two officers. All around me teargas canisters were flying and completely peaceful people were being brutally beaten up. I was curled up against the wall and sitting very still, so they probably thought I had passed out and moved on to someone else. Then I saw an opening and made a run for it. Happily I made it down a side street, where I hid by some bushes for half an hour together with about 20 shocked pacifists.
Hiding out in the side street I made an interesting observation. The police that had driven the Blacks over the square and down towards the Red Zone now calmly walked back over the square, got in their vans and drove off, letting the Blacks roam as freely as they wished. The unpleasant conclusion I could not help drawing from this is that the police were not trying to actually arrest or stop these Blacks. For the time being they simply wanted to drive them over the square where we Pinks and others were gathered, thereby creating an excuse to violently end the peaceful meetings that they knew were being held there.
CLIP
COMING TO TERMS WITH WHAT HAPPENED IN GENOA
CLIP
There are several facts about what happened in Genoa, and the implications of these events, that I feel must be stated.
It is terribly obvious to me that the carabinieri and police knew very well what they were doing. They were not panicking in any way, they came prepared, and they had their tactics well sorted out. It is also clear that they were not acting on their own, the blame must not fall on them alone, but travel all the way to the very top of the Italian government, and thereby also to the other countries that are a part of the Greedy Eight.
On Tuesday the 24th there were still about 600 people in hospital in Genoa, and something like 200 were under arrest. People who were well when arrested were later found badly beaten in hospital. There have been terrible reports from the prisons. People have been repeatedly beaten, humiliated, made to chant fascist slogans and even gassed in their cells. The message of this is all too clear, the police were not really out there to control and arrest people, they were out there to hurt and scare people. And I suppose that is because they can't really get at very many people legally, while they can hurt a lot of people quite easily.
There were a great number of reports of police infiltrators actually taking part in the rioting and fighting in Genoa. There are so many pictures, videos and eye-witness reports of people dressed as Black Block activists rioting and fighting and then speaking to the police, getting in and out of police vans and even leaving police stations that even the mainstream media (at least in Italy) haven't been able to ignore it.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the police are tactically using parts of the Black Block to cause havoc, beat innocent people, and turn different groups of activists against each other.
Sadly, the police tactics were partially successful. I witnessed organisations and groups arguing endlessly over whether or not to permit anarchists to demonstrate with them, over whether there is any point at all to being there when there is a large chance of getting beaten up. And of course, whether they should be defending themselves against the violence or not, and how, and what tactics to use, and so on.
Important as these tactical discussions may be, I believe that we must try to remember what this is actually about, remember why we are out there demonstrating in the first place. We must try to find strength in the great diversity of activists that really want a change, focusing more on our common goals than our differences.
The positive implication of all this madness I suppose is that the government and economic leaders are really showing that they are scared of what the demonstrators represent. Their need to repress more and more of the population is becoming increasingly obvious. The eyes of many are being opened and new activists are being created every day.
See also: TOP FIRMS RETREAT INTO BUNKER TO WARD OFF 'ANARCHISTS' at
http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/update/story.jsp?story=77374:
Some of Britain's biggest companies are running their internet operations on systems installed in a 300ft-deep nuclear blast-proof bunker to protect customers from violent anti-capitalist campaigners.
8/9/01
6:18:31 PM
The following has been taken from the July 27 issue of the Good News Agency newsletter -- More details at
It is prepared and distributed by the Associazione Culturale dei Triangoli e della Buona Volontà Mondiale. E-mail: s.tripi@tiscalinet.it
21-22 July, Genoa: fresh public opinion seeks expression
Final statement on the G8 summit: some success, the concern remains
Genoa, 22 July - Following the final statement issued at the conclusion of the G8 meeting, Volunteers of the World - FOCSIV (a Federation of 52 International Volunteer NGOs) considers an NGO success the fact that two thirds of the statement concerns the strategic approach to the reduction of poverty in the world. "The acknowledgment by the G8 of its own responsibilities for resolving some of the planets major problems is an important step forward, even though not an adequate one", said Sergio Marelli, General Manager of FOCSIV. "What are needed are concrete measures, adequate tools and resources, definite times, and measurable objectives that don't seem to have been clearly identified during the summit."
Problems of the utmost importance such as: safeguarding the environment, safe food for everyone, improving local health services, blockading the arms trade, equal opportunities for poor countries in accessing markets and, above all, the definition of rules and democratic systems of governance at international levels, can no longer wait. The destiny of millions of poor people depends on a greater social justice that must not be postponed.
The establishing of the Health Fund, the debt reduction of 23 heavily indebted countries, the proposal of a Plan for Africa, the adherence to the European initiative "Everything but Arms" are all positive signals which, alone however, risk becoming benevolent gestures with no real impact on the causes of poverty.
"Various passages of the document, as far as we are concerned, are cause for alarm and need to be modified - concluded Sergio Marelli. We reiterate our desire to continue talks with national and international bodies, especially now that the spot light on the G8 summit has been switched off. The commitment to promote innovative solutions based on ample partnership with civil society and on greater cooperation with those developing countries cited in the final statement of the G8 summit, if concretized, will finally constitute a positive step forward in that long sought-after direction and which was so greatly supported over the past months of preparation for the Genoa summit."
8/9/01
6:15:33 PM
Superweed: Monsanto's GM Canola Is Out Of Control
Farmers in Canada are struggling with a new pest in their fields - a crop that was supposed to make their lives easier. Genetically engineered canola is appearing in farmer's fields where it wasn't planted, and because the plant has been engineered to resist conventional herbicides, it's tough to kill.
Agricultural scientists suspect that the plants spread through cattle manure. The seeds travel through an animal's digestive tract and are deposited on the soil, where they germinate. 'The GM canola has in fact spread much more rapidly than we thought it would,' said Martin Evit, a plant scientist at the University of Manitobaa. 'It's absolutely impossibl to control.'
Ottawa approved GM canola in 1996, and at the time it did consider the possibility that it could become a weed. Tha Canadian Food Inspection Agency describes the current problem as "a nuisance" and has advised farmers to 'use another chemical,' But the alternative chemicals can kill farmers' intended crops and in some cases, the GM canola appears to be resistant to the other chemicals,
Monsanto, which created one of the GM canola strains, says that if farmers call the company, they'll send out a team to manually pull up the weeds. But Martin Phillipson, a University of Saskatchewan law professor, said that Monsanto may be liable for damages if their GM canola continues to spread.
The problems with canola confirm the long held fears of anti-GE campaigners regarding the possibility that genetically engineered crops will become super weeds,
8/9/01
6:12:48 PM
"The natural world is dying, and it is dying fast. So fast that at current trends, much of it will cease to be capable of supporting complex forms of life, like humans, in a matter of decades. That is why we, the representatives of the World Rainforest Movement and ECOROPA hereby declare a state of global environmental emergency."
- Edward Goldsmith
GAlA & THE GLOBAL CORPORATIONS: CAN THE ENVIRONMENT SURVIVE?
Keynote address by Edward Goldsmith, Co-Founder of the International Forum on Globalization at IFG annual Conference in 1998, on the on-going global biological holocaust; environmental destruction; economic collapse; the impoverishment of humanity; social & ecological catastrophe; and global revolution; are all taking hold.
There are no effective institutional methods for "policing the global environment". To the extent that the global environment will be "policed" at all it is only likely to be by mass social movements. This will become easier as the global economy starts to break down, I do not see the development of the global economy as irreversible, The global economy is highly vulnerable and contains the seeds of its own disintegration.
As far as I know, the only environmental agency with ally executive powers at all is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA. which has a budget of 2 billion dollars. However, this is but a minute fraction of what it would need to control the environmentally destructive activities of the vast transnational corporations it was set up to control. Thus, among its duties is to examine the 70,000 or so chemicals already marketed in the USA, for their potential adverse health effects, as well as a thousand or so new ones that are put onto the market every year. But after many years it has only succeeded in examining - in a cursory way at that -. little more than about 5% of these chemicals. 95% of those that are still on the market have thus never been tested at all - a truly horrifying thought.
In any case, the problems we face today are too massive and too deep-seated to be solved by any institution Environmental destruction, in spite of assurances to the contrary by scientific experts working for governments and international institutions, is entirely out of control. For instance, there is absolutely nothing today to prevent the ever increasing destruction of the world's forests- that is until it becomes "uneconomic" to destroy any more. Nor can I can see anything to stop the erosion of the last inch of topsoil from what remains of the world's dwindling agricultural land so long as there is a market for its produce. Nor, in spite of the World Climate Conference held in Kyoto, is there anything to prevent the further growth of C02 emissions to the atmosphere and the further destabilization of world climate, that is so long as there is a market for fossil fuels. Let us face it, there is no law in any country - to my knowledge - that makes it illegal to clear-cut forests, nor to erode our topsoil, nor to generate greenhouse gases over and above that which can be absorbed by dwindling natural sinks. What is more, even if such laws were enacted, I can see no effective mechanism anywhere in the world for applying them.
If environmental destruction is out of control, what then is likely to happen? Clearly something must in the end bring it to a halt. It cannot just continue increasing forever. In all probability economic collapse will do so.
Needless to say, there is no cosmetic solution to the problems that they and the world in general will face. They can only be solved by changing the course on which our society is set. Instead of aiming to create a global economy dominated by vast transnational corporations catering for a world market, we need, on the contrary, to recreate a network of loosely connected local economies run by small and medium sized companies that are rooted in a particular society to which they are accountable economically, socially, ecologically, and morally, and catering largely, though not entirely, for local and regional markets. Only in this way can we reduce sufficiently the impact of our destructive economic activities on our rapidly degrading environment. Only in this way too can we prevent the further disintegration of our social fabric, for only local economies can provide the economic infrastructure for the healthy and cohesive families and communities that are the key building blocks of a healthy society, and that in the industrial world of today exist in name only. Only in this way too can we hope to assure the livelihoods of those who are still outside the orbit of the world economy and provide jobs for those who require them - for only small and medium sized companies can possibly provide employment for all those who would otherwise be marginalized and rendered largely destitute. Only a society made up of healthy families and communities based on local economies, what is more, could possibly be imbued with the religio-cultural world-view that can once more give meaning to our lives and rescue us from the sordid nihilism into which we are rapidly sinking.
An extended article based on this piece. on how environmental destruction will be brought to a halt was published in Caduceus Magazine as:
"GAlA & THE GLOBAL CORPORATIONS: CAN THE ENVIRONMENT SURVIVE?
For further information, papers, books, bibliographies & tapes, contact:
International Forum on Globalization
1062 Fort Cronkhite
Sausalito CA 94965 USA
8/9/01
6:03:54 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
UPDATE - EPA seen easing coal plant emission standards - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11951
FEATURE - 'Jaws' author crusades to save endangered sharks - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11956
INTERVIEW - No US farm bill changes before debate - Combest - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11955
Anadarko CEO decries restrictions in Rockies - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11952
INTERVIEW - Vermont coffee co. celebrates "green" image - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11950
EPA seeks to scale back Clinton pollution rule - Post - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11948
Sunken US boat likely to discharge all its fuel - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11947
Spain's Gamesa signs wind power contracts - SPAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11958
Indian film stars, celebrities say no to shahtoosh - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11957
UPDATE - German Greens say RWE nuke incident first in West - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11953
INTERVIEW - Liberian timber riches seen fuelling regional war - COTE D'IVOIRE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11946
Conoco throws weight behind Canadian Arctic gas - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11949
INTERVIEW - Brazil black market in GM soybeans booming - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11954
Australia signs nuclear waste deal with Argentina - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11945
Western Australia to build A$270 mln power plant - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11960
CitiPower signs Australia wind power deal - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/11959
8/9/01
6:02:07 PM
The Nation
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
And read Bruce Shapiro's explosive related essay, "Dead Reckoning," from the August 6 issue of The Nation. Currently available at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=shapiro
THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICA
The most powerful voice making the case against the Supreme Court decision that put George W. Bush in the White House was a legendary prosecutor, previously known more for putting people behind bars than for progressive activism. With his brilliant and courageous account of a crime committed by the highest court in the land, Vincent Bugliosi has assumed leadership of a growing chorus of voices indicting the Supreme Court's conduct in Bush v. Gore.
Indeed, Bugliosi is the only public figure in America calling the five justices "criminals in the truest sense of the word who belong behind bars as much as any American white collar criminal who ever lived."
None Dare Call It Treason, published in the February 5, 2001, issue of The Nation, drew the largest outpouring of mail from Nation readers in the magazine's 136-year history. Now it has been turned into a best-selling paperback featuring updates and amplifications to the original article, a complete summary of all the legal proceedings in Florida leading up to the Supreme Court decision, and introductory essays from famed attorney Gerry Spence and columnist Molly Ivins, who calls Bugliosi's book, "the American equivalent of 'J' accuse.'"
Published by NationBooks, The Betrayal of America has been listed as high as number 4 on the New York Times bestseller list and has been residing in the Barnes & Noble Top 100 for some time--remarkable achievements for a heavy-hitting political polemic. Help make it number one. It's very reasonably priced at $9.95, and it makes a great gift, so buy a copy today. You can order online via The Nation Books site at:
SUPPORT STEM-CELL RESEARCH
Stem cell research is among medicine's most promising fields of study. Because embryonic stem cells have the singular ability to evolve into any human organ or tissue, advances in this area may lead to bold new treatments for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
But much of that progress lies in jeopardy as George W. Bush decides on whether to bar federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush is paying close attention to antiabortion groups who wish to eliminate federal funding for the experiments. He is expected to make a decision in the next few weeks. In the meantime, please help keep the pressure on him and his advisors by sending an informed letter in support of embryonic stem cell research. Our Act Now! page provides all the details and relevant tools, as well as further information. Available at:
http://www.thenation.com/alert/actnow/
THE NATION ONLINE INTERVIEW SERIES
Read an exclusive interview with author, activist and educator Mark Crispin Miller on his new book, The Bush Dyslexicon. Miller warns that we "misunderestimate" George W. Bush at our peril. And watch this space for info on upcoming interviews with a range of writers, thinkers, politicians, musicians and activists. Available exclusively at:
http://www.thenation.com/special/20010726miller.mhtml
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:
8/9/01
6:00:08 PM
FYI: DUAL-FUEL RETROFIT SYSTEM USES HYDROGEN OR NATURAL GAS TO LOWER DIESEL ENGINE EMISSIONS BY UP TO 75%
This message is to inform all technical personnel that there is a cost effective retro-fit technology which lowers Diesel emissions from Diesel engines by converting any generator engine to run on hydrogen or natural gas/diesel dual fuel.
Dual fuel technology provides technical and environmental advantages when used for distributed generation, prime power, peak shaving and other Diesel engine applications. It is common to achieve NOx reductions up to 60% and 75% for PM without SCR or catalytic after-treatments. Oil changes, engine overhauls and engine life are all extended. Operating expenses are much less than for large 100% dedicated gas engines.
Engine horse power and operating temperatures remain the same and if gas is lost, dual fueled engines automatically revert back to 100% Diesel fuel until gas pressure is restored.
Existing Diesel engines of any size, age and manufacturer can be retrofitted. Natural gas sources can be utility pipeline gas, bio, digester, LNG, CNG, producer and wellhead gasses. Hydrogen gas also works well. Dual fuel hardware is external to all engines and can be installed, on site, in less than a week.
Systems are operating in California and elsewhere. For details, please contact Mr. Larry Reinhart toll free at 877-524-3835. Thank you.
Lreinhart@innotechgroup.com
Web site: www.innotechgroup.com
8/9/01
5:22:36 PM
FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY
A new program called King's Kids is bringing young Arabs and Jews together for projects in the Middle East and surrounding countries. Assist News Service says the program, now in its eighth year, was started by a Swiss couple who realized that many of their young Christian friends had Jewish or Arab backgrounds and many friends from each of those groups.
The group's latest missionary project was a trip to Romania.
One 18-year-old member of the group tells Assist that the young people "have far more in common than they thought. Even though Christianity is our common thread, there are so many other things for which we should be thankful."
8/9/01
5:19:48 PM
MediaChannel.org
THE REAL WORM THREATENING WEB "SECURITY"
Now that Danny Schechter has joined the community of weblog users, he's discovered a new - and welcome! - virus menacing those who seek to dominate the Internet.
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/blogger.shtml
MEDIA, EMPTY-HEARTED
Nepali journalist Kunda Dixit looks toward the World Conference on Racism, noting the scanty coverage of such issues as poverty. What would help? "Journalists who have a soul and a conscience." (From Isis International-Manila)
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#wcar
MEDIA READER *New Edition*
The best media about the media. MediaChannel's international, biweekly, multimedia magazine
* Kremlin's Media Tricks
* Selling Out The BBC?
* South African Women Ignored
And much, much more... Plus: Streaming audio and video
http://www.mediachannel.org/news/mediareader
REINVENTING CNN
After firing hundreds of workers and exploring cost-cutting deals with other networks, CNN now faces more criticism for its Headline News redesign and efforts to woo conservative politicians. (From Columbia Journalism Review)
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#cnn
IS NBC DOING GE'S DIRTY WORK?
When the head of NBC lobbied against a government plan to clean up the Hudson River, was it just another example of the GE-owned network exploiting its news power? Plus: A Congressman accuses GE head Jack Welsh of having ordered NBC news to call the presidential election for Bush. (From Multinational Monitor, The American Prospect)
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#nbc
PRESS COUNCIL OR PRESS CONTROL?
A Malaysian citizens' initiative demanded an independent panel to defend press freedom, but now that a Media Council is being created, the citizens warn that there is no press freedom to defend. (From Aliran Kesedaran Negara)
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#malaysia
MEDIACULTURE
A collaboration between MediaChannel and Alternet exploring the currents, crises and cultures of American media.
Recently featured:
* American Pie, Condom-Free
* The E-Book Hacker
* A Gangsta Double Standard
And much, much more...
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#mediaculture
LOST IN TRANSLATION
To expose differences in news reporting in the English-language Miami Herald and its Spanish-language sister, El Nuevo Herald, a local radio station offers a "B.S. (that is, Bilingual Scam) Detector."
http://www.mediachannel.org/front.shtml#bs
8/9/01
5:16:05 PM
August 6 and 9 Commemoration - Hidankyo Organization
The Hidankyo Organization should receive the next Nobel Peace Prize.
NIHON HIDANKYO is the only nation-wide organization of A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Hibakusha). Hidankyo were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 and 1994. The reason given for Hidankyo's nomination was that it has persisted with "tireless work in advocating the total abolition of all nuclear weapons" and has conducted "a continuing campaign not only against nuclear weapons, but also for effective compensation for the Hibakusha.."
The three main objectives of the Hidankyo Organization:
1) Prevention of nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons, including the signing of an international agreement for a total ban and the elimination of nuclear weapons. The convening of an international conference to reach this goal is also part of Hidankyo's basic demand;
2) State compensation for the A-bomb damages. The state responsibility of having launched the war, which led to the damage by the atomic bombing, should be acknowledged, and the state compensation provided.
3) Improvement of the current policies and measures on the protection and assistance for the Hibakusha.
For more information on the Hidankyo Organization, visit:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/english/index.html
8/9/01
5:14:27 PM
Not Just Cloning Around
by Scott Shuger
The NYT's top non-local story is three researchers' insistence, at a major meeting of (mostly disapproving) scientists in Washington, D.C., that they will each independently try to produce human clones. The WP, the only major not to front the would-be cloners, leads with the EPA's confirmation that it has decided to scale back an aggressive Clinton administration initiative designed to force aging coal-fired power plants to add modern anti-pollution controls. The paper observes that the decision comes "after intense lobbying by the utility and refinery industries." USAT leads with its poll showing that no Democrat is viewed as the leader of the party. 51% of those polled didn't have an opinion, the next highest finisher, at 10%, was "no one." Al Gore was picked by just 6%, Bill Clinton got 5%, Hillary Clinton 3% and Joe Lieberman 1%. The poll also asked "If the election were today between President Bush and Gore, how would you vote?" The result: A 48% to 48% tie. The LAT leads with the government's finding that during the second quarter U.S. productivity increased 2.5%. The paper attributes the increase, not to the use of high technology, but rather to cuts in workers and hours worked. The NYT, in its insider on the numbers, disagrees, stating at the outset, "Even in a sharp economic slowdown, the new economy seems to be surviving," and noting below that many economists saw "investment in equipment and software as the force behind" the gain. The WP, in its productivity fronter, also disagrees, with its subheadline stating, "Report Bolsters View That New Economic Era Has Begun."
The top story in the WSJ's front-page business news box--also the off-lead at the WP--is that yesterday Microsoft asked the Supreme Court to vacate all the findings of fact and legal conclusions the trial judge reached in his antitrust ruling against the company. The company's paperwork questions the judge's fairness, in light of the private interviews he gave to several reporters during the trial.
The WSJ reports some of the first relatively hard numbers for the defense cuts Donald Rumsfeld wants to effect in order to pay for the Bush administration's planned high tech weaponry including missile defense. The paper says his aides have recommended cutting about 56,000 Army troops, 16 of 61 Air Force fighter squadrons and two of 12 Navy carrier groups. The Journal says such cuts are "sure to provoke strong protests from both the military brass and Congress."
The WP and NYT stuff news that Israel yesterday loosened rules of engagement for its forces so as to now allow them to shoot first at Palestinians who appear to be preparing an attack, whereas previously they had to wait until their lives were being actively threatened. The LAT puts this in a front-pager, but one that goes on higher and more elaborately about how Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon is now stressing the need to work harder at winning the worldwide public relations war too. Changes to come, says the paper: Fewer soldiers in uniform explaining Israeli actions, but more women. And possibly more Israeli intellectuals. And Sharon wants to emphasize not just security issues, but also Jewish claims to disputed lands. But the story finishes up referring to a not-so-easily-solved image problem recently noted by a retired Israeli official in the Jerusalem Post: "The use of heavy weapons--attack helicopters or tanks--against a single terrorist creates the image of an Israeli Goliath fighting a Palestinian David."
The NYT reports inside on the results of an independent examination (paid for by the Times and other news organizations) of four computers used during the Florida recount by Katherine Harris and her aides. At issue here: to what extent Harris's office and those computers were used then for partisan political purposes, and whether she had been sufficiently forthcoming when the Times had earlier asked to examine them. The experts concluded that the computers were used more extensively than either Harris or her spokesman had acknowledged. They found evidence that they had been used before the recounts for Harris' political work for the Bush campaign and that during the recounts they were recipients via email of some partisan documents. They also found that some information had probably been permanently erased from them earlier this year after new operating systems were installed on three of them. The story is headlined (online at least) "DATA PERMANENTLY ERASED FROM FLORIDA COMPUTERS." But the big print doesn't mention what the story adds: The experts said they found "no evidence that records had been systematically purged as part of an intentional effort to destroy election documents."
The LAT goes inside with another election flashback. In February, at a congressional hearing, the president of NBC, Andrew Lack, responding to a rumor that on Election Night, GE chairman Jack Welch, a major Republican fund contributor, had played a role in the network's decision to call the election for George W. Bush, offered California congressman Henry Waxman access to any existing internal newsroom tapes. But now, reports the LAT, Lack says Congress has no right to internal deliberations of any news organization. Waxman says that NBC has confirmed the existence of such tapes and that he'll seek a subpoena for them.
The WP's Al Kamen reports that longtime Bush I stalwart Brent Scowcroft, soon to take a foreign policy job in the current administration, recently called former Bush I secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger to ask him to work with him and that Eagleburger agreed. But later Scowcroft called him back saying that there was a problem at the White House. In Kamen's words: "Something about Eagleburger having supported that McCain fellow for president."
A NYT editorial is rightly incredulous about the billboard outside Madison Square Garden that the University of Oregon is paying $250,000 for in order to promote the Heisman Trophy prospects of its quarterback. Sure, notes the paper, the money was all privately raised. But don't athletic officials--not to mention, Today's Papers would add, college presidents--have any "power or responsibility to influence what gifts their benefactors make?"
8/9/01
5:11:40 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
ASSAULT ON A FREE PRESS
by the Inter American Press Association
-- "Nine journalists murdered in the past three months, an onslaught of lawsuits and damages awards against media, and new press laws are curtailing freedom on expression in the Americas."
HE JUST WANTS TO MAKE US HAPPY: SALINGER'S HOLDEN CAULFIELD AT 50
by Cornel Bonca, Orange County Weekly
-- J.D. Salinger's character Holden Caulfield needs us to understand him now as much as he did 50 years ago.
BODIES OF SUBVERSION
by Margot Mifflin, Gadfly Online
-- "Examined against the shifting social backdrop of Western culture in the last two centuries, tattoos serve as touchstones for women's changing roles and evolving concerns during the most progressive era in women's history."
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
8/9/01
5:09:34 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
GM food better be good for you - Australian survey - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11940
Union wins Australian state backing for wind power - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11934
Iran team to clear up slick from sunken Gulf ship - BAHRAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11937
German RWE says fuel rod dropped at Biblis nuke - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11942
Daimler, MMC to make eco-friendly engines - paper - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11935
High water levels in central, north Norway - NVE - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11931
Stranded whale blown up on South African beach - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11939
Statoil's clean ships could offset NOx emissions - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11943
As Barry fades, more severe hurricanes forecast - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11938
US judge curtails cruise visits to Glacier Bay - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11944
Interior's Norton confident about ANWR drilling - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11941
Clean air groups fear Bush retreat on pollution rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11936
GM unveils hydrogen fuel cell - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11933
UPDATE - GM touts fuel cell for homes, business - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11932
8/9/01
5:08:34 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
OFFICIALS SCRAMBLE TO FIND MISSING NUCLEAR FUEL RODS
By Joe Palenik
HARTFORD, Connecticut, August 7, 2001 (ENS) - Northeast Utilities of Hartford, Connecticut is conducting an exhaustive investigation into the whereabouts of two nuclear fuel rods from the Millstone Power Station it formerly owned. The rods may be in a water pool on the site or they may have been shipped elsewhere for disposal.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-07-01.html
CANADIAN TIMBER SALE BAD NEWS FOR THREATENED SEA BIRD
By Neville Judd
SECHELT, British Columbia, Canada, August 6, 2001 (ENS) - What is the point of having a government agency if its recommendations are ignored by the ministry it is supposed to advise? That's the question frustrating Daniel Bouman, who believes that a timber sale high above an inlet on Canada's west coast threatens the survival of a rare sea bird.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-06-01.html
ALARM BELLS RING FOR WEST AFRICA'S THREATENED SEA TURTLES
BONN, Germany, August 7, 2001 (ENS) - The long beaches of southern Gabon hold the largest number of leatherback turtles in the world. Mauritania, with large areas of sea grass beds, is considered to have the most important feeding grounds for green turtles in West Africa.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-07-02.html
INDONESIAN TRADE BAN ON RAINFOREST WOOD AIDS ORANGUTANS
WASHINGTON, DC, August 6, 2001 (ENS) - A rare Indonesian wood that is imported into the United States and sold as furniture, building materials, window blinds, picture frames, and pool cues will no longer be available for legal import as of today.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-07-03.html
8/9/01
5:06:21 PM
Limiting Greenhouse Gases In India And China
By Environmental News Network
A series of studies conducted by Daniel Sperling, PhD, of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California at Davis is pinpointing inexpensive ways to curb heat-trapping emissions from the transportation sector in developing countries. The control of greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the mastery of global warming.
The United States backed out of the Kyoto climate protocol in part because the Bush administration is not willing to submit to limitation of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions if those from populous developing countries such as India and China are not cut.
Sperling and his teams of researchers in India and China found that by 2020 transport-related greenhouse gas emissions could rise as much as fourfold in Delhi, and sevenfold in Shanghai if no action is taken to reduce them.
"One of the greatest challenges we face in addressing climate change is helping developing countries forge cleaner, more sustainable paths to development," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, an independent U.S. based organization which funded the studies.
"These reports identify ways that fast growing cities like Delhi and Shanghai can meet the demand for high quality transportation while easing congestion, improving air quality, and protecting the global climate," she said.
In Delhi, India, Sperling and his team found, an aggressive effort to encourage environmentally friendly forms of travel could reduce the projected fourfold increase to a doubling.
For the Delhi study, Sperling worked with Ranjan Bose of the Tata Energy Research Institute who led the team of Indian researchers.
By 2000, said Sperling's team, Delhi had about 2.6 million motor vehicles - 200 for every 1,000 inhabitants, a rate far higher than most cities with similar incomes.
Now inhabited by about 13 million people, Sperling's team estimates that the population will rise above 22 million by 2020. Motor vehicles, including cars, trucks, and motorized two- and three-wheelers, are expected to grow at an even faster rate. The domestic auto industry is predicting car sale increases of 10 percent per year, they say.
Sperling and his teams suggested low cost policy options that include building and maintaining more sidewalks, and bicycle and bus lanes, improving public transit, and expanding charter bus services.
Delhi should also replace the inefficient, polluting engines in scooters and motorcycles and improve the fuel efficiency of cars, the study said.
The authors also recommend fundamental changes that could have longer term impacts such as integrated land use planning and faster introduction of advanced vehicle and information technologies.
The Shanghai team was led by Sperling with Hongchang Zhou of Tongji University in Shanghai, China's largest city. The report estimates Shanghai's metropolitan population at more than 13 million people. "Shanghai's transportation sector currently generates extremely low levels of greenhouse gas emissions for a city of its size and affluence," the report says.
The city currently devotes little land to roads and has only 650,000 cars and trucks, a number well below virtually all cities of similar income, Sperling and Zhou report. "Even with this small number of vehicles, Shanghai already suffers from serious transport induced air pollution and traffic congestion," they write.
While the Shanghai population is not growing quickly, the economy is, and the emission of greenhouse gases is predicted to grow sevenfold by 2020. City planners project a quadrupling of the number of cars and trucks in operation by 2020, says Sperling's report
Zhou and Sperling outline Shanghai's transportation future plans. Once built, they say the investments will improve the city's transportation system, but are costly and threaten greater energy use and air pollution.
Shanghai plans expansion of the new airport, construction of a deep water harbor, three new bridges and tunnel river crossings, completion of a 165 mile modern rapid transit rail system, expansion of suburban highways, and construction of 1,240 miles of new and upgraded urban roads.
The city is investing in rail and bus transit and "intelligent" transportation technologies, the report says. "To the extent Shanghai can restrain motorization and emissions, it may serve as a model for other cities in the developing world."
Zhou and Sperling's team suggest that to reduce greenhouse gases, a specialized infrastructure be built for smaller vehicles and bicycles. More and better express bus service would help, as would promotion of clean, efficient motorcycles and scooters, small cars and cleaner engine technologies in conventional vehicles.
The Shanghai city government is already moving in that direction. To reduce polluting emissions by the year 2002, all of the 40,000 taxis in Shanghai plus 3,000 buses will be using cleaner fuels - compressed natural gas for buses and liquefied petroleum gas for cars.
"Shanghai is a model city in producing environmentally friendly vehicles and I hope it will become the nation's first city where the blue skies are not covered by grayish auto emissions," said Xu Guanhua, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The Delhi and Shanghai reports are the first in a series of five examining transport related greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.
Case studies of Chile and South Africa, and an overview report, will be released later this year.
"Government and industry both recognize that new mobility systems must be carefully researched and designed to ensure clear social benefits from future transportation systems, Sperling said. Sperling serves as co-director of the New Mobility Center, with Susan Shaheen, Ph.D. The New Mobility Center aims to be an international leader in research, development, and evaluation of innovative new approaches to delivering new mobility such as intermodal transportation, smart car-sharing and dynamic ridesharing, and instant access services.
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/08/08072001/greenhouse_44566.asp
8/9/01
5:03:08 PM
NEWS FROM THE WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE
Worldwatch Research moves to CD-ROM
The Worldwatch Institute has packaged its award-winning research into a new, easy to use format, releasing its first-ever CD-ROM.
The Worldwatch CD-ROM pulls together fully searchable text and data (in color-enhanced excel format) from annual publications State of the World 2001 and Vital Signs 2001 as well as an archive of data from all Worldwatch publications from 1999 to 2000.
The new product opens up many new uses for the Worldwatch Institute's cutting-edge information, including the capacity to combine data sets from more than one file to see parallel or intersecting trends and make 'what if' projections. Users can reproduce tables, charts and graphs for illustration purposes and easily import data into personal spreadsheet programs, presentation software or word processors.
The CD, selling for $99, runs on both PC and Macintosh computers and requires no special software. As a special introductory offer, buyers will also receive hard copies of Vital Signs 2001 and State of the World 2001 free (a savings of $29.90). The Worldwatch CD-ROM can be ordered online at: <http://secure.worldwatch.org/cgi-bin/wwinst/CD2001PW> or by calling 1-800-555-2028 (outside the U.S., call 1-301-567-9522).
For more information, contact Denise Warden, Marketing Coordinator.
email: dwarden@worldwatch.org
8/9/01
5:01:05 PM
MOTHERSALERT HOME PAGE:
An interview with Jack Hitt, author of the Sunday New York Times magazine article on Star Wars is available on line at:
Go to www.wnyc.org, click on archives, and click again on Leonard Lopate. Monday, August 6th is right there, and Mr. Hitt's interview is clearly listed.
Thanks to Erin Tower for this.
-Bill Smirnow
8/9/01
4:54:24 PM
Anti-Bush links
Here's an impressive and comprehensive web page of over 500 (!) links and web rings opposing and/or lampooning our illegitimate Idiot in Chief...some serious, some funny...some reasoned, some vitriolic. Go forth:
http://www.pieman.org/anti-bushlinks.html
8/9/01
4:51:15 PM
Presidential IQ's
In a report published Monday, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania detailed its findings of a four month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush.
Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published it's research to the education community on each new president, which includes the famous "IQ" report among others.
According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 50 years, from F. D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking.
The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:
147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) 132 Harry Truman (D) 122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) 174 John F. Kennedy (D) 126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D) 155 Richard M. Nixon (R) 121 Gerald Ford (R) 175 James E. Carter (D) 105 Ronald Reagan (R) 098 George HW Bush (R) 182 William J. Clinton (D) 091 George W. Bush (R)
The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:
The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155.
President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91. The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126. No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176.
Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the
English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis.
The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis.
"All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers. Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said. "He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking."
The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist.
This study was commissioned on February 13, 2001 and released on July 9, 2001 to subscribing member universities and organizations within the education community.
8/9/01
4:41:58 PM
TomPaine.com
The Loyal Opposition
THE NEW AND IMPROVED PRESIDENT
Forget Policy -- Bush Wants Fuzzy, Feel-Good Phrases
by David Corn
To define his presidency, Bush isn't going to rely on calls to privatize Social Security and build a missile defense system. Instead, he'll "unite Americans by focusing on children, quality of life and universally appreciated values."
http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/08/03/index.html
LOOKING LOCALLY: A BOTTOM-UP ENERGY SOLUTION
Audio and Text Versions
by David Morris
Basement microturbines and fuel cells, rooftop solar cells, backyard wind turbines: these are the power plants for the 21st century.
TomPaine.commentary -- AUDIO and TEXT -- produced by Steven Rosenfeld.
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/08/02/1.html
Economics Reporting Review
DRILLING FOR JOBS
by Dean Baker
In reporting on the House energy bill, the New York Times cited claims by proponents of Arctic drilling that this oil would create 750,000 jobs. It didn't mention that this estimate came from an oil industry-financed study.
http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/08/06/index.html
WILL CONGRESS LET FISH-KILLING DAMS OFF THE HOOK?
Hydropower Dams and The Fate of Salmon
by Ben Hubbard
"Hydropower licensing is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to modernize these dams to protect our rivers and the benefits they provide to local communities."
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/08/03/index.html
LOSING THE BATTLE, WINNING THE WAR
by Geo Beach
The result of environmentalists crying wolf about ANWR in the current energy bill debate was that they lost the truly crucial issues - fuel efficiency standards and corporate tax breaks.
A TomPaine.commentary -- AUDIO and TEXT!
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/08/03/1.html
BRIGHT YOUNG THING
How Michael Powell Rose From GOP Obscurity to Have a Shot at Becoming the First Black President
by Brendan I. Koerner
Were the Republican Party to design its ideal up-and-comer in a Gattaca-style genetics lab, the result would look and sound a lot like FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell.
http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/30/index.html
8/9/01
4:36:46 PM
SCIENTISTS FIND GENETIC BASIS OF INSECT'S RESISTANCE TO ENGINEERED CROPS
Genetically engineered crops with built-in insecticides are an increasingly popular tool for controlling agricultural pests. Some experts, however, believe that using those modified crops could backfire by forcing the development of genetically resistant pests.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010803084155.htm
8/9/01
4:33:37 PM
ADVERSARIES WOULD FIND OTHER ATTACK METHODS, GAME THEORY SHOWS
As Congress ponders a $3 billion increase in funding for a national missile defense system, University of Illinois professor Julian Palmore is looking at the programs prospects for success from a mathematicians perspective.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010802080823.htm
8/9/01
4:31:44 PM
SUSPENDED IN SPACE: RESEARCHERS MAKE IMPORTANT DISCOVERY ABOUT MATERIALS
A NASA-funded study in materials science has yielded a discovery that may significantly change the way electronics, paint, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries develop products.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010802081504.htm
8/9/01
4:30:25 PM
SOLAR STORMS DESTROY OZONE, STUDY RECONFIRMS
A new study confirms a long-held theory that large solar storms rain electrically charged particles down on Earth's atmosphere and deplete the upper-level ozone for weeks to months thereafter. New evidence from NASA and NOAA satellites is helping scientists better understand how man and nature both play a role in ozone loss.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010802080620.htm
8/9/01
4:29:27 PM
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED TOMATO PLANT GROWS IN SALTY WATER
A genetically engineered tomato plant that thrives in salty irrigation water and may hold the key to one of agriculture's greatest dilemmas has been developed by plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Toronto.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010801082418.htm
8/9/01
4:28:35 PM
DISCOVERY WILL CHANGE THE WAY RESEARCHERS LOOK AT DNA TRANSCRIPTION, SCIENTISTS SAY
Biological chemists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say a discovery they have made about how living organisms convert genetic instructions into action represents a fundamental advance in the understanding of the flow of genetic information.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010730081253.htm
NEW MAGNETIC SEMICONDUCTOR MATERIAL SPINS HOPE FOR QUANTUM COMPUTING
Scientists at the Department of Energys Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have created a semiconductor material that has superior magnetic properties at room temperature and that may propel research one step closer to realizing the potential of quantum computing.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010801082047.htm
NYU STUDY ASSESSES WHETHER YOGA CAN REDUCE EPILEPTIC SEIZURES
In a quiet, dark gym, yoga instructor Ramona Shih tells her students to focus on breathing deeply. Her voice is gentle and soothing. At the end of this 90-minute yoga session, a profound sense of peacefulness has descended over the six people taking the class. It would appear to be a regular yoga class, but Ms. Shih's students have epilepsy, and the class is really a novel clinical study at NYU Medical Center's Comprehensive Epilepsy Center.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010730075528.htm
8/9/01
4:26:36 PM
EXTREME PRECIPITATION LINKED TO WATERBORNE DISEASE OUTBREAKS
More than half of the waterborne disease outbreaks in the United States in the past 50 years were preceded by heavy rainfall, according to a study conducted at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010801081736.htm
8/9/01
4:25:10 PM
"BIONIC EAR" IMPLANTED BY PENN SURGEONS TO GIVE HEARING TO THE DEAF: FDA-APPROVED DEVICE PROVIDES THE WORLD'S FASTEST HEARING TECHNOLOGY
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Centers Department of Otorhinolaryngology are now surgically implanting the recently FDA-approved bionic ear, bringing hearing to once-deaf adults throughout the Delaware Valley.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010801082144.htm
8/9/01
4:24:03 PM
APPROACH TO AN ASTEROID: NEW NEAR MOVIE FEATURES FINAL FOOTAGE FROM A LANDING SPACECRAFT
Stunning close-up views of asteroid 433 Eros from the descending NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft get top billing in a new movie from NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission. The minute-long movie, released today on the NEAR Web site at covers the final moments of NEAR's yearlong orbit at Eros.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010801082535.htm
8/9/01
4:20:38 PM
OPTICAL SCIENTISTS TO DEVELOP EYEGLASSES WITH AUTOFOCUS
Optical scientists at the University of Arizona are working under an agreement with The Egg Factory, LLC, and its subsidiary company, eVision, to develop a proprietary technology that within a few years could provide next-generation eyeglasses -- glasses with lenses that actively focus so people can see clearly up close or far away.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010730080847.htm
8/9/01
4:18:15 PM
LAB-RAISED, ALGAE-EATING SEA URCHINS MAY REVERSE CORAL REEF DECLINE
One of the first attempts at restoring the health of Atlantic coral reefs gets underway as early as Friday, July 27, when the first ever laboratory-raised sea urchins will be released on an experimental site at Little Grecian Reef in a Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The sea urchins are critical to coral reef renewal because they eat coral-smothering algae.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010730081053.htm
8/6/01
9:47:08 PM
WILD ALERT
Ignoring public opinion and a multi-year public process, the Bush Administration has ordered the National Park Service to re-open its decision to phase out snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Please tell the Park Service to uphold the existing policy –
http://www.wilderness.org/takeaction/?step=2&item=573
The comment period is extremely short, ending August 14th.
ADMINISTRATION BACKPEDDLING
This past July, the Bush Administration backed away from its commitment to protect Yellowstone and Grand Teton from the damage caused by snowmobiles, by settling a lawsuit brought by the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association. As a result, the Park Service has been ordered to re-open its decision to phase-out snowmobiles -- and reconsider speculative advances in "cleaner" and "quieter" snowmobile technology.
To do this, the National Park Service is required to prepare a "Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement" (SEIS) to solicit "more public comment." Industry's strong endorsement of this process confirms the Bush Administration's determination to keep snowmobiles *in* the park.
This maneuver sets aside 10 years of scientific analysis, a 3-year process to collect public input, 22 public hearings, and the involvement of 65,000 people who took time to become involved it the process.
COMMENT PERIOD IS ONLY 15 DAYS LONG
The SEIS will be completed in just 15 months and the first opportunity to voice your opinion is right now, before August 14, 2001. (The comment period only opened on July 31st.)
TAKE ACTION
Please write to the Park Service (sample letter below) and tell them to uphold the existing policy to phase-out snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Send a message from
http://www.wilderness.org/takeaction/?step=2&item=573
or send your comments directly.
**It's important to PERSONALIZE YOUR MESSAGE so the Park Service counts them as individual responses.** Tell the Park Service that:
- You object to the NPS plan to conduct a Supplemental EIS on winter use at Yellowstone and Grand Teton.
- Ten years of study have proven that snowmobiles harm wildlife and threaten public health and safety.
- Uphold the existing plan and begin implementing it immediately.
Send your comments to:
Winter Use Plan, Superintendent's Office
Grand Teton National Park, P.O. Drawer 170
Moose, WY 83012
eMAIL: yell_winter_use@nps.gov
(insert "Attn: Winter Use Plan" in the subject line and include your name and address)
***SAMPLE LETTER***
I care deeply about the future of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
I object to the National Park Service's plan to conduct a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on winter use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I believe that in 10 years of study, scientists and professional land managers proved that snowmobiles are harming wildlife and threatening public health and safety. Please uphold the existing plan and immediately begin to implement the well-researched decision of the Park Service to phase out snowmobiles from these parks.
Sincerely,
8/6/01
9:43:45 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Alaska geese head for Russian breeding program - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11921
NY Comptroller warns on NYPA power initiatives - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11925
Sunken ship leaks fuel into Prince William Sound - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11924
EPA chief considers limits on US gas blends - report - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11917
US governors want private lands protected - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11918
GM seeks to weaken clean air, diesel restrictions - WSJ - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11930
British farm culls waste billions - report - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11923
FEATURE - Britain's Thames getting better all the time - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11913
Ship with Iraq oil sinks in Gulf fleeing patrol - UAE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11929
INTERVIEW - Chinese dams could help Laos fight floods - THAILAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11920
Beached humpback whale to be put down in South Africa - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11928
Norway says will not use Kyoto "sink" loophole - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11926
FEATURE - Germany has mixed record in drive for cleaner air - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11915
German industry, greens slam nuclear phaseout pact - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11927
Gabon, loggers in deal to stop bushmeat poachers - GABON http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11919
Greens dub Paris Pompidou expressway "Velorution" - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11922
FEATURE - Brazil cane raisers sweet on ethanol - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11914
FEATURE - Australia's brush with nuclear power 'ground zero' - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11916
8/6/01
9:40:01 PM
Solar Storms Destroy Earth's Ozone Layer
by Environmental News Network
Last year extreme ultraviolet cameras on board the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured this image of a prominence above the eastern limb of the Sun.
The Earth's ozone layer is destroyed not only by human use of ozone depleting chemicals, but also by large solar storms, new research confirms.
A solar flare with an associated coronal mass ejection sent positively charged protons streaming to Earth from July 14 to 16, 2000. The bombardment of protons, called a solar proton event, was the third largest in the last 30 years.
Now a year later, new evidence from U.S. Earth orbiting satellites is helping scientists better understand how solar events such as this one affect the planet.
Large solar storms rain electrically charged particles down on Earth's atmosphere and deplete the upper-level ozone for weeks to months according to a study in the August 1 issue of the journal "Geophysical Research Letters."
"A lot of impacts on ozone are very subtle and happen over long periods of time," said Charles Jackman, a researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Laboratory for Atmospheres and lead author of the study. "But when these solar proton events occur you can see immediately a change in the atmosphere, so you have a clear cause and effect."
Jackman and his colleagues examined impacts of a series of huge solar explosions on the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere with the help of data gathered by satellites operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Jackman said, "You have to first be able to separate the natural effects on ozone, before you can tease out humankind's impacts."
Chlorine and bromine are linked to ozone decline which allows more of the Sun's UV rays to hit the Earth, resulting in more skin cancers and optical damage in humans and animals. Most of the chlorine and bromine comes from human produced compounds such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halon gas.
Solar storms consist of coronal mass ejections and solar flares, the researchers explain. Coronal mass ejections are huge bubbles of gas ejected from the Sun and are often associated with these flares. Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that happen when energy stored in twisted magnetic fields, usually above sunspots, is suddenly released.
When protons like these bombard the upper atmosphere, they break up molecules of gases like nitrogen and water vapor. Once freed, those atoms react with ozone molecules and reduce the ozone layer.
When atmospheric winds blow nitrogen oxides down into the middle stratosphere, they can stay there for months, and continue to keep ozone at a reduced level.
When bombarded with protons from the Sun, water vapor molecules break up into forms where they react with ozone. These molecules, called hydrogen oxides, only last during the time period of the solar proton event.
But these short-term effects of hydrogen oxides can destroy up to 70 percent of the ozone in the another atmospheric layer known as the middle mesosphere.
Jackman and the other investigators used measurements from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) instrument aboard the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SBUV/2) instrument aboard the NOAA-14 satellite to obtain data on amounts of atmospheric gases like ozone and oxides of nitrogen in different layers of the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere.
The investigators then compared readings before and during the July 2000 solar event.
"If you look at the total atmospheric column, from your head on up to the top of the atmosphere, this solar proton event depleted less than one percent of the total ozone in the Northern Hemisphere," Jackman said. While the solar event's impact on humans was negligible, it helped scientists verify their computer models.
On July 23, an advanced environmental satellite equipped with instruments to monitor Earth's weather and with a telescope that will be used to detect solar storms was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-M) is the first of the GOES satellites equipped with a Solar X-ray Imager which will be used to forecast Earth space weather due to solar activity.
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/08/08062001/storms_44529.asp
8/6/01
9:35:19 PM
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
AT WHIT'S END
U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman now thinks her decision to revoke a Clinton administration rule to reduce arsenic in drinking water was a bone-headed move. She told USA Today that her decision wasn't bad policy, but bad politics: "Politically, if I'd been smart, I would've never changed it. ... I would've let the courts decide. We were going to be sued anyway by the Western states and a bunch of water companies, and I should've just left it there."
straight to the source: USA Today, Traci Watson, 06 Aug. 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010806/3529189s.htm>
SAY IT IS SO, JOE
The powerful duo of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) called for a plan on Friday to require power plants in the U.S. to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. They said the U.S.'s absence from the Kyoto treaty on climate change could hurt American industry, as well as the environment. Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday that the Bush administration probably would come to the next international climate change conference with actual proposals for fighting global warming. Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the same. But U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman and U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice later contradicted him, telling reporters that a climate change plan wasn't in the cards for the conference this fall in Morocco.
straight to the source: New York Times, Katharine Seelye, 04 Aug 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/04/politics/04MCCA.html>
straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 06 Aug 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35811-2001Aug5.html>
DRIVING THE NUMBERS UP
The percentage of households in the U.S. with three or more cars (18.3 percent) is nearly double the percentage of households with no cars (9.3 percent), and more than 76 percent of Americans say they drive to work alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Only 11 percent of people carpool, and merely 5 percent use public transportation to get to work. Telecommuting as a high-tech solution to the problems of pollution-spewing traffic seems to be a bust: Only 3 percent of Americans work at home, roughly the same percentage as in 1990. Carpooling dropped 16 percent since 1990. To put these numbers in perspective: In 1960, one in eight workers in Massachusetts walked to work; now, only one in 25 hoof it.
straight to the source: USA Today, Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, 06 Aug 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010806/3529137s.htm>
I'VE GOT A SECRET AND I'M NOT TELLING
Vice President Dick Cheney has formally refused to turn over documents relating to the development of the Bush administration's energy plan to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO may now take the White House to court over the issue. Democrats and enviros believe the energy plan was tailor-made for energy executives who held closed-door meetings with Cheney's Energy Task Force. Cheney aide Mary Matalin pooh-poohed any such criticism, saying the task force "produced a balanced, comprehensive, environmentally friendly energy policy in remarkably short time."
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Randall Mikkelsen, 06 Aug 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11901>
straight to the source: New York Times, Joseph Kahn, 06 Aug 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/04/politics/04ENER.html>
Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:
Sharps shooter -- Colorado man cleans up war-game carnage -- in our Out on a Limb section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/limb/limb072601.asp?source=daily>
Hocus-focus group -- a day in the life of Kevin Collins, National Parks Conservation Association <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/collins080301.asp?source=daily>
Closer-to-home toxic hot spots -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha073001.asp?source=daily>
8/6/01
9:28:49 PM
The Nation
The fight for fair and free elections in the United States is going to be a long and difficult one, reports John Nichols, as he examines the Dodd-Conyers Bill and the future of electoral reform in the latest installment of The Online Beat. Exclusively available at:
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat
You can also find 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:
8/6/01
9:15:50 PM
A major water conservation effort in South Africa is providing thousands of new jobs for that country's poor and uneducated population. The program, similar to FDR's Works Progress Administration, is designed to reclaim a portion of the water supply that is being consumed by alien plants.
In a country where water is already scarce, experts say the invasion of foreign plants is having a devastating effect on the ecosystem. The Christian Science Monitor reports that spreading, unwanted plants are drinking an estimated 7 percent of the water supply and that a single tree can absorb up to 13 gallons per day.
The South African government, using its new workforce of 22,000, has already removed the plants from more than 3 million acres of land.
Armed with only a machete, the average worker receives $3.75 per day from the government for participating in the plant-eradication program.
8/6/01
9:14:50 PM
The return of the Perseid meteor shower is about to dazzle the night skies. Scientists say the celestial display actually began several weeks ago, but many parts of the country have seen such overcast skies at night few have seen the show.
Usually each night a major "when you wish upon a star" meteor streaks across the night sky during the event.
The astronomical news organization space.com says that meteor showers are Mother Nature's way of cleaning up the universe. "Junk" -- left over after the death of planets and stars eons ago -- eventually gets close enough to Earth to be pulled in by gravity and then burns up in the atmosphere.
Forecasting meteor showers is, so far, not an exact science. The Perseid shower is one of only two for which scientists say they can make reliable predictions.
8/6/01
9:12:18 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
OUR ADDICTION TO CREDIT
by Silja J.A. Talvi, LiP Magazine
-- In an interview with Robert Manning, author of "Credit Card Nation," Silja J. A. Talvi scrutinizes corporate lending practices and questions the stability of an economy dependent on debt acquisition.
CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE
by Greg Burk, LA Weekly
-- When four blue-collar blokes from Birmingham got together to form Black Sabbath in 1969, no one thought they'd be around over 30 years later, let alone have left such a heavy-handed mark on pop music.
THE ARCHITECTURE CRITIC: A SURVEY OF ARCHITECTURE CRITICS IN AMERICA
National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University
-- We live in buildings, work in buildings, spend most of our lives in buildings -- buildings are our main environment. Why then, does America's press practically ignore the aesthetics of architecture?
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
8/6/01
9:09:37 PM
Our current issue of the Spirit of Ma'at, which went online August 1, marks the first magazine of our second year.
To commemorate this occasion, Drunvalo has written a letter to let you know where we are, what we have accomplished, and what is coming up in the future. To read it, go to:
http://www.spiritofmaat.com/announce/annstmt.htm
or visit our home page and click on the Announcements link.
We will have more news for you later on this month concerning the free gift Drunvalo mentions in his letter, and the new Resource Directory, which will come online in a couple of weeks.
Once again, thanks for being there. For being you.
In love and service,
The Staff at Spirit of Ma'at
staff@spiritofmaat.com
520-468-0960
"When you really want to know"
8/6/01
9:06:47 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Electricity to flow soon from Venezuela to Brazil - VENEZUELA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11898
McCain, Lieberman want carbon emissions cap, market - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11900
Cheney declines to give Congress energy documents - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11901
Studies find how bugs beat leading safe pesticide - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11902
Wildfire spreading in Yellowstone National Park - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11903
Group says EPA acted too soon on Hudson dredging - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11909
UPDATE - UK green power scheme set for early 2002 - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11904
Spanish firefighters bring blaze under control - SPAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11899
FEATURE - Southeast Asia bets on natural gas to generate power - SINGAPORE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11912
Philippine volcano calmer, alert may be lowered - PHILIPPINES http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11910
Experts try to stop oil leak at damaged Omani well - OMAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11906
Japan, Australia agree US entry vital to Kyoto pact - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11908
Germany H1 nuke power supply up four pct - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11905
Greens reclaim the Paris streets - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11911
Philips lays off 180 in Brazil as lights go off - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11907