Earths.net

12/15/01
5:24:09 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.16

Pakistanis Welcome al-Qaeda And Taliban

http://www.truthout.com/12.16A.Pakistan.Taliban.htm

Missile Defense System Canceled | Navy Program Woes Cause Bush Setback

http://www.truthout.com/12.16B.NMD.Cancel.htm

DASCHLE | Democratic Radio Address | Response to the President

http://www.truthout.com/12.16C.Daschle.Radio.htm

Wall Street Journal | The Straw Demon The Desperate Demonization of Tom Daschle

http://www.truthout.com/12.16D.Straw.Demon.htm

Thomas Frank | The Enron Outrage

http://www.truthout.com/12.16E.Enron.Outrage.htm

New York Times Editorial Comment | Misusing Executive Privilege

http://www.truthout.com/12.16F.Misusing.EP.htm

12/15/01
12:50:56 PM

Are We Winning Yet?

3,500 Civilians Killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Bombs University of New Hampshire Economics Professor Releases Study of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Monday Morning on Democracy Now! Radio/TV Show

DURHAM, NEW HAMPSHIRE - December 10 - More than 3,500 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan by U.S. bombs, according to a study to be released December 10 by Marc W. Herold, Professor of Economics, International Relations, and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Professor Herold will announce his findings on Monday, December 10 in a discussion with award-winning journalist, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! in Exile's War and Peace Report (http://www.democracynow.org). Professor Herold has been gathering data on civilian casualties since October 7 by culling information from news agencies, major newspapers, and first-hand accounts. "I decided to do the study because I suspected that the modern weaponry was not what it was advertised to be. I was concerned that there would be significant civilian casualties caused by the bombing, and I was able to find some mention of casualties in the foreign press but almost nothing in the U.S. press," said Herold.

Herold's data will be available at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/.

For each day since October 7, when the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began, he lists the number of casualties, location, type of weapon used, and source(s) of information. Following are several examples from his daily calculations:

On October 11, two U.S. jets bombed the mountain village of Karam, comprised of 60 mud houses, during dinner and evening prayer time, killing 100-160 people. Sources: DAWN, (English language Pakistani daily newspaper), the Guardian of London, the Independent, International Herald Tribune, the Scotsman, the Observer, and the BBC News.

On October 13, in the early morning, an F-18 dropped 2,000 lb. JDAM bombs on the Qila Meer Abas neighborhood, 2 kms. South of the Kabul airport, killing four people. Sources: Afghan Islamic Press, Los Angeles Times, Frontier Post, Pakistan Observer, the Guardian of London, and the BBC News.

On October 31, in a pre-dawn raid, an F-18 dropped a 2,000 lb. JDAM bomb on a Red Crescent clinic, killing 15 - 25 people. Sources: DAWN, the Times of London, the Independent, the Guardian, Reuters, Associated Press, and Agence France Presse. Professor Herold has sought whenever possible to cross-corroborate accounts of civilian casualties. He relied upon British, Canadian, and Australian newspapers; Indian newspapers, especially The Times of India; three Pakistani daily newspapers; the Singapore News; Afghan Islamic Press; Agence France Press; Pakistan News Service; Reuters; BBC News Online; Al Jazeera; and a variety of other reputable sources, including the United Nations and other relief agencies.

The Pentagon has repeatedly denied reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and most U.S. media outlets have qualified their reports of casualties with the statement "could not be independently confirmed." But Professor Herold has been able to confirm the number of casualties and has found that the number is climbing toward 4,000. "People have to know that there is a human cost to war, and that this is a war with thousands of casualties," said Herold. "These were poor people to begin with, and, on top of that, they had absolutely nothing to do with the events of September 11."

12/15/01
12:44:12 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

SIX NEW NATURAL WONDERS PROTECTED FOR ALL HUMANKIND

HELSINKI, Finland, December 14, 2001 (ENS)- The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has inscribed six new natural sites on the prestigious World Heritage List and has added extensions to three others during its annual meeting here in Helsinki.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-14-01.html

EPA CONSIDERS ACCEPTING HUMAN TESTS OF TOXICS

By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, December 14, 2001 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering accepting studies involving human testing of toxic substances such as pesticides. In a letter released today, the agency asked the National Academy of Sciences to review the scientific and ethical issues posed by studies that use human subjects to identify or quantify toxic effects.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-14-06.html

CHINA'S FIRST RAPTOR RESCUE CENTER TAKES FLIGHT

BEIJING, China, December 14, 2001 (ENS) - With their acute vision, hooked beaks, and large, sharp talons, wild birds of prey do not appear to need help, but when they are injured by pollution or by capture for sale, these raptors do need skilled care. Until now, there has been no specialized facility in China to care for injured hawks, eagles, falcons, and owls and prepare them for release into the wild.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-14-02.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: DECEMBER 14, 2001

ExxonMobil Pays $11.2 Million in Hazwaste Case

Soot Hurts Lungs as Much as Smoking

Citizens Group Wins Hearing Over MOX Plant

San Francisco Diverts 46 Percent of Waste

Nature Conservancy Targets Cumberland Plateau for Protection

800 Acres Protected in Maryland

Navy, EPA to Clean Unexploded Ordinance Off Adak Island

Colored Plastics Guide Plant Growth

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-14-09.html

12/15/01
12:32:05 PM

It's Time To Speak Up

by Helen Thomas

WASHINGTON - 12.14.01 | If there ever was a time when Americans should speak up on behalf of people in this country whose rights are being abridged, that time is now.

I remember with tremendous sadness the statement of Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister in Berlin, after World War II as a warning of what can happen when people do not come to the defense of others whose civil liberties have been taken away.

Niemoller said, "In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and by that time, no one was left to speak up."

Niemoller had founded the Pastors Emergency League to Resist Hitlerism and had been confined to Nazi concentration camps for eight years before his release in 1945.

Happily, we do not have that kind of environment in the current terrorist crisis. But there is always the possibility that we could create an atmosphere where dissent and freedom of speech are not tolerated on grounds of national security.

We all know America is admired by people around the world because of its freedoms, especially those under the Bill of Rights, which protects citizens and even non-citizens. We are a nation that has been governed by laws that have endured for more than 200 years. If we lose our title of "land of the free," what have we got?

Under his authority as commander-in-chief, President Bush seems to have given his Cabinet carte blanche in pursuing suspects, detaining immigrants secretly and establishing military tribunals that could impose the death penalty by a two-thirds vote of the jury without judicial review.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, summoned last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was masterful in showing that the best defense is a good offense.

He bluntly attacked the panel's chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and other critics who had voiced concerns about lost liberties. "We need honest, reasoned debate, not fear-mongering," Ashcroft said. "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: 'Your tactics only aid terrorists -- for they erode national unity and diminish national resolve."'

Actually, the real erosion takes place when we allow the chipping away of the bulwark of the U.S. Constitution and our overall record on human rights, which have made us a beacon around the globe.

Where are the modern-day Patrick Henrys and Thomas Paines when we need them? Henry was the most celebrated orator of the American Revolution. Every schoolchild has learned his ringing call, "Give me liberty or give me death." And Paine is remembered for his pamphlets on behalf of political equality, tolerance, civil liberties and human dignity.

But Ashcroft argued that people who hope the kind of terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11 will not be repeated "were living in a dream world."

He held up a training manual for al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden's terror network, and said it showed that "terrorists are taught how to use America's freedoms as a weapon against us."

With strong support in the public opinion polls, the administration obviously feels it is free to proceed in curbing civil liberties.

In their questioning of Ashcroft many of the senators, except for Leahy and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., rolled over. After all, who wants to be called unpatriotic in these times?

Where are the profiles in courage? There are not many on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers seem to be giving up their own rights to set rules on the treatment of immigrants and others in this country who are detained or sought by the government for questioning.

To Bush, Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, I would ask this: Please remember the quote of Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 1950s who said, "Democracy is great not just because the majority prevails but because it is safe to be in the minority."

The attorney general, accusing the critics of exaggerating or misstating the dangers of the government's new curbs on civil rights, insisted that the Justice Department "has sought to prevent terrorism with reason, careful balance and excruciating attention to detail."

Of course, Americans are willing to defer some of the freedoms they once had for valid security reasons. No one can dispute the need for strict enforcement of the rules at airports and in vulnerable public buildings. Arrests of foreign-born residents accused of violating immigration laws or of having knowledge of terrorists or their plans are certainly legal. But those detained should also be given due process rights and equal protection of the laws. And the long detentions of innocent persons based on little or no evidence should be stopped.

Ashcroft plans to offer immigrants help in obtaining citizenship if they snitch on their friends or acquaintances as dangers to the Republic. But such an official policy would undermine our nation's reputation for probity and decency.

What we need now are more leaders who are students of civics, democracy and especially the Constitution. For to become great Americans, we must know why the founders of our country were so outstanding.

Source: http://www.truthout.com/12.15E.Thomas.Speak.Up.htm

12/15/01
12:24:22 PM

Bush Makes Justice Papers Secret

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Since taking office, President Bush has sent a clear message to Congress: Some sensitive information Capitol Hill lawmakers have been used to getting will be off limits.

Bush sent the most powerful part of the message Thursday when he invoked executive privilege to protect the confidentiality of prosecutorial documents Congress has often received in the past.

Kept out of lawmakers' hands are documents pertaining to the FBI's handling of mob informants in Boston in the 1960s and the Clinton-era fund-raising probe of the 1990s.

"This is the beginning of a real constitutional confrontation," said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass. "I think they ran into the wrong chairman, the wrong committee and maybe the wrong Congress."

The House Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., had subpoenaed the Boston material.

"I think it's just a power grab" and "a clever maneuver politically," Catholic University political science professor Mark Rozell said of the president rebuffing congressional demands.

After a prolonged battle, Attorney General Janet Reno turned over much material to the Republican-led Congress from the fund-raising investigation of the Clinton campaign of 1996.

The Bush White House's strategy is "to make a sharp turn to get them back" to where the Republicans think the privilege should properly be, said St. John's University law professor John Barrett.

Rozell said it is disturbing that the White House takes the position that a dispute involving a prosecutorial matter is automatically resolved in the executive's favor.

The Justice Department almost always withholds materials from Congress in ongoing investigations, but in closed probes the need for secrecy is greatly reduced.

Withholding information from Congress has become a White House habit.

The president didn't bother to consult the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman before disclosing his plan for military tribunals. Since last spring, Vice President Dick Cheney has been refusing to disclose his secret energy meetings with power industry executives and lobbyists.

Senate Judiciary Committee member Charles Grassley questions Bush's position that access to the Justice Department documents would be contrary to the national interest.

"Anything that limits legitimate congressional oversight is very worrisome," Grassley said. "This move needs to be carefully scrutinized, particularly in an atmosphere where Congress is giving the Justice Department additional powers and authority."

At a hearing before Burton's committee, Justice Department criminal division chief of staff Michael Horowitz argued keeping deliberative documents away from Congress would "insulate career line prosecutors and their internal deliberations from political pressure."

"What you have said is extraordinarily insulting," responded Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.

"We all think this is stonewalling. It's a terrible, terrible precedent to set," Burton said. "We might be able to go to the (House) floor and take this thing to court."

The full House, controlled by Republicans, would have to vote to find Bush in contempt to start such a court battle.

"The point is if you have corruption in the Justice Department and you let an executive decision stand, you can't root out corruption," Burton said. "This is not a monarchy."

In the Boston case being examined by the committee, Joseph Salvati spent 30 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, even though the FBI had evidence of his innocence.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Reporter Melissa Robinson in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.truthout.com/12.15A.Bush.Secret.htm

12/15/01
12:18:46 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.15

BUSH Makes Justice Papers Secret

http://www.truthout.com/12.15A.Bush.Secret.htm

KERRY Threatens to Block Nominations

http://www.truthout.com/12.15B.Kerry.Judicial.htm

DASCHLE on Election Reform Agreement

http://www.truthout.com/12.15C.Daschle.Voting.htm

ASHCROFT Praises German Law Banning Terrorist Religions

http://www.truthout.com/12.15D.Ashcroft.German.htm

HELEN THOMAS | It's Time To Speak Up

http://www.truthout.com/12.15E.Thomas.Speak.Up.htm

12/15/01
12:00:19 PM

Attacking The First Admendment

When the War on Terrorism Turns on the Wrong Targets

by Joe Davidson

The government's current approach to the war against terrorism’s domestic front runs the risk of putting press freedom in harms way.

Using the Justice Department as central command and an attorney general who puts the emphasis on "general," President Bush has pursued a strategy that threatens civil liberties and the civil rights of non-citizens in particular.

Though direct White House assaults on journalists have been limited, there certainly is indication enough that the administration believes there can be too much freedom during wartime. Furthermore, Congress now is considering legislation that critics say would cripple a basic tool journalists and others use to discover information the government would not other wise disclose.

The Critical Infrastructure Information Security Act of 2001, introduced in September by GOP Senators Bob Bennett and Jon Kyl, would, among other things, protect certain information from the reach of the Freedom of Information Act. Using national security as a cover, Bennett and Kyl would allow companies to voluntarily submit information, on things from computer security to oil spills for example, to 13 designated government agencies.

"Doing so means that specific information shared with a federal agency for analysis, warning or ... study will not be disclosed in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)," says a Bennett statement.

Sponsors of the legislation say it would encourage companies to share critical data with the government, while keeping that information out of terrorists' hands. The Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, however, calls the bill "a corporate lobbyist’s dream for suppressing information about dangerous business practices for which a company should be held responsible." If the measure is attached to other legislation already up for consideration, there would be no Senate hearings on the FOIA impact.

While Congress contemplates enervating FOIA, other administration actions to restrict longstanding freedoms clearly inhibit journalists' ability to report. One example is the White House plan to try terrorism suspects in military tribunals, which would operate with much greater secrecy than regular courts.

Even without using the tribunals, the round up of at least 1,100 people since September 11 has been conducted with much more mystery than American standards generally tolerate. This severely restricts the media’s ability to fully convey the extent to which Constitutional protections might be in jeopardy.

Now, the government has decided to cover its tracks even more. No longer does Justice release the number of detainees, which allowed the press and the public to know the number being held. This affinity for secrecy works as a brake on press freedom even without a direct hit on the First Amendment.

The administration did attempt a direct hit when the State Department tried to stop the September broadcast of a Voice of America (VOA) interview with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. After a delay, the VOA wisely rebuffed State and scored a point for press freedom.

Actions like this by the State Department and others on the domestic front recently prompted an upstanding group of folks to form a blue ribbon panel to protect freedom of the press and our other civil liberties. The Constitution Project, part of the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, organized an Initiative on Liberty and Security.

Floyd Abrams, a first amendment lawyer who represents The New York Times and CNN, said he joined the Initiative more to protect against potential abuse than to protest administration actions so far. Nevertheless, Abrams found National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s telephone call to television networks executives, urging them to review and edit Osama bin Laden’s remarks before broadcasting them, too aggressive.

"If she simply asked them to be thoughtful about it during a speech, it would have been far less troubling than in effect calling them on the carpet and pushing pretty hard," he said in an interview.

Abrams also fears misuse of the espionage act. Under it, he explained, revealing "information relating to the national defense" for the purpose of aiding a U.S. adversary or hurting the American cause is a crime. "That is very loose language," Abrams complained. While the courts have interpreted the act narrowly, "it sits there as a potential source of abuse," he warned. The loose language, he added, "provides an angry government with a dangerous weapon."

A paper released by the Constitution Project noted times the government has used its weapons to stifle descent, starting from the very beginning of the Republic. The Alien and Sedition Act of 1796 made it a federal crime to falsely criticize the government or government officials. "Numerous individuals were sentenced to prison for speech that was mild and ineffectual," according to the Project.

During World War I, Congress made criticizing the war effort, and the draft in particular, a federal crime. Eugene Debs, the famous socialist, called draftees "cannon fodder" and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. "The Supreme Court upheld both of these convictions and sentences, even though there was not the slightest evidence that they had any effect on the war effort," says the Constitution Project’s survey of wartime laws.

And during the Cold War, the survey noted, some people were convicted under the Smith Act for conspiring to advocate the government’s overthrow because they studied Marx and Lenin.

This history and the far-reaching investigative techniques since September 11 create a scary picture. But the picture will only get worse if those who benefit from constitutional freedoms -- including freedom of the press -- do nothing when they are diminished.

Joe Davidson is a commentator for NPR's "Morning Edition," and writes for the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times.

Source: http://tompaine.com/features/2001/12/13/index.html

12/15/01
11:34:43 AM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

LEADING THE DEMOCRATIC CORPSE

Looking For Signs of Life on the Left

These days it's getting near impossible to tell a Democrat from a Republican, at least without taking a pulse. Republicans have one.

http://tompaine.com/opinion/2001/12/13/1.html

ATTACKING THE FIRST AMENDMENT

When the War on Terrorism Turns on the Wrong Targets

by Joe Davidson

The Bush administration, the Justice Department and the Attorney General are pushing scary new legislation through Congress to fight the "war on terrorism." In these cases, though, the collateral damage will be our rights.

http://tompaine.com/features/2001/12/13/index.html

NO RETURN TO EXECUTION

The U.S. Death Penalty as a Barrier to Extradition

by Amnesty International

A clear majority of countries have decided justice is not to be found at the hands of state executioners. The United States' growing isolation on this fundamental issue has significant consequences for its foreign relations.

http://tompaine.com/features/2001/12/07/1.html

SCRIPTING BIN LADEN'S LAST ACT

Closing the Curtains on the Pentagon's Propaganda Play

by Richard Blow

Media organizations, knowingly or not, have helped the Pentagon prep the public for the desired climax of the Afghanistan campaign: an unheroic death for Osama bin Laden.

http://tompaine.com/news/2001/12/12/index.html

VICTORY ABROAD THROUGH GLUTTONY AT HOME

by Jane Holtz Kay

It's time to turn SUV headlights on the danger of pursuing "victory" abroad through gluttony at home. This year, we'll inscribe Kerouac's question on our holiday cards: "Whither thou goest, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"

http://tompaine.com/opinion/2001/12/11/index.html

MR. ARAFAT, YOU'RE NO BEN-GURION

by M. W. Guzy

"Ben-Gurion died widely regarded as a visionary statesman, a stature history is unlikely to confer on political-opportunist Arafat. Yet, both men have benefited at the negotiating table from terrorism they supposedly deplored."

http://tompaine.com/history/2001/12/11/index.html

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Our Readers React: Another One Bites the Dust ... A Little More Outrage Please ... Letting It All Slip Away ... Forgetting History ... more.

http://tompaine.com/opinion/2001/12/13/index.html

12/15/01
11:29:56 AM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE <http://www.gristmagazine.com>

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Leading experts take on Bjorn Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," in a special edition of Grist: <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/lomborg121201.asp?source=daily>

I'M MISTER HEAT MISER

The Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances is the poster child for international environmental agreements; thanks to its success, chlorofluorocarbons (and, we hope, the ozone hole) are on their way to oblivion. But is there a dark side to this happy tale? HCFCs and HFCs, the chemicals replacing CFCs, are powerful greenhouse gases -- in some cases, 1,300 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the planet. Yet non-ozone depleting, non-greenhouse gas alternatives are readily available for the same applications. What gives? Reporting from an annual Montreal Protocol meeting in -- where else? -- Montreal, Grist correspondent Jason Anderson takes on the fragmentation of environmental issues, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: The hole in the ozone layer policy -- are higher temperatures the price of saving the ozone layer? -- by Jason Anderson <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/anderson121401.asp?source=daily>

OIL IN YOUR STOCKING

This holiday season, be sure to take a little time to think about ... oil. Yep, oil. The stuff that helps define U.S. foreign policy and could be conveniently pumped through Afghanistan given a friendly government. Also the stuff that powers your trip to grandmother's house and fills the tanks of the trucks and ships and airplanes that bring a Harry Potter action figure to every Toys "R" Us in the world. And, oh yeah, the stuff that releases greenhouse gases when burned. Don't want to be a part of that? Taking the holiday season as a starting point, Grist columnist Elizabeth Sawin pulls on the thread connecting her to the big tangled mess of oil dependency, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: Deck the halls with CFLs -- an oil-free holiday season -- in our Global Citizen section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/citizen/citizen121401.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action to change a habit <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#tips>

BUY, BUY, MISS AMERICAN PIE

Uncle Sam wants you to go to the mall! With the White House, Congress, and the media flacking for the financial sector in the name of patriotism, surely the least you can do for your country this holiday season is max out your credit card. David Helvarg takes on the war economy and the new urgency behind the "shop till you drop" ethic, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: Everything's changed, including zero-down financing -- by David Helvarg <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/helvarg121401.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action to boycott Discover Card <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/rivers.asp?source=daily#discover>

I WANT YOU ... TO BUY MORE STUFF!

World War I was fought to make the world safe for democracy; World War II for ourselves and our allies. Is this new war being fought largely to make the world safer for consumption? Jane Holtz Kay compares the "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" ethic that governed the WWII home front with the consume-for-your-country campaign currently underway, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: Gluttony at home is not necessary for victory abroad -- by Jane Holtz Kay <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/kay121401.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action on waste issues <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/waste.asp?source=daily#junkmail>

STEAL THESE BOOKS

Consumption and land conservation are the subjects of two very different books reviewed this week in Grist. "Affluenza," by John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas Naylor, takes a look at materialism run amok, while "Red" by Terry Tempest Williams argues that the minimalism and grandeur of the red rock wilderness provide a critical escape from the corrosive forces of capitalism. Reviewer Elizabeth Grossman looks at our desire for the good life and our need for wild places, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: A review of "Affluenza" and "Red" -- in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/grossman121401.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action and crush capitalism with your pen <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/consumption.asp?source=dail y#capitalism>

I GOT YER HOLIDAY CHEER RIGHT HERE, BUDDY

Species going extinct. Warming temperatures. Environmental skeptics on the rise. An all-oil team in the White House. Yep, we at Grist sure do have fun writing about the despoiling of Mama Earth. But even Grist staffers need to take time out once in a while. We'll be on vacation for the last two weeks of the year 2001. We know you'll miss your daily fix of green news, but fret not -- we'll be back at work on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2002, in better humor than ever. Thanks for all your support this past year!

Happy holidays: <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha121201.asp?source=daily> <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha121500.stm?source=daily> <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha122099.stm?source=daily>

12/14/01
5:30:16 PM

http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=99633&group=webcast

"Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S."

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, NY Times

The high quality, the adviser said, lends credence to the idea that someone with links to military laboratories or their contractors might be behind the attacks. "It's frightening to think that one of our own scientists could have done something like this," he said. "But it's definitely possible."

From: http://sf.indymedia.org/2001/12/111201.php

Irradiation of US mail is in the pipeline (December 3 2001)

In order to create a system that would allow the mailing of items like seeds, film, drugs, food, etc., a complex series of loopholes would have to be created, which could then be used to circumvent this expensive (and dangerous) "Anthrax Defense System".

Public Citizen and the Center for Food Safety have released a report on dangerous changes in food (the formation of unique radiolytic compounds) caused by the lower levels of irradiation" [now in use on foods in the US]

Question: If one of our own agents or scientists is suspected of perpetrating the Anthrax scare, why are we proposing to spend billions of more dollars on a faulty remedy?

Government eyes its own for anthrax

The FBI investigates federal laboratories and contractors as possible sources for the pathogen used in the attacks.

NEW YORK TIMES

The FBI has expanded its investigation of the anthrax attacks to include the laboratories of the government and its contractors as a possible source of anthrax that has infected and killed five people, say scientists and law enforcement officials.

While theories about the culprit have focused mainly on domestic loners and foreign states or terrorists, law enforcement officials are now examining the possibility that the criminal may be a knowledgeable insider.

Asked if the FBI was investigating U.S. military and nonmilitary laboratories that held the anthrax strain used in the attacks and individuals associated with such centers, a law enforcement official replied, "Certainly."

Separately, a private expert in biological weapons, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, has recently published a paper contending that a government insider, or someone in contact with an insider, is behind the lethal attacks.

Though not an expert on criminal profiling, Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York, has testified on biological weapons before Congress, advised Bill Clinton when he was president and addressed international arms control meetings, including one a few days ago in Geneva.

Law enforcement officials said Rosenberg's assertion might turn out to be well founded, though they emphasized that the investigation was still broad-based.

One official close to the federal investigation called the Rosenberg theory "the most likely hypothesis." Referring to her paper, the official said, "I might not have put it so strongly, but it's definitely reasonable."

Other analysts, including some scientists and experts in germ weapons, expressed more skepticism that it was an insider, contending that the skills and knowledge needed to produce the type of anthrax in this attack were widely available.

The paper laying out Rosenberg's thesis was distributed on Thursday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an arms control group.

Rosenberg, who conducts research at State University of New York and is chairwoman of an arms control panel at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, D.C., has argued repeatedly that states, not individuals, have the wherewithal to make advanced biological weapons.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/attack/stories/xanthfbi_20011202.htm

---

US Expert Believed Behind Anthrax Attacks

GERMANY: November 29, 2001

BERLIN - The anthrax attacks in the United States were probably the work of a member of a U.S. biological warfare programme, the magazine of environment pressure group Greenpeace Germany reported yesterday.

The magazine said its article was based on information from a U.S. delegation source at the United Nations biological weapons conference in Geneva that began last week. The attacks have killed five people.

"The U.S. delegation believe it is an inside job... Their members also have more information than has been made public," Kirsten Brodde, a reporter for the magazine, told Reuters. The magazine said: "It seems the attacker...wanted to force through an increase in the budget for U.S. research on biological weapons." It speculated that the attacker, who used anthrax-laced mail, had probably wanted to cause panic rather than kill anyone.

U.S. investigators have still not determined who was behind the attacks, but Attorney General John Ashcroft has signalled the authorities were inclined to believe they had a domestic source. The attacks occurred in the aftermath of the September 11 suicide plane attacks on New York and Washington and prompted initial accusations by President George W. Bush that Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden may been responsible.

Asked about the magazine article, an FBI spokesman reiterated that investigators were pursuing a number of leads but no arrests appeared imminent. A spokesman for the U.S. delegation in Geneva said he did not have any information about the article. The magazine is linked to the environmental lobby group and shares its offices, but it said it was financially and editorially independent.

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

SEE ALSO

Pentagon Denials and Civilian Death in Afghanistan

http://AlterNet.org/story.html?StoryID=12044

BUSH Abandons ABM | Congress : "This is Not a Monarchy"

http://www.truthout.com/12.14B.ABM.Out.htm

12/14/01
5:09:56 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

http://www.utne.com/webwatch

MAKING A MEMRI

by Tim Cavanaugh, Online Journalism Review

-- Heard the one about the Palestinian doctor's celebration of anthrax or the Saudi Arabian debate about ridding the world of Christians and Jews? It's all part of the Middle East Media Research Institute's (MEMRI) determined campaign to stir up animosity toward the Muslim world. And according to Tim Cavanaugh in the Online Journalism Review, there are few news services more valuable to Americans at the moment.

THE POWER OF SONG IN THE PROTECTION OF NATIVE LANDS

by Melissa Nelson and Philip M. Klasky, Orion Afield

-- Chronicling the songs and stories of American Indians' ties to native lands is the first step in preserving habitat, says one group trying to record a tribe's oral history.

CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE LAW AND POLICY

Web site review by Kate Garsombke

-- The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, a nonprofit organization aiming for equality of women through reproductive rights, spolights the struggle for women's human rights on their Web site.

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

12/14/01
5:07:31 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

COALITION CALLS FOR REFORMS IN HYDROPOWER LICENSING

WASHINGTON, DC, December 13, 2001 (ENS) - An antiquated process for relicensing hydropower dams on U.S. rivers is delaying dam reforms that could improve the health of these rivers and the species which depend upon them, argues a new report by the Hydropower Reform Coalition. The report echoes comments made this week by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency responsible for licensing the nation's hundreds of dams.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-13-06.html

BERING SEA POACHING BY RUSSIAN MAFIA UNCOVERED

WASHINGTON, DC, December 12, 2001 (ENS) - The World Wildlife Fund today issued the findings of a year long investigative study by TRAFFIC, its wildlife trade monitoring network, that accuses "the Russian mafia" of illegal fishing in the western Bering Sea.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-13-02.html

BLAZE DESTROYS NORWEGIAN WHALE MEAT FACTORY

LOS ANGELES, California, December 13, 2001 (ENS) - The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is denying that anyone from the organization is involved in a fire that swept through a Norwegian whale meat processing plant Tuesday night and another fire that sank a Norwegian whaling ship last week in the Lofoten Islands.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-13-03.html

2002 DECLARED YEAR OF THE MOUNTAIN

NEW YORK, New York, December 13, 2001 (ENS) - War and other conflicts, and the poverty of mountain peoples, are leading to the decimation of mountain ecosystems and the species which depend upon them, the United Nations said Tuesday. Mountain forests are vanishing across the globe, prompting the organization to designate 2002 as the International Year of Mountains.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-13-07.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: DECEMBER 13, 2001

Farm Subsidies Pay for Handful of States

Anti-Terrorism Assessments Crafted for Power Plants

Fish Poachers Nabbed by Satellite Data

Climate Change Could Boost Cotton Yields

Carbon Capture Could Benefit Air, Oceans

Loud Noises Could Give Whales the Bends

Four Wolves Shot in Wisconsin

Giant Umbrellas Will Not Solve Global Warming

FARM SUBSIDIES PAY FOR HANDFUL OF STATES

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-13-09.html

12/14/01
5:03:15 PM

AlterNet Headlines Brief summaries of leading stories from AlterNet -- the independent news and syndication service -- for December 14, 2001. http://www.alternet.org

COLLATERAL DAMAGE MADE REAL Deborah James, AlterNet A visit to refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan indicates what the future holds for post-war Afghanistan. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12077

PREDICTING 9-11 Chris Wright, Boston Phoenix Osama bin Laden's terrorists surprised America on September 11, but apparently more than one astrologer saw it coming. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12082

LABOR FIGHTS TERRORISM AND BUSH SIMULTANEOUSLY Marc Cooper, AlterNet Some 650 unionized workers died in the Sept. 11 attacks, and the ensuing recession has made hundreds of thousands jobless. On top of that, says the AFL-CIO's leader, Bush is waging a "war on workers." http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12080

NIGGERS, OLD & NEW Keith Owens, Detroit Metro Times Do black folks feel more relieved and less under the gun after the Sept. 11 tragedy because now the pressure is off them and on the Arabs? http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12081

THE FEMININE MISTAKE Erin Aubry Kaplan, LA Weekly Are whites making more progress in the gender wars than blacks? Is dressing skimpily in public an admirable goal? The hard questions of post-post-feminism catch up with one young writer. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12074

THE TABLOID ENVIRONMENTALIST Colin Woodard, TomPaine.com Taken in by claims in Bjorn Lomborg's new book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," that the earth's health is improving and pesky environmentalists are just using bad science to scare us, the supposedly skeptical big media got duped -- big time. *In EnviroHealth: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=18

GOLDEN STATE TERRORISTS Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com If President Bush is steadfast in his belief that "if they [countries] fund a terrorist, they're a terrorist. If they house terrorists, they're terrorists," look out California! http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12073

EIGHT WEEKS IN JAIL: LIFE ON ASHCROFT'S ENEMIES LIST Carole Bass, New Haven Advocate The Justice Department has detained more than 1,100 people in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, most because of their national origin. Finally, some of their stories are starting to emerge. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12062

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF RACIAL PROFILING Nicole Davis, ColorLines Anti-racial profiling activists have to develop new strategies to challenge the current war rhetoric, which gives law enforcement license to target people of color. *In HumanRights USA: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=22

TECHSPLOITATION: SEX STUDIES AT MIT Annalee Newitz, AlterNet The world-renowned MIT Media Lab has just unveiled its latest project, the Erotic Computation Group, studying everything from digital erotica to sex robots. Well, at least, they would like to... http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12064

HOW DOES POT WORK? Mark D Fefer, Seattle Weekly All you know is that it gets you high. Ever wonder what's really going on in your brain when you take a hit? *In DrugReporter: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=17

MAD DOG: I'M BEGINNING TO SHOP A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS Mad Dog, AlterNet Christmas is going to be different this year. It won't just be that the outside of every house will be decorated in red, white, and blue bulbs. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12066

12/14/01
5:01:23 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.14

BUSH Invokes Executive Privilege to Deny Subpoena

http://www.truthout.com/12.14A.Exec.Priv.htm

BUSH Abandons ABM | Congress : "This is Not a Monarchy"

http://www.truthout.com/12.14B.ABM.Out.htm

PUTIN | U.S. ABM Withdrawal a 'Mistake'

http://www.truthout.com/12.14C.Putin.ABM.htm

DASCHLE | Briefing ABM: "Undermines Fragile Coalition"

http://www.truthout.com/12.14D.Daschle.ABM.htm

LEVIN-GEPHARDT on ABM | Question "Provocative Unilateral Steps"

http://www.truthout.com/12.14E.Levin.Gephardt.htm

REPORT | Jerusalem Explosion May Have Been an Attempt on Life of US General Zinni

http://www.truthout.com/12.14F.Zinni.Bomb.htm

12/14/01
4:59:28 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Bush decision on ABM advances Republican dream - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13718/story.htm

Moon power "could plug energy gap" - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13720/story.htm

Governor seeks more oversight of Alaska oil wells - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13721/story.htm

Scientists see threat of abrupt world climate change - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13722/story.htm

UPDATE - Brit Energy, Amec to build 600 mln stg UK wind farm - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13713/story.htm

Leaked report calls for nuclear-free power - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13713/story.htm

Spain's Gamesa takes over rest of wind power unit - SPAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13715/story.htm

UPDATE - EU court says French ban on British beef is illegal - LUXEMBOURG http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13719/story.htm

Hydrogen burst may have occurred at Japan reactor - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13714/story.htm

Japan's maverick PM praises reformist car - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13716/story.htm

12/14/01
4:57:53 PM

Flowers

A new business was opening and one of the owner's friends wanted to send flowers for the occasion. They arrived at the new business site and the owner read the card. It said, "Rest in Peace." The owner got angry and called the florist to complain. He let the florist know in no uncertain terms how angry he was about the obvious mistake.

The florist wisely diffused the man's anger when she calmly said, "Sir, I'm really sorry for the mistake, but just imagine this ... somewhere there is a funeral taking place today, and they have flowers with a note saying, "Congratulations on your new location!"

12/14/01
4:51:58 PM

The Tabloid Environmentalist

How A Pseudo-Scientist Duped The Big Media -- Big Time

by Colin Woodard

Bjorn Lomborg's new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, brings us glorious news. The world's environment is getting better, not worse. Contrary to what the experts have been telling you, forests are spreading, air and water pollution are improving, global warming will have mild effects, and there won't be any food shortages as the world's population grows. And there's no need to worry about the ozone hole, species extinction, or acid rain; all those pesky environmentalists have just been exaggerating to try to scare you.

If this sounds too good to be true, that's because it is.

The Skeptical Environmentalist presents itself as a work of impartial scholarship, an attempt to test the validity of various environmental concerns through a careful analysis of the evidence. In fact, it's a polemic, an intellectually dishonest tract filled with glaring omissions, appalling errors of fact and analysis, and inaccurate characterizations of contrary arguments. There are some valid points as well -- Greenpeace and other advocacy groups have distorted scientific information for their own ends -- but Lomborg must be read with a very skeptical eye.

Unfortunately, the media reaction has been surprisingly un-skeptical. The book has become a runaway hit on both sides of the Atlantic following a wave of credulous features, book reviews, and Lomborg guest essays published in many of the English-speaking world's most respected newspapers and magazines.

Before the book was even available in the Britain, newspapers were signing its praises. The London Observer's environment correspondent, Anthony Browne, announced it had "demolished almost every ... environmental claim with a barrage of official statistics. "The London Times science correspondent reported Lomborg's global warming claims in a story without other sources. The Economist gave a glowing review and invited Lomborg to write a 2,500 word essay, while the more liberal Guardian published a three-part series. Time International opined that "Of all the sacred cows, only global warming remains unslain" by Lomborg.

The coverage quickly generated a maelstrom of criticism from leading scientists --including Lomborg's own colleagues at the University of Aarhus. Many of his claims were publicly discredited, but you'd never know that from reading the subsequent coverage in this country. The New York Times carried a sympathetic 2,000 word feature on the book, calling it "a substantial work of analysis." The Washington Post Book World was gushing in its praise, calling it "a magnificent achievement" and "the most significant work on the environment since ... Silent Spring." The Post reviewer, Dennis Dutton, a philosopher in New Zealand who lectures on "the dangers of pseudoscience" even decreed that the book "is now the place from which environmental policy decisions must be argued."

How did the supposedly skeptical media get so taken in? Weren't there clues that should have cast suspicion on Lomborg's motives and analysis? Well, yes and no.

At first glance, Lomborg looks credible. Unlike past anti-green polemicists, Lomborg is a tenured professor at the environmental studies institute of a prestigious university. He's a self-declared "environmentalist ... former Greenpeace member [and] left-wing sympathizer" who doesn't eat meat because he doesn't want to kill animals.

Lomborg isn't an environmental scientist and has never published a scientific paper on climate change, ecology, atmospheric pollution, or any other topic he takes on in his book.

More importantly, his book is published by Cambridge University Press, an academic publisher that supposedly peer reviews manuscripts prior to publication.

"He's a tenured professor at a major university published by an important press," says Bruce Lewenstein, who teaches science communications at Cornell University, after looking over Lomborg's bio. "If someone with some credentials is questioning the conventional wisdom, that's a story."

It may be a story, but it's one that smells fishy from the very first sniff.

Lomborg isn't an environmental scientist and has never published a scientific paper on climate change, ecology, atmospheric pollution, or any other topic he takes on in his book. That's because he's not even a natural scientist, but rather a political scientist with a background in statistics and game theory.

"Here's one guy taking on a whole spectrum of issues who has never written a paper on any of them and is in opposition to absolutely everyone in the field, Nobel prize-winners and all," says Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Columbia University who says virtually all of Lomborg's facts on biodiversity are simply wrong. "It ought to have raised some red flags." Political reporters often follow the money; science reporters should follow the data. Those that did discovered that many of the book's 2,500 footnotes led not to hard data, but to newspaper stories, Web pages, and magazine interviews with rival scientists. Some stunning assertions -- that "our oceans have not become defiled" for instance -- aren't substantiated by any research at all.

"He asserts with no analysis that only the mildest [climate change] impacts will happen and that the dangerous ones won't happen," says Stanford University's Stephen H. Schneider, lead author of several chapters of the International Panel on Climate Change's reports. "That the media sucked it up is really incredible."

"Journalists feel they need to give equal emphasis to a single skeptic on one side and, say, the scientific consensus of several thousand of the world's scientists on the other."

Part of the problem is the media's propensity to treat scientific disagreements as they might a political one: quote both sides and let the reader decide on their own. But, as most science writers know, such an approach is entirely inadequate for reporting on science and technology issues. It's important to report on bold, unorthodox theories, because some hold true and lead to new discoveries. But the science journalist has a duty to place them in their proper context: the shared, established opinion of dozens or hundreds of experts in the field does in fact carry more weight than that of a single dissenter.

"Journalists feel they need to give equal emphasis to a single skeptic on one side and, say, the scientific consensus of several thousand of the world's scientists on the other," as in the debate over climate change, says Lisa Sorensen, staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "This leads readers and viewers to think these opinions have equal weight when, in fact, they do not."

Not everyone sees it this way. Anthony Browne, whose articles in the London Observer first brought attention to the English-language edition of The Skeptical Environmentalist, says most environmental journalists spend most of their time "acting as publicists to those who have a vested interest in scaring people about the state of the environment." He said that when somebody like himself airs the views of skeptics, "those who believe with a passion that we are all doomed heap anger and contempt on them." Browne says journalists shouldn't test "the validity of certain bits of science," but simply judge if someone appears credible and give them an airing to foster debate.

The editor in chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott, stands behind Lomborg's book and denies that it has been given a free ride by the media. "The real problem for the critics is that as far as we can see his data is incontrovertible. That is awkward for those who have made claims in the past that the data flatly contradicts," Emmott says. He said that in all the debate, he had yet to see a critic establish that the book contains "egregious" errors. "He has wiped the floor with his opponents, which is probably why he has created such ire." Grist Magazine has compiled a series of articles from leading scholars that illustrate how wrong Lomborg and Emmott are.

Several scientists interviewed for this article were dumbfounded that with all the scientific and environmental expertise available in the United States, the Washington Post's book review assigned the book to a philosophy professor in New Zealand with no more expertise to assess the arguments than the Post's own science reporters. The reviewer, Dennis Dutton, was chosen because of his "neutrality, remove, record ... and his interest in the environment," according to the paper's Book World editor, Marie Arana. She said that assigning the book had been the subject of an unusually wide-ranging debate, which resulted in a decision not to assign the book within the newsroom.

Dutton, whose popular Arts and Letters Web site includes a paean to the late environmental skeptic Julian Simon in its list of classic articles, declined to comment for this article. "It is the accuracy or inaccuracy of the book that is at issue, as far as I am concerned," he wrote by e-mail. "If you think the book is factually wrong, and if reviewers have been misled, I'd be keen to learn how."

But many of Lomborg's most troubling deceptions don't require scientific training to detect, and should have been obvious to any editor with even a passing interest in the environmental debate. Much of the book is deliberately misleading. Lomborg devotes entire chapters to "revealing" that we are not running out of oil or metals, although virtually nobody in the environmental movement has claimed otherwise in the past twenty years. He also marshals statistics to prove that human life expectancy and the global Gross Domestic Product have improved over the past two centuries and that the green revolution increased agricultural production, as if anyone is arguing the contrary. Lomborg shows the Kyoto agreement will have only a slight impact on global warming, apparently unaware that the treaty is indeed conceived as a "down payment" on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Much of the media -- conservative and liberal alike -- were duped by the imprimatur of Cambridge University Press, whose reputation has been damaged by the publication of Lomborg's book.

Conservatives love Lomborg's message because it suggests that the status quo is pretty good. The Cooler Heads Coalition -- a group spearheaded by the Competitive Enterprise Institute which seeks to "dispel the myths of global warming" -- helped kick-off The Skeptical Environmentalist's U.S. release by sponsoring Lomborg's very own Capitol Hill briefing on October 4th. Not surprisingly, conservative columnists have heaped praise on the book. Katherine Kersten, senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, told her Minneapolis Star-Tribune readers not to be taken in by "environmental fearmongering" and that "celebration, not despair, is in order." Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune questioned how environmentalists have "resisted the impulse to carry Lomborg off on their shoulders, wildly celebrating all the achievements of our era." The reason: environmentalists take "a solemn vow of melancholy."

Asked about how he assessed Lomborg's work, Chapman said that he didn't pretend to be a scientist and might change his opinion of the book if it were shown to be fraudulent. "All a layman like myself can do is try to learn about a subject by listening to what scientists on either side say and make a judgment of who is right," he said. "We do the same thing with non-scientists like economists and military people, whose knowledge is far deeper than our own."

Much of the media -- conservative and liberal alike -- were duped by the imprimatur of Cambridge University Press, whose reputation has been damaged by the publication of Lomborg's book. "Despite the sales that have been generated, CUP's credibility and reputation will suffer," says Jane Lubchenco, distinguished professor of zoology at Oregon State University and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Many of us have inquired of our Cambridge contacts how they could have published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review."

The book was acquired by CUP's social science group, rather than its natural science division. Editor Chris Harrison declined to comment on rumors that natural science editors had been kept in the dark about the book until a very late date. He said by e-mail that he had been very skeptical about the book when it first landed on his desk, and was surprised when all four of the scientific "referees" who reviewed the English manuscript recommended it for publication. He said referees always remain anonymous, but that all four were "senior figures … from leading departments on both sides of the Atlantic" and included two from "environmental science departments, one from climate science, and one from a social science department."

Harrison said he had no regrets about publishing the book and that Cambridge University Press prided itself on publishing a variety of voices. "The book has been noticed and debated and that is surely a valuable contribution to public and academic debate in an open society," he said, adding that he himself was a "green tinted liberal" and not part of some conservative agenda.

Others dispute that The Skeptical Environmentalist's contribution will be positive.

"This book is going to be misused terribly by interests opposed to a clean energy policy," says Ms. Sorensen of Union of Concerned Scientists, whose organization is publishing a series of scientific critiques of Lomborg's science. "Hopefully that will help counter the claims and minimize the damage that could be done by a book like this."

Earth Day Network's Grist Magazine.com commissioned a series of reviews by prominent scientists from the fields that Lomborg tackled in his book.

For details, http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/11/1.html

Colin Woodard is the author of Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas. He currently lives in Port Isabel, Texas.

Source: http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/12/07/index.html

12/14/01
4:45:45 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE <http://www.gristmagazine.com>

WATER, AT YOUR SURFACE

A water shortage in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, has grown so severe that authorities have called in the army to distribute drinking water to the city's residents. The shortage is fueled by 6 percent annual population growth, mushrooming housing complexes, and severe pollution of the nearby Buriganga River. Riverside industries dump hundreds of tons of waste and toxic chemicals directly into the water, making it unsuitable for human use -- but as the city's clean water supply runs short, some people have no choice but to drink from the river. Groundwater levels have been falling by six feet per year, largely because of pumping from deep wells for irrigation and other purposes. A surface water treatment plant scheduled to open next June could help matters, but it will only have a daily capacity of 59 million gallons of water, compared to the 420 million gallons needed each day by residents.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 13 Dec 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13708/story.htm>

SUDDENLY SIZZLIN'

Global warming is typically thought of as a gradual process, but a report released this week by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warns that greenhouse gases and other atmospheric pollutants could cause massive, sudden, and potentially disastrous climate shifts. The authors of the report relied on paleontological evidence, the historical record, and computer modeling to demonstrate that in the past, gradual climate change was punctuated by sudden temperature increases. For example, the report concluded that roughly half of the warming that has taken place in the northern Atlantic Ocean since the last ice age occurred in just one decade, triggering floods and droughts across the globe.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 12 Dec 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28650-2001Dec11.html>

HUMMER BUMMER

Oy vey. From the department of mad consumerism, reckless fuel consumption, and paramilitary chic comes this latest gem: the Hummer H2, the latest sports utility monstrosity from General Motors. Built to resemble the Humvees rumbling through Kabul, the Hummer H2 gets about 13 miles per gallon and, at 8,600 pounds, weighs just enough to evade federal fuel efficiency standards. It's not cheap to own the beast -- fifty grand sticker price, plus all that fuel -- but nonetheless, GM expects to sell around 40,000 Hummers per year. Enviros are outraged, but hope the new vehicle will help spur the fight for fuel-efficiency standards for SUVs.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Michael Ellis, 13 Dec 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13701/story.htm>

PAINE ON THE ASS

If you read yesterday's special issue of Grist Magazine on Bjorn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist," you know that the experts largely disagree with Lomborg's thesis that environmental problems are just hyperbolic hooey. So why does the mainstream media love him? Writing for TomPaine.com, Colin Woodard casts a critical eye at the glowing reviews in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, and elsewhere.

straight to the source: TomPaine.com, Colin Woodard, 07 Dec 2001 <http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/12/07/index.html>

SOUND EFFECTS

The Pacific Northwest's Puget Sound is not a great place to be a marine animal, according to a report released this week by the group People for Puget Sound. The report assessed dozens of scientific studies on toxic chemicals in the sound and concluded that although the water is considerably cleaner than it was a few decades ago, marine animals from orcas to herring continue to be contaminated by PCBs, DDT, dioxins, mercury, lead, and other toxins. Every level of the marine food chain in the sound is affected. People for Puget Sound hopes the report will help persuade the Washington state legislature and Gov. Gary Locke (D) to fund a state effort to phase out the worst chemicals and eliminate discharges into state waterways.

straight to the source: Seattle Times, Craig Welch, 12 Dec 2001 <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134377232_pcborcas12m.html>

12/14/01
4:39:08 PM

Public Citizen

FDA Action on Red Cross Long Overdue

Statement of Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, Director, Public Citizen's Health Research Group

A year ago, Public Citizen requested the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ask that the American Red Cross (ARC) be held in contempt of court because of longstanding, dangerous practices that are jeopardizing the safety of the U.S. blood supply. On Thursday, the FDA finally made that request.

While we are pleased the government took action, it is long overdue, and we urge the court to act swiftly. Records indicate that the Red Cross has not come into compliance with a 1993 consent decree or with U.S. laws and regulations concerning blood and blood products.

The importance of having a safe blood supply cannot be overstated. The American public relies heavily on the Red Cross blood supply, and patients should know that when they receive blood, it will not be tainted. Records indicate that the ARC has improperly released blood products containing cytomegalovirus, a virus that can cause blindness in newborns. Also, FDA inspectors found that blood donors had incorrect histories and that Red Cross staff failed to follow test kit instructions for HIV.

Although the FDA insists the blood supply is safe, these findings cause grave concern. If proper procedures are not followed, it is only a matter of time before someone is seriously harmed. That would be inexcusable, particularly given the fact that the government has known about the Red Cross' violations forwell over a decade. Even the ARC's former president, Dr. Bernadine Healy, said in an Aug. 14, 2000, meeting that she found the FDA's findings "alarming" and that the severity of the situation held the potential for "grave impact" to patients, court records show.

We strongly support the efforts to hold the Red Cross in contempt of the consent decree. Unfortunately, given the lengthy history of this case, the fines that would accompany a contempt of court citation appear to be the only way the Red Cross will respond.

NOTE: Public Citizen's December 2000 letter to the FDA can be found at:

http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=6750

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org

12/14/01
4:36:12 PM

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS--PART 2

by Peter Montague

Here we continue summarizing the main points from the 327-page report titled OECD ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK[1] from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which describes current environmental trends in the OECD's 30 member nations.[2] (See Rachel's #737.)

The OECD report forecasts environmental trends to the year 2020, using a traffic signal to highlight major conclusions: green lights where it's OK to "proceed with caution," yellow lights for important issues that are still shrouded in uncertainty and red lights for problems that require "urgent action" because they are likely to "significantly worsen" by 2020. (pg. 279) Notice that even the "green light" issues warrant only a "proceed with caution" advisory from the OECD.

Here we continue listing the most important "red light" problems that the OECD has identified:

** Energy: Total energy use will increase 35% in OECD regions by 2020, and 51% elsewhere in the world. Oil will remain the OECD's energy mainstay, and the share of oil supplied by OPEC countries[3] will increase from 54% today to 74% by 2020. Only 6% of energy will come from renewable sources (such as solar power) by 2020, says the OECD, and even this "will depend upon financial incentives from government." (pg. 148)

The OECD report does not say so, but any such financial incentives would be subject to challenge under World Trade Organization rules as illegal restraints of free trade. The WTO does not allow governments to subsidize particular industries, such as solar energy, though of course military subsidies to keep the oil flowing from the Middle East are allowed. By 2020, the share of OECD energy supplied by nuclear power may decline slightly from its current 11%, the OECD says, because the technology lacks popular support everywhere. (pg. 148)

** Global warming: "Global warming is a reality," says the OECD report. (pg. 157) As the Earth warms, we should expect more extreme weather in some regions (floods, droughts, and perhaps more "catastrophic" events such as large hurricanes and typhoons). We should also expect the sea level to rise somewhere between 6 inches and 37 inches by the year 2100, inundating valuable and densely-populated coastal lands. (pg. 162) Serious human diseases carried by mosquitoes, such as dengue fever (also called "breakbone fever" because it is so painful) and malaria, are likely to increase in both the northern and southern hemispheres, says the OECD. (pg. 162) "The possible effects of climate change are a widely recognised future threat to human health," says the OECD. "Climate change might result in new infectious diseases, as well as changing patterns of known diseases, and loss of life due to extreme weather conditions." (pg. 252)

"Overall studies show that some of the most adverse impacts [of global warming] are bound to occur in the Southern Hemisphere where countries are most vulnerable and least likely to easily adapt to climate change," says the OECD. (pg. 162)

Humans are contributing to global warming by releasing "greenhouse gases" -- mainly carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Of these, CO2 is the largest. The OECD forecasts CO2 emissions rising 33% in OECD countries and 100% in the rest of the world by 2020. To meet the goals of the Kyoto agreement, intended to curb the damage from global warming, OECD countries will need to reduce their CO2 emissions by anywhere from 18% to 40% depending on what non-OECD countries do. (pg. 160) Given that the U.S. increased its CO2 emissions 11% between 1990 and 1998, even an 18% reduction by 2020 would require a Herculean political commitment to reverse "business as usual." (pg. 159)

** Chemicals: Although the chemical industry creates large quantities of hazardous waste, an even bigger problem is its products. The OECD says there are somewhere between one and two million chemical preparations on the market today, each a mixture of two or more individual chemicals that do not react with each other. Each of these preparations must be considered in light of workplace hazards, accidents involving hazardous materials, and harmful exposures of workers in other industries, consumers, the general public, and the natural environment, says the OECD. Unfortunately, there is "an immense knowledge gap about chemicals on the market," says the OECD: governments "lack adequate safety information about the great majority of chemicals." (pg. 223) The "unknown hazard" from chemicals is a "major concern," says the OECD. (pg. 226)

"Major concerns exist about the possible impact on the environment and human health of substances produced by the chemicals industry, which are found in virtually every man-made product," says the OECD. "Many are being detected in the environment, where particular problems can be caused by persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals. Concern is growing, for example, about chemicals which cause endocrine disruption and which persist in the environment," OECD says. (pg. 223) Endocrine disruption refers to industrial chemicals, released into the environment, that interfere with the hormones that control growth, development, and behavior in all birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, snails, lobsters, insects, and mammals, including humans.

Evidently the OECD does not have confidence that governments --or the chemical industry itself -- can control the chemical problem because the report explicitly says that vigilance by non-governmental organizations -- the environmental movement --will be "critical" to the success of efforts to assess the hazards of chemicals that are already on the market. (pg. 233) And of course assessing the hazards is only a first step --prelude to the much more contentious question of curbs, phase-outs, forced substitutions, or bans.

In sum, persistent toxic chemicals "are expected to continue being widespread in the environment over the next 20 years, causing serious effects on human health," the OECD says. (pg. 19)

** Human Health: "The loss of health due to environmental degradation is substantial" in OECD countries. (pg. 253) The "most urgent issues" are "air pollution and exposure to chemicals," the OECD says. The "greatest cause for concern" is the "threat of continuing widespread release of chemicals to the environment." (pg. 252) "This is not only a question of the amount of chemicals that end up in the environment, but more a question of their characteristics and effects. Unfortunately, the latter are often unknown, as the recent discovery of the endocrine disrupting effects of certain pesticide ingredients has shown," the OECD says. (pg. 252)

The OECD estimates that environmental degradation causes somewhere between 2% and 6% of all human disease in OECD countries and 8% to 13% in non-OECD countries. (pg. 250) In OECD countries this presently translates into health-care costs between $50 billion and $130 billion per year, the OECD says. (pg. 252)

The OECD report highlights two kinds of air pollution that can harm humans: ground-level ozone, and fine particles, both created by cars and trucks. Ground-level ozone -- a component of smog --exacerbates asthma, bronchitis, emphysema and other chest ailments, and diminishes lung capacity even in healthy children. Health standards for ozone are exceeded at 95% of monitoring sites in the U.S. and Japan and at 90% of sites in Europe, the OECD reports. (pg. 188)

Fine particles -- soot so small that you can't see it, except as a haze -- presently kill twice as many people as automobile accidents each year, the OECD says. (pg. 176) And particles produced by diesel engines cause lung cancer -- in the U.S. alone, an estimated 125,000 new cases each year, the OECD says.

Environment and health costs from transportation presently amount to 8% of GDP (gross domestic product) in Europe, not counting the costs of traffic congestion, the OECD says. (pg. 176) And motor vehicles will increase 32% in OECD countries by 2020, and 74% worldwide. (pg. 170) As we approach 2020, stricter emission controls will reduce urban air contaminants in many OECD countries, but much of the rest of the world will be driving older cars and trucks without benefit of modern controls.

Environmentalists, of course, would like to add many details to the OECD's sobering report. The most blatant omission is the biggest killer of all -- the workplace environment. As we have reported previously, work-related injuries and disease kill about 165 workers EACH DAY in the U.S. alone -- a mammoth, ongoing human rights violation that the OECD report has managed to ignore. (See RACHEL'S #578.)

By cherry-picking data and sometimes fudging the details, writers like Bjorn Lomborg manage to confuse the public by claiming that environmental problems have been exaggerated or don't really exist.[4] But this is the wrong time to be pretending that all is well because the trends are otherwise. The world's oceans, forests and biodiversity are clearly in trouble. Global warming is real and, given the political power of oil and coal companies, intractable. Waste is immense and growing, but toxic PRODUCTS are an even bigger problem. Toxic chemicals can now be measured at low levels in the bodies of living things everywhere on Earth, from the bottoms of the deepest oceans to the most remote mountain tops. Exotic industrial poisons have been introduced into all of us without our informed consent -- invading our bodies even before we are born -- and new harms from these toxic trespassers are discovered almost daily as ignorance and cover-up give way to openness and knowledge. But we needn't wait for yet another scientific study. We already know enough to act and act decisively.

The basic problem is that "free market" ideology regards the natural environment as an inexhaustible supermarket for raw materials and a bottomless free toilet for wastes. Both of these conceptions are dead wrong, and therefore "markets" must not be free -- they must be moderated by social covenants and government policies -- ranging from simple generosity and sharing on an international scale, to fessing up and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions on a corporate scale, plus a range of government sanctions and strictures, including purchasing preferences, subsidies for clean technologies, green taxes and fees, precautionary regulations and actions, guarantees of workplace safety and health (with real teeth), stiff fines, and even prison for repeat polluters. The key reforms must aim to create a vastly more responsive democracy, allowing people to make decisions by talking together about those things that affect their lives, displacing the elitist corporate rule that both Democrats and Republicans today call government.

Reversing environmental decline will require above all the commodity in shortest supply: courageous political commitment and democratic policy innovations based firmly and explicitly on the principle of forecaring or precaution, to counteract decades of "free market" theology that have left governments weakened, democracy vitiated, and the environment inadequately protected. If we and our unelected "leaders" can't -- or won't -- face up to the necessary changes, the environmental outlook for our children and grandchildren will be grim indeed.

Source: http://www.Rachel.org

12/14/01
4:18:09 PM

A survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors indicates hunger and homelessness increased significantly in the last year in nearly all 27 cities surveyed and the pace appeared to pick up in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Conference President Marc H. Morial of New Orleans calls the findings "sobering."

"Twenty-five of the 27 cities surveyed showed an increase in demand for emergency food," Morial told a news conference Wednesday. "These cities on average show the increased demand was 23 percent. That is the largest increase our survey has shown since 1991. Twenty-three, approximately, of the 27 cities showed increase in demand for emergency shelter. This reflects in the individual cities an average of about 13 percent increase, the second highest since 1994."

Morial said it is not uncommon for there to be more hungry than homeless people simply because people's money is being stretched so thin, "they cannot properly feed their families."

12/14/01
4:02:12 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

HISTORIC GLOBAL FISHERIES AGREEMENT ENTERS INTO FORCE

NEW YORK, New York, December 12, 2001 (ENS) - Canada prepares to confront a Spanish owned, Belize flagged trawler suspected of illegal fishing for turbot off eastern Newfoundland. This conflict, played out repeatedly in the early 1990s, will be less likely to happen now that a new fisheries management regime is in place.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-12-01.html

LOW RADIATION DOSES MAY POSE HIGH RISK

NEW YORK, New York, December 12, 2001 (ENS) - Low doses of radiation from natural sources can trigger widespread mutations in living cells at much lower doses than the amount scientists previously believed could do such damage. New research from Columbia University suggests that public health officials may need to reconsider what levels of radiation in nature should be deemed safe.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-12-06.html

CLIMATE CHANGE COULD COME QUICKLY, STUDY WARNS

WASHINGTON, DC, December 12, 2001 (ENS) - Climate change may come on fast and furious, wreaking sudden and catastrophic damage on people, property, and natural ecosystems, warns a new report from the National Research Council. The study suggests that human caused greenhouse warming may increase the possibility of abrupt and unwelcome climatic events.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-12-07.html

BRAZIL CRACKS DOWN ON THE ILLEGAL MAHOGANY TRADE

BRASILIA, Brazil, December 12, 2001 (ENS) - The Brazilian government has acted to protect whatever mahogany trees in three states that remain after the predation of illegal loggers. The historic announcement in effect means an end to the illegal mahogany industry in Brazil, said a Greenpeace campaigner who has worked in partnership with the Brazilian environment ministry to put a stop to the destruction of mahogany trees.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-12-03.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: DECEMBER 12, 2001

Fisheries Conservation Act Passes House

Scientists Patent Coal Purifying Bacteria

Alaska's Columbia Glacier Melting Away

$10.7 Million Funds Low Sulfur Fuel Research

Landfill Gas Turned Into Fuel, Soda Bubbles

Former Senator Targets Diesel Engine Pollution

"The Birds" Setting Named as Important Bird Area

$130,000 Donated to Help Kabul Zoo

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-12-09.html

12/14/01
3:59:51 PM

SojoNet News Daily Headlines

http://www.sojo.net/news

Pope calls for an end to Iraqi sanctions

Pope John Paul II called for an end to the embargo on Iraq and said the Church would share in the "unjustly inflicted" suffering of Iraqis on Friday, a day of fasting for Catholics.

http://europe.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/12/11/vatican.iraq.ap/index.html

A Warning on Climate Change

While recent climate change studies have focused on the risks of a gradual rise in the Earth's temperature, a new National Academy of Sciences report has concluded that greenhouse gases and other pollutants could trigger large, abrupt and potentially disastrous climate changes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28650-2001Dec11.html

U.S. to Pull Out of ABM Treaty

Critics of Bush's plan are unpersuaded. Many say that Sept. 11 proved that America's major vulnerabilities have little to do with missile attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/12/international/europe/12MISS.html

Mexico's War on Terror Continues

Threats to the lives of two environmentalists from Mexico continue, even after their release from prison and the murder of their lawyer, Digna Ochoa.

http://www.utne.com/webwatch/archive.tpl?d=12/12/2001

Britain warns against widening anti-terror campaign

Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the chief of defence staff, acknowledged for the first time that Britain and the United States were at odds over the future of the US-led campaign. Not only were Britain's armed forces already stretched far enough, he said, but they might find themselves taking part in operations that may "contradict national policy".

http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/2001/12/12/FFX31C1K2VC.html

Perpetrators of East Timor massacre jailed for crime against humanity

Ten members of a gang responsible for one of the worst massacres linked to East Timor's 1999 vote for independence were found guilty of crimes against humanity and given jail terms of up to 33 years.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011211/1/236ob.html

The Hypocrisy of Trade Promotion Authority

The administration's selective adherence to its professed free trade principles confirms criticisms that public interest groups have long lodged against the agreements. Far from promoting free trade, the agreements favor power and privilege, and allow wealthy countries like the United States to flout them.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/12/11/index.html

The War's Implications for U.S. Military Spending

One exception to the rule of military budget expansion was the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which helps Russia dismantle its nuclear weapons, secure its remaining arsenal, and divert its nuclear scientists, via productive employment, from selling their skills to, for example, terrorist networks. These programs took an $86 million hit.

http://www.fpif.org/faq/0112milfund.html

12/14/01
3:54:45 PM

ACLU Action Network Members

Without observing the legally mandated period of public review and comment, Attorney General Ashcroft has implemented a new eavesdropping regulation that gives the government, without judicial oversight or meaningful standards, the unprecedented power to listen in on conversations between prison inmates and their attorneys.

The new regulation renders the age-old tradition of attorney-client privilege worthless and essentially guts the right to counsel guaranteed by the Constitution. Furthermore, the new regulation is unnecessary since the Department of Justice already has the legal authority to record attorney-client conversations by going before a judge and obtaining a warrant.

Take Action! The Bureau of Prisons is compiling public comments through December 31 and a huge public outcry could force Ashcroft to rescind the regulation. Now is the last time to speak out! You can read more and send an email to the Bureau of Prisons from our action alert at:

http://www.aclu.org/action/attorney107.html

12/14/01
3:52:33 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.13

KENNEDY | Statement on Bush Secret Tribunals

http://www.truthout.com/12.13A.Kennedy.Tribunals.htm

RANGEL | Hundreds of Billions for Corporate Tax Cuts -- Little for the Unemployed

http://www.truthout.com/12.13B.Rangel.Tax.cut.htm

ENRON Rejects Congress Request to Testify

http://www.truthout.com/12.13C.Enron.Snub.htm

Robert Scheer | Los Angeles Times | Connect the Enron Dots to Bush

http://www.truthout.com/12.13D.Enron.Dots.htm

REUTERS, Report | Bin Laden Escaped to Pakistan

http://www.truthout.com/12.13E.OBL.Pakistan.htm

12/14/01
3:50:55 PM

Dear Back from the Brink Web Supporters,

Nuclear weapons are back in the news with the announcement that the U.S. will pull out of the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. This is bad news for de-alerting and arms control advocates (more on this below).

But first, we want to thank you for taking the time over the past year to tell your elected officials to take U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.

With your help, the Brink Campaign got tens of thousands of messages into Congressional offices and the White House. We delivered them through our Presidential Call-In Days in February, our "Toast-cards" to Congress in the summer, and through e-mail messages like yours -- all year long.

What's ahead for de-alerting? The recent announcement by the Bush administration that they will pull out of the ABM Treaty to pursue missile defenses is likely to lead to more nuclear weapons kept on a hair-trigger. Check out our Missile Defense Talking Points

And while the U.S. and Russia are talking about cutting thousands of nuclear weapons from their huge arsenals -- over the next ten years -- de-alerting is not in the mix. Thousands of nuclear weapons will still be poised for a quick launch.

President Bush has backed away from his campaign pledge to remove U.S. weapons from high-alert and we need to call him on it!

Now's the time to send a message to the President. Tell him to confront the most pressing missile threat -- the thousands of nuclear weapons on high-alert -- by fulfilling his campaign pledge to de-alert nuclear weapons. Tell him to abandon the nuclear hair-trigger not the ABM treaty.

Just click on the Next button to send a message. And, if you can, forward the message to friends.

Have a great holiday season and we look forward to working with you in the New Year!

Sincerely, Ira Shorr, Director Esther Pank, Grassroots Coordinator

We invite you to log on to our Web site: http://www.backfromthebrink.org to see the latest on our campaign activities --including our work with top Russian scientists and former military officials.

12/14/01
3:49:15 PM

MoveOn.org

Almost two years ago you signed a petition urging our leaders to de-alert nuclear weapons in order to reduce the danger of an unintentional nuclear war. Today the Bush administration is poised to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that has helped to slow the proliferation of nuclear arms for 30 years.

Please phone your Senators today.

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

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

Make sure they know you're a constituent. Then ask them to tell the President that they are shocked, appalled and dismayed that he is apparently planning a precipitous, unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. Ask your Senators to voice their strong opposition to the United States withdrawing from the ABM Treaty.

The media are reporting that the President will make a formal announcement as early as Thursday, December 13th. So it is urgent that you take action immediately.

Thank you for your commitment to reducing the dangers of nuclear weapons, and for making these calls.

Sincerely,

- Joan Blades MoveOn.org December 12, 2001

Press Reports from the New York Times follow.

Please also see http://www.disarmament.org for further background on Missile Defense / ABM Treaty

"U.S. To Pull Out Of ABM Treaty, Clearing Path For Antimissile Tests" New York Times, Dec. 12, 2001 By David E. Sanger & Elisabeth Bumiller

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 President Bush will announce this week that Washington will withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty in six months, the first time in modern history that the United States has renounced a major international accord, according to administration officials. The decision came after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, visiting Moscow in recent days, was unable to bridge differences with Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, on how to deal with an arms control accord that Mr. Bush has called a "relic" of the cold war, and "dangerous." But Mr. Bush concluded last week that Secretary Powell's last effort would likely fail, and it appears that he gave warning of his intentions in a phone conversation with Mr. Putin on Friday.

The decision ends a raging debate within the administration over the wisdom of withdrawing from the treaty, and marks a major policy defeat for Secretary Powell. He has long maintained that it was still possible to negotiate an agreement with Russia that would allow the Pentagon to move forward with the kind of tests it insists are necessary to develop an antiballistic missile system initially capable of handling the launch of a handful of nuclear weapons at the United States.

At the same time, Mr. Bush's decision was a major victory for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, fresh from the success of the military campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Mr. Rumsfeld has countered that there is no technologically satisfying way to amend the accord that President Richard M. Nixon signed with the former Soviet Union nearly three decades ago.

In the end, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, sided with Mr. Rumsfeld, several administration and congressional officials said today.

Mr. Bush made no mention of his decision when he gave a speech on the future of the American military today at the the Citadel, the military college in Charleston, S.C. But he forcefully repeated his contention that the treaty is outdated, noting that last week the Pentagon conducted another "promising test" of missile defense technology.

"For the good of peace, we're moving forward with an active program to determine what works and what does not work," Mr. Bush told a cheering crowd of cadets. "In order to do so, we must move beyond the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that was written in a different era, for a different enemy."

The treaty allows either signatory to withdraw with six months' notice. If Mr. Bush goes ahead with his announcement this week - possibly on Wednesday or Thursday - it would mean that the administration would be free to conduct any type of test it wants by mid-June. The Pentagon plans to start construction on silos and a missile defense command center at Fort Greely, Alaska, in late April or early May. The silos and center would initially be used for testing allowed by the treaty. But Russian officials note that part of the plan is for the "test bed" to become part of an operational missile-defense system. For that reason, some ABM experts contend that the work would violate the treaty.

Pentagon officials have also said they want to schedule tests in which ship-based radars track long-range missiles early next year. Such tests are not allowed under the treaty. Aides say Mr. Bush hopes his announcement will prompt discussions with Russia on what kind of agreement should become the successor to the ABM treaty. Presumably that will be the focus of his expected trip to Moscow, his first, sometime next spring. Ms. Rice said after the last meeting between the two leaders, at Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., that the relationship between the two countries had been so strengthened that it could glide past the difference of opinion about the value of the treaty.

"This is a smaller element of the U.S.Russia relationship than it was several months ago and certainly than it was before Sept. 11," she said in Crawford.

At a meeting in Washington that preceded the Crawford summit by a day, Mr. Putin and his aides made it clear that while they were inclined to allow the United States to conduct antimissile tests despite the treaty, they wanted the right to approve each test of the system. "It was something we couldn't live with," a senior administration official said. "It would mean subjecting each test to separate scrutiny, and sooner or later they were going to say `no,'" one senior official said.

Today a senior administration official said that "the Russians won't like it, but the calculation is that they will learn to live with it, and they will quickly get beyond it. They've certainly known it's coming. "Another official said this evening, "In a way, the bigger question is how the Chinese will react." While China is not a signatory to the treaty, its arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons is so small - only 20 or so weapons can reach American shores - that Chinese officials fear that the arsenal would be neutralized by a modest American antimissile system built in Alaska or deployed on ships in the Pacific. That could prompt China to speed the modernization of its nuclear forces, something the White House believes it will do anyway.

In contrast, even when Russia reduces its nuclear arsenal to 1,500 or so weapons, a goal Mr. Putin has set, Russia would be able to overwhelm any antimissile system now on the Pentagon's drawing boards.

While White House officials maintain that strategic concerns, not politics, have always been at the heart of Mr. Bush's decision on the ABM treaty, it seems likely some major political calculations went into the timing.

Mr. Bush's approval ratings are as high as ever - nearly 9 out of 10 Americans say they approve of how he is handling his job, a New York Times/CBS News poll released tonight reports - and 75 percent say they approve of how he is handling foreign policy. In the spring, only about half of those polled said they approved.

Other polls show that since Sept. 11, more Americans believe in the need for missile defense, even though the attacks three months ago used airplanes, not missiles. Mr. Bush has argued that the next attack could well come in a missile attack from a rogue state or terrorists.

But the critics of his plan are unpersuaded. Many say that Sept. 11 proved that America's major vulnerabilities have little to do with missile attacks. And this evening, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Democrat of Delaware and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement warning that "unilaterally abandoning the ABM treaty would be a serious mistake. The administration has not offered any convincing rationale for why any missile defense test it may need to conduct would require walking away from a treaty that has helped keep the peace for the last 30 years."

European leaders have also criticized American discussion of abandoning the treaty, saying before Sept. 11 that the administration's treatment of the treaty was a prime example of a worrisome move toward unilateralism. But now administration officials appear to be calculating that the European reaction will be muted, especially if European leaders do not want cracks to appear in the coalition against terrorism.

Mr. Bush's speech today at the Citadel was, in many ways, a reprise of a 1999 address on military policy that he delivered there as a presidential candidate. The remarks today served as both a marker of the three month anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and a call for a more agile, modern military.The White House also used the event as a kind of "I told you so" about the threat of terrorism, a large theme of Mr. Bush's earlier speech. Today he warned that "rogue states" were the most likely sources of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and said that they would be regarded as "hostile regimes" if they aided terrorists. "They have been warned, they are being watched, and they will be held to account," the president said.

Mr. Bush cited the American military campaign in Afghanistan as a model for future wars, and said the United States needed to further develop unmanned planes, like the Predator, and precision-guided bombs. Both have been used in Afghanistan. He also called for rebuilding "our network of human intelligence" as well as new intelligence-gathering technology. "Every day I make decisions influenced by the intelligence briefing of that morning," Mr.Bush said. "The last several months have shown that there is no substitute for good intelligence officers, people on the ground."

12/14/01
3:47:36 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Drive on soot "could slow global warming" - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13691/story.htm

US science panel warns of risk of abrupt climate shifts - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13692/story.htm

UPDATE - Energy Dept. sued for Bush energy plan records - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13695/story.htm

Nuke industry presses Bush to move on Yucca plan - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13696/story.htm

Failed whale rescues off US coast cost more than $250,000 - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13704/story.htm

Kansas elk found with brain-damaging disease - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13702/story.htm

New GM SUV, the Hummer H2, irks environmentalists - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13701/story.htm

Scottish fossil fuel levy to be slashed - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13694/story.htm

Nine Romanian workers exposed to high radiation - ROMANIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13707/story.htm

Cholera outbreak kills 81 in Mozambique - MOZAMBIQUE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13706/story.htm

Court finds Italy late to enact EU oil disposal rules - ITALY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13687/story.htm

Germany's Kuenast urges consumer choice on GM food - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13698/story.htm

Germany delays law on CHP subsidies to Jan or Feb - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13705/story.htm

US says urgent for EU to end ban on new GM foods - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13697/story.htm

UPDATE - Arrests made ahead of Brussels EU summit protests - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13699/story.htm

Poachers threaten survival of Cambodian species - CAMBODIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13689/story.htm

Enron Wind set for Irish order, sees big profits - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13703/story.htm

EU agrees ban on sulphur in petrol from 2009 - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13688/story.htm

Bangladesh capital faces acute water crisis - BANGLADESH http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13708/story.htm

UPDATE - BHP Billiton nears Ok Tedi mine exit - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13700/story.htm

12/14/01
3:46:33 PM

Greenpeace Action Alert

Support Government Action to Protect the Amazon

Following two years of Greenpeace research and on the ground investigations by the Brazilian environment agency Ibama, the Government of Brazil has taken unprecedented moves to stop the illegal mahogany industry in the Amazon. This is a significant step forward for Amazon protection since the mahogany industry drives the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and is run by a corrupt industry that is undermining traditional cultures, and leading the illegal destruction of the world's most biologically diverse ancient forest.

But the government is now under pressure from the powerful mahogany industry and needs your support to stick by their decision.

Take online action now:

http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/save/alerts/brazil-direct.htm

Update on HR 4 Action Alert

We greatly appreciate your cyberactivism that prevented last week's sleight-of-hand push on the administration's energy scam. More than 5,000 of you took action and sent emails and faxes to your Senators demanding they vote no on HR 4 as an amendment to the Railroad Bill.

As you know, setting a framework for the United States' energy future must not be set by big oil lobbyists. Their efforts to stealth-track the energy scam, attaching it as an amendment to unrelated legislation, was truly reprehensible.

You have succeeded in getting the message through! But we haven't seen the last of the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbyists' efforts to push their agenda down the throats of the American people - stay tuned for more cyberactivism in January!

Visit our Action Center to stay involved!

http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/takeaction/

Want to find out more about clean energy?

Go to: http://www.cleanenergynow.org

12/14/01
3:44:59 PM

FAIR

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Media analysis, critiques and news reports

ACTION ALERT: HOW MANY DEAD?

Major networks aren't counting

How many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of U.S.-led bombing on October 7? Journalists and aid workers have limited access to the area, so it's an admittedly difficult question to answer. But many U.S. media outlets don't seem to be trying very hard.

None of the three major networks' nightly newscasts are offering even rough tallies of the mounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan. ABC World News Tonight, however, has followed the story somewhat more seriously than either the CBS Evening News or NBC Nightly News, which both regularly frame discussion of civilian deaths in terms of their value in the "propaganda war." Questions about the legality of those U.S. targeting decisions that led to strikes on civilians were rarely raised on any network.

It may be some time before a full accounting is possible, but relief agencies and a few noteworthy news stories do provide information about the scale of the devastation. As a "conservative" estimate, Doctors Without Borders has stated that civilian casualties are already in the hundreds and rising (NPR, 12/6/01). On the high end, a compilation of international press reports by a University of New Hampshire professor suggests there may be over 3,500 civilian deaths.

http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have voiced strong concern about the loss of civilian life, and have both independently called for a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs. Though it was not widely reported in the U.S. press-- and not at all on ABC, CBS or NBC-- Amnesty has also demanded "an immediate and full investigation into what may have been violations of international and humanitarian law such as direct attacks on civilian objects or indiscriminate attacks" by the U.S. military (press release, 10/26/01).

Some in the U.S. media, however, have suggested that Afghans don't mind being killed by U.S. bombs. "It turns out many of those Afghan 'civilians' were praying for another dose of B- 52's to liberate them from the Taliban, casualties or not" wrote foreign affairs commentator Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 11/23/01).

Even some of the more extensive U.S. reporting on civilian casualties-- which came last week, after U.S. bombing near Tora Bora destroyed two villages and killed over 100 civilians-- seemed surprised at Afghans' negative response. CBS's Randall Pinkston reported that "at least 100 people" had been killed, but claimed that until recently, "many Afghans" were "raising few objections to civilians accidentally killed in U.S. bombing attacks." He noted that the killings had provoked criticism of American policy, and called this "a troubling new reaction" (CBS Evening News, 12/1/01).

One forthright story on the killings near Tora Bora, by NBC correspondent Mike Taibbi (12/3/01), stood in marked contrast not only to the general trend in reporting on other networks, but to NBC's previous coverage of civilian casualties as well. Taibbi investigated the destroyed villages in person, juxtaposing his findings-- which included a fragment of a U.S. missile, serial number intact-- with the Pentagon's claim that it was unlikely the incident had occurred.

Unfortunately, this kind of independent approach was the exception rather than the rule on the nightly news shows. Claims that Afghan civilians had been killed were often reported as unsubstantial, utterly unverifiable salvos in the so-called "propaganda war." One report by CBS's David Martin (10/23/01) claimed that the Taliban's "chief weapon seems to be pictures they say are innocent civilians killed or injured by the bombing." Martin went on to say that the Pentagon admits to "a few instances of bombs hitting civilians," but made no mention of any estimates, from the Pentagon or elsewhere, of the actual number of people killed.

This pattern was repeated several times on the CBS Evening News. A November 6 CBS report stated that George Bush had "opened a new public relations front in the war on terrorism" because "claims of heavy civilian casualties have provoked howls of protest" in Muslim countries. No mention was made of whether such claims were factual, or, as the belittling "howl" might suggest, merely a PR ploy. The next day, CBS again returned to the Taliban "propaganda machine," with David Martin reporting that "usually it airs claims of civilian casualties by American bombing." Again, no mention was made of whether, where or how many civilians had actually been killed.

A few weeks earlier (10/18/01), Martin filed a report showing images of dead civilians, but included no information about the people-- except that they were complicating the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "says the determination to avoid scenes like these of civilians apparently killed by American bombs makes the terrorist hunt more difficult," reported Martin.

NBC Nightly News also tended to present reports of the U.S. military killing civilians as primarily a propaganda issue. In a report (11/4/01) about America's battle "to protect its image as a compassionate nation," NBC correspondent Dan Lothian gave a thumbnail sketch of "the war on terrorism as reported in the Arab world." With no apparent sense of irony, Lothian catalogued the Arab media's propaganda: "Daily doses of news concerning civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Graphic pictures below front page headlines. Compelling stories on cable TV, as well." Daily news, graphic pictures and compelling stories-- a threatening arsenal indeed.

"The first casualties of this war were thousands of American civilians," said Lothian in his wrap-up. "Now, as the Taliban is targeted for protecting the terrorists of Al-Qaeda, the U.S. is also fighting a public relations war." It's a difficult passage to parse, but the meaning seems to be that first, American civilians were attacked by terrorists, and now, the United States' image is being attacked with equal mercilessness.

NBC's most persistent advocate of the propaganda perspective, however, was Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, who several times portrayed reports of Afghan civilian casualties as an assault on the U.S. Despite the U.S. military's "overwhelming firepower," reported Miklaszewski (10/15/01), "the Pentagon is on the defensive today." Why? Because "the Taliban took foreign journalists on a guided tour of the village of Karam, where they claim US bombs killed 200 civilians." Later, the Pentagon was still "fighting the propaganda war" by "denying Taliban claims that American bombs have killed more than 1,000 innocent civilians" (10/24/01). The report did not investigate what a more accurate figure might be, or whether any civilians had been killed at all.

A few days later (10/29/01), Miklaszewski again had the Pentagon "on the defensive" against "charges that American bombs are killing hundreds of civilians," noting that "Rumsfeld says the ultimate blame lies with those who started the war." Despite Rumsfeld's implicit acknowledgement that some civilians-- perhaps hundreds-- had been killed, NBC again failed to ask how many, where or why.

In comparison to CBS and NBC's poor performances, ABC World News Tonight did somewhat better at reporting specific numbers and locations of instances when U.S. bombs hit civilians. Reporter David Wright devoted attention to civilian casualties as an issue in their own right, noting, for example, that "even when the target's the front line, the trouble is, people live here" (10/28/01). ABC has not, however, focused on the important questions raised by groups like Amnesty International about the legality of U.S. strikes.

When media portray reports of civilian casualties as an attack on America, it's hardly surprising that serious reporting on the issue is scarce. It is crucial that news outlets independently investigate civilian casualties in Afghanistan-- not only how many there have been, but how and why they happened.

ACTION: Please ask the three major networks' nightly news shows to investigate how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan as a result of U.S. military action, and to examine the legality of those attacks.

CONTACT:

ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings

Phone: 212-456-4040

Fax: 212-456-2795

mailto:netaudr@abc.com

CBS Evening News with Dan Rather

Phone: 212-975-3691

Fax: 212-975-1893

mailto:audsvcs@cbs.com

NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw

Phone: 212-664-4971

Fax: 202-362-2009

mailto:nightly@msnbc.com

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone.

Please cc mailto:fair@fair.org with yourcorrespondence.

12/14/01
3:40:55 PM

MoveOn.org

In Senate hearings last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft questioned the patriotism of those speaking out for civil liberties: "Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve," he said. "They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends."

We can't let Ashcroft bully American citizens into deserting our Constitution. Join our "Defend the Constitution" campaign at:

http://www.moveon.org/constitution/

We've all read the stories. The knock in the night. The quick scuffle, the cries of the children. And then the silence. Frantic spouses and friends trying to get even the slightest information about the loved one who has been arrested in the dead of night. Secret arrests on secret evidence, secret trials, secret executions.

But that can't happen here, right? We're talking about Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia or Pinochet's Chile. But not the USA! We're protected by the rule of law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights!

The Attorney General says it isn't so. We're at war, he says and the Constitution doesn't fully apply in an emergency. Anyhow, we're not talking about denying the rights of US citizens, just of the 20 million non-citizen residents of this country.

In the last two months, this administration has: - Announced that it would permit the monitoring of conversations between attorneys and their clients if suspected of terrorism; - Abolished civilian jury trials for non-citizen residents accused of terrorism; - Permitted the secret detention of suspects accused of terrorism; - Asked to use secret evidence to prosecute deportation hearings without providing that evidence to the defense.

The administration argues that these draconian measures are necessary to preserve our way of life.

We respectfully disagree. It is when we are fearful that we most need the protections of our constitution. Our institutions have worked for us for over 200 years. We are a nation of laws, not of men. Our freedom depends upon the rule of law. We don't suspend the law because we're under attack. We support and defend it.

This is not an issue of the left or right. William Safire, the conservative columnist, has called the Administration's moves "a dismaying departure from due process" and an assumption of "dictatorial power."

We urge Congress to assert that the Constitution and Bill of Rights must be fully respected, particularly in this time of crisis. We need your help and urge you join this petition by going to:

http://www.moveon.org/constitution/

Charge Congress and the President with honoring their oaths of office -- to "defend the Constitution."

Sincerely yours,

- Wes Boyd and Doug Carlston MoveOn.org December 12, 2001

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance." -John Philpot Curran, 1790

"It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action."

-Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 1963

"Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension."

-Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788

12/14/01
3:33:10 PM

Public Citizen

Getting Its Foot in the Back Door: Energy Department Could Ignore Process and Quietly Resume "Recycling" of Potentially Radioactive Metals

Public Would Be Asked to Trust That Metals from "Hot Areas" Are Radiation-Free

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In what public interest groups deem a betrayal, certain U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials are pushing a proposal that would allow the "unrestricted release" - including recycling - of potentially radioactive metals from DOE nuclear sites. The plan directly violates the spirit of previous DOE policy and would quietly reverse DOE's July 2000 decision to suspend the release of potentially radioactive metals. The plan was outlined in a draft memo from the department's Field Management Council (FMC) that Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) recently acquired.

The DOE is currently conducting an environmental review of how to handle radioactive scrap metal from DOE sites (the process is called a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on the Disposition of [Radioactively Contaminated] Scrap Metals). This process includes a planned public comment period and hearings on the various alternatives for the disposition of potentially radioactively contaminated metals generated by DOE nuclear activities. The metals at issue can be sold and used to make a wide variety of retail goods and industrial materials.

The FMC proposal would essentially bypass the current environmental review process by pre-selecting one of the alternatives under consideration by the DOE. Should the proposal be approved by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, there would be no public review, participation, comment or notification. Amazingly, the memo states that "this action will not bias the analysis" of the ongoing review.

References to "scrap metals that may have originally contained small, but acceptable quantities of residual radioactivity" and "the Oak Ridge complex's initiative to recycle metals with acceptable level[s] of residual radioactivity" indicate that the DOE is again aiming to unload thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated waste and materials upon American businesses and consumers.

The PEIS process itself has not been without problems. In early 2000 the DOE hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform the environmental review. SAIC had previously been terminated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a substantial conflict of interest because it had a financial interest in a quarter-billion dollar contract to recycle radioactive metal from the DOE's Oak Ridge, Tenn., complex, and at the same time was creating a report for the NRC to use as a guide for releasing and recycling radioactive materials from its own facilities. After Public Citizen, NIRS and other public interest groups met with DOE officials in July and pointed out SAIC's questionable record, DOE revoked its contract with SAIC to perform the environmental review.

"This latest back-door maneuver makes it crystal clear that DOE's ultimate goal is to release and disperse radioactive materials," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "The PEIS process has revealed strong public, environmental and metal industry opposition to radioactive recycling. So now DOE is plotting another step to recycle this stuff in complete disregard of its own environmental review process. It may be in the DOE's financial and legal interests to toss its nuclear waste into our homes, but Americans have always been strongly opposed to the idea."

"DOE is destroying whatever fragments of credibility this troubled process has left by attempting to secretly reverse the one good policy they have - prohibiting radioactive metals from getting into commerce," said Diane D'Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service project director. "In addition, DOE continues to send other contaminated materials out into the marketplace."

Dave Ritter, policy analyst with Public Citizen's Critical Mass, agreed. "What Americans really want this holiday season is assurance from their government that radioactive waste will not be recycled into metal, concrete, soil, plastic or any other product. Instead of a clear and unambiguous ban on this practice, the DOE is trying to side-step its own process and eventually drop its own version of a terrorist's 'dirty bomb' all over this country."

Public Citizen and NIRS are submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to the DOE for all materials relating to the development of the FMC memo.

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org

12/14/01
3:32:21 PM

Public Citizen

Rep. Barton's Electricity Deregulation Bill Hurts Consumers

Consumers Demand More Accountability, Not Less

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- An electricity bill scheduled for hearings in the House on Wednesday and Thursday would replace consumer protections with unregulated corporate control over energy markets, potentially leading to the kind of price-gouging that plagued California consumers after deregulation, Public Citizen said today.

No consumer groups were scheduled to testify at the hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, chaired by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). Public Citizen sent a written request to Barton on December 5.

"It is wrong that only supporters of electricity deregulation - the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and energy corporations - were invited to testify, but consumers were not," said Tyson Slocum, research director for Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Millions of consumers are paying higher prices because of deregulation's failure in California, Montana and other states. Consumers have a right to have their voices heard in this important debate."

Barton's bill ends FERC's authority to review utility mergers and power plant sales, in addition to repealing the Public Utility Holding Company Act.

"After the California debacle, the last thing consumers need is for Congress to remove controls over market power ¯ but that's what Barton does by repealing PUHCA and ending FERC's merger review authority," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public Citizen's Texas office. "Removing these important consumer protections allows greed to go unrestrained, resulting in skyrocketing prices and energy company bankruptcies. As we begin deregulation in Texas, consumers outside urban areas don't have much choice - and only one or two companies are serving them. If we remove the merger and anti-trust protections, we will have no controls to prevent price-gouging."

Barton's legislation also limits state regulatory oversight by transferring state jurisdiction of transmission lines to FERC. In addition, it strips electricity markets of transparency and accountability by forcing the creation of Regional Transmission Organizations, ending the ability of state regulators to regulate transmission.

"Rep. Barton promises his constituents that he supports private property rights," said Katy Hubener, director of a Dallas-based air quality group, the Blue Skies Alliance. "But his bill eliminates the ability of property owners to protest transmission line projects in their neighborhood. Because Texas doesn't fall under FERC jurisdiction, our citizens have the right to protest such projects. By transferring authority away from other state and local officials, Barton is saying, 'What's good for Texas isn't good for America.'"

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org

12/14/01
3:31:36 PM

Public Citizen

House Election Bill Lacks Strong Voting Standards

Statement of Joan Claybrook, President of Public Citizen

The House today passed a weak election "reform" bill that will do too little to ensure that every vote counts. The Ney-Hoyer bill fails to promote meaningful reform just as surely as the butterfly ballot failed the voters of Palm Beach County, Fla. in last year's presidential election.

It's a sad testament to the spirit of reform that House leaders decided the only way to pass this defective voting rights bill was to deny members the right to vote on amendments to the bill. Public Citizen applauds the nearly 200 members who voted against this undemocratic procedure and also voted for the motion to recommit to bring the bill back to the floor with a strong civil rights package. The chief sponsors of the civil rights package were Reps. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) and Chris Shays (R-Conn.).

Ney-Hoyer fails to provide strong national voting standards, even as a condition for $2.65 billion in federal assistance for improving voting systems. It fails to mandate voting systems that notify voters if they have voted for too few or too many candidates, so they can correct their errors. It fails to mandate national standards to make polling places and voting systems accessible to individuals with disabilities and those with limited English language proficiency. It fails to require that voters be notified of their right to file a provisional ballot if they believe their eligibility to vote is wrongly challenged. It fails to require nationally mandated standards for the error rate of voting machines. And it changes the Motor Voter Law, making it easier for states to purge registered voters from the rolls.

Americans now look to the Senate to prevent future election fiascoes. Both major proposals - the Dodd and the McConnell-Schumer bills - are stronger than Ney-Hoyer. We hope that today's unfortunate House vote will spur senators to quickly conclude their negotiations for a bipartisan compromise bill. Strong Senate action is indispensable to crafting a final product that is more than a Band-Aid to this gaping wound to our democracy.

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.

For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org

12/14/01
3:28:20 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE <http://www.gristmagazine.com>

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK

In his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Danish professor Bjorn Lomborg claims that global warming, deforestation, extinction, air pollution, energy shortages, food scarcity, and other environmental worries are "phantom problems" created or inflated by the environmental movement for its own ends. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, and plenty of other mainstream media outfits love him -- but do the scientists? We asked the experts to take a look; several of their pieces are summarized below. By bringing a healthy dose of skepticism to the Lomborg debate, this special issue of Grist fights fire with fire; we leave it to our readers to determine who gets flambeed.

only in Grist: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark -- a skeptical look at "The Skeptical Environmentalist" <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/lomborg121201.asp?source=daily>

VANISHING POINT

Concerned about losing your favorite charismatic megafauna and enigmatic microfauna? Never fear, says Bjorn Lomborg, who disagrees with the assessment of the majority of the scientific community that we are in the middle of a massive extinction phase. E.O. Wilson, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, discoverer of hundreds of new species, and one of the world's greatest living scientists, takes on Lomborg's analysis of extinction rates. Wilson says "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is "characterized by willful ignorance, selective quotations, disregard for communication with genuine experts, and destructive campaigning to attract the attention of the media rather than scientists." Whew. Read the rest, only in this special issue of Grist.

only in Grist: Vanishing Point -- on Bjorn Lomborg and extinction -- by E.O. Wilson <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/wilson121201.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action on extinction issues <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/species.asp?source=daily>

HOSTILE CLIMATE

In "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Bjorn Lomborg goes a little lighter on global climate change than on many other environmental problems. He agrees it exists, although on a much smaller scale than we think, but argues that it's nothing to worry about. Stephen H. Schneider, one of the world's foremost climate change scientists, says Lomborg is woefully unqualified to out-expert the experts -- and that it shows. A Stanford professor and MacArthur Fellow who has served as a consultant to federal agencies and the White House during six administrations, Schneider also takes Cambridge University Press and the media to task for publishing and praising Lomborg's book. Read Schneider's full review, only in this special issue of Grist.

only in Grist: Hostile Climate -- on Bjorn Lomborg and global climate change -- by Stephen H. Schneider <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/schneider121201.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action on climate change issues <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily>

BJORN AGAIN

Bjorn Lomborg has no patience for concerns about overpopulation. We're nowhere near our planet's carrying capacity, he argues, and we aren't likely to ever get there, because population will decline as global prosperity increases. Meantime, while we keep multiplying, human ingenuity will find clever new ways -- like genetically modified foods -- to keep the billions fed and housed. Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, begs to differ. Brown says any way you slice it, a burgeoning population spells trouble for our water, food, and energy supplies, not to mention the health of our ecosystems. Read Brown's take on Lomborg, only in this special issue of Grist.

only in Grist: Bjorn Again -- on Bjorn Lomborg and population -- by Lester R. Brown <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/brown121201.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action on population issues <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/population.asp?source=daily>

UNHEALTHY SKEPTICISM

Sometimes worrying about the environment means worrying about our own health: smoggy air, polluted water, pesticides in our food, nuclear reactors in our communities. ... You get the picture. But Bjorn Lomborg doesn't: He says our environment is becoming an ever-healthier place to live. Devra Davis, a leading epidemiologist and researcher on environmental health and chronic diseases, takes on Lomborg's analysis of breast cancer rates and declining sperm counts, and comes up with a different story. Read it only in this special issue of Grist.

only in Grist: Unhealthy Skepticism -- on Bjorn Lomborg and environmental hazards to human health -- by Devra Davis <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/davis121201.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action against health-threatening chemicals <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/toxic.asp?source=daily>

GREEN IS THE COLOR OF MY NEW BOOK ROYALTIES

Zed goes toe-to-tail with the Skeptical Environmentalist in front of a live audience. Decide for yourself which combatant is more evolved. Catch Zed, last of his species, in "There's One Bjorn Every Minute," only in this special issue of Grist.

only in Grist: There's One Bjorn Every Minute-- in the comic adventures of Zed, last of his species <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/zed/zed121201.asp?source=daily>

only in Grist: Check out the Zed music video, "Extinction is Forever" <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/zed/zed-fun.asp?source=daily>

THERE'S MORE!

Don't miss the rest of this Grist Magazine special issue on Bjorn Lomborg: Norman Myers, David Nemtzow, and Al Hammond tackle Lomborg on biodiversity, energy, and statistics. On the non-science side, Grist Assistant Editor Kathryn Schulz takes a look at the politics behind the statistics, while Santa Claus laments the way Lomborg and his ilk have left him the opposite of high and dry. Plus a roundup of other responses to Lomborg on the web -- all in this special issue of Grist.

only in Grist: Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark -- a skeptical look at "The Skeptical Environmentalist" <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/lomborg121201.asp?source=daily>

12/14/01
3:23:50 PM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

DUPED BY "The Skeptical Environmentalist"

The New York Times, Washington Post,

The Economist and Others Got Suckered

Bjorn Lomborg's new book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," says the Earth's environment is getting better, not worse. Don't fret over ozone depletion, species extinction, or acid rain, Lomborg says. Pesky environmentalists are using bad science to scare us.

A NEW YORK TIMES writer called the book, "a substantial work of analysis." A WASHINGTON POST reviewer gushed over Lomborg's "magnificent achievement." THE ECONOMIST, TIME INTERNATIONAL, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE and many other respected publications swallowed the book whole, legitimized it, and made it a hit.

But the supposedly skeptical press got suckered by the Danish author. Find out how at TomPaine.com.

READ OUR OP AD...

http://www.TomPaine.com/opad

AND READ THESE OP-AD FEATURES...

THE TABLOID ENVIRONMENTALIST

How a Pseudo-Scientist Duped the Big Media -- Big Time by Colin Woodard for TomPaine.com "Here's one guy taking on a whole spectrum of issues, who has never written a paper on any of them, and is in opposition to absolutely everyone in the field, Nobel Prize winners and all. It ought to have raised some red flags."

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/12/07/index.html

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK

A skeptical look at "The Skeptical Environmentalist" GristMagazine.com commissioned an extensive series of reviews of Lomborg's book by leading scientists. The series is a devestating rebuttal, and shows just how badly the media got duped. Here's your guide -- with links -- to the series.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/11/1.html

Also at TomPaine.com...

DO UNTO OTHERS Looking at the Hypocrisy of Trade Promotion Authority

by David Case

The Bush administration wants greater power to negotiate trade agreements. Yet since September 11th it's having more trouble than ever abiding by its own "free trade" principles.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/12/11/index.html

HONEY I SHRUNK THE BIOMASS

by Ann Hancock

We are eroding the Earth's biomass at an alarming rate. Our absent-minded destruction of our environment will leave our children wondering how we could so damage our collective future. AUDIO and TEXT produced by Steven Rosenfeld.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/10/index.html

REAL VALUE FOR THE HOLIDAY$

by Betsy Taylor

Only eight percent of Americans think we should use this holiday season to stimulate the economy, while a full 85 percent think we should instead focus on friends, family, and meaning. Some thoughts on how to do that this season.

AUDIO and TEXT produced by Sharon Basco.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/07/index.html

Book Excerpt: Breaking Gridlock

ON TRACK WITH HIGH-SPEED TRAINS

by Jim Motavalli

Looking to the European model of transport may be the answer to America's gridlock woes. But with no electrified track or improved signal capacity outside the Northeast, a national high-speed rail system is still a long ways off.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/04/index.html

WHO'S THE FARE CHEAT?

When Sprawl Hit the Green Mountain State

by David Case

Vermont's new commuter train is the state's innovative answer to gridlock. Instead of throwing more money at already congested highways, officials looked to rail to save the day. So far, it's working.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/06/index.html

CHECK IT OUT!

Tips, Leads, and Links

by The TomPaine.com Staff

Wartime Marketing... American Journalism in Transition... Opt-out or Shut Up... Conflict of Interest?... Changing the Climate... and more.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/12/11/1.html

12/14/01
3:19:10 PM

DAILY MEDIA NEWS

Breaking news stories about the international media, from mainstream and alternative sources.

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

EXCLUSIVE: Global conflict coverage from Globalvision News Network's 150 international news providers

http://www.gvnews.net

EXCLUSIVE: News Dissector's Daily War Report Danny Schechter critiques what's reported - and what's not featuring reader input.

http://www.mediachannel.org/weblog

RACE, VIOLENCE AND THE AUSTRALIAN MEDIA When headlines in Australia screamed "Muslim Rape Gangs!" did they incite more violence? Can Australian media cover race without resorting to racism? A MediaChannel exclusive by Nadya Stani.

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

WORLD IN CRISIS, MEDIA IN CONFLICT In this global conflict, are the news media too controlled and too biased to help us understand the true consequences in Afghanistan, the United States and wherever the war spreads next?

Our special coverage continues, including: * U.S. Media: Covering Up Thousands Of Afghan Deaths? * Why The Web Is Perfect For Propaganda * And much, much more...

http://www.mediachannel.org/atissue/conflict

THE CREDULITY OF THE PRESS In "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Bjorn Lomborg denounced the warnings of Nobel and other scientists. And an all-too-eager press swallowed his conclusions whole. (From TomPaine, World Resources Institute)

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

NEWS DISSECTOR: MEDIA AND HUMAN RIGHTS When international journalists debated news versus propaganda at the UN, they realized human rights and responsibilities go together, says Danny Schechter

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

FREE-PRESS JUSTICE FOR ONLINE NEWS A New York judge ruled last week that online news sites deserve the same First Amendment protections as commercial media, explains winning defendant Al Giordano of NarcoNews. (From Independent Media Center - NYC)

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

12/14/01
3:16:28 PM

EMS Update

Scientists Take Aim at "Skeptical Environmentalist" In his new book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg argues that problems like climate change, deforestation and toxic pollution are imaginary or have already been fixed. The claims don't sit well with Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, who accuses Lomborg of "willful ignorance" and "destructive campaigning." Wilson is one of several world-renowned scientists to offer written critiques of the book.

Find out more: http://www.ems.org

Cheney Energy Secrets Subject of Lawsuit After waiting nearly eight months for a response, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit Tuesday to obtain information about which companies were consulted during the formation of the administration's energy plan.

NRDC press release: http://www.nrdc.org/media/default.asp#1211energy

12/14/01
3:14:51 PM

A Global Call To Action

by John McConnell, Founder of Earth Day

In this new millennium it is imperative the whole human family mobilize for a moral equivalent of World War II. All people who receive this message are urged to quickly choose what they will do. Think about it, talk about it -- and then act.

The Earth Trustee idea of the original Earth Day (March 21, 1970) provides the key: Every individual and institution must now seek to eliminate pollution, poverty and injustice by Earth Trustee choices in ecology, economics and ethics. Thousands of group projects are already helping people and planet. Their impact can increase dramatically by uniting in a global Earth Trustee Campaign with one common cause -- the REJUVENATION of Earth.

Human greed, injustice and folly have almost ruined our planet. But with the aid of new technology a vigorous global effort can repair the damage. Until now, Earth Caretakers have been a sad minority. The most powerful institutions (global corporations and rich governments) have usually put financial profit first. The resulting social and environmental damage is disastrous. But Earth Trustee vision and action can change that. It provides a way for you to tap the best in your thinking and in your faith.

Press, Radio, TV and Internet play a vital role. Actions, good or bad, begin in the mind. Those able to command media attention have a special obligation to speak out about the crisis and its solution -- the Earth Trustee vision and agenda. (See: www.earthsite.org)

Earth Day provides an opportunity for Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, The Dali Lama, and ALL world leaders to call for prayer and heartfelt dedication to the care of Earth -- to think and act as Trustees of Earth. Leaders in other areas of public trust should do the same. The March 20 Earth Day is the day to focus attention on what can be done.

When people think and act as Earth Trustees they will show a reverence for life - and for holy places. Earth Day helped move toward conciliation when it had Shimon Perez of Israel ring the United Nations Peace Bell -- and persuaded Yaser Arafat of Palestine to add his name to the Earth Day Proclamation. Jerusalem is a holy place to Christian, Muslim and Jew and its role in history is important to people of every religion.

Earth Day and its Earth Trustee agenda, puts The Golden Rule to work - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Here is a chance for people of all religions to show their ethical values by being Earth Trustees and practicing reverence for life in word and deed.

Mass media has a sacred obligation as the eyes and ears of the public to: -- Feature solutions as well as problems -- Headline cases of peaceful progress in the human adventure that replace hate, fear, greed and lust. -- Give recognition and attention to people and projects that eliminate pollution and poverty and foster peace, justice and the care of Earth.

With the media's cooperation, each year's Earth Day -- on nature's historic annual event, the March Equinox, will provide a great global holiday with world wide participation by people of every creed and culture. This will inspire actions for Earth's rejuvenation in the new millennium -- with peace, justice and prosperity for all.

John McConnell

1933 Woodbine St.

Ridgewood, NY 11385

http://www.EarthSite.org

12/14/01
3:09:20 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

http://www.utne.com/webwatch

MEXICO'S WAR ON TERROR

by Sam Parry, Consortium News

-- Threats to the lives of two environmentalists from Mexico continue, even after their release from prison and the murder of their lawyer, Digna Ochoa.

IT'S PERSONAL: RACE AND OPRAH

by Tammy Johnson, ColorLines

-- Oprah may have widespread appeal, but her mainstream take on racism has one writer questioning the value of her message.

GRAFFITI WITH OLD SCHOOL VIDEO GAME STYLE

Web site review by Sara Buckwitz, space-invaders.com

-- Need a good theme for your illegal tagging tendencies? If you can't think of your own you can help the anonymous Parisian artist Space Invader plaster the world with tile mosaics of the aliens from the video game Space Invaders.

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

12/14/01
3:07:42 PM

Dissing Democracy

By Robert Parry

Major national news outlets have gone silent in the face of evidence that they published misleading stories about the Florida presidential recount.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Washington Post and other leading news organizations relied on a dubious hypothesis to craft stories last month portraying George W. Bush as the recount winner, when the recount actually showed that Al Gore won if all legally cast votes were counted.

The news outlets assumed, incorrectly as it turned out, that so-called "overvotes," which heavily favored Gore, would have been ignored if the Florida court-ordered recount had been allowed to proceed and that therefore Bush would have won even without the intervention of five conservative allies on the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote," the New York Times front-page headline read. "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush," declared the Washington Post.

After those stories were published on Nov. 12, however, new evidence emerged showing that this pro-Bush hypothesis was wrong. It turned out that the judge in charge of the recount was moving to include the "overvotes" when Bush got the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

But rather than run corrections, the major news organizations chose to duck the fact that they had messed up one of the biggest political stories in U.S. history.

After learning of this foul-up via the Internet, some citizens complained in letters and e-mails, but the news outlets have responded by turning their backs on the complaints. There has been virtually no debate or commentary in the major news media about the mistaken assumption at the heart of those front-page stories.

The silence has sent another message: that the news media believes that something as fundamental to democracy as making sure the person with the most votes wins is a kind of trivial pursuit interesting only to Gore "partisans." In this time of crisis, the news media seems to be saying, it isn't important that the occupant of the White House got there in an anti-democratic fashion -- and if that happens to be the case, it's best not to talk about it.

'Gore Wins'

In their Nov. 12 recount articles, all the leading news organizations downplayed the key fact of the unofficial recount: that a full counting of all legally cast ballots in Florida showed that Al Gore won the state, regardless of what standards were used in judging the chads, whether dimpled, hanging or fully punched through. Gore also won the national popular vote by about 537,000 votes, a number that exceeded the victory margins of John Kennedy in 1960 and Richard Nixon in 1968.

Still, the major news outlets that paid for the recount led their articles with the claim that Bush would have won the election even if five conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened on Dec. 9, 2000, to stop the statewide hand recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.

To construct that lead, the newspapers deleted legally cast votes for Gore and instead used a hypothesis that presumed that the statewide recount would not have counted so-called "overvotes" that broke heavily for Gore. By subtracting the "overvotes" from the total and including only "undervotes," the big media got a number that showed Bush still clinging to a tiny lead.

"Undervotes" were ballots kicked out of voting machines that recognized no vote for president. "Overvotes" were ballots that the machines rejected as having more than one vote for president. However, under Florida law, hand recounts must include those ballots if the intent of the voter is clear.

For instance, if a voter marked a ballot for Gore and then wrote in Gore's name, that should count as a legal vote in Florida, as well as many other states. If an "undervote" revealed a partially pushed through chad, that too could be counted as a legal vote. By counting all the ballots where the intent of the voter was clear, Gore pushed ahead of Bush by margins ranging from 60 to 171 votes depending on the standards used to judge the "undervotes," according to the media recounts.

Besides those legal votes that should have been counted under Florida law, the media recounts estimated that Gore lost tens of thousands of other unrecoverable ballots. Those were lost because of confusing ballot designs, actions by Gov. Jeb Bush's administration purging hundreds of predominantly African-American voters by falsely labeling them felons, and the Bush campaign's success in counting illegally cast absentee ballots in Republican counties while excluding them in Democratic counties.

No adjustments were made for those lost votes in the media recounts, though they help explain why Election Day exit polls showed Gore winning Florida, since he was the choice of a clear plurality of Florida voters.

A Media Miscalculation

But what made the journalistic slant of last month's "Bush Wins Recount" stories indefensible was the erroneous assumption that the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have excluded "overvotes."

In effect, Lewis's instructions foreshadowed a decision to count the "overvotes" because once the votes - that were legal under Florida law - had been identified there would be no legal or logical reason to throw them out, especially since some counties had already included "overvotes" in their counts.

By assuming that the "overvotes" would be cast aside, the major news outlets had failed to take into account the judge in charge of the recount.

Punishing Journalists

Normally when serious journalistic errors are made on high-profile stories, a media firestorm ensues. Even when stories are just hyped - not dead wrong - editorialists and media critics rush to rap the knuckles of the offending reporters.

Remember, the furor over a CNN report quoting former U.S. military officials seeming to confirm that poison gas was used on defectors and other sensitive targets during the Vietnam War. Press critics demanded a retraction, CNN admitted flaws in the reporting, and two producers lost their jobs amid public humiliation.

Remember, too, Gary Webb's stories about the CIA tolerating cocaine trafficking by Nicaraguan contra forces, leading to the introduction of crack cocaine in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. Though the CIA inspector general eventually confirmed that the CIA and the Reagan-Bush administration had protected contra-cocaine trafficking, major newspapers concentrated their wrath on Webb for supposedly exaggerating CIA malfeasance. He, too, lost his job, at the San Jose Mercury News. [For details, see Robert Parry's Lost History.]

In the Florida recount screw-up, however, the major news organizations simply turned a deaf ear to the fact that their core assumption was wrong. No one apparently will pay any price.

More significantly, the vast majority of Americans probably have no idea that they were misled by those stories. Millions of Internet readers may know the truth and some Americans may have heard the news by word of mouth, but the big media's refusal to revisit an embarrassing mistake has guaranteed that most voters will remain uninformed.

But the most fitting final comment on Election 2000 may be the silence of major news outlets in the face of evidence that they misreported the results of their own recount - and in doing so, awarded legitimacy to George W. Bush, the man who lost the election but won the White House.

For more on studies about the election results, see

http://www.Consortiumnews.com

stories of May 12, June 2, July 16, Nov. 12, and Nov. 22.

In the 1980s, writing for the Associated Press and Newsweek, Robert Parry broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra Affair. His latest book is Lost History, a study of how propaganda has altered Americans' understanding of their recent history.

Read the entire article at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/120601a.html

12/14/01
3:04:53 PM

Genocidal Thought in the Land

by Scott McConnell

CONTEMPLATING GENOCIDE

We are in at a strange and pivotal moment in America's history. As the Christmas season commences there are reasons for hope: the early success of our forces in Afghanistan, and the fact - anticipated by few in September and October - that that the Taliban's grip on the Afghan population's loyalty was minimal. There is much that is hellish about this war, but the smiles of women who are suddenly allowed to show their faces, the kite flying, the music, the images of a people undergoing genuine liberation make up for a lot. Yet there are signs that that this victory could soon turn rancid. One can hear the beginning of murmurs for fresh blood - for campaigns directed not against those who plotted and abetted the 9-11 terror, but against all Arabs, even all Muslims. They are, so far, only murmurs. But they come not from the America's patriotic working class or vast middle class, but from the society's highly educated elite. Were they ever to be translated into American policy, they would set this country on a course that in another time and place led those in charge of a nation similarly filled with a belief in its own destiny and the need for strong measures to be put on trial at Nuremberg.

A CHUCKLE IN MANHATTAN

The other day a friend described to me a dinner party he had attended. Present were prominent editors, publishers, businessmen - some with names easily recognizable to the general public. In the course of the evening a guest suggested, as a joke of course, that American planes could bomb the Aswan Dam, flooding and killing millions of innocent Egyptians. Chuckles all around. One hopes that at least one person spoke up to say that it was not all that funny, or even point out that many of the millions of Egyptians who would die have no more connection to the 9-11 attacks than Gilligan and the Skipper. But if so, it didn't penetrate the mood of general amusement and chin-stroking satisfaction that contemplation of such an attack afforded the guests. And the company, remember, was not tattooed yahoos from the American heartland - those whose moral imagination is so often sneered at by Manhattan sophisticates - but men who would be welcome in any New York City boardroom.

MORAL BLINDERS IN CYBERSPACE

I participate in several e-mail lists. One of them is particularly ideologically diverse. Its participants include several prestigious, even famous, professors, most men far more learned than I. The other day, someone, in a fit of irritated sarcasm, posted a retort to someone else who was making the case for a wider war - "Phase 2" as it is now known. Arming the "Iraqi opposition" and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the satirist wrote, wouldn't be nearly enough. Instead we could use nuclear bombs over much of Arabia, and then smallpox to thin out the major population areas - a small price to pay for gas at 25 cents a gallon.

In satire, almost anything can be said. But what was shocking to me was that some on the list apparently did not recognize the post as satire. They responded - "well, maybe we don't need to go so far, but..."

JUSTIFYING GENOCIDE Saturday evening, I am descending in my apartment's elevator. Another family gets on, a young guy with his wife and two kids in tow. He is talking excitedly. "Wipe out all the Arabs," he is saying to his wife as he enters the car. "I heard Netanyahu on TV," he goes on, in a softer voice now that he sees he is not alone, "and he said we could do just like America does." I stifle the rebuke rising in my throat, at least until the young man and his family are out of earshot.

THE TWO WARS

The two streams are now flowing closer and closer together in the minds of much of the American establishment: America's war against terror and Israel's war against the Palestinians. Combined, they are generating a synergy of emotion, in which anger, adrenaline, the senses of hubris and self-justification are not doubled, but squared or cubed.

But the two wars, Israel's and our own, are not symmetrical - not logically, not morally. Indeed, if there is a moral symmetry, it is to be found in Israel's war on the Palestinians and the Palestinians' war on Israel.

While General Zinni is right to describe Saturday's suicide bomber attacks on Jerusalem and Haifa as absolute evil, what words adequately summarize the Israeli antipersonnel booby trap which killed five Palestinian boys on the way to school in Gaza a few days earlier? The death toll was only five, not twenty-five - not nearly as bad. Indeed, the children were probably not the intended targets of the Israeli weapon, simply the people most likely to be destroyed by it, if you took a moment to think about it. And, who knows, perhaps the kids might have, in the past, thrown rocks at the Israeli guard tower that oversees the settlement planted in their midst. It is clear that their parents, friends, relatives will never be convinced that their death was justified. Israel has not apologized for the killings, denounced them (it could hardly denounce itself) or admitted error. The moral calculations become more difficult.

Difficult enough, that the best one might do is to pray for the wisdom of President Bush and his advisors in the weeks to come - pray with the full knowledge that they are hearing now, and will continue to hear, plenty of dark and morally obscene counsel from some of this country's most influential citizens.

http://www.antiwar.com/mcconnell/mc-col.html

12/14/01
2:59:49 PM

No Longer In The Wilderness

1,000 Turn Out In Oregon to Hear Mike Ruppert Expose Government Complicity in the WTC, Pentagon Attacks

FTW, December 5, 2001 - On November 28th an estimated 1,000 people came from as far away as Seattle and San Francisco to Portland State University to see FTW Publisher/Editor Mike Ruppert give a 2 ½ hour lecture and documentary presentation on the events surrounding the September 11th attacks and their aftermath. Starting with an offer of $1,000 to anyone who could show that any of the sources he cited were not authentic or misrepresented, Ruppert launched into an display of more than 40 visual exhibits showing government complicity in and foreknowledge of the attacks.

The event was organized by the campus newspaper The Rear Guard and its editor Dimitris Desyllas. "I never expected that we would have this kind of turnout," Desyllas said. "But it is obvious that the public has very deep concerns about what we are being told and what the government is doing. We eventually brought in 860 chairs and there were people all around the walls and on the floor." One of the volunteer videographers at the event was a Native American spiritual teacher of the Dakota Sioux nation, Skip Mahawk. Mahawk, then with the 101st Airborne Division, won the Congressional Medal of Honor at the legendary 1969 Vietnam War battle known as Hamburger Hill. Mahawk refused to accept the decoration.

Ruppert's lecture was full of documentary evidence. After pointing out - among other things - that the Chief of Pakistani intelligence (approved for his position by the CIA) ordered a $100,000 wire transfer to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta; that the Bush family had business dealings with the bin Laden family through the Carlyle Group, that the U.S. and British governments had extensive military deployments already in the area before the attacks, and that the Bush administration had ordered the FBI to stop investigating two relatives of Osama bin Laden living near CIA headquarters this January, Ruppert launched into the centerpiece of the lecture which was a visual presentation of his timeline of events around September 11th - which left some members of the audience in tears.

See: http://www.copvcia.com/stories/nov_2001/lucy.html

Special attention was also paid a newly resurrected Unocal pipeline to transport oil and natural gas from the Central Asian republics to the Pakistani coast for sale to China and Japan. Henry Kissinger is on both ends of that deal.

Audience reaction and anger was strongest as Ruppert presented selected quotes from "The Grand Chessboard," a 1997 book by former Carter National Security Advisor and member of the Trilateral commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Those quotes - along with maps of Central Asia - indicated clearly that the current war had been in the planning stages for at least four years. Two particular quotes from Brzezinski indicating the need for a Pearl Harbor-like attack evoked boos and hisses for the intelligence expert and professor who also served in the Reagan Administration.

Ruppert closed the lecture with an analysis of the assault on American civil liberties since September 11th in the form of the so-called PATRIOT Act and several unilateral decisions made by President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft which have effectively nullified three amendments to the Bill of Rights and taken away part of another. He also showed documentary evidence from Congress supporting his claim that the Bush administration was going to loot the Social Security Trust Fund.

The audience responded to the lecture with a two minute standing ovation.

Mike Ruppert's website and information on his subscriber-based newsletter "From The Wilderness" is located at http://www.copvcia.com. Anyone interested in arranging a 2002 lecture appearance can obtain additional information by contacting the office manager at 818-788-8791 or by emailing mailto:service@copvcia.com.

Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413

(818)788-8791 fax(818)981-2847

mailto:mruppert@copvcia.com

12/14/01
2:53:43 PM

Bush Cabal Heaven: The American Imperial Era Begins by Al Martin

According to the Friendly Colonel, the FBI had prior knowledge of "a major attack on a commercial target" -- at least two years before the event took place.

http://www.almartinraw.com/column38.html

9-11 - Where was the CIA?

This is groundwork to understand the resources of the cabal behind world suppression

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=170869&article=10&show_parent=1

12/14/01
2:43:29 PM

THE RISE OF THE FOURTH REICH

Everyone likes to say, "Hitler did this", and, "Hitler did that". But the truth is Hitler did very little. He was a world class tyrant, but the evil actually done by the Third Reich, from the death camps to WW2 was all done by German citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was the truth or not, and who because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.

The German people of the late 1930s imagined themselves to be brave. They saw themselves as the heroic Germans depicted by the Wagnerian Operas, the descendants of the fierce Germanic warriors who had hunted wild boars with nothing but spears and who had defeated three of Rome's mightiest legions in the Tuetenberg Forest.

But in truth, by the 1930s, the German people had become civilized and tamed, culturally obsessed with fine details in both science and society. Their self-image of bravery was both salve and slavery. Germans were required to behave as if they were brave, even when they were not.

It's easy to look back and realize what a jerk Hitler was. But at the time, Hitler looked pretty good to the German people, with the help of the media. He was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938. The German people assumed they were safe from a tyrant. They lived in a Republic, after all, with strict laws regarding what the government could and more importantly could not do. Their leader was a devoutly religious man, and had even sung with the boy's choir of a monastery in his youth.

The reality was that the German people, as individuals, had lost their courage. The German government preferred it that way as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But the German people didn't wish to lose their self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a situation demanding individual courage, in the form of a government gone wrong, the German people simply pretended that the situation did not exist. And in that simple self-deception lay the ruin of an entire nation and the coming of the second World War.

When the Reichstag burned down, most Germans simply refused to believe suggestions that the fire had been staged by Hitler himself. They were afraid to. But so trapped were the Germans by their belief in their own bravery that they willed themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that they could nod in agreement with Der Fuhrer while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoided the one situation which most required real courage; to stand up to Hitler's lies and deceptions.

When Hitler requested temporary extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned under German law, but powers Hitler claimed he needed to have to deal with the "terrorists", the German people, having already sold their souls to their self-delusions, agreed. The temporary powers were conferred, and once conferred lasted until Germany itself was destroyed.

When Hitler staged a phony invasion from Poland, the vast majority of the German people, their own self-image dependent on continuing blindness to Hitler's deceptions, did not question why Poland would have done something so stupid, and found themselves in a war. But Hitler knew he ruled a nation of cowards, and knew he had to spend the money to make the new war something cowards could fight and win. He decorated his troops with regalia to make them proud of themselves, further trapping them in their self-image. Hitler copied the parade regalia of ancient Rome, to remind the Germans of the defeat of the legions at the Tuetenberg Forest. Talismans were added from orthodox religions and the occult to fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical strengths and an afterlife if they fell in battle. Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the enemy face to face, Hitler spent vast sums of money on his wonder weapons, airplanes, submarines, ultra-long range artillery, the world's first cruise missile and the world's first guided missile, weapons that could be used to kill at a distance, so that those doing the killing need not have to face the reality of what they were doing.

The German people were lured into WW2 not because they were brave, but because they were cowards who wanted to be seen as brave, and found that shooting long range weapons at people they could not see took less courage than standing up to Hitler. Sent into battle by that false image of courage, the Germans were dependent on their wonder-weapons. When the wonder-weapons stopped working, the Germans lost the war.

I remember as a child listening to the stories of WW2 from my grandfather and my uncles who had served in Europe. I wondered how the German people could have been so stupid as to have ever elected Hitler dog catcher, let alone leader of the nation. Such is the clarity of historical hindsight. And with that clarity, I see the exact same mechanism that Hitler used at work here in this nation.

The American people imagine themselves to be brave. They see themselves as the heroic Americans depicted by Western Movies, the descendants of the fierce patriot warriors who had tamed the frontier and defeated the might of the British Empire.

But in truth, by the dawn of the third millennium, the American people have become civilized and tamed, culturally obsessed with fine details in both science and society. Their self-image of bravery is both salve and slavery. Americans are required to behave as if they are brave, even when they are not.

The American people assume they are safe. They live in a Republic, after all, with strict laws regarding what the government can and more importantly cannot do. Their leader is a devoutly religious man.

The reality is that the American people, as individuals, have lost their courage. The government prefers it that way as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But Americans don't wish to lose their self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a situation demanding courage, in the form of a government gone wrong, the American people simply pretend that the situation does not exist.

When the World Trade Towers collapsed, most Americans simply refused to believe suggestions that the attacks had been staged by parties working for the US Government itself. Americans were afraid to, even as news reports surfaced proving that the US Government had announced plans for the invasion of Afghanistan early in the year, plans into which the attacks on the World Trade Towers which angered the American people into support of the already-planned war fit entirely too conveniently. But so trapped are Americans by their belief in their own bravery that they will themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that they can nod in agreement with the government while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoid the one situation which most requires real courage; to stand up to the government's lies and deceptions. The vast majority of the American people, their own self-image dependent on continuing blindness to the government's deceptions, never question why Afghanistan would have done something so stupid as to attack the United States, and as a result, Americans find themselves in a war.

Now the US Government has requested temporary extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned under Constitutional law, but powers the government is claiming they need to have to deal with the "terrorists". The American people, having already sold their souls to their self-delusions, are agreeing. The temporary powers recently conferred will be no more temporary in America than they were in Germany.

The US Government knows they rule a nation of cowards. The government has had to spend the money to make the new war something cowards can fight. The government has decorated the troops with regalia to make them proud of themselves, further trapping them in their self-image. Talismans are added from orthodox religions and the occult to fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical strengths and an afterlife if they fall in battle. Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the enemy face to face, the United States government has spent vast sums of money on wonder weapons, airplanes, submarines, ultra-long range artillery, cruise missiles, and guided missiles, weapons that kill at a distance, so that those doing the killing need not have to face the reality of what they are doing.

As I mentioned above, Hitler was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938. Stalin was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year for 1939 and 1942. Both of these men, and many others also celebrated by the media, were unimaginable monsters. The lesson from these facts is that it isn't easy to spot a genocidal tyrant when you live with one, especially one whom the press supports and promotes. Tyrants become obvious only when looking back, after what they have done becomes known. The German people did not standup to Hitler because their media betrayed them, just as the American media is betraying the American people by willingly, voluntarily, even proudly, abandoning its traditional role as watchdog against government abuse.

It is the very nature of power that it attracts the sort of people who should not have it. The United States, as the world's last superpower, is a prize that attracts men and women willing to do absolutely anything to win that power, and hence are also willing to do absolutely anything with that power once they have it. If one thinks about it long enough, one will realize that all tyrants, past and most especially present, MUST use deception on their population to initiate a war. No citizen of a modern industrialized nation will send their children off to die in a war to grab another nation's resources and assets, yet resources and assets are what all wars are fought over. The nation that wishes to initiate a war of conquest must create the illusion of an attack or a threat to start a war, and must always give their population of cowards an excuse never to question that carefully crafted illusion.

It is naive, not to mention racist to assume that tyrants appear only in other nations and that somehow America is immune simply because we're Americans. America has escaped the clutches of a dictatorship thus far only through the efforts of those citizens who, unlike the Germans of the 1930s, have the moral courage to stand up and point out where the government is lying to the people. And unless more Americans are willing to have that kind of individual courage, then future generations may well look back on the American people with the same harshness of judgment with which we look back on the 1930s Germans.

Author unknown

12/14/01
2:31:03 PM

U.S. Terror Attacks Galvanize Europeans to Tighten Laws France, Spain, Germany and other European nations have proposed laws to fight international terrorism more restrictive than those used against domestic terrorists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/international/europe/06EURO.html

Explosions on Flight 587 (Another cover up!) Several people saw 2 explosions before the plane fell apart

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12022001/commentary/35535.htm

ACLU President - Testimony Before Senate, on Dangers Posed by the PATRIOT Bill

http://www.truthout.com/12.08C.ACLU.Senate.htm

Lords 'sabotage' forces concessions on terror bill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,615395,00.html

12/14/01
2:25:55 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

CENTRAL FLORIDA DRINKING WATER COULD RUN OUT IN FIVE YEARS

By Donald Sutherland

ORLANDO, Florida, December 11, 2001 (ENS) - Water management officials in central Florida warn the region has supplies of drinking water that will last just five more years if current unfettered growth and projected drinking water demand is not abated.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-11-02.html

GULF WAR SERVICE LINKED TO LOU GEHRIG'S DISEASE

WASHINGTON, DC, December 11, 2001 (ENS) - Gulf War veterans are more than twice as likely to suffer from Lou Gehrig's disease than their military counterparts who did not serve in the conflict, the Department of Veterans Affairs revealed Monday. The agency examined the records of almost 2.5 million veterans for the study, which represents the first official acknowledgment of a link between illness and service in the Gulf.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-11-06.html

AIRPLANE CABIN AIR MAY BE UNHEALTHY

WASHINGTON, DC, December 11, 2001 (ENS) - Holiday travelers may run into unhealthy air while in the air, suggests a new report by the National Research Council. The researchers conclude that air in airplane cabins sometimes fails to meet federal health standards, and urge the Federal Aviation Administration to investigate whether regulations governing the air quality are adequate to protect public health.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-11-07.html

OCEAN GOVERNANCE INADEQUATE, WARNS WORLD CONSERVATION UNION

WASHINGTON, DC, December 11, 2001 (ENS) - Half the world's population is living on the coasts, and human impacts on the coastal and marine environments are growing. It will take improvements in international ocean governance to deal with fisheries depletion and deteriorating marine conditions, especially due to pollution, concludes a new report released late last month by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-11-01.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: DECEMBER 11, 2001

Energy Department Sued Over Task Force Papers

Forest Service Accused of Misusing Fire Funds

Alaskan Glaciers Retreating

Commercial Fishing Gear Impacts Get Second Look

Grand Canyon Fish Face Extinction

MIT Researchers Seek Clean Water For Nepal

Oil Spill Kills Birds Off California Coast

Larceny Comes Naturally to Northwestern Crows

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-11-09.html

12/14/01
2:21:20 PM

God works in mysterious ways

THE SATURDAY NIGHT CALL

On a Saturday night several weeks ago, this pastor was working late, and decided to call his wife before he left for home. It was about 10:00 PM, but his wife didn't answer the phone. The pastor let it ring many times.

He thought it was odd that she didn't answer, but decided to wrap up a few things and try again in a few minutes. When he tried again she answered right away. He asked her why she hadn't answered before, and she said that it hadn't rung at their house.

They brushed it off as a fluke and went on their merry ways. The following Monday, the pastor received a call at the church office, which was the phone that he'd used that Saturday night. The man that he spoke with wanted to know why he'd called on Saturday night.

The pastor couldn't figure out what the man was talking about. Then the man said, "It rang and rang, but I didn't answer." The pastor remembered the mishap and apologized for disturbing him, explaining that he'd intended to call his wife.

The man said, "That's OK. Let me tell you my story. You see, I was planning to commit suicide on Saturday night, but before I did, I prayed, 'God if you're there, and you don't want me to do this, give me a sign now.'

At that point my phone started to ring. I looked at the caller ID, and it said, 'Almighty God'. I was afraid to answer!"

The reason why it showed on the man's caller ID that the call came from "Almighty God" is because the church that the pastor attends is called Almighty God Tabernacle!!

12/14/01
2:15:28 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.12

FEINSTEIN | Calls for Enron Senate Investigation

http://www.truthout.com/12.12A.Feinstein.Enron.htm

Bush to Renounce ABM Treaty

http://www.truthout.com/12.12B.Bush.Out.ABM.htm

NEVADA Will Defend Yucca Mountain in Court

http://www.truthout.com/12.12C.Nevada.Resist.htm

Norton / Assistant Go on Trial for Contempt

http://www.truthout.com/12.12D.Norton.Contempt.htm

Report : Norton / BLM Mismanagement of Indian Funds

http://www.truthout.com/12.12E.Indian.Money.htm

Records Tell of Wild Horse Killings

http://www.truthout.com/12.12F.Horse.Killings.htm

DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe Statement on Bush Social Insecurity Commission

http://www.truthout.com/12.12G.McAuliffe.SS.htm

12/11/01
10:54:45 PM

World's Water Capacity Shrinking

Environment News Service

BONN, Germany, December 4, 2001 (ENS) - The reservoirs of the world are losing their capacity to hold water as erosion brings silt down to settle in behind dams, the chief of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned today.

Speaking to the Bonn International Conference on Freshwater, UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said that siltation is reducing the capacity of the world's reservoirs to hold water, a result that is hastened by the clearcutting of forests.

"The issue of dams can arouse strong passions on both sides," Toepfer told the delegates. "Some people are very much in favor of building dams and others are vehemently against. However, what we are talking about here is the state and fate of the existing stock of dams and reservoirs on whose waters billions of people depend for not only irrigation and drinking water, but also for industry and the production of hydroelectricity."

Toepfer, a former German environment minister, counseled careful management of the world's stocks of fresh, drinkable water. "It would seem prudent and sensible for us to manage the existing stock in the most sustainable way possible. Otherwise we face increasing pressure on natural areas with water, such as wetlands and underground aquifers, with potentially devastating environmental consequences to wildlife and habitats," he said.

In response, UNEP has launched a new Dams and Development Project (DDP), to address siltation and other serious environmental effects of dam development.

Based in South Africa, the Dams and Development Project, known as the DDP Unit, is a follow up to the work of the World Commission on Dams, publisher of an in-depth report on the environmental impact of large dams in November 2000.

The new DDP Unit has secured funding and pledges of over $2.5 million from the governments of Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Sustainable management of reservoirs will take a central role in its work.

None too soon for Rodney White, author of "Evacuation of Sediments from Reservoirs" and a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. White is warning the world's leaders to pay more attention to the capacity of the world's dams to hold water.

"The loss of capacity of the world's dams should be of highest concern for governments across the globe, and at the moment I do not believe this issue is commanding the attention it deserves," White said.

"The demand for water is rising, not falling, as the population of the planet climbs from six billion today to an estimated 10 billion by 2050. I am extremely concerned," said White, "that water shortages in some of the poorer parts of the world will intensify unless we act to reduce reservoir sedimentation and conserve storage in existing dams using sound management techniques. Sediment removal should be a fundamental feature in the design of dams and their associated infrastructure." In view of the "threat of global warming," Toepfer urged the planting of forests across the globe. "We must act to reduce the loss of forests and to reforest cleared areas as part of a comprehensive strategy of watershed management of the world's river systems," he said.

"There will always be natural levels of erosion that will contribute to a loss of water storage capability," Toepfer acknowledged, and called on engineers to provide "technical solutions that offer environmentally friendly ways of extending the lives of the world's reservoirs."

Jeremy Bird, interim coordinator of the DDP Unit, said next week, a meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, they would be looking at how to improve the performance of reservoirs and dams across a wide range of functions from agriculture to power generation.

12/11/01
10:44:15 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Chrysler offers fuel cell van with soapy twist - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13671/story.htm

California urged not to delay MTBE phaseout in gasoline - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13683/story.htm

US nuclear plants face downtime for reactor cracks - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13685/story.htm

Albatross' ill-omened appetite sparks US action - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13679/story.htm

UK consumers call for end to EU agriculture policy - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13677/story.htm

UPDATE - UK says greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain down - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13670/story.htm

Most Britons oppose new nuclear power plants - poll - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13673/story.htm

UPDATE - UK refineries on alert over river pilots strike - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13680/story.htm

Sweden sees Barseback reactor closure by end - 2003 - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13672/story.htm

Greens see red as Norway plans Arctic coal mine - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13669/story.htm

US experts to plug oil, gas spill at Indian well - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13678/story.htm

UPDATE - Firemen hurt in Frankfurt chemical plant blaze - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13684/story.htm

Norddeutsche bids to recyle old EU coins - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13682/story.htm

Protesters occupy TotalFinaElf head's chateau - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13681/story.htm

UPDATE - Oil spill hits Finnish island, source unknown - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13668/story.htm

Bulgaria surprises EU, says wants to join in 2004 - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13675/story.htm

FEATURE - Brazil's Indians take path toward medicinal patents - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13676/story.htm

Think big, Europe's offshore wind farms urged - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13674/story.htm

12/11/01
10:35:58 PM

DEeclaration Of Planetary Rights

By John McConnell

(Copyrighted 1969 WE, Inc. Anyone may quote or print this article so long as they indicate the author, John McConnell.)

Concerning the rights of all people to Earth's land, sea, minerals, oil and other natural resources.

1. That all men are created equally free and independent and have among their inalienable rights certain fundamental property rights during their sojourn on this planet.

2. That a beneficent Creator has provided this Earth-home, this nest in the stars, with an abundance of land and natural resources; enough that with care and cooperation a good life can be enjoyed by all members of the family of man.

3. That among the equal rights of men is the right to an equal share in nature's bounty; a right of each man [person] to his planetary inheritance -- his share of land, water, minerals or an appropriate equivalent in food, housing or other benefits. No one can, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity, or any other man's posterity, of the right to his portion or Earth. All natural resources belong equally to every living person.

4. That steps should be taken to compensate for, or other wise adjust the differences in the present unequal ownership of the gifts of nature. To this end each nation should collect a two percent royalty each year for all use (including its own) of any land or other natural resources. These royalties would be above and apart from taxation for government needs, and be distributed equally to all citizens through quarterly payments, or other appropriate measures. In this way within a fifty year life span there will be full and just compensation to each person for the use of his portion of Earth's natural riches.

5. That since the benefits of nature's bounty can only be realized through man's constructive effort and the wise use of his accumulated knowledge, each person's learning and labor should be encouraged and rewarded. Therefore, no individual, or group should be deprived of any just benefits obtained from Earth's available resources -- so long as fair payment for its use is made to the rest of mankind.

6. That the basic raw materials of the Earth should be made available to all on an equal basis, with due regard for the requirements of conservation; that the United Nations should seek agreements to serve this purpose.

7. That steps be taken by the United Nations to assure that the use and exploitation of the sea and sea floor will be equally available to people of all nations, subject to careful conservation regulations and supervision; and that in addition to fees for its services, the United Nations will collect royalties for the use of the sea and sea floor to be distributed equally among the ultimate owners -- all the people of this Earth.

8. That as these steps toward social justice and cooperation demonstrate their advantage, all nations should seek to adjust the remaining differences among them in natural resources benefits through participation in a natural resource Royalties pool, whereby equal royalty payments would be paid each and every member of the whole human family. These steps toward realization of global property rights will encourage cooperation, individual initiative, and responsibility; they will make feasible full production with ever-growing peaceful progress as we explore the nature of man and his place in the universe, and find new ways to encourage and inspire his highest potentials.

Source: http://www.EarthSite.org

12/11/01
10:33:04 PM

9-11 Crisis - Back to Basics 12-12-01

By John McConnell, 86 year old founder of Earth Day and its Earth Trustee agenda

The destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists has affected the global state of mind and may become a turning point in history. It killed over 4,000 people -- people of every creed and culture. There was a feeling everywhere that the crime was against all of us. The shock brought a sense of our shared humanity. Paradoxically, the violence of 9-11 united us in altruistic concern about the future and a desire to take action.

The question is "What shall we do?" Can we in our diversity of creeds and cultures find an agenda all can warmly support?

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON THE STATE OF THE WORLD AND WHAT TO DO

Overview -- The Human Adventure

When I was a young man my preacher father wrote a tract, "What's Life All About." At this time of global crisis many people are asking that question.

In the last century we became more aware of the many different cultures and religions that cover our globe. Then our venture into Space made us know that we had only one Earth and that the future would be largely determined by the human family - which now covered the globe.

Today we have incredible knowledge and technology. If it is used for good the whole world has a better future. Misused, it will destroy civilization.

In this brief article, I want to provide different perspectives on the human adventure. They call attention to important matters in which we agree and how we can unite in a common cause - a sustainable future. (At the same time we must recognize our differences and how to accommodate them.)

RELIGION

Many people feel their religion holds the answer to a better future. They view life from the perspective of their religion.

The religions of Earth (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.) are an important factor in what people think and do. Unfortunately, mass media largely ignores this fact. In the newspapers and TV programs you will find far more space for football than for religious news and events.

Most religions teach the Golden Rule and profess to favor justice and fair play (though many times their words are not followed by actions). However, we are conditioned to focus on differences. We need to find and focus on a great common cause all can support. The solution is a compelling agenda that will appeal to all and leave room for differences.

Awareness of this led to my efforts to make Earth Day the Great Day of Earth: A global event that could bring together the whole human family on one special day each year.

This day calls attention to the Earth Trustee Agenda, which on several occasions at the United Nations has fostered peaceful resolution of conflict, justice for all and environmental actions for a sustainable future. The Earth Trustee vision and agenda provides a key solution to our problems.

EARTH TRUSTEE AGENDA

"Let every individual and institution now think and act as an Earth Trustee, making choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will eliminate pollution, poverty and violence, awaken the wonder of life and nurture people and planet."

POWER PROBLEM

Lord Acton stated, "Power Corrupts." All around us are examples of this. While motives are mixed and many altruists seek financial success with the idea they will use their wealth for good, they repeatedly push up the amount they need for themselves before they give. There are exceptions. I knew George Pepperdine who practiced what he preached and gave 10% when he was poor and kept raising the amount as he prospered. When he sold his auto supply business he formed the Pepperdine Foundation -- and the Pepperdine University.

Most of the time money power is misused to obtain more power. The solution is a heartfelt sense of responsibility on the part of the individual and an open, fair economic system that would reward honest service and eliminate the drones who on Wall Street and in the banking business make money without rendering an honest service.

We need to restructure the Stock Market and the banking system. But until that is done, let us try to invest money in ventures that are aiding the environment, health, education, home ownership, etc. -- even though the returns are less.

WHO OWNS THE EARTH?

There are many different perspectives on what life is all about and what we should do. There are the perspectives of the scientist, the scholar, the saint. They may each look at a different aspect of what life is all about and have differences on what is important. But I have found that almost everyone agrees with the Earth Trustee Agenda. It provides a common cause and leaves room for differences. The more people think and act the Earth Trustee way, the better our future will be.

Think about it, talk about it, pray about it. Look at our web site:

http://www.EarthSite.org

12/11/01
10:30:54 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE <http://www.gristmagazine.com>

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The fixings for a traditional British turkey dinner could travel more than 24,000 miles before they reach the table, according to a report released yesterday by the U.K. lobby group Sustain. On average, food consumed in Britain travels 50 percent more than it did a decade ago, at the expense of human and environmental health. Sustain said that the country's food system had become "almost completely dependent" on oil, and that internationally, food distribution is a major cause of pollution and climate change. The organization also criticized a food system in which countries essentially swap food. (For example, in 1997, the U.K. imported 33 million gallons of milk and exported 71 million gallons). It urged Britain to improve food quality and safety and protect the environment by supporting local food suppliers.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 11 Dec 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13658/story.htm>

ICE, ICE, MAYBE NOT

The South Pole is treading on thin ice, according to a study presented yesterday that found rapid thinning in three of Antarctica's largest glaciers. In the last 10 years, the glaciers have lost up to 150 feet of thickness, or a collective 37.6 cubic miles of ice. According to the authors of the study, who shared their conclusions during a panel on the effects of global warming on the world's cold regions at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, that's enough to raise the world's sea levels one-sixtieth of an inch single-handedly (so to speak). At current melting rates, the glaciers could begin to float in 150 years and would vanish in around 1,500 years -- a long time for us, but a blink of the eye in geological time. Some scientists blame global warming for the melting ice, but others doubt that the relatively small temperature change in the last century could affect Antarctic climes.

straight to the source: New York Times, Kenneth Chang, 11 Dec 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/science/earth/11GEO.html>

SUNDER WATER

The home of one of India's leading environmentalists, Sunderlal Bahuguna, was flooded last week when the Indian government resumed work on the massive Tehri dam project. Bahuguna has spent two decades protesting the project, which is expected to totally submerge the town of Tehri by November. Activists, including author Arundhati Roy, have condemned the project as environmentally destructive, unsafe, and unfair to the tens of thousands of people who will lose their homes and be forced to relocate due to the flooding.

straight to the source: BBC News, Ram Dutt Tripathi, 08 Dec 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1699000/1699418.stm>

ANN OF GREEN STABLES?

"Awful" and "horrible" are just some of the epithets that have been hurled at U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman by farm-state lawmakers. What's drawn their ire is Veneman's effort to overhaul the $20 billion federal farm subsidies program, which she says threatens international trade agreements, supports the wealthiest farmers, and is bad for the environment. She is proud of her reform proposal, which helped double the amount of funding for conservation efforts in the bill being considered by the Senate, but her opponents call her ideas "drastic." Her predecessors in the position say the farm lobby is immensely powerful and warn that she is playing with fire.

straight to the source: New York Times, Elizabeth Becker, 11 Dec 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/politics/11VENE.html>

THAT EXTINCTS!

Environmentalists in Florida are concerned about state plans to weaken protections for the manatee and the red-cockaded woodpecker. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has developed a new set of criteria to gauge what levels of protection animals deserve, and it has indicated that the woodpecker and manatee may now merit lower levels. To qualify as endangered in the state, a species must now have lost at least 80 percent of its population during the past 10 years; a threatened species must have lost at least 50 percent of its population in the last 10 years. Enviros say the criteria will effectively guarantee the extinction of more species. The woodpecker population, for example, has dropped 97 percent in the last century, but not even 50 percent in the last decade.

straight to the source: St. Petersburg Times, Craig Pittman, 10 Dec 2001 <http://www.sptimes.com/News/121001/State/Species__endangered_s.shtml>

12/11/01
10:25:38 PM

My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war

Report by Robert Fisk in Kila Abdullah after Afghan border ordeal

They started by shaking hands. We said "Salaam aleikum" - peace be upon you - then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn't see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

So why record my few minutes of terror and self-disgust under assault near the Afghan border, bleeding and crying like an animal, when hundreds - let us be frank and say thousands - of innocent civilians are dying under American air strikes in Afghanistan, when the "War of Civilisation" is burning and maiming the Pashtuns of Kandahar and destroying their homes because "good" must triumph over "evil"? Some of the Afghans in the little village had been there for years, others had arrived - desperate and angry and mourning their slaughtered loved ones - over the past two weeks. It was a bad place for a car to break down. A bad time, just before the Iftar, the end of the daily fast of Ramadan. But what happened to us was symbolic of the hatred and fury and hypocrisy of this filthy war, a growing band of destitute Afghan men, young and old, who saw foreigners - enemies -in their midst and tried to destroy at least one of them.

Many of these Afghans, so we were to learn, were outraged by what they had seen on television of the Mazar-i-Sharif massacres, of the prisoners killed with their hands tied behind their backs. A villager later told one of our drivers that they had seen the videotape of CIA officers "Mike" and "Dave" threatening death to a kneeling prisoner at Mazar. They were uneducated - I doubt if many could read - but you don't have to have a schooling to respond to the death of loved ones under a B-52's bombs. At one point a screaming teenager had turned to my driver and asked, in all sincerity: "Is that Mr Bush?"

It must have been about 4.30pm that we reached Kila Abdullah, halfway between the Pakistani city of Quetta and the border town of Chaman; Amanullah, our driver, Fayyaz Ahmed, our translator, Justin Huggler of The Independent - fresh from covering the Mazar massacre - and myself.

The first we knew that something was wrong was when the car stopped in the middle of the narrow, crowded street. A film of white steam was rising from the bonnet of our jeep, a constant shriek of car horns and buses and trucks and rickshaws protesting at the road-block we had created. All four of us got out of the car and pushed it to the side of the road. I muttered something to Justin about this being "a bad place to break down". Kila Abdulla was home to thousands of Afghan refugees, the poor and huddled masses that the war has produced in Pakistan.

Amanullah went off to find another car - there is only one thing worse than a crowd of angry men and that's a crowd of angry men after dark -and Justin and I smiled at the initially friendly crowd that had already gathered round our steaming vehicle. I shook a lot of hands -perhaps I should have thought of Mr Bush - and uttered a lot of "Salaam aleikums". I knew what could happen if the smiling stopped. The crowd grew larger and I suggested to Justin that we move away from the jeep, walk into the open road. A child had flicked his finger hard against my wrist and I persuaded myself that it was an accident, a childish moment of contempt. Then a pebble whisked past my head and bounced off Justin's shoulder. Justin turned round. His eyes spoke of concern and I remember how I breathed in. Please, I thought, it was just a prank. Then another kid tried to grab my bag. It contained my passport, credit cards, money, diary, contacts book, mobile phone. I yanked it back and put the strap round my shoulder. Justin and I crossed the road and someone punched me in the back.

How do you walk out of a dream when the characters suddenly turn hostile? I saw one of the men who had been all smiles when we shook hands. He wasn't smiling now. Some of the smaller boys were still laughing but their grins were transforming into something else. The respected foreigner - the man who had been all "salaam aleikum" a few minutes ago - was upset, frightened, on the run. The West was being brought low. Justin was being pushed around and, in the middle of the road, we noticed a bus driver waving us to his vehicle. Fayyaz, still by the car, unable to understand why we had walked away, could no longer see us. Justin reached the bus and climbed aboard. As I put my foot on the step three men grabbed the strap of my bag and wrenched me back on to the road. Justin's hand shot out. "Hold on," he shouted. I did.

That's when the first mighty crack descended on my head. I almost fell down under the blow, my ears singing with the impact. I had expected this, though not so painful or hard, not so immediate. Its message was awful. Someone hated me enough to hurt me. There were two more blows, one on the back of my shoulder, a powerful fist that sent me crashing against the side of the bus while still clutching Justin's hand. The passengers were looking out at me and then at Justin. But they did not move. No one wanted to help.

I cried out "Help me Justin", and Justin - who was doing more than any human could do by clinging to my ever loosening grip asked me - over the screams of the crowd - what I wanted him to do. Then I realised. I could only just hear him. Yes, they were shouting. Did I catch the word "kaffir" - infidel? Perhaps I was was wrong. That's when I was dragged away from Justin.

There were two more cracks on my head, one on each side and for some odd reason, part of my memory - some small crack in my brain -registered a moment at school, at a primary school called the Cedars in Maidstone more than 50 years ago when a tall boy building sandcastles in the playground had hit me on the head. I had a memory of the blow smelling, as if it had affected my nose. The next blow came from a man I saw carrying a big stone in his right hand. He brought it down on my forehead with tremendous force and something hot and liquid splashed down my face and lips and chin. I was kicked. On the back, on the shins, on my right thigh. Another teenager grabbed my bag yet again and I was left clinging to the strap, looking up suddenly and realising there must have been 60 men in front of me, howling. Oddly, it wasn't fear I felt but a kind of wonderment. So this is how it happens. I knew that I had to respond. Or, so I reasoned in my stunned state, I had to die.

The only thing that shocked me was my own physical sense of collapse, my growing awareness of the liquid beginning to cover me. I don't think I've ever seen so much blood before. For a second, I caught a glimpse of something terrible, a nightmare face - my own - reflected in the window of the bus, streaked in blood, my hands drenched in the stuff like Lady Macbeth, slopping down my pullover and the collar of my shirt until my back was wet and my bag dripping with crimson and vague splashes suddenly appearing on my trousers.

The more I bled, the more the crowd gathered and beat me with their fists. Pebbles and small stones began to bounce off my head and shoulders. How long, I remembered thinking, could this go on? My head was suddenly struck by stones on both sides at the same time - not thrown stones but stones in the palms of men who were using them to try and crack my skull. Then a fist punched me in the face, splintering my glasses on my nose, another hand grabbed at the spare pair of spectacles round my neck and ripped the leather container from the cord. I guess at this point I should thank Lebanon. For 25 years, I have covered Lebanon's wars and the Lebanese used to teach me, over and over again, how to stay alive: take a decision - any decision - but don't do nothing.

So I wrenched the bag back from the hands of the young man who was holding it. He stepped back. Then I turned on the man on my right, the one holding the bloody stone in his hand and I bashed my fist into his mouth. I couldn't see very much - my eyes were not only short-sighted without my glasses but were misting over with a red haze - but I saw the man sort of cough and a tooth fall from his lip and then he fell back on the road. For a second the crowd stopped. Then I went for the other man, clutching my bag under my arm and banging my fist into his nose. He roared in anger and it suddenly turned all red. I missed another man with a punch, hit one more in the face, and ran.

I was back in the middle of the road but could not see. I brought my hands to my eyes and they were full of blood and with my fingers I tried to scrape the gooey stuff out. It made a kind of sucking sound but I began to see again and realised that I was crying and weeping and that the tears were cleaning my eyes of blood. What had I done, I kept asking myself? I had been punching and attacking Afghan refugees, the very people I had been writing about for so long, the very dispossessed, mutilated people whom my own country -among others - was killing along, with the Taliban, just across the border. God spare me, I thought. I think I actually said it. The men whose families our bombers were killing were now my enemies too.

Then something quite remarkable happened. A man walked up to me, very calmly, and took me by the arm. I couldn't see him very well for all the blood that was running into my eyes but he was dressed in a kind of robe and wore a turban and had a white-grey beard. And he led me away from the crowd. I looked over my shoulder. There were now a hundred men behind me and a few stones skittered along the road, but they were not aimed at me -presumably to avoid hitting the stranger. He was like an Old Testament figure or some Bible story, the Good Samaritan, a Muslim man - perhaps a mullah in the village - who was trying to save my life.

He pushed me into the back of a police truck. But the policemen didn't move. They were terrified. "Help me," I kept shouting through the tiny window at the back of their cab, my hands leaving streams of blood down the glass. They drove a few metres and stopped until the tall man spoke to them again. Then they drove another 300 metres.

And there, beside the road, was a Red Cross-Red Crescent convoy. The crowd was still behind us. But two of the medical attendants pulled me behind one of their vehicles, poured water over my hands and face and began pushing bandages on to my head and face and the back of my head. "Lie down and we'll cover you with a blanket so they can't see you," one of them said. They were both Muslims, Bangladeshis and their names should be recorded because they were good men and true: Mohamed Abdul Halim and Sikder Mokaddes Ahmed. I lay on the floor, groaning, aware that I might live.

Within minutes, Justin arrived. He had been protected by a massive soldier from the Baluchistan Levies - true ghost of the British Empire who, with a single rifle, kept the crowds away from the car in which Justin was now sitting. I fumbled with my bag. They never got the bag, I kept saying to myself, as if my passport and my credit cards were a kind of Holy Grail. But they had seized my final pair of spare glasses - I was blind without all three - and my mobile telephone was missing and so was my contacts book, containing 25 years of telephone numbers throughout the Middle East. What was I supposed to do? Ask everyone who ever knew me to re-send their telephone numbers?

Goddamit, I said and tried to bang my fist on my side until I realised it was bleeding from a big gash on the wrist - the mark of the tooth I had just knocked out of a man's jaw, a man who was truly innocent of any crime except that of being the victim of the world.

I had spent more than two and a half decades reporting the humiliation and misery of the Muslim world and now their anger had embraced me too. Or had it? There were Mohamed and Sikder of the Red Crescent and Fayyaz who came panting back to the car incandescent at our treatment and Amanullah who invited us to his home for medical treatment. And there was the Muslim saint who had taken me by the arm. And - I realised - there were all the Afghan men and boys who had attacked me who should never have done so but whose brutality was entirely the product of others, of us - of we who had armed their struggle against the Russians and ignored their pain and laughed at their civil war and then armed and paid them again for the "War for Civilisation" just a few miles away and then bombed their homes and ripped up their families and called them "collateral damage".

So I thought I should write about what happened to us in this fearful, silly, bloody, tiny incident. I feared other versions would produce a different narrative, of how a British journalist was "beaten up by a mob of Afghan refugees".

And of course, that's the point. The people who were assaulted were the Afghans, the scars inflicted by us - by B-52s, not by them. And I'll say it again. If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila Abdullah, I would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.

12/11/01
10:21:09 PM

Commentary: Not such a pretty picture

By JEANNE MALMGREN © St. Petersburg Times, published December 10, 2001

In the wild, dolphins don't paint pictures.

Sunset Sam did, once or twice a week, in his indoor tank at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. "Holding" a paintbrush in his teeth, he would lunge out of the water and swipe at a canvas held by a trainer or a visiting celebrity. The resulting works, decidedly abstract, would then be sold in the gift shop or auctioned off.

Sam's reward: a fish or two.

Sam died last week; he had chronic liver trouble and had been losing weight. He was in captivity at the aquarium for 17 years, having been taken there after beaching himself in Old Tampa Bay one spring morning in 1984, when he was about 4.

His passing is a sad occasion for the two generations of kids and their parents who visited him at the small, two-story block building on Memorial Causeway, near Clearwater Beach. For many people, Sam was the only dolphin they would ever see up close and wet. Thousands fell in love with his "smile," the upcurved beak of a bottlenose dolphin.

But Sunset Sam's death is more than an opportunity for nostalgia. It's also a chance to think about how we use captive animals, particularly in Florida.

* * *

For decades, the tourism industry has put animals in the spotlight. Promoters have touted roadside alligator shows. Black bears pacing in tiny cages outside spring-break motels. Tropical birds performing tricks. Killer whales jumping through hoops. Swim-with-a-dolphin programs.

And of course Sunset Sam the painting dolphin, one of the rare artists who was appreciated in his own time.

Tarpon Springs resident Mary Mosley, 63, remembers the roadside shows from her childhood.

"I used to see bears and elephants outside those pecan stands, in the heat, chained by one leg," she said. "I remember my father stopping one time and handing the guy a dollar and saying, "Will you get this animal a bucket of water?' "

Mosley is angry at the culture that allows captivity of animals.

"We're a throwaway society," she said. "We exploit everything."

When Sam's rescuers found him on the beach he was blind in one eye. His liver was damaged. His new keepers decided he wouldn't do well if he was put back in the bay. So they made him a goodwill ambassador.

It wouldn't be fair to equate Sunset Sam's treatment with that of the bear chained by the roadside. The Clearwater Marine Aquarium and many other tourist attractions try to educate visitors about Florida's wildlife. They use display animals as teaching tools, to inspire us to care about other species.

But the fact remains: captive animals live unnatural lives. They're separated from others of their kind. They're made to depend on humans for food and shelter. Their normal behaviors are blunted and redirected, so they'll do tricks that make people clap.

One of nearly 1,000 dolphins in captivity around the world, Sunset Sam had it better than many. He didn't live in a fake lagoon inside a Las Vegas hotel, or at a Zurich discotheque with pumping techno music. He didn't have to take swimmers for rides on his dorsal fin. He wasn't made to "tail walk" or dance the hula, as some performing dolphins are trained to do. The aquarium staff doted on him.

And yet he had to produce the paintings, which sold for $50 apiece in the aquarium gift shop and were auctioned off at fundraisers for hundreds of dollars. And there were plenty of poolside photo ops. Earlier this year, Sam was asked to "predict" the outcome of the Super Bowl. Balls with team logos were thrown in his tank, and he was supposed to choose one. (He went for the Baltimore Ravens. Righto!)

Sam was provided three "girlfriends" over the years -- female dolphins brought in to live with him. Two of them died within a few years. As a result, he spent much of his time alone.

For decades, Richard O'Barry, who trained dolphins for the Flipper TV series, has been involved in rehabilitating and releasing dolphins to the wild, with varying success. He has written two books. In the mid-1990s, a dolphin sanctuary in the Keys where he was "untraining" dolphins fell apart, and he and another man were fined by the federal government for releasing two dolphins without a permit. This summer he successfully released two dolphins that had been in captivity in Guatemala.

In 1987 O'Barry and other activists became concerned about Sam's living conditions. Fearing what they might do, the aquarium stationed police guards around Sam's tank. Federal fisheries officials showed up. Eventually, the dolphin got a new, larger pool -- and then an even larger one.

Last week O'Barry took the news of Sunset Sam's death with a resigned sigh.

"It's always sad when dolphins die in captivity," he said. "He wasn't really living there, he was just surviving."

An indoor tank without sunlight, ocean tides or other sea creatures is an abnormal environment for a dolphin. Their sonar bounces back at them from the concrete walls. They have to swim in endless circles. Instead of chasing live prey all day, they eat dead fish dumped from a bucket.

"You put a human in a concrete box for all these years, they'd go nuts," O'Barry said.

Now a wildlife consultant for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, O'Barry said people should think carefully about what kinds of entertainment they choose.

"I just hope they'll stop buying tickets to see dolphins in captivity. Otherwise, they're teaching kids that it's okay to abuse nature."

Mark Berman of Earth Island Institute, a marine mammal advocacy organization in San Francisco, had harsh words about the captivity of Sunset Sam.

"They turned him into a circus clown, for their own benefit to make money," said Berman. "That was totally irresponsible and totally wrong."

Still, a lot of children and adults derived joy from Sam, there's no doubt. They developed a new respect for marine mammals. The question is: Did they remember him after their minivan left the parking lot?

Mary Mosley said she hadn't visited Sam in a long time.

"I didn't go down there because I couldn't stand to look at him. A beautiful animal kept in those deplorable conditions."

Mosley hopes people will not just mourn Sunset Sam. Like O'Barry, she hopes we're moving into a new way of thinking.

"The day for keeping dolphins in captivity is over," she said firmly.

For Sunset Sam, it's too late. But it's not too late for all dolphins. Let's put away the paintbrushes -- and take the kids out on the bay.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/121001/Floridian/Commentary__Not_such_.shtml

12/11/01
10:17:47 PM

The Nuclear Industry is Not Properly Regulated!

The Precautionary Principle states that if you don't know how much damage something might be able to cause, you should assume the worst.

The Hippocratic Oath states (among other things, some dated), "first, do no harm".

The Smart Gambler knows to "never bet more than you can afford to lose".

Nuclear power, as a solution to our energy needs, violates all these basic tenets.

The Peter Principle states that an employed person will "rise to their level of incompetence" and remain there.

There appear to be no employees at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who are competent at their level of authority.

Murphy's Law, while not scientifically proven, appears to be a sadly accurate "rule of thumb" to live by: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time."

The nuclear power industry believes it will never suffer a catastrophic sequence of "unlikely" events. If that is true, they would be unique in the history of human endeavor.

Another saying is simply this: "Nobody's Perfect".

But the nuclear industry assumes it will be.

So, in violation of many of the most basic "truisms" of human living, the Nuclear Mafia continue to create tons and tons of High Level Radioactive Waste (HLRW) every day. Each nuclear power plant produces, on average, about 50 tons of year of HLRW and more than 150 tons of so-called Low Level Radioactive Waste (LLRW), which is just HLRW with filler added (metal, plastic, cloth, water, etc.). "Filler" which might once have been recyclable material, but now it's not.

The 103 operating nuclear power plants thus produce about 10,000,000 pounds of HLRW per year, and at least 30,000,000 pounds, and a huge physical volume, of LLRW per year. This is a lot of crap. And it doesn't even include the waste created from the rest of the "nuclear fuel cycle".

There are NO safe disposal methods for this waste. Yucca Mountain? Unlikely to ever become a reality on both scientific and political grounds. Transmutation? Only partially effective and incredibly expensive. Vitrification? Doesn't work! Reprocessing? Expensive, dangerous, can create bomb materials along the way, requires transporting the waste all over the country.

What's left? Shoot it into space? Way too dangerous; the Yucca Mountain team considered the idea but it was rejected resoundingly. (NASA does it anyway, calling their nuclear waste missions "deep space probes".)

There's nothing left to do but to stop creating more nuclear waste. There are clean energy solutions! There is no need to burden ourselves and our progeny with ever-increasing mountains of HLRW and LLRW. Wind, wave, tide, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass and other renewable energy solutions are available TODAY and are cost-competitive in the short run and extremely cost-competitive in the long run.

DON'T BUY THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY HYPE! SHUT 'EM DOWN NOW!!!

For a look at how to build clean energy solutions:

http://www.animatedsoftware.com/geni/rh2000ge.htm

12/11/01
10:13:32 PM

There Is A Difference Between Dissent And Treason

by Richard Reeves

WASHINGTON - So, the attorney general of the United States tells me: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists."

Well, screw you, buddy! What are you trying to say? Are you saying that anyone who talks about civil rights, civil liberties and the freedom that makes us Americans is a traitor in this undeclared but loudly proclaimed war?

I have messages for you, Mr. Attorney General John Ashcroft, former governor, former senator and all-round political perpetual: (1) I am no traitor, and neither is anyone else who questions sweeping expansion of government power to search people's homes and minds; (2) if someone or something has to be blamed and castigated for the breakdown in American security analysis that occurred so horrifically on Sept. 11, we should start with the foul-ups of the government itself in allowing terrorist networks to develop almost openly over the past 10 years.

Start by searching you own record, sir. Take a hard look at what the FBI and the CIA have been doing instead of setting them on ordinary citizens with new powers to tap, bug, search, seize, detain and arrest. The people supposed to be watching over us have responded to their own failures in watching our enemies by saying that now they need more power to watch us.

That said, Ashcroft impresses me as a small man, who does indeed seem to see the very real terrorism crisis as an opportunity to push a law enforcement agenda not unlike the one heralded as the salvation of the country in the bad old days of "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" His obvious determination to regulate almost everything in the country, with the notable exception of any checks on unlimited gun ownership by either citizens or aliens, seems somehow detached from the real threat of foreign-sponsored terrorism. His blaming the naivete of the citizenry about terrorism is outrageous. Americans know what is happening, and they certainly seem willing and eager to do something about it, including the use of our military wherever in the world bad guys assemble and plan.

The libertarian monthly Reason is one of the few publications that have the guts right now to criticize the repression impulse that has coursed through the country since Sept. 11. The publication has gathered men and women of both the right and left who understand, or are willing to say, that the terrorism was not caused in some bizarre fashion by constitutional guarantees of individual liberty and free speech.

"Federal agents still need to make the case that the expanded powers for which they are asking are necessary," the journal quoted Jerry Berman of the Center for Democracy and Technology as saying in its current issue. "It wasn't a restriction breakdown. It was an analysis breakdown."

The magazine also quoted two officials from research institutions:

"Once people have been subjected to such thoroughgoing government surveillance, all relations between the government and the public are transformed. Whether the rulers be revolutionary despots or democratically elected officials, every citizen knows that 'they' know all about him and his affairs, and hence no one dares to step out of line. In such a situation, the sociopolitical system will gravitate ineluctably toward totalitarianism," said Robert Higgs, editor of The Independent Review.

"Friends of traditional American values -- namely, freedom, privacy and justice -- should keep their eyes on two transcendent issues during wartime," said David Kopel, the Independence Institute's research director. "First, the effort to change our system of checks and balances and our system of federalism with unreviewable central executive power. Second, the tendency of people to suppress their own willingness to think freely, and to lash out at those who do not similarly self-suppress."

Watching members of Congress defer to Attorney General Ashcroft, there is obviously a lot of self-supression going on in Washington these days. But not at the Justice Department or the White House; the executive branch seems more intent on expanding its own police power at home than in mobilizing the free will of the American people against terrorism from abroad.

Source: http://www.rense.com/general17/thereISadifference.htm

12/11/01
10:10:50 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

GOVERNORS SEEK FUNDS FOR HOMELAND SECURITY

WASHINGTON, DC, December 10, 2001 (ENS) - The nation's governors have asked Congress for at least $2 billion in federal funds to support efforts to improve the ability of state and local health systems to respond to bioterrorism. The governors say that their states cannot shoulder the responsibility of keeping the nation's populace safe from biological weapons such as anthrax and smallpox.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-10-06.html

UNITED NATIONS: AQUACULTURE COULD REDUCE FAMINE

ROME, Italy, December 10, 2001 (ENS) - Aquaculture, or fish farming, is expected to boost food fish supplies worldwide over the next 20 years, helping to reduce poverty and food insecurity, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-10-10.html

AFRICAN MINISTERS MOBILIZE TO FINANCE CLEAN WATER

BONN, Germany, December 10, 2001 (ENS) - African ministers in charge of water from 22 countries are urging that action to reduce death rates due to poor hygiene and polluted water be placed at the core of the next year's World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. There is a need for "drastic measures to improve water, sanitation and hygiene conditions for all our peoples," they declared.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-10-01.html

INDIA CLOSES PARK TO CATCH ELEPHANT KILLERS

By Vidya Deshpande

NEW DELHI, India, December 10, 2001 (ENS) - Rajaji National Park in the Himalayan foothills has been closed to visitors after the killing of two elephants for their tusks. Four platoons of Provincial Armed Constabulary and 300 forest guards and rangers are combing the park for the poachers.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-10-05.html

SLOVAK TORTOISE POACHERS CONVICTED IN SOUTH AFRICA

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, December 10, 2001 (ENS) - Two Slovak nationals caught in South Africa with 113 angulate tortoises in their possession have been convicted under the Nature Conservation Ordinance due to the work of Cape Nature Conservation's new green crime unit.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-10-03.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: DECEMBER 10, 2001

Intel Founder Donates Millions to Conservation International

Federal Office May Have Wooed Lobbyists

Retraining, Rehab Could Ease Climate Costs

Maryland Protects 300 Acres Along Severn River

$34 Million Supports Coral Reef Conservation

Soggy Summer Helped Clean Alabama's Air

Three Countries Collaborate on Environmental Satellites

Wrap It In a Map

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-10-09.html

12/11/01
10:07:21 PM

Taken from the MANIFESTO Positio Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis published by the Rosicrucian Order AMORC and available from http://www.rosicrucian.org

"The situation of the contemporary world is not hopeless, but it is worrisome. What concerns us most is not so much the condition of humanity, but that of our planet. In fact, we think that time is of no significance in terms of humanity's spiritual evolution, since man has all eternity to carry out this evolution, seeing that his soul is immortal. On the other hand, the earth is truly threatened, at least as a living environment for the human species. Time is running out for it, and we believe that its protection is a vital necessity in the 21st century. It is to this purpose that politics, economics, science, technology, and all other fields of human activity should devote their efforts. Is it really so difficult to understand that humanity can only find happiness by living in harmony with natural laws and, in a wider sense, with divine laws? Furthermore, is it so unreasonable to admit that humanity has the wherewithal to sublimate its own interests? Nevertheless, if humans continue to pursue materialism, the darkest prophecies will be fulfilled and no one will be spared. It matters little what political ideas, religious beliefs, and philosophical convictions people hold. The time has passed for divisiveness in all its forms; the time is now ripe for unity - unity of differences in the service of the common good."

12/11/01
10:03:33 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.11

DASCHLE | "Chairman Arafat's Words Alone are Not Enough."

http://www.truthout.com/12.11A.Daschle.Arafat.htm

WELLSTONE Overcomes GOP Secret Hold to Secure Final Passage of His Homeless Veterans Bill

http://www.truthout.com/12.11B.Wellstone.Vets.htm

DAVID S. BRODER | Why Should Tax Cuts Be Untouchable?

http://www.truthout.com/12.11C.Broder.Tax.Cuts.htm

CHINA Cracks Down in Tibet | Exile Leader Warns of Violence

http://www.truthout.com/12.11D.Tibet.Violence.htm

Donald J. Brooks | Selling the Public on the Cattle Lobby

http://www.truthout.com/12.11E.Brooks.Cattle.htm

12/11/01
10:01:58 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

UPDATE - Poverty alliance would be Sept 11 memorial-Britain - VIETNAM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13659/story.htm

New US uranium enrichment plant would need NRC okay - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13648/story.htm

Record $261 mln gift said pledged for conservation - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13660/story.htm

Correction - Caviar smuggler in Florida gets 13 months jail - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13663/story.htm

Scottish to build 100 megawatt wind farm - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13652/story.htm

UK Kielder wind power court case delayed - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13649/story.htm

UK minister opens wind farm, gives OK for another - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13650/story.htm

UK to change renewables rules to overcome planning - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13651/story.htm

Food transport from afar wasteful, risky - UK group - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13658/story.htm

Bardot decries vulgar Korean dogmeat defenders - SOUTH KOREA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13647/story.htm

When the worm turns, the result is fertilizer - SARAH TIPPIT http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13664/story.htm

Mexico investigating transgenic corn - MEXICO http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13656/story.htm

Environmentalists slam Venice dam scheme - ITALY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13654/story.htm

Suicide bombers trying chemical devices - officials - ISRAEL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13665/story.htm

Oil, gas spillage at ONGC's western Indian well - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13644/story.htm

Ruhrgas says studying cogeneration plant projects - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13662/story.htm

EU plans to cut deep-water fishing quotas - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13655/story.htm

EU unveils new law to deter industrial accidents - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13653/story.htm

12/11/01
9:58:26 PM

CyberWar

There are two major fronts opening up in the Cyber War front, largely being ignored by the major media. Computer security groups are noting the vast influx of email-propelled virii. The other front largely ignored is the clash in the surveillance policies and programs between the FBI and the CIA, reported only by Charles R. Smith of Newsmax.com news service.

Virus Invasion

Badtrans is the name of the virus that is making the rounds currently and grinding email servers to a halt worldwide. There is much speculation by respectable theorists that this may be the much-talked about keylogging virus the FBI is threatening to release on the public known by the name Magic Lantern. Operationally, it fits the profile, logging keystrokes to a temp-file and when the temp-file reaches a certain size, mailing the log file to a pre-specified recipient. The Badtrans virus has had a couple modifications made to it over the last couple weeks, making it's transmission and operations more smooth, and therefore more infections and effective, however it is reported that most commercially available anti-virus software still picks it up prior to infection.

The new version of the Badtrans virus activates embedded HTML in the email and automatically informs Microsoft email programs to activate the attached virus program. The virus also appears to activate the MP3 player.

There are three scenarios within possibility which would explain the origin of the Badtrans virus. The first, most obvious, and most widely accepted is that it is a simple keylogging virus put out by a random hacker to get user's usernames and passwords. The second theory is more of an addendum to the first, in that it's a virus put out by a random hacker at this time to try to create a buzz and make it look as if the FBI is targeting certain groups or demographics (this theory has been posited by many members of the OSINT group RMNews). The third theory is that this is in fact the second iteration of the Magic Lantern keylogger.

The first theory is supported by the simple fact that this sort of thing comes out on a fairly regular basis, and to assume that this virus is any different than the last 15 that have come out is pure conjecture -- at least at first glance. The third theory is supported by the plethora of news releases that has accompanied the virus's release that tell of the FBI's Magic Lantern keylogger's inner workings. The operations are very similar in description, and a mass release through worm form is an effective means of distribution, despite the preferred method of delivery is reportedly the newly allowed "sneak and peek" method -- however, distribution through an email virus does seem to be a bit unconventional, a bit of a kludge-type attack. Granted, the FBI's technology teams have proven somewhat clueless as to implementation of internet technologies in the past, but this tends to lack the type of precision the FBI needs, and seems like it could lead to the type of legal trouble the FBI could ill-afford.

All of this lends the most credence to the second theory, that it is most likely being used as an Infowar tool, to make individuals feel as if they are being singled out by the FBI or other government agencies since most virus detection systems alert the user of it and mention it's purpose. It may have originally started out as the tool mentioned in theory one, but it has quickly become the tool mentioned in theory two.

FBI vs. CIA in Cyberspace

Most people who are in the intelligence community and those who follow it recognize that there was a vast intelligence failure that led up to the Sept 11 attacks.

The FBI and CIA are two agencies charged with law enforcement and intelligence operations, have taken the most heat for the failure. Both agencies had few areas of cooperation prior to Sept. 11. As it turns out the FBI and CIA have suddenly found themselves in diametrically opposed roles inside cyberspace.

Below is a list of tools that would aid US Federal law

FBI tools: Carnivore http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/carnivore/carnlrgmap.htm

The way carnivore works, according to the diagrams and explanations on the FBI website, is to trap all data going through a certain point, make a copy and send it back to a centralized point. The FBI is then able to sift through it using keyword searches.

Some time last year the FBI was forced by privacy advocates such as the ACLU and the EFF to reveal that it had a new software program called Carnivore designed to monitor Internet e-mail. The way the Carnivore system operates is not on home personal computers, or the client side, but on Internet Service Provider computers, or the server side. This allows the agency to siphon off data from suspected customers.

It is used only for looking through email, according to its description, *however* from it's description, it is also capable of sifting through web traffic. (remember that)

Magic Lantern

There is no official documentation on Magic Lantern on FBI's website, but open source intelligence resources describe it's operation and implementation as such:

It is to be spread either through an agent manually infecting the machine by inserting an infected disk or downloading the infection, or through targeted email virus infections. (i.e., opening an email, and a hidden virus is installed on the victim's machine without his knowledge by way of many security holes in email software).

It is a key-logging program, designed to intercept passwords and outgoing emails from the user's machine. It cannot log mouse clicks, however, which is it's only weakness. (i.e., if a user has an encryption software installed, and has the password stored locally, it can be activated by mouse clicks instead of a password being typed in, thus defeating the keylogging method).

dTective

Developed jointly by Ocean Systems Co. of Burtonsville Md. (did the software side) and Avid Technology Inc. (hardware side). Its purpose is to trace the financial transactions linked to Sept's terrorist attacks against New York and Washington by enhancing ATM video surveillance images that were previously unusable due to bad lighting and such.

Encase

Deleted file recovery tool. Used in cases where the suspect has clean sweep deleted the hard drive of data.

CIA tools:Triangle Boy/SafeWeb

It's original intent was to allow Asian Surfers (primarily Chinese) to surf the web without government interference. It allowed them to bypass governmentally blockage of websites and to do so anonymously (at least to governments other than the United States).

Technically, this tool sponsored by the CIA could be used as an aid to hackers, as well as those hiding from governments and companies who filter what their users are able to see.

It could also be used as a device to in some way circumvent the FBI from positively tracking down the author of a message. Imagine if a terrorist sets up an account on Hotmail, but uses Triangle Boy to access it. The FBI would be able to determine what the content was, but would be unable to find the user by way of IP tracking. Nor would the FBI know what computer to put Magic Lantern on in case the user was employing a method of encryption, which would prevent the FBI from even seeing the content of the messages as well.

Fluent

Custom-written software scours foreign Web sites and displays information in English back to analysts. The program already understands at least nine languages, including Russian, French and Japanese. Not a remarkable piece of software, same results that this software produce can be accomplished by combining the power of Digital's babelfish project with Google's search engine software.

Echelon Essentially a European Carnivore, not officially acknowledged by the US government.

Oasis Technology that listens to worldwide television and radio broadcasts and transcribes detailed reports for analysts. Oasis currently misinterprets about one in every five words and has difficulty recognizing colloquial Arabic, but the system is improving, said Larry Fairchild, head of the CIA's year-old Office of Advanced Information Technology.

Conflicting tools:

The tool conflict comes up between the CIA and the FBI are the CIA's Triangle Boy utility and the FBI's Magic Lantern and Carnivore snooping utilities. Essentially, by using the Triangle Boy web proxy utility or any other commercially available approximation thereof while simultaneously running any number of publicly available different 128-bit encryption routines, you can effectively and completely block yourself off from any FBI monitoring.

What Triangle Boy allows you to do is anonymously surf the web. There are a couple public projects on the internet that approximate what Triangle Boy does, such as it's predecessor Anonymizer.com, probably the web's first public anonymous proxy server. By using this or a similar service to log on to a public, free email server, you have prevented the email server from logging your IP address, or in other words, a number that can be linked to your person.

To completely make your message unintelligible and unbreakable to the US Federal government, use 128-bit or better encryption methods, preferably the RC5 standard. Distributed.net has been working with a brute force hack of the RC5 encryption routine (64-bit encryption) since 1998 using thousands of computers simultaneously on the project and estimates they have a year left until they break the code. From this one can safely assume that by the time the government is able to break your message at 128-bits, the usefulness of the contents of the message will long past be viable, not to mention most statute of limitation laws will have expired in the process.

Vulnerabilities in the Magic Lantern Keylogger

The Magic Lantern keylogger not only is ineffective in accomplishing it's purpose by virtue of the CIA's and the private sector's privacy tools, it also could backfire on the federal government. Any technically savvy hacker, could quite easily reverse engineer the product to either hack into the repository for the keylogged files or re-distribute the virus as an agent to gather his own data, especially if the government strikes deals with anti-virus makers to make the utiity unnoticed by their detection software.

Brooks Isoldi, editor

mailto:bisoldi@intellnet.org

http://www.intellnet.org

12/11/01
9:52:16 PM

Antivirus firms say they won't create FBI loophole

By Elinor Mills Abreu

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Anti-virus software vendors said on Monday they don't want to create a loophole in their security products to let the FBI or other government agencies use a virus to eavesdrop on the computer communications of suspected criminals. ADVERTISEMENT

Under a project code named "Magic Lantern," the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is creating an e-mail-borne virus or Trojan horse that hides itself on the computer and captures all keystrokes made, including passwords that could be used to read encrypted mail, according to a report on MSNBC.com in November.

Despite subsequent reports to the contrary, officials at Symantec Corp. (NasdaqNM:SYMC - news) and Network Associates Inc. (NasdaqNM:NETA - news) said they had no intention of voluntarily modifying their products to satisfy the FBI. Spokesmen at two other computer security companies, Japan-based Trend Micro Inc. (NasdaqNM:TMIC - news) and the U.S. subsidiary of UK-based Sophos PLc., made similar statements.

All four anti-virus companies said they had not contacted or been contacted by the U.S. government on the matter.

The FBI declined to confirm or deny the report about "Magic Lantern," when it was first published by MSNBC.com and a spokesman was not available for comment on Monday.

"We're in the business of providing a virus-free environment for our users and we're not going to do anything to compromise that security," said Tony Thompson of Network Associates.

"Symantec's first priority is to protect our customers from malicious and illegal attacks," Symantec Chief Executive John W. Thompson said in a statement. "We have no intention of creating or leaving a hole in our software that might compromise that security."

If anti-virus vendors were to leave a hole for an FBI-created Trojan horse program, malicious hackers would try to exploit the hole too, experts said.

"If you leave the weakness for the FBI, you leave it for everybody," said Fred Cohen, an independent security expert and digital forensics professor at the University of New Haven.

>From the industry perspective, leaving a hole in anti-virus software would erode public confidence and damage the reputation of the vendor, sending customers to competing companies, the vendors said.

The government would have to convince all anti-virus vendors to cooperate or the plan wouldn't work, since those not cooperating would have a market advantage and since they all share information, said a Symantec spokeswoman.

"The thought that you would be able to convince the industry as a whole to do this is kind of naive," she said.

PLAN WOULD ALIENATE OTHER COUNTRIES

Symantec and Networks Associates, both of whom have investments in China, would not jeopardize their footings in that market, said Rob Rosenberger, editor of www.vmyths.com, a Web site that debunks virus hoaxes.

"If (the Chinese) thought that the company was a tool of the CIA, China would stop using those products in critical environments," Rosenberger said. "It is in the best interest of anti-virus vendors not to heed the call of the FBI."

"We always try to cooperate with the authorities when it's appropriate. Having said that, our No. 1 goal is to protect our customers," said Barbara Woolf of Trend Micro. "I've heard reports that the government is upset this got out and is going back to the drawing board."

Appeasing the U.S. government would be difficult for vendors who have parent companies and customers outside the United States, they said.

"If the laws of the land were to change to permit this kind of activity then we would abide by the law," said David Hughes, president of Sophos' U.S. subsidiary.

But "how would a vendor provide protection for customers outside of the specific jurisdiction?" Hughes asked. "If we were to do this for the U.S. government we'd also have to do it for the government of any other nation that would want to do something similar."

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/011210/n10139438_1.html

12/11/01
9:42:29 PM

Noam Chomsky, Wartime Media Hero

by Norman Solomon

"If liberty means anything at all," George Orwell wrote, "it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

From all indications, the gatekeepers for big media in the United States don't want to hear what Noam Chomsky has to say -- and they'd prefer that we not hear him either.

Mainstream journalists in other nations often interview Chomsky. Based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he's a world-renowned analyst of propaganda and global politics. But the chances are slim that you'll ever find him on a large network here at home.

Chomsky is ill-suited to providing soundbites -- and that's not just a matter of style. A few snappy words are sufficient when they harmonize with the conventional wisdom in a matter of seconds. It takes longer to intelligibly present a very different assessment of political realities.

No one disputes that Chomsky revolutionized the study of language more than 40 years ago. The rich and powerful have no quarrel with his work as the world's most significant linguist. But as a political analyst, he's pretty much persona non grata at big U.S. networks and influential dailies.

Meanwhile, overflow audiences of thousands are routine when Chomsky speaks on college campuses and elsewhere in the United States. For many years now, community radio stations across North America have featured his speeches and interviews on political subjects. Progressive magazines publish his articles.

But at major media outlets, most editors seem far more interested in facile putdowns of Chomsky than in allowing space for his own words. Media attacks on him are especially vitriolic in times of international crisis and war.

Since Sept. 11, the distortions have been predictable: Although he's an unequivocal opponent of terrorism in all its forms, Chomsky is portrayed as an apologist for terrorism. Although he's a consistent advocate of human rights for all, Chomsky is accused of singling out the U.S. government for blame.

To some extent, Chomsky seems to bring the media salvos on himself. Even when the brickbats are flying, the guy just won't keep his head down. He speaks bluntly when the Pentagon terrorizes faraway civilians in the name of fighting terrorism. And he points out that citizens of the most powerful country on Earth have special opportunities and responsibilities to work against deadly policies implemented in their names with their tax dollars.

Chomsky's latest book, titled "9-11," is now arriving in bookstores. It's a collection of interviews, serving as a badly needed corrective to news coverage of the present-day "war on terrorism."

The book will be very useful in the months to come. Yet "9-11" just scratches the surface. For those who want more depth, many superb Chomsky books are available -- including the classic study "Manufacturing Consent" (co-authored with Edward S. Herman), "Profit Over People" and "The New Military Humanism," as well as volumes of interviews conducted by David Barsamian.

In "9-11," Chomsky speaks without evasion: "We should recognize that in much of the world the U.S. is regarded as a leading terrorist state, and with good reason." Chomsky cites many examples of U.S. actions that resulted in the killing of several million civilians during the past few decades. A partial list of nations where those deaths have occurred includes Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, East Timor, Sudan, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

All in the past? Chomsky rips into the scam of wiping the U.S. government's slate clean. "If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion," he said. "Or we can look at recent history, at the institutional structures that remain essentially unchanged, at the plans that are being announced -- and answer the questions accordingly. I know of no reason to suppose that there has been a sudden change in long-standing motivations or policy goals, apart from tactical adjustments to changing circumstances."

Chomsky added wryly: "We should also remember that one exalted task of intellectuals is to proclaim every few years that we have 'changed course,' the past is behind us and can be forgotten as we march on towards a glorious future. That is a highly convenient stance, though hardly an admirable or sensible one."

For those whose window on the world is mostly confined to mainstream U.S. media, some of Chomsky's statements may seem odd or absolutely wrong. But you can't make an informed judgment based on a few quotes. Read a couple of Chomsky's books and decide for yourself.

Noam Chomsky is not a lone ranger or ivory tower intellectual. For decades, he has worked closely with grassroots activists. "Understanding doesn't come free," he commented a few years ago. "It's true that the task is somewhere between awfully difficult and utterly hopeless for an isolated individual. But it's feasible for anyone who is part of a cooperative community." And, he added, understanding the world "doesn't help anyone else, or oneself very much either for that matter, unless it leads to action."

Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media." His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12051

12/11/01
9:39:00 PM

AlterNet Headlines

http://www.alternet.org

THE WAR FOR PUBLIC OPINION

Tamara Straus, AlterNet

By clamping down on information like never before, the Bush regime has sold America the Terror War. Will critical journalism from the Internet and from abroad break the deal?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12050

EVERYDAY LIFE IN AFGHANISTAN

Ted Rall, AlterNet

When you spend just a few weeks living the same toxic lifestyles as these poor and unlucky souls, you find it's amazing that they live as long as they do.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12046

ROBERTSON'S RESIGNATION

Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com

Will the resignation of president and board member Pat Robertson sound the death knell for the Christian Coalition?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12047

PENTAGON DENIALS AND CIVILIAN DEATH IN AFGHANISTAN

David Corn, AlterNet

Now that journalists in Afghanistan are sending in reports about civilian casualties there, the Pentagon has resorted to lies and distortions to cover up the bloodshed.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12044

OFFICE PARTY SURVIVAL GUIDE

Roger Naylor, Las Vegas CityLife

Maintaining proper etiquette at your office holiday party is crucial in these times of economic uncertainty. Use this easy to follow guide to keep your fast track reputation intact.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12048

ISRAEL IN 600 WORDS OR LESS

Etgar Keret, LA Weekly

Israel's most popular young writer captures the cyclical insanity of the Jewish/Palestinian conflict in a pithy, moving essay.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12045

HUFFINGTON: ON FLYING HIGH AND LOWERED EXPECTATIONS

Arianna Huffington, AlterNet

Television ads feature excerpts from a rousing speech the president gave in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, intercut with shots of travel industry employees.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12049

SOLOMON: NOAM CHOMSKY, WARTIME MEDIA HERO

Norman Solomon, AlterNet

From all indications, the gatekeepers for big media in the U.S. don't want to hear what Noam Chomsky has to say -- and they'd prefer that we not hear him either.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12051

BELOW THE SURFACE: COAL CZAR NOMINEE'S TROUBLING RECORD

Phillip Babich, Pacific News Service

With media attention focused on Afghanistan and Israel, some residents of coal mining communities in America fear that allegedly shady dealings of a Bush administration nominee to oversee mining could slip under the radar screen.

*In EnviroHealth: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=18

Want to sound off about any of the stories above? Visit AlterNet's rapidly growing online community:

http://www.alternet.org/discuss

12/11/01
9:34:32 PM

SojoNet News Daily Headlines

http://www.sojo.net/news

Chiapas governor marks first year with call for renewed peace talks

Pablo Salazar, governor of Chiapas, said on Saturday that the conflict between Zapatista rebels and the Mexican government, which began in 1994, "requires a dignified ending for the Zapatista National Liberation Army and for the Mexican army."

http://europe.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/americas/12/09/mexico.chiapas.ap/index.html

Getting at the roots of terrorism

The largest gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates ever was held in Oslo, Norway this past week. While some laureates were critical of the U.S. military action in Afghanistan, they often agreed about long-term solutions to terrorism.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1210/p7s1-wogi.html

"Alternative Nobel" winners slam US policies

The Right Livelihood Award, worth roughly $200,000, is bestowed on organizations or people who dare to throw off the straitjacket of conventional ideas, break taboos and work for peace, social justice or the environment.

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13634/story.htm

Terror hit list drawn up by US

There were increasing indications last night that the US has honed a hit list of countries to target for military action in rogue regions across the globe where it believes terror cells flourish.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,616256,00.html

UN chief warns against Iraq attack

The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has warned the United States not to take action against Iraq as part of its declared war on terrorism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1701000/1701002.stm

U.S. plans to spread special operations

Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman: "Afghanistan is only one small piece. So of course we're thinking very broadly. I would say since World War II we haven't thought this broadly about a campaign. I think this is going to be a long, hard-fought conflict."

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011210-99639471.htm

Recession Is Stretching the Limit on Welfare Benefits

Although the 1996 welfare law set a five-year limit for benefits, the economy is in recession at the very time the benefits are set to end, and many states are setting the deadlines aside for more and more recipients.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/national/09WELF.html

Ask Not What...

Imagine if the president decided to make us energy independent in a decade, on the basis of domestic oil, improved mileage standards and renewable resources, so we Americans, who are 5 percent of the world's population, don't continue hogging 25 percent of the world's energy?

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/opinion/09FRIE.html

12/11/01
9:27:41 PM

The Nation

In the wake of September 11th, special interests have decided that the U.S. Treasury is their personal piggy-bank. And many members of Congress are going along with them, voting for unwarranted bailouts, unnecessary tax breaks and outright boondoggles.

Why are our representatives caving in to their demands? One big reason is because they need their campaign contributions to keep getting re-elected. Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest beneficiaries of Congress's largesse are also among the nation's biggest political contributors.

This corruption of democracy can only be fixed through sustained, broad-based activism. Toward that end, Public Citizen, a Washington, DC-based non-profit that aims to dramatically reduce the role of special interest money in American politics, has launched a major new initiative to address the war profiteering that has been on the rise in the last couple of months.

Featuring informational resources, activist materials, online action alerts, scholarly reports and much else, HowDareThey.org is a critical outlet for the unavoidable backlash being fostered by the Bush Administration's exploitation of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Check it out now at:

http://www.howdarethey.org

And don't miss this related editorial from the November 19, 2001 issue of The Nation for background info:

ROBERT BOROSAGE: Scoundrel Time

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011015&s=borosage

Also, please check out The Nation's site for a wide-range of regularly updated material, including a host of new web articles. All available at:

http://www.thenation.com

12/11/01
9:10:47 PM

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS -- PART 1

Every couple of years someone writes a new report claiming that most environmental problems have been greatly exaggerated or don't even exist. There are now at least a dozen writers and publicists who spend their days putting a smiley face on environmental trends including Gregg Easterbrook (NEW REPUBLIC, and author, A MOMENT ON THE EARTH, 1995), Michael Fumento (author, SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE, 1993), Rush Limbaugh (syndicated radio talker), John Stossel (ABC TV), and John Tierney (NEW YORK TIMES), among others. Now a Danish mathematician, Bjorn Lomborg, has joined the ranks of these illuminati with a new book called THE OPTIMISTIC ENVIRONMENTALIST (2001), which we will review in the future.

The details vary, but the basic message from all these savants is similar: the environment is not seriously deteriorating; indeed, it is improving in almost every way. Human population? Growth has slowed. Forest loss? In many countries, tree cover is expanding. Global warming? It may not be so bad -- northern winters will be more pleasant. Toxic chemicals? The worst is past. The real problem, they say, is all those gloomy environmentalists scaring us to death simply to raise money.

When these contrarian reports grab headlines, the public --understandably -- doesn't know what to believe. Do environmental problems really exist or do they exist only in the minds of environmental wackos and professional doomsayers?

To get our bearings in this debate, we can turn to the mainstream of the mainstream: a new 327-page report titled OECD ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK [1] from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which describes environmental trends in the OECD's 29 member nations (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S.).

This is no Chicken Little manifesto from the fringe.

The OECD report forecasts environmental trends to the year 2020, using a traffic signal to highlight major conclusions: green lights where things are improving and it's OK to "proceed with caution" (for example, organic agriculture, which is growing at 20% per year); yellow lights for big, important issues that are still shrouded in uncertainty (such as genetic engineering of food crops); and red lights for problems that require "urgent action" because they are likely to "significantly worsen" by 2020. (pg. 279) [Throughout this issue of RACHEL'S, page numbers refer to the OECD's ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK report.]

Here is a bare-bones sketch of the most important "red light" problems that the OECD has identified:

** Human population, worldwide, will grow 1.1% per year between now and 2020, increasing from 6.1 billion people to 7.5 billion, or 23%. (pg. 40) This basic trend will impose a 23% greater burden on the natural environment in the next 20 years. Furthermore, as household size diminishes (requiring more individual homes) and urban sprawl increases, the burden imposed on the environment by each individual is steadily rising, the OECD says.

** Ocean fish provide 20% of all the protein in the human diet today (pg. 109) but 50% of the world's marine fisheries are already producing as much as they possibly can, 15% are being over-fished (an obviously unsustainable practice) and another 7% are fully depleted. Pressure on the oceans' fisheries will not decline any time soon because the global fishing fleet now has at least 30% more capacity than the oceans can supply on a sustained basis (pg. 113): more and more ships are chasing fewer and fewer fish. We should not expect increased fish yields from the oceans between now and 2020, the OECD says, so any increase must come from fish farming. But fish farms have serious problems of their own -- large concentrations of fish-waste nutrients, which can deplete species diversity; large-scale feeding of antibiotics, which can harm other species and disturb whole ecosystems; and escaping fish that can drive out native species and spread disease. (pg. 115) As a consequence of these trends, the OECD forecasts a 10% decline in marine fish harvest by OECD countries by 2020. (pg. 112)

** Fresh water: The demand for fresh water must rise to keep pace with population growth, but water pollution is reducing the useable supply in most countries. As surface waters become exhausted or polluted, many countries begin pumping their underground aquifers, but nature replenishes such underground supplies only slowly. Seventeen countries are already pumping more water from underground than nature replaces each year. (pg. 102)

Furthermore, underground water supplies are being polluted: "Available evidence suggests that there is a trend towards a worsening of aquifer water quality in OECD regions. Once groundwater sources are contaminated, they can be very difficult to clean up because the rate of flow is usually very slow and purification measures are often costly," the OECD says. (pg. 103) Worse, growing water scarcity is already giving rise to conflicts within and between countries, the OECD says, a trend likely to accelerate. (pg. 102)

** Forests: Within OECD countries, original "old growth" forests are being cut and replaced by secondary growth and by simple tree farms, which require artificial fertilizers and pesticides to survive. Thus, although the total area of forests is holding steady in OECD regions, the QUALITY of forested lands, in terms of natural habitat and biodiversity, is steadily declining. Some trees may grow quickly but forests take centuries to mature. The prospect for tropical forests is worse. With 37 million acres being cut down each year, "Tropical deforestation is expected to continue at alarming rates over the next few decades," says the OECD. (pg. 125) Between now and 2020, the world will lose almost 6% of its total forested land. (pg. 136)

** Acid Rain: Acid rain, snow and fog, caused by emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides, damage forests, soils and fresh water ecosystems. Acid rain "has been identified as an important factor in forest demise," says the OECD (pg. 127), and "Current acid deposition levels in Northern Europe and parts of North America are at least twice as high as critical levels." (pg. 190) In Europe the situation is expected to improve in the next 10 years but elsewhere in the world, it is expected to worsen. Outside OECD countries, both sulphur and nitrogen oxide emissions are expected to increase substantially in the next two decades: "Thus, acid depositions are likely to continue to contribute to acidification of surface waters and soils in these areas and reduce the quality of the most sensitive ecosystems." (pg. 190)

** Biodiversity: Humans are relentlessly clearing and plowing up the habitat needed by other creatures, mostly converting it to farmland. Then many of the farmlands themselves are being despoiled by irrigation (which brings salts up from deep soils and deposits them in the top layers) and by soil erosion. According to the OECD, two-thirds of the world's farmlands have already been degraded to some degree and one-third have been "strongly or very strongly degraded." (pg. 138) Furthermore, half the world's wetlands have already been destroyed. (pg. 136) And the biodiversity of freshwater ecosystems is "under serious threat" with 20% of the world's fresh water fish extinct, threatened or endangered. (pg. 138) Half of all primates, and 9% of all known species of trees are at some risk of extinction, the OECD says. Between now and 2020, biodiversity in OECD countries is likely to degrade further. (pg. 138) It is hard to put a smiley face on the prognosis for biodiversity, the biological platform upon which all humans depend.

** Municipal solid waste, or garbage: In 1995, the average person in OECD countries created 1100 pounds of garbage each year. By 2020 this is expected to increase 28% to 1400 pounds per person per year. Because of growing population, total OECD garbage will increase 43% by 2020, reaching 847 million tons each year. (pgs. 203, 236) Outside the OECD regions, annual garbage production is expected to more than double by 2020, reaching 1450 million tons per year. (pg. 237)

In 1997, 64% of OECD garbage went to landfills (where it can contaminate underground water supplies [pg. 242]), 18% was incinerated (producing a range of noxious air pollutants, including the notoriously toxic, mobile and long-lived dioxins and furans [pg. 241]), and 18% was recycled. (pg. 235) By 2020, the OECD says, only 50% of OECD garbage will be landfilled, 17% will be incinerated, and 33% will be recycled. (pg. 240) Most waste ultimately escapes into the general environment in one form or another.

** Hazardous waste: OECD countries presently create 220 pounds of legally-hazardous waste per person per year. By 2020, per-capita production will rise 47% to 320 pounds per person per year and, because of growing population, total OECD hazardous waste will increase 60% to 194 million tons each year. (pgs. 137, 314) Significant portions of this will enter the general environment and eventually begin moving through food chains.

A partial survey of 13 out of 29 OECD countries has identified 475,000 sites that may be contaminated by hazardous industrial chemicals. The OECD estimates the cost of cleaning up these sites at $330 billion, a large number indeed. (pg. 242)

To be continued next issue. Peter Montague

Source: http://www.Rachel.org

12/11/01
9:07:09 PM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

EQUAL REPRESENTATION FOR WOMEN?

Official concern for women's participation in the Afghan government rings a little hollow when we look at our own government, says Susan Carroll of the Center for American Women in Politics.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/05/1.html

TAKING THE MASS. LEGISLATURE TO COURT

Massachusetts legislators have refused to implement a public-financing campaign reform that voters approved in 1998 by a margin of two-to-one. Their defiance of the voters' will has landed them in court.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/06/1.html

The Loyal Opposition

DENYING THE DEAD

In Pentagon Reports of Afghan Dead, Truth is the First Casualty

by David Corn

"It is not, as Rumsfeld asserted, 'impossible to get factual information about civilian casualties.' His military just hasn't bothered."

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/07/2.html

TomPaine.commentary

SUBJECT TO HUMAN FAILING

by M. W. Guzy

"In a time of war, executive prerogative expands at the expense of the public's right to know. This phenomenon is understandable, but perilous."

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/12/05/index.html

Tips, Leads and Links

by The TomPaine.com Staff

Buggy Business... Environmental Sportsman... Executing Foreign Policy... Channel One Keeps its Eye on the Kids... and more.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/12/06/2.html

TomPaine.com got a nice little plug in the New York Times Magazine yesterday! Check it out!

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/magazine/09EMAIL.html

12/11/01
9:02:24 PM

Major Pledge To Save Species Intel Co-Founder Gives $261 Million

Tanya Schevitz, Chronicle Staff Writer

A foundation created by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife announced yesterday that it will give a major conservation group $261 million over 10 years, the largest gift ever to an environmental organization.

The gift to Conservation International will support initiatives to slow the extinction of animals and plants and start an ambitious campaign to protect about 400 million acres of tropical forests, or the equivalent of land the size of Alaska.

"As Gordon describes it, he saw nature disappearing in important areas that were once rich with life," Doug McConnell, spokesman for San Francisco's Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, said yesterday. "This is . . . an important statement that this is a truly critical matter."

The gift is Moore's second major contribution to Conservation International, a Washington, D.C., group established in 1987. In 1998, he gave $35 million --which was the largest gift ever to the organization until yesterday -- to start the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science.

Moore, who was not available for comment yesterday, has been actively involved with Conservation International, serving on its board and traveling with the group on research trips. He co-chaired the organization's Nature's End conference held at the California Institute of Technology in August 2000. It was at the conference that the plans for the new initiative were developed.

The gift from Moore's foundation provides seed money for a global conservation fund to protect the highest priority regions of hot spots in 400 million acres, said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International. He said the grants will help build alliances with other conservation groups and allow the group to try to leverage another $6 billion from public and private sources.

Although the 25 biodiversity hot spots represent only 1.4 percent of the Earth's land mass, they contain 60 percent of the planet's animal and plant species, according to the group.

The new initiative, which will focus initially on the Andes, Madagascar, Brazil, the Guyanas and Melanesia, will provide funds to work with local governments in areas where there are rich biological resources to find alternatives to logging and other environmentally destructive activities that are often seen as the only economic choice for developing countries.

The foundation's gift will help establish 10 new research stations where comprehensive long-term studies on changes in ecosystems can be conducted and then compared from site to site, Mittermeier said. That will allow scientists to recognize early warnings of major shifts.

"It enormously increases the scale in which we are able to operate," Mittermeier said. "It is pretty exciting."

Harvard University biologist Edward Wilson, who co-chaired the Nature's End conference with Moore, said yesterday that the grant is a "breakthrough" gift that will attract more attention to the field.

"This is just the kind of stimulus that is needed to jack up research on conservation biology and biodiversity," he said. "Once it is there and adequately funded, we will get more of our brightest young scientists attracted to the field."

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation was established in November 2000 and already had given $300 million in October to the California Institute of Technology, along with a personal gift of $300 million from Moore and his wife.

Yesterday's gift is the largest ever to a single environmental group. In 1998, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation pledged $375 million over five years to protect California's environment.

email Tanya Schevitz: mailto:tschevitz@sfchronicle.com

Source: http://www.SFGate.com

12/11/01
9:01:11 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE <http://www.gristmagazine.com>

LIFTING THEIR KILT-OWATTS

Scotland has enough potential wind and wave energy to power the entire U.K., according to an independent study that has been met with excitement by the Scottish government. Known as one of the windiest spots in Europe, Scotland could apparently provide almost a quarter of the U.K.'s energy needs from onshore wind farms, without having to construct the farms on designated scenic areas. Wave and tidal stream energy could meet the other three-quarters of Britain's power needs. A second report issued today said Scotland could achieve its goal of generating 18 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

straight to the source: BBC News, 10 Dec 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_1699000/1699665.stm>

GWICH'IN TO DRILL?

Some tribes and lawmakers are criticizing environmental groups for continuing to represent Native Americans in a simplistic, self-serving way as model caretakers of the Earth. David Lester, a Creek Indian and executive director of the Council of Energy Resources Tribes, says, "Environmentalists are using the Indians the way the French and English used Indians in the French-Indian War: We're their foot soldiers." In Alaska, for example, many Native groups support proposals to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But enviros have made much to-do about the opposition of the Gwich'in Indians to the drilling. The Gwich'in say they rely on the refuge to support the Porcupine caribou herd, on which the tribe subsists. In less-publicized news, however, the tribe is working to open up oil resources on land in Canada, away from the herd.

straight to the source: Sacramento Bee, Tom Knudson, 09 Dec 2001 <http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/1293532p-1362043c.html>

12/11/01
8:48:42 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

HIDING PAST AND PRESENT PRESIDENCIES

by John Dean, Find Law's Commentary

-- President Bush's signing of Executive Order 13233, which allows him more powers in suppressing presidential records, gives him license to govern by secrecy say critics.

JOHN O'CONNOR, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST, DEAD AT 46

by Don Hazen, AlterNet

-- Longtime progressive activist John O'Connor, best known for fighting chemical companies and founding the National Toxics Campaign, passed away on November 30 after suffering a heart attack while playing basketball.

BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT PROTECTS RAINFOREST

by Greenpeace

-- The Brazilian government is taking measures to protect mahogany forests in the Amazon, after a Greenpeace report exposed illegal logging practices.

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

12/11/01
8:46:27 PM

How the Military Tribunals Will Really Work

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11983

Going Backwards: Ashcroft Seeks Looser Limits on FBI Spying U.S. religious, political groups may lose civil liberties safeguards

http://commondreams.org/headlines01/1201-02.htm

ASHCROFT Attempted to Circumvent Habeas Corpus Entirely

http://www.truthout.com/12.04B.Habeas.Corpus.htm

Bush going too far curtailing our rights

The Bush administration is using the national trauma and state of emergency resulting from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to trample the Bill of Rights.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1135558

The Grand Tyranny by Al Martin

"This law then could be interpreted, so that the prosecutorial power of the government could be extended essentially to anyone who disagreed with State policy. (...) the people of the United States have allowed their government to be a democracy in name only."

http://www.almartinraw.com/column40.html

Confounding Carnivore: How to Protect Your Online Privacy

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11986

"If we give up our essential rights for some security, we are in danger of losing both."

Benjamin Franklin

12/11/01
8:43:58 PM

Justice Deformed: War And The Constitution

The inconvenient thing about the American system of justice is that we are usually challenged to protect it at the most inopportune moments. Right now the country wants very much to be supportive of the war on terrorism, and is finding it hard to summon up much outrage over military tribunals, secret detentions or the possible mistreatment of immigrants from the Mideast. There is a strong temptation not to notice. That makes it even more important to speak up.

After the brutal attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration began building a parallel criminal justice system, decree by decree, largely removed from the ordinary oversight of Congress and the courts. In this shadow system, people can be rounded up by the government and held at undisclosed locations for indefinite periods of time. It is a system that allows the government to conduct warrantless wiretaps of conversations between prisoners and their lawyers, a system in which defendants can be tried and condemned to death by secret military tribunals run according to procedural rules that bear scant resemblance to normal military justice.

The extreme nature of these new measures and the arbitrary way in which they were adopted are stirring a growing uneasiness among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, as well as America's overseas allies. Yet so far the voices of opposition have been timid. It is never easy to criticize a president in wartime. It is especially difficult during this war, which began with the killing of thousands of civilians here at home.

But if the antiterrorism effort is to be a genuine success, Americans must speak up. We do not want history to record this as one of those mixed moments in which the behavior of our government failed to live up to the performance of our troops in the field. We do not want to remember this as a time when the nations of the world united in a campaign against terrorists, and then backed away when America attempted to prosecute foreign nationals in secret trials conducted according to unfair rules.

The administration has awarded itself some of these powers, which go well beyond those just granted in the antiterrorism legislation Congress approved at its request only a few weeks ago. It is now reported that Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax rules barring the Federal Bureau of Investigation from spying on domestic religious and political groups without probable cause. The Founding Fathers, properly wary of an unrestrained executive branch, created our system of checks and balances precisely to guard against a president and his aides grabbing powers like these without Congressional approval or the potential for judicial review. Mr. Ashcroft's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week should provide an opportunity for senators from both parties to express their concerns.

Secret Detentions

One of the most troubling moves by the administration has been the secret and in some cases prolonged detention of suspects rounded up after Sept. 11. The Justice Department, which has offered a shifting series of explanations as to why this is necessary, most recently suggested that it was responding to the possibility that Osama bin Laden might have sent "sleeper" agents to the United States. The American system does not hold with the idea of incarcerating a large group of people who it seems to have no credible reason to believe are dangerous, out of vague concern that somewhere among them might be a future law-breaker.

The administration certainly has a right to arrest people who are in the country illegally, and deport them after a judicial hearing. If the federal government had consistently kept track of visitors who failed to leave at the appointed time, it would have been harder for the terrorists to carry out their attacks in New York and Washington. But there appears to be no evidence that the vast majority of those picked up on immigration charges are guilty of anything else, and the punishment must fit the crime. Now, the places they are held and in most cases their names are being kept from the public. Meanwhile there is mounting anecdotal evidence suggesting that some detainees have been held under harsh conditions with limited access to legal counsel.

Mr. Ashcroft retreated last week from some of his stonewalling and filled in certain previously missing details about 548 people in custody for immigration violations, while still refusing to reveal their names. He did release the names, along with other details, for 93 people charged with other, mostly minor crimes. But it was far short of the sort of disclosure the situation calls for.

Military Tribunals

It is by no means clear that the president has the authority to set up military tribunals without specific Congressional authorization. For the administration to act unilaterally in this sphere is no trifling matter. Beyond trespassing on the separation of powers, it could undercut the legality of any military tribunal proceedings. The precedent the administration cites - Franklin Roosevelt's use of secret military commissions to try eight German saboteurs caught on American soil during World War II - is not reassuring. That trial, which actually did have the support of a Congressional declaration, was an embarrassing skirting of the legal process that occurred mainly to cover up the F.B.I.'s failure to listen when one of the saboteurs attempted to confess and turn in his comrades.

The military tribunals authorized by President Bush have little relation to actual military justice. Under normal military law, trials are not closed to the public, defendants have a right to review all the evidence presented against them, and they cannot be sentenced to death without a unanimous decision by the officers who sit as judges. Defendants also can appeal their cases to higher military courts, and to the Supreme Court. The Bush courts are free to proceed in secret, to withhold evidence from defendants and to deliver capital sentences if two-thirds of the judges consent.

Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that under the administration's order, the president's power to insist on military justice is not limited to accused terrorists who are captured overseas. The order's breadth is astonishing, allowing for the indefinite incarceration and trial of any non-citizen the president deems to be a member of Al Qaeda, to be involved in international terrorism of any type, or to be harboring terrorists. After Sept. 11, Americans were introduced to any number of homeowners who sheltered the men who were about to become hijackers, with no realization that they were anything but students. The scope of these powers should make the potential for abuse clear. The fact that the administration drew them that way should undermine confidence in its self-restraint.

Faith in the Courts

The Bush administration appears to have no faith in the American criminal justice system's ability to try terrorists fairly and openly, despite the fact that prosecutors have successfully brought to justice the men accused of the first World Trade Center bombing and the attack on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Civilian courts are not as fragile as the administration fears. For one thing, longstanding federal laws make it possible to sanitize intelligence information so that it can be introduced as evidence in trials without compromising spying methods. Courts have also given greater latitude to prosecutors in bringing overseas defendants to trial even if they have not been accorded a traditional Miranda warning about their rights before they are questioned after their capture.

The administration has argued that even if the powers it is seizing are broad, it will not use them abusively. This has been a constant theme of Mr. Ashcroft and the administration in general - that they are people who can be trusted to use these broad, repressive rules wisely. That is not the way the American system works. This is a nation built around the rule of law, not faith in the goodness of particular officials.

At a time when the nation is reaching out to create and maintain a global coalition against terrorism, the Bush administration is taking us down a path that will surely wind up embarrassing the country and undermining our own standing as a defender of international human rights and global justice. The United States, which constantly criticizes other countries for holding secret trials, and for refusing to guarantee political prisoners due process, is breaking faith with its own standards. It is no wonder that European countries are uneasy about extraditing anyone to face such tribunals. Our country assures the world that its case against Osama bin Laden is a firm one, but if he is tried in secret, large parts of the world will never believe in his guilt.

One Rule of Law

The administration has been able to push so far down the road toward negating civil liberties without encountering much resistance because the parallel system it is creating only affects non-citizens. Mr. Ashcroft, for example, is not proposing to wiretap the conversations of American prisoners as they talk to their attorneys. These are special rules for outsiders, a fact that is supposed to make those of us on the inside feel safe.

The country does treat non-citizens differently from Americans. Most important, authorities can deport them if they fail to live up to the terms of their visas. But the right to a fair trial, to consult with a lawyer beyond the range of government microphones and protection against being held in secret for minor crimes are not for Americans alone. We believe that they are the rights of all human beings. Our history is a story of continuous struggles to keep the government from sectioning off one segment of humanity as unworthy of the same basic civil rights as everyone else. This is not the time to start infringing the rights of people whose only relationship with international terrorists may be a shared nationality, religion or ethnic background.

We will be judged not by how we hold to our values when it is easy, but when it is difficult. The world is watching.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/opinion/02SUN1.html

12/11/01
8:40:29 PM

The Dogs of Democracy

Several times at Saturday's demonstration, protesters approached the police barricades set up to protect G20, International Monetary Fund and World Bank delegates. They were greeted by rubber bullets, pepper spray and teargas. But, according to some demonstrators, they were most frightened by the police dogs. There were times of eerie silence Saturday afternoon on the part of the police and the protesters. During stalemates, the only sounds that could be heard were the barking and whining of the police dogs. Their masters struggled to hold them back. One demonstrator, named Matt, said, "We're used to horses - we can handle horses - but these dogs look vicious."

A videographer who was at Le Breton Flats earlier in the morning said that, once protesters were made to lie down and arrested, the police would put dogs on them - after they had been handcuffed. She had footage of police breaking up the crowd with dogs. Her video shows dogs rearing up on their hind legs, their teeth bared, their saliva flying. The police would periodically increase the length of a leash to scare demonstrators. A protester on the flats at the time said, "Prior to the beginning of Saturday's march, a police dog was released into the crowd ... it obviously had no direct target." Several cases of dog bites were confirmed. A medic explained that dog bites can result in puncture wounds and crush injuries.

During the actions, the police in Ottawa were both militaristic and used ritualized gestures. There was a lot of posturing with guns and rhythmic banging of sticks and shields. They stared down at the thousand-plus crowd below. At one point, some protesters from the street rushed to climb a fence, shouting slogans. One female demonstrator held up a small, pink hand mirror to police and yelled, "Look at what you have become!"

As the snake march progressed, the crowd didn't disperse. In the below-zero weather, police used a water hose. The crowd remained. Police fired teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and lead-filled packets at the protesters. Still, there was no sign of retreat.

A protester had the muzzle of a teargas gun pushed into his stomach. He was blown backward when the officer fired. Later, another demonstrator was hit with a rubber bullet to the back of the head. His face bounced off the pavement like a basketball when he fell. Other protesters rushed forward. The crowd chanted, "We're not violent, how about you?"

During the weekend protests in Ottawa, a single McDonald's window was broken. There were a few random acts of graffiti. Although protesters were disciplined, their show of restraint had little effect on the actions of the police. Dozens of people were arrested. The Ottawa legal collective indicates the total number of arrests is forty-one.

Puppets, balloons, confetti, the Living River, pagans and the Raging Grannies - in short, anyone who stood out - seemed to be worthy subjects for the video cameras used by police to record every move the demonstrators made. One protester commented, "They were expecting us and I guess we were greeted, even though we come in peace." He added that the police in Quebec last April had "warned us that next time, they'd be ready for us, they would be prepared. I guess they are."

http://www.canadianliberty.bc.ca/liberty-vs-security/dogs-of-democracy.html