12/23/01
4:21:09 PM

FBI Declines to Release Hijack Flight Cockpit Tape

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The FBI (news - web sites) has turned down family requests that it release the cockpit voice recording from an airliner hijacked on Sept. 11 that crashed in a Pennsylvania field, saying the horror captured on the tape would do little to assuage their grief.

``(FBI) Director (Robert) Mueller has personally listened to the recording from the hijacked flight and advised that the FBI will not be releasing the tape at this time,'' FBI spokesman John Collingwood said in a letter to U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (news - bio - voting record) that the congresswoman's office released on Thursday.

``While we empathize with the grieving families, we do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way,'' Collingwood said.

Tauscher, a California Democrat, had written to the FBI on behalf of Deena Burnett, whose husband Thomas was among those aboard the plane when it was hijacked on Sept. 11.

Unlike three other passenger jets hijacked that day that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites), United Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, apparently brought down amid a passenger revolt against the hijackers.

Burnett and several other relatives of Flight 93 passengers have asked the government to release the cockpit voice recorder, saying they hoped it would reveal what really happened during the final minutes before the plane crashed, killing all 45 people aboard.

The Justice Department (news - web sites) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to release even an edited transcript of Flight 93's cockpit voice recorder, saying that it is evidence in a criminal investigation.

The FBI's Collingwood repeated that the tape was being held as evidence, and said Mueller believed that the families would gain nothing from listening to the tape.

``While we share your interest in providing Mrs. Burnett with peace of mind, we do not believe that any of the victim's families would find comfort in the recording,'' Collingwood said. ``Furthermore, the voices are, for the most part, indistinguishable.''

A number of other recordings, made by other aircraft and air traffic control, have surfaced that appear to support the belief that passengers clashed with the hijackers in the final minutes of the flight.

Collingwood said that while the FBI would not accede to the families' request for the tape, ``we hope that they will take comfort in knowing that all of America embraces the passengers and flight crew of Flight 93 as heroes.''

Source: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011220/ts/attack_hijack_recording_dc_1.html

12/23/01
4:18:35 PM

Forgiveness: The Harsh and Dreadful Precursor To Justice

by Mike Miles

"You have heard it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him also the other...You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."

It may well be that in the human experience, more difficult words have never been uttered. The practicality of these instructions seem to defy all logic -- how could one ever imagine circumstances that would call for such a response? Perhaps in an ideal, or better yet, in a perfect world, one could give consideration to these seemingly impossible teachings. But then in a perfect world how could evil ever gain a foothold, or disputes that would create enemies even exist?

No, in these words rest the wisdom of ages present, the remedy for the human condition, the power to undo Hiroshima. In these words we learn forgiveness -- not surrender, certainly not capitulation, but, as Dostoyevski put it, the harsh and even dreadful reality which becomes the heart of love in action.

I have had the privilege to stand in the presence of forgiveness in situations of incalcuable loss and have been awed by its transforming power. I have walked beside Amber, Ryan, and Barry Amundson, wife and brothers of Craig Scott Amundson who was killed at his post in the Pentagon on that dreadful September morning. I have shared stories and laughter with David Potorti whose brother Jim died in the World Trade Center. They, along with other families of victims of 9/11, have become a moral compass to the nation as they issue a clarion call for justice without revenge, peace without war, an end to perpetual cycles of violence.

I have stood with families in hospital wards in Baghdad watching their children suffer and die for lack of simple medicines and clean water -- their plea to us being that no other families experience the horrors, the sorrows, they have known. I have been witness to farmers in Iraq whose son and brother was killed by an American cluster bomb while watching his family's sheep on yet another clear, blue morning. They gave our humbled delegation the only photograph they had of young Omran so we could continue to tell his story to anyone willing to listen--a story of innocence lost in the collision of empire and ideology.

I have read the report by Robert Fisk, reporter and Middle East expert, as he was being beaten to death by a crowd of Afghani refugees -- how he understood why they felt the need to lash out at anyone from the West and the shame he experienced as he escaped to safety.

This depth of understanding, of compassion, of forgiveness, is not unique to these exceptional individuals and families. It is a thread that runs through us all as children of a common Creator. Some have experienced it on a personal level with friends and family. Others have seen how it can transform social structures and even nations.

It is a power that is neither sentimental nor without cost -- witness the assassinations of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Oscar Romero; the murders of countless human rights workers -- Dorothy Kazel, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jafar Siddaq Hamzah; the imprisonment's of Aung San Su Kyi, Philip Berrigan, Angie Zelter, Mubarak Awad.

Forgiveness has been the lifeblood of the movement to free South Africa from apartheid. Love of enemies fueled those who led the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines, the liberation of East Timor, and the dissolution of communist block countries in the late eighties. In East Germany hundreds of thousands gathered regularly at the church of St. Nicholas in Leipzig to reflect on the Sermon on the Mount. Holding their candles, surrounded by the STASI (East German Secret Police) people demanded democracy and free elections. After the government of Erich Honecker had fallen, Horst Sindermann, a member of the Central Committee of the GDR remarked, "We had planned everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayer."

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there was a time when evil had so multiplied that God unleashed the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, a flood that destroyed virtually everyone in the world. When that didn't work and evil reestablished itself, God chose forgiveness as the cornerstone for saving us from ourselves. Even Jesus forgave his murderers in the midst of his execution The strength, the wisdom, the purity, of forgiveness as the precursor to justice seems to have eluded us for over two thousand years now.

As Christians approach the celebration of the birth of the One whose counsel often sticks in our throats, we would do well to consider the words of G. K. Chesterton: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried." We believe, help us in our unbelief. Lord have mercy.

Mike Miles lives at Anathoth Community Farm, a center for the study of Nonviolence and Sustainability in northern Wisconsin. He has traveled to Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness and recently accompanied the Walk for Healing and Peace with the National Mobile Peace Center--formerly known as the Remembering Omran Bus Tour.

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1220-04.htm

12/23/01
4:15:35 PM

Published on Thursday, December 20, 2001 by Common Dreams We Are Also in the World: A Bulls-Eye View of Baghdad by Ramzi Kysia

Baghdad does not know it's a city under a death sentence.

The sun still shines here. The date palms and poplars still line the Tigris river. The streets are still full of cars, and buses, and taxicabs searching for fares. When night falls, the mosques are full of people praying, and the sidewalks jam with families enjoying the festive Ramadan atmosphere of street vendors, sweets dealers, and restaurateurs roasting chickens in the open air. And with smuggling at an all time high, the shops are full of pretty things to look at - even if most people still can't afford to buy them.

Walking the streets of Baghdad you notice the architecture - the boarded-up buildings, the crumbling sidewalks. This is what happens after 11 years of economic ruin. But then you also notice the new, box-like structures being built, with huge archways, intricate brickwork, and jutting columns, balconies, and facades. It's a striking mix of old and new, of socialist sensibility and Babylonian splendor - Frank Lloyd Wright meets Lawrence of Arabia. These buildings are beautiful, and you have to wonder how many of them will be standing in six months if the U.S. does decide to massively bomb this country.

As America's "new war" winds down into civil disorder and lawlessness in Afghanistan, the focus is shifting to Iraq. President Bush has put Iraq on notice: let weapons inspectors back into the country, or face the consequences. Media speculation that Iraq will be hit next is rampant. Rabid might be a better word. With this conflict, the media has all but erased the line between speculation, reporting, and enthusiastic encouragement.

There are facts that everyone at home seems to be forgetting. In 1998 there was a year-long series of conflicts with Iraq over weapons inspections. The Iraqi government claimed that the U.S. was using the inspectors to "spy" on the regime, and the U.S. claimed that Iraq was making up stories to hide an active weapons program. In December 1998, this conflict culminated in "Desert Fox," an intense, three-day bombing campaign against Iraq that marked the end of weapons inspections.

According to earlier Pentagon estimates, it also likely resulted in over 10,000 deaths.

In January 1999, both the Washington Post ("Annan Suspicious Of UNSCOM Role," 1/6/99) and the Boston Globe ("US used UN to spy on Iraq," 1/6/99) reported that the Iraqi charges were in fact true, and that the U.S. had been lying and had used the weapons inspection program to spy on the regime.

This is significant.

People cannot be punished for the failures of a government they only happen to live under. Nor can a government be punished because it refuses to assist in its own self-destruction. Nor can the United Nations be subverted to attempt to overthrow its member states. All of these things are gross violations of international law.

U.S. pundits and politicians are forgetting other uncomfortable facts. Primary among these is the devastation that has already been wrought throughout Iraq. In 1991, during the six-week Gulf War, the U.S. dropped over 88,000 tons of explosives on a country 2/3 the size of Texas. This was more firepower than was used by all sides during World War II. It compelled Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait. It also devastated the country.

The Jordanian Red Crescent Society estimated the number of civilian dead at 113,000. This means that the ratio of U.S. soldiers killed by Iraqi fire, to Iraqi soldiers and civilians killed by U.S. fire, was roughly 1:1,000. In a press conference at the time, then Gen. Colin Powell said that wasn't "a number I'm particularly interested in." That wasn't particularly surprising. When the ratio of dead in a conflict is 1:1,000, you don't usually call it a war -you call it a massacre.

After Desert Storm, the international blockade was kept in place to force the Iraqi government to comply with Security Council dictates, including weapons inspections. Let's be blunt: linking the well being of a civilian population, suffering in the immediate aftermath of a devastating bombing campaign, to the vagaries of a brutal dictator - this was madness. It was and is an act of collective punishment. It is illegal, immoral, and, at the very least, it has been spectacularly unproductive at doing anything other than killing massive numbers of human beings.

To some degree, sanctions are crumbling now. Smuggling is widespread. Walking the streets of Baghdad you see more shops than before. But you also see young children, in torn and dirty clothes, searching through the garbage by the side of the road - looking for a meal. Street children are a new phenomenon in Iraq. This is a country where, before the war, childhood obesity used to be the biggest problem pediatricians complained about.

The problem is that sanctions have already devastated Iraq's economy, causing hyperinflation, chronic unemployment, and the collapse of critical civilian infrastructures -including the public health care and educational systems - resulting in the virtual destruction of Iraq's once prosperous middle class. Crumbling or not, economic sanctions, by design, damage economies.

If smuggling cannot take the place of normal economic activity, then neither can a handout. The Oil-for-Food program is at best a band-aid, and at worst an excuse to maintain sanctions. Despite having sold more than $50 billion worth of oil over the 5 years of this program, Iraq has only received some $16 billion worth of supplies through it. This is an average of $150 per person per year - making Iraq, by deliberate design, one of the poorest nations in the world.

In this conflict, the Iraqi people are caught between a dictator and a democracy - neither of which seem to give a damn how many of them die.

The central, shattering truth of this conflict is that hundreds of thousands of innocents have already died, and thousands more continue to die every month. According to the UN's own figures, more children have died in Iraq due to the sanctions than all U.S. combat deaths during all the wars of the 20th Century.

The suffering of the Iraqi people may not impress either the U.S. or Iraqi governments, but it has fragmented the international coalition against Saddam that once existed. And the vision of U.S. warplanes now routinely bombing Iraqi civilians, while U.S.-led sanctions impoverish them, has worked to rehabilitate Saddam's image throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

If Americans can't understand how that's possible, then maybe they can understand this: according to UN agencies and relief organizations in Iraq - organizations such as UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross - sanctions have caused at least 500,000 excess deaths among children under the age of 5. That's a children's 9-11 every month for the last 11 years: 250 World Trade Towers, full of babies and toddlers, crashing to the ground.

Mr. Bassel manages the Zahrat al-Kaleej Apartments in the heart of Baghdad. Like most of the older people here, he treated me with kindness and warm hospitality despite my nationality. He remembers a time when Iraq was a part of the world - and demonized, demoralized and seemingly discarded.

"Americans don't know anything about the world," Bassel told me. "They are on top. They first in technology. They first in military. Everything belong to them. But they should not think they are the only people in the world." Said Bassel, "we are also in the world."

He spoke those words to me as a plea, in the hope of reconciliation between our two peoples. But as America becomes drunk on war fever, we would do well to look at the devastation we have already wrought in Iraq, and to remember one of primary lessons of 9-11: 'We are also in the world' can be a plea - and it can be shout delivered in raging blood. l

Ramzi Kysia is a Muslim-American peace activist, and serves on the board of directors for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center

http://www.saveageneration.org

He is currently in Iraq as part of a Voices in the Wilderness peace delegation trying to stop the war

http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw

12/23/01
4:11:42 PM

The Making Of A Movement

Getting Serious About Media Reform

by Robert W. McChesney & John Nichols

No one should be surprised by the polls showing that close to 90 percent of Americans are satisfied with the performance of their selected President, or that close to 80 percent of the citizenry applaud his Administration's seat-of-the-pants management of an undeclared war. After all, most Americans get their information from media that have pledged to give the American people only the President's side of the story. CNN chief Walter Isaacson distributed a memo effectively instructing the network's domestic newscasts to be sugarcoated in order to maintain popular support for the President and his war. Fox News anchors got into a surreal competition to see who could wear the largest American flag lapel pin. Dan Rather, the man who occupies the seat Walter Cronkite once used to tell Lyndon Johnson the Vietnam War was unwinnable, now says, "George Bush is the President.... he wants me to line up, just tell me where."

No, we should not be surprised that a "just tell me where" press has managed to undermine debate at precisely the time America needs it most--but we should be angry. The role that US newsmedia have played in narrowing and warping the public discourse since September 11 provides dramatic evidence of the severe limitations of contemporary American journalism, and this nation's media system, when it comes to nurturing a viable democratic and humane society. It is now time to act upon that anger to forge a broader, bolder and more politically engaged movement to reform American media.

The base from which such a movement could spring has already been built. Indeed, the current crisis comes at a critical moment for media reform politics. Since the middle 1980s, when inept and disingenuous reporting on US interventions in Central America provoked tens of thousands of Americans to question the role media were playing in manufacturing consent, media activism has had a small but respectable place on the progressive agenda. The critique has gone well beyond complaints about shoddy journalism to broad expressions of concern about hypercommercial, corporate-directed culture and the corruption of communications policy-making by special-interest lobbies and pliable legislators.

Crucial organizations such as Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), the Institute for Public Accuracy, the MediaChannel, Media Alliance and the Media Education Foundation have emerged over the past two decades. Acting as mainstream media watchdogs while pointing engaged Americans toward valuable alternative fare, these groups have raised awareness that any democratic reform in the United States must include media reform. Although it is hardly universal even among progressives, there is increasing recognition that media reform can no longer be dismissed as a "dependent variable" that will fall into place once the more important struggles have been won. People are beginning to understand that unless we make headway with the media, the more important struggles will never be won.

On the advocacy front, Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting and People for Better TV are pushing to improve public broadcasting and to tighten regulation of commercial broadcasting. Commercial Alert organizes campaigns against the commercialization of culture, from sports and museums to literature and media. The Center for Digital Democracy and the Media Access Project both work the corridors of power in Washington to win recognition of public-interest values under extremely difficult circumstances. These groups have won some important battles, particularly on Internet privacy issues.

In addition, local media watch groups have surfaced across the nation. Citizens' organizations do battle to limit billboards in public places and to combat the rise of advertising in schools--fighting often successfully to keep Channel One ads, corporate-sponsored texts and fast-food promotions out of classrooms and cafeterias. Innovative lawsuits challenging the worst excesses of media monopoly are being developed by regional groups such as Rocky Mountain Media Watch and a national consortium of civic organizations, lawyers and academics that has drawn support from Unitarian Universalist organizations. Media activists in Honolulu and San Francisco have joined with unions and community groups to prevent the closure of daily newspapers that provided a measure of competition and debate in those cities.

Despite all these achievements, however, the media reform movement remains at something of a standstill. The sheer corruption of US politics is itself a daunting obstacle. The Center for Public Integrity in 2000 issued "Off the Record: What Media Corporations Don't Tell You About Their Legislative Agendas"--an alarming exposé of the huge lobbying machines employed by the largest communications corporations and their trade associations, as well as the considerable campaign contributions they make. According to the center, the fifty largest media companies and four of their trade associations spent $111.3 million between 1996 and mid-2000 to lobby Congress and the executive branch. Between 1993 and mid-2000, the center determined, media corporations and their employees have given $75 million in campaign contributions to candidates for federal office and to the two major political parties. Regulators and politicians tend therefore to be in the pockets of big-spending corporate communications lobbies, and--surprise, surprise--the corporate newsmedia rarely cover media policy debates. Notwithstanding all the good work by media activists, the "range" of communications policy debate in Washington still tends to run all the way from GE to GM, to borrow a line from FAIR's Jeff Cohen.

At this very moment, for example, the FCC is considering the elimination of the remaining restrictions on media consolidation, including bans on cross-ownership by a single firm of TV stations and newspapers in the same community, and limits on the number of TV stations and cable TV systems a single corporation may own nationwide. The corporate media lobbying superstars are putting a full-court press on the FCC--which, with George W. Bush's imprint now firmly on its membership, is now even more pro-corporate than during the Clinton years. The proposed scrapping of these regulations will increase the shareholder value of numerous media firms dramatically, and will undoubtedly inspire a massive wave of mergers and acquisitions. If the lessons of past ownership deregulation--particularly the 1996 relaxation of radio ownership rules--are any guide, we can expect even less funding for journalism and more commercialism. All of this takes place without scrutiny from major media, and therefore is unknown to all but a handful of Americans.

The immensity of the economic and political barriers to democratic action has contributed to demoralization about the prospects for structural media reform and an understandable turn to that which progressives can hope to control: their own media. So it has been that much energy has gone into the struggle over the future of the Pacifica radio chain, which looks at long last to be heading toward a viable resolution. The Independent Press Association has grown dramatically to nurture scores of usually small, struggling nonprofit periodicals, which are mostly progressive in orientation. And dozens of local Independent Media Centers have mushroomed on the Internet over the past two years. These Indy Media Centers take advantage of new technology to provide dissident and alternative news stories and commentary; some, by focusing on local issues, have become a genuine alternative to established media at a level where that alternative can and does shift the dialogue. We have seen the positive impact of the IMC movement firsthand--in Seattle, in Washington, at the 2000 Democratic and Republican national conventions, at the three lamentable presidential debates later that year, during the Florida recount and in the aftermath of September 11 in New York and other cities. It is vital that this and other alternative media movements grow in scope and professionalism.

Yet, as important as this work is, there are inherent limits to what can be done with independent media, even with access to the Internet. Too often, the alternative media remain on the margins, seeming to confirm that the dominant structures are the natural domain of the massive media conglomerates that supposedly "give the people what they want."

The trouble with this disconnect between an engaged and vital alternative media and a disengaged and stenographic dominant media is that it suggests a natural order in which corporate media have mastered the marketplace on the basis of their wit and wisdom. In fact, our media system is not predominantly the result of free-market competition. Huge promotional budgets and continual rehashing of tried and true formulas play their role in drawing viewers, listeners and readers to dominant print and broadcast media. But their dominance is still made possible, in large part, by explicit government policies and subsidies that permit the creation of large and profitable conglomerates. When the government grants free monopoly rights to TV spectrum, for example, it is not setting the terms of competition; it is picking the winner of the competition. Such policies amount to an annual grant of corporate welfare that economist Dean Baker values in the tens of billions of dollars. These decisions have been made in the public's name, but without the public's informed consent. We must not accept such massive subsidies for wealthy corporations, nor should we content ourselves with the "freedom" to forge an alternative that occupies the margins. Our task is to return "informed consent" to media policy-making and to generate a diverse media system that serves our democratic needs.

In our view, what's needed to begin the job is now crystal clear--a national media reform coalition that can play quarterback for the media reform movement. The necessity argument takes two forms.

First, the immense job of organizing media reform requires that our scarce resources be used efficiently, and that the various components of a media reform movement cooperate strategically. The problem is that the whole of the current media reform movement is significantly less than the sum of its parts. Isolated and impoverished, groups are forced to defend against new corporate initiatives rather than advance positive reform proposals. When they do get around to proposing reforms, activists have occasionally worked on competing agendas; such schisms dissipate energy, squander resources and guarantee defeat. More important, they are avoidable. Organizers of this new coalition could begin by convening a gathering of all the groups now struggling for reform, as well as the foundations and nonprofits willing to support their work. "All the issues we talk about are interlinked. We are fighting against a lot of the same corporations. The corporations, while they supposedly compete with one another, actually work together very well when it comes to lobbying," explains Jeffrey Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. "We need to link up the activists and start to work together as well as the corporations do for the other side." Will every possible member organization get on the same media reform page? No. But after years of working with these groups in various settings, we have no doubt that most will.

Second, a coherent, focused and well-coordinated movement will be needed to launch a massive outreach effort to popularize the issue. That outreach can, and should, be guided by Saul Alinsky's maxim that the only way to beat organized money is with organized people. If the media reform movement stays within the Beltway, we know that we will always lose. Yet, so far, outreach beyond the core community of media activists has been done on a piecemeal basis by various reform groups and critics with very limited budgets. The results have, by and large, been predictably disappointing. As a result, says Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., "the case for media reform is not being heard in Washington now. It is not easy to make the case heard for any reform these days. That's why we need to do more. I hear people everywhere around the country complaining about the media, but we have yet to figure out how to translate those complaints into some kind of activist agenda that can begin to move Congress. There has to be more pressure from outside Washington for specific reforms. Members have to start hearing in their home districts that people want specific reforms of the media."

That will only happen if a concerted campaign organized around core democratic values takes the message of media reform to every college and university, every union hall, every convention and every church, synagogue and mosque in the land. To build a mass movement, the new coalition must link up with organized groups that currently engage in little activity in the way of media reform but that are seriously hampered by the current media system. Organized labor, educators, progressive religious groups, journalists, artists, feminists, environmental organizations and civil rights groups are obvious candidates.

These groups will not simply fall into place as coalition partners, however. Media corporations do not just lobby Congress; they lobby a lot of the groups that suffer under the current system. Some of those groups have been bought off by contributions from foundations associated with AOL, Verizon and other communications conglomerates; others--particularly large sections of organized labor--have been convinced that they have a vested interest in maintaining a status quo that consistently kicks them in the teeth. Building a broad coalition will require a tremendous amount of education and old-fashioned organizing that will inevitably involve pressure from the grassroots on major institutions and unions in order to get the national leadership of those organizations to engage. Movement-building will require that able organizers like Chester, Cohen, FAIR's Janine Jackson and Media Alliance executive director Jeff Perlstein--who have already been engaged in the struggle--be provided with the resources to travel, organize and educate.

All the organizing in the world won't amount to a hill of beans, however, unless there is something tangible to fight for, and to win. That's why we need reform proposals that can be advocated, promoted and discussed. Media reform needs its equivalent of the Voting Rights Act or the Equal Rights Amendment--simple, basic reforms that grassroots activists can understand, embrace and advocate in union halls, church basements and school assemblies. And there has to be legislation to give the activism a sense of focus and possibility.

Fortunately, there are several members of Congress who are already engaged on these issues: Senator Fritz Hollings has emerged as a thoughtful critic of many of the excesses of media monopolies; Senator John McCain has questioned the giveaway of public airwaves to communications conglomerates; Representative John Conyers Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has been outspoken in criticizing the loss of diversity in media ownership and the failure of the FCC to battle monopolization and homogenization; Representative Louise Slaughter has introduced legislation mandating free airtime for political candidates; Senator Paul Wellstone has expressed an interest in legislation that would reassert standards for children's programming and perhaps adopt the approaches of other countries that regulate advertising directed at young children; and Jesse Jackson Jr. has expressed a willingness to introduce legislation aimed at broadening access to diverse media, along with a wide range of other media reform proposals. If an organized movement demands it, there are people in Congress with the courage and the awareness to provide it with a legislative focus.

Ultimately, we believe, the movement's legislative agenda must include proposals to:

§ Apply existing antimonopoly laws to the media and, where necessary, expand the reach of those laws to restrict ownership of radio stations to one or two per owner. Legislators should also consider steps to address monopolization of TV-station ownership and move to break the lock of newspaper chains on entire regions.

§ Initiate a formal, federally funded study and hearings to identify reasonable media ownership regulations across all sectors.

§ Establish a full tier of low-power, noncommercial radio and television stations across the nation.

§ Revamp and invest in public broadcasting to eliminate commercial pressures, reduce immediate political pressures and serve communities without significant disposable incomes.

§ Allow every taxpayer a $200 tax credit to apply to any nonprofit medium, as long as it meets IRS criteria.

§ Lower mailing costs for nonprofit and significantly noncommercial publications.

§ Eliminate political candidate advertising as a condition of a broadcast license, or require that if a station runs a paid political ad by a candidate it must run free ads of similar length from all the other candidates on the ballot immediately afterward.

§ Reduce or eliminate TV advertising directed at children under 12.

§ Decommercialize local TV news with regulations that require stations to grant journalists an hour daily of commercial-free news time, and set budget guidelines for those newscasts based on a percentage of the station's revenues.

We know from experience that many of these ideas are popular with Americans--when they get a chance to hear about them. Moreover, the enthusiasm tends to cross the political spectrum. Much of our optimism regarding a media reform movement is based on our research that shows how assiduously the corporate media lobbies work to keep their operations in Washington out of public view. They suspect the same thing we do: When people hear about the corruption of communications policy-making, they will be appalled. When people understand that it is their democratic right to reform this system, millions of them will be inclined to exercise that right.

What media policy-making needs is to be bathed in democracy. The coalition we envision will have its similarities to the civil rights movement or the women's movement--as it should, since access to information ought to be seen as a fundamental human right. It will stand outside political parties and encourage all of them to take up the mantle of democratic media reform, much as Britain's impressive Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has done. Although its initial funding may well come from large grants, this reform coalition ultimately must be broad-based and member-funded, like Greenpeace or, dare we say it, the National Rifle Association. Activists must feel a sense of ownership and attachment to a citizen lobby if it is to have real impact. We understand that success will depend, over the long term, upon a rejuvenation of popular politics and, accordingly, a decrease in corporate political and economic power. At the same time, we are certain that a movement that expands the range of legitimate debate will ultimately change not just the debate but the current system. "I am convinced that when people start talking about these big issues, these fundamental issues, when they start to understand that they have the power as citizens in a democracy to take on the powers that be and change how things are done, then change becomes inevitable," says Jackson. "The challenge, of course, is to get people to recognize that they have that power."

Even before it gets down to the serious business of reforming existing media systems, the coalition we propose can lead an organized resistance to corporate welfare schemes like the proposed FCC deregulation. And it might even be able to prevent the complete corporatization of the Internet [see Jeffrey Chester and Gary O. Larson, "Something Old, Something New," in this issue]. The key is to have a network of informed organizations and individuals who are already up to speed on media issues and can swing into action on short notice. Currently that network does not exist. The heroic public-interest groups that now lead the fight to oppose corporate domination of FCC policies find themselves without sufficient popular awareness or support, and therefore without the leverage they need to prevail. The movement we propose will be all about increasing leverage over the FCC and Congress in the near term, with an eye toward structural reform down the road.

But is it really possible that such a coalition can take shape in the months and years to come and begin to shift the debate? History tells us that the possibility is real. At times of popular political resurgence throughout the twentieth century, media activism surfaced as a significant force. It was most intense in the Progressive Era, when the rise of the modern capitalist media system was met with sustained Progressive and radical criticism from the likes of Upton Sinclair, Eugene Victor Debs and Robert La Follette. In the 1930s a heterogeneous movement arose to battle commercial broadcasting, and a feisty consumer movement organized to limit advertising in our society. In the postwar years, the Congress of Industrial Organizations attempted to establish a national FM radio network, one of the first casualties of the war on independent labor and the left that marked that period. In the 1960s and '70s the underground press provided vital underpinning for the civil rights, antiwar and feminist movements.

In short, we are building on a long tradition. And there is considerable momentum at present to coalesce. In November some thirty-five media activists from all over the nation met for a day in New York to begin coordinating some of their activities on a range of issues, from local and national policy matters to creating alternative media. Leading media scholars and educators are forming a new national progressive media literacy organization, one that will remain independent of the media conglomerates that bankroll existing groups. We are excited by speculation that Bill Moyers, who has done so much to drum up funding for reform initiatives, will in 2002 use his considerable influence to convince progressive foundations to make a genuine commitment to this fundamental democratic initiative.

The bottom line is clear. Until reformers come together, until we create a formal campaign to democratize our communications policy-making and to blast open our media system, we will continue to see special issues of The Nation like this one lamenting our situation. We need no more proof than the current moment to tell us that the time to build a broad coalition for media reform has arrived.

Robert W. McChesney, who teaches at the University of Illinois, is the author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy (New Press) and, with John Nichols, of It's the Media, Stupid (Seven Stories). John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is the author, with Bob McChesney, of It's the Media, Stupid (Seven Stories), which features introductions by Ralph Nader, Barbara Ehrenreich and Paul Wellstone, and Jews for Buchanan, on the 2000 presidential election, published in November 2001 by New Press.

Source: http://www.TheNation.com

12/23/01
4:06:11 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.23

RANGEL Delivers Democratic Response to the President

http://www.truthout.com/12.23A.Rangel.Radio.htm

Afghan Convoy Controversy Grows

http://www.truthout.com/12.23B.Afghan.Convoy.htm

U.S. Special Forces Aiding Philippine Fight Against Rebels

http://www.truthout.com/12.23C.US.Philippine.htm

Senate Approves Feinstein Terrorist US Small Arms Provision

http://www.truthout.com/12.23D.Small.Arms.htm

Body of Missing Harvard Biologist Found in Mississippi River

http://www.truthout.com/12.23E.Body.Biologist.htm

Navy Sonar Likely Killed Whales

http://www.truthout.com/12.23F.Navy.Whales.htm

12/23/01
4:02:12 PM

Everybody's Got Their Own Terrorist

by Al Martin

According to the Friendly Colonel, one of his friends who retired from the FBI and became a local police chief has told him that even in the small city jail he runs they're holding eight suspects under the terrorism act. They're being kept in a separate wing. It's interesting the way it works. The federal government picks up the tab. The sheriff told him that the detainees are not allowed to have any visitors, not even family. They're not even allowed to call a lawyer or have any contact with a lawyer. They can't send out mail or receive mail. As a matter of fact, they're not even allowed to put these guys' names in the computer to say they're holding them. Their names are kept on a separate hand written piece of paper that the sheriff has to keep locked up in his safe. These people are being kept "at the special request" of the Office of Homeland Security.

Some of the "detainees" have been arrested locally by the local nickel and dime police guys. They keep getting lists of names of people that are "wanted." The county sheriff's office is large enough so they have the ability to get "pink" cables from the Department of Justice. In other words, they keep getting classified cables with seemingly endless lists of names. He said there are thousands of names.

The sheriff's department isn't obligated to go out and grab them - only if they notice them in their jurisdiction. Thus far, the only thing that's paid for is a per diem for keeping these guys -- and that only circuitously because Washington has to jump through hoops to get them the money and it has to come under the guise of some sort of special funding program that doesn't really exist. They're not getting paid anything extra to go out and look for them, but he has said they have received notification as late as last week that indicated that as soon as "things settle down" and certain remaining pieces of legislation are passed and incorporated into the USA Patriot Act that the locals will be paid to go out and get the people.

And what nationality are these "detainees"? Perhaps aliens with green cards, or maybe people who wear turbans? Not at all, the former FBI agent admitted that where the nervousness is coming from at senior levels in federal law enforcement is that there are thousands and thousands of people who are being secretly detained in the United States. There are an awful lot of names on this list that are not Arabs. There are an awful lot of names on the list like "Smith" and "Jones" and "Johnson" and "Nelson." And there's no paper trail. Their names are being kept off computers. Even their families don't know where they are.

The Bush Administration is jumping the gun because even with the authority already given them and with the bills already passed to date to augment that authority, they don't have all the authority necessary to detain people and to do what they're doing, that is, detaining so many people and keeping them incommunicado. They're supposed to wait for the remaining pieces of legislation that are still outstanding to be passed. Then they'll have the authority to do what they're doing - but for right now, they don't. And what the FBI is nervous about is that if this gets dribbled out into the media or gets exposed in a big way, somebody in Washington is going to duck for cover and it's going to leave a lot of local guys with a lot of explaining to do. And they're not going to have any paperwork in their hands to say, "This is what I was told to do."

Other sheriffs have done the same thing. They're getting these confidential lists of names of people they're supposed to place under detention. They've been ordered to shred them right after. He knows that he (and a hell of a lot of other sheriffs in this nation, are beginning to keep these lists because people are getting concerned about covering their own ass.

There's a lot of nervousness about who's covering whose ass. As of now, the Department of Justice is not giving out bounties, just a per diem comp, just the standard fee which isn't much. They're not paying them anything extra yet, but they've been told that that's coming, that supposedly they will be getting paid extra for doing this. One thing that the feds have to be careful about is that most of the local jails and the county sheriffs are on a very tight budget.

They have a special wing of the jail they're using at Huntsville. It's a special wing devoted to this that used to be their "dry-out tank."

The media has circulated rumors before that there are far more people being detained both domestically and overseas than what the US Government has admitted, but the information in this column is an exclusive report on the details.

Like the sheriff said, "How many guys with the last name of Smith and Jones can have immigration or green card problems?"

Of course, even though he's a former FBI agent, he doesn't exactly know the intent of holding all these people who most likely don't have anything to do with terrorism or most likely aren't even connected to it. In other words, people are being held who couldn't possibly have any connection with terrorism. He thinks that a lot of the people they're holding are "potentially vocal people." He didn't go on to explain that. Then he said, "How do you think the government has gotten away with holding so many people for so long with names like Smith or Jones, completely incommunicado, yet nobody is running to the media. Why isn't there pressure building? Why aren't family members running to the local newspapers saying what's happened?"

The answer is that the people being held are, in some cases, people who have worked in very sensitive capacities for the US Government before and perhaps they know enough that they could be a problem down the line if they started to talk. By and large, these are people who don't have much family or may be very disconnected from family life. In other words, they come from family circumstances where they are used to being missed for months and sometimes years. That would be a normal course of events for them.

The FBI is generally familiar with Arabs that the CIA has associated with, including Arabs in the United States who are considered to be friendly. What it looks is a massive operation by the CIA to cover its ass, to distance itself from its own Arab connections. If they're in prison, they can't talk and say anything if they're held incommunicado.

It's like the sheriff said - if somebody from the Department of Justice or even the Department of Defense showed up tomorrow with DoD or DoJ credentials with a writ signed from the judge for the production of these eight people, I'd have to release them. I'd have no idea where they would go after that. All I need to see is the little stamp of Office of Homeland Security and that's it.

The sheriffs, when asked to release the detainees, would not even have the right to be informed as to the ultimate destination where the people are going.

The speculation from the FBI old-timers is that there are probably a variety of reasons why there are so many people being detained, the least of which is "terrorism." What they suspect is that by the number of Arab nationals being detained (knowing who these guys are and knowing their involvement with US intelligence in the past) that the CIA is doing a lot of housecleaning and covering its own ass.

He said, "How do you define terrorism?" You need new definitions - when everything is so interconnected.

Terrorists, for example, who went out and killed people or blew up buses full of kids, and who also had relationships with the CIA - are they then strictly "terrorists"?

The ambiguity of state-sponsored terrorism, or domestic terrorism, or international terrorism, then becomes one big muddle.

The FBI is arresting all these Arabs; then the CIA comes and grabs them and either lets them go or gets them out of the country and the FBI isn't even told where they've gone. This is why the FBI is nervous - because of the chaos of the situation. The FBI old timer says, "The CIA grabs people from us. The Department of Defense grabs guys from us that we're arresting. The British show up and we find out that this terrorist had actually been working with MI6. The French DST shows up and says, 'hey this of one of our terrorists.'"

They're not only protecting their own assets, but they're covering their own asses. Regarding the processing office at the National Intelligence Division of the FBI, they had a luncheon for some of the retired guys who were talking with some of the active duty guys getting close to retirement and they were laughing at how it looks like a mini-U.N. The British show up to claim their terrorists. The French show up to claim their terrorists. And then the CIA comes in to get their terrorists. He says, pretty soon we got nobody left, who actually is supposed to be a terrorist. He says I thought we had a war on terrorism and we were supposed to be declaring war on terrorism. But what a selective war it seems to be when all the supposed enemy targets and would be terrorists get whisked away by various intelligence agencies of different countries trying to cover their political liabilities. Everybody in the world shows up to claim them. He laughs and says that even the Russians have been there.

It really makes you wonder, though, how all this is getting financed --holding all these people in detention. Millions are being spent looking for all these people that represent a liability to the United States or one of our allies. Then you look at these appropriation bills getting jammed through Congress, and Congress is in complete chaos. They're getting bills passed just about every day. A former Washington insider says that he doesn't know any member of the House or Senate that has actually read them.

What is happening apparently is the old Bushonian trick of appropriating $20 million, $15 million, or $50 million here and there for, in some cases, little esoteric subdivisions of divisions of departments, some of which haven't even been in operation in 40 years. That's the best scam -appropriating money for defunct agencies. There are legions of little office buildings outside of the crescent of Washington from Silver Springs over to Fort Mead and down into McLean, Virginia and Reston. There are row after row of little office buildings, and they're all leased by different agencies of the government.

There was one that was called something like the Appalachian Relief and Corn Investigation Bureau that was phased out in 1947 and they still have an office with a sign on the door. There's nothing in it. It's completely vacant and there's no furniture in it anymore, but they still rent the office for like $150 per month.

It reminds me of another story about the way government accounting works. If the media ever asked any questions, they can always say, "Oh yes we're aware that that bureau got closed down in 1947, but its functions were then assumed by Bureau 317-A of the Department of Agriculture." The when the media goes there and finds out that that was shut down in 1963. Then they say, "Oh yes, but then their functions were assumed by this other bureau." And the government can get away with it because a lot of the appropriations, if they're under $10 million per year for these esoteric little offices, they just come out as block spending authority, which isn't specifically listed by bureau because the government claims that the cost of the paperwork is too high. So the way it works is there are slush funds within slush funds. But it's a neat trick the way it's done.

Only God knows how much money is sucked out of the federal budget.

Here's another way money is sucked out for purposes other than what the appropriations have been designated - by using little arcane one man or two man bureaus, a subdivision of a subdivision of an agency that has long since been shut down - but continue to get funded.

Congressman Bill Alexander actually stumbled into this little bureau that was supposed to be part of the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) that was actually shut down in the 1940s. It supposedly had to do with the restocking of wildlife and reforestation planning, but it didn't do anything. It was what they called a "field planning office." He tracked it down and it ended up that $1.9 million annually still gets appropriated for it, but it's actually being used to subsidize a variety of exclusive congressional luxury golf course retreats. Of course, they're not called that. They're called "congressional study and research retreats."

In other news, it is interesting to report that when the final 50 odd pieces of legislation related to the USA PATRIOT bill are passed by Congress, more than likely under administration pressure before the need of this congressional term, the United States of America will no longer meet the legal definition of being a "free democratic state" in accordance with the definition, as put forth by our own Supreme Court.

The old American Republic now falls as Benjamin Franklin predicted it might -- not with a bang but with a whimper -- of naivete, apathy and blind "patriotism."

Hail the New Imperial Republic. . .

Source: http://www.almartinraw.com/column42.html

12/23/01
3:53:43 PM

t r u t h o u t | 12.22

TOM DASCHLE Responds to Ari Fleischer

http://www.truthout.com/12.22A.Daschle.Fleischer.htm

Pentagon, Justice Dept. Battle Over Handling Of American Taliban

http://www.truthout.com/12.22B.CBS.Walker.htm

Senate Confirms Two Bush Nominees | Again Rejects Otto Reich

http://www.truthout.com/12.22C.Senate.Confirms.htm

Flight Trainer Blew Whistle on Moussaoui

http://www.truthout.com/12.22D.Trainer.Whistle.htm

Hunt for Osama Bin Laden Highlights Problems in U.S.-Saudi Relations

http://www.truthout.com/12.22E.US.Saudi.OBL.htm

GENE LYONS | Magic Carpet Jihad

http://www.truthout.com/12.22F.Lyons.Jihad.htm

12/23/01
3:47:29 PM

US Navy Admits Its Sonar Killed Whales

By Cat Lazaroff Environment News

WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) - The U.S. Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service have released a report acknowledging the role that the Navy's experimental sonar played in the deaths of 17 marine mammals in the Bahamas last year. The report is the agency's first official admission that sonar may contribute to whale beachings.

The interim report finds that the March 2000 stranding of 16 whales and a dolphin on Bahamian beaches was caused "by the unusual combination of several contributory factors acting together."

The Navy and NMFS concluded that the presence of the whales in a restrictive ocean channel, during calm water conditions which reflect and amplify sounds, caused the Navy's sonar to damage the whale's ears, leading them to beach themselves.

"Review of passive acoustic data ruled out volcanic eruptions, landslides, other seismic events, and explosive blasts," the agencies reported. "The unusual extended use of Navy midrange tactical sonars operating in the area is the most plausible acoustic source."

The report says that the Navy's experimental Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS), which has been implicated in other whale strandings, was not involved in this incident.

Instead, the whales were injured because the calm water and the underwater topography concentrated sound in the top 200 meters of the ocean - just where the whales and dolphins would have been swimming.

"The calm seas did little to stop the reflection and caused fewer air bubbles, which dissipate sound energy," the report notes.

On March 15 and 16, 2000, nine Cuvier's beaked whales, three Blainville's beaked whales, two unidentified beaked whales, one spotted dolphin, and two Minke whales were reported stranded along the Northeast and Northwest Providence Channels on the Bahamian Islands. The strandings took place within 24 hours of the intensive use of active midrange sonar by U.S. Navy ships as they passed through the Northeast and Northwest Providence Channels.

The Navy says that multiple sonar units were used over an extended period of time.

Six of the whales died after stranding on beaches. One dolphin stranded and died of unrelated causes. Ten whales were returned to the sea alive.

Specimen samples were collected from four dead whales. Three of these whales showed signs of bleeding in the inner ears and one whale showed signs of bleeding around the brain.

Whale biologists determined that the most likely cause of the bleeding was either a blow to the head or exceptionally loud noises.

"The investigation team concludes that tactical mid-range frequency sonars aboard U.S. Navy ships that were in use during the sonar exercise in question were the most plausible source of this acoustic or impulse trauma," the report concludes.

The investigation team recommended that future research focus on identifying where combinations of ocean and undersea conditions might combine to create similar problems in the future.

"This research, along with other research on the impacts of sonar sounds on marine mammals, increased knowledge of marine mammal densities, increased knowledge of causes of beaked whale strandings, increased knowledge of beaked whale anatomy, physiology and medicine, and further research on sonar propagation, will provide valuable information for determining which combinations of factors are most likely to cause another mass stranding event," they conclude.

Little is known about deep sea whales like this Blainville's Beaked Whale (Photo courtesy Cetacea)

The team recommended that the Navy continue to investigate how sonar affects marine mammals and to develop measures to protect animals "to the maximum extent possible and not jeopardize national security."

The Navy said it will include, when possible, Bahamian scientists and other qualified individuals in future surveys involving marine mammal research in Bahamian territorial waters.

The interim report is available online at:

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/overview/Interim_Bahamas_Report.pdf

Environment News Service (ENS) 2001. All Rights Reserved.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-21-07.html

12/23/01
3:45:23 PM

Fox News Pulls Its Four-Part Israeli US Phone Spying Series Michael Rivero rivero@whatreallyhappened.com 12-22-1

Fox News just yanked the four part story about the phone spying scandal.

This has become absurd.

Here the FBI has just uncovered the largest spy ring ever discovered in our country, and the government that owns and operates that spy network is able to tell Fox News NOT to report the story?

Will someone explain to me what is going on when the nation that owns the largest spy ring ever discovered inside the United States is, even AFTER that spy ring is discovered and arrested, able to tell Fox News what stories they can and cannot run?

We need to get this to as many people as possible. Clearly, the Mossad has a huge network of people able to call and complain to Fox News to remove the story. We must muster an even greater number of people to call Fox News and DEMAND the full and complete story be put back on the web site and on the air.

Please email everyone on your activist list and post the news about this most egregious censorship, about Fox caving in on this story, to every public forum you can.

Have everyone on your activist list call Fox News to demand the return of the story, then phone ten of their activist friends and have THEM phone Fox News.

Source: http://www.rense.com/general18/spypull.htm

12/23/01
3:39:51 PM

White Christmases Becoming More A Dream Than A Reality

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Dec. 20, 2001 – In 1942, Bing Crosby crooned about a white Christmas, and a dream is just what a snowy Dec. 25 has become in several parts of the United States, according to statistics provided by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Looking at 16 cities – mainly in the north -- since 1960, the number of white Christmases per decade declined from 78 during the 1960s to 39 in the 1990s. People in Chicago, for example, saw the number of white Christmases – defined as at least one inch of snow on the ground – drop from seven in the 1960s to two during the 1990s. In New York, the number declined from five in the 1960s to one this past decade, and Detroit had just three white Christmases in the 1990s vs. nine in the 1960s.

But in several cities, the number of white Christmases has been fairly constant. Looking at the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and’90s, Tahoe City, Calif., had eight, seven, eight and nine white Christmases, respectively. Salt Lake City’s number of white Christmases per decade were seven, seven, eight and eight. Minneapolis/St. Paul had eight white Christmases in the 1960s, seven in each of the following two decades and eight in the 1990s.

In Tennessee, Memphis, Nashville and Knoxville/Oak Ridge had several white Christmases in the 1960s – three in Memphis, two in Nashville and four in Knoxville/Oak Ridge -- but none in the 1980s or 1990s.

As defined for this survey, Atlanta hasn’t had a white Christmas since the record-keeping process began in 1896.

Following are metropolitan areas used in the study followed in parentheses by the number of white Christmases for each of the last four decades:

Seattle (2, 0, 0, 0) Tahoe City, Calif. (8, 7, 8, 9) Salt Lake City, Utah (7, 7, 8, 8) Denver (4, 4, 7, 2) Minneapolis/St. Paul (8, 7, 7, 8) Kansas City, Mo. (4, 0, 6, 2) Chicago (7, 5, 4, 2) Detroit (9, 7, 5, 3) Cincinnati (3, 0, 2, 2) Boston (8, 5, 5, 2) New York City (5, 1, 1, 1) Washington, D.C. (4, 0, 0, 0) Memphis (3, 0, 0, 0) Nashville (2, 0, 0, 0) Knoxville/Oak Ridge (4, 1, 0, 0) Atlanta (0, 0, 0, 0)

The snowfall analysis was performed by Dale Kaiser, a meteorologist with the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Kevin Birdwell, a meteorologist in the lab’s Computational Science and Engineering Division.

For many cities, the weather described by the data is actually what was recorded at a suburban station several miles away, Bob Cushman, director of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, noted. For example, the weather for Washington, D.C., was actually recorded at Glen Dale, Md.

Cushman advised against reading too much into the analysis, saying, "After all, we’re only looking at one aspect of weather on one specific day each year. Whether there is snow on the ground on Dec. 25 may or may not relate to the larger issue of whether the U.S., or any region in the country, is experiencing an overall warming trend."

The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/), which includes the World Data Center for Atmospheric Trace Gases, is the primary global change data and information analysis center of the Department of Energy. The center responds to requests for data and information from users from all over the world.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a Department of Energy multiprogram research facility managed by UT-Battelle.

Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://www.ornl.gov

12/23/01
3:36:58 PM

NEW STUDY SHOWS EARLY SIGNALS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN EARTH'S COLD REGIONS

Global mean temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, with more than half of the increase occurring in the last 25 years, according to University of Colorado at Boulder Senior Researcher Richard Armstrong.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011210163124.htm

LUNGS DEVELOP BETTER IN KIDS WHO MOVE AWAY FROM POLLUTION

When children living under polluted, hazy skies move away to communities with cleaner air, their lungs begin to grow more quickly, according to a study by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011217082728.htm

GEOPHYSICIST STUDIES LIFE IN THE EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM

The early Earth may have been an interrupted Eden - a planet where life repeatedly evolved and diversified, only to be sent back to square one by asteroids 10 or 20 times wider than the one that hastened the dinosaurs' demise. When the surface of the Earth finally became inhabitable again, thousands of years after each asteroid impact, the survivors would have emerged from their hiding places and spread across the planet - until another asteroid struck and the whole cycle was repeated.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011217082959.htm

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER NEW MATERIAL THAT EXPANDS UNDER PRESSURE

Most materials get compacted or fall apart under pressure, but scientists working in an international collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and the School of Chemical Sciences at Englands University of Birmingham have discovered some that expand. These unusual materials may have applications as "molecular sponges" for soaking up chemical pollutants or even radioactive waste.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011214081600.htm

NEW PICTURE OF INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS THE OVERLOOKED ROLE OF VISUOSPATIAL ABILITIES

When we say that people know their way around, we really mean theyre smart. Now, psychologists have evidence that strong visuospatial skills and working memory may be at least as good as verbal skills and working memory as indicators of general intelligence. New research correlates visuospatial abilities, less extensively explored than verbal abilities in intelligence research, with the brains executive function, the central cognitive command and control that may lie at the heart of smarts.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011217082547.htm

ENGINEERS CREATE TINY, WIGGLING FANS TO COOL FUTURE ELECTRONICS

Research engineers at Purdue University are developing tiny, quiet fans that wiggle back and forth to help cool future laptop computers and other portable electronic gear. The devices remove heat by waving a small blade in alternate directions, like the motion of a classic hand-held Chinese fan. They consume only about 1/150th as much electricity as conventional fans, and they have no gears or bearings, which produce friction and heat.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011217083503.htm

PRIMITIVE MICROBE OFFERS MODEL FOR EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS A microorganism whose evolutionary roots can be traced to the era of the first multicellular animals may provide a glimpse of how single-celled organisms made a critical evolutionary leap.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011218072534.htm

ENGINEERED STRATEGIES TO MITIGATE GLOBAL WARMING COULD INFLUENCE BIOSPHERE

Blocking the sun may not be such a cool way of counteracting climate change, scientists at the University of Illinois say. Potential effects upon the biosphere could be important to agriculture and forest production, and also could create secondary feedback mechanisms that may further change the climate.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011213084601.htm

NASA BIDS FAREWELL TO THE SUCCESSFUL DEEP SPACE 1 MISSION

NASA's adventurous Deep Space 1 mission, which successfully tested 12 high-risk, advanced space technologies and captured the best images ever taken of a comet, will come to an end Dec. 18, 2001.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011218073701.htm

RELATIVISTIC HEAVY ION COLLIDER BEGINS COLLIDING HIGH-ENERGY POLARIZED PROTONS; EXPERIMENTS WILL PROBE SPIN STRUCTURE OF PROTONS AND THE NATURE OF THE STRONG FORCE

The newest and largest particle accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory is taking a break from recreating the conditions of the early universe to investigate another fundamental question that has puzzled physicists: Where do protons get their spin, a property of elementary particles as basic as mass and electrical charge? To begin to answer the question, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has accelerated beams of polarized protons to the highest energy ever, and will begin colliding the beams this week.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011218073117.htm

NEW PUBLIC-DOMAIN DATABASE COULD ADVANCE HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION THROUGH SOUND

Researchers in California have created a new, publicly available database of acoustic measurements of human subjects that may help engineers build personalized sound systems for computers that could rival or even exceed the experience of listening to a high-end home theater system.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011218072852.htm

SCENT OF A LOBSTER

No question about it spiny lobsters arent pretty. Keith Ward, chair of ONRs Biomolecular and Biosystems Science and Technology Group, doesnt particularly like their looks either, but he knows their sense of smell is astounding. Researchers funded by Ward figure that a lobsters extraordinary ability to sniff out all kinds of odor trails in the water is just what the Navy would like an unmanned vehicle to be able to do.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011218072745.htm

ANTARCTIC MUD REVEALS ANCIENT EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

Scientists concerned about global warming are especially troubled by dramatic signs of climate change in Antarctica - from rapidly melting glaciers to unexplained declines in penguin populations. Records show that average winter temperatures are 10 degrees higher in parts of Antarctica today than they were 50 years ago. If that warming trend continues, say many climate experts, the vast Antarctic ice sheets could melt, causing catastrophic coastal flooding as the world`s oceans rise.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011219062844.htm

WORLD'S SMALLEST ATOM STORAGE RING IS FIRST TO GUIDE ULTRA-COLD NEUTRAL ATOMS; A STEP TOWARD "ATOM FIBER OPTICS"

In a development that could lead to dramatic improvements in aircraft guidance systems and open new areas of study in basic physics, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated the first storage ring able to confine and guide the flow of ultra-cold neutral atoms in a circular path.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011219062506.htm

NASA TECHNOLOGY MELTS ICE, KEEPING TRANSIT SYSTEM SAFE

A NASA-developed, environmentally friendly anti-icing fluid that can make railroad and commuter travel safer and more reliable during snowy conditions is now available for commercial applications.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011218073836.htm

BATTLING THE BARNACLE

For as long as we’ve been building boats and putting them in the water, we’ve been battling those pesky little ocean critters that want to attach themselves to our boats for a free ride. The ubiquitous, determined barnacle not to mention tubeworms, oysters, algae, and an array of other invertebrates has long been the bane of many a fleet and flotilla. Pitch, copper sheaths, oils and gums, pesticides, silicone, arsenic over the centuries all have been tried, and none have completely solved the problem.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011219062137.htm

IBM'S TEST-TUBE QUANTUM COMPUTER MAKES HISTORY; FIRST DEMONSTRATION OF SHOR'S HISTORIC FACTORING ALGORITHM

Scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center have performed the world's most complicated quantum-computer calculation to date. They caused a billion billion custom-designed molecules in a test tube to become a seven-qubit quantum computer that solved a simple version of the mathematical problem at the heart of many of today's data-security cryptographic systems.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011220081620.htm

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND VOLCANOLOGISTS ANALYSIS OF 1883 KRAKATAU ERUPTION HELPS ASSESS VOLCANIC HAZARDS

Large-scale explosive eruptions from volcanoes located close to the sea often generate tsunamis that can carry volcanic fallout or flow material from such events onto distant coastal areas. URI Graduate School of Oceanography volcanologists Steven Carey, David Morelli, and Haraldur Sigurdsson and Butikno Bronto of the Volcanological Survey of Indonesia have studied the processes of tsunami deposition of past major eruptions to better understand how these volcanic deposits are important components of volcanic hazards assessment in coastal areas.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011218072639.htm

HOT GALACTIC ARMS POINT TO VICIOUS CYCLE TRIGGERED BY BLACK HOLE

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed the aftermath of a titanic explosion that wracked the elliptical galaxy known as NGC 4636. This eruption could be the latest episode in a cycle of violence triggered by gas falling into a central massive black hole.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221082136.htm

ANTIBIOTIC MAY BE A POTENTIAL THERAPY FOR MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

A common antibiotic, long used to treat infections in humans, may have potential as a treatment for multiple sclerosis, a devastating disease of the central nervous system, according to a new study.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221080824.htm

PENN TEAM FINDS "MOLECULAR CHAPERONES" CAN HALT PROGRESS OF PARKINSON'S DISEASE IN FRUIT FLIES AND POSSIBLY HUMANS

Using fruit fly models of Parkinsons disease, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found that a class of proteins known as "molecular chaperones" can block the progression of neurodegenerative disease in Drosophila melanogaster. In addition, the group has found evidence that similar pathways may operate in Parkinsons disease and possibly other neurodegenerative disorders in humans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221081755.htm

RESEARCHERS DISCOVER HOW BODYS INTERNAL CLOCK GENERATES DAILY RHYTHMS; SIGNALS FROM RETINA AND BODY CLOCK RECEIVED BY SAME MESSENGER

Harvard Medical School researchers have gained one of the first glimpses of how the bodys circadian clocka tiny cluster of nerve cells behind the eyessends out the signals that control natural daily rhythms. The newly discovered pathway, reported in the December 21 Science, opens a long-closed door to research that could ultimately lead to new treatments for circadian disturbances such as certain sleep disorders.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221081605.htm

PROTEIN DISCOVERY TIED TO DNA MASTER SWITCH

A new cellular protein discovered by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill appears to be a crucial molecular component of a master switch that turns genes on and off.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221081457.htm

NEW INSIGHT INTO SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) usually affects infants during their first six months of life. The incidence of this disease in Sweden increased during the 1980s and was approximately one death in 1000 live births in 1990 and was considerably greater in some other countries. After 1992-1993 the incidence of this disease has decreased to a level of approximately one third of that in 1990.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221081106.htm

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RESEARCH BOOSTS UNDERSTANDING OF HOW HYDROGEN TRANSFER WORKS

During the last 40 years, chemists have developed an understanding of how an electron transfers from one group to another to create new compounds. Now a team of University of Washington chemists has found that the same ideas apply to transferring a hydrogen atom an electron and a proton together. That understanding could prove important to scientists trying to devise new classes of chemical reactions.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221081705.htm

RARE SQUID FOUND IN GULF OF MEXICO

Texas A&M University oceanographer William Sager spotted and photographed an unusual squid while investigating natural oil seeps deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The results of his serendipitous encounter will appear in the Dec. 21 edition of the prestigious research journal Science.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221081841.htm

WHITE CHRISTMASES BECOMING MORE A DREAM THAN A REALITY

In 1942, Bing Crosby crooned about a white Christmas, and a dream is just what a snowy Dec. 25 has become in several parts of the United States, according to statistics provided by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221081413.htm

12/23/01
3:13:05 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

SONAR KILLED WHALES, NAVY ADMITS

WASHINGTON, DC, December 21, 2001 (ENS) - The U.S. Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service have released a report acknowledging the role that the Navy's experimental sonar played in the deaths of 17 marine mammals in the Bahamas last year. The report is the agency's first official admission that sonar may contribute to whale beachings.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-21-07.html

USDA SUED OVER ELEPHANT ABUSE DOCUMENTS

WASHINGTON, DC, December 21, 2001 (ENS) - Three animal protection groups have filed suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeking information about how much the agency knew, and when, regarding the mistreatment of elephants at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. The lawsuit comes as famous circus trainer Mark Oliver Gebel faces a criminal trial for elephant abuse in San Jose, California.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-21-06.html

EUROPE INVITES RUSSIA TO STRENGTHEN GREEN TEAMWORK

BRUSSELS, Belgium, December 21, 2001 (ENS) - The European Union and Russia should strengthen cooperation on environmental issues over "a broader strategic agenda," the European Commission said this week. The executive branch of the European Union is proposing increased contacts between the two sides within the framework of existing agreements.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-21-01.html

RARE GIANT SQUID FOUND IN GULF OF MEXICO

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, December 21, 2001 (ENS) - A giant squid seen and photographed in the Gulf of Mexico last year was just the latest in a string of eight sightings around the world of what may be a whole new class of the strange creatures. The Mystery Squid, as it has been dubbed, has turned up west of Africa, in the Indian Ocean and in Hawaii, at depths ranging from 6,300 to 15,390 feet.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-21-03.html

HEALING OUR WORLD: WEEKLY COMMENT

By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

How Can We Possibly Change Things?

The shortest day of the year - and the longest night - is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice. To the ancients, it was initially a time of great stress as the people wondered if the days would keep getting shorter and shorter until the Sun went out for good. We can only imagine the great relief that spread over the land as the days became longer and longer again and the warmth of the Sun returned.

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-21g.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: DECEMBER 21, 2001

Santa Gets Help from NOAA

Are White Christmases Just a Memory?

Making the Holidays Pet-Safe

Some Christmas Toys Called Naughty to Animals

Caviar Not on Green Gift Lists

Nation's Living Christmas Tree Hosts Hundreds of Visitors

Last Great Places Photos Available Online

Sierra Club Offers Answers for Holiday Arguments

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-21-09.html

12/23/01
3:09:40 PM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

WOMEN'S BODIES: THE NEXT AFGHAN BATTLEFIELD

Equality for Women Depends on Access to Reproductive Healthcare

by Martha Campbell

"An Afghan woman has a one in 60 chance of dying every time she has a baby. Over her lifetime, she has a one in 12 chance of dying in childbirth. That mortality rate far exceeds most battlefields where men fight."

http://205.252.23.176/opinion/2001/12/19/1.html

A MISSISSIPPI MEDITATION

The Radiant Memories of a Grateful Interloper

by Robert Montague

Forbidden to go near the black church down the dirt road, Robert Montague used to sneak there anyway. His reward: the gospel spirit enriched the white boy who crouched beneath the church windows.

http://205.252.23.176/opinion/2001/12/19/2.html

CHECK IT OUT!

Tips, Leads and Links by The TomPaine.com Staff

Misogynist Heritage... PATRIOTs Across the Pond... Perry Messes with Texas Death Penalty... You Go, Girl!... and more!

http://205.252.23.176/news/2001/12/20/index.html

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Our Readers React by The TomPaine.com Staff

Fooling the Voters... What Goes Around... Welfare for the Rich... Feedback on Publicus... and more!

http://205.252.23.176/news/2001/12/20/1.html

12/23/01
3:04:10 PM

Manifesto 2000 For A Culture Of Peace And Non-Violence

The Manifesto 2000 for a culture of peace and non-violence, was drafted by a group of Nobel Peace Prize, to translate the resolutions of the United Nations into everyday language and to make them relevant to people everywhere.

The Manifesto 2000 was made public in Paris on March 4th 1999, during a press conference at the Eiffel Tower and is open to signatures from the wider public throughout the world.

The Manifesto 2000 does not appeal to a higher authority, but instead it is an individual commitment and responsibility.

Because the year 2000 must be a new beginning, an opportunity to transform - all together - the culture of war and violence into a culture of peace and non-violence. ecause this transformation demands the participation of each and every one of us, and must offer young people and future generations the values that can inspire them to shape a world based on justice, solidarity, liberty, dignity, harmony and prosperity for all. ecause the culture of peace can underpin sustainable development, environmental protection and the well-being of each person. ecause I am aware of my share of responsibility for the future of humanity, in particular to the children of today and tomorrow.

I pledge in my daily life, in my family, my work, my community, my country and my region, to:

Respect the life and dignity of each human being without discrimination or prejudice;

Practice active non-violence, rejecting violence in all its forms: physical, sexual, psychological, economical and social, in particular towards the most deprived and vulnerable such as children and adolescents;

Share my time and material resources in a spirit of generosity to put an end to exclusion, injustice and political and economic oppression;

Defend freedom of expression and cultural diversity, giving preference always to dialogue and listening without engaging in fanaticism, defamation and the rejection of others;

Promote consumer behaviour that is responsible and development practices that respect all forms of life and preserve the balance of nature on the planet;

Contribute to the development of my community, with the full participation of women and respect for democratic principles, in order to create together new forms of solidarity;

Please sign at: http://www.unesco.org/manifesto2000

12/23/01
2:46:38 PM

Dear friend of MoveOn,

Today is the Winter Solstice, the day when long nights begin to recede and sunlight starts to return.

Attached below is a message of hope from 9-11peace.org. 9-11peace.org, founded by Eli Pariser on September 12th, is now supported by MoveOn.org. We are very proud of the work of this campaign, including the excellent weekly bulletin, a sample of which is attached below.

If you'd like to subscribe to this bulletin, go to:

http://www.9-11peace.org/bulletin.php3

We wish you a happy and peaceful New Year.

Sincerely,

- Wes, Joan, Carrie, Peter, David, Eli & Susan MoveOn.org and 9-11peace.org December 21st, 2001

THE HOPE FOR PEACE

Read online, subscribe, or unsubscribe at:

http://www.9-11peace.org/bulletin.php3

INTRODUCTION: WHY HOPE?

At one time it seemed that slavery had always been a part of human history and always would be. But through the courage, sacrifice, and hard work of thousands of people, slavery was abolished in most countries. Apartheid ended. The Berlin wall came down. Women were enfranchised in many nations.

Activism is contingent on a kind of tough optimism, a stubborn belief that our power is our own and that it is enough to change the world. In other words, activism and social change must be preceded by hope. This hope is necessary if we are ever to escape the cycles of violence between nations and create a lasting peace.

Hope is not always easy to come by. Despite our best efforts, governments wage war, conflicts rage on, and innocent people are killed. At least, this is often how it seems.

This week we devote ourselves to the good news. There ARE positive signs that efforts for peace world-wide are working and growing. Below are our favorites, but because these initiatives rarely draw attention to themselves, there are thousands more that we haven't heard of. In the new year, it is our hope that we can build on these successes. The customary season's greeting is too appropriate to pass up: Let there be Peace on Earth, and Goodwill toward All.

Note: The next issue of the bulletin will come out during the second week of January.

TOP FIVE REASONS TO HOPE -------------------- The top five reasons to hope for world peace.

75 Million People Commit to Work for Peace

In 1999, UNESCO and several Nobel Peace Laureates launched the Manifesto 2000 signature campaign. The Manifesto 2000 is not a petition; rather, it's a commitment by each person who signs it to follow the six principles of a culture of peace in his or her daily life, family, work and community:

1) respect all life

2) reject violence

3) share with others

4) listen to understand

5) preserve the planet

6) rediscover solidarity

The Manifesto 2000 has been signed by a staggering 75 million people worldwide, with more people signing every day.

UNESCO's Director-General Matsuura stated that: "It is a sign of hope that decision-makers, gathered at the Millennium Summit, and civil society, represented by the millions of signatories of the Manifesto 2000, share the same commitment. For peace cannot be brought about by decree. Whilst political, economic or military settlements are necessary to establishing peace, they are not enough. Each individual must uphold the commitment in practice, in his or her daily life, through the simplest of acts. I am delighted to see that the world movement for a culture of peace is gathering momentum. During the International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World, we will increase our efforts so that it triumphs."

You can sign the Manifesto here:

http://www.9-11peace.org/r.php3?redir=58

12/23/01
2:41:32 PM

Happy holidays from the Greenpeace Clean Energy Now! campaign's weekly update - POSITIVE ENERGY!!!! This is the last issue of the year, but don't be sad, we will be back the second week of January!

STOP GLOBAL WARMING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

Native Energy puts a new spin on gift giving this holiday season! For $120, or $11 per month, you can buy a one-year Wind Builders membership that supports the installation of new wind farms. By giving the gift of clean energy, you can educate your friends and family about the greatest environmental threat facing the world while offering them a solution - clean energy now! According to Native Energy, a Wind Builders membership effectively cuts the average household's one-year CO2 emissions to zero.

For more information, go to:

http://www.nativeenergy.com/windbuilders.html

TAKE ACTION TO GET SOLAR PANELS ON NEW BUILDINGS IN CALIFORNIA Take a minute to urge the California Energy Commission to add Photovoltaic systems to the updated version of the Title 24 Building Efficiency Standards that will come into effect in 2005. Title 24 is what helped to make California one of the most energy efficient states in the Nation. Now it is time for the commission to take the next step and begin accounting for the benefits of solar systems on buildings. Once photovoltaic systems are accepted into the Title 24 standards we are one step closer to having all new buildings in California generate their own electricity!

Go to http://www.cleanenergynow.org/bin/takeaction.pl?action_id=100 to fax the commissioners and urge them to add solar photovoltaics to the updated standards.

SHARP TO TRIPLE SOLAR PANEL PRODUCTION

Sharp, the world's largest producer of solar panels based in Japan, has recently decided to increase its manufacturing capacity outside of its home country to meet increasing overseas demand. Last year the company produced 300,000 KW of solar cells, but expects to triple its production by 2003, including a 30% increase in its share of the world market. They expect that the average household solar-power generation system to drop dramatically in price from approximately $22,000 to $10,000 within the next six years.

Imagine if Californians keep increasing the demand for solar at the same rate as we have this year? Solar companies will be pushing the natural gas suppliers out of the market in no time. Goodbye fossil fools!!!

http://www.solaraccess.com/news/story.jsp?storyid=1229

The "Positive Energy" newsletter and website, will give you good news about ways to achieve clean air, climate justice and renewable energy solutions to our current energy crisis.

http://www.cleanenergynow.org

Want to do more? Become a Greenpeace member today!

http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/join2/cen.htm

12/23/01
2:38:22 PM

FAIR

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Media analysis, critiques and news reports

ACTION ALERT: FCC Moves to Eliminate Cable Ownership Cap; Move Would Also Impact Internet

The Federal Communications Commission is moving to eliminate one of the few remaining vestiges of public interest regulation on media concentration-- the rules that limit the percentage of the national audience that a single cable company can reach. If existing rules limiting a single company to 30 percent of the national market are abandoned, the country's cable TV industry, now dominated by just eight companies, could be controlled by as few as two. Such consolidation threatens the diversity not just of cable TV but also of the Internet, since cable is likely to eventually be the way most people get Internet access.

Just two days after the September 11 attacks, the FCC moved to review both the cable ownership cap and the "cross-ownership" rules that keep a single company from owning both a newspaper and a TV station in the same geographic area.

See FAIR Action Alert, http://www.fair.org/activism/ownership-comment.html

FCC reviews include a mandatory public comment period to give Americans a chance to weigh in on proposed regulations. The public comment period for the cross-ownership rules closed on December 3, 2001, but the public has until January 4 to weigh in on the cable ownership cap.

Cable mega-companies like AOL Time Warner have aggressively moved to eliminate even the most modest of public interest regulations, claiming that any such rules impinge on their First Amendment rights. Despite the dubious idea of a "right" that only two giant corporations could take advantage of, a D.C. Court of Appeals accepted that argument, striking down the federal limit on the size of cable companies in March 2001; on December 3, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review that decision.

Several recent court rulings have favored media corporations' desire to grow ever larger and more concentrated; the FCC could resist, by offering justification for its regulations, but few observers expect the agency to do so. "If the Federal Communications Commission is heading in the direction many predict that it is, a new era of mega-media mergers may be on its way," reports the New York Law Journal (10/4/01). "The way to bet here is that they will loosen the rules," adds analyst and former FCC official Blair Levin.

"Looser" rules will very likely also mean higher cable rates for consumers; since the deregulatory Telecommunications Act of 1996, cable rates have risen nearly three times as fast as inflation.

Those concerned about preserving the democratic potential of the Internet should take heed: "AOL Time Warner and other cable companies are seeking to dramatically overturn the limits on cable system ownership precisely so they can control the key access point for the Internet marketplace," explains the Center for Digital Democracy. The FCC needs to hear from the public now, the CDD's Jeff Chester told CounterSpin (12/21/01), in order "to assure openness and diversity in cable and in the internet's future."

ACTION: Please let the FCC know that allowing further media consolidation by lifting the cable ownership cap will not serve the public interest.

The Center for Digital Democracy has created a special form that allows citizens to automatically file comments with the FCC. To access that form, go to:

http://www.democraticmedia.org/getinvolved/fccfiling2.html

For more details on the FCC's efforts to weaken ownership rules, see the Center for Digital Democracy's in-depth resources:

http://www.democraticmedia.org/issues/mediaownership/index.html

Source: http://www.FAIR.org

12/23/01
2:33:09 PM

MAINSTREAM EXTREMISTS

Here we begin our annual review of the key events of 2001.

September 11 took everyone by surprise, but what has struck us most forcefully is how quickly right-wing mainstream extremists in the U.S. moved to capitalize on the World Trade Center atrocities.

The day after the attacks, U.S. Senator Don Young (R-Alaska) announced that there was a "strong possibility" that "eco-terrorists" based in Seattle had hijacked the airplanes that brought down the twin towers in New York. "If you watched what happened in Genoa, in Italy, and even in Seattle, there's some expertise in that field," Young told the ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS. "I'm not sure they're that dedicated but eco-terrorists -- which are really based in Seattle -- there's a strong possibility that could be one of the groups," Senator Young said.[1]

The next day the Reverend Jerry Falwell, a Baptist minister and White House adviser, blamed the Republican right's favorite enemies. Speaking on Pat Robertson's TV show, "The 700 Club," Mr. Falwell said, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U. [American Civil Liberties Union] , People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.''' Mr. Robertson chimed in, "I totally concur."[2] Mr. Robertson is a Republican party fundraiser and strategist, and the founder of the Christian Coalition.[3]

Less than 3 weeks later, Congressman Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) and six of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives insinuated a link between mainstream environmentalists and terrorism. "Some people have turned a blind eye [to ecoterrorism] because this destruction, this terrorism, is being activated under the so-called cloak of protecting the environment," Mr. McInnis said on the floor of the House October 3. Mr. McInnis subsequently wrote letters to the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the League of Conservation Voters, the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, Earthjustice Defense, and Natural Resources Defense Council, giving them a deadline of Dec. 1 to publicly "disavow ecoterrorism."[4]

For a decade, hundreds of abortion clinics and offices of Planned Parenthood have been receiving envelopes in the mail containing white powder and a note identifying it as anthrax. Recently the volume of these terrorist threats (none of them, so far, real anthrax) has increased substantially. More than 200 medical clinics and Planned Parenthood offices have received such threats by mail since Sept. 11, according to the LOS ANGELES TIMES.[5] A fundamentalist Christian group calling itself the Army of God claims responsibility. Congressman McInnis did not give Mr. Falwell or Mr. Robertson a deadline for disavowing anthrax terrorism.

The Reverend Donald Spitz of Chesapeake, Virginia, claims membership in, and maintains a web site for, the Army of God, and he openly applauds sending anthrax threats by mail, calling them a "good thing" and a "brilliant move."[5,6] The Army of God was recently featured in a TV documentary in which various members boasted how their group had murdered physicians, fire-bombed medical clinics, and purchased truckloads of raw materials for making explosives.[7] The FBI has made no arrests in any of these hundreds of anthrax-terrorism cases going back a decade, and Congressman McInnis and his six Republican colleagues have not given the Reverend Mr. Spitz a deadline for disavowing terrorism.

These hooded Christians provide a dangerous -- and terrifying -- side-show, diverting attention away from the main event in Washington, where the White House and corporate lobbyists have used Sept. 11 to aggressively roll back environmental protections and dole out billions of federal dollars to major polluters, many of whom are major donors to the Republican party.

As the NEW YORK TIMES reported November 18, "Before the attacks, environmentalists seemed to have political momentum in casting President Bush as unfriendly to the environment and his administration as beholden to the extractive industries. But in the last two months, environmentalists have been stymied for fear of appearing unpatriotic or even petty in the face of a national crisis."[8] Sensing hesitancy and confusion among environmentalists, since 9/11 the President and his corporate lieutenants have taken the offensive to:

** Abandon negotiations for a treaty to control global warming;[8]

** Shelve a plan to reduce air pollution from coal-burning power plants because a nation engaged in a war-without-end against terrorism can't risk power shortages;[8]

** Reverse a Clinton administration policy that stopped road-building, oil and gas leasing, and most new logging in 60 million acres of nearly-untouched national forests;[8,9]

** Reverse the phase-out of snowmobiles in national parks;[8]

** Grease the skids for mining corporations to dig for gold, copper, zinc and lead on public lands. Under rules set during the Clinton administration, the government could stop new mines "likely to cause substantial irreparable harm to water quality and other natural resources." No longer.[8,10]

** Ease energy-conservation standards for air conditioners;[8]

** Make it easier for home-builders and commercial developers to eliminate wetlands;[8]

** Prevent the re-introduction of grizzly bears in the Northwest;[8]

** Cut funding 50% for research and development into renewable sources of energy, and provide $34 billion in additional subsidies to the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear industries.[10]

** Drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.[8]

Mr. Bush's most far-reaching achievements, however, are these:

** The House of Representatives suspended its rules of debate on Nov. 27 to rush through a reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act which severely limits the nuclear industry's liability for radioactive errors, oversights, slips, goofs, flubs, blunders, leaks, releases, discharges, mishaps, misadventures, accidents or catastrophes (including "energetic disassemblies," the nuclear industry's own term for explosions), placing most of the liability for such human foibles on the taxpayer. Excusing the nuclear corporations from liability for their own behavior would "dramatically improve security at our Nation's nuclear power plants in response to the widespread concerns over terrorist threats," said Congressman Joe Barton (R-Tex), a key Republican strategist in the House. And so it passed.[11]

** The President won a major "free trade" victory over labor and environmentalist opposition Dec. 6, using anti-terrorist arguments. By a vote of 215 to 214 the House of Representatives gave the President the right to negotiate "free trade" agreements around the globe without amendment or debate from Congress. It's called "fast track authority" and President Clinton twice failed to win it. President Bush won it "for several reasons," the NEW YORK TIMES reported: "The first is that his argument about trade as a weapon against terrorism, while a stretch, actually worked."[12]

But even these major opportunistic accomplishments pale in comparison to the strategic vision that right-wing mainstream extremists are developing now. They see Sept. 11 as an opportunity to attack the entire civil sector of American society and paint citizen participation in democratic decision-making as wasteful, inefficient, misguided, deceitful, destructive, unpatriotic, and a danger to the civilized world.

The Washington Legal Foundation -- a mainstream extremist think tank -- let this snarling little cat out of the bag Nov. 26 in an ad on the Op-Ed page of the NEW YORK TIMES, titled, "Wanted: Public Interest Reality."[13] In it, they said that, prior to September 11, "ideological lawyers" have "wasted decades" "treating our military and America's business community with contempt as if they were the enemy." And, "We are now paying the price for those years of frivolous activism," as if citizen activism had somehow led to the atrocities of Sept. 11. The ad contains a simple agenda for the post-9/11 world:

1. Get rid of "right to know" laws because they provide "a road map for terrorists." Strategic message: Limit citizens' access to information to curb citizen activism.

2. The reason we don't have vaccines against smallpox is not because smallpox was eradicated[14] world-wide in 1971 but because "inefficient FDA bureaucrats" have brought the production of life-saving vaccines to a standstill, the ad says. Strategic message: Get government off our backs, unleash corporations.

3. Why are we dependent upon Middle Eastern oil? Not because the vast majority of the world's oil resides there and we've neglected alternatives, but because "wave after wave of laws, regulations, and novel lawsuits" have enabled "radicals" to prevent oil drilling in "a remote area of frozen Alaskan wasteland," the ad says. Strategic message: Get government off our backs, end citizen lawsuits, end citizen activism.

4. The "Naderite food police" slowed the licensing of food irradiation, which is now "nearly unavailable" to kill anthrax being sent through the mail. Strategic message: End citizen activism, get government off our backs, unleash corporations.

5. The Endangered Species Act has allowed "uncompromising elites" to "obsess" over "plant and insect subspecies" and thus block housing construction and economic development, thereby endangering "jobs, prosperity, investments, and consumer welfare." Strategic message: End citizen lawsuits, get government off our backs.

6. "Self-indulgent activists spent the frivolous 90's [sic] squandering our resources and opportunities chasing phantom risks, ridiculous 'public interest' causes, and bogus consumer scares" like electromagnetic radiation and genetically engineered foods. Strategic message: End citizen activism.

7. "In the post-September 11 world, we can no longer afford to put the narrow agendas of a 'public interest' elite ahead of our own national interests." Strategic message: End citizen activism because it's now unpatriotic.

So there you have it: Active citizens who want their government to protect the natural assets of their communities against corporate plunder are unpatriotic elitists squandering valuable resources for silly purposes, endangering our entire civilization by keeping us enslaved to Middle Eastern oil, slowing the introduction of civilization-saving technologies like food irradiation, placing the needs of endangered species like the San Diego fairy shrimp ahead of the needs of prosperous investors and important men of means.

"As a united America labors to rebuild our wounded economy, the silly muddle of 'public interest' advocacy now seems irrelevant.... Can the professional activists understand that free enterprise is the very heart and soul of America?" the ad asks.

No, actually, they probably can't.