12/7/01
5:00:18 PM
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE <http://www.gristmagazine.com>
INTERIOR'S ULTERIOR MOTIVE
Ever since the White House declared energy independence a matter of national security, some unlikely evangelists have been belting out the clean energy gospel. Case in point: Last week, Gale Norton presided over the first national renewable energy summit in history, co-hosted by the Departments of Interior and Energy. Next the Department of Defense got into the groove, and things only got weirder from there. Is renewable energy making its way into the mainstream, or is the Bush administration playing the enviro tune to plug its war? Amanda Scott reports from the renewable energy summit, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: Behind the scenes at the Bush administration's renewable energy summit -- in our Main Dish section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/scott120701.asp?source=daily>
LOST AT SEA
In the midst of an expedition to document the impact of global warming and pollution on the Amazon Basin, America's Cup champion Sir Peter Blake was shot and killed yesterday, when pirates boarded his research boat at the mouth of the Amazon River. Blake, a 53-year-old native of Auckland, New Zealand, won the yacht race in 1995 and 2000, but had recently retired from competitive sailing to devote his time to studying ecological problems and launching an adventure travel company. Blake was revered in New Zealand, where flags are being flown at half-mast to mourn his death.
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Scott Gold, 07 Dec 2001 <http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000097318dec07.story>
SUIT UP
Two environmental groups launched the first legal assault on the Bush administration's energy policy, suing to overturn last September's sale of 12 new oil and gas leases by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in southern Utah. The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance claim that BLM officials violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act by issuing the leases to explore for oil and gas. The groups say the BLM neglected to analyze the impact of the leases on environmental and historic resources, and failed to solicit adequate public input before making its decision.
straight to the source: Salt Lake Tribune, Brent Israelsen, 07 Dec 2001 <http://www.sltrib.com/12072001/utah/155793.htm>
straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Jim Carlton, 07 Dec 2001 (access ain't free) <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB100766286132598320.htm>
BAD AIR DAY
As if flying didn't already make you nervous: Air quality aboard commercial jets can be hazardous to passenger's health and the airlines, but federal regulators have done little to address the problem, according to a report released yesterday by a panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The report said the systems for collecting health data about cabin air quality "are woefully inadequate," making it hard to establish clear connections between health complaints and cabin air. Areas of concern for passengers and flight crews include cabin pressure, ozone and carbon monoxide levels, and possible exposure to pesticides and fumes from engine oil, hydraulic fluids, and de-icing liquid. Panel members recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration begin a thorough investigation of the problem and assess whether to impose tougher air quality regulations on the industry.
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, 07 Dec 2001 <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-000097352dec07.story>
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
In a blow to environmentalists and unions, Republicans in the U.S. House pushed through a plan yesterday to give President Bush broad authority to negotiate trade agreements. The bill, which was approved by a single vote, would take away from Congress the power to amend trade deals brokered by the administration; lawmakers could merely vote yea or nay on the pacts. Enviro groups and unions fear their concerns would receive short shrift under such a system. Democrats also argued that the bill would enable foreign investors to challenge environmental regulations in the U.S.. To win the vote, the White House and GOP leadership played the terrorism card and doled out favors to any fence-sitting House members. A similar bill is expected to pass easily in the Senate.
straight to the source: Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin, 07 Dec 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5609-2001Dec6.html>
WHAT RECESSION?
What's with all the talk about national energy security and a recession? American consumers aren't listening to the worrywarts -- they're out there doing their patriotic duty, lining up to buy SUVs at a record clip. Sales in November were up 13.7 percent last month from the year before. In fact, so far this year, half of the 20 best-selling vehicles in the country have been SUVs, according to the Commerce Department. (Could this have something to do with an announcement by the U.S. EPA in October that fuel efficiency for all 2001 model cars is only 20.4 miles per gallon, the lowest in two decades?) Senate Democrats said this week that they would fight to increase fuel-efficiency standards for SUVs, but somehow they forgot to mention just what size increase they would push for.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 07 Dec 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13620/story.htm>
straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Ball, 06 Dec 2001 (access ain't free) <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB1007590025149604920.htm>
12/7/01
4:56:04 PM
Time for another edition of Greenpeace's Clean Energy Now! weekly campaign update - POSITIVE ENERGY!!!!
L.A. COMMUNITY COLLEGE SOLAR INITIATIVE AT RISK
Students and faculty at Los Angeles's nine community colleges have joined Greenpeace calling on the Community College District Board of Trustees to lead the way to a solar energy future for California and the country. The Board of Trustees is deciding how to spend $1.245 billion that voters approved for renovations and new buildings in a ballot measure. Students and faculty are working hard on campus and in the district's halls of power to ensure that a significant amount of that money goes to investments that will ensure clean air and a reduction in California's global warming emissions. Six out of nine student Senates, and all of the student body Presidents have passed resolutions calling on the Trustees to ensure that any new buildings constructed on community college campuses receive at least 25 percent of their energy supply from solar energy, and exceed California Building Code efficiency requirements by at least 25 percent.
Despite the overwhelming outcry for solar energy, the president of the Board of Trustees, Sylvia Scott Hayes, is refusing to meet with students, faculty, and activists, and is attempting to delay the solar vote in order to diffuse the public's interest in clean air and climate protection. You, however, can help . . .
Contact Mrs. Hayes now, and demand that the Community Colleges invest in solar and green buildings, by going to:
http://www.cleanenergynow.org/bin/takeaction.pl?action_id=97
SWEDEN GOES BEYOND KYOTO
On November 29th 2001, Sweden demonstrated how governments can reduce greenhouse gas emissions without bankrupting their economy. It was officially announced that they have set their emissions reduction target at -4%, and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions without using "sinks" to capture carbon dioxide. While this is not nearly enough to stop the onslaught of global warming impacts, it is, according to a recent Greenpeace Nordic press release a "stumbling step in the right direction." Originally, the European Union required the emmissions only increased by +4% in Sweden from 1990 levels. This -4% emissions target is a tremendous improvement from that original goal.
We are far behind Sweden here in the US, but there is still hope that our local political leaders will move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite the lack of leadership from the White House.
***CITY OF VALLEJO TO INSTALL 30MW OF RENEWABLE ENERGY***
The city of San Francisco is not alone in its efforts to meet future energy demands with renewable power. By early 2002, the city of Vallejo expects to begin construction on an initial 1 megawatt (MW) of solar and 10 MW of wind energy and could expand to meet the city's 100 MW base load energy demand within five years. This would allow the city to sell extra energy back to the grid! In May, the Vallejo City Council voted to negotiate a deal with BP Solar to build a 1 MW solar farm with half the energy going to city hall and the rest for sale on the grid. And, in then a 7-0 vote in August, the Vallejo authorized a round of talks with Terra Moya Aqua, a Wyoming wind generator, to build a 10 MW wind farm, at least one third would be devoted to the city's highest electricity costs: pumping reservoir water. Right now, the city is stuck buying power from the corporate culprit PG&E, but could soon be energy independent! Way to go Vallejo . . .
To find out more information, go to: www.ecologycenter.org
The "Positive Energy" newsletter and the web site,
will give you good news about ways to achieve clean air, climate justice and renewable energy solutions to our current energy crisis.
Want to do more? Become a Greenpeace member today!
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/join2/cen.htm
12/7/01
4:52:44 PM
ENVIRONMENTAL, TRIBAL COALITION CAMPAIGNS AGAINST COAL STRIP MINE
TEMPE, Arizona, November 30, 2001 (ENS) - A coalition of four grassroots and environmental groups, and the Pueblo of Zuni, is working to save the sacred Zuni Salt Lake from destruction by a sprawling strip mine.
The planned industrial facility in western New Mexico would destroy sacred shrines, human burial sites, and places of worship used by seven American Indian tribes. The Zuni Salt Lake Coalition brings together diverse groups seeking environmental justice.
"The proposed SRP Fence Lake coal mine directly affects our interests. Our input has been convoluted and dismissed at the expense of opening an unneeded mine," said Governor Malcolm Bowekaty of the Pueblo of Zuni. "We continue to seek all avenues to protect our Salt Lake. The Zuni Salt Lake Coalition is an additional means to safeguard a precious and rare resource."
The Salt River Project (SRP), an Arizona electric utility, has proposed a strip mine that would extract over 80 million tons of coal from 18,000 acres of public, state, and private land around the Zuni Salt Lake. Studies by the Department of Interior found that the mine will drain the Dakota Aquifer, damaging the sacred Zuni Salt Lake and destroying the delicate balance of water and salt found in this rare, high desert lake.
For thousands of years Zuni, Hopi, Acoma, Laguna, Navajo, and Apache people have come to the Zuni Salt Lake to collect its salt for ceremonial and domestic use. The tribes consider the lake and surrounding lands not only neutral territory, free for all to use, but also sacred. The Zuni believe the Salt Lake is home to Salt Woman, an important deity to their People.
Grassroots and environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, the Citizens Coal Council, and the Water Information Network have joined the tribe's fight.
"The strip mine will tear the heart out of these sacred places and belch greenhouse gases into our fragile atmosphere," said Andy Bessler of the Sierra Club. "If Salt River Project is serious about being 'Earthwise,' as they claim, they will drop plans for the Fence Lake Coal Mine and look to energy from wind and solar, not dirty coal."
The Pueblo of Zuni and the Center for Biological Diversity have appealed the state permit for the mine. The federal permit for the Fence Lake Coal Strip mine is not signed yet, but Coalition members fear that Interior Secretary Gale Norton will sign the permit.
"For over 30 years, my family and I have been living with the destruction, pollution and hatred brought by strip mining," said Norman Benally of the Citizens Coal Council, a Dine (Navajo) from Black Mesa, Arizona. "Coal companies have destroyed the grave sites of our loved ones, our ceremonial sites, and the homes of some of my family members. I don't want to see the Zuni go through what my family and other members of the Citizens Coal Council have suffered."
We do not know of any prepared action letters for this issue. In lieu of something more specific, we suggest going to the following website:
There you can enter your zip code and be able to send a message telling how you feel about this issue (or about any issue) to 4 government officials with just one click of your mouse: to your two US Senators, your US Congressperson, and to Bush.
12/7/01
4:49:54 PM
DEA Targets Hemp Foods, Sparks Canadian Complaints
By Ann Woolner
Atlanta, GA. (Bloomberg) -- Chomping on watercress and sipping lentil soup, I find it hard to believe that the bag sitting next to me could be filled with illegal drugs.
No one at the Whole Foods market raised an eyebrow when I plucked from the shelves and dropped into my basket items the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says may be as illegal as cocaine or marijuana.
Now, with my soup steaming and shoppers walking by, I reach into the bag and pull out this: a clearly marked bag of Healthy Hemp Sprouted Bread. I open it up and remove a slice. It is dark and full of seeds.
And then, in front of whoever may be watching, I eat it.
Indeed, unabashedly, I ingest it.
Doing so is not now illegal. But in two months, the DEA will treat hemp food containing even trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, as it would treat hemp's brother, marijuana. Its use, sale and distribution will be a criminal act, the DEA says.
THC is what makes marijuana users high, and scientists say it exists only in small amounts in the hemp plants that produce the oil and seed used in food. Almost all of it's removed in processing.
Bread Labels
Still, because hemp's merely a different strain of the plant known as marijuana, the DEA now says hemp is a controlled substance if it contains even an infinitesimal amount of THC.
Most hemp food makers say their products contain no THC, and often their labels say so. The label on my bread bag contains such a statement, for example. All that means, however, is that lab tests detected no THC.
A DEA spokeswoman says that's good enough for the DEA. The industry's still worried, because the vagaries of agriculture and more sophisticated testing could turn up trace amounts in products previously declared void of them.
It's not possible to get all the THC out of every seed and drop of oil, says Gordon Scheifele, a research scientist with the University of Guelph in Ontario and one of Canada's leading hemp scientists.
Besides, "It's absolutely impossible to establish a criteria of zero scientifically," he says "There's no equipment or lab technique capable of doing that."
That's why Canada and the European Community allow up to 10 parts per million of THC in hemp oil and seed.
Blame Canada
Canada's rules are important because commercial hemp farming, forbidden in the U.S., has been allowed there since 1998 under strict government scrutiny. That's where U.S. hemp food makers get their seed and oil.
Under the new DEA policy, products perfectly legal in Canada will be barred from U.S. markets. This violates the North American Free Trade Agreement, unless the DEA can show a scientific basis for doing so, hemp food advocates say.
And yesterday, Canada's embassy in Washington accused the DEA of breaching another international agreement. In a letter to the agency, the embassy complained that the DEA is barring a Canadian product without assessing health risks or notifying World Trade Organization members.
The DEA's not alleging health risks, nor does it care whether trace amounts of THC produce a high.
The agency has simply interpreted existing law to mean that any amount of THC makes hemp a controlled substance under its jurisdiction, says Rogene Waite, a DEA spokeswoman.
"It's a zero threshold," says Waite.
No High
At the levels Canada allows, "it's inconceivable" that someone could eat enough hemp food to produce a high, says Scheifele.
Even the then-chief of the Justice Department's Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, John Roth, said as recently as last year that hemp food products "have THC at levels too low to trigger a psychoactive effect." In a letter to the DEA last March, he said they're "explicitly excluded from regulation under the Controlled Substances Act" by the wording of the law itself.
He did suggest, however, that new "regulatory language" could make the products subject to control.
The new language came from the new administration.
The Hemp Industries Association and hemp food companies have gone to court to keep the DEA's enforcement power away from their products. Their court petition says the DEA overstepped its bounds by "rendering criminal one day conduct that was lawful the day before."
The zig-zags in U.S. policy has kept this new industry from growing as it otherwise would, say those in the business. They say hemp offers a rare combination of important health benefits, and tastes good, too.
'New Oat Bran'
"It's the new oat bran," declares Linda Cross, who works at my neighborhood health food co-op, Sevananda.
It's an industry that should, um, mushroom. But, "How can we attract capital when the government's threatening to shut you down," asks John Roulac, president of Nutiva, a California hemp food maker.
The DEA's new interpretation of the law takes effect immediately, although the agency has granted a grace period before enforcing it. The DEA rule gives those who make, distribute or sell hemp food products containing THC have until Feb. 9 to "dispose" of them.
Bloated
For the consumer, this means get them while you can.
Scouring the shelves at Whole Foods, a natural nutrition shop and Sevananda, I wind up with this cache: a 30-hit bottle of capsules, each containing 1,000 milligrams of pure hemp oil; "Hempini" hemp butter; Hemp Seed Nut (I get the large size, fearful of the future); two boxes of HempPlus Granola; two flavors of Govinda Hemp Bars; and, of course, the aforementioned bread.
Over the next 24 hours, I sample them all. I slather hemp butter on hemp bread. I bite into a hemp bar. I sprinkle hemp granola on my yogurt. I even eat seeds, all by themselves. Except for the oil capsules (which really should be swallowed whole), everything's so tasty I help myself to more. And more.
I also learn what happens if you eat a lot of this stuff. You don't get high. You get bloated.
12/7/01
4:42:52 PM
New at http://www.ips-dc.org
"Fast Track Passage Won't Defeat the Seattle Coalition" by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh of IPS's Global Economy Project.
Also -- John Cavanagh will be on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show on Monday, December 10, at 10am Eastern. The Diane Rehm show is on 88.5 fm in Washington and syndicated throughout the country. You can also listen live or after the fact via the web at
The Institute's Democracy Summer/Democracy Action Project has also recently unveiled a new website, and there is plenty of new material on the IPS/The Nation magazine Electoral Reform pages.
12/7/01
4:40:55 PM
Researchers look at a time when the Army sprayed what it thought was harmless on San Francisco and other cities
By Jim Carlton, WALL STREET JOURNAL
SAN FRANCISCO -- Fifty-one years ago, Edward Nevin checked into a San Francisco hospital, complaining of chills, fever and general malaise. Three weeks later, the 75-year-old retired pipe fitter was dead, the victim of what doctors said was an infection of the bacterium Serratia marcescens.
Decades later, Mr. Nevin's family learned what they believe was the cause of the infection, linked at the time to the hospitalizations of 10 other patients.
In Senate subcommittee hearings in 1977, the Army revealed that weeks before Nevin sickened and died, the Army had staged a mock biological attack on San Francisco, secretly spraying the city with Serratia and other agents thought to be harmless.
The goal: to see what might happen in a real germ-warfare attack. The experiment, which involved blasting a bacterial fog over the 49-square-mile city from a Navy vessel offshore, was recorded with clinical nonchalance: "It was noted that a successful BW (biological warfare) attack on this area can be launched from the sea, and that effective dosages can be produced over relatively large areas," the Army wrote in its 1951 classified report on the experiment.
Now, with anthrax in the mail and fear mounting of further biological attacks, researchers are again looking back at the only other time this country faced the perils of germ warfare -- albeit self-inflicted.
In fact, much of what the Pentagon knows about the effects of bacterial attacks on cities came from those secret tests conducted on San Francisco and other American cities from the 1940s through the 1960s, experts say.
"We learned a lot about how vulnerable we are to biological attack from those tests," says Leonard Cole, adjunct professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and author of several books on bioterrorism.
"I'm sure that's one reason crop dusters were grounded after Sept. 11: The military knows how easy it is to disperse organisms that can affect people over huge areas."
In other tests in the 1950s, Army researchers dispersed Serratia on Panama City, Fla., and Key West, Fla., with no known illnesses resulting.
They also released fluorescent compounds over Minnesota and other Midwestern states to see how far they would spread in the atmosphere.
The particles of zinc-cadmium-sulfide -- now a known cancer-causing agent -- were detected more than 1,000 miles away in New York state, the Army told the Senate hearings, though no illnesses were ever attributed to them as a result.
Another bacterium, Bacillus globigii, never shown to be harmful to people, was released in San Francisco, while still others were tested on unwitting residents in New York, Washington, D.C., and along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, among other places, according to Army reports released during the 1977 hearings.
In New York, military researchers in 1966 spread Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, also believed to be harmless, in the subway system by dropping lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto tracks in stations in midtown Manhattan.
The bacteria were carried for miles throughout the subway system, leading Army officials to conclude in a January 1968 report: "Similar covert attacks with a pathogenic (disease-causing) agent during peak traffic periods could be expected to expose large numbers of people to infection and subsequent illness or death."
Army officials also found widespread dispersal of bacteria in a May 1965 secret release of Bacillus globigii at Washington's National Airport and its Greyhound bus terminal, according to military reports released a few years after the Senate hearings.
More than 130 passengers who had been exposed to the bacteria traveled to 39 cities in seven states in the two weeks following the mock attack.
The Army kept the biological-warfare tests secret until word of them was leaked to the press in the 1970s. Between 1949 and 1969, when President Nixon ordered the Pentagon's biological weapons destroyed, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times, according to the Army's testimony in 1977 before the Senate's subcommittee on health.
In 80 of those experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria that its researchers at the time thought were harmless, such as the Serratia that was showered on San Francisco. In the others, it used inert chemicals to simulate bacteria.
Several medical experts have since claimed that an untold number of people may have gotten sick as a result of the germ tests.
These researchers say even benign agents can mutate into unpredictable pathogens once exposed to the elements.
"The possibility cannot be ruled out that peculiarities in wind conditions or ventilation systems in buildings might concentrate organisms, exposing people to high doses of bacteria," testified Stephen Weitzman of the State University of New York, in the 1977 Senate hearings.
For its part, the Army justified its experiments by noting concerns during World War II that United States cities might come under biological attack. To prepare a response, the Army said, it had to test microbes on populated areas to learn how bacteria disperse.
"Release in and near cities, in real-world circumstances, were considered essential to the program, because the effect of a built-up area on a biological agent cloud was unknown," Edward Miller, the Army's secretary for research and development at the time, told the subcommittee.
But in at least one case -- the bacterial fogging of San Francisco -- the research may have gone awry.
Between Sept. 20 and Sept. 27 of 1950, a Navy mine-laying vessel cruised the San Francisco coast, spraying an aerosol cocktail of Serratia and Bacillus microbes -- all believed to be safe -- over the famously foggy city from giant hoses on deck, according to declassified Army reports.
According to lawyers who have reviewed the reports, researchers added fluorescent particles of zinc-cadmium-sulfide to better measure the impact. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43 locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city's 800,000 residents to inhale at least 5,000 of the particles.
Two weeks after the spraying, on Oct. 11, 1950, Nevin checked in to the Stanford Hospital in San Francisco with fever and other symptoms. Ten other men and women checked in to the same hospital -- which has since been relocated to Stanford University in Palo Alto -- with similar complaints.
Doctors noticed that all 11 had the same malady: a pneumonia caused by exposure to bacteria believed to be Serratia marcescens. Nevin died three weeks later. The others recovered. Doctors were so surprised by the outbreak that they reported it in a medical journal, oblivious at the time to the secret germ test.
After the Army disclosed the tests nearly three decades later, Nevin's surviving family members filed suit against the federal government, alleging negligence.
"My grandfather wouldn't have died except for that, and it left my grandmother to go broke trying to pay his medical bills," says Nevin's grandson, Edward J. Nevin III, a San Francisco attorney who filed the case in United States District Court here.
Army officials noted the pneumonia outbreak in their 1977 Senate testimony but said any link to their experiments was totally coincidental.
No other hospitals reported similar outbreaks, the Army pointed out, and all 11 victims had urinary-tract infections following medical procedures, suggesting that the source of their infections lay inside the hospital.
The Nevin family appealed the suit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to overturn lower court judgments upholding the government's immunity from lawsuits.
Today, the U.S. military is again patrolling San Francisco's coastline, guarding against someone who might try to copy the Army tests of half a century ago. Local officials say such an attack is unlikely, given the logistical problems of blasting the city without Navy ships.
Partly as a result of Nevin's death, says Lucien Canton, director of San Francisco's emergency services, "One thing we now know is that it takes an awful lot of stuff to produce casualties, especially in a place like San Francisco that always has a stiff breeze."
12/7/01
4:38:18 PM
Government Eyes Its Own for Anthrax
The FBI investigates federal laboratories and contractors as possible sources for the pathogen used in the attacks
By William J. Broad and Judith Miller
The FBI has expanded its investigation of the anthrax attacks to include the laboratories of the government and its contractors as a possible source of anthrax that has infected and killed five people, say scientists and law enforcement officials.
While theories about the culprit have focused mainly on domestic loners and foreign states or terrorists, law enforcement officials are now examining the possibility that the criminal may be a knowledgeable insider.
Asked if the FBI was investigating U.S. military and nonmilitary laboratories that held the anthrax strain used in the attacks and individuals associated with such centers, a law enforcement official replied, "Certainly."
The official said, "We are aggressively investigating every possible lead and every possible avenue," adding it was "logical."
Federal agents are known to be interrogating the military establishment that replaced the nation's old program for making biological weapons.
The facilities of that program, in western Maryland, are major repositories of the anthrax strain used in the attacks.
Col. Arthur Friedlander, the senior research scientist at the Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., said Friday that officials there were cooperating with federal investigators.
"They've asked us about personnel who had access," Friedlander said, speaking reluctantly and offering no details.
"They didn't talk to me about my personal experience," said Friedlander, a physician and leading anthrax expert.
"They asked me about other personnel."
He went on to dismiss the insider idea as improbable.
The person who made the killer anthrax, he said, "clearly knew what they were doing. But to make the leap that this came out of a government lab is somewhat large."
He emphasized that no one in his organization, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a leader in creating germ defenses, even knew how to make dry anthrax, as was found in the letters.
Instead, he said, scientists there used wet anthrax, which is far easier to make. It is used in developing vaccines and testing their effectiveness.
"We haven't had an offensive program for a long time," Friedlander said. Nobody at the Army's lab, he added, "has that kind of expertise."
A dozen or two U.S. laboratories are said to have the Ames strain, though no one knows for sure because researchers over the decades have shared such pathogens informally.
Military laboratories such as the one at Fort Detrick, as well as military contractors, are central to the Ames network, as they have often pioneered the nation's research on vaccines and other defenses against germ weapons.
The United States began its military program to make germ weapons during World War II and over the decades developed many ways to spread many diseases.
A top agent was anthrax, a gallon of which was strong enough to kill 8 billion people. President Richard Nixon, after renouncing germ weapons in 1969, championed a global treaty that, starting in 1975, banned such arms.
Since the start of the anthrax attacks, federal officials, scientists and amateur sleuths have scrambled to identify the source.
Some see the attacker as home-grown, perhaps a disaffected scientist or a militia group, while others discern a conspiracy by a state such as Iraq or a foreign terrorist group.
The current avenue of inquiry is consistent with the official profile of the suspect, released Nov. 9 by the FBI.
The profile describes a man with a strong interest in science who is comfortable working with hazardous material and has "access to a source of anthrax and possesses knowledge and expertise to refine it."
Separately, a private expert in biological weapons, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, has recently published a paper contending that a government insider, or someone in contact with an insider, is behind the lethal attacks.
Though not an expert on criminal profiling, Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York, has testified on biological weapons before Congress, advised Bill Clinton when he was president and addressed international arms control meetings, including one a few days ago in Geneva.
Law enforcement officials said Rosenberg's assertion might turn out to be well founded, though they emphasized that the investigation was still broad-based.
One official close to the federal investigation called the Rosenberg theory "the most likely hypothesis."
Referring to her paper, the official said, "I might not have put it so strongly, but it's definitely reasonable."
Other analysts, including some scientists and experts in germ weapons, expressed more skepticism that it was an insider, contending that the skills and knowledge needed to produce the type of anthrax in this attack were widely available.
The paper laying out Rosenberg's thesis was distributed on Thursday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an arms control group.
Rosenberg, who conducts research at State University of New York and is chairwoman of an arms control panel at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, D.C., has argued repeatedly that states, not individuals, have the wherewithal to make advanced biological weapons.
International treaties that prohibit that work, she believes, are critical.
Rosenberg reasoned that the Ames strain probably did not originate in 1980 or 1981, as is often asserted, but arose many decades earlier and was used in the secretive U.S. program to make biological weapons.
She noted a conclusion reached by some experts knowledgeable about the investigation, that the anthrax powder distributed in the attacks by letter was treated in a sophisticated manner so it floated easily, as was done in the old U.S. offensive program.
"All the available information," she said, "is consistent with a U.S. government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for the U.S. weaponization process."
Rosenberg contended that the anthrax used in the attacks either originated in the U.S. weapons program itself or was made by someone who had learned the secret recipe.
The killer, Rosenberg concludes, is "an American microbiologist who had, or once had, access to weaponized anthrax in a U.S. government lab, or had been taught by a U.S. defense expert how to make it.
"Perhaps he had a vial or two in his basement as a keepsake."
The paper, "A Compilation of Evidence and Comments on the Source of the Mailed Anthrax," dated Nov. 29, is based on interviews with federal and private experts, published reports and scientific articles.
Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University who has closely followed the anthrax case and has read Rosenberg's paper, said he found it provocative but unconvincing.
"This is one extreme in the theorizing," Ebright said. "There are elements that are reasonable, but elements that are not. I'm confident that she started with the insider conclusion and then selected the facts."
Even so, he said, U.S. foes seem likely to seize on the paper and amplify the provocative thesis.
"Every state that's hostile to the United States is going to pick up on this," Ebright said. "They'll say it was an orchestrated government attack, which I don't believe for a second. But you can see people believing it."
Source: http://www.NYTimes.com
12/7/01
4:34:27 PM
Anthrax Hoax
If one of our own agents or scientists is suspected of perpetrating the Anthrax scare, why are we proposing to spend billions of more dollars on a faulty remedy.
Irradiation of US mail is in the pipeline and already happening in Washington DC. Because irradiation destroys/changes seeds, film, drugs, food, etc., to create a system that would allow the mailing of items like seeds, film, drugs, food, a complex series of loopholes would have to be devised which would make this expensive "Anthrax Defense System" worthless. Public Citizen and the Center for Food Safety have released a report on dangerous changes in food (the formation of unique radiolytic compounds) caused by the lower levels of irradiation" [now in use on foods in the US]
http://sf.indymedia.org/2001/12/111201.php
http://sf.indymedia.org/2001/12/111201.php</A
"Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S."
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, NY Times
The high quality, the adviser said, lends credence to the idea that someone with links to military laboratories or their contractors might be behind the attacks. "It's frightening to think that one of our own scientists could have done something like this," he said. "But it's definitely possible."
http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=99633&group=webcast
http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=99633&group=webcast</A
US Expert Believed Behind Anthrax Attacks
GERMANY: November 29, 2001
BERLIN - The anthrax attacks in the United States were probably the work of a member of a U.S. biological warfare programme, the magazine of environment pressure group Greenpeace Germany reported yesterday.
The magazine said its article was based on information from a U.S. delegation source at the United Nations biological weapons conference in Geneva that began last week. The attacks have killed five people.
"The U.S. delegation believe it is an inside job... Their members also have more information than has been made public," Kirsten Brodde, a reporter for the magazine, told Reuters.
The magazine said: "It seems the attacker...wanted to force through an increase in the budget for U.S. research on biological weapons."
It speculated that the attacker, who used anthrax-laced mail, had probably wanted to cause panic rather than kill anyone.
U.S. investigators have still not determined who was behind the attacks, but Attorney General John Ashcroft has signalled the authorities were inclined to believe they had a domestic source.
The attacks occurred in the aftermath of the September 11 suicide plane attacks on New York and Washington and prompted initial accusations by President George W. Bush that Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden may been responsible.
Asked about the magazine article, an FBI spokesman reiterated that investigators were pursuing a number of leads but no arrests appeared imminent.
A spokesman for the U.S. delegation in Geneva said he did not have any information about the article.
The magazine is linked to the environmental lobby group and shares its offices, but it said it was financially and editorially independent.
12/7/01
4:24:19 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
WORMWOOD THE BASIS FOR A CANCER-FIGHTING PILL
by Environmental News Network
-- A nontoxic pill consisting of wormwood may be useful in treating breast cancer and leukemia, according to two University of Washington bioengineers.
ON SOCIAL JUSTICE: REVISITING PENRY
by Vivian Berger, The National Law Journal
-- Since the 1989 Penry v. Lynaugh case, the highest court reviewed no cases about capital punishment on individuals with mental retardation. All that changed when the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the recent Atkins v. Virginia case.
SATIREWIRE'S 2ND ANNUAL POETRY SLAM...ER...SPAM
SatireWire.com
-- Last year we showcased the winners of SatireWire's Poetry Contest; this year we're ahead of the curve. If you need to express your feelings about all the spam in your inbox, here's your chance.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
12/7/01
4:21:23 PM
"When you get caught up in ideas that there is an enemy -- and there is certainly enough evidence to work with for that idea -- you perpetuate the experience of being a victim. You choose the downward spiral. Are there people working in concert -- a conspiracy toward certain aims? Absolutely. But are you working in concert with others to create a new world, to assist the planet in her ascension? We hope so! Is that a conspiracy, too? Are you "conspiring" to bring about "Heaven on Earth"? We hope so!..."
http://www.operationterra.com/Messages/Vol02/Cross_Roads26.html
12/7/01
4:17:44 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
ASSESSMENT OF AFGHAN ENVIRONMENT PROPOSED FOR RECONSTRUCTION
NAIROBI, Kenya, December 6 2001 (ENS) - Environmental issues should form part of the package being considered by governments for the rehabilitation of Afghanistan, Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said today.
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-06-03.html
U.S. HOUSE PASSES FAST TRACK AUTHORITY
By Cat Lazaroff
WASHINGTON, DC, December 6, 2001 (ENS) - Late this afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to give President George W. Bush the authority to approve international trade agreements without Congressional input. Conservation groups say the so called fast track legislation could undermine efforts to include environmental, public health and labor provisions in new trade pacts.
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-06-06.html
LANDMINE DANGER DROPPING WORLDWIDE, BUT NOT IN AFGHANISTAN
WASHINGTON, DC, December 6, 2001 (ENS) - The number of deaths caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance has fallen to less than 10,000 a year from the previously reported 26,000 casualties annually, according to a new U.S. State Department report.
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-06-02.html
ANTI-INCINERATION PROTESTS ACROSS SPAIN
MADRID, Spain, December 6, 2001 (ENS) - A new campaign against waste incineration was launched last weekend in Spain with protests outside 12 cement-works and municipal waste incinerators aimed at generating public debate about health risks associated with the emission of dioxins and furans.
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-06-01.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: DECEMBER 6, 2001
Senate Energy Bill Has Pros, Cons
Farm Bill Opposed by Bush, Supported by Enviros
Leap Years Throw Wrench in Climate Predictions
Comprehensive Report Details Health of California Rivers
Peconic Bay Gets Long Term Restoration Plan
Shell Fined $350,000 Over Plant Explosion
Invasive Algae Threatens Hawaiian Corals
Suit Would Rein In Wild Horse Roundups
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-06-09.html
12/7/01
4:15:09 PM
MOJOURNAL
* German Greens' Changing Colors * - Web Exclusive: Critics of the German Green Party's vote supporting the deployment of troops in Afghanistan say it cost the party its principles. Will it also cost the Greens their political base?
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/greens.html
* On to Iraq? * - Web Exclusive: Novelist Simon Pearson predicted a US attack on Iraq in his fiction -- a scenario that is looking more and more like a potential fact.
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/totalwar_book. html
* Beyond the Blasts * - Web Exclusive: Arab fighters can't return home; foreign students to face more restrictions; an obliterated village where "nothing" happened; Mullah Omar car camping; MIA: Missing in Afghanistan; more ...
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/blast13.html#120501
* Bush Files * - Web Exclusive: Investigating "un-American" art; Bush's first Sept. 11 thought; O'Neill on his way out?; regulatory czar asks business which rules to dump; Bush to nominate "biblical law" activist; more ...
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/bushfiles42.html#120501
* Discuss * - Coming out of the woodwork: Far-right groups in the US are using the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to promote their own agendas at home. Is a nation at war particularly vulnerable to messages of racial hatred, division, and isolationism?
http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/WebX?50@@.ee9a04f
12/7/01
4:11:42 PM
GreenPeace True Food Network
Trader Joe's Drops GMO Food
After a year of a national consumer campaign targeted against it, Trader Joe's announced on November 14th that the grocery store chain would no longer use genetically engineered ingredients in its store brand products. Trader Joe's is the first mainstream grocery store chain to announce a non-GMO food policy for their store brands.
http://www.truefoodnow.org/inside_scoop/index.html#traderjoes
True Food Guide: Help Stop New Genetically Engineered Fruits And Vegetables
When Greenpeace released our True Food Shopping List in October 2000, we received thousands of requests for the popular list and many questions about eating GMO-Free.
In response, we have created a bigger and more comprehensive Guide. Released in November 2001, the new Shopper's Guide not only includes a list of food brands that do and do not contain GE ingredients, but it also list of common fruits, grains and vegetables and what the biotech industry is planning to do with these food. Don't want to eat herbicide tolerant rice or drink wine from GE grapes? Help stop the next wave of genetically engineered foods!
http://www.truefoodnow.org/gmo_facts/whole_foods
The FDA Denies Mandatory Labeling, Volunteers Just Label It!
In October, Greenpeace True Food Network activists in 10 cities joined with local groups to label genetically engineered foods in supermarkets.
The FDA, in January, only approved voluntary labelling of genetically engineered food, despite receiving 600,000 public comments in support of mandatory labeling. So concerned citizens volunteered to do just that - label it!
http://www.truefoodnow.org/inside_scoop/index.html#labelit
Starlink Corn: Consumers Stop EPA's Approval For Food Supply
Despite industry moves to allow StarLink corn in the human food supply, the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year reaffirmed that the GE corn will not be allowed for human consumption.
The EPA's moves followed outcries from consumers and environmental groups. And their decision followed an EPA advisory panel decision that StarLink was indeed a "potential allergen" and was not safe in the food supply. In addition, the panel called for a two-year allergy testing regime, and urged federal agencies to take measures to prevent this type of contamination from occurring in the future.
http://www.truefoodnow.org/inside_scoop/index.html#starlink
Biotech Company Feel the Heat on GE Fish
In March, Greenpeace exposed that the FDA was considering approving genetically engineered salmon for the human food supply. In timing with the International Seafood Show in Boston, Greenpeace helped draw attention to this issue by hanging a 6,000 square foot banner reading "Stop Genetically Engineered Fish" over the roof of A/F Protein, Inc, the company responsible for making genetically engineered salmon. News stories were generated in over 15 different countries about the Greenpeace action.
Following news of the AF Protein's petition to commercialize the GE Salmon, the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, an international body, reaffirmed their position that GE salmon should not be raised in or near open waters where the fish could escape and threaten wild species.
http://www.truefoodnow.org/inside_scoop/index.html#gefish
Greenpeace Exposes Rice with Human Genes Growing in California
Unbeknownst to the residents of Sutter County, pharmaceutical (pharm) rice is growing in open-air fields in this rice-growing region of northern California. The rice has been genetically engineered with human genes to produce human proteins for drug production. The biotech company, Applied Phytologics, which is responsible for the rice drug, was field testing the pharm crop within a few hundred feet of conventional rice.
Neither the USDA nor the state of California has any regulations on the production of these pharmaceutical crops, putting the environment and food supply at risk.
http://www.truefoodnow.org/inside_scoop/index.html#pharmarice
International Round Up:
Mexican Corn Contamination
In September, the Mexican Intersecretarial Commission on Biosafety (CIBIOGEM) publicly acknowledged the genetic contamination of local varieties of corn. Fifteen out of twenty-two communities in the States of Oaxaca and Puebla have been affected.
EU Labels, Says No to new GMOs
In October, European Union (EU) governments adopted a plan to require mandatory labeling of GE ingredients in food products and animal feed. The EU also kept in place a 1998 ban on the commercialization of new GE crops in the union.
http://www.truefoodnow.org/inside_scoop/index.html#international
12/7/01
4:06:07 PM
t r u t h o u t | 12.07
By a Single Vote House GOP Prevails on Fast Track
http://www.truthout.com/12.07A.GOP.215-214.htm
Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's Top Aide Reported Dead
http://www.truthout.com/12.07B.Zawahiri.Dead.htm
WILLIAM SAFIRE | 'Voices of Negativism'
http://www.truthout.com/12.07C.Safire.Voices.htm
CONYERS Blasts; "Help America Vote Act" "Actually Weakens Current Law"
http://www.truthout.com/12.07D.Conyers.Loaf.htm
RUMSFELD Warns of 'Messy' War
http://www.truthout.com/12.07E.Messy.War.htm
Civil Rights Commissioner in Showdown With Bush
http://www.truthout.com/12.07F.Showdown.htm
12/7/01
4:04:22 PM
AlterNet Headlines
IT'S ONLY THE CONSTITUTION
Nat Hentoff, The Progressive
Looking at the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 in historical context, it is clear that playing fast and loose with civil liberties is a bad idea.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12032
GERALD LEVIN'S NEGATIVE LEGACY
Jeffrey Chester, AlterNet
As front-page stories gush over the accomplishments of Gerald Levin, AOL Time Warner's CEO, his retirement has obscured the more negative part of his legacy.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12039
HUFFINGTON: THE EVILDOERS AND THE MISLED
Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
What are we to make of John Walker, the 20-year-old All- American kid who turned Taliban warrior? Maybe that Bush's "us vs. them, good vs. evil" talk is hollow rhetoric.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12041
PEARL HARBOR: A LOOK BACK, A LOOK FORWARD
Tucker Teutsch, AlterNet
In remembering the Dec. 7 anniversary of Pearl Harbor, history has largely forgotten the U.S. internment of German families living in America.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12018
IT'S PERSONAL: RACE AND OPRAH
Tammy Johnson, ColorLines
Has Oprah taken on the role of New Age mammy for suburban soccer moms? In other words, does she play it weak when it comes to boundaries of color and race?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11994
ZENFULLY YOURS
Justin Berton, Metro Silicon Valley
Once the packaging schtick of organic farmers and soulful, independent health food producers, the mind/body/spirit marketing niche has a new pal: Madison Avenue.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12017
HOW THE TALIBAN STOLE CHRISTMAS
Santa Claus, Sacramento News and Review
Can Santa Claus save Christmas, revive the economy and help make the world more safe and free? Damnit, he's gonna try! A hilarious rant penned by St. Nick himself.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12029
FOR GLOBAL SECURITY, FAST TRACK IS THE WRONG PATH Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark, AlterNet
A Congressional vote on whether to give the President "fast track" powers in trade negotiations could happen any day. For our safety in the terror war, Congress should vote no.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12030
QUESTIONING THE QUESTIONING
Nancy Guerin, Metroland
Is the federal government's Muslim-American voluntary interview program violating civil rights?
* In Human Rights USA: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=22
GARCIA: FILM FEATURES REFUGEE'S STORY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
James E. Garcia, AlterNet
A new documentary fluidly melds the experiences of Maria Guardado with broader, critical questions about the sometimes unsavory alliances that result from U.S. foreign policy.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12034
HUTCHINSON: POLICE-FBI ROUNDUPS NOT NEW
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet
The seed for the government ethnic targeting of Arab Americans was planted in the 1960s. The ghetto riots that rocked hundreds of American cities triggered the first major escalation in police power.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12033
DURST: PATRIOTISM SALE 2001
Will Durst, AlterNet
The challenge is terrorism. The answer is a 20 percent Patriots Sale(tm) on everything in the store! (Not including video games or consoles.)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12027
LAND LOSS, POVERTY AND HUNGER
Anuradha Mittal, International Forum on Globalization Agricultural liberalization has failed to live up to its advertising as the key to improving farmers' economic situations in developing nations and solving world hunger.
* In Globalization: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21
12/7/01
3:58:39 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
US green groups sue to halt Utah canyon drilling - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13610/story.htm
US fuel standard can't be raised until 2004 models - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13614/story.htm
UPDATE - Trade bill passes House in victory for Bush - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13617/story.htm
US drivers in SUV gas-guzzling buying spree - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13620/story.htm
UK minister, Ofgem at odds over green power costs - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13615/story.htm
Metraux wins car waste processing order - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13623/story.htm
Vattenfall mull swapping Barseback n-plant for gas - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13616/story.htm
Hundreds fan out in Indian reserve to count tigers - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13621/story.htm
Denmark seals its first CO2 pollution deals - DENMARK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13611/story.htm
Canadian farms forecast to be eco-friendly by 2005 - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13618/story.htm
British Columbia still seeks offshore oil drilling - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13619/story.htm
Brazil orders studies into third nuclear reactor - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13622/story.htm
12/6/01
7:07:48 PM
Dear Friends,
Please feel free to share this with others:
On Monday November 26th, 2001 I met with a group of about 15 Japanese activists and students in Tokyo to talk about low frequency active sonar (LFAS). I felt this was important to do because I had learned that the boat equipped with this system is stationed off Japan. I am grateful to Earth Island Institute for alerting me to this as I was going to Japan anyway to teach workshops. They put me in touch with Ms. Nanami Kurasawa of the Dolphin and Whale Action Network of Japan. I was very impressed with her work and that of this small dedicated group of Japanese environmentalists.
They're working very hard to stop the killing of whales and dolphin hunts which is part of fisheries practice in Japan. They're also trying to prevent aquariums from keeping orcas captive. Another focus of their work is to protect a pod of about 50 dugong (manatees) in Okinawa. This is the northernmost group of dugong and several of the people in the group are trying to protect them. One man told me that 75 percent of the United States Navy is stationed in Okinawa, something I had not known.
I felt a little badly adding LFAS to their list of concerns but they were very interested . After after explaining the basic situation, I showed the KGO news videotape. My interpreter did excellent job of communicating with the audience ( apparently she has interpreted for other American ocean activists visiting Japan and is familiar with the issues). The meeting went on longer than we had expected as people had many questions. One woman who leads eco-tours in Okinawa was particularly eager to find the LFAS boat and put herself in the water to protest. Thanks to Douglas Webster, I was able to give her a website with a photo of the boat.
I asked the group members to introduce themselves to me and to one another. This provided an opportunity for some of them to connect with one another and to know that there are others who care. As we have done at SeaFlow events in Hawaii and the San Francisco area, and at Nanami-san's request, I closed with a guided meditation. I also asked them to spread the word about LFAS with any American friends they might have.
ALERT: If anyone finds out where LFAS boats might be stationed, please let me know so that I can communicate this to the Japanese contact. The woman eco-tour leader was so eager to find the boat that I want to be sure to let her know if it is no longer in Japan so she doesn't waste her precious energy.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this sharing of information and inspiration.
May there be peace in all the worlds.
Love and aloha,
Hallie Austen Iglehart
12/6/01
7:04:37 PM
Breaking Free Of The Oil-Hog Cycle
By David Suzuki
There's never been a better time to buy a new vehicle! Zero percent financing! Be a patriot: Buy a car! The ads are hard to miss, and they're striking a chord with North Americans. Low interest rates are pushing record vehicle sales. And what vehicles are selling? In the United States last month, light trucks and SUVs topped the list. Those vehicles may guzzle gas, but with low prices once again returning to the pumps, people aren't very concerned about fuel efficiency.
That's too bad for a number of reasons. First, transportation has a bigger impact on the environment than any other sector of society. A whopping 40 percent of all the oil consumed in the United States is used to power passenger vehicles. And although modern pollution controls have reduced some vehicle emissions that cause smog, the average new passenger vehicle today still burns more gasoline than a new vehicle did nearly two decades ago. That means higher emissions, especially of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
The atmosphere and climate are not limited by human borders, so transportation isn't just a local, regional, or even a national issue. It's global. Certainly the effects of air pollution are largely local and regional, but the costs of dealing with the health problems associated with poor air quality extend to a national level. And global warming is a problem that affects the whole planet, and it will impact the world's poorest people the most.
Consider Bangladesh, for example. Most of its 130 million citizens earn less than US$1 a day. Together, these people emit just O.1 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. But because of the country's low-lying geography, it could be one of the hardest hit by a changing climate. Even a small rise in sea level could have catastrophic effects, and increases in extreme weather events like cyclones could be equally disastrous.
Second, all the gas-guzzling done by our light trucks and SUVs doesn't just change the climate, it also drives wild fluctuations in oil prices — what MIT economist Paul Krugman calls the "oil-hog cycle." Those price fluctuations and the high demand for imported oil in the United States is one of the causes of the instability that plagues the Middle East. Reducing our consumption of oil would help reduce that instability. And in a recent editorial in the New York Times, Mr. Krugman argues that politically and economically, now is an ideal time to implement conservation policies.
One of those policies would be to close the loophole that exempts SUVs and pickup trucks from passenger fuel-efficiency standards. Manufacturers have resisted this step on the grounds that it would be too expensive. But the Union of Concerned Scientists says existing technologies can "green" SUVs by using a more efficient engine and low-resistance tires, improving aerodynamics, and reducing body weight to improve fuel efficiency by nearly 50 percent. These changes would increase the price of the vehicle slightly, but reduced fuel costs would, over a few years, more than make up the difference and eventually yield substantial savings. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences also recently concluded that automakers could improve fuel efficiency of the vehicle fleet by 40 percent without undue cost burdens.
Unfortunately, Canada doesn't set its own fuel efficiency regulations. It essentially copies those from the United States and makes them voluntary for manufacturers, not compulsory. This leaves Canadians at the mercy of the American political process, and that is unacceptable. It's time for Canada to take a stand and require stricter standards, as California has done for air quality. As Mr. Krugman notes, it's time to acknowledge that conservation is more than a personal virtue; it's a way to make the world more stable. Although he was referring to politics and the economy, the most important increased stability in the long term might just be to the climate.
Source: http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/12/12062001/s_45792.asp
12/6/01
7:01:48 PM
Mass Inoculations Opposed by Nation's Largest Doctors' Group
By REUTERS
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4 - The American Medical Association said today that it would not support an immediate national smallpox vaccination program, saying the potential threat of a bioterror attack did not warrant the risks.
The association, the nation's largest doctors' group, noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opposed a mass inoculation program in part out of fears that some people, roughly one in every million, could die from adverse reactions to the smallpox vaccine.
The A.M.A. said it supported study of alternative vaccination strategies, like immunizing "rings" of people around smallpox cases, a strategy that eradicated smallpox by 1980.
12/6/01
7:00:19 PM
PAPUA NEW GUINEA: World Bank Fails to Enforce Logging Moratorium
TAKE ACTION:
http://forests.org/emailaction/png.htm
By Forests.org, Inc.
Papua New Guinea's moratorium on new logging has been allowed to lapse. Several logging operations have commenced during the moratorium, violating the conditions of a World Bank loan. In accepting a Structural Adjustment Loan from the World Bank, the government of PNG agreed to a moratorium on new logging concessions until the entire forestry sector was reviewed and properly reformed. The government has not fulfilled their obligation under the loan conditions, yet the Bank refuses to suspend economic lending. The World Bank has failed to follow its own policies on this loan.
In response PNG landowners have filed an Inspection Panel grievance with the World Bank, claiming they have lost their land and forests while the government was contractually bound to the World Bank to improve forest governance and not commence new logging. The Centre of Environmental Law and Community Rights Inc. has lodged the claim on behalf of landowners along the Kiunga Aiambak Road in the Western Province. The area is one of several areas that have been illegally logged during the period that the PNG government committed itself to the moratorium in exchange for loans. Illegal logging along the Kiunga Aiambak Road has caused severe environmental damage as logs worth millions of kina are unlawfully removed. Protesting landowners have been unlawfully imprisoned, beaten and tortured.
Should the World Bank disburse the final loan payment without maintaining the moratorium it would be in violation of the contractual provisions of the loan, as well as in conflict with their own operational directives. Their failure to follow their own policies comes as they propose a forest sector reform project. The proposed Forestry and Conservation Project (FCP) includes an important trust fund to support community-based projects that protect biodiversity, but does nothing to ensure their legal status. The project does not support policy-making for community based eco-forestry efforts that strive for ecological sustainability, local ownership and community development. This project must be strengthened before it is deserving of the support of forest conservationists. The moratorium must be maintained and the forest project amended to include support for other types of forest management besides industrial log export.
The World Bank and government of PNG must be taken to task over failing to ensure the moratorium is maintained, failing to end illegal logging in Western Province and elsewhere, their failure to suspend further loans, and their continued subsidies and support for commercial forestry (while ignoring alternatives).
Please go to the following website
http://forests.org/emailaction/png.htm
to send an action letter to
Mr. James Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank
1818 H. Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
12/6/01
6:58:16 PM
Problem Gamblers
A University of Illinois professor predicts attorneys will begin filing class-action lawsuits soon on behalf of "problem gamblers," much the way they took on tobacco companies on behalf of smokers.
John W. Kindt said the gambling industry is vulnerable to such suits because it profiles customers to target those likely to wager a high percentage of their income. That profiling is done through credit cards and other marketing tools.
In an article published in the latest issue of Managerial and Decision Economics, Kindt said the industry's efforts to promote gambling among vulnerable groups make it potentially liable for the harm its product causes to the general public.
Kindt studied tobacco litigation and found corporate liability centered on the claim cigarette executives "knew, but long hid, their knowledge" of the addictive properties of nicotine and "manipulated nicotine levels ... to hook unsuspecting smokers." He said the gambling industry has studied the tobacco lawsuits as well and has tried to insulate itself from legal liability by admitting there are problem gamblers and sponsoring public service announcements advising those with a problem to get help.
The situation is complicated by state legalization of casino and other forms of gambling. Kindt said the industry could argue a state should not benefit financially from a lawsuit against an activity it has promoted. But the state could come back with accusations the gambling industry presented incomplete or misleading studies in winning approval for casinos.
Kindt said ultimately, governments will have to decide "whether the goal is to reduce the public's utilization of an alleged potentially hazardous product or to impose increased costs on the industry," which would then be passed on to the public in the form of higher prices.
12/6/01
6:54:04 PM
SojoNet News Daily Headlines
Ashcroft Seeking to Free F.B.I. to Spy on Groups
Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions on the F.B.I.'s spying on religious and political organizations in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/national/01BURE.html
GOP Bargains for Fast Track Trade Powers
On the eve of today's House trade vote, Republicans continued to woo undecided lawmakers, offering additional benefits for unemployed workers and personal audiences with the president in an effort to round up votes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64863-2001Dec5.html
Pat Robertson Resigns from Christian Coalition
The coalition has been losing members, influence and financial support since the mid-1990s. The 1994 GOP takeover of Congress failed to enact the religious right's social agenda, but coalition leaders could no longer blame Democratic leaders.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62621-2001Dec5.html
Justice Dept. Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry
Even as the Justice Department is instituting tough new measures to detain individuals suspected of links to terrorism it is being unusually solicitous of foreigners' gun rights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/national/06GUNS.html
Senate Democrats push US energy conservation
Senate Democrats offered an alternative yesterday to a Republican plan to allow drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and instead called for more energy conservation and stricter fuel mileage standards for cars and sport utility vehicles.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13585/story.htm
'Voices of Negativism'
The sudden seizure of power by the executive branch, bypassing all constitutional checks and balances, is beginning to be recognized by cooler heads in the White House, Defense Department and C.I.A. as more than a bit excessive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/opinion/06SAFI.html
A Veil on the Truth
Having routed the enemy, perhaps the United States would stop the bombing, allowing food trucks to move in from across the border. But, instead, the opposite is true. The bombing continues, civilian populations are left at the mercy of marauding gangs, and food aid dwindles.
http://www.zmag.org/petersveil.htm
In an ill-defined war, what next?
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the cold war 12 years ago, the United States has been searching for an overall foreign policy to replace the anti-communism of that era. We may have found it in antiterrorism.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1206/p9s2-coop.html
12/6/01
6:48:03 PM
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.... Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
12/6/01
6:46:46 PM
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE <http://www.gristmagazine.com>
NUCLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER?
With allies in the White House and energy issues on everybody's mind, the nuclear power industry was on something of a roll this summer. Now, the momentum has shifted. David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, "Sept. 11 has been the biggest challenge to nuclear power since Chernobyl." Elected and appointed officials have raised serious concerns about whether a nuclear plant could withstand a plane crash, and at several public hearings, citizens living near plants have expressed similar fears. Meanwhile, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided not to shut down a nuclear power plant in Ohio, despite concerns that an important reactor safety feature may be cracked. On Tuesday, the NRC said the plant's owner, FirstEnergy, could continue to run the reactor until mid-February, when the plant is scheduled to come off-line for refueling and safety checks.
straight to the source: New York Times, Matthew Wald, 05 Dec 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/national/05NUKE.html>
RESERVE JUDGMENT
Concerned about threats to Africa's remaining rainforest, the New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society has been forming closer ties with logging companies. The group believes that in some cases, working hand-in-hand with loggers is the best way to protect what's left. Last year, the group helped negotiate a deal that traded away 260 square miles of the 2,000-square-mile Lope Reserve in Gabon to a timber company; in exchange, logging was prohibited throughout the remainder of the reserve and 160 square miles of forest were added to it. In July, the group brokered an arrangement whereby a logging company agreed to protect 100 square miles of forest in the Republic of Congo, forgoing timber harvests valued at $40 million. Some other environmental groups, however, criticize the conservation society's tactics, saying they result in only minor victories and draw too much positive attention to logging companies.
straight to the source: Washington Post, Associated Press, Tim Sullivan, 06 Dec. 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59270-2001Dec5.html>
PATRIOT MISSILES
Hopping aboard the post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism bandwagon, some Republicans have set their sights on so-called eco-terrorists. U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) and six other Republicans have asked mainstream environmental organizations to publicly disavow groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, which have claimed responsibility for many acts of vandalism and arson in recent years. In a letter to the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and their brethren, the seven congressmen say that although the acts of eco-terrorism haven't been as severe as the World Trade Center attack, they are "no less deplorable." Mainstream enviro leaders, most of whom are already on the record condemning eco-terrorism, have denounced the congressmen's request as "McCarthyesque." Greenpeace's John Passacantando: "They are trying to stick it to environmentalists in the name of patriotism."
straight to the source: Salon.com, Paul Tolme, 26 Nov 2001 (access ain't free) <http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/11/26/ecoterror/index.html>
DASCHLING THROUGH THE SENATE
U.S. Senate Democrats unveiled an energy bill yesterday that would place more emphasis on conservation and efficiency than the GOP alternative, while keeping the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drill-free. Currently, about 2 percent of the country's electricity comes from renewable sources; the new bill would require the number to jump to 12 percent by 2020. Democrats also called for higher miles-per-gallon fuel standards for SUVs, but gave no details. Enviros said the bill was a vast improvement over the GOP one, though they worried that it was too light on specifics. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) is scheduled to bring the bill up for debate early next year.
straight to the source: Anchorage Daily News, Liz Ruskin, 06 Dec 2001 <http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/738355p-786075c.html>
SONY-SIDE DOWN
Sony said yesterday that it would replace the peripheral cables for 1.3 million PlayStation 1 consoles destined for sale in Europe, in response to environmental concerns raised by the Dutch government earlier this week. A European Union rule forbids the sale of products that contain more than 0.01 percent cadmium; the Dutch say the cables pose a health threat because they contain between three to 20 times that amount. Sony questioned the Dutch regulators' interpretation of the rule, but said it would replace the cables nonetheless. The company has no plans to replace PlayStation 1 cables outside of Europe.
straight to the source: CNN.com, Reuters, 05 Dec 2001 <http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/12/05/sony.playstation.reut/index.html>
12/6/01
6:39:56 PM
Bush's Inexperience Is Showing
Dire threats emanating from Washington have horrified America's allies
By Eric Margolis, Contributing Foreign Editor
Crusades are messy, bloody affairs, and it's often hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
Exhibit A: Afghanistan, where the United States just suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the wily Russians. Happily for the White House, neither the media nor the American public understand what just happened. They continue to cheer on the president, who is mighty thankful he is leading a jolly little war against Muslims instead of having to explain to voters why the economy is nose-diving and hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs.
The Northern Alliance is not a merry band of pro-American freedom fighters battling the wicked Taliban, but a Russian front organization run by leaders of the revived Afghan Communist party. It has also reopened the heroin trade the Taliban had shut down.
The Alliance proclaimed itself Afghanistan's legitimate government last week. Moscow recognized the Alliance, and rushed "advisers" and troops into Afghanistan.
On Sept. 11, Alliance forces were a mere 10,000 men. A month later, it fielded 30,000 with an array of Russian armour and artillery. It's likely regular troops from neighbouring Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - all Russian satellite states - were sent into Afghanistan.
OIL AND GAS RESOURCES
Russia now dominates Afghanistan, thus reversing its historic defeat of the 1980s, shutting the U.S. and Pakistan out of Central Asia, and ensuring future Russian control of the Caspian Basin's oil and gas resources. Bush was too busy trying to "smoke out" outlaws Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar to notice his new best friends, the Russians, had drygulched him and grabbed the lion's share of Afghanistan.
The much ballyhooed Afghan unity conference in Germany last week, hailed by the U.S. and UN as a "breakthrough" and the beginning of a viable "democratic" government in Afghanistan, was a farce.
The U.S., UN, and Europe are waiting to shower tens of millions in aid on a "new," non-Islamic Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance realize they need a few women and some toothless royalists to create the illusion of a multi-party government in order to cash in on western aid. Armed, supplied and guided by the Russian Army and KGB, the Alliance remains the real power in Afghanistan.
Last week, hundreds of Taliban prisoners of war were reportedly massacred in the Mazar-E-Sharif fort by soldiers of communist warlord Rashid Dostam, assisted by U.S. and British special forces, and air strikes by U.S. warplanes. Our side says the prisoners tried to break out and had to die. Some more neutral observers claim the prisoners were murdered en masse. Amnesty International is calling for an investigation. U.S. troops also watched while 140 Taliban prisoners were executed in southern Afghanistan.
The U.S has been using fuel-air munitions that rights organizations claim are inhumane weapons that should be banned.
Last week, bin Laden's holy war syndrome seemed to infect the White House. Bush proclaimed a new jihad against Saddam Hussein, warning Iraq was next on his hit list. Saddam was moved into the terrorist column by Bush for allegedly planning to produce weapons of mass destruction to threaten his neighbours. The president forgot to mention Israel and India, who have also threatened their neighbours with nukes.
While Bush was preaching a new crusade against Iraq, other high administration officials were warning that Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Somalia and even Pakistan might be added to Bush's jihad list. A decade ago, this would have been called warmongering. Now, the frightful Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. are being used to justify all sorts of adventures abroad, and the curtailment of civil rights and free speech at home.
Bush's anti-Muslim crusading policy is being advocated by a group of Dr. Strangeloves, hardline "neo-conservatives" - the Washington chapter of Ariel Sharon's far-right Likud party. They want to use America to destroy all of Israel's enemies and block peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
RESTRAINT
Sensible Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the administration's sharpest mind, Secretary of State Colin Powell, are trying to restrain the Sharonistas, who seem dangerously close to convincing Bush to launch a crusade against much of the 1.2-billion-person Islamic world. They failed with clever Bill Clinton, but are succeeding with the unworldly Bush.
America's European, Asian and Muslim allies are horrified by the dire threats emanating from Washington, but so far no one has dared to publicly break ranks and tell the president to holster his sixguns and simmer down. America is not refighting World War II.
In fact, it is not even at war, since none has been declared by Congress. It is fighting a handful of small but deadly international criminal organizations. This is not D-Day, nor the Alamo, and certainly no reason to launch America on the 21st century's first world war.
Eric can be reached by email at mailto:margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
Letters to the editor should be sent to mailto:editor@sunpub.com
Source: http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis.html
12/6/01
6:32:39 PM
FAIR
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
MEDIA ADVISORY:
NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD TELL FULL STORY IN TERROR BLAST
Hamas Leader Was in Palestinian Prison Until Freed by Israeli Attack
December 6, 2001
Three separate terrorist attacks in Israel claimed at least 25 lives this past weekend, and subsequent Israeli army attacks on Palestinian areas have killed at least five people. The Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings, which it said were in retaliation for the November 23 assassination of the group's senior West Bank leader, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud.
Echoing the response of the Bush administration, the U.S. news media have largely blamed the attacks on Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat, despite the fact that Hamas is an unaffiliated rival of the PA. "Arafat didn't send the suicide bombers, but he didn't stop them either," reported CBS Evening News correspondent David Hawkins (12/3/01). Although no one has charged that the Palestinian Authority carried out or authorized the suicide attacks, Israeli airstrikes against Palestinian Authority headquarters and police facilities were presented in some outlets as a direct response to the suicide bombings, as with the December 4 New York Daily News front-page headline: "PAYBACK."
The New York Times made the Palestinian Authority's failure to arrest more Hamas militants a major theme in its December 3 reporting and commentary. According to a news analysis piece, "Mr. Arafat's lieutenants said they would crack down on two powerful extremist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and began making arrests. Mr. Arafat had said before that he would take this step, without doing so." The Times added that Arafat's Fatah organization "has maintained uneasy relations with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Palestinian analysts and officials say-- relations that are likely to end if he puts their leaders in prison and keeps them there."
The paper quoted Secretary of State Colin Powell as telling Arafat, "You've got to go after the organizations who are conducting these kinds of acts of terror... putting them in real jails where they are not walking free several days later." The Times' editorial followed the same line, warning that "a decisive moment is now at hand in which Mr. Arafat has to assert his authority with actions, not merely words. He must, as Washington demands, break up the terrorist organizations led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad by arresting leaders involved in planning violence and by seizing illegally held arms."
While it is certainly valid to investigate whether either the PA or Israel have done enough to pursue suspected terrorists or to stop violence under their control, the New York Times has omitted crucial facts about this latest cycle of violence, even though the paper has reported these facts in the past.
On August 26 of last year, Hamas' Hanoud was wounded by Israeli forces in a shootout near the West Bank town of Nablus. Hanoud then surrendered to the Palestinian Authority, and four days later he was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a Palestinian military tribunal for training and arming military groups (Associated Press, 9/2/00).
On May 18, Israel launched an F-16 attack on the Nablus jail where Hanoud was being held, in an attempt to kill him. The action proved disastrous: Eleven Palestinian police officers are believed to have died, and Hanoud escaped (New York Times, 5/20/01). Castro Salameh, the Palestinian commander of the Nablus post, told the Times, "Abu Hanoud has been my charge for nine months, and I have kept him under lock and key... But now Israel has liberated him. I have absolutely no idea where he has gone to."
These facts have been reported in the New York Times, most recently in a November 25 story about Hanoud's assassination. But the stories written after the latest round of violence have omitted these facts. Targeting civilians is never acceptable, but context is critical as people seek a way out of the cycle of Mideast violence: If the Times reminded readers that the Hamas leader whose killing sparked the recent round of violence was in a Palestinian jail until the Israeli military tried to assassinate him, it would put the contention that the Palestinian Authority bears most of the responsibility for the current strife in a different light.
On December 5 the Times did report that Arafat and others believe that Israeli attacks on Palestinian police facilities are in fact encumbering their ability to arrest militants. But the troubling connection between Israel's attempt to kill a prisoner in Palestinian custody and the recent rash of bombings is still not being pointed out by the paper.
Source: http://www.FAIR.org
12/6/01
6:30:02 PM
Corvallis Police Refuse To Question Foreign Visitors
Corvallis Joins Portland Police
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Portland police are no longer alone in their refusal to interview foreign visitors as part of a federal terrorism probe.
Corvallis police joined their Portland counterparts Wednesday, and the Eugene police might soon follow suit.
The City of Eugene was awaiting its lawyers' advice before making a decision.
Until Wednesday, Portland had been the only city in the nation to refuse a request by the U.S. Department of Justice to participate in the interviews, citing state privacy laws. As many as 5,000 foreign visitors will be questioned nationwide, some 200 of them in Oregon.
Corvallis Police Chief Pam Roskowski believes the city's officers can legally participate in the federal probe, according to a statement released Wednesday.
However, Roskowski believes the city will be better served if officers concentrate on criminal investigations rather than in interviewing people on the federal list who are not criminal suspects, police spokesman Lt. Paul Miller said in the statement.
"It is incumbent on all law enforcement agencies to promote the balance of protecting the community ... while preserving the freedoms and civil liberties of all residents," the statement said.
Eugene police were waiting Wednesday for advice from city attorneys before deciding whether to participate in the FBI interviews. Salem police said federal agents have not yet asked them for help.
"Give us some legitimate reason to talk to the people -- other than that they're from the Middle East -- and we'll be glad to," said Pam Alejandere, a Eugene police spokeswoman.
Federal agents will likely question 23 foreign visitors in the Portland area, the U.S. Attorney's office said Wednesday. Another 40 will be questioned in Eugene. About 30 people will be interviewed in Corvallis.
The state attorney general on Tuesday said there is nothing in Oregon law that prevents state investigators from helping with the interviews, but Portland officials have a different interpretation.
City attorney Jeffrey Rogers said Wednesday a few of the Justice Department's questions could violate state privacy laws protecting people not accused of crimes.
Federal authorities want to question about 200 people in Oregon who are in the state on student, work or tourist visas. All have come to the state in the past two years from countries known to harbor terrorists.
The people on Oregon's list will be questioned, one way or another, said Kent Robinson, chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney's office in Portland.
The Oregonian newspaper obtained a partial list of the questions federal agents instructed local police officers to ask as part of the probe.
The paper identified three guidelines issued by federal authorities that Portland city officials believe would violate state law if posed during interviews.
They are:
"You should obtain all telephone numbers used by an individual and his family or close associates." "If he lives with others you should inquire as to their identities. You should note any information that would assist us in locating the individual in the future." "You should inquire specifically whether he or anybody he knows has ever visited Afghanistan."
Those were among the guidelines sent to U.S. Attorneys on Nov. 9 by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the newspaper said.
A group called the Portand Peaceful Response Coalition (PPRC) is holding a march in support of the Portland police decision not to take part in the questioning. The group plans to meet at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland at 5 p.m. Friday and will march to City Hall.
http://www.koin.com/c6k/news/stories/news-109721420011129-131127.html
12/6/01
6:26:02 PM
Feed The Afgan People
International Aid Efforts Hampered by US Military Strategy
Urge President Bush to allow multinational peacekeepers to ensure safe delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan. Take Action!
There is now enough food in place to feed hungry people in Afghanistan, but banditry and the lack of security on the ground is preventing its distribution. The UN and relief agencies report that routes are either blocked or sporadically interrupted due to the violence and chaos of post-Taliban Afghanistan.
In northern Afghanistan where the largest number of hungry people are the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs reports a situation that "remains very unstable" with reports of continued fighting and looting. For the period of November 15 to December 15, the UN says, less than 20% of identified food needs have been met. Two million people are estimated to be vulnerable.
Last week, a number of allied governments, including Britain, France, Canada, Turkey and Jordan were preparing to send peacekeeping forces to help stabilize the situation and permit the safe passage of food before winter completely arrives. The Northern Alliance, now nominally in control of northern Afghanistan, agreed to allow these forces in.
But that peacekeeping force has been blocked. The US General in charge of the war ruled that these forces might interfere with US military operations and vetoed the deployment. Nor is the US military offering to provide protection for relief distribution itself.
This is morally outrageous. The US doesn’t want any other force in the country, won’t help with food distribution itself, and is now standing in the way of feeding starving people.
Write to President Bush, urging him to support the necessary multinational peacekeeping force to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan so that hungry people can be fed. There are millions still at high risk, winter snows have arrived in many locations, and every day lost could cost lives. Tell the President to act now.
Source: http://www.sojo.net/feedtheAfghanpeople
12/6/01
6:22:45 PM
Public Citizen
Public Citizen Urges Nuclear Industry, NRC to Support Safety
Industry, Agency Opposition to Enhanced Security Measures Puts Corporate Wishes Before Public Interest
WASHINGTON, D.C. -The nuclear power industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are putting corporate interests before public safety by opposing legislation that would enhance security measures at nuclear power plants, Public Citizen warned today.
"For the NRC and the industry to oppose this bill reflects a breathtaking disregard for the health and safety of people living near nuclear power plants," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "People want assurances that they are safe from a terrorist-triggered radiological nightmare. The industry and the NRC are meeting those concerns with cold contempt."
The need for sweeping security upgrades at the nation's nuclear facilities had been well-documented prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and alarm about security problems at the plants has heightened since Sept. 11. Public officials and their constituents living near nuclear facilities are now questioning the adequacy of security precautions and in some instances demanding that plants immediately be shut down.
Legislation co-sponsored by Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and James Jeffords (I-Vt.), along with Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), attempts to address some of those security concerns. The measure would federalize security forces at the plants and drastically expand the number and types of threats that security forces must envision when they determine if and how the plants can be defended against assaults. Other provisions of the bill would seek to protect the public by establishing stockpiles of potassium iodide -recently dubbed the Cipro of radiation - near nuclear plants and expand a plant's emergency response and evacuation zone from a 10- to a 50-mile radius.
Plant operators would be charged fees to pay for the nuclear security force and other provisions of the legislation. Reid has estimated the cost to the industry could be as high as $1 billion. Public Citizen cautioned, however, that the bill's language may have to be improved to assure that taxpayers are not asked yet again to subsidize the cost of nuclear power, this time by paying for adequate security at nuclear power plants.
Shortly after the bill was introduced, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve and Joseph Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying organization, blasted the legislation. In a prepared statement, Colvin dismissed the issue of nuclear power plant security as "a problem that does not exist." In a letter to Reid, Meserve parroted the views of the industry he is charged with regulating and asserted that the bill "addresses a non-existent problem."
In fact, very real security problems have been identified at the nation's nuclear power plants. From 1991 through 1998, the NRC conducted a series of "force-on-force" tests, in which mock assailants "attacked" nuclear power plants. In nearly half the tests, it was found that a real attack would have jeopardized the reactor and potentially resulted in core damage and the release of radiation to the environment.
Even before Sept. 11, watchdog groups and concerned citizens were warning that the scope of threats envisioned by plant operators and the NRC was ridiculously narrow. For instance, current safeguards don't adequately account for attacks from air, water or large truck bombs (the latter is a particularly egregious deficiency after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City). Current defense planning also assumes that attackers would arrive in small numbers, possess little or no technical expertise, and would not be suicidal, at least with regard to aircraft - clearly unrealistic assumptions.
Since Sept. 11, news reports have quoted terrorists describing the temptation of nuclear power plants as targets of attack. The government has also acknowledged the potential terrorist threat to power plants: National Guard troops have been deployed, no-fly zones have been declared and Meserve himself declared that immediately following the terrorist attacks that an NRC review of security and procedures at nuclear power plants was warranted. The NRC even shut down its Web site, citing concerns that potential assailants might obtain sensitive information about power plants that would prove helpful in an assault.
Yet now that legislation has been introduced attempting to address known security problems at nuclear power plants, the NRC opposes it, and the commission chairman claims the problems targeted in the bill don't exist.
"The NRC and the nuclear power industry are nearly indistinguishable from each other, and their coziness has been both a regulatory farce and a public disservice for years," Hauter said. "But the NRC's lockstep agreement with industry at this particular time, and on this particular issue, is singularly odious. Richard Meserve should change his title from 'commission chairman' to 'industry apologist.' And he should hang his head in shame."
While the legislation takes several steps in the right direction toward protecting the public from attacks on nuclear power plants, reactors and their high-level nuclear waste will continue to loom as an unnecessary public safety risk, Hauter said.
"If they become law, the enhanced security measures in this legislation will not remove the urgency of replacing nuclear power with conservation and renewable energy sources," she said. "In fact, this legislative response to Sept. 11 underscores yet again the folly of relying on nuclear power, let alone promoting it, as Bush calls for in his energy plan."
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.
For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org
12/6/01
6:21:57 PM
Public Citizen
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Ignores Public Health and Safety; Sides with Nuclear Industry on Yucca Mountain Dump Proposal
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Concerned citizens and representatives of national environmental and public interest groups demonstrated their opposition to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump outside a media briefing that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce held today. The Chamber of Commerce, together with the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, recently launched a lobbying campaign in support of the nuclear waste dump proposal.
"This is another disappointing instance of the business lobby abandoning the health and safety concerns of the communities in which they operate," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.
In addition, there appears to be a lack of solidarity among Chamber of Commerce members over the issue. Apparently, the Chamber did not bother to seek approval from its 3,000 state and local chambers before launching its pro-repository campaign. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, the third largest in the country, officially opposes the nuclear dump proposal and has resigned from the U.S. Chamber in protest.
Yucca Mountain, located about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nev., is the only site being considered as a potential repository for 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste from U.S. Department of Energy weapons sites and commercial nuclear power plants across the country. Despite numerous unresolved technical, environmental and policy issues, the pro-nuclear Bush administration appears committed to pursuing the project. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to formally recommend the Yucca Mountain site early next year, but it faces an uncertain future in Congress.
Yucca Mountain is in a seismically active area and lies above an aquifer that is the only source of drinking water for area residents. Opponents of the repository project are concerned that radioactivity would eventually leak into the groundwater. High-level nuclear waste remains dangerously radioactive for a quarter-million years.
Spokespeople for the Chamber of Commerce campaign have brushed aside the fundamental question of the site's suitability and have tried to claim that it's better to have all the nation's nuclear waste in one spot, rather than scattered across the country. However, Yucca Mountain will not contain all of the country's nuclear waste. This waste must be stored on-site at nuclear power plants for at least five years before it can be moved anywhere, and even then, the proposed repository is not big enough to store all the waste projected to be generated by the currently operating U.S. reactors.
"The repository proposal does nothing to resolve security concerns at U.S. nuclear power plants," said Kevin Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "To the contrary, the repository design features massive, exposed surface operations, which would establish a larger, highly vulnerable and potentially more devastating target for attack, close to a major population center."
Further, the prospect of shipping 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to Nevada raises other safety and security concerns. A severe transportation crash or terrorist attack could have grave environmental and health consequences and result in billions of dollars in damages.
"Tens of thousands of shipments of dangerous nuclear waste would pass through as many as 45 states, and no one can guarantee that accidents won't happen," Kamps said. "This unprecedented nuclear transportation scheme would introduce new risks all along the highways and railways of this country."
The Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, the other sponsor of the pro-repository campaign, is a spin-off of the nuclear industry's lobbying organization, the Nuclear Energy Institute.
"Long-lasting radioactive waste is the ugly underbelly of nuclear power, and the nuclear industry is desperate to sell policy-makers on an 'out of sight, out of mind' solution to this problem," Hauter said. "Now that the Yucca Mountain project faces an uncertain future, the nuclear industry has turned to its friends in the business community to help market this disastrous idea. But problems with the project extend far beyond the realm of marketing, and certainly cannot be resolved by the Chamber of Commerce."
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.
For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org or http://www.nirs.org
12/6/01
6:14:17 PM
Dispatch From Anthrakistan
Martin A. Lee, AlterNet
IT'S A HELLUVA war our government has gotten us into. It could go on for years, we're told. There's no end in sight.
I'm not talking about the war against terrorist networks in Afghanistan and beyond. I'm referring to another troubling conflict: the crusade against civil liberties on the domestic front, the jihad against dissent that's taking shape in Anthrakistan, our anxious homeland.
This nervous nati