1/5/02
9:07:38 PM

Science's Top Ten Scientific Advance Of 2001:

Nanoscale Computing Circuits Named Top Scientific Advance Of 2001

Molecular-scale circuits that link together tiny transistors, wires, and switches to carry out basic computing operations were named this year's top scientific achievement by the journal Science and its publisher, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The nanocircuits, named the Breakthrough of the Year by Science's editors, leads their list of the top ten scientific developments in 2001. The top ten, chosen for their profound implications for society and the advancement of science, appear in the journal's 21 December issue.

This year's leap forward for molecular computing may pave the way to a future filled with tiny but extremely fast and powerful machines that can translate conversations on the fly or delve deep into your body to diagnose an illness. If these circuits can be combined into even more complex architecture, this would "undoubtedly provide computing power to launch scientific breakthroughs for decades to come," say the Science editors.

The idea of using molecules and small chemical groups as the building blocks of a new generation of computers has been around for years. The quest has become more urgent over the last decade, however, as traditional silicon circuitry continues to shrink towards a point where it can no longer function. Researchers hope to skirt this problem by using molecules and small chemical groups to create billions of devices that could fit easily in the space of a current chip.

After expanding their repertoire of molecular-scale devices in 2000, several research teams took the next critical step and wired the devices together to form working circuits. Several papers published in Science this year detail the progress from communicating nanowires (26 January 2001) to nanotube and nanowire-based logic circuits (9 November 2001) to computational circuits using single-molecule transistors (8 November 2001, Science Express).

Molecular computers with the speed, reliability, and low cost of silicon computers are still years away, but this year's Breakthrough has researchers charged up about the future.

Science also salutes nine other scientific achievements of 2001. Except for the first runner up, the others are in no particular order.

RNA Revolution: RNA revealed itself to be remarkably versatile in 2001, breaking out of its traditional role of genetic messenger and performing a number of unexpected tasks. Small snippets of RNA have already been shown to silence genes in plants, and this year researchers discovered that this "RNA interference" can happen in mice and humans as well. Cell biologists also uncovered key details of how messenger RNA--the biochemical link between DNA's information and protein formation--is spliced together. As part of this process, other small RNAs team up with proteins to form a slicing "editor" of forming mRNA, and researchers were surprised to learn that it's the RNAs that do the cutting, suggesting that RNA can act as an enzyme as well. The molecule's expanding repertoire has rekindled interest in an "RNA world," where RNA appeared before DNA in the earliest life forms.

Solar Mystery Solved: Scientific detectives cracked one of their toughest cases this year, solving the problem of the missing solar neutrinos. Neutrinos are particles with virtually no mass, and "electron" neutrinos are a byproduct of the nuclear furnace that drives the sun. In the late 1960s, researchers calculated the number of electron neutrinos that should be streaming away from the sun--but the actual number of detected neutrinos came up short. This year, researchers at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada confirmed a hunch that earlier experiments had hinted at: the neutrinos weren't disappearing, but going incognito. Their experiments established that solar neutrinos convert to two other neutrino flavors (muon and tau) after leaving the sun, thereby escaping detection.

Genomes Galore: An amazing race ended early this year with the simultaneous publication of two draft sequences of the entire human genome, years earlier than anyone had expected at the outset of the sequencing effort. In a surprising twist, the human gene count was low--only 35,000 genes, much less than that of "simple" creatures like the lowly worm C. elegans (although the estimate is being revised upward). Humans were only part of the genome gold rush of 2001: over 60 organisms now boast a sequenced genome, including several disease-causing microbes. Full genomes for research-important animals such as the rat, mouse, zebrafish, and a malaria mosquito are in the works.

Sizzling Superconductors: In 2001, superconductors were hot--well, hotter than expected, at least. The promise of resistance-free electricity transmission suggested by superconductor technology competes with the cold reality that materials become superconducting at far below room temperature. This year, two new superconductors pushed the temperature limits higher. Japanese scientists discovered that magnesium diboride, a simple lab compound, becomes a superconductor at 39 degrees Kelvin, beating the previous high temperature for a metallic compound by a factor of two. Carbon buckyballs expanded with organic molecules became superconductors at 117 degrees Kelvin, suggesting new possibilities for superconducting electronics.

Neuron Traffic Signals: Axons are the spindly arms of nerve cells that reach out to each other to form a neural communications network, and this year scientists gained insight into how axons know where to grow in the developing nervous system. This information could aid in the quest to repair damaged adult nerves. Research in the 1990s identified a number of beckoning and repelling molecular signals that guide wandering axons. In 2001, researchers learned more about how these signals interact and how axons integrate their often-conflicting messages. Other studies demonstrated how these signals are translated into action by the axon.

Cancer In The Crosshairs: 2001 marked the clinical appearance of a new breed of cancer-fighting drugs, specific "smart bombs" targeted to the precise biochemical defects that cause certain cancers. This year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Gleevec, which inhibits a faulty enzyme associated with one type of leukemia. Enzymes that influence the growth of cancer cells are prominent targets in this new salvo against cancer, and dozens of clinical trials of other defect-correcting drugs are under way worldwide. Many common cancers such as breast, colon and lung cancer, however, involve several gene defects and may require multiple targeted drugs.

Cold Atoms Still Hot: The first Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a "superatom" of trapped and supercooled atoms in quantum lockstep, was published in a landmark Science article in 1995. Science authors Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman were awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work, sharing the prize with Wolfgang Ketterle of MIT. The buzz about BECs continued this year, with an eye towards a future of atom lasers and ultraprecise measurements. Two French research teams created helium BECs for the first time, and lithium and potassium condensates also debuted. Scientists made strides in manipulating this new state of matter as well, imploding an atomic supernova ("bose nova"), stirring up whirlpool-like structures in the condensates, and trapping BEC clusters to create the first "squeezed" state of atomic matter.

Climate Consensus: It's official: "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations," declared the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this year, pinning the blame on human, rather than natural, causes. New data and new computer modeling led to a better understanding of climate change that confirms the human impact on an unnaturally warm 20th century, although uncertainty remains about the planet's sensitivity to greenhouse gases. United States President George W. Bush, citing this uncertainty along with reservations about the high cost and unequal burden of implementing emission controls, pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol, designed to reduce human-produced greenhouse gases worldwide.

Missing Sink Found: The United States is the world's top greenhouse gas producer, but it's also a "sink," mopping up lots of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The size of the U.S. carbon sink has been a matter of dispute, but this year two opposing groups of scientists revised their estimates to come to an agreement on the sink's extent. Atmospheric researchers shrunk their prediction of a giant sink with new analyses of data from a longer time period, while carbon counters on the land found new hiding places for carbon that upped their estimates of overall sink size. The result: a sink that absorbs around one-third of current U.S. emissions but may show signs of slowing within the next century.

Science After September 11: The international science and engineering community faces a "sobering new era" after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, challenged by shrinking budgets, information-sharing and collaboration restrictions, and shifting research priorities. In a special section devoted to "The Year of Living Dangerously," Science examines the consequences of the attacks for scientists, particularly regarding bioweapons and sweeping new security for top labs and universities.

The flip side of Science's top ten is its Breakdowns of the Year--less-than-inspiring moments in science and science policy in 2001. Featured this year are budget problems surrounding the International Space Station and the "scientific vacuum" in the Bush Administration.

Best Bets for Hot News in 2002: As in previous years, Science has chosen six hot topics to watch in 2002. This year, their choices include: U.S. stem cell research in private industry and abroad, the field of proteomics, the maiden voyage of several new telescopes, multifactorial diseases, optical clocks and fundamental constants, and visualizing complex molecules and biological interactions. The editors also check in on the 2000 scorecard to see how well they did with last year's predictions.

As the world's leading peer-reviewed general science journal, Science is uniquely suited to compile the most authoritative list of the year's scientific accomplishments. The top ten list is the thirteenth since Science inaugurated the feature. Editor-In-Chief Donald Kennedy writes about the Breakthrough of the Year report in the 21 December issue's editorial, which is available upon request.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Association For The Advancement Of Science for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit American Association For The Advancement Of Science as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011225095034.htm

1/5/02
8:57:52 PM

FOOD ADDITIVE EXTENDS LIFE OF FRUIT FLIES BY 15 PERCENT AND IMPROVES THEIR ABILITY TO WITHSTAND STRESS

Ben-Gurion University researchers have achieved a significant increase in the life span of fruit flies by adding small quantities of an experimental material to the flies' diet. The substance, known as ATA, also enabled the insects to better withstand stresses produced by exposure to a low-oxygen atmosphere, high temperature or X-ray irradiation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011224082208.htm

STANFORD RESEARCHERS DEVELOP SYSTEM FOR FIELD TESTING MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION

Evolutionary biology has always faced a major hurdle - how to test a process that takes place over thousands, if not millions, of years. Researchers at Stanford University may have come up with a solution.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011221080921.htm

WORLD'S SMALLEST LASER CAUGHT IN ACT OF LASING BY UC BERKELEY CHEMISTS

Chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, have taken snapshots of the world's smallest laser in action. Peidong Yang, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, reported in June the creation of an ultraviolet nanowire nanolaser shorter than the width of a human hair and one-hundredth the width.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011224081002.htm

SCIENCE'S TOP TEN: NANOSCALE COMPUTING CIRCUITS NAMED TOP SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE OF 2001

Molecular-scale circuits that link together tiny transistors, wires, and switches to carry out basic computing operations were named this year's top scientific achievement by the journal Science and its publisher, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011225095034.htm

FISH MAY SHOW HOW NATURE DIVERSIFIES

Although the threespine stickleback fish has been celebrated on the currency of the Netherlands and been a star of a pioneering 1928 French documentary film, the fish has found its most receptive audience with biologists, who have been studying it for more than 100 years. In what may be its most important role yet, the stickleback is being used as a model by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at Stanford University to track the genetic changes that define a species, a puzzle that until now could not be tested experimentally in vertebrate animals.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011220081713.htm

ARCHAEOLOGISTS REWRITE TIMELINE OF BRONZE AND IRON AGES

Using information gleaned from the sun's solar cycles and tree rings, archaeologists are rewriting the timeline of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The research dates certain artifacts of the ancient eastern Mediterranean decades earlier than previously thought. And it places an early appearance of the alphabet outside Phoenicia at around 740 B.C.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011220081204.htm

"SCARED TO DEATH," MORE THAN JUST AN EXPRESSION

In the legendary Sherlock Holmes story "The Hound of the Baskervilles," by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Charles Baskerville dies from a heart attack brought on by extreme psychological stress. Findings from a new medical article by University of California, San Diego Sociologist David Phillips suggest that people can indeed be scared to death, both in fact as well as fiction.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011225094518.htm

IMPLANTABLE HEARING DEVICE CAN IMPROVE SOUND QUALITY

A new hearing device that is implanted in your middle ear may provide better sound quality than conventional hearing aids, according to the January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011228081859.htm

NEW UCLA IMAGING STUDY FIRST TO SHOW PLACEBO ALTERS BRAIN FUNCTION IN INDIVIDUALS WITH MAJOR DEPRESSION

UCLA researchers are the first to report altered brain function in people who respond favorably to placebo treatment for major depression. In addition, the findings show these changes are different than those found in people who respond to antidepressant medication.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020102074543.htm

URBAN AIR POLLUTION LINKED TO BIRTH DEFECTS FOR FIRST TIME; RESEARCH LINKS TWO POLLUTANTS TO INCREASED RISK OF HEART DEFECTS

Exposure to two common air pollutants may increase the chance that a pregnant woman will give birth to a child with certain heart defects, according to a UCLA study that provides the first compelling evidence that air pollution may play a role in causing some birth defects.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020102075340.htm

MINI-LASERS AND SILICON ON SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY LEAD TO SPEEDIER AND COST-EFFECTIVE INTERCONNECTS BETWEEN COMPUTER CHIPS

Using light beams in place of metal wires, engineers at The Johns Hopkins University have devised a cost-effective method to speed up the way microchips "talk" to each other. The method, created by a team in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, takes advantage of unusual characteristics associated with silicon on sapphire technology, a new way to manufacture microchips.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020102075205.htm

NEW LIGHT SHED ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE

Individuals who have been blind from birth use different parts of their brain when they read Braille than do those who lost their sight later in life -- a difference that sheds new light on the relationship between thought and language.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020102080342.htm

FRUITS AND VEGGIES GAINING GROUND, BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH

The percentage of men who consumed fruits and vegetables at least five times a day increased from 16.5 percent in 1990 to 19.1 percent in 1996. The percentage of women eating enough fruits and vegetables increased from 21.3 percent in 1990 to 26.2 percent in 1996, according to the American Heart Associations 2002 Heart and Stroke Statistical Update, an annual publication released Dec. 31.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020102075940.htm

AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATIONS TOP 10 RESEARCH ADVANCES FOR 2001 INCLUDE HEART DEVICES, CELL TRANSPLANTS AND DRUG-ELUTING STENTS

New treatments for heart failure implantable heart devices and cell-grown tissues are among the top 10 research advances in heart disease and stroke for 2001, says David Faxon, M.D., president of the American Heart Association.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020102074842.htm

2001: A YEAR OF CHALLENGE AND ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR NASA

As NASA's space odyssey for 2001 comes to an end, the Agency faces a year of transition and new challenges as it prepares to continue its mission of discovery into the new millennium. In the last year, the International Space Station, the largest and most sophisticated spacecraft ever built, celebrated its first full year of human habitation. The successful arrival of NASA's Mars Odyssey at the red planet energized space scientists and, for the first time, NASA was able to create a complete biological record of Earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/011227075443.htm

THE CURSE OF THE CARP

Carp must be Australia's most hated fish. Introduced to the River Murray about 20 years ago, they have become such an environmental threat that they now bear the nickname of "river rabbits."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020102080525.htm

1/5/02
8:45:56 PM

MOJOURNAL

http://www.motherjones.com/

* Undercutting Executions * - Web Exclusive: Opinion: Death penalty opponents are launching a new campaign to make it more difficult -- and more costly -- for prison officials to carry out lethal injection executions.

http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/executions.html

* A Biodefense Boondoogle * - Magazine: As pharmaceutical companies line up for multimillion-dollar contracts to make bioterrorism vaccines, some question whether the industry is up to the job.

http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/JF02/biodefense.html

* Daily Briefing * - Web Exclusive: The hunt for bin Laden; the Moussaoui trial; don't name my baby Osama; the Mumia Abu-Jamal decision; farewell, Rudy; more ...

http://motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/index.html

* Capitol Beat * - Web Exclusive: Campaign finance reform, the politics of war; Amtrak reform derailed; more ...

http://motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/capitol_beat.html

* Discuss * - Victim of unilateralism?: Was President Bush's decision to abandon the ABM treaty based on his administration's support for a missile defense plan or its basic antipathy for multi-lateral agreements which can limit US policies?

http://motherjones.com/cgi-bin/WebX?50@@.ee9a13e

1/5/02
8:37:00 PM

Avoiding Wars Takes Courage And Responsibility

by Dr Jamal A. Shurdom, The Jordan Times

A GLANCE at the seriousness of the outcome of the first round of bloody "war against terrorism", compels us all, as responsible human beings, to do the impossible, before it is too late, for the sake of alleviating human suffering and to prevent the expansion of the war into other areas, notably Iraq. A paramount objective should be to save human lives and to avoid catastrophes. Humanely, no one can justify a war. Wars, under any circumstances and for whatever reasons, are unacceptable human behaviour. It is an uncivilised demeanour where the rule of the jungle applies: the strong savages the weak.

Humanity is facing the possibility of extinction because of the accumulation of ever more sophisticated, deadly weapons and technology. To end the "war-making" psychology certainly takes courage and responsibility. It takes new thinking and devoted peace-loving leaders who have to act before it is too late. Political leaders should understand the cost and the price of wars.

In logical terms, wars and violence should not and cannot serve to resolve political conflicts that might arise among governments and nations. The lives of peoples should matter more than those of self-centred political leaders, interested in elections, military industry contractors, political lobbyists, or the dominating superpowers' views of national security and interests.

Conflict of interest is a common phenomenon in human relations, but it should not make people pay the price and become the only victims of initiating wars. Peoples should urge their leaders to seriously start rethinking wars in terms of tools for political gains.

The young American soldiers, the people of the Middle East and any other people on this planet have the God given right to live and survive in a decent, peaceful environment. Peoples also have the right to fight terrorism, resist the policies of wars, and get rid of foreign occupation, control, exploitation and domination.

Leaders should realise that a new national and international consciousness is powerfully developing among the masses of the peoples of the world against the investors and the beneficiaries of bloody wars.

At this crucial moment of the post-Taleban era, serious and honest American-Iraqi, face-to-face negotiations could, if successful, save the region from indescribable catastrophe, notably saving the children and people of Iraq from starvation and death brought about by unjustified UN sanctions. Leaders should wholeheartedly attempt to ease tensions by mutual understanding and respect for the other's interests and security. Relations should be based on common interest and human principles of justice and fairness. Both the Iraqi and the American leaders, for the sake of saving human lives, should compromise in negotiating an acceptable political settlement based on mutual interest.

President George W. Bush should seriously rethink his decision, in dealing with Iraq. America shouldn't fight the wars of others. War against Iraq is not justified. Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism and never supported, financed or harboured a terrorist group. Iraq is not a fundamentalist or unreasonably fanatic state. Iraq is a secular state defending its views of sovereignty and independence. Fighting Iraq now is not fighting the Taleban or Osama Ben Laden, or even the Gulf War for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. For the Iraqis, a war now would be a matter of life and death. It is a war of survival and existence. The price paid in the event of a war is too high.

Political leaders should responsibly understand that saving human lives is more important than saving political lives and faces. The conflict should not be personalised.

For the sake of the basic principles of human decency, dignity and civilisation, it is hoped that the American and Iraqi leaderships will endeavour to end the human sufferings of the children and people of Iraq and open a new chapter of American-Iraqi mutual understanding and peace.

The writer is an expert consultant in international affairs, national security, terrorism, American government and strategic studies. He is the chief editor of MECRA International Journal in Orlando, Florida, and adjunct professor of international affairs and politics.

Source: http://www.jordantimes.com/Tue/opinion/opinion3.htm

1/5/02
8:34:49 PM

Israeli soldiers beat Bethlehem housewife to death

IAP News 30 December 2001

Israeli occupation soldiers last night raided Palestinian homes in several areas surrounding the town of Bethlehem, killing a young housewife after beating here savagely on the head using the butts of their rifles.

Hospital sources said Nujud Muhammed Ghuneim, 27, died of a massive brain haemorrhage resulting from a severe beating that also caused her skull to rupture.

Palestinian sources in Bethlehem said several crack Israeli soldiers raided Ghuneim's home at the village of el-Khader south of Bethlehem, and as the young woman sought to prevent the soldiers from vandalizing her utensils and house appliances, the soldiers reportedly started beating her savagely on the head until she collapsed.

Her cousin Muhammed Ghuneim described the incident as "extremely ugly."

"This is a reflection of the brutal ugliness of the Zionist-Jewish mentality. Here, you had ten soldiers, and all of them ganged up on the young lady, hitting her on the head without mercy until she died. So, why doesn't the American media speak about Jewish terror?"

Muhammed said the occupation soldiers understand only the language of death and murder.

"Nujud didn't pose any threats to those crack soldiers. She is a lady, does any person in his right mind believe she posed any risk to their lives?"

"If so why did they kill her? Why?

http://ummahnews.com/viewarticle.php?sid=2373

1/5/02
8:31:52 PM

Criticism Of The United Nations

If indeed, as I believe, the foundation of the United Nations was rooted in some selfish elitist scheme to more easily control people rather than to act as some angelic international body of peace, then why would any modern day peace, love and freedom supporter believe the UN holds answers to solutions on the world's greatest problems? The ideal behind the UN is beautiful but the reality from the beginning was masked in deceit and outright stupidity. The presented notion was that all peace-loving countries would band together in a world where war would be avoided and harmony would reign through cooperation and fairness. There have been more wars and more bloodshed SINCE the advent of the UN than at any time before. Why?

The concept from the beginning was rooted in artificial soil. How can the UN be seen in anyone's eyes, at its inception, now, or any time in between, to be "representative" of "the people" when "the people" in most of the participating countries didn't or still don't even have a say in the representation of their own country to begin with!? The grand representative UN was brought forth and given emergence to begin with in an unbelievably obvious and clear UN-representative way. The UN from its start was a collective of countries run by kings, dictators, monopoly-clad political parties (which is what the U.S. has become, under the guise of a two-party system), and moneyed interests. It wasn't some grassroots bonanza. It wasn't some magical butterfly equipped with angelic wings. It was concocted by brutes and tyrants, the bulk of them right here in our own paradise of arrogant successors to golden hereditary thrones.

Is it any wonder that we now have a World Monetary Fund, a World Bank, a World Trade Organization, World Peacekeeping Forces, a World Court, and every other world thing, while the world keeps spiralling in a materialistic ball of ignorance and selfishness and fear and violence? This lovely world, based on the U.N. blueprint, is working just fine for those who created it for themselves, but it does not work for everyday people and it does not work, at its root level, with compassion and concern for love and freedom. That is why consolidation of power has perpetually increased everywhere one looks, especially so since hero Franklin Roosevelt met with good guys Churchill and Stalin and shoved the boondoggle down a duped world's throat. In medicine, in the media, in finance, everywhere, power has become centrally controlled while the people have been led to believe they are wise and free. Yikes!

Yes, the United States government is full of flaws, but the system is in place to correct the flaws because the citizens are ultimately given free will to fix things or help things rot. The United Nations system is flawed even in its foundation, and even in its motives, to those who can see through the veil and false declarations of love and peace from wealthy, powerful, conniving fear mongers who only want to always be in control over others. It was not the common people who met in backrooms and who continue to meet in backrooms, in secrecy, to draft the U.N. Charter or to continue to expand the stretch of the U.N.'s octopus tentacles while the people of the world suffocate and drown.

The creators of the UN and the perpetrators of continued UN expansion are the very same powers that continue to undermine love and the indomitable role of our open minds, hearts, souls and spirits in our individual and collective ascensions to a truly better and more beautiful world.

Ron McEntee

President/Publisher, Active Communications, Inc., Active Voice/The Weekly Farce, P.O. Box 394, Berea, OH 44017; InnerSkies@aol.com

1/5/02
8:29:37 PM

Scientific Proof of Global Consciousness May Be Emerging

September 11 Attacks Registered Strongly

By Bernadette Cahill

Science may be on the verge of proving what the spiritual community has claimed all along about prayer and meditation: that group consciousness exists and it can show up on a worldwide scale. The events in the US on September 11 provided the latest indications of this possibility, when devices around the world registered significant anomalies before, during and for some time after the attacks.

As yet, scientists are not exactly sure what their results mean, but they do admit that something significant has occurred, and it has done so in similar circumstances before. The 38 devices called "eggs" are located around the world. These eggs generate random data continuously and send it for archiving and analysis to a special central location at Princeton University. They are known as Random Number Generators (RNG). To use an analogy familiar to most people through trips to the doctor, the network is like an EEG for the planet. The RNGs are the brainchild of scientists at Princeton University, who have been operating since the late 1990s ongoing research called the Global Consciousness Project (GCP). "The underlying motivation for this work," reports the GCPÃ web site at

http://www.noosphere.princeton.edu/ ,

"is to discover whether there is evidence for an anomalous interaction driving the eggs to non-random behavior. In a metaphoric sense, we are looking for evidence of a developing global consciousness that might perceive and react to events with deep meaning.

On September 11, "The whole world reeled in disbelief and horror as the news of the terrorist attack and the unspeakable tragedy unfolded. The egg network registered an unmistakable and profound response. That morning, data that normally flows randomly suddenly began to register distinct concentrations in pattern, like a peak on a graph. Extreme deviations began "before the first World Trade Center tower was hit and continu(ed) for nearly three days, to the end of (September) 13th. The anomalous trend began at about 4 a.m. EST on September 11. Scientists at the GCP are unready to commit to what this means exactly. "We cannot explain the presence of stark patterns in data that should be random, they report, but they also state, "the results of our analyses are unequivocal. There is an important and uniquely powerful message here. When we ask why the disaster in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania should appear to be responsible for a strong signal in our world-wide network of instruments designed to generate random noise, there is no obvious answer. When we look carefully and discover that the eggs might reflect our shock and dismay even before our minds and hearts express it, we confront a still deeper mystery. We do not know if there is such a thing as a global consciousness, but if there is, it was moved by the events of September 11, 2001. We do not know how, but it appears that the coherence and intensity of our common reaction created a sustained pulse of order in the random flow of numbers from our instruments. These

patterns where there should be none look like reflections of our concentrated focus, as the riveting events drew us from our individual concerns and melded us into an extraordinary coherence. Maybe we became, briefly a global consciousness. The RNG have shown deviations from the norm on at least one major world event before, the death of Princess Diana. They also registered some deviations from random patterns during a global meditation organized by the Gaia Mind Project, designed for the five minutes between 17:30 and 17:35 Greenwich Mean Time on January 23, 1997 to coincide with an unusual astronomical conjunction. However, the RNGs registered no anomalies during the funeral of Mother Teresa, which came shortly after Princess Diana. The RNGs also registered no anomalies during an attempt to replicate the January 23, 1997 Global Meditation. It seems that the events that register significant deviations from random "share a common feature, namely, that they engage our attention and draw us in large numbers into a common focus. Professor Mike Perry, Ph.D, a mathematician and statistician in the Math Department of ASU works a lot with random numbers. He said that, while he doesn't know anything about the Global Consciousness Group, the fact it comes from Princeton gives it a "basis for legitimacy, and the results "are kind of interesting. "Some people might think this is just nonsense, he said "but I'm not skeptical of anything until it is proved or disproved. It's the first time I've seen anything like this. There are lots of different kinds of explanations for things, but the actual explanation of this is beyond the realm of mathematics and statistics. He suggested it might belong more to the realm of philosophers.

Could the effect that appeared on the RNGs during the attack be similar to the effect that occurs when people pray together? Fr. Rick Lawler, Parish Priest of St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Church in Blowing Rock said, "I feel that when we are involved in prayer we are opening to the sacred, to what the Christian community calls God and to each other in ways that may have been closed off or frozen to each other. The more people who pray together, the greater the impact. "I can't say anything about the experiment or the numbers, but I would like to believe that (the effect of prayer) could be measured. If what's being measured does indeed prove the existence of group consciousness, such a result could be of major significance. If more generally known and accepted, groups worldwide could begin consciously and deliberately to choose to focus their thoughts, emotions and energies towards the achievement of a single intention worldwide. Henry Reed, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Edgar Cayce Institute for Intuitive Studies, who also teaches at Ancient Wisdom in Boone, said, "This study is adding to a growing body of evidence that a group of people, setting their intent and working in consciousness alone, can have an impact world wide.

HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

The Global Consciousness Project

We do not feel that our minds are isolated within our bodies. In truth, we experience the world with beautiful immediacy, we know our loved ones from afar, and we leap in thought to the stars. Research on anomalies of consciousness shows that we may have direct communication links with each other, and that intentions can have effects in the world despite physical barriers and separations. Evidence compels us to accept correlations that we cannot yet explain. It appears that consciousness may sometimes produce something that resembles, at least metaphorically, a nonlocal field. The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) takes this possibility as a starting point for a speculation that such fields generated by individual consciousness would interact and combine, and ultimately have a global presence. Usually, because we are busy with individual lives, there is little to produce structure in the field, so it is random and not detectable. But occasionally there are global-scale events that bring great numbers of us to a common focus and an unusual coherence of thought and feeling. To study the effects of a possible global consciousness, we have created a world-spanning network of detectors sensitive to coherence and resonance in the mental domain. Continuous streams of data are sent over the internet to be archived and correlated with events that may evoke a world-wide consciousness. Examples that appear to have done so include both peaceful gatherings and disasters: a few minutes around midnight on any New Years Eve, the first hour of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, the Papal visit to Israel, a variety of global meditations, several major earthquakes, and now September 11.

1/5/02
8:27:43 PM

Indian PM eases Kashmir tension

http://www.guardian.co.uk/kashmir/Story/0,2763,627190,00.html

Biography on the Bush family

http://www.kmf.org/williams/bushbook/

Great color pictures of George W. Bush, giving the Satanic hand sign - Plus interesting research and family background information.

http://hardtruth.topcities.com/george_w_bush.htm

BUSH'S ENRON TIES The Enron Corp. scandal involves millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Bush, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm and other members of Congress.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12155

Executive Privilege Again

http://www.truthout.com/01.04F.Safire.EP.Again.htm

Afghan Refugees, Freezing, Hungry and Prey to Bandits

http://www.truthout.com/01.04G.Afghan.Starve.htm

ARGENTINA'S CRISIS, IMF'S FINGERPRINTS Argentina's economic meltdown might seem far away from American borders, but our greedy support of short-sighted IMF policies is largely to blame.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12152

GLOBAL CITIZEN: STEALING THE SUN According to a new study, humans gobble up 32 percent of the total solar energy captured by land plants. How much more can we steal without upsetting the Earth's ecology?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12153

1/5/02
8:22:40 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE (ENS)

http://ens-news.com

AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRES BLAZE OUT OF CONTROL

SYDNEY, Australia, January 4, 2002 (ENS) - Nearly 20,000 exhausted firefighters are struggling to contain at least 80 fires blazing across New South Wales today. No lives have been lost, but an estimated 170 homes have been burned.

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-04-01.html

RENEWABLE FUELS COULD SAVE MONEY, ENVIRONMENT

WASHINGTON, DC, January 4, 2002 (ENS) - Energy legislation emphasizing renewable fuels could help boost the U.S. economy by $300 billion and create as many as 300,000 new jobs by 2016, an independent analysis suggests. The study, sponsored by the National Biodiesel Board, finds that increased use of American made fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol would generate an additional $71 billion over the next 15 years.

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-04-06.html

SPAIN SAYS CLIMATE A PRIORITY OF ITS EUROPEAN PRESIDENCY

BRUSSELS, Belgium, January 4, 2002 (ENS) - Spain took over the rotating presidency of the European Union on New Year's day at the start of a six month period likely to see lots of activity on the environmental policy stage. Madrid's tenure will be marked by three themes: sustainable development, climate change, and international environmental agreements.

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-04-02.html

COURT ORDERS BETTER PROTECTION FOR NEW ENGLAND GROUNDFISH

WASHINGTON, DC, January 4, 2002 (ENS) - The nation's fisheries managers have defied Congressional mandates to conserve New England groundfish, a federal judge has ruled. The district court ruling in a case brought by five environmental groups could lead to new restrictions on the fishery, aimed at preventing overfishing and reducing bycatch.

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-04-07.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JANUARY 4, 2002

World Trade Center Cleanup Highlights National Meeting

Summer Flounder Catches to Increase

Incineration Alternative Headed for Field Tests

California River Habitats Win Environmental Grants

$2.8 Million Funds Renewable Energy Research

Channel Islands Eelgrass Bed Will Be Restored

Pennsylvania Gets 343 Acre Conservation Gift

Website Offers Hot Information About Wildfires

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-04-09.html

1/5/02
8:20:27 PM

hey crazy wackos just wanted to say Hi!

Thanks.

1/5/02
8:18:23 PM

A Hawk In Flight

Against the backdrop of US efforts to resume peace talks, Sharon has been aggressing Palestinians on all fronts

by Khaled Amayreh from Jerusalem

Rather than hailing the virtual halt to the Palestinians' armed resistance, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears to have ordered his forces to keep up the assault on the beleaguered people.

A fresh round of bloodletting began on 30 December when Israeli occupation troops ambushed and killed six Palestinian civilians who the Israeli army alleged were "terrorists" on their way to attack Israeli troops.

An occupation army spokesman initially claimed that three of the victims were trying to infiltrate the settlement of Eli Seinai, built on confiscated Palestinian land belonging to the village of Beit Lahya.

A few hours later, the spokesman changed his story, saying that the young men were only heading toward the settlement when they were shot and killed.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) condemned the killing of the six Gazan civilians as "a vile atrocity" aimed at "provoking the Palestinians to retaliate against Israel."

The killing in Gaza took place as the Israeli occupation army continued nightly incursions and raids into PA-administered towns and villages, ostensibly for the purpose of arresting "wanted Palestinians."

This week, the Israeli army raided villages in Hebron, Tulkarm, Nablus, Ramallah and Gaza, where Israeli soldiers harassed, beat, and humiliated Palestinian families. Israeli soldiers reportedly tattooed numbers on the arms of Palestinian detainees, allegedly to identify them more easily.

Meanwhile, Sharon's actions suggested that he intends to be even more intransigent. This week he told his increasingly powerless foreign minister, Shimon Peres, that creating a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was no longer a goal of the state of Israel.

Sharon, according to Israeli state run radio, also told Peres that his discussions with Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qurei should be restricted to security issues, emphasising that Peres was not authorised to initiate "political talks" with the Palestinian Authority.

Further confirming his refusal to send positive signals to the Palestinian leadership, Sharon even ordered Israeli President Moshe Katsav to refuse to accept a PA invitation to address the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah.

The invitation was relayed to Katsav earlier this week by former Arab Knesset member Abdel-Wahab Darawshe who suggested that Katsav propose to Palestinian legislators a year-long cease-fire allowing the two sides to resume peace talks.

Sharon ordered Katsav to close the subject, saying a visit to Arafat in Ramallah would undermine Israel's position and effectively break the blockade that Israeli troops are imposing on the Palestinian president in Ramallah.

This week, Peres revealed, probably inadvertently, that Sharon and his ideological bedfellows had been considering as their main strategy the idea of "transfer" -- effectively the expulsion of millions of Palestinians from the entirety of mandatory Palestine.

Israeli state radio quoted Peres as saying, "I don't think that transfer is a viable option, and the more we talk about it, the more damage we suffer in the international arena."

Because Peres's comments did not respond to a question about transfer, the foreign minister's remarks give the impression that imply that he knew of high-level discussions on the matter.

The Jordanian government may well have received word of a trend to that effect when one of the country's officials warned last week that Jordan would close all border crossings from the West Bank to Jordan in the event that a large number of Palestinian refugees try to enter Jordan.

Source: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/567/re1.htm

1/5/02
8:11:02 PM

January 4th, 2002

In a way, the fact that the Feds won't share all they know about the hijackers, or about the target for the 4th plane, or about the actions that ended in that plane nose-diving into a field, or about the exact reasons for thinking Bin Laden is guilty, and then on top of all that, they won't share what they know about the Anthrax attack, leads me to believe that whoever did it either does indeed have very high connections in DC, or doesn't need them because DC is helping them without there having even been a plan -- it amounts to the same thing, namely, the perpetrators are not caught and DC is doing fine, thank you, no problem, let's just keep going and forget about that unfortunately little incident.

I read recently that there are believed to be only about 100 people who could possibly have a connection to the Anthrax attack, because so few have both access to that strain/grade, and the knowledge to utilize that access. So how come we round up 1000 people on suspicion after the hijackings, but these 100 people go free? Is it because 99 of them (or perhaps 98 or 97) are good Americans whereas all the 1000 are Arab-Americans or Arabs?

So many things don't add up, it's pathetic. What's the world coming to? When are the answers coming? I hope that 20th hijacker gets a televised trial like he's asking for. I learned an awful lot -- good and bad -- from watching the OJ trial (he was guilty as sin, by the way). Let's watch this guy, and John Walker, and whatever Taliban leaders they've got get tried in public so we can see the "evidence" that purportedly exists. (Noting that they've just arrested the Taliban ambassador we kept seeing during the early phases of the war. What you arrest an ambassador for, I don't know.)

Russell Hoffman, Carlsbad, CA

1/5/02
8:08:15 PM

t r u t h o u t

DASCHLE | Rising to Our New Challenges

http://www.truthout.com/01.05A.Daschle.Rise.htm

t r u t h o u t Special Report Part I | Congressional Aide Found Dead in Congressman's Office

http://www.truthout.com/01.05B.Klausutis.1.htm

CONYERS | Confronts Ashcroft Over Covert Detention of Michigan Pastor

http://www.truthout.com/01.05C.Conyers.Pastor.htm

GAO Tests Value of Drug Discount Cards Savings Less Than 10%, Study Shows

http://www.truthout.com/01.05D.GAO.Cards.htm

Bush, Unions Tangle Over Contractor Rules, Labor Issues

http://www.truthout.com/01.05E.Bush.Unions.htm

Enron Executives Face Subpoenas

http://www.truthout.com/01.05F.Enron.Subpoena.htm

1/5/02
8:06:22 PM

DAILY GRIST <http://www.gristmagazine.com>

SIGH-ONARA

Not two months after the conclusion of the climate change negotiations in Marrakech, Morocco, Japan is sending alarming signals that it will bow to industry pressure and break its pledge to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol and cut greenhouse gas emissions. An advisory council to the government is recommending that emissions cuts be voluntary for businesses and that the government not impose any guidelines on how to achieve the reductions. Critics say such a framework would make it very difficult for the country to meet its target of cutting emissions by 6 percent below 1990 levels. Japan has been in the climate change spotlight ever since the Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol.

straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 03 Jan 2002 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1740000/1740677.stm>

straight to the source: Yomiuri Shimbun, 31 Dec 2001 <http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20011231wo12.htm>

RUNNING A GROUNDFISH

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service is breaking the law by failing to sufficiently protect groundfish in New England, a federal judge ruled last Friday. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said she would issue an order with specific directions for how the agency should stop overfishing, because the NMFS can't be trusted to enforce the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act. The region's 1,400 cod and other groundfish trawlers will likely face much tougher limits on where nets can be cast and how many fish can be caught. Environmentalists praised the decision as precedent-setting, while fishers worried that they might be regulated out of business.

straight to the source: Portland Press Herald, John Richardson, 04 Jan 2002 <http://www.portland.com/news/state/020104fish.shtml>

VICTOR: VICTORIA

These days, press coverage of the Middle East is all bombs and burkhas, but Victoria Jamali is fighting a very different battle. The Iranian woman cofounded one of her country's most active nonprofits, the Women's Society Against Environmental Pollution. Now, along with colleagues at the University of Tehran, she is launching Iran's first environmental law program. U.S. environmentalists have called Jamali an Iranian John Muir. She is leading Iran's movement against severe water and air pollution (cities like Tehran must close their schools in the fall, when air pollution is most severe); against threats to the country's wildlife (such as the rare Persian cheetah); and against the general lack of environmental regulation in her society.

straight to the source: Eugene Weekly, Cheri Brooks, 03 Jan 2002 <http://www.eugeneweekly.com/coverstory.html>

1/5/02
8:01:55 PM

The Discreet Charm Of The Straight Spin

by Norman Solomon

If my memory is correct, it was a Jerry Lewis movie. More than 40 years later, I still remember the scenes of a grown man so gullible that he believed his television. What a laugh riot! The guy dashed out to shop every time a commercial told him exactly what to buy. Then he'd sit in front of the TV set, dyeing his hair and smoking cigars, awaiting further instructions.

It was quite funny -- to a 10-year-old, anyway. Even back then, it seemed incontrovertibly absurd to think that someone would be so credulous about televised messages.

Today, print journalists may roll their eyes at the mention of television. Those of us who write for newspapers are (ahem) rather more sophisticated and nuanced. But even someone who sticks to reading the news has probably gotten the authoritative word that Sept. 11 changed "everything."

And so, it was unremarkable when, on the last Sunday of 2001, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch flatly stated in an editorial: "The unspeakable, the unthinkable, the inconceivable horror of that day changed everything." Meanwhile, a couple of thousand miles away, Northern California's largest newspaper was even more over the top as the San Francisco Chronicle's front page proclaimed: "Attack on the U.S. changed everyone and everything everywhere."

When highly regarded news outlets are serving up wild hyperbole in the guise of sober analysis, you gotta figure that some screws in the nation's media machinery are seriously loose.

On the trail of jingo-narcissism, it's difficult to stay within shouting distance of television. In early fall, Pentagon reporters sought -- and got -- more frequent news conferences. "Let's hear it for the essential daily briefing, however hollow and empty it might be," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in the middle of October. "We'll do it."

Since then, Rumsfeld has regularly helped with the propaganda chores. Airing live on such cable networks as MSNBC, CNN and Fox, his performances have won profuse media accolades. A news report by CNN called him "a virtual rock star." A Wall Street Journal essay -- by TV critic Claudia Rosett, a member of the newspaper's editorial board -- described Rumsfeld as "a gent who in our country's hour of need has turned out to be one (of) the classiest acts on camera."

Published on the last day of the year, Rosett's article was a fitting climax to a media season of slathering over the well-heeled boots of the man in charge of the Pentagon. During recent weeks, she noted approvingly, "in print and on the air, we've been hearing about Don Rumsfeld, sex symbol, the new hunk of home-front airtime."

Deep into the mass-media groove, the Wall Street Journal piece declared: "The basic source of Mr. Rumsfeld's charm is that he talks straight. He doesn't expend his energy on spin..." Now there's an example of some prodigious spinning. Actually, Rumsfeld -- who excels at sticking to the lines of the day -- is a fine practitioner of spin in the minimalist style, with deception accomplished mostly by what's left unsaid.

For some, Rumsfeld's dissembling style is a source of continual delight. "These briefings, beamed out live, have become, to my mind, the best new show on television," Rosett wrote. "It's a rare one that doesn't contain, at some point, some variation on his wry trademark reply when asked to discuss matters he'd rather not go into: 'I could, but I won't.'"

One of the subjects that Rumsfeld would rather not go into is civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

Several weeks ago, University of New Hampshire professor Marc Herold released a report calculating that 3,767 Afghan civilians had been killed by the bombing between Oct. 7 and Dec. 10. The report was ignored by major U.S. media.

In Britain, the report received a bit more attention. "The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war against terror is only now starting to become clear," an editor at the London-based Guardian wrote on Dec. 20. Seumas Milne explained that Herold's research was "based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world."

Milne added: "Of course, Herold's total is only an estimate. But what is impressive about his work is not only the meticulous cross-checking, but the conservative assumptions he applies to each reported incident. The figure does not include those who died later of bomb injuries; nor those killed in the past 10 days (Dec. 10-20); nor those who have died from cold and hunger because of the interruption of aid supplies or because they were forced to become refugees by the bombardment."

As wars go, we are supposed to understand, this has been a noble one. Great men like Donald Rumsfeld have told us so. However, from a more informed and less credulous vantage point, buying such claims might seem absurd. But not funny like a Jerry Lewis movie.

Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media." His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12161

1/5/02
7:56:51 PM

How One Person Can Change the World

by Geov Parrish

I've never actually met Ruel Bernard; our paths have probably crossed at one time or another, but by the time we knew who each other was, we lived a continent apart. One day, we'll meet. In the meantime, I'm glad I know him, and know of him. It's people (and stories) like Ruel that always give me hope for a new year.

Our paths crossed because in 1991, two friends and I launched my first adventure in publishing -- and, for that matter, my first adventure in writing and reporting. It was a tiny volunteer, non-profit newspaper called On Indian Land, and it focused on Native American traditional land struggles and politics. (I left about five years ago, but it only recently went on a perhaps-permanent hiatus after a wonderful ten-year run.)

OIL turned out to primarily be about the newspaper, but it was originally only one piece of a larger project, called Support for Native Sovereignty, that carried out public education and raised material aid and political support for impoverished traditional Native communities. Enter Ruel.

Ruel Bernard is a carpenter who has lived for many years in Albany, New York. His sometimes-activism was abruptly jump-started by a trip to Nicaragua in the mid-'80s, of the sort common among progressives still then hopeful that the Sandanista revolution could withstand relentless hostility from the U.S. government. It was Ruel's first time in the Third World, and what he saw was that for the time he spent and the money he made building third bathrooms and luxury kitchens in one or another American suburb, whole communities could be built, and lives immeasurably improved, in an alternate universe not very far away.

One thing led to another, and when Hurricano Hugo devastated Puerto Rico in 1989, a project called Building Community was born. The purpose of Building Community, as with the Central American solidarity brigades Ruel learned from, was to apply U.S. skills and resources to far poorer communities where they were desperately needed -- but to do so by working with communities and responding to their perceived needs, rather than imposing norteamericano ideas and solutions. Ruel turned to Puerto Rico in part because it was a piece of the Third World that belongs to the United States -- Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but often live in Latin American housing conditions. And after Hugo, many of them weren't living in any housing at all.

Sometimes, all it takes is a simple idea, and a good one, to change a lot of lives. Early on, Ruel hooked up with families from Villa sin Miedo ("City Without Fear"), the campesino community made famous by spectacular confrontations with the Puerto Rican government in the early '80s over a huge squat outside San Juan. (My friendship with Ruel was cemented when I found out about that connection, and he found out about the song I'd written about that squat.) Building Community, the organization, has been and continues to be focused on building community, the mission. Its collectivist ethic extends beyond building structures, but also skill trainings and self-help projects that give people with few resources more confidence in themselves and each other.

Over a decade later, Ruel's channel for his restless energy now has construction and medical brigades in Puerto Rico and Guatemala, and works with schools and the public in the mainland U.S. as well.

The reason for writing about Ruel and Building Communities here isn't so much as a testimonial or because it's a cool group -- though it is -- as to suggest what kinds of answers can be possible if any of us asks the right questions.

Those questions are both personal (What do we really want to do with our energy, our labor, our lives?) and societal (How can we best use our tremendous creativity, good will, and wealth? Why are the things some of us can take for granted seemingly so far beyond the reach of other, equally deserving peoples? And how can that be fixed?).

I have no idea how many people, how many families, how many children have had their lives immeasurably improved over the last decade because one guy in Albany decided to stop building third bathrooms. But somewhere, at the dawn of this new year, other people are making equally important and inspiring decisions. For all of the political grimness that crops up in this site, this country, this planet, there are still billions of people on it, and with each of us there is the seed of hope.

Most of us will never change the world. But we can change ourselves, and each of us can change some peoples' worlds -- for the better -- if only we pick the right questions, and have the courage to answer them.

Building Communities can be reached at 845 679.6100

Or via email at: MailTo:ruel43@aol.com.

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12158

1/5/02
7:43:01 PM

The FBI's Black Magic?

by David Corn

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

The FBI.

The FBI who?

The FBI who is working on a way to gain remote access to all you type on your computer so we won't have to say 'knock, knock' in the future.

In mid-December, the FBI made a startling announcement that received scant attention. A spokesman for the bureau acknowledged it was developing a controversial Internet spying software -- code-named Magic Lantern -- that supposedly can surreptitiously enter an individual's personal computer, record every keystroke and zap all this data back to the G-men and G-women. Presto, the data-snoops at the bureau would have the target's computer passwords, the texts and addresses of all the emails written by him or her (even those angry emails drafted but never sent), a record of all the Internet traveling he or she did, copies of snail-mail correspondence, the contents of any diary kept, to-do lists, on-line banking information, memos, you-name-it --anything typed into the computer, even if it were immediately deleted or trashed.

For weeks, rumors of this computer-search software had been buzzing throughout tech circles. In November, MSNBC first reported FBI was developing a computer "virus" that would install "keylogging software" on a suspect's machine. But the bureau would neither confirm nor deny. Several software companies were asked by reporters if they were cooperating with the FBI by rigging their anti-virus detection programs to ignore Magic Lantern. Some firms offered conflicting replies; eventually all said they were not in league with the government. Then finally a FBI official named Paul Bresson publicly confirmed Magic Lantern was no illusion. "It's a workbench project" that has not yet been used, he told Reuters. And that was all he would reveal.

Magic Lantern would not entail a dramatic technological advance. As zdnet.com notes, "several hacking tools, the two most popular being Back Orifice and SubSeven, allow full control over a remote PC infected by the program, including keystroke logging." Still, it is a momentous law enforcement advance.

The software was born out of FBI frustration. In recent years, the electronic eavesdroppers of the bureau have been bedeviled by widely-available encryption programs. If the FBI gets a warrant to intercept the Internet communications of a suspect, it is screwed if that data has been encrypted, for the bureau does not have the resources to crack this sort of code. It would be much easier to obtain the passwords used by a target and with those in hand de-encrypt the information. In at least one known case, the feds, using a search warrant, gained physical access to the computer of an alleged loan shark and gangster who had utilized encryption to scramble information on his hard drive. The bureau planted keystroke-detection technology on the computer, uncovered his password and collected evidence against him. (In court, the FBI adamantly refused to disclose the specifics of its keystroke-snatching technology.) Magic Lantern would replace the need for a black-bag job. Instead of agents breaking into a home or office to attach a keystroke logger, the software would creep in, perhaps via an email that seems to come from a friend, and silently penetrate the computer.

With Magic Lantern, the FBI would move beyond its controversial Carnivore system, which is installed at an Internet service provider, reviews the data stream and picks out email and web visits of specific account holders. Carnivore is like a policeman at a speed trap watching for suspected speeders. Magic Lantern is a cop who sneaks into the backseat of the car of a suspect and, unbeknown to the driver, rides along.

So there's a problem with this? Possibly. Magic Lantern could too easily lead to overly broad searches. Though its grail may be encryption passwords, agents will be able to snag anything typed on a keyboard. (The FBI in the days of old used to love to obtain the discarded typewriter ribbons of suspected criminals or commies. With the ribbons in hand, the bureau could read whatever had been written on the suspect's typewriter.) Viewers of The Sopranos might recall the episodes in which FBI agents wiretapped Tony's home. As is often the case, they were not allowed to record everything that went on in the house. The FBI team could only roll tape when it was clear T. was talking about illicit enterprises. That is because wiretaps are supposed to be narrowly aimed, not used like a Hoover (pun intended). Magic Lantern could end up being much too powerful a snoop.

"Because the tool involves covert installation of software on someone's PC with no physical intervention, it could conceivably allow law enforcement to circumvent wiretapping restrictions,"Alex Salkever writes on Business Week Online. David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center complains, "We don't know what this is capable of." Will this software be open-source? asks Lee Tien, a senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If it is not, the public will not have a clear picture of its capabilites. (Don't bet on the FBI opening such a potent weapon to scrutiny.) The public may not even know when Magic Lantern is up and running, assuming the bureau's high tech wizards succeed. Perhaps it already is. And here's a scary thought: what if Magic Lantern fell into the wrong hands? Or what if the FBI's development and use of a particular software helped or encouraged corporations, individuals, or other governments (say, Beijing) to produce and exploit similar software? Who knows who will be slipping in and out of your computer.

In the Ashcroft era, it is easy to lose sight of a fundamental principle: not every government invasion of privacy has to be accepted, even if the government claims each one is a necessary tool for fighting the "evil ones." But when a war is under way, civil liberties tend to be trumped by national security concerns, real or imagined. For those who fret about Magic Lantern, the trendline is not encouraging. The USA Patriot Act, quickly passed by Congress in October, included a provision that made it easier for the FBI to unleash Carnivore. The legislation allows agents to install it without petitioning a judge for a warrant, as long as they get an okay from a U.S. or state attorney general,

In a 1967 decision, the Supreme Court observed that "by its very nature eavesdropping involves an intrusion on privacy that is broad in scope" and that "few threats to liberty exist which are greater than those posed by the use of eavesdropping devices." Which means it is a government power to be used sparingly, as a last resort, and with extensive oversight. If Magic Lantern does become operational, tough regulations ought to be imposed. Judges should be tightfisted in signing warrants allowing the FBI to dispatch the software. If a warrant is signed, the snoopers should have to report to the judge often and provide full updates on how Magic Lantern is being used and what it is collecting. The target ought to be notified his or her computer has been penetrated shortly after the investigation ends.

But because government wiretapping is a subject shrouded in great secrecy, it is usually difficult for the public to tell whether or not the rules governing it are being followed assiduously. When Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared at a Dec. 6 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, raised the subject of Magic Lantern. She noted that under the USA Patriot Act it was indeed possible Magic Lantern-like software could be employed in too sweeping a manner. She asked if Ashcroft would agree to meet four times a year with legislators to discuss how the government was utilizing intercept technologies like Carnivore and Magic Lantern. Ashcroft offered a noncommittal reply: "I welcome the opportunity for the [Justice] Department to work with you toward these objectives." In other words, yeah, right.

Lee Tien has a good idea along these lines. He suggests there be "some kind of powerful independent counsel (like a police Internal Affairs department) that watches all this surveillance." Magic Lantern, he says, "goes far beyond tapping a line. Those of us who use computers have a lot of our lives on them. You use your computer to read, to think with. It's our virtual home, very much an extension of self." The government should invade this turf only in the most dire circumstances.

In that 1967 Supreme Court decision, the justices said it is conceivable a surveillance technology could be so risky, from a constitutional perspective, that the Fourth Amendment would prohibit the government from taking advantage of it. That's never happened, but Magic Lantern is a close candidate. This software would give the government the power to enter your most private space and record everything you write. With a war on -- so to speak -- Magic Lantern is not shining brightly on many radar screens. But it is a step toward Big Brotherhood that warrants reflection and debate before this software magic becomes mundane.

David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and a regular AlterNet contributor.

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12163

1/5/02
7:38:58 PM

2001: A Year of W.

by Barry Crimmins

Can it really be a year since we didn't elect George W. Bush president? Time sure flies when you're going straight to hell.

Let's take a look back at our first 12 months with the court-appointed chief executive.

December 2000

Happy holidays! The Republicans, hell-bent on returning ethics to Washington, formalized the theft of the election with an assist from the Supremacist Court, when George W. Bush was appointed president of the United States.

The turn of the millennium, which reached a de facto conclusion a year earlier when marketers commandeered the calendar, actually expired at midnight, December 31, 2000, outliving the credibility of America's electoral process by several days.

January 2001

The New Year arrived with the feel of one of those action movies where a comet's hurtling toward Earth and, short of a miracle, it's going to hit -- hard.

Neither Bruce Willis nor Robert Duvall showed. Bush was inaugurated. A dazed electorate had been body-politic slammed into a deep Florida sinkhole. As we scrambled to clear the cobwebs from our heads, an ominous groan grew to a large rumble emanating from a fleet of conveyances set to dump toxic waste, religious sewage, and corporate effluence upon us. Only those who could tread slime stood any chance of crawling back to dry land.

During the Inaugural weekend, the Republicans delivered on their promise to return dignity to the capital by tying longhorn steers in the foyers of grand hotels. Z-list celebrities, such as Dixie Carter and the Statler Brothers, were the only showbiz types to soil themselves by attending the festivities. Bush wept as he awaited his swearing in. Perhaps he was thinking of all the Texans who gave their lives in the death chamber so that he could be there.

Laura Bush announced that she would use her position as First Lady to promote abstinence. No one wondered why.

February

The F-month was marked by the continuation of ridiculous cabinet confirmation hearings begun in January. Even though W.(orst) was appointed president after losing the popular vote and stealing the Electoral College, the assemblage of corporate toadies, backroom fixers, and self-loathing zealots he nominated would make you think he arrived with a mandate.

What this guy lacked in brains he made up for in audacity. Who else would even consider Governor Christy Todd Whitman of New Jersey to head the Environmental Protection Agency? And who would foist upon us church-state integrationist John Ashcroft -- a man deemed by Missouri voters less fit for public office than a corpse -- as attorney general?

After becoming treasury secretary, former ALCOA chair Paul O'Neill told Britain's Financial Times that he thinks corporate taxes should be abolished, along with Medicare and Social Security. Fortunately, O'Neill hasn't yet found time to transfer the Social Security trust fund into Enron and Lucent stock certificates.

Bush better be reappointed in '04, or there won't be time for his cabinet to unpack all the baggage they brought with them.

The only nominee to go down was Linda Chavez, who withdrew her name from consideration for labor secretary when it got out that she had illegal aliens sleeping in the exact spot under the table where she paid them. Too bad: she would have worked cheap.

February's highlight came when the teaching of evolution was restored in Kansas. Kansans celebrated by walking upright, taking shelter from storms, and communicating through a series of simple grunts. If this keeps up, their congressional delegation is in big trouble.

March

In March, Bush announced that taxes on the rich would be replaced with an honor system under which the elite would be expected to increase their commitment to private, faith-based bribery and slush funds by some 50 percent.

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was christened and immediately manned by scab air-traffic controllers. The vessel is actually larger than Grenada, the site of Reagan's greatest military victory.

A March earthquake heavily damaged Starbucks' Seattle headquarters. Within days, the coffee giant bounced back and replaced it with 60 new headquarters at various places around the city.

In financial news, the NASDAQ was traded for a 1988 Yugo, high mileage, needs bodywork and a new engine. Smith Barney ran a 75% off! everything must go! sale.

April

So far, on W.'s watch, the US

• Accidentally sank a Japanese fishing boat.

• Got into a military incident with the Chinese that any kid in a video arcade could have avoided with a few clicks of a joystick. (In fairness, the South China Sea was positively crawling with Japanese fishing vessels.)

• Strafed Europe with debris from military aircraft that must have been built by the same technicians who found a way to make plastic rust on US cars in the '70s.

• Failed to explain adequately the " Baptists under fire " incident in Peru, where a Baptist missionary's plane was shot down under the aegis of narcotics interdiction. Apparently the War on Drugs targeted-substance list had been expanded to include " opium of the masses. "

On April 13, I wrote: " If Bush's foreign policy gets any more antiquated, the Crusades will resume in July. " Okay, I was off by a few months. Oh, and on April 15, wealthy Americans paid taxes for the final time.

Although humanity is pretty durable, many began to believe it didn't have a British cow's chance at customs of surviving the court-appointed Bush administration.

Aaron Sorkin, creator of the Emmy Award--winning The West Wing, was arrested for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, which explains Sorkin's vision of a White House peppered with idealists fighting good battles.

May

In honor of May Day, American corporations laid off workers by the thousands just to make sure they would be ineligible to celebrate the international workers' holiday. Court-appointed president Bush finally named his choices for the federal bench in May. The long delay was due to the travel time required for the judges to reach Washington from their residences in the 17th century.

After appearing at the National Rifle Association convention and praising gun nuts as " America's unsung conservation heroes, " Interior Secretary Gail Norton earned a new title: Secretary of the Ulterior.

May's top story: like any good Vermonter, Senator Jim Jeffords demonstrated he knows when the sap runs and when to run from the sap. Jeffords left George W. Bush and the Republican Party, taking with him majority control of the Senate. As a result, Trent Lott and the rest of the GOP Senate leadership were given a chance to do some of that " downsizing " they like so much.

June

First the court-appointed Bush administration literally takes office, and then The Producers sweeps the Tonys. The year 2001 will always be remembered for joke revivals featuring fascists.

In June, I traveled to Albuquerque to speak at a drug-policy conference hosted by the stalwart anti-drug-war warriors of the Lindesmith Center. Federal drug prosecutors and DEA agents just happened to schedule their convention in the same town at the same time. The feds held no seminars on subtlety.

Speaking of substance-abuse arrests, Jenna Bush was busted in June for underage drinking. Considering who her father is, it's a miracle the poor kid isn't walking around with a morphine drip in her elbow.

July

Al Giordano, a former Phoenix staff writer who publishes the Web-based Narco News, and Mexican journalist Mario Menéndez faced a huge civil suit in New York City brought by Banamex (a Mexican bank, since purchased by Citigroup) and its chair, Roberto Hernández. Hernández was upset with Al and Mario for printing corroborated facts about his and his bank's involvement in the drug trade. The suit was intended to prevent Al from continuing to publish his independent, highly factual refutations of the big lie that is the drug war. At a July hearing in federal court, Giordano and Menéndez demonstrated that the case had no business in New York, especially since it had already been thrown out of Mexican courts for lacking merit. In December, New York State Supreme Court judge Paula Omansky threw the case out of court, informing the plaintiff that Giordano and Menéndez deserved the same First Amendment protection afforded journals that publish lies about the War on Drugs.

August

Unlike most Americans in their first year on a new job, W. took an extended paid vacation in August. It's a good thing he got rested up, rather than exhausting himself with concerns like airport safety and domestic security.

September 1--10

George W. Bush's vacation ended on Labor Day in Detroit. He'd been invited there to attend a picnic by Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr., a man whose integrity is less likely ever to be discovered than the whereabouts of his missing father.

John Joslin and Kevin Mackey, two rank-and-file members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, were disturbed by the invitation of such an obvious enemy of labor to labor's hometown on Labor Day. So, at the spot where the building-trades portion of Motown's massive Labor Day parade formed, Joslin and Mackey put up a stage and sound system. Then they put me on the stage. As each union marched in place waiting to round the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, I suggested to the workers just how insulting and cynical Bush's visit was. And then Joslin, Mackey, and a host of activists handed out signs that articulated the many ways Bush and his cronies harm working Americans and their families.

Bush's photo op was co-opted by thousands of real working Americans. Carrying signs and chanting insults, union members made it clear that Bush was no more welcome in Detroit on Labor Day than they would be at a clambake at Bush's country club. It was the last wonderful day we would have for a long time.

September 11 and 12

On September 11, the whole world changed -- except for large portions of Europe, Asia, and Africa, several island nations, and those parts of the world where terrorism, whether state-sponsored or rogue, was already part of everyday life. Okay, on September 11 life in the US began to resemble, just slightly, life elsewhere.

The court-appointed prez was addressing elementary-school children in Florida when the attacks occurred. (Somehow it's always Florida.) He quickly headed to Louisiana and then into a game room in Omaha.

I might have given Bush a pass on going Barney Fife that morning except for a few things. During a time when even Rudolph Giuliani rose above venal political considerations (albeit briefly), the Bush administration's apparent top priority was to propagate alibis about why the president headed for the Grain Belt while the Northeast Corridor burned. This included telling us about a call to the Secret Service stating that the president was in imminent danger. Problem is, no such call was received. Bush was supposed to be a hard-ass Texas Republican naturally inclined to fly to DC, climb to the roof of the White House, and wave pearl-handled revolvers, yelling, " Try me, motherfuckers! " Instead, the Incredible President Limpet headed for a bunker in the Central Time Zone.

On September 12, while people lay trapped and dying under piles of rubble, several administration officials spent the morning telling us about the mythical phone threat, along with other prevarications that must have taken much of September 11 to prepare.

They also said the assault on the Pentagon was sort of a coincidence because the terrorists were really aiming for the White House. They called the Pentagon a " secondary target. "

Even if the Pentagon had been a terrorist afterthought (and of course it wasn't), why bring it up while people were still dead and dying in its wreckage? Because the cheesy people who operate the marionette that occupies the Oval Office value political viability over human life, that's why. This episode is important to recall as we watch the Bush administration seize this crisis to further its entire agenda. SDI, oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge, destroying the federal judiciary, and yet another tax break for the rich -- all have suddenly become essential weapons in the War on Terrorism. Yeah, and W. will be joining Mensa soon, too.

September 13--30

Within days, even skeptics were convinced that Osama bin Laden was behind the terrorist attacks. The US vowed to bring him to justice. All searches should include probes into the curdled milk of human kindness -- a sure sign he's nearby. If that doesn't work, go to Jerry Falwell and take a slight right. If you get to Ann Coulter, you've gone too far.

The nation and the mainstream media universally embraced Junior for rising to the occasion. Such a delusion arose from the fact that September 11 created exactly what everyone feared: a life-and-death struggle that forced us to look to this rather dim bulb to think on his feet.

To be fair, after his weak start, Bush did have a good night of being TelePrompTed before Congress on September 20. His address promoted his basic dinosaur-brained good-versus-evil rap in terms speechwriters sufficiently airbrushed to make him seem almost eloquent. But once Jimmy Breslin busted him for recycling his father's dead-cop-badge gambit, we quickly returned to the frosty truth that we had a president and Jingo was his name-o.

Bush spoke of " evildoers " and " crusades. " They have a jihad; he gave us a GOPhad. We needed a president, and the guy who does the voice-overs for Underdog showed up.

Americans cautiously returned to airports to face many inconveniences. The new rule of thumb for airline passengers is to allow yourself as much time as it would take to walk to your destination.

October

Around October 7, the US " officially " began military action in Afghanistan. These were tough days for hungry Afghans who couldn't differentiate between a yellow cluster bomb and a yellow food packet. Even if they found a food packet, there was a decent chance it had landed in the middle of a minefield. In the meantime, US military action brought legitimate humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan to a standstill.

Congress rewarded the airline industry for staffing its security checkpoints with minimum-wage employees who didn't realize that McDonald's offered better career options by coughing up a $15 billion bailout package. Damned welfare scofflaws!

In a classic example of becoming what you resist, the new Office of Homeland Security, headed by Pennsylvania's Tom Rigid, opened. Rigid's familiarity with Pennsylvania-Dutch/South African customs should be a real plus on the war's domestic front.

The country was by now awash in the kind of demonstrative patriotism that is best left to used-car dealerships. Flags were everywhere -- particularly in Third World sweatshops where they couldn't keep up with the demand for Old Glory. Flag price-gouging was reported across the country. Now ain't that America?

Throughout the delayed post-season, by the fourth inning of any baseball game the entire Irving Berlin songbook had been exhausted. At around the same time, someone decided that all motor vehicles should enter a General-Patton-staff-car look-alike contest. The fiercest competition was among sport-utility vehicles. Americans, involved in a war that's in no small part related to dependence on Middle Eastern oil, managed to make obscenely fuel-inefficient SUVs that much worse with the addition of red, white, and blue wind resistance.

I had no flag at all until a homeless vet sold me a small one, the kind that goes on Fourth of July cupcakes. Now I can proudly point to it majestically flapping atop the bird feeder. It's a nice reminder that when the veterans of this war come home, feeling destitute and forgotten, there will always be flags for them to sell.

Since September 11, the flag has become a perverse and undemocratic symbol of blind obedience to the edicts of the unelected son of a former chief of the CIA, an organization that helped school Osama bin Laden in terrorism.

Nazi Germany had a lot of flags and no Bill of Rights. That's exactly where we are headed if we roll over for the likes of Kaiser Ashcroft and his full frontal attack on our civil liberties.

Osama bin Laden assaulted our way of life, but John Ashcroft and George W. Bush are destroying it. January 20, 2001, may end up much more a Day of Infamy than September 11. This does not make me proud to be an American.

I am willing to live with the slightly heightened danger of terrorist attack rather than the guaranteed oppression of a police state. I am willing to risk my life to remain free. Are you?

On October 30, the FBI sounded a new terrorism alert just in time for Halloween -- or perhaps just in time to spook Americans into accepting the idea of carpet-bombing Afghanistan on October 31.

November--December

It wasn't hard watching the hateful Taliban fall from power. These crackpots executed " improperly attired " women. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan became a fashion-police state. But when they faced true adversity, the Taliband of Brothers were routed from Afghan cities in less than two months.

I really can't sort November from December, or December from October, for that matter, but while time got fuzzy over the past months, some things came into focus.

W.'s " With us or against us " cant doesn't cut it. Every one of our lives is at stake, so we all need to get literate about the world in which we live. Though we'll never cave in to the barbarous Al Qaeda network, we must stop making the world fertile ground for its violent lunacy.

We have to look at certain issues -- even if they are found on known terrorists' lists of grievances -- because we don't want there to be more terrorists. For instance, it's time to face what over a decade of sanctions and bombing has done to the poor people of Iraq. And we must let the people of Israel know that we cannot truck the direction their nation has taken under the vicious Ariel Sharon. Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, the Hamas leader whose November 23 assassination sparked the recent terrorist attacks on Israel, was freed from a Palestinian jail under cover of mayhem caused when Israeli troops bombed it in a May attempt to kill Hanoud.

We can't afford to celebrate driving a fifth-rate dictatorship from power in Afghanistan -- particularly when the vacuum it leaves will be filled by the Northern Alliance, a collection of drug- and weapons-dealing misogynists with nary a democratic inclination among them. So far, all that has happened is the US has driven a bunch of terrorists from the cities and into the weeds. Terrorists like weeds and can strike at will from them.

What will America do when that starts happening? Send in Ashcroft to organize a round-up of all the people who appear to be Middle Eastern in Afghanistan?

Further, we can't afford to ask with affected naïveté how anyone in the world could hate us enough to bomb us when we have bombed unoffending people more often than any other nation. There is a reason the US coined the term " collateral damage, " and now that we understand just how profane it is, we have to speak up against it -- here, there, and everywhere.

Another reason we are hated is that we always get so much more than our share of the worldwide pie. Only in America would anyone suggest running up credit-card debt as a way of helping the nation recover from tragedy.

THE OTHER night, after watching a news anchor pull off the amazing feat of correctly pronouncing several difficult Afghan names while simultaneously fellating the entire US military-industrial complex, I flicked off the TV and reached for Mark Twain's Notebook. In it, Sam Clemens demonstrated once again that he was light-years ahead of his -- or, apparently, our -- era. Twain wrote:

There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case, the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism: in the other, neither government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The Gospel of Monarchical Patriotism is: " The King can do no wrong. " We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: " Our country, right or wrong! "

We have thrown away the most valuable asset we have -- the individual right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he by himself) believes them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it all away: and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.

Were Twain alive today, he could expect a visit from the Office of Homeland Security.

To keep up with Barry Crimmins's thoughts as they occur -- and not just annually --

Check out his Web site at http://www.barrycrimmins.com

1/5/02
7:30:02 PM

So You're an Environmentalist;

Why Are You Still Eating Meat?

by Jim Motavalli

There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized factory farming -- which allows diseases to spread quickly as animals are raised in close confinement -- has given rise to recent, highly publicized epidemics of meat-borne illnesses. At press time, the first discovery of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb caused beef prices to plummet in Japan and many people to stop eating meat.

All this comes at a time when meat consumption is reaching an all-time high around the world, quadrupling in the last 50 years. There are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space on the Earth, more than triple the number of people. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for human dinner tables has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion. U.S. beef and pork consumption has tripled since 1970, during which time it has more than doubled in Asia.

Americans spend $110 billion a year on meat-intensive fast food, and its growing popularity around the world may be a factor in dramatic increases in global meat consumption. © Jason Kremkau

One reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of fast-food restaurants as an American dietary staple. As Eric Schlosser noted in his best-selling book Fast Food Nation, "Americans now spend more money on fast food -- $110 billion a year -- than they do on higher education. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music -- combined."

Strong growth in meat production and consumption continues despite mounting evidence that meat-based diets are unhealthy, and that just about every aspect of meat production -- from grazing-related loss of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle in a hungry world, to pollution from "factory farms" -- is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke calls factory farming "a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems."

World Hunger and Resources

The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.

According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle. Britain -- with 56 million people --could support a population of 250 million on an all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of U.S. and European meat eaters' grain consumption is indirect (first being fed to animals), westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain a year. Most grain in underdeveloped countries is consumed directly.

Somalian famine victims line up for food handouts. Producing a pound of beef requires 4.8 pounds of grain, and critics of our modern agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets aggravates world hunger. © David & Peter Turnley / Corbis

While it is true that many animals graze on land that would be unsuitable for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions of productive acres away from farm inventories. The cost of that is incalculable. As Diet For a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé writes, imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. "Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the 'feed cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains."

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich note that a pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water, whereas a pound of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds.

Environmental Costs

Energy-intensive U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of animal waste in 1996, which, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Meat production has also been linked to severe erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland and to the destruction of rainforests.

McDonald's took a group of British animal rights activists to court in the 1990s because they had linked the fast food giant to an unhealthy diet and rainforest destruction. The defendants, who fought the company to a standstill, made a convincing case. In court documents, the activists asserted, "From 1970 onwards, beef from cattle reared on ex-rainforest land was supplied to McDonald's." In a policy statement, McDonald's claims that it "does not purchase beef which threatens tropical rainforests anywhere in the world," but it does not deny past purchases.

Circle Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million gallon waste lagoon. When lagoons like this spill into rivers and lakes as happened in North Carolina in 1995, the result can be environmentally catastrophic. © AP Photo / Douglas C. Pizac

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), livestock raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the human population, some 87,000 pounds per second. The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that 20 tons of livestock manure is produced annually for every U.S. household. The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.

More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Beef production alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation's entire fruit and vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil. In his book The Food Revolution, author John Robbins estimates that "you'd save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year." Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year.

"We definitely take up more environmental space when we eat meat," says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation. "I think it's consistent with environmental values to eat lower on the food chain."

The Human Health Toll

There is some evidence to suggest that the human digestive system was not designed for meat consumption and processing (see sidebar), which could help explain why there is such high incidence of heart disease, hypertension, and colon and other cancers. Add to this the plethora of drugs and antibiotics applied as a salve to unnatural factory farming conditions and growing occurrences of meat-based diseases like E. coli and Salmonella, and there's a compelling health-based case for vegetarianism.

The factory-farmed chicken, cow or pig of today is among the most medicated creatures on Earth. "For sheer overprescription, no doctor can touch the American farmer," reported Newsweek. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the use of antimicrobial drugs for nontherapeutic purposes -- mainly to increase factory farm growth rates -- has risen 50 percent since 1985.

Ninety percent of commercially available eggs come from chickens raised on factory farms, and six billion "broiler" chickens emerge from the same conditions. Ninety percent of U.S.-raised pigs are closely confined at some point during their lives. According to the book Animal Factories by Jim Mason and Peter Singer, pork producers lose $187 million annually to chronic diseases such as dysentery, cholera, trichinosis and other ailments fostered by factory farming. Drugs are used to reduce stress levels in animals crowded together unnaturally, although 20 percent of the chickens die of stress or disease anyway.

One result of these conditions is a high rate of meat contamination. Up to 60 percent of chickens sold in supermarkets are infected with Salmonella entenidis, which can pass to humans if the meat is not heated to a high enough temperature. Another pathogen, Campylobacter, can also spread from chickens to human beings with deadly results.

In 1997, more than 25 million pounds of hamburger were found to be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, which is spread by fecal matter. The bacteria are a particular problem in hamburger, because the grinding process spreads it throughout the meat. E. coli, the leading cause of kidney failure in young children, was the culprit when three children died of food poisoning after eating at a Seattle Jack in the Box restaurant in 1993.

Business as usual at the animal farm: From left: chicken debeaking, cow confinement, poultry transport and hog crowding.

The British epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which began in 1986 and has affected nearly 200,000 cattle, jumps to beef-eating humans in the form of the always-fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). The CDC reports that an average of 10 to 15 people have contracted CJD from meat in Britain each year since it was first detected in 1994. In 1998, the British Medical Association warned in a report to Members of Parliament, "The current state of food safety in Britain is such that all raw meat should be assumed to be contaminated with pathogenic organisms." In 1997, it added, Salmonella or E. coli infected a million people in Britain. BSE spreads through cattle that are fed contaminated central nervous-system tissue from other animals. "Its future magnitude and geographic distribution...cannot yet be predicted," the CDC reported. In the U.S., deer have been affected with chronic wasting disease, which has many similarities to British BSE, though a definitive link to humans has not been established.

In the book Eating With Conscience, Dr. Michael W. Fox reports that what is known as "animal tankage" -- the non-fat animal residue from slaughterhouses -- is used in a wide variety of products, from animal feed and fertilizer to pet food. Dr. Fox adds that hundreds of cats in Europe (and several zoo animals) that ate tankage-laced food have contracted forms of BSE. The Japanese outbreak is believed to have originated in BSE-contaminated feed imported from Europe.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 10 million animals that were dying or diseased when slaughtered were "rendered" (processed into a protein-rich meal) in 1995 for addition to pig, poultry and pet food. Animals that collapse at the slaughterhouse door or during transportation are called "downers," and their corpses are routinely processed for human consumption. A 2001 Zogby America poll conducted for the group Farm Sanctuary found that 79 percent of Americans oppose this practice, which could be an entry point for BSE into the U.S. meat supply. Farm Sanctuary petitioned the USDA in 1998 to end processing of downer meat for human consumption, but its petition was denied.

Europe will spend billions of dollars bringing a virulent epidemic of yet another animal-borne disease -- foot-and-mouth -- under control. In the last two years, 60 countries have had outbreaks of foot-and-mouth, which kills animals but does not spread to people.

One of the major western exports is a taste for meat, though it brings with it increased risk of heart disease and cancer. Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with a diet and food production system resulting in such waste, endemic disease and human health threats.

Caring About Animals

The average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of some 2,400 animals during his or her lifetime. Animals raised for food endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter, which is something not clearly evident in the neatly wrapped packages of meat offered for sale at grocery counters. Given the information, many Americans -- especially those with an environmental background -- recoil at knowing they participate in a meat production system so oppressive to the animals caught up in it.

The family farm of the nineteenth century, with its "free-range" animals running around the farmyard or grazing in a pasture, is largely a thing of the past. Brutality to animals has become routine in today's factory farm. A recent article in the pig industry journal National Hog Farmer recommends reducing the average space per animal from eight to six square feet, concluding "Crowding pigs pays." Morley Safer reported on the television program 60 Minutes that today's factory pig is no "Babe": "[They] see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they cannot even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits."

Beef cattle are luckier than factory pigs in that they have an average of 14 square feet in the overcrowded feedlots where they live out their lives. Common procedures for beef calves include branding, castration and dehorning. Veal calves, taken away from their mothers shortly after birth, live their entire lives in near darkness, chained by their necks and unable to move in any direction. They commonly suffer from anemia, diarrhea, pneumonia and lameness.

Virtually all chickens today are factory raised, with as many as six egg-laying hens living in a wire-floored "battery" cage the size of an album cover. As many as 100,000 birds can live in each "henhouse." Conditions are so psychologically taxing on the birds that they must be debeaked to prevent pecking injuries. Male chicks born on factory farms -- as many as 280 million per year -- are simply thrown into garbage bags to die because they're of no economic value as meat or eggs.

Some 95 percent of factory-raised animals are moved by truck, where they are typically subjected to overcrowding, severe weather, hunger and thirst. Many animals die of heat exhaustion or freezing during transport.

Some of the worst abuse occurs at the end of the animals' lives, as documented by Gail Eisnitz' book Slaughterhouse, which includes interviews with slaughterhouse workers. "On the farm where I work," reports one employee, "they drag the live ones who can't stand up anymore out of the crate. They put a metal snare around her ear or foot and drag her the full length of the building. These animals are just screaming in pain." He adds, "The slaughtering part doesn't bother me. It's the way they're treated when they're alive." Dying animals unable to walk are tossed into the "downer pile," and many suffer agonies until, after one or two days, they are finally killed.

The threat to slaughterhouse workers' safety is largely underreported or ignored in the media. For example, Mother Jones magazine, in an otherwise admirable story on slaughterhouse workers, barely mentions the frequent injuries caused by pain-wracked animals lashing out inside the slaughterhouses. Despite the existence of the Humane Slaughter Act and regular USDA inspection, animals are often skinned alive or -- in a major threat to worker safety -- regain consciousness during slaughtering.

The Vegetarian Solution

Vegetarianism is not a new phenomenon. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras was vegetarian, and until the mid-19th century, people who abstained from meat were known as "Pythagoreans." Famous followers of Pythagoras' diet included Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein. The word "vegetarian" was coined in 1847 to give a name to what was then a tiny movement in England.

In the U.S., the 1971 publication of Diet For a Small Planet was a major cataly