Earths.net

7/22/01
9:28:58 PM

In reference to the post dated and titled below: 7/22/01 8:37:44 PM

Study Sees Earth's Temperature Soaring By 2100

by Will Dunham

I have one comment....are you out of you freaking mind?? 9 degrees F.. IS NOT soaring....An increase of only 9 degrees is nothing...now before you start telling me all about the polar ice melting and flooding coastlines...an increase of 9 degrees STILL puts the temperature of the ice caps BELOW freezing...where's your melting??? An increase of this minute amount will not only go unnoticed..but have no effect on the environment. Just my opinion,Steve

7/29/01
1:28:40 PM

Dear All,

July/August letters were posted on Earth Action Network's web site,

http://www.eanetwork.org

We really appreciate your efforts to promote healing and justice in our world. Also, please keep helping us grow by telling your friends about EAN.

For Better World,

Earth Action Network

7/29/01
12:47:00 PM

Pentagon Considers 'Space Bomber'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Pentagon (news – web sites) is looking into the development of a futuristic bomber that would take off like a long-range missile and drop precision bombs from heights of 60 miles (96 km) or more, the Los Angeles Times reported in its Saturday edition.

The Times, citing a government planning document, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Pentagon last month to consider the sub-orbital space craft for rapid global strikes.

It said the bomber, possibly manned, was expected to travel 15 times the speed and 10 times the altitude of existing bombers and hit targets on the other side of the world in a half-hour.

The craft would allow U.S. military planners to address the threat of distant targets at a time when the number of U.S. military bases abroad is declining, the Times said.

But it also was likely to intensify the debate over the militarization of space, it said.

President Bush (news - web sites) is backing a national missile defense system that is strongly opposed by Russia and China as well as some European leaders who have expressed doubts about setting aside the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010728/pl/plane_space_dc_1.html

USA Space Command, "Vision 2020":

http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace

7/29/01
12:41:50 PM

Manley Critical Of U.S. Plan For Space Weapons

From: CBCNEWS <nwonline@toronto.cbc.ca>

HANOI--Canada's foreign minister says U.S. plans to develop space-based weapons are dangerous.

John Manley said, "I've made the point as strongly as could possibly be made that Canada is unalterably opposed to the weaponization of space.''

Manley made his comments Wednesday in a telephone conference call from Hanoi, where he was attending an Asia-Pacific economic meeting.

Manley said the U.S. plan encourages the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other responses that are unlikely to be good for global security.

He said Canada is pushing for a treaty to ban weapons from orbit and has support from other countries.

The Pentagon has said the planned missile defence system should include a mix of land, sea and space-based weapons.

Manley also criticized the U.S. for rejecting a protocol which would have enforced the 1972 convention on germ warfare.

7/29/01
12:37:34 PM

Kucinich to Introduce Legislation to Ban Weaponization of Space

NEWS RELEASE

July 26, 2001

CONTACT: Kathie Scarrah

202.226.8139, 703.845.2874

Kucinich to Introduce Legislation to Ban Weaponization of Space

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Cleveland) today announced his intention to introduce legislation to ban the weaponization of space. "The time has come to ban the further weaponization of space," Congressman Kucinich said. "We must work toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and an end to policies which cause this country to move toward the weaponization of space. I was pleased with the recent news from our neighbor to the north that Canada is ready to join an international effort to prohibit weapons in space. It is time for the United States to take the lead and end the weaponization of space."

Kucinich said the argument that supporters of weaponization use claiming our national security and commercial interests would be put at risk are fear tactics backed by greed. "We signed the ABM treaty nearly 30 years ago; which requires a reduction in strategic arms, nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. Weaponization of space clearly violates that treaty. My bill will call for an immediate and permanent termination of research, testing, manufacturing, production and deployment of all space-based weapons systems and components by any person, agency or contractor of the U.S. government." Kucinich will introduce the Space Preservation Act of 2001 this autumn.

Please support Congressman Kucinich's Space Preservation Act that he plans to introduce this autumn, network this information and find addtional endorsers for October 13 to unite with the world and stop weapons in space and the expansion of the arms race; also, contact U.S. congressional representatives in support of such proposed legislation to transform from the direction of war to the direction of peace and disarmament of weapons of mass destruction.

The Congressional switchboard telephone number: 202-224-3121.

Web Site: http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html

For Senators' telephone, fax, web, and E-mail addresses see:

http://prop1.org/prop1/senate.htm

7/29/01
12:35:25 PM

Star Wars

Things are shaping up in regards to the plan of action to ban space-based weapons. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Cleveland) last Thursday announced his intention to introduce legislation to ban the weaponization of space. He declared, "We must work toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and an end to policies which cause this country to move toward the weaponization of space." Following a press release on these statements is an article that Canada's foreign minister stated that the U.S. plans to develop space-based weapons are dangerous. John Manley said, "I've made the point as strongly as could possibly be made that Canada is unalterably opposed to the weaponization of space.'' Manley said the U.S. plan encourages the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other responses that are unlikely good for global security. He said Canada is pushing for a treaty to ban weapons from orbit and has support from other countries.

The Global Network's support for international actions on October 13 to ban weapons in space is extremely timely. Right now 198 Organizations are endorsing this campaign, with 72 sites planned for demonstrations. Also, percolating on the side of peace, is the unlikely common interests of peace organizations and many military leaders, concerned that the Bush missile defense plan would lessen their abilities to preserve national (and international) security interests.

The UN's Outer Space Treaty was ratified by 95 States, (including the US), and signed by at least 27 additional states. You can review the "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies" at the UN's Office of Outer Space Affairs website:

http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/treat/ost/ost.html

For a scarier and more dangerous perspective, check out US Space Command's "Vision 20/20"

http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace

To learn more on actions planned for October 13, visit the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

http://www.space4peace.org

7/28/01
1:16:05 PM

Poison Control

By Charles Sisk

The Washington Post and the New York Times lead with the House's decision to support a tough standard for arsenic in drinking water that was implemented in the Clinton administration's last few days. Bush ordered a review of the new standard soon after he took office in January. The Los Angeles Times leads with a local story on the firing of five state energy advisors for conflicts of interest. (A sixth resigned.) The advisors own stock in utilities that have recently done business with the California government. The LAT also goes high with the arsenic vote.

Clinton's new standard would reduce the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 ppb by the year 2006. Republican argue this standard will make it too expensive for rural water systems to continue operating, forcing people to turn to untreated water supplies. Friday's 218-189 vote, which includes 19 Republicans, would force Bush to accept a standard at least as tough as Clinton's. The WP focuses on the political: Bush's decision has reinforced the notion that he is unfriendly to the environment, the paper says, and it goes on to recount his various environmental missteps. The NYT and the LAT focus on the scientific, saying that the National Academy of Sciences opposes the old arsenic standard and that World Health Organization and most European countries use the 10-ppb rule.

Everyone goes above-the-fold with news that the U.S. economy grew by a slight 0.7% in the spring 2001 quarter. This is actually good news to some economists, who feared that the economy might have slipped into a recession. Many economists believe growth will pick up in the summer and fall quarters. Everyone agrees that consumer spending, which increased 2.1%, was a major reason the economy remained as strong as it did. This offset a steep decline in business investment. The NYT points out that the economy was also aided by a rise in government spending initiated when the economy was strong.

The WP fronts the Department of Justice's decision to kill the $12.3 billion, United Airlines-US Airways deal. The decision is expected to put to rest merger talk in the airline industry. If United had been able to complete the deal, it and American Airlines would have controlled about half of the nation's air traffic. Other airlines would have needed to merge to stay close. But Justice's opposition is probably good news for United, which has been criticized for overpaying. US Airways, however, faces an uncertain future, as it is being squeezed by both the major airlines and the smaller, low-fare carriers.

The NYT goes high with the Israeli Foreign Ministry's warning that Israeli officials should avoid traveling to countries that claim global jurisdiction over human rights cases. Israel fears that foreign governments--mainly European ones--are biased toward the Palestinians and could attempt to try high-ranking Israeli officials for human rights abuses. This is not idle paranoia, the Israelis insist. Twenty-three Palestinians are urging a Belgian court to bring charges against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for a 1982 attack on two Lebanese refuge camps, and the Danish are upset that the new Israeli ambassador is a former merger of the Israeli secret police. The irony, the NYT concludes, is Israel itself has been a leading advocate of international human rights law, as it sought to bring former Nazis to justice.

The NYT fronts a feature on Florida's two major league baseball teams: the Florida Marlins, which play in Miami, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Both were added in the 1990s, and both are failing miserably. There is now talk of eliminating them. The Times gives a number of reasons for their failure--poor marketing, lifeless stadiums, Florida's frequent summer thunderstorms--but both cases ultimately boil down to one thing: winning. The NYT says the Marlins' fan base was destroyed when the team unloaded most of its top players soon after it won the 1997 World Series. The Devil Rays, meanwhile, have been pathetic since starting play in 1998.

Finally, the LAT fronts a piece on the high number of celebrities running for seats in Japanese parliament this year. The article--cleverly slugged "jesse" on the Web--notes that Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, President Reagan and former Philippine President Joseph Estrada have all won high office, so these guys are hardly trailblazers. But Japan does seem to have an abnormally large number of stars running--30 celebrity-candidates seeking 121 seats. Many of them have incredibly inane platforms. A professional wrestler promises to return Japan to "a samurai age without hara-kiri" (ritual suicide), and a comedian says he will build a combination hospital-spa-comedy club in downtown Osaka. This is the first time Japanese have been allowed to vote for individual candidates, rather than parties. If many of these celebrities win, one wonders if they'll ever be allowed to vote for individuals again.

Source: http://www.Slate.com

7/28/01
1:11:21 PM

http://www.thefarm.org/

7/28/01
12:39:15 PM

ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY

by Jay Hanson, www.dieoff.com

"There is an assumption in economics that the market system handles resource allocation in an efficient manner unless proven otherwise." -- ENERGY PLANNING AND POLICY, Thomas H. Tietenberg

"All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true in itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility." -- MEIN KAMPF, Adolf Hitler

ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY

When an engineer uses "efficiency", it means getting the most output for the least input -- a good thing because it tends to conserve finite natural resources. [1] But when an economist uses "efficiency", it means "efficient distribution" -- a bad thing because it tends to deplete natural resources (all economic activity wastes finite energy stocks). Economic efficiency means the "correct people" (those who can afford it) get the "correct goods and services" (whatever they want; technically known as "Pareto Optimality", which incidentally, doesn't exist). Economic efficiency rewards people who are the most successful at converting natural resources into industrial garbage ... so they can invest in even more conversion of natural resources into industrial garbage.

If one can think like an engineer (social scientists will have difficulty doing this), one can deduce from first principles, history, and observation that a society based on "economic efficiency" will crash and dieoff. Here's how:

1). Visit the astronomy department at your local university and verify that Earth is indeed spherical. All spheres are finite, thus Earth is finite. Therefore, you can deduce that Earth's energy resources are finite too -- finite "energy stocks" (e.g., oil) and finite "energy flows" (e.g., wind).

2). Visit the physics department and verify that: Energy is the capacity to do work (no energy = no work). Thus, the global economy is 100 percent dependent on energy -- it always has been, and it always will be. There are NO exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics.

The First Law of thermodynamics tells us that neither capital nor labor nor technology can "create" energy. Instead, available energy must be spent to transform existing energy stocks, or to divert an existing energy flow into more available energy.

The Second Law of thermodynamics tells us that energy is wasted at every step in the economic process. The engines that actually do the work in our economy (so-called "heat engines", such as diesel engines) waste more than 50 percent of the energy contained in their fuel.

Energy resources must produce more energy than they consume, otherwise they are called "sinks" (this is known as the "net energy" principle). About 735 joules of energy are required to lift 15 kg of oil 5 meters out of the ground just to overcome gravity -- and the higher the lift, the greater the energy requirements. The most concentrated and most accessible oil is produced first; thereafter, more and more energy is required to find and produce oil. At some point, more energy is spent finding and producing oil than the energy recovered -- and the "resource" has become a "sink".

3). Visit the ecology (or population biology) department and verify that "overshoot", "crash", and "dieoff" are common in nature. Dieoff occurs when animals run out of energy stocks (food). H. sapiens are running out of energy stocks (fossil fuel first, and then food).

Now that you have deduced the dieoff scenario from the science, turn on your TV set and observe that "dieoff" is already underway in Russia and Africa.

The only remaining question is when will "dieoff" come to a location near you? Many industry experts expect it in less than ten years. Some say it is here already.

See http://dieoff.com/synopsis.htm

THE POLITICS OF ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY

"Economic efficiency" also means "economic anarchy" (no government regulations). Another way of looking at it is that economists advocate "Social Darwinism" -- survival of the economically fittest -- the rest can suffer and die. In the words of Economic Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman: "Pinochet has supported a fully free-market economy as a matter of principle. Chile is an economic miracle." [2]

Although the first advocate of Friedman's Social Darwinism was the Dominican Friar St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274),[3] the British economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was the first to really understand and record the real-world implications of Thomistic Philosophy:

"A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favor. The report of a provision for all that come fills the hall with numerous claimants. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect. The guests learn too late their error, in counter-acting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all guests should have plenty, and knowing she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full." [4]

Here is a recent example of Malthus' Thomistic Philosophy (Social Darwinism) by the notorious former World Bank Chief economist and US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers:

"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable... because foregone earnings from increased morbidity" are low. He adds that "the underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles.... " [5]

By using everyday words in idiosyncratic ways, economists hijack normative "feel good" terms for their heinous "feel bad" political agenda: Social Darwinism. Economists are able to use both definitions simultaneously in order to "feel good" about their politics while deceiving others -- which is a splendid example of lying to oneself in order to tell more convincing lies to others. Economists provide the best examples of how the animal evolved as the apex "social predator" rather than the apex "engineer" (economists don't know anything about the real world -- and they don't care).

"POLITICAL EFFICIENCY"

The reality of the economist's political agenda is a curious mixture of politics and efficiency: "political efficiency". Economists are trained to believe that "money" has nothing to do with politics and is simply a medium of exchange. But even the casual observer can see that money is social power because it "empowers" people to buy and do the things they want -- including buying and doing other people: politics.

If employers have the freedom to pay workers less "political power", then they will retain more political power for themselves. Money is, in a word, "coercion", and "economic efficiency" is correctly seen as a political concept designed to conserve social power for those who have it -- to make the politically powerful, even more powerful, and the politically weak, even weaker.

Economists have adopted normative terms and idiosyncratic definitions to make them better liars. Indeed, to the economist, lying is effortless and automatic. It's a way of life.

"Economists have become a plague as dangerous as rabbits, prickly pear or cane toads. Economists have become the cultural cane toads of Canberra, oozing over the landscape and endangering myriad indigenous species. Not only the economy but also mental health would be greatly improved if we could lift the fog of obfuscation on things economic. The first step is to take economists from their pedestal and to see them as the curiosities they are. The first step to reducing their power is to reduce their legitimacy. How is this to be achieved? First, economists' outpourings should, as a matter of principle, be met with laughter, derision, benign paternalism. They should cease to be employed as media commentators. In the long term they should cease to be hired. Let them be pensioned off and die out. Extinction is a worthy end for a profession whose brief is rotten to the core."

-- Dr. Evan Jones, Economics Department, University of Sydney Jay -- www.dieoff.com

[1] Energy efficiency is the percentage of total energy input that does useful work in an energy conversion system.

[2] Cite in Newsweek, Jan, 1982.

SUMMARY: So what was the record for the entire Pinochet regime? Between 1972 and 1987, the GNP per capita fell 6.4 percent. In constant 1993 dollars, Chile's per capita GDP was over $3,600 in 1973. Even as late as 1993, however, this had recovered to only $3,170. Only five Latin American countries did worse in per capita GDP during the Pinochet era (1974-1989). And defenders of the Chicago plan call this an "economic miracle."

Read more about Milton Friedman's Social Darwinist utopia at http://www.lakota.clara.net/myths/economy.html

[3] "Particularly important was Aquinas' brief outline of the mutual benefit each person derives from exchange. As he put it in the Summa: 'buying and selling seems to have been instituted for the mutual advantage of both parties, since one needs something that belongs to the other, and conversely.'" [ p. 10, ECONOMIC THOUGHT BEFORE ADAM SMITH, by Murray N. Rothbard; Edward Elgar, 1995;

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852789611/brainfood.a ]

St. Thomas Aquinas' free trade politics were finally perfected three hundred years later by the Jesuit Father Luis Molina (1535-1600): "If merchants paying and accepting market prices, made gains, this was all right, and if they suffered losses, this was bad luck or else a penalty for incompetence, so long as gain or loss resulted from the unhampered working of the market mechanism though not if it resulted, for example, from price fixing by public authority or monopolistic concerns." pp. 98-99, HISTORY OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS, Joseph Schumpeter; George Allen, 1954;

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195105591/brainfood.a

Today, the religious disciples of St. Thomas are the Neoclassical economists: "Adam Smith's key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit." -- Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman p. 2, FREE TO CHOOSE, Milton and Rose Friedman; Harvest, 1980;

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156334607/brainfood.a

Of course, Friedman is wrong here. Everything Smith wrote derives from the Scholastics and the Physiocrats. Specifically, the ideology of "free trade" comes from St. Thomas. The early industrialists could hardly have sold Catholic religious teaching to Protestants, so they used Smith as a "shill" for Catholic theology. As might be expected from a discipline founded entirely on lies, economic students aren't even taught the true history of their discipline! The entire religious program of the Neoclassical economists is presented well in REACHING FOR HEAVEN ON EARTH, by Robert Nelson; Rowman & Littlefield, 1993;

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822630249/brainfood.a

[4] AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, 2nd edition, Thomas Malthus

[5] The Memo DATE: December 12, 1991

TO: Distribution

FR: Lawrence H. Summers

Subject: GEP

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

7/28/01
12:19:49 PM

Why is your world so totally screwed up?

read REACHING FOR HEAVEN ON EARTH,

by Robert H. Nelson

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822630249/brainfood.a

The members of the American economics profession, as Arnold contended, performed a vital practical role in maintaining this unique system of corporate socialism American style. It was their role to prevent the American public from achieving a correct understanding of the actual workings of the American economic system. Economists instead were assigned the task to dispense priestly blessings that would allow business to operate independent of damaging political manipulation. They accomplished this task by means of their message of "laissez faire religion, based on a conception of a society composed of competing individuals." However false as a description of the actual U.S. economy, this vision in the mind of the American public was in practice "transferred automatically to industrial organizations with nation-wide power and dictatorial forms of government." Even though the arguments of economists were misleading and largely fictional, the practical -- and beneficial -- result of their deception was to throw a "mantle of protection ... over corporate government" from various forms of outside interference. Admittedly, as the economic "symbolism got farther and farther from reality, it required more and more ceremony to keep it up." But as long as this arrangement worked and there could be maintained "the little pictures in the back of the head of the ordinary man," the effect was salutary -- "the great [corporate] organization was secure in its freedom and independence." It was this very freedom and independence of business professionals to pursue the correct scientific answer -- the efficient answer -- on which the economic progress of the United States depended.

http://dieoff.com/page235.htm

7/28/01
12:16:30 PM

This following paper by Hall et al. will appear in the August issue of BioScience.

It is archived at http://dieoff.com/page228.pdf

The need to reintegrate the natural sciences into economics,

by Charles Hall 1 , Dietmar Lindenberger 2 , Reiner Kümmel 3 , Timm Kroeger 1 , and Wolfgang Eichhorn 4

1 Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, and Program of Environmental Studies, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, Syracuse NY 13210, USA

2 Institute for Energy Economics, University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-50923 Cologne, Germany

3 Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Würzburg,D-97074 Würzburg, Germany

4 Institute for Economic Theory and Operations Research,University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany

"How long will researchers working in adjoining fields... abstain from expressing serious concern about the splendid isolation in which academic economics now finds itself?" the Nobel Laureate in Economics, Wassily Leontief, asked in 1982.

This question is extremely important because economics is the foundation on which most decisions effecting agriculture, fisheries, the environment, and indeed most aspects of our daily lives, are based. Natural scientists, including biological scientists, may have particular views on this or that economic policy, but few question the legitimacy of economics as a tool. We believe that, paraphrasing the great Prussian military historian Karl von Clausewitz, economics is too important to leave to the economists, and that natural scientists should not leave the procedures by which we undertake economics up to economists alone. Instead, natural scientists must contribute to a new discourse about the means, methods and ends of economics.

This paper is a response to Leontief’s question. It is critical that economics be based on sound principles, and that the policies that are generated from it have a solid foundation. Neoclassical economics, that form of economics derived in the mid 19th century that prevails today, focuses on problems related to value decisions, the behavior of economic actors, and the working of markets. These problems belong to the sphere of the social sciences (many of which, incidentally, have their own problems with neoclassical economic theory, see for example Marris 1992). But the wealth that is distributed in the markets must be produced in the "hard sphere" of the material world where all operations must obey the laws and principles of physics, chemistry and biology. Our concern is that most production models of economics are not based upon these biophysical laws and principles, and indeed tend to ignore them (Georgescu-Roegen 1971, Daly 1973, 1977, Kümmel et al. 1985, Leontief 1982, Cleveland et al. 1984, Hall et al. 1986, Hall 1992, 2000).

The rest is at http://dieoff.com/page228.pdf

7/27/01
6:57:36 PM

Photo Contest

Grab your camera and head for your favorite body of water. The nation’s preeminent river conservation organization has joined forces with the leading outdoor recreation and adventure travel Web site in sponsoring a national photography contest that celebrates America’s rivers and waterways.

Through Sept. 1, American Rivers and GORP.com is inviting photographers to submit images that capture the beauty of the nation’s rivers. Visitors to GORP.com will vote images off the site, ultimately determining the winning image. The grand prizewinner will receive a kayak package that includes an inflatable Tahiti Classic kayak by Sevylor. Additionally, American Rivers and GORP.com will award 20 finalists a case of Poland Springs water and a pair of Slot Canyon Whitewater shoes by Timberland from Mountain Athletics.

7/27/01
6:03:20 PM

G8 nations must do more for AIDS-ravaged countries

By David Suzuki

An agreement made last week at the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, to increase spending for the global AIDS fund is an important step towards fighting this pandemic in the developing world, but a much greater effort is needed to slow its insidious spread. While not often discussed in North American media, AIDS has become a killer of unprecedented proportions in many parts of the developing world, especially Africa. According to a recent analysis in the journal Nature, HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) ranks as a 9 on the Richter scale of viral diseases. High-profile diseases such as ebola or the West Nile virus that caused a recent scare in North America rank merely 2.8 and 0.5 respectively.

HIV ranks so high because AIDS has killed so many and because HIV continues to spread at an alarming rate in many areas. Three million people will die from AIDS this year alone, adding to a death toll of more than 23 million. The analysis in Nature reaches the frightening conclusion that, "There is nothing to suggest that HIV will plateau or that it will not reach 1 billion cases before 2050."

AIDS is one of the most urgent global public health issues we face today. And while the fight against it is well funded in wealthy places like North America, the hardest hit areas have the least resources to combat the disease. According to most recent OECD statistics, in 1999 developed nations collectively contributed just US$100 million to fight AIDS in developing countries. Harvard director of International Health Amir Attaran points out that this is the cost of building about 20 kilometres of paved highway, or $5 per infected person — the price of a sandwich.

The lack of funds means that AIDS treatment and prevention measures in developing countries are actually getting worse, not better. The number of condoms available, for example, has dropped, as has training and education expenditures. Priorities in wealthy nations are elsewhere. The United States, for example, has just announced plans to buy 60 new B2 bombers at a cost of $120 billion.

The Global AIDS fund developed by the United Nations is supposed to help secure money to fight AIDS in the nations that need it the most. Last week, the G8 committed US$1 billion in initial pledges, but this must be just the beginning if the fund is to be successful. To function adequately, the fight against AIDS will require $8 billion to $10 billion every year, with half of that dedicated to sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest rates of infection. Some countries in this region have seen life expectancies drop by as much as 20 years since the onset of the epidemic. In South Africa, 200 babies with HIV are born every day.

Most AIDS experts say that the most humanitarian — as well as the most effective — way to fight the disease is to split funding, with half going to prevention and half to treatment. Although some have argued that treatment is not very effective in Africa because a lack of basic health care and education means that complicated drug treatment regimes will not be followed, studies have found that, with training, treatment compliance in Africa is just as good as in New York City. Access to treatment is essential from both an ethical standpoint and from a public health perspective. If no treatments are available to fight AIDS, then there is little incentive for people to be tested, and the disease will continue to spread.

African governments have increased their commitment to health care, but the AIDS epidemic is well beyond their control and it's killing their youngest and most productive members of society. Initial pledges of help from the world's richest nations offer a starting point, but much more is needed. Hopefully, the recent appointment of Canada's Stephen Lewis as the U.N.'s Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa will help bring badly needed attention and resources to this desperate situation.

http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/07/07272001/aids_44429.asp

7/27/01
6:01:32 PM

NewsBytes: California's impending gasoline crisis and other environmental news

By Stacey L. Fowler

Union of Concerned Scientists and Surface Transportation Policy Project report titled "Over a Barrel: How to Avoid California’s Second Energy Crisis"

Gas Crisis

California’s energy woes are far from over, according to a new report released this week by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Surface Transportation Policy Project. The report, titled "Over a Barrel: How to Avoid California’s Second Energy Crisis," predicts that unless action is taken, Californians’ demand for gasoline will soon outstrip supply.

“Because gasoline consumption is increasing so rapidly in California and we’re very near the limits of our supply, we’re likely to see price hikes, supply disruptions, and shortages by the end of next year,” said Julia Levin, an author of the report and California policy coordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In addition to increased demand, the report attributes the impending crisis to several other factors. These include California’s forthcoming phase out of the additive MTBE from its gasoline and subsequent changeover to ethanol, a proliferation of energy-inefficient vehicles such as SUVs and light trucks, and increased driving due to urban sprawl and lack of reliable public transportation.

Levin said that control of refineries and ethanol suppliers by a small number of companies further complicates matters. “We’re looking at a situation very similar to the electricity crisis, where we have growing demand, finite supply, a small number of market players, and a situation that is very ripe for market manipulation,” she said.

MTBE must be replaced by ethanol in California gasoline by the close of 2002. According to Levin, MTBE has contaminated more than 1,000 sources of drinking water throughout the state. Ethanol, which is made primarily from corn in the Midwest, will have to be shipped to California via trucks or ships, as pipelines are not an option. This method of shipping makes the transition highly complex and expensive.

Californians have already been paying exorbitant rates for gasoline. But recently consumers have seen drops in prices at the pump. “It’s a short-term trend — probably the quiet before the storm,” said Levin. “The long-term trend for gasoline prices has been on the increase, and we expect it to continue to increase as does the California Energy Commission.”

Levin cited the California Energy Commission’s prediction that if Californians continue driving extended distances in fuel-inefficient vehicles, California gasoline consumption could rise by as much as 43 percent over the next 20 years. “That’s just a mind-boggling amount,” said Levin. “That means that we will go from 14 billion gallons a year to more than 20 billion gallons a year of gasoline consumption in California, and the extra cost to drivers will be more than $8 billion a year.” Levin warned that California must address its consumption issues sooner rather than later. She said the state is predicting that gas prices could inflate by anywhere from 6 to 50 cents a gallon by the end of next year, while other energy experts warned that prices could rise by as much as a dollar per gallon.

Levin emphasized that the big difference between the electricity crisis and the looming gasoline crisis is that the state has an opportunity prevent the gas crisis. “The two most important steps are increasing the fuel-efficiency of our motor vehicles and reducing the need for driving in California,” she said. There are several steps that California drivers can take now to increase the fuel efficiency of their vehicles by 10 percent or more and help thwart the crisis. Levin said these include putting more fuel-efficient tires on their cars, keeping tires properly inflated, servicing their vehicles regularly, and driving within the speed limit.

In terms of reducing driving overall, the report recommends that the state develop tax incentives that encourage businesses and residents to increase use of public transportation, car-pooling and car-sharing programs, and telecommuting. “Simply by increasing the frequency and availability of public transportation, more Californians would take it,” said Levin. “In fact, as a whole, Californians use public transportation more than Americans as a whole, so I don’t think that Californians are averse to doing it. It’s just not a viable alternative yet, but it could be.”

As was evident with the electricity crisis, California’s problems can quickly become the nation’s problems. “California is now the fifth-largest economy in the world, and it’s the engine that drives the whole U.S. economy in many ways,” said Levin. “If Californians face a second energy crisis that could potentially take billions of dollars out of California pocketbooks, that will certainly spill over into the rest of the U.S. economy and affect consumers around the country.” Levin added that increased demand in California is likely to directly affect prices of gas and ethanol for the rest of the country.

“This is a crisis that we can prevent, but the state needs to take steps now. The state needs to let consumers know that they need to begin conserving so that prices don’t ever reach those phenomenal levels,” Levin said. The report outlines a series of feasible steps the state can take that “would save consumers money in the long-run and would improve our quality of life and protect our public health.”

7/27/01
5:58:14 PM

NewsBytes: California's impending gasoline crisis and other environmental news

By Stacey L. Fowler

Union of Concerned Scientists and Surface Transportation Policy Project report titled "Over a Barrel: How to Avoid California’s Second Energy Crisis"

Gas Crisis

7/27/01
5:55:12 PM

E-culture: GM food sparks controversy, books

By Erica Gies, Environmental News Network

Many writers, including Marc Lappé and Britt Bailey, are turning their attention to genetically modified food.

After years of protest in Europe and Asia, Americans are finally realizing that they are part of a not-so-grand experiment: Genetically modified food has silently invaded our food supply as giant biotechnology companies liberally line the pockets of our politicians and the FDA. Little is known about this unlabeled, untested "Frankenfood," and much media coverage parrots the biotech companies' PR machines that promise to feed the world risk-free. To learn more about this controversy that is driving some of your fellow citizens to become crop-pulling activists, try one or more of these accessible, fascinating books that turn this technical subject into a real page-turner.

Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food By Marc Lappé, Ph.D. and Britt Bailey

Against the Grain reveals how Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and their ilk are jeopardizing the health of humans, other critters, and the Earth. Concerns include loss of biodiversity and topsoil, higher human pesticide consumption, cross-contamination of organic crops, less nutritional value in food, corporate ownership of food, and unforeseen repercussions in nature catalyzed by the hit-or-miss methods of gene transplantation employed by geneticists.

And why are biotech companies committing such dastardly deeds against nature? It turns out they also sell pesticides, which just happen to be well-tolerated by their new special hybrids. And next year they can sell farmers more of the same, because their seeds just happen to be sterile. Lappé and Bailey plough under the hyperbole the biotech industry sprouts to reveal its true crop: cash.

Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers By Ronnie Cummins, Ben Lilliston, Andrew Kimbrell

This book gives a general background on the issues that surround the GM food industry. But most important, it reminds readers to vote with the tool megacorporations really listen to: their food dollars. Genetically Engineered Food delivers straight, savvy advice to consumers on how to avoid GM food at markets and at restaurants and where to seek out organic alternatives. The authors also remind readers to write letters to corporations that produce bioengineered food, and they provide copious resources for shopping and protesting.

Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare?: The Brave New World of Science and Business By Mae-Wan Ho

Genetic scientist Mae-Wan Ho plays tour guide for lay people in the land of biotechnology. She explains its pitfalls and points out the corporate business quagmires that have ensnared the ethics of genetic science. She warns that the industry is solely profit driven and that the public is not informed about potential health and environmental risks. Get the real skinny on the hard science here.

7/27/01
5:51:21 PM

Here are two press releases Public Citizen put out on July 26, 2001

Senate Vote Places Safety Above Free Trade At All Costs

Statement Of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook

Today's Senate cloture vote to stop the filibuster of the Murray-Shelby agreement in the Department of Transportation (DOT) appropriations bill is a significant victory for the safety of motorists in the United States. The Murray-Shelby provisions are designed to protect Americans from the potential hazards of Mexican trucks, which currently are not subjected to the same safety standards as American carriers. If the current DOT bill is passed, the Murray-Shelby provisions will help ensure that non-discriminatory inspections of Mexican trucks will be carried out both at the border and on site at the companies' center of operations, thus holding them to the same regulatory standards as U.S. and Canadian vehicles entering our country. Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) are to be commended for their leadership roles in defeating the filibuster and getting these safety standards written into the bill.

Furthermore, the significant number of senators who voted for cloture - 70 - undermines President Bush's threat of vetoing a bill that will act in the health and safety interests of all Americans. It's refreshing that, in the face of an administration that is pushing for more free trade at all costs, the Senate is doing the wise thing by protecting its citizens first. We must not permit the expanded trade allowed by NAFTA to be accomplished at the expense of the safety of those on our country's roads.

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

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

White House Touts Trade Gains But Refuses Freedom of Information Act Request for Substantiation

White House Effort to Push Fast Track has Smoke and Mirrors Galore, But No Facts as Trade Fight Heats Up in House

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has declined to provide information documenting the administration's repeated assertion that the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization have increased U.S. household income by $1,300 to $2,000 annually.

The USTR has repeatedly offered the dollar figure during its campaign to promote Fast Track but has failed to provide documentation pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request for "substantiation of the USTR figure." The failure of the USTR to offer the underlying documentation for the alleged economic benefits of trade to American families - requested by Public Citizen under FOIA on June 13 - comes as the administration continues to press for Congress to consider its Fast Track proposal (now dubbed Trade Promotion Authority) before the August congressional recess.

"In the height of the Fast Track fight, the administration's unwillingness to substantiate its implausible claim leads to only one conclusion: They're using fuzzy math to promote their trade agenda," said Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach. "There's nothing like a campaign to push an unpopular trade policy to make trade officials get creative with numbers."

The refusal to comply to the FOIA inquiry is particularly troubling because the requested information contains no proprietary, confidential or sensitive national security material. Without revealing the underlying economic assumptions, it is impossible for the American public to assess the legitimacy of the administration's claims of $1,300 to $2,000 income gains. For example, the USTR could have generated the number merely by dividing the increase in gross national product since 1994 by the number of American households and incorrectly assumed any benefits of free trade were shared equally by the entire population. Or, the USTR could be basing the number on the aggregate tariff reductions (which are not expected to go into full effect until 2008) divided by the number of American households.

http://www.Citizen.org

7/27/01
4:47:35 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

RISING STUN

The International Whaling Commission yesterday delayed for a year the touchy subject of whether to lift a ban on commercial whaling. A motion by pro-whaling countries asking the IWC to allow controlled hunts was withdrawn before an official vote. The pro-whaling faction is led by Japan, which ran into a P.R. nightmare last week when one of its whaling negotiators said his country used foreign aid to help persuade other countries to vote to lift the ban. He also complained about the high number of minke whales in the sea, describing the species as "the cockroach of the ocean." Pro-whaling countries at the IWC meeting did succeed in shooting down a campaign for a whale sanctuary in the South Pacific.

straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 26 Jul 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1458000/1458923.stm>

straight to the source: Washington Post, Doug Struck, 27 Jul 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/world/A58519-2001Jul26.html>

straight to the source: Sydney Morning Herald, Simon Mann, 25 Jul 2001 <http://www.smh.com.au/news/0107/25/world/world5.html>

GULP OF MEXICO

The Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, where nutrient pollution from farms in the Midwest has chocked off fish life, is bigger this year than ever before, according to university researchers. Stretching from the Mississippi River delta to Texas waters, the 8,000-square-mile, low-oxygen area is forcing crabs and other bottom feeders to the surface. Environmental groups are struggling to get the Bush administration to act on the recommendations made by a Clinton-era task force to reduce fertilizer and animal-waste runoff into the Mississippi River.

straight to the source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, Mark Schleifstein, 27 Jul 2001 <http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/newsstory/dead27.html>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Mississippi delta blues -- pollution is flushing marine life down the drain -- by David Helvarg <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books052401.asp?source=daily>

JESUS, CHRISTIE!

U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman yesterday proposed replacing five of the government's toughest air-pollution programs with a single approach favored by the electricity industry. Rules to limit mercury emissions, reduce emissions from Midwestern power plants, and restore visibility in national parks would be scrapped. As a replacement, Whitman sketched a plan to reduce nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and mercury emissions by expanding pollution-credit trading programs. Whitman also contradicted comments by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell last week and said the Bush administration would probably not have ready by this fall a substantive alternative to the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Sen. James Jeffords (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Environmental and Publics Works Committee, sparred with Whitman over the issue of climate change. He has introduced a bill requiring power plants to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 27 Jul 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57022-2001Jul26.html>

straight to the source: New York Times, Douglas Jehl, 27 Jul 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/27/politics/27ENVI.html>

CRASH TEST DUMMIES?

A panel appointed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has eased up on the auto industry in a draft report on fuel-economy standards. An earlier draft, which was leaked to the New York Times, said big increases in fuel economy for cars and SUVs would be possible over the next six to 10 years; the revised version says 10 to 12 years would be necessary. The revised version also raises the estimated cost to consumers of the improvements in fuel economy, and cautions more strongly that the changes could lead to vehicle safety problems. Enviros accused the auto industry of pressuring the panel to weaken its conclusions. Industry reps denied the charge, though some admit to contacting panel members to make their cases.

straight to the source: New York Times, Keith Bradsher, 27 Jul 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/27/national/27AUTO.html>

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Ball and Stephen Power, 27 Jul 2001 (access ain't free) <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB996185300562972276.htm>

straight to the source: USA Today, James Healey, 27 Jul 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010727/3514830s.htm>

catch it only in Grist Magazine: Drive the friendly skies -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha120800.stm?source=daily>

7/27/01
4:35:30 PM

The Nation

After Genoa: A funeral and a call from U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney for an investigation that "pursues justice"

"In the end, we all want the same thing: A better world, or, at least a less disgusting one." Giuliano Giuliani, father of slain Genoa protester Carlo Giuliani, speaking at his son's funeral.

Thousands of Italians attended the funeral Wednesday of Carlo Giuliani, the 23-year-old protester shot by police during last week’s Group of Eight summit in Genoa. Some of those who came to pay their respects wore t-shirts expressing their anger over the killing. One featured the words: "The killer’s car: CC AE 217" -- a reference to the license plate of the police vehicle that ran over Giuliani’s dead body after he was shot Friday. The victim’s father, Giuliano, appealed for the government to answer for the death of his son. "That clash, (Carlo) certainly didn't seek it," said the elder Giuliani. "And the state should answer for this murder. I want an explanation.

Calls for a more aggressive investigation of the killing have grown louder following a report in the mass-circulation Corriere della Sera newspaper, which quoted an unnamed senior police officer as saying that the officials managing the response to the Genoa protests had deployed inexperienced and inadequately trained officers. "There was no need to shoot to kill," the officer told the newspaper. "He could have fired in the air or at the boy’s legs."

Leaders of the coalition of center-left opposition parties in the Italian parliament have called for the resignation of Interior Minister Claudio Scajola, a major player in the conservative Forza Italia party led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Scajola has been the chief defender of police actions in Genoa. But the opposition is now charging that the police employed brutality protesters in Genoa.

International voices have joined the chorus of Italians questioning Scajola's quick defense of the police and demanding a thorough investigation of what happened in Genoa. "Why did other police vehicles, less than 30 meters from the besieged Land Rover, not intervene? Why were police armed with lead bullets rather than non-lethal rubber pellets?" asked London's Observer newspaper. "What strategic blunders allowed a young conscript to be so isolated and terrified? And what sort of training does this paramilitary police force give such conscripts?"

From the United States came a letter, addressed to Prime Minister Berlusconi, by U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga. An outspoken critic of police brutality in the U.S., McKinney expressed her concern that, if justice is not done in the Genoa case "doubts may arise about the existence of democracy within developed nations.

The text of McKinney's letter read:

Dear Prime Minister Berlusconi:

During the recent G-8 Summit your nation hosted in Genoa, Italy, activists and protesters from a myriad of backgrounds and with a multitude of interests gathered to share their concerns about globalization, trade and the perceived threats to the global environment, indigenous communities and developing nations' economies.

I share many of their concerns, and appreciate their efforts to increase the profile of the inequality and exploitation involved in globalization. Unfortunately, their protest was marred by the murder of one young activist, Carlo Giuliani, who was shot twice in the head and then apparently run over by a Carabinieri vehicle. I would like you to know that I support the investigation and prosecution of police officers who are found to be responsible for this atrocity. As this is the first death to occur at a recent, large protest accompanying an international summit, I believe that care must be taken to insure that justice is correctly administered in this case. Otherwise, doubts may arise about the existence of democracy within developed nations - a parallel theme often voiced at such protests.

Further, like many in your nation, I oppose the death penalty in practice and in theory, and feel that the events surrounding the death of Mr. Giuliani resemble too closely a death sentence meted out by over-zealous law enforcement agents.

As is too often the case in the United States, it is my hope that those responsible for this death will not be excused. Please see to it that a full investigation pursues justice in the name of Carlo Giuliani, and for the sake of freedom and democracy in our global community.

Sincerely,

Cynthia McKinney

Member of Congress

http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/

7/27/01
4:24:57 PM

The Nation

Thousands of Italians attended the funeral Wednesday of Carlo Giuliani, the 23-year-old protester shot by police during last week's Group of Eight summit in Genoa. Some of those who came to pay their respects wore t-shirts expressing their anger over the killing.

Calls for a more aggressive investigation of Giuliani's death have increased in the wake of a report in the mass-circulation Corriere della Sera newspaper, which quoted an unnamed senior police officer saying that the officials managing the response to the Genoa protests had deployed inexperienced and inadequately trained officers in high-pressure situations.

International voices have joined the chorus of Italians questioning Scajola's quick defense of the police and demanding a thorough investigation of what happened in Genoa.

Read more from The Nation's Washington, D.C. correspondent John Nichols in the latest installment of The Online Beat. Nichols includes the full-text of an eloquent letter sent by Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga) to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berluscioni. Exclusively at:

http://www.thenation/thebeat

And read "After Genoa," a related editorial from the most recent double-issue of The Nation at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=editors

You can also find many other new articles, columns and interviews from the August 6/13 issue of The Nation currently available:

BRUCE SHAPIRO: Dead Reckoning

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=shapiro

TIM ROBBINS: What I Voted For

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=robbins

ERIC BOEHLERT: Junk Journalism

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=boehlert

ERIC ALTERMAN: Hey Buddy, Wanna Buy A Bridge?

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=alterman

JOANN WYPIJEWSKI: Audacity On Trial

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=wypijewski

JOHN NICHOLS: Is This The New Face of the Democratic Party?

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010806&s=nichols2

THE NATION ONLINE INTERVIEW SERIES:

Read an exclusive interview with author, activist and educator Mark Crispin Miller currently on his new book "The Bush Dyslexicon." Miller warns that we "misunderestimate" George W. Bush at our own peril. Available exclusively at:

http://www.thenation.com/special/20010726miller.mhtml

THIS WEEK IN THE NATION ARCHIVES:

On the eve of the first lunar landing, a Nation editorial from July 28, 1969 ponders the future of the U.S. space program.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=archive&s=19690728moon

RECENT NATION ARTICLES

And don't miss the host of recent articles of interest still available including Walden Bello's eyewitness account of the battle of Genoa; Katrina vanden Heuvel's look at a blueprint for a progressive future; Katha Pollitt on new Bush appointees; Christopher Hitchens on Henry Kissinger and Victor Navasky on Cold War Ghosts. All accessible at:

http://www.thenation.com

7/27/01
4:19:58 PM

Dog Beats Alligator

An 84-year-old woman has her dog to thanks for fending off an alligator that may've been trying to attack her after she fell, helpless, near a Florida canal.

Ruth Gay told her family she couldn't see the battle between her 52-pound dog, Blue, and the gator because it was dark and she was still lying on the ground, but she's convinced he saved her, the Fort Myers News-Press reports.

Albert Gibson, Gay's son-in-law, said the elderly woman was walking the dog, an Australian blue heeler, when she fell face first, breaking her nose and both shoulders. She rolled over onto her back, but said that's all she could do. "Blue sat by as she hollered for help," he said.

But the home is isolated -- surrounded by a vacant lot and two vacant homes. There's also a canal nearby, where three alligators, ranging in length from 6-12 feet, have been seen.

No one answered her calls and Blue suddenly left her side.

"She heard some noises, and then the dog started to fight," Sylvia Gibson said. "It was very dark and she couldn't see what was going on.

The Gibsons -- who had been at the beach -- returned home and the dog ran up to them. They took Gay to Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Meyer and after she was settled, they took Blue to the vet who said the wounds, some 30 of them, looked like gator bites.

"The doctor was amazed that the dog could survive," Gibson said.

Gay underwent surgery on her shoulders Wednesday and is expected to recover.

The Gibsons have asked wildlife officers to remove the alligators from the canal.

7/27/01
12:28:49 PM

FAIR

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Media analysis, critiques and news reports

ACTION ALERT:

Police Violence in Genoa-- Par for the Course?

Media complacency helps normalize assaults on demonstrators

July 26, 2001

The tens of thousands of people who gathered last weekend to protest the G8 summit in Genoa were greeted by a "ring of steel" manned by police, military and paramilitary forces; one protester, Carlo Giuliani, was shot in the head, run over and killed by police. U.S. media ran sensationalistic reports on the drama "in the streets of this gritty port city" (ABC World News Tonight, 7/20/01), but by and large showed little curiosity over about basic questions such as why Italian forces were armed with live ammunition.

This trend was particularly noticeable on the three major television networks' nightly newscasts, which all managed to focus on the violence without seriously investigating its causes; when questions of tactics arose, it was usually in the context of whether protesters were too violent, not police. In addition, only superficial attention was paid to the substantive policy issues behind the summit and the demonstrations.

"Genoa is ready for war," reported NBC Nightly News' Jim Maceda in the run-up to the protests (7/19/01). "Today over 20,000 Italian police on high alert, the port's shipping lanes closed, surface-to-air missiles deployed at the airport. The site of tomorrow's economic summit now a two-square-mile red no-go zone, shops closed, every resident's ID checked." Why such heavy militarization? Maceda gave the clear impression that Genoa's intense security measures were a necessary response to dangerous radicals. "Organized, sophisticated, tens of thousands strong. Their mission: to do battle with the world economic powers.... With this chaos of environmentalists, young communists and extreme anarchists, officials here expect this volatile mix could lead to perhaps deadly violence."

As in fact it did, though it was neither a wild-eyed tree-hugger nor a communist youth who pulled the trigger. All three networks reported Giuliani's killing, but none raised questions about the use of live ammunition for crowd control. NBC Nightly News (7/21/01), while careful to emphasize that "the large majority" of activists in Genoa were "all non-violent," sidestepped questions of police misconduct in Giuliani's death by focusing on Giuliani's links to the Black Bloc, whose members NBC tarred as "apolitical, often drugged, itching for a fight."

The NBC report made clear that many police actions had been "extremely violent," but also stated that Italian police were "learning" and had become "more careful" to target only "black-clad extremists" by helicopter, "then cutting them off before beating them." The report provided no further analysis of this practice, leaving viewers to wonder if police beatings were perhaps the right way to deal with "extremists."

ABC World News Tonight (7/21/01) also made an effort to explain that most protester violence was initiated by "small bands," and that "the vast majority of protesters... came here to make argument, not trouble." But like the other two networks, ABC failed to seriously address the question of police brutality.

CBS Evening News was perhaps the most careless with generalizations about "violent protests": "Violent demonstrators laid waste to the city's center" in a "frenzy of destruction," reported CBS's John Roberts (7/21/01); the day before (7/20/01), Roberts told viewers that "violent protests transformed parts of this tranquil Mediterranean port city into a war zone today" in an episode of "civil unrest and trouble-making."

The July 22 police raid on the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum-- the umbrella group coordinating the protests-- and the neighboring Independent Media Center (IMC) received largely indifferent coverage. Reports indicate that some 200 police officers descended on the Forum, brutally beating the activists sleeping there in an attack that injured 61 people, with more than a dozen of the 93 people arrested carried out of the building on stretchers, some unconscious (London Guardian, 7/24/01).

During the attack, journalists at the IMC were detained and searched (and therefore unable to document the beatings occurring next door); several reported that police trashed the IMC offices and confiscated files. A source at the Italian Interior Ministry told the London Guardian (7/24/01) that "the raid had turned into a revenge attack by police venting their frustration"; there have been calls in the Italian parliament for a commission of inquiry into the policing, and for the resignation of the interior minister.

ABC World News Tonight did not report the raid at all. CBS Evening News (7/22/01) mentioned it in passing, with John Roberts noting almost approvingly that "the tactics were heavy-handed, but the streets were quiet today." Commendably, NBC Nightly News (7/22/01) devoted more significant attention to the attack, with Jim Maceda reporting that 66 activists had been "beaten mercilessly," and noting that while police claimed the crackdown had been on "violent extremists," protest leaders countered that all the victims had been non-violent and "the latest victims of police brutality."

And what about the issues that brought so many protesters into the streets? CBS Evening News (7/21/01) lamented that "rock-tossing, firebomb-throwing anarchism" was all many people would remember about Genoa, but seemed utterly unconscious that news coverage might have had anything to do with this problem. The report segued into uninformative soundbites about debt relief from Bono and Bob Geldof, which prompted reporter Bill Plante to opine: "Sometimes it takes a rock star to keep your issue from being drowned out by violence. Other non-violent groups find themselves ignored." CBS, of course, was one of the media outlets doing the ignoring.

ACTION:

Please contact the networks' nightly news shows and urge them to conduct serious investigations into the growing trend of police violence at anti-globalization protests. You might also urge them not to wait for massive civil unrest to report on globalization issues.

CONTACT:

NBC Nightly News

Phone: 212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259

Fax: 202-362-2009

mailto:Nightly@nbc.com

ABC's World News Tonight

47 W. 66 St., New York, NY 10023

Phone: 212-456-7777

Fax: 212-456-4297

mailto:peterjennings@worldnewstonight.abcnews.com

CBS Evening News

Phone: 212-975-3691, 202-457-4385

Fax: 212-975-1893

mailto:audsvcs@cbs.com

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

Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.

For alternative coverage of the G8 summit and protests, see:

The Independent Media Center, http://www.indymedia.org

7/27/01
12:11:24 PM

RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #726

SCIENCE, PRECAUTION AND PESTICIDES

by Peter Montague. Rachel.org

Lymphoma is cancer of the white blood cells, and half the people who get it die within 5 years. Those 5 years are likely to be a hellish combination of fear, worry, pain, and sickness caused by standard medical therapies -- radiation treatment, surgery (including bone marrow transplants or stem cell transplants) and/or chemotherapy. Side effects from therapies can include pain, nausea, vomiting, persistent mouth sores, and secondary infections like colds and flu after cancer therapies damage the immune system. Worse, lymphoma can go into remission, then flare up without warning, requiring all the therapies to be repeated. This is a disease that gives its victims a terrifying roller coaster ride through the valley of death.

There are two main kinds of lymphoma -- Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or NHL. NHL accounts for about 88% of all lymphoma. Some 287,000 people in the U.S. are living with NHL at any given time. About 55,000 new cases of NHL will be diagnosed this year in the U.S. and even more will be diagnosed next year because lymphoma is the second-fastest-growing kind of cancer. Between 1975 and 1998, the incidence (occurrence) of lymphoma increased at about 2.2% per year, though the rate of increase has slowed during the past decade.[1]

No one knows what causes lymphoma, but we know that all cancers are caused by multiple gene mutations (requiring probably 5 to 10 separate injuries) and/or by damage to the parts of the immune system that normally destroy cancer cells. (See REHN #693.) In the past two decades medical researchers have come to suspect that various combinations of factors give rise to lymphoma -- a weakened immune system, exposure to certain kinds of chemicals, and perhaps exposure to one or more viruses. Studies seem to implicate one particular class of chemicals -- chlorophenols. Chlorophenols are chlorine-containing chemicals that include dioxins, PCBs, DDT, and the so-called "phenoxy herbicides," including the weed killers 2,4,5-T, and 2,4-D. This last one is the most popular crabgrass and dandelion killer in America, sold as Weed-B-Gone, Weedone, Miracle, Demise, Lawn-Keep, Raid Weed Killer, Plantgard, Hormotox, and Ded-Weed, among other trademarked names.

Now the Lymphoma Foundation of America has pulled together and summarized in a 49-page booklet all the available studies of the relationship between lymphoma and pesticides.[2] It is an impressive piece of work by Susan Osburn, who directed the project, and a scientific review panel of 12 physicians and lymphoma researchers. The booklet summarizes 99 studies of humans and one study of pet dogs (see REHN #250) in relation to pesticide exposures.

Of the 99 human studies, 75 indicate a connection between exposure to pesticides and lymphomas. Twenty-four show no relationship.[3] The one study of pet dogs indicates that the popular crabgrass killer, 2,4-D, doubles a pet dog's chances of getting cancer. (See REHN #250.)

Does all this "prove" that exposure to pesticides causes cancer? No, it doesn't.

In anything as complicated as pesticide exposures or even cigarette smoke, science can never prove beyond every possible doubt that X causes Y. There is always room for a researcher employed by Philip Morris or the Crop Protection Association (the pesticide trade group) to say, "Couldn't this disease be partly caused by some factor that you haven't taken into consideration? Maybe it's partly caused by some factor you haven't even thought of." And the honest answer must always be, "Yes, there's a slim chance that it could be." Where chemicals and humans and ecosystems are concerned, the complexity is enormous, the tools of science are crude, and what is not known is always much larger than what is known.

It's time we admitted to ourselves that science will never provide definitive answers to some of the most important questions that we face. Still, as individuals and, as a human society, we DO need answers. We can read the hundred studies of lymphomas and pesticides -- 75% of which tell us there's danger lurking here -- and then we must decide:

(a) do we personally want to reduce our exposure to pesticides?; and

(b) do we want to start asking, where did pesticide corporations get the right to spread their dangerous products into the soil, water, and air that we all depend upon?

The Lymphoma Foundation's booklet lists 12 ways that most of us are routinely exposed to pesticides in our daily lives even if we use no pesticides in our homes: routine spraying of apartments, condos, offices (and the associated lawns), public buildings and public spaces (parks, green spaces alongside highways, power line rights of way), and in motels, hotels, and restaurants. Pesticides can also be measured in most foods, much of the water we drink, in the air, and even in rain water. (See REHN #660.) We might well ask, where did these corporations get permission to violate our well-established human right to personal security? And why do we allow these toxic trespasses into our bodies to occur without our informed consent?[4]

In other words, we might begin to view pesticide exposures not as a scientific question, but mainly as a question of morals and ethics, a question of human rights. If we view the problem in this light, then we can review the scientific evidence without expecting it to provide "the answer" to our questions, because science cannot answer questions of morals and ethics and human rights. Science can provide food for thought -- sometimes very compelling food for thought -- but we must provide the thought. Whether to use pesticides -- and whether we want to allow others to expose us and our children to pesticides -- are ethical and political questions. The answers lie within each of us and not with some panel of scientific experts.

What does science give us for guidance? This is where the Lymphoma Foundation's booklet is so useful:

1) The available evidence strongly indicates that people exposed to pesticides in their work are more likely than non-exposed or less-exposed people to suffer an excess of lymphoma.

2) There are a few studies that tell us that parents who use pesticides are more likely (than non-users) to raise children with an excess of lymphoma. In other words, we need to consider the possibility that, by using pesticides, we are increasing not just our own but also our children's chances of getting this awful disease. (Just as pet dogs pick up pesticides from lawns and track them into homes, so do children.)

3) We learn from the Lymphoma Foundation's booklet that scientists employed by pesticide corporations are more likely than independent researchers to find no connection between pesticides and lymphoma. In other words, consciously or not, a scientist's source of funding often influences the outcome of the research. (See REHN #581.) Worse, there is evidence that some scientists employed by chemical corporations conduct studies which could not possibly reveal a relationship between pesticides and lymphoma because they lack the "statistical power" to do so; some of those scientists then falsely claim that their studies provide positive evidence that pesticides are not associated with lymphoma. Some corporations evidently require scientists to check their ethical principles at the door when they report for work.

4) We learn from the Lymphoma Foundation's study that not only chlorophenol pesticides, but also atrazine and glyphosate are statistically linked to lymphoma. Atrazine is used on 96% of the U.S. corn crop each year, is found in most drinking water supplies in the midwest during the growing season, and has been strongly linked to birth defects in the children of midwestern farmers. (See REHN #665, #660, and #553.)

Glyphosate is sold as Roundup, Rodeo, Touchdown, Rattler, Sting, and Pondmaster, among other trademarked names. (See REHN #660.) Roundup is the first reason Monsanto Corporation got into the business of genetically engineering food crops. Monsanto now sells "Roundup ready" seeds for corn, soybeans, and cotton; wheat will be next. These are seeds engineered to withstand a thorough dousing with Roundup, which kills weeds without killing the Roundup-ready crops. To make "Roundup ready" seeds legal, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had to triple the amount of glyphosate residues that it allows on crops. For years, Roundup has been Monsanto's most profitable product, and genetic engineering has allowed it to sell -- and to spread into soil and water -- gobs more of it. (See REHN #637, #639, #660, #686.)

As we weigh whether we want to take action against those who expose us and our children to pesticides, we are not limited to thinking about lymphoma.

Pesticide exposures seem to give rise to Parkinson's (REHN #635) -- a horrible degenerative disease of the nervous system. Pesticide exposures diminish children's memory, physical stamina, coordination, and ability to carry out simple tasks like drawing a stick figure of a human being. (See REHN #648.) Pesticide exposures seem to make children more aggressive. Pesticide exposures seem to contribute to the epidemic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that has swept through U.S. children in recent years. (See REHN #678.) And, as we saw above, pesticides are strongly linked to birth defects.

If we decide to take up the cudgel against pesticide exposures, we should consider carefully the basis of our strategy. For 30 years the environmental movement has fought science with science, dueling to a draw. Pesticide use has steadily climbed, despite all the scientific evidence of harm.

No, science will not solve this problem for us. Isn't it time to consider a human rights approach, an ethical challenge to the poisoners? And time to find new allies -- perhaps the chemical workers exposed to these poisons? They need good jobs, as we all do, but do they want to leave a skull and crossbones as their legacy? Do they want their children sick? Of course they don't. They need our help, we need theirs.

The old science-based strategy has failed us. Perhaps a new, precautionary path can get us where we need to go. The precautionary principle says, "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." (See REHN #586.) It is a broad ethical principle. It can guide us all -- workers and environmentalists -- in a righteous fight against corporate greed.

Peter Montague

Thanks to Rachel Massey for research assistance.

[1] http://www.cfl.org/resources_factsheet_non-hodgkins.cfm

[2] Susan Osburn, RESEARCH REPORT: DO PESTICIDES CAUSE LYMPHOMA? Available by U.S. mail from Lymphoma Foundation of America, P.O. Box 15335, Chevy Chase, MD 20825. Tel. (202) 223-6181. ISBN 0-9705127-0-8. Available at: http://www.lymphomahelp.org/docs/- research/researchreport/rr_2000.pdf.

[3] Not all the links revealed in these 75 studies are "statistically significant" though the vast majority are. If a study revealed a positive correlation between exposure to pesticides and increased lymphomas, I counted it as "showing a connection." Likewise, if a study revealed no connection between pesticides and lymphomas -- even if the study was so poorly designed that it could not possibly reveal a connection even if a connection existed -- I counted it as "showing no relationship." --P.M.

[4] The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the U.S. in 1948, says (Article 3), "Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person." Article 4, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution obligates the federal government to protect the citizenry against "domestic violence" which arguably includes modern forms of domestic violence such as toxic assault. See

http://www.article4.com/.

Environmental Research Foundation

P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403

Fax (410) 263-8944; E-mail: erf@rachel.org

All back issues are available by E-mail: send E-mail to

info@rachel.org with the single word HELP in the message.

Back issues are also available from http://www.rachel.org.

7/27/01
12:06:05 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

GROUND ZERO

by Debbie S. Miller, The Amicus Journal

-- With the Bush administration clamoring to start drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it's important to examine the impact on wildlife as well as the effect on the region's native people.

WHAT'S YOUR STORY?

Web site review by Al Paulson

-- As a dot-com refugee, Liisa Ogburn collects stories from other folks who went through the manic "Internet Boom and Bust" of the late 1990s.

CARRYING CASH? YOU MUST BE A CROOK!

by Greg Land, Creative Loafing Atlanta

-- Civil libertarians are outraged over revelations that the DEA and other federal police agencies reward rail and air carriers who tip them off about cash-heavy customers.

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

7/27/01
12:01:47 PM

PRESS RELEASE

July 26, 2001

Oglala Lakota Nation Asserts Treaty Rights to S.D. US Attorney in Industrial Hemp Dispute

Pine Ridge, SD -- A July 18, 2001 letter (below) from John Yellow Bird Steele, President of the Oglala Lakota Nation (Pine Ridge), to Michelle Tapken, US Attorney for South Dakota, asserts the Indian nation's right to grow industrial hemp under provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. This assertion is a direct challenge to the US government's implication that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970 abrogates provisions of the 1868 treaty.

The DEA cut down the first industrial hemp crop at Pine Ridge in a widely publicized raid on August 24th, 2000, conducted under the auspices of the CSA. The treaty of 1868 gave the Lakota Indian nations the mandate to grow food and fiber crops, effectively switching their livelihood to an agricultural base, which is generally recognized as part of the treaty's original intent. Hemp was commonly grown in the United States at the time of the Fort Laramie Treaty.

The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 is a federal statute that criminalized the production, manufacture, and distribution of controlled substances, including marijuana. The CSA defined marijuana without distinction from industrial hemp. Legislation in various states in recent years (including Nebraska, Kentucky, Dakotas', and Hawaii among others has sought to distinguish between industrial hemp and marijuana by defining hemp in terms of its low tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content. THC is the psychoactive chemical in marijuana.

On July 28th, 1998, the Lakota Nation passed an ordinance that defined industrial hemp as Cannabis sativa plants containing less than 1 percent THC by weight, the same definition used in legislation seeking to legalize industrial hemp in various states. The ordinance did not affect the existing illegal status of marijuana in the Oglala Lakota Nation.

Laws like the CSA are not applicable to Indians unless the act expressly states that it applies to Indians and that it is abrogating any treaty right the Indians may have. However, before ever getting to the treaty, the Lakota have a reserved right to grow industrial hemp by virtue of their sovereignty preexisting that of the U. S. Government. Therefore, the Lakota argue that the CSA is inapplicable to its citizens and does not preempt an Indian's right to engage in agriculture, including the growing of industrial hemp, under the Fort Laramie Treaty.

The Oglala Lakota Nation, in the July 18th letter to the US Attorney's office, argue that the "Controlled Substances Act of 1970 did not divest the Lakota People of our reserved right to plant and harvest whatever crop we deem beneficial to our reservation. Therefore, we regard the enforcement of our hemp ordinance and prosecution of our marijuana laws as tribal matters to be handled by our Oglala Sioux Tribal Public Safety Law Enforcement Services."

The harvest season for industrial hemp takes place during August. The US Attorney for South Dakota has recently asserted that any individual continuing to grow hemp on the Pine Ridge Reservation will be prosecuted with penalties of minimum ten years to life in prison. The hemp is used to build houses, which would replace current substandard housing on the reservation. The situation is causing great concern among the Native Americans.

For more information see http://www.nativesunite.org/hemp

Oglala Sioux Tribe

Box H

Pine Ridge, S.D. 57770

July 18th, 2001

Dear Ms. Tapken, U.S. Attorney for South Dakota:

I respectfully request that you direct the law enforcement agencies under your authority to refrain from further contact with our tribal members regarding the cultivation of industrial hemp, or encroachment upon our reservation for the purpose of enforcing your Controlled Substances Act. That Act does not apply to our reservation or our People.

The powers of local self-government enjoyed by the Lakota people existed prior to the United States Constitution. Our local governmental powers were not created by the Constitution. Our nation, our culture and laws, precedes your nation, your "culture," and your laws. Before non-Indians came to our country, the Lakota had a rich history, language, religion, culture, and civilization; we had our own customs and laws by which we lived. We were, and continue to be, a sovereign nation.

The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 did not divest the Lakota People of our reserved right to plant and harvest whatever crops we deem beneficial to our reservation; nor did the Act abrogate Congress's ratification of the reserved to write in the 1868 treaty. Therefore we regard the enforcement of our hemp ordinance and prosecution of our marijuana laws as tribal matters to be handled by our Oglala Sioux Tribal Public Safety Law Enforcement Services. As such, I respectfully request that you direct the law enforcement agencies under your authority to refrain from further contact with our tribal members regarding the cultivation of industrial hemp, or encroachment upon our reservation for the purpose of enforcing your controlled substances act. That act does not apply to our reservation or our people.

We ask for your government's compassion as we try to ease the pain of our poverty through hemp manufacture. We asked that you take a look at all of the hemp legislation being introduced around your country and realize the growing support for hemp by your nation's people as well. I would add that during World War II your government signed contracts with members of the Pine Ridge Reservation to grow industrial hemp for your war effort. In other words, when your government needed the benefits of growing hemp to aid your war effort, and encouraged its growth on the reservation, we supported your government by doing so. Now my nation needs to grow industrial hemp to aid our efforts at becoming more self-sufficient. We would appreciate your support in our endeavors.

I must reiterate that hemp agriculture on reservation land is a tribal matter to be handled exclusively by tribal law. If you or your law enforcement agencies have questions or concerns relating to enforcement of our laws, I must insist that you direct them to the Oglala Sioux Tribal offices and not our individual tribal members. Again, the proper procedure is to contact the tribal offices with your questions and concerns, not our individual members.

Thank you in advance for what I anticipate will be your respectful consideration in this delicate matter. In addition, thank you for directing any further hemp related questions to my office. I remain,

Sincerely yours,

Oglala Sioux Tribe

John Yellow Bird Steele

President

cc: The World Natives Unite

7/27/01
11:58:34 AM

Planet Ark World Environment News

EPA nearing decision on Hudson River dredging - Whitman - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11785

Yellow-billed cuckoo in trouble in Western US - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11798

Bipartisan Senate plan seeks reduced carbon emissions - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11803

UPDATE - Deadly West Nile virus spreading in US - CDC - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11800

Alaska oil spills raise worries ahead of ANWR vote - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11787

Ohio Government signs bill for environmental bonds - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11784

Lieberman may subpoena Bush environmental records - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11783

EPA aims to simplify pollution rules for utilities - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11782

US ethanol group pledges to meet Calif. demand - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11781

California struggles with need for power vs. pollution - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11780

Old hunting, fishing blamed for today's coast woes - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11779

More than 300 firms sign up for UN Global Compact - UNITED NATIONS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11788

Study links pesticides to male infertility - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11789

Carrots and sticks to turn big business greener - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11795

Whale meeting censures Japan on porpoise cull - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11801

British police arrest 41 protesters at Esso depot - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11797

ANALYSIS - CO2 emissions trading long way off despite Kyoto deal - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11802

Whale meeting agrees urgent fish stock study - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11792

Anachronistic Whaling Commission stumbles on - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11791

Consumers ask Asia to adopt tough EU GMO rules - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11793

Etna's farmers - a love-hate bond with a volcano - ITALY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11790

UPDATE - Israeli divers trained in poisoned waters - inquiry - ISRAEL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11786

Thousands ill as Phnom Penh air pollution doubles - CAMBODIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11799

Brazil approves fuel alcohol export policy - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11778

Australia govt urged to lift wind - fired energy goal - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11794

Koala lovers call for action to save gum trees - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11796

7/27/01
11:57:01 AM

AlterNet.org This week AlterNet launches DrugReporter Headlines, a weekly newsletter that will bring you the best journalism covering the U.S.'s War on Drugs. The newsletter will follow prevailing hot topics such as racial profiling, medical marijuana, policy reform and Plan Colombia.

Many of these stories will be featured on our DrugReporter page, where you also can find background information, links and action alerts:

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=17

The War on Drugs is one of the great policy catastrophes of the past decade. Yet it rolls on despite widespread evidence of violence and human rights violations, and despite its obvious failure to reduce drug trafficking or consumption.

If you would like to receive weekly DrugReporter Headlines, you may subscribe to through our website at:

http://lists.alternet.org/drugreporter_subscribe

or you can send a blank email to:

subscribe-drugreporter@lists.alternet.org.

July 25, 2001

Drug War Pulse: Ten Top Drug War Stories

1. PLAN COLOMBIA SET TO ESCALATE: An obscure clause removes the cap on the number of private mercenaries and weapons that can be dispatched to Colombia.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11170

2. NARCOWATCH ON TRIAL FOR ALLEGING CITIGROUP AFFILIATE'S INVOLVEMENT IN THE DRUG TRADE: Reporter Al Giordano and his colleague found evidence suggesting that Banamex, a Mexican bank subsidiary of Citigroup, could be laundering drug money. Now he is on trial for slander.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11124

http://www.drcnet.org/wol/194.html#drugwarontrial

http://www.narconews.com/

3. DRUG REFORM, CALIFORNIA STYLE: A status report on the implementation of Prop 36 in California.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11225

4. RACIAL PROFILING CREATING TURMOIL IN TULIA, TEXAS: When authorities arrested 10 percent of the small town's black population for cocaine trafficking, civil rights organizations across the country cried foul. Now, two years later, activists are stepping up their protests, trying to get the victims out of jail

http://www.drcnet.org/wol/194.html#tulia

http://www.drugsense.org/foj/

5. ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES: Zero tolerance laws punish ordinary people for ordinary mistakes with draconian consequences.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11202

6. CRACKDOWN ON RAVES IS CRIMINALIZING DANCE PARTIES: In the government's craze to stem teen drug use it has declared war on dance parties and nightclubs -- even glowsticks.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11116

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/01/33/independence-cogan.shtml

7. CANADIAN POT INDUSTRY AND PROSPECTS FOR REFORM: As marijuana becomes an increasingly important part of the Canadian economy, the impetus for legalization grows stronger despite consternation from the DEA.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11223

8. MEDICAL MARIJUANA: SHOT DOWN BUT NOT ABANDONED: Despite the Supreme Court decision that the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative could not use medical necessity as cause to distribute marijuana, advocates vow to continue fighting.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11030

9.DRUG TREATMENT ABUSE: Boot camp-style drug treatment programs profess to help kids with addiction. Some describe their methods as torture.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11228

10. JOHN WALTERS NOMINATED AS NEW DRUG CZAR: The hearings on Bush's drug warrior John Walters are scheduled to begin in September.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10856

7/27/01
11:44:18 AM

NRDC's EARTH ACTION: The Bulletin for Environmental Activists

ENERGY LEGISLATION: *Urgent! House vote next week* Tell your representative to reject Arctic drilling and pollution subsidies and to instead pass a responsible energy bill.

Leaders in the House of Representatives plan to bring an energy bill to a vote next week that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other pristine wilderness to oil and gas drilling, provide tens of billions of dollars to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, and increase air pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Instead of investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources in a serious way, the bill proposes huge new tax breaks for the oil and coal industries -- even though energy companies are currently making record-breaking profits. And rather than raising fuel economy standards adequately, the bill ducks the issue by offering a provision that will do almost nothing to help reduce gasoline use, and could actually increase fuel consumption. Meanwhile, the bill would encourage development of more coal-fired power plants -- the dirtiest source of energy, responsible for premature deaths, asthma, mercury poisoning, acid rain, and global warming -- and would also promote new investments in nuclear power, increasing the risks of nuclear weapon proliferation and contamination from nuclear waste.

Between now and the time the House votes on the bill, bipartisan amendments will be offered to save the Arctic Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas drilling and increase vehicle fuel economy standards. Other amendments may seek to preserve stronger federal oversight of drilling operations on sensitive public lands, and reduce subsidies in the current bill for polluting industries.

What To Do

Contact your representative *today* and urge him or her to oppose the current House energy bill and support amendments to fix it.

Contact Information

You can email or fax your representative directly from NRDC's Earth Action Center at http://www.nrdc.org/action. If you prefer to call your representative, the Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

About Our Bulletins/How to Subscribe & Unsubscribe

NRDC distributes three bulletins by email. To subscribe to any or all of them or to join our activist networks, go to:

http://www.join.nrdcaction.org/subscribe.asp.

7/26/01
5:32:08 PM

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

A Murfreesboro, Tenn., pastor, Jerry Trousdale, is practicing what he's preaching and becoming a local hero by doing so.

Several years ago, he heard about young children brutally scarred by fighting in the troubled West African nation of Sierra Leone. He went there to size up the situation. Returning to Tennessee, he spread the word and began raising money.

Now, according to the Tennessean newspaper, he has just returned from Sierra Leone with a five-year-old boy whose face was mutilated by rebel forces. The boy's mouth was crushed by a rifle butt when insurgents raided his home. The resulting infection destroyed much of that part of his face.

Trousdale's Carpenter's House church will underwrite much of the cost of facial reconstruction. Doctors at the Middle Tennessee Medical Center will do the rest.

7/26/01
5:30:41 PM

One of India's most notorious bandits -- who spurned a life of crime and turned to politics -- was killed outside her New Delhi home Wednesday by three masked gunmen as she returned from parliament.

Phoolan Devi was shot at point-blank range with automatic weapons as she got out of her car. Her bodyguard, who was also wounded, returned fire and wounded one of the attackers, who all fled.

Devi died en route to a hospital.

Devi -- who was born a member of India's lowest caste, the untouchables -- became famous in the 1970s after avenging her gang rape by killing the 22 upper-caste Hindus who had killed her lover, gang-raped her and assaulted her for several days, parading her naked in villages.

She subsequently became one of India's most notorious bandits, accused of more than 50 killings and 70 robberies. Her notoriety reached cult status and many members of her caste saw her as a heroine -- a sort of female Robin Hood.

Devi and her gang were cornered by police in the forests of northern Uttar Pradesh state in 1983 and forced to surrender. She remained in prison for 11 years without a trial before she was freed on parole in 1994.

In 1996, she was elected to parliament and re-elected in 1999.

The 1994 film "Bandit Queen," which portrayed her life, made her famous outside India, too.

7/26/01
5:24:35 PM

Swimming For A Cause

By Dylan Darling, The Register-Guard

A Eugene man plans to swim all 1,243 miles of the Columbia River, but not to get his name in the record books.

Rather, Christopher Swain is going the distance of the West's greatest river to raise concerns about what he calls "a contaminated beauty."

Swain won't start the 160-day swim until next summer, but he already is telling people about his trip in hopes of raising $1 million for protection and restoration of the Columbia.

"I am willing to put my life on the line to get people to think about the Columbia in real terms," said Swain, who works for Columbia Riverkeeper, an organization dedicated to improving the river.

Swain hopes to start in late June 2002 at Canal Flats, B.C., and finish in early November at Cape Disappointment in Washington. In the coming year, he'll work to focus attention on the river, raise money for the organization and train for the attempt.

This won't be the first time Swain has taken on a long swim for a cause. In 1996 he swam the 210-mile lower Connecticut River, from Vermont to the Atlantic Ocean.

He began that swim in an effort to bring attention to human rights issues but found that most people he met were more interested in talking about the river and its water quality.

"Because I was in the river, people want to know what is in the river," he said.

It started him thinking about another swim, this time focusing on the environment.

Swain, a native of New England, first saw the Columbia in 1997 when he was visiting relatives in Oregon.

"I thought, `Oh no, I want to swim again,' " he said. "It grabbed my heart in five seconds."

Swain moved to Eugene in 1999, following his wife as she went to graduate school at the University of Oregon. Early this year he took his idea of swimming the length of the river to Columbia Riverkeeper, which hired him for a job aimed at educating the public about the Columbia. Swain soon will begin boating the river, talking with others on the water and people along the shore.

He recalls that his first sight of the Columbia was disappointing.

He'd expected a great, free-flowing river, teeming with salmon but found a largely slow-moving river, more like a reservoir in many areas than a river.

Although the dams seem to be permanent fixtures, Swain hopes his actions can boost efforts to improve the Columbia's water quality.

Swain said he connects with the river by being in the water.

"The river becomes real to me," he said.

To protect himself from the real cold of the Columbia's water, Swain will wear a wet suit designed for swimming. He'll swim six to eight hours and 12 to 14 miles per day.

He'll have help on his trek from two people in a nearby boat and others driving along in two vehicles.

Swain will face a variety of dangers, from submerged pilings and barrels to more natural challenges, such as rapids and the current.

Though he didn't swim in college, Swain participated in crew rowing, bike racing and triathlons.

He said the training techniques he learned for these sports are helping him prepare for the Columbia.

He has been swimming about 20 miles a week, as well as cross-training with hill running and weight lifting.

"I'm training myself to keep going when I don't want to," he said.

Although his mother worries about everything from polar bears in British Columbia (there aren't any) to container ships near Portland (there are plenty of them), Swain said most of his friends aren't surprised by his upcoming effort.

"To most people who know me, it doesn't seem odd to them," he said.

Columbia River Swim

What: Christopher Swain will swim the 1,243-mile length of the Columbia to raise awareness about the river's deterioration.

When: June-November 2002.

Information: Call Columbia Riverkeeper, (877) 252-6077.

On the Web:

http://www.ColumbiaRiverKeeper.org

7/26/01
5:18:44 PM

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

The ancient oracle at Delphi in Greece was the most sacred site in the ancient world for centuries and among the most influential. Rulers from all around the Mediterranean, famous philosophers such as Socrates, and even legendary heroes like Hercules regarded the oracles as channels to the gods and came, often bearing gifts, for guidance from the priestesses.

Now researchers say those prophecies that helped determined the fate of Western civilization may've been induced by mind-altering vapors from chasms deep beneath the temple.

Ancient reports linked the Delphic oracle to vision-inducing fumes that issued from a chasm from deep in the earth. However, modern scholars up to now dismissed these accounts as a myth.

But in 1995, geologist Jelle de Boer of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., discovered a series of faults in the earth at Delphi while conducting geological surveys for the Greek government. These faults confirmed the existence of a rift that ran directly under the site of the old temple.

Working with archaeologist John Hale at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and marine chemist Jeff Chanton at Florida State University in Tallahassee, de Boer ran chemical analyses on mineral and spring water samples from Delphi. They discovered ethane and methane, which have a narcotic effect. They also found traces of ethylene, a sweet-smelling anesthetic gas that can induce trances and out-of-body experiences.

"We believe the temple was constructed to enclose these gases in an oracular chamber sunken below the floor," Hale said. "The gases helped trigger visions in the priestesses as they sat in their tall golden tripods above the rift."

Although there's not much gas at Delphi now, the scientists feel the simple fact that it was there is significant enough to help validate the ancient stories. "We hope out studies and others will help bring ancient sources more respect," Hale said.

7/26/01
5:13:13 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

BACKSTROKE TO THE FUTURE

Christopher Swain of Eugene, Ore., plans to swim all 1,243 miles of the Columbia River to call attention to what he describes as "a contaminated beauty." The feds are now investigating the river for sources of mercury and other nasties. Swain, who works for Columbia Riverkeeper, will embark on the 160-day swim next summer; in the meantime, he's in fundraising mode, trying to raise $1 million for protection of the river. The Columbia won't be the first river Swain has practiced his backstroke on: In 1996, he swam 210 miles from Vermont to the Atlantic Ocean to raise the public profile of the Connecticut River.

straight to the source: Eugene Register-Guard, Dylan Darling, 25 Jul 2001 <http://www.registerguard.com/news/20010725/1d.cr.swimmer.0725.html>

straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Robert McClure, 26 Jul 2001 <http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/32777_mercury26.shtml>

THE BROWN LAGOON

Lagoons of animal waste from large factory farms are threatening drinking water and recreational waters across the country, according to a report released Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Clean Water Network. The groups want new lagoons to be banned and existing ones to be phased out within the next five years. The U.S. EPA this month is weighing whether to impose tougher pollution rules on hog, poultry, and dairy farms. But don't get your hopes up -- the agency under President Bush hasn't been supportive of tightening clean water rules. Industry representatives say more restrictions on the lagoons could drive some farms out of business.

straight to the source: Kansas City Star, Michael Mansur, 24 Jul 2001 <http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/local.pat,local/3accd866.724,.html>

CAFFEINE FIX

With the support of environmentalists and other activists, some eco-friendly coffees are hitting the big time. Borders Books, Hyatt hotels, Safeway, and Starbucks are all selling sustainable blends. Bird-lovers point consumers to "shade-grown" coffee that protects the trees used by migratory songbirds; other greenies talk up "organic" coffees; and still others tout "fair-trade" coffees that guarantee farmers a minimum price for their beans. Sustainable java might not be everyone's cup of tea -- green beans are still a tiny part of the overall coffee market -- but the demand for it is definitely on the rise.

straight to the source: USA Today, Patrick McMahon, 26 Jul 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010726/3511266s.htm>

straight to the source: Mr. Green Beans -- he's all abuzz about socially responsible coffee -- in our Out on Limb column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/limb/limb081100.stm?source=daily>

LEASE ME ALONE

Michigan Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus (R) made pit stops in three Great Lakes cities on Monday to spread the word that he doesn't support the plan by his boss, Gov. John Engler (R), to end a moratorium on new leases for oil and gas drilling under the lakes. Engler says the drilling would be environmentally a-okay; Posthumus says the risks would be too great. Why the split? You guessed it: Posthumus is expected to run for governor next year to succeed the term-limited Engler. All five Democratic gubernatorial candidates have already spoken out against Engler's plan.

straight to the source: Detroit News, George Weeks, 24 Jul 2001 <http://detnews.com/2001/metro/0107/24/d01-252902.htm>

straight to the source: Detroit Free Press, 24 Jul 2001 <http://www.freep.com/news/mich/out24_20010724.htm>

JUST SAY NO TO G.M. ESCARGOT

The European Commission proposed a framework yesterday to replace Europe's three-year moratorium on approving new genetically modified foods. The proposed rules would require labels on all approved biotech foods and testing for the presence of genetically modified organisms at each stage of the production chain. The commission tried to dodge one bullet -- in this glorious era of globalization, small amounts of genetically modified foods from who-knows-where often mix accidentally with non-biotech foods. What to do? The commission recommended that foods with trace amounts of unapproved genetically modified ingredients be permitted into the E.U. market. Enviros, as well as some European officials, said the rules were a giveaway to corporations. Meanwhile, the Agriculture Ministry in Brazil said yesterday it was poised to approve the sale of genetically modified soybeans in the country, which up to now has been one of the few places in the world where such foods are banned.

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Geoff Winestock, 26 Jul 2001 (access ain't free) <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB996094289731506490.htm>

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, David Evans, 26 Jul 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11762>

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 26 Jul 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11757>

do good: Take action to label genetically modified foods in the U.S. <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/food.stm?source=daily#label>

GET YOUR SOLAR KICKS ON ROUTE 66

The longest solar-powered car race came to end yesterday in Claremont, Calif., with a University of Michigan team in the lead. The victorious single-passenger car took 56 hours and 10 minutes to cover 2,247 miles in a 10-day race along Route 66. Twenty-eight teams finished the race, the sixth since the first U.S. competition in 1990 The cars' price tags range from $30,000 to $1 million, with some of the costs picked up by U.S. automakers and other corporations, though the U.S. Energy Department is the race's major sponsor.

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 25 Jul 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/605220.asp>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

A White House fuel-economy strategy -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha052201.stm?source=daily>

A capital idea -- how to make capitalism lean, green, and nice -- by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/books022200.stm?source=daily>

7/26/01
4:47:58 PM

Press Release

Soft Skull Press Publishers of Fortunate Son by James Howard Hatfield

Monday July 23, 2001

Dear Friends and Members of the Press,

We have been reeling from the news since Friday. Jim Hatfield is gone. In a country where not enough reporters and talking heads have the courage to speak truth to power, Hatfield, the President's most controversial biographer, ended his own life in solitude in an Arkansas motel last week.

I knew Jim. He could be tempestuous, moody and unpredictable. He was also intensely driven, articulate and full of Southern charm. When I spoke with his widow Nancy on Friday, we agreed, "He was a good writer." He was a hell of a fighter and you wanted him on your side. Just last month we spent a weekend together in Chicago on the trade show floor of Book Expo America. He signed books, shook hands, worked the crowd, spoke out, strategized with me and revealed sources. We went non-stop together to promote his Bush biography Fortunate Son. He was fond of quoting Langston Hughes, "I've been insulted, eliminated, locked in, locked out, and left holding the bag. But I am still here."

Like Hughes, Hatfield will live on through his books. Jim's life will not be soon forgotten. The story of Fortunate Son is gravely important. Jim was on the verge of collapse due to financial difficulties, and part of this was due to the failure of this book. The American media followed the trail laid for them: the piercing inquiries into Bush's drug history were diverted into ironic stories about Jim Hatfield's own checkered past. After Hatfield was fed information and then discredited, he faced financial ruin and obscurity. He lost two other book contracts. His death was by his own hand but the causes go deeper. October of 1999 was glorious for him: he celebrated the initial publication of Fortunate Son and the birth of his daughter. But October was shattered by a book burning, a two-year long media carnival, and the character assassination of Jim Hatfield, an ex convict turned author who had paid his debt to society.

Jim Hatfield's death is in part on the hands of an imperious American media establishment that reserves the softest touch money can buy for George W. Bush and all sons of privilege. Jim Hatfield, a working class journalist unannointed by the media elite, was viciously made into an example.

He had a fearlessness that will be missed.

Sander Hicks

CEO

Soft Skull Press, Inc.

for more information on Fortunate Son, please see

http://softskull.com/catalog/hatfield/fortunate_son.html

for my Publisher's Preface, please see

http://softskull.com/catalog/hatfield/fs_karlrove.html

7/26/01
4:30:12 PM

Bush Accuser Dies Of Drug Overdose

By Irene Noguchi

The troubled author of a biography accusing President Bush of hiding a three-decade-old cocaine arrest committed suicide Wednesday. James Howard Hatfield, 43, was found in a hotel room in Springdale, Ark., and appeared to have died from a overdose of prescription drugs, police said.

Hatfield wrote "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President" in 1999. The book cited unnamed sources in claiming that Bush was arrested in 1972 but that his case was expunged. Bush, who was campaigning for president when the book was published, denied the allegations.

Soon after "Fortunate Son" was released by St. Martin's Press, the company discovered that Hatfield had been convicted in 1988 of attempted murder of his former supervisor. It recalled 70,000 copies in October 1999 and left an additional 20,000 books in storage.

Police went to Hatfield's house Tuesday morning to arrest him on charges of credit card fraud, but Hatfield wasn't home, said Detective John Hubbard of the Bentonville, Ark., Police Department.

His body was found around noon Wednesday by a hotel housekeeper. Hatfield left notes for his family and friends that listed alcohol, financial problems and "Fortunate Son" as reasons for killing himself, police said. He is survived by a wife and daughter.

After the book had been dropped by St. Martin's, it was picked up a month and a half later by Soft Skull Press, a small publisher on New York's Lower East Side. Sander Hicks, the head of Soft Skull, said yesterday that he joins the family "in feeling this deep loss."

"He did have a past that he was working very hard to put behind him," Hicks said.

In "Fortunate Son," Hatfield said three unnamed sources claimed a judge had expunged Bush's case and given him community service as a favor to his father, who was ambassador to the United Nations at the time. The incident raised questions of how well publishers screen the credentials of authors and check facts in their books.

Hatfield was convicted in 1988 of paying a hit man $5,000 to murder his former boss with a car bomb. Both passengers in the vehicle, the intended victim and a colleague, escaped unharmed when the bomb malfunctioned. After news of that conviction surfaced, it was also discovered that Hatfield had pleaded guilty to embezzlement in 1992.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29283-2001Jul20.html

7/26/01
3:59:02 PM

New Media Heroes

Alternet honors 10 activists and journalists working to make the Internet something more than a corporate tool

By Andy Steiner, Utne Reader

AlterNet, a San Francisco–based news service that created the Media Heroes Awards to honor journalists and producers bringing progressive views to the public, decided this year to single out the contributions of people working in the New Media. The AlterNet staff nominated 24 people for its New Media Heroes, and visitors to its Web site (www.alternet.org) were invited to vote for the winners. The process, says AlterNet executive director Don Hazen, was "an opportunity to look around in this climate of dot-com failure and see what works online. These heroes reach more people with information that makes a difference in their lives faster than they ever could before the technology of the Internet."

And the winners are, in order of vote totals:

Chip Giller http://www.GristMagazine.com

What's so funny about the environment? Not much, and for many would-be environmentalists, that's just the problem. "There are people out there who care deeply about the planet, but they're just so overwhelmed by all the problems we face that they shut down," says Chip Giller, 30, founder and editor of the Seattle-based online environmental magazine, Grist. "It's our job to get those people's attention again. We do that by making them laugh."

For instance, Grist's feature about the world's disappearing croplands was titled "They Paved Plots of Rice and Put Up a Parking Lot." For chuckle seekers, there's also a comic strip featuring an imaginary endangered species. "He's hoping he's not really the last of his kind," Giller jokes. "He'd like a girlfriend."

Giller promises to keep the laughs coming, but not at the expense of serious content. "Deep down, our intentions are serious," he says, noting it's Grist's aim to showcase "some of the best environmental reporting out there."

Leif Utne http://www.Utne.com

Our very own New Media Hero, Leif Utne, is editor of the Utne Reader Web Watch, a sampling of the best of the Web. It's like a thrice-weekly e-mail edition of the magazine with summaries of and links to compelling stories on the best alternative Web sites. Utne, 29, (son of Utne Reader founder, Eric Utne) also edits the online edition of the magazine and helps run Café Utne, an online community.

Josh Karliner http://www.CorpWatch.org

A surfer in the literal sense of the word, Josh Karliner became interested in environmental issues during his youthful travels looking for great waves. After college at the University of California–Santa Cruz, Karliner, 38, founded the activist group EPOCA (Environmental Project on Central America) before signing on in the mid-'90s with the San Francisco–based Transnational Re-source and Action Center (TRAC), where he launched CorpWatch, an "online activism center" and e-zine for readers concerned about the effects of corporate gobalization.

"We saw that in the activist community there was an important need for an information clearinghouse, an action tool on issues of corporate accountability," Karliner says. "We stepped in and filled that need. It's our hope that the world will never be the same again."

John Moyers http://www.TomPaine.com

Talk about big shoes to fill. The original Tom Paine jump-started the Revolutionary War with the publication of Common Sense, his outspoken essay calling for American independence from British rule. More than two centuries later, TomPaine.com is also about revolution, though one of ideas rather than muskets. The online magazine and advocacy organization takes up where the 18th-century Mr. Paine left off, exposing media hypocrisy, drawing attention to serious social ills, offering articles on current issues and gaining publicity for radical ideas (including a series of public service ads in The New York Times). It's the brainchild of John Moyers, 37, a former public affairs director for the Sierra Club and foundation administrator, who hopes to rekindle the American concept of civic responsibility.

"Tom Paine believed in the power of the pen to change people's minds," says Moyers (son of journalist Bill Moyers). "And it did. He was writing in the common interest, warning people about unaccountable and distant rulers. Unfortunately, we have our share of distant and unaccountable rulers in America today. Once again, the people need to be informed. We are trying to provide a place where voices that have a public interest can be heard."

Art McGee http://www.BlackRadicalCongress.com

For activist groups, the Internet may be the best invention to come along since the bumper sticker, says Art McGee, Los Angeles–based Internet coordinator for the Black Radical Congress. Founded in 1998 by activists and intellectuals, the congress promotes equal rights for African-Americans. "We use the Internet to communicate with our membership," he says. "It's been a tool to link people around the world with incredible efficiency. And we've been able to orchestrate this communication at a low cost, which is important—since we're a volunteer organization."

McGee, 33, created the organization's Web site and set up a number of public and private discussion groups and listservs, the most active being BRCNet, which posts articles, commentaries, and reports relating to black liberation that often lead to lively debates. "We're trying to get people talking about issues that really matter," he explains. "If we don't do that, then what's the reason for being here?"

Josh Knauer http://www.GreenMarketplace.com

Back in 1991, when Josh Knauer was a freshman at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he founded EnviroLink Network, an online community forum for environmental activists. The group fostered lively discussions in the green community, with topics as complex as strategy debates on how to save the rainforests and as personal as advice on navigating the grocery aisles.

"Right away, we noticed that a huge percentage of comments coming to Envirolink were people asking, ‘Where can I find this or that product? How do I know if it's really green?' " Knauer, 28, recalls. "We went looking for answers online and we couldn't find them, so we decided to create a shopping space for people who wanted to make green choices, who wanted to shop for products without guilt."

What eventually developed was Greenmarketplace.com, an online store featuring a diverse array of products from tampons to dish soap, all certified "green" by Knauer and his staff of researchers.

Honorable Mention

AlterNet also singled out the accomplishments of other nominees who did not place among the top vote-getters. Among them are:

Farai Chideya http://www.PopandPolitics.com

Founder of an eclectic political and cultural Web site.

Becky Bond http://www.BeckyBond.com Host of the Web radio pro-gram Fast Forward and the creative force behind Working Assets' new media ventures workingforchange.com, radioforchange.com, actforchange.com.

The lively activ-ists at http://www.IndyMedia.org Who built the network of Independent Media Centers throughout the country.

Don Rojas http://www.tbwt.com

CEO of The Black Word Today (which has been delivering high-quality news to the African American community for years.

Sam Smith http://www.ProRev.com

Editor of The Progressive Review, which gives readers a distinctly alternative take on politics.

Source: http://www.Utne.com

7/26/01
3:37:27 PM

A&E

Ape Man

This 4-part series, hosted by Walter Cronkite, tells the story of man's evolution and asks: What makes us human? And why are there humans at all? The Human Puzzle (Part 1): Traces evolution from the dinosaur era through the dramatic events leading up to human development.

Giant Strides (Part 2): Studies how humans began to walk upright and use tools and fire, and why it's believed that all humans can trace their ancestry back to one single female, living in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

All in the Mind (Part 3): Focuses on the development of human language asking why early humans, living on the open African savannah, needed to evolve complex speech? And why did post-Neanderthals spend time on sculpture and cave paintings rather than the urgent demands of survival?

Science and Fiction (Part 4): Examines beliefs of those who reject evolution and believe humans were created by God; the controversy over the relationship between modern humans and the Neanderthals; and theories that place human origins in Asia, not Africa.

Aug. 6 through Aug. 9 at 7 a.m. ET/PT.

7/26/01
3:35:41 PM

Discovery Channel

State of the Planet with David Attenborough Episode 1: Travel from the rainforest home of golden monkeys to the African habitat of the voracious driver ant to find out why species are becoming extinct at a rapid rate. Examine animals, from microscopic to mammoth, for clues to this mystery.

Episode 2: Research the migratory paths of humans and other animals to find out how these global travels may lead to mass extinctions. Compare Earth today with conditions during the mass extinction of the dinosaurs for clues to the future.

Episode 3: Examine the planet's future in terms of choices mankind must make in order to preserve some species but sacrifice others. Assess the amount of control man can and should exercise over the environment and the effects of that control. The three, one-hour episodes air in succession –

(ET/PT): Aug. 1-8:00 PM and again at 11:00 PM; Aug. 5-12:00 PM.

Planet Plastic: The 4th Kingdom - TLC Hear the untold story of the revolution that rocked the 20th century-the Plastics Revolution. Delve into the history of plastics, uncover the scientific advances of the plastic pioneers, and look at the social changes that this material has unleashed.

(ET/PT): Aug. 5 - 9:00 PM , 12:00 AM; Aug. 7 - 9:00 PM, 12:00 AM.

7/26/01
3:29:42 PM

Bonnie Raitt, Others, Arrested in Illinois Protest

ITASCA, Ill. July 25 (Reuters) - Police on Wednesday arrested 20 peaceful activists, including singer Bonnie Raitt, who were demonstrating against logging practices outside an office products company.

The protesters, who also included former Doors drummer John Densmore and activist and author Julia "Butterfly" Hill, staged a well-orchestrated sit-in outside the headquarters of Boise Cascade Office Products in Itasca, a suburb of Chicago.

They were handcuffed and led away and later charged with disorderly conduct, a crime punishable by a small fine, and released from the city jail.

"Deforestation worldwide is a life and death issue. We want deforestation halted, we want it now and we want it for future generations," said Randall Hayes, the founder of Rainforest Action Network, the group that organized the event.

Cascade's parent, paper and manufacturing giant Boise Cascade Corporation, has fought a public battle with RAN for more than a year.

"We believe that Boise Cascade Corporation, their old-growth logging operation and their trading of old-growth around the world makes them an American disgrace," RAN executive director Chris Hatch told protesters before the demonstration.

"Their operations are barbaric and their anti-environment campaigns, their efforts to stifle free speech are a disgrace to America," he said.

Boise Cascade is continuing efforts to reduce the amount of old-growth forests used in timber production and has hired a third party auditor to review their logging practices, said company spokesman, Michael Moser.

"Their accusations are incorrect," Moser said. "If they would correct the information and agree to have a dialogue, then maybe progress could be made."

Boise Cascade and RAN have met three times and both sides say they are willing to do so again.

"We'll offer a meeting right now," said RAN spokesman Mike Brune. "We're not short on meetings, we're short on results."

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010726/re/people_raitt_dc_1.html

7/26/01
3:02:09 PM

AlterNet.org Headlines

GENOA AND ITS AFTERMATH

Geov Parrish, AlterNet

For some 20 months, anti-globalization protests have gotten larger and more raucous. Now one is dead in Italy. What does it mean for the future of the movement?

http://www.alternet.org

ARE YOU BEING WATCHED BY YOUR CELL PHONE?

David Corn, AlterNet

A new privacy bill in the Senate would ban companies from tracking your location through your cell phone. For paranoiacs like me, that's just another reason to fret.

http://www.alternet.org

** Violence in Protests Debate **

LETTER FROM INSIDE THE BLACK BLOC

Who are the Black Bloc, what do they believe and will they survive after Genoa? A first-hand account from a member of today's most contentious radical faction.

-- and –

AFTER CARLO GIULIANI, PEACEFUL PROTESTS MUST CONTINUE

The Black Bloc, mainstream demonstrators and police authorities must all come to their senses and de-escalate violence at future protests.

http://www.alternet.org

GEORGE W.AL-MART AND THE CORPORATE GRAB AT YOUR TAX REBATE

Alicia Rebensdorf, AlterNet

No sooner are Bush's $300 bribes in the mail than corporations are scheming to take the cash out of your hands. Fortunately, the "Donate the Rebate" campaign is taking off.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11232

BLACKS SHOULD STOP CALLING WHITES RACIST

Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet

If black-white race relations in America are to move beyond the current impasse, black folks ought to stop referring to white brothers and sisters as "racist."

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11221

HAVE SEX AND THEN YOU DIE

Lara Riscol, AlterNet

A recent NIH study says there's no such thing as 100 percent safe sex. So should we throw out condoms and preach abstinence as the only sexual option? Conservatives think so.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11226

SHAMANISM VS. CAPITALISM -- THE POLITICS OF AYAHUASCA

Martin A. Lee, Organica

Ayahuasca, the most celebrated hallucinogenic drug of the Amazon, is under threat from both anti-narcotics agencies and corporations that want to patent and sell it for profits.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11215

DRUG ABUSE TREATMENT OR DRUG TREATMENT ABUSE?

Maia Szalavitz, AlterNet

Boot-camp style drug treatment programs profess to help kids with addiction, but some describe their methods as torture.

* In DrugReporter: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=17

THE GEEKS RETURN

Tamara Straus, AlterNet

The Fifth Annual Webby Awards, honoring the best Internet Web sites, underscored a hallmark of Internet culture: geek power rules, sophistication is irrelevant.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11217

BUSH'S FOX WATCHING THE HEN HOUSE

>From the Public Campaign

Bush's "regulatory czar," the public official who oversees environment, health, and safety regulations, has taken tons of money from the very companies he is supposed to regulate.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11211

TECHSPLOITATION: SEX TOYS ONLY A GEEK COULD LOVE

Annalee Newitz, Metro Silicon Valley

When I got my electric sex toy kit from Blowfish.com, I turned into the porn version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, becoming my own depraved experimental subject.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11205

CLICK HERE FOR BRITNEY!

Brendan I. Koerner, Washington Monthly AOL is muscling its way into online journalism. Be afraid.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11200

REICH: THE REBIRTH OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Robert B. Reich, The American Prospect

If Democrats hope to regain the White House in 2004, they'll need to mobilize grassroots groups and thus rebuild the party from the bottom up.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11227

TOWARD AN "OVERSTANDING" OF GENOA AND JAMAICA

Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org

Police shootings in Jamaica and Genoa are linked by underlying economic and social issues that don't receive the coverage they deserve.

* In MediaCulture: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=19

INSIDE THE G8, INACTION AND UNRESOLVED ISSUES

Sam Husseini, AlterNet

Critics say the elites who meet at G8 Summits are refusing to come to terms with some harsh realities -- the global AIDS crisis, debt buildup and economic slowdowns.

* In Globalization: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

BRITISH COLUMBIA IN THE GREEN, DEA MIFFED

Philip Smith, DRCNet

Marijuana production a major money-maker for British Columbia. But U.S. drug warriors plan to bring their hundred year's war on drugs to Vancouver.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11223

U.N. DEAD WRONG ABOUT ENGINEERED CROPS

Anuradha Mittal, AlterNet

The U.N. says that genetically engineered food will end hunger in the Third World. Then why are so many developing countries banning GMOs?

* In EnviroHealth: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=18

DRUG REFORM CALIFORNIA STYLE

Daniel Forbes, High Times

California's Prop. 36 was hailed as a major step from criminalization to treatment, but without state regulation some counties may be in for more of the same.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11225

HUFFINGTON: THE POWER OF GRIEVING PARENTS

Arianna Huffington, OverthrowTheGov.com

Grassroots movements led by grieving parents are frequently the only way to bring about real change and focus attention on underreported problems.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11209

7/26/01
2:51:22 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Republican officials seek high fuel vehicle standards - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11765

Calif. struggles with need for power vs. pollution - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11776

US grain sector irked by Europe's GMO rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11758

W.House says cooperating on enviromental probe - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11770

UPDATE - US House panel to vote on Vietnam, Jordan pacts - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11761

UPDATE - Key senator details proposal for Bush trade bill - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11756

UPDATE - Environmentalists close Esso UK fuel terminal - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11773

British queen's cygnets face swansong from vandals - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11769

Experimental US pigs turned into sausages - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11767

UK water industry says climate change threat urgent - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11763

Thailand may allow shrimp farming in rice paddies - THAILAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11772

Oscar-winner Almodovar accused of animal cruelty - SPAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11768

Nigerian commission arranges Shell-Ogoni meeting - NIGERIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11759

NZ may face repeat of 1992 power crisis - Hodgson - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11760

New Zealand embarks on world's biggest rat hunt - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11775

Japan whaler says survival hard without Minkes - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11771

INTERVIEW - Japan business body says hard to meet Kyoto target - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11774

Iceland says IWC rebuff won't effect whaling plans - ICELAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11777

UPDATE - Kyoto deal approved after last minute scare - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11766

French agency finds GMO traces in regular crops - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11764

Brazil set to approve GM soybeans next week - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11757

UPDATE - EU presents tough rules on gene labels, tracing - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11762

7/25/01
9:01:49 PM

The Nation

The most powerful voice making the case against the Supreme Court decision putting George W. Bush in the White House was a legendary prosecutor, previously known more for putting people behind bars than for progressive activism. But with his brilliant and courageous account of a crime committed by the highest court in the land, Vincent Bugliosi has taken his place as the leader of a growing chorus of voices indicting the Supreme Court's conduct in Bush v. Gore.

"None Dare Call It Treason," published in the February 5, 2001 issue of The Nation, has been turned into a bestselling paperback book featuring updates and amplications to the original article, and highlighted by introductory essays from famed attorney Gerry Spence and columnist Molly Ivins.

Published by NationBooks, The Betrayal of America is currently number #4 on the New York Times bestseller list and has been residing in the Barnes & Noble Top 100 for some time--a remarkable achievement for a heavy-hitting political polemic. It's very reasonably priced at $9.95. So buy a copy (or two or ten) today. They make great gifts. You can order online via The Nation Books site at:

http://www.nationbooks.org

And those in the Bay Area can see Vincent Bugliosi speak live at a special booksigning on August 2 at 7:00 pm, at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, California. (The Grand Lake Theater is located at 3200 Grand Avenue.) The bill will include Medea Benjamin speaking on voter reform, among others.

Tickets are on sale for $15 (no credit card sales) at the Grand Lake Theater box office, as well as at Cody's Books in Berkeley, Modern Times in San Francisco and A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, also in San Francisco. Call (510) 287-9406 or send an email to aleien@jps.net for will-call tickets and information. Checks/money orders sent for tickets via regular mail will be at Will Call on the day of the event. Seating is limited.

And remember to check The Nation/IPS joint site on electoral reform to see how you can help prevent future travesties like Election 2000. It features a Voter's Bill of Rights, investigative articles and reports, media and activist resources, legislative updates, an events calendar, a speaker's bureau and more. And it's constantly updated. At:

http://www.ips-dc.org/electoral/

7/25/01
8:56:32 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

MY BONN LIES OVER THE OCEAN

While the rest of the world moves forward with the Kyoto treaty, the Bush administration claims it is cooking up its own strategy to fend off global warming. But some officials involved in the administration policy review say there has been little real pressure from the White House to come up with a new plan anytime soon. The action may be shifting to the U.S. Congress, where several bills to address climate change are already being considered. Some members of Congress say American businesses will be hit hard by the administration's decision not to participate in Kyoto -- businesses in other countries will be first out of the gate with innovations to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, and U.S. firms will be left out of new carbon-trading markets. Read more about the fallout from the negotiations in Bonn from Elliot Diringer, a veteran environmental reporter now with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, on the Grist Magazine website.

straight to the source: New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin, 25 Jul 2001 <http://www.newyorktimes.com/2001/07/25/international/25CLIM.html>

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, John J. Fialka, 24 Jul 2001 (access ain't free) <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB995878763185472930.htm>

TURNING OVER A NEW LEACH

After spending more than $80 million on the project, the U.S.'s largest gold-mining company has ended plans to open the first major open-pit, cyanide-leach mine in Washington state. The Crown Jewel Mine in northeastern Washington would have blown the side off a mountain to extract about 1.4 million ounces of gold. Houston-based Newmont Mining Corp. said yesterday it had decided that the mine would not return enough to make it financially worthwhile. In the past, former Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) helped fight off efforts by the Clinton administration to kill the mine -- a position that may have contributed to his defeat by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).

straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Robert McClure, 25 Jul 2001 <http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/32649_gold25.shtml>

HUDSON HAWK

General Electric is in the midst of a multimillion-dollar PR blitz to try to sway the Bush administration to withdraw a proposed plan to clean up the Hudson River. The Clinton-era plan calls for dredging a 40-mile stretch of the river to remove PCBs dumped there for decades by GE. The company would have to pick up the $460 million tab for the dredging. GE claims that the Hudson is naturally cleaning itself and that dredging now would make the pollution problem worse. In its ads, GE says it has the support of local communities in opposing the dredging. But opinion polls show significant support for the Clinton plan, which has been backed by 66 communities along the river. Still, the GE offensive may be working -- the New York attorney general warned yesterday that the U.S. EPA is considering scaling back the dredging plan.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Cindy Skrzycki, 24 Jul 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40807-2001Jul23.html>

straight to the source: New York Times, Richard Perez-Pena, 25 Jul 2001 <http://www.newyorktimes.com/2001/07/25/nyregion/25DRED.html>

ICELAND ICELAND BABY

Iceland is gunning to be the world's first carbon-free economy. The country is in something of a bind, as it now has very low carbon-dioxide emissions and the Kyoto treaty on climate change gives it little room to expand its economy in a way that would increase its emissions. Already, 67 percent of Iceland's energy comes from emissions-free geothermal heat and hydroelectric dams. During the next two decades, Iceland wants to convert its buses, cars, and fishing fleet to run off hydrogen fuel cells, which emit only heat and water. Giant companies like DaimlerChrysler and Royal Dutch/Shell, as well as the European Union as a whole, are investing in the fuel-cell projects.

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, John J. Fialka, 25 Jul 2001 (access ain't free) <http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB996010595961794159.htm>

7/25/01
1:23:46 PM

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

A fungus spread by hatchery-raised trout is causing a large number of frogs to croak.

That's according to a study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Oregon State University (and published in the August issue of Conservation Biology). The study by PSU's Joseph Kiesecker and OSU's Andrew Blaustein is the first to show fish stocking can spread amphibian diseases.

The culprit is known as Saprolegnia ferax and Kiesecker said the impact on western toads in Oregon has been severe in recent years. "Within the last decade, in some years none of the (frog) embryos hatch, or 5, 10 or 15 percent of them hatch," he said.

The impact of the fungus is very likely not limited to Oregon. "Saprolegnia is a fungus that is world-wide in distribution," Blaustein told UPI. "Wherever there are fish hatcheries there is Saprolegnia. Wherever fishes are introduced into lakes and ponds, Saprolegnia goes with them." Saprolegnia infects a number of other amphibians besides the western toad, the researchers said.

Kiesecker and Blaustein emphasized that understanding the nature of the decline in amphibians is an extremely complex proposition -- involving global warming, changes in rainfall and ozone depletion. Kiesecker noted the worldwide decline in amphibians in locations as diverse the United States, Central and South America and Australia can be traced to a variety of pathogens.

7/25/01
1:17:31 PM

MediaChannel.org

DAILY MEDIA NEWS

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

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

NEWS DISSECTOR: "OVERSTANDING" GENOA AND JAMAICA

Police shootings in Jamaica and Genoa are linked by underlying economic and social issues that don't receive the coverage they deserve, says News Dissector Danny Schechter.

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

BEARING WITNESS TO A MOVEMENT

The brutal attacks on the Genoa Independent Media Center may prove that police don't distinguish protesters from those who document them. IMC videomakers blur the roles of activists, journalists and artists. (From IMC, LiP Magazine)

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

CHANGE THROUGH FILM: EIGHT TIPS

A guide to using grassroots documentary film for political change, including tips from production to screening. (From MediaRights)

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

MAPPING CORPORATE POWER

Design and vote on charts that connect the directors of America's Richest corporations, their political donations and their Web sites. (From Future Farmers)

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

ACCESS DENIED, POST-APARTHEID

The black population of South Africa is still at a disadvantage in access to media, conclude the authors of this scholarly paper on the relationship between media and democracy. (From Safundi)

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

MEDIACULTURE:

A collaboration between MediaChannel and Alternet exploring the currents, crises and cultures of American media. Recently featured:

* TV's Faces Are Only Black And White

* WTO Markets Itself To The Young

* The Perils Of Covering Porn

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

WHY I STOLE THE WEBBY AWARD

An activist describes storming the stage at the glitzy Webbys to grab a statuette in protest. Its actual winner, Inside.com editor Michael Hirschorn, thought the prank was "just part of the show." (From The MediaChannel Forum)

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

7/25/01
1:11:36 PM

Where Is The Free Energy?

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/freeenergy.html

7/25/01
12:55:31 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

HOLY WAR IN THE SHADOWLANDS

by Scott McLemee, The Chronicle of Higher Education

-- Disciples of the late great English author C.S. Lewis exchange allegations and litigation over charges of forgery and misappropriation. If only we could just duck inside a magic wardrobe and escape it all.

CO-HOUSING: ECO-FRIENDLY ALTERNATIVE TO SPRAWL

by Ann Mullen, Detroit MetroTimes

-- The Danish concept of co-housing, residential developments where neighbors know each other by name, share meals and care for their homes and children together, is growing in popularity in the U.S. Ann Mullen visits Sunward, a three-year-old co-housing project in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

LATINOS REDEFINE MACHISMO

by Daniel B. Wood, Christian Science Monitor

-- Circulos de hombres, the small but growing Latino men's movement largely found on the West Coast, seeks to help minority men find their place in American society.

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

7/25/01
12:52:58 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

BUENOS AIRES SHAPES SUSTAINABLE WASTE DISPOSAL STRATEGY

By Alejandra Herranz

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, July 24, 2001 (ENS) - The total amount of urban solid waste generated by Argentina's capital city of Buenos Aires has increased 30 percent in the past 10 years. This finding comes from the city government's first ever study of solid waste.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-24-02.html

ANTARCTIC TREATY TO BE ADMINISTERED FROM ARGENTINA

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, July 24, 2001 (ENS) - A long awaited breakthrough has been made with a decision to establish the first secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty System in Argentina, 40 years after the treaty came into force.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-24-04.html

WHALERS BLOCK SOUTH PACIFIC SANCTUARY

LONDON, United Kingdom, July 24, 2001 (ENS) - Delegates from 37 countries opened the 53rd meeting of the International Whaling Commission in London Monday by turning down a sanctuary for whales in the Pacific Ocean.

Twenty countries voted in favor of the South Pacific Whale Sanctuary, thirteen against it. Ireland, Oman, Morocco and the Solomon Islands abstained on the vote.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-24-03.html

INTERNATIONAL PLANT SMUGGLERS WEEDED OUT

WASHINGTON, DC, July 24, 2001 (ENS) - Six men charged with crimes related to the illegal importation of internationally protected plants called cycads were arrested by special agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Friday.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-24-01.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JULY 24, 2001

Seattle Elects to Meet U.S. Kyoto Protocol Target

General Electric Must Clean Milford Superfund Site

Pennsylvania Chemicals Firm Fined for Reporting Violations

EPA in Court Over Small Incinerator Emissions Limits

New York Writes Updated Energy Conservation Building Code

Brosnan, Cousteau, Taylor Oppose U.S. Navy Sonar

Victory for Dolphins in "Dolphin Safe" Tuna Label Case

Judge Blocks Army Live-Fire Training in Makua Valley

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-24-09.html

7/24/01
10:10:33 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

US senators slam Bush on Kyoto pact, others say pact flawed - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11737

UPDATE - US to release water to parched Oregon farms - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11753

Ruptured pipeline at Prudhoe Bay spills oil - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11752

Canadians see no sudden boom in US natgas exports - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11734

US EPA's Whitman likes part of global warming treaty - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11736

Senate wants study of US transport infrastructure - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11755

Weed US farm aid, let 'green' grow - Senator Harkin - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11731

Protesters picket Exxon Mobil UK HQ over Kyoto - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11747

Papers see Bonn as political win, environment loss - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11746

UPDATE - Ocean whale sanctuaries rejected at angry meeting - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11740

Russian nuclear experts say raising Kursk is safe - RUSSIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11745

Four die, dozens hurt in violent Moscow storm - RUSSIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11741

NZ activists threaten action on cramped pig crates - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11750

US not dodging global warming challenge - Powell - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11751

ANALYSIS - Obstacles to Kyoto remain - politics and people - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11742

UPDATE - Officials haggle over Kyoto accord fine print - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11738

EU to unveil controversial GMO labelling rules - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11743

Dane wind turbines shares down amid tech worries - DENMARK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11744

UN wants audit of Colombia cocaine spraying - COLOMBIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11739

Canada sees more trouble with EU over environment - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11735

British Columbia vows quick review of offshore ban - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11732

Pacific nations give cautious welcome to climate deal - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11748

Tasmania's Aurora Energy eyes mainland Australia - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11749

Australia says helps weed out global plant scam - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11754

Antigua police break up resort protest - ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11733

7/24/01
4:58:18 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

MOBY DICKS

A meeting of the International Whaling Commission that could end a 15-year-old ban on commercial whaling began yesterday in London, with Japan and Norway leading the charge for reopening the (legal) market to whale meat. Norway has lifted a voluntary ban on exporting whale meat and blubber, and is preparing to export a stockpile of the yummy stuff to Japan. Japan kills about 500 whales a year as part of a "scientific" whaling program; somehow, the research meat ends up in pricey Tokyo restaurants. The Bush administration, meanwhile, gets to paint itself green on this one, taking the politically painless stance of backing a whaling ban.

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 23 Jul 2001 <http://www.msnbc.com/news/603883.asp>

straight to the source: New York Times, Walter Gibbs, 23 Jul 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/international/europe/23WHAL.html>

straight to the source: BBC News, 23 Jul 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1453000/1453514.stm>

VIRGINIA SLIMS

One of America's fastest-growing counties, Loudoun County in Virginia, voted last night to adopt tough development controls and try to keep two-thirds of the county as farmland. The vote by the county board of supervisors removed 83,000 potential homes from county plans and ended support for studying a proposed new highway to connect Dulles International Airport with I-95. Property rights advocates were up in arms over the vote. Meanwhile, neighboring Fairfax County said yesterday it would stop purchasing SUVs and pare back its current fleet of the vehicles to help reduce pollution levels.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Michael Laris, 24 Jul 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40379-2001Jul23.html>

straight to the source: Washington Post, David Cho, 24 Jul 2001 <http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40790-2001Jul23.html>

DUDE, WHERE'S MY PIPE?

Many problems with the U.S.'s vast network of oil and natural gas pipelines don't get reported or are underreported to the federal Office of Pipeline Safety, and even if major mishaps are reported, the agency rarely fines companies for them, reports the Austin American-Statesman after a yearlong investigation. Past problems that didn't show up in the agency's books include nine spills in Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve and a blast in California that killed two people. In total, the country's pipelines leaked at least 67 million gallons of crude oil, gas, and other petroleum products in the last decade. The OPS, an underfunded and understaffed agency, has jurisdiction over more than 2 million miles of pipelines, but it doesn't even know where some of those pipelines are located. The Bush administration's push for increased energy production will put an even greater burden on the pipeline system.

straight to the source: Austin American-Statesman, Jeff Nesmith and Ralph K.M. Haurwitz, 22 Jul 2001 <http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/sunday/news_1.html>

SCHELL GAME

Even though U.S. President Bush has withdrawn the U.S. from the Kyoto treaty on climate change, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell (D) and four City Council members announced yesterday that Seattle would easily meet what would have been the greenhouse-gas-reduction target for the U.S. under Kyoto. The city promised to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels and to try to reduce them by 20 percent. Seattle City Light, the city-owned utility, put the cost of the program at $3 million a year -- a tiny portion of its $500 million annual budget. (Before feelings of happiness set in, recall that most of Seattle's electricity comes from emissions-free, salmon-killing hydropower dams.)

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Chris Stetkiewicz, 24 Jul 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11717>

BACK FLIPPER

A federal appeals court yesterday rejected the U.S. government's bid to loosen the standard for "dolphin-safe" tuna. The U.S. wanted to open its dolphin-safe market to Mexican and Latin American fishers who catch tuna in large purse-seines and promise to set free dolphins trapped in the nets. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling, preventing the U.S. Commerce Department from moving forward with the new standard until it conducts more studies on whether dolphin populations would be hurt by the change. The issue has split the environmental community. The Earth Island Institute, which filed the suit, said the new standard would lead to more dolphin deaths. But Greenpeace and others argued that the standard would create economic incentives for foreign governments to make sure tuna fishing doesn't harm dolphins.

straight to the source: Contra Costa Times, Associated Press, David Kravets, 24 Jul 2001 <http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/nation/stories/tuna_20010724.htm>

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Andrew Quinn, 24 Jul 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11715>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Killing dolphins for free trade -- by David Brower, David Phillips, and William Snape <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho120699.stm?source=daily>

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE today:

Crazy like a red fox -- John Perrine, fox researcher <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/week/perrine072301.stm?source=daily>

You light up my cubicle -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha072301.stm?source=daily>

Boston tree party -- green money not good at the Boston Globe -- in our Muckraker column <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/muck/muck062901.stm?source=daily>

7/24/01
1:08:13 PM

Public Citizen

Government Needs to Rein In Drug Ads

Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney Wolfe Testifies to Senate Lawmakers

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The federal government urgently needs to beef up its regulation of direct- to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs because false and misleading ads can lead to injuries and deaths, Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe will tell lawmakers today.

Drug advertising has more than tripled in dollar volume, from $791 million in 1996 to $2.5 billion in 2000, but the number of warning letters and notices of violation issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has dropped sharply in recent years, according to Wolfe, who is scheduled to testify at 2:30 p.m. before the Senate Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs. From mid-2000 through mid-2001, the FDA took 74 enforcement actions, less than half (47 percent) of the 158 enforcement actions taken between mid-1997 and mid-1998.

This means that is it likely that prescriptions are being written for drugs that are more dangerous and less effective than doctors or patients realize, according to Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. A copy of his testimony is at

http://www.citizen.org/hrg/PUBLICATIONS/1583.htm.

"Until changes are made, both physicians and patients will be harmed by prescribing decisions based on all-too-frequently false and misleading information from advertisements," Wolfe said.

Problems stem from several things. First, the FDA lacks enough investigators to monitor ads. Second, there are no regulations specifically written for direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Third, the FDA has limited enforcement power. It can issue a violation notice or warning letter but cannot impose civil monetary penalties, which could deter companies from creating misleading ads.

A review of published medical studies showed cause for concern. In one, consumers believed that the FDA reviews drug ads before they are published or aired and that only the safest and most effective drugs may be advertised. In another study, a fourth of patients said they would go to another doctor if their physician refused to prescribe a drug they wanted as a result of seeing an ad.

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

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

7/24/01
12:57:27 PM

Global Shootout The NRA's love-hate relationship with the New World Order.

By Mark Strauss

Back in 1995, after the Oklahoma City bombing and the flap over its infamous "jack-booted thugs" fund-raising letter, the National Rifle Association went into damage-control mode. Distancing itself from the militia movement, the gun lobby ridiculed all the paranoids crouched in their bunkers with loaded rifles just itching for U.N. peacekeepers to make their move. Its Information and Research Division published an exhaustive report concluding U.N. black helicopters were nothing more than "flights of fantasy" and distributed an editorial mocking the militias' belief that the United Nations was about to seize their guns, saying that: "They're silly to worry about the UN, which can't even handle the Serbs."

Those were simpler times. Today, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre is shrieking that the United Nations is engaged in nothing less than "a worldwide effort to crush any culture that does not submit to voluntary civil disarmament." NRA members have opened their mailboxes to find a fund-raising letter warning that it could be only a matter of time before the United Nations "demands gun confiscation on American soil." And the NRA Web site broadcasts round-the-clock investigative reports on the United Nations' global gun-grab to mobilize the Second Amendment faithful in an all-out war against Kofi Annan and his minions—a veritable world war that knows no borders and encompasses a dozen countries. A war that the NRA is winning.

The NRA would probably have been content to stay at home and focus its efforts on fulfilling the Founding Fathers' vision that no American be denied the right to own an unmarked, plastic, automatic rifle loaded with Teflon-coated bullets. But, in the mid-1990s, the rest of the world was in a decidedly anti-gun frame of mind. The Untied Nations was brokering a series of conferences to address the spread of small weapons and light arms—ranging from pistols and submachine guns to grenade launchers and anti-tank guns—that was fueling civil wars and killing millions worldwide. A global coalition fell in line to support the effort: human rights advocates, arms control experts, church groups, and gun control organizations that had been outraged and emboldened by mass-shootings such as the Dunblane massacre that had left 16 Scottish schoolchildren and a teacher dead. For the National Rifle Association, it was a slowly tightening global tourniquet that meant restrictions on the multibillion dollar U.S. gun industry and possibly upon gun owners themselves.

So, faster than anyone could say "you'll pry my gun from my cold, dead, multilateral fingers," the National Rifle Association decided to fight globalism with globalism. Only one year after the NRA had derided the United Nations as an ineffectual organization, it went ahead and joined the United Nations. It won the right to lobby the world body by securing permanent accreditation as a nongovernmental organization from the United Nations' Economic and Social Council, where it pledged to prevent salad-eating do-gooders from imposing "their values on hunting societies." And, just as the United Nations had its own support network of peaceniks and clergymen, the NRA went ahead and built its own global coalition of gun nuts and merchants of death. In 1997, it joined with pro-gun groups and firearm manufacturers from 11 other countries—including France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain—to establish an international lobbying group, a sort of EuroNRA called the World Forum on the Future of Sports Shooting Activities, now headquartered in Belgium.

And, unlike the United Nations, the NRA is not restricted by an inconvenient charter that prevents it from interfering in a country's domestic affairs. Recognizing that the best way to undermine global consensus on gun control was to attack the problem at the national grass-roots level, the NRA contributed money to pro-gun political candidates in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, and waged public campaigns against gun regulation in Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. And, when necessary, the NRA could still count on the long arm of the U.S. Congress. In 1998, when the war-torn, cash-strapped Economic Community of Western African States imposed the world's first-ever small arms moratorium and asked for money to help enforce it, Sen. Jesse Helms, R.-N.C., dutifully blocked U.S. aid, expressing his opposition to using the taxpayers' money to "promote policies in foreign countries that may very well be a violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—if the federal government attempted such activities here at home." An NRA lobbyist argued that such policies could have an inadvertent effect on hunters and sport shooters—despite the fact that all the big game is located farther east on the continent.

The global NRA has not won friends as it has sought to influence people. The Scottish press has derided the NRA as a "sinister" organization of "right-wing fanatics" eager to "stick their noses into Britain's business." The Australian attorney general accused the NRA of offensive, inaccurate, and outrageous tactics when it broadcast an infomercial last year claiming that violent crime had skyrocketed after the government tightened gun laws following the Port Arthur shooting massacre that left 35 people dead in 1996. Michael Beard, the president of the U.S. Coalition To Stop Gun Violence, expressing frustration at the United Nations' slow pace to produce binding restrictions on the global gun trade, complains that the NRA "has corrupted the U.S. position on international arms control as it has at a domestic level."

It's tempting to wonder if such complaints ever entered the mind of Wayne LaPierre as he delivered a fire-and-brimstone speech against U.N. gun control at the Conservative Political Action Conference last February. He warned that the next generation of Americans would not reap the benefits of freedom "if it is globalized." But the truth is that LaPierre is not against the globalization of freedom, so long as it is the type of freedom endorsed by the NRA. For all the talk of drawing a line against globalization, the NRA is actually one of the forces driving global integration, as long as it is globalization on its own terms. Despite its devotion to the principle of sovereignty, it has no compunction about interfering in the political affairs of other nations. The "global NRA" is the living embodiment of the U.N. caricature it once ridiculed—an unelected, supranational organization seeking to imprint its cultural values on the wretched of the earth who have not embraced its interpretation of the right to bear arms.

Or, put another way, the black helicopters have come home to roost.

Source: http://www.Slate.com

7/24/01
12:52:51 PM

Petition To Protect The Tasmanian Trees

The tallest flowering plants in the world are in Tasmania (Australia). The trees in the Styx valley are the second tallest trees on the planet - just behind the giant redwoods in California. These trees average 500 years of age. One of these Eucalyptus regnans, which means 'king of the eucalypts' measured 134 metres in height and is registered in the Guiness Book of Records as the world's tallest tree. Please help to save this living breathing forest of giants.

These magnificent forests are being logged for woodchips for the Japanese paper mills by the Howard Government and the Tasmanian State ALP Government. The Wilderness Society and the Greens in Tasmania are fighting back with the best weapon they know - public opinion. Each weekend, the Society hosts busloads of visitors to the Valley of the Giants. Pictures of the splendour, as well as the slaughter, of these forests are being sent to scientists, politicians and environment groups around the world. The aim is to have the Howard Government and Labor Opposition drop their support for logging and, united, declare the Valley of the Giants a national park and World Heritage Area.

There is a beautiful collection of photos of these trees at:

http://www.wilderness.org.au/member/tws/projects/Forests/valgiant.html

Please sign the petition to save them from logging, at:

http://www.gopetition.com/info.php?currentregion=12&petid=195

Please pass this on, and perhaps the massacre can be stopped.

Thank you.

7/24/01
12:45:16 PM

International Simultaneous Policy Organisation

PRESS RELEASE

The Simultaneous Policy, a new international campaign to counter the forces of globalisation and international competition, has been launched in London. Based on the premise that all nations are subject to global competitive forces unleashed by the ability of capital and transnational corporations to cross national borders, no nation nor group of nations can control global capital nor can they implement vital economic, social or environmental policies that might incur market or corporate displeasure. To break the vicious circle of global competition, both between nations and between corporations, all nations need to act simultaneously by implementing the Simultaneous Policy (SP); a range of measures to re-regulate global markets and corporations in order to restore genuine democracy, environmental protection and peace around the world.

Endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ed Mayo and many other leading ecologists, counter-economists, churchmen and journalists, SP recognises that party politics has become little more than a sham in which whatever party we elect, the policies delivered inevitably conform to market and corporate demands and to the dictatorship of competition. It calls upon peoples all over the world to come together to take policy out of the hands of politicians and, by force of their numbers and their votes, to compel political parties around the world to adopt SP. By transcending party-political differences and by offering a means that allows politicians and governments to adopt it without risking their respective 'national interests', SP claims to provide the long-awaited, coherent and practical solution to globalisation and other world problems.

Based on a new book, "The Simultaneous Policy - An Insider's Guide to Saving Man and the Planet" by John Bunzl, the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) has been established to campaign for the adoption of SP. Acclaimed as "the first writer on the 'sustainable society' to advance beyond rhetoric and grapple with the problem of how such a society might be achieved", the book crucially offers the blueprint for a secure and responsible transition from the existing paradigm of destructive, international economic competition to the new paradigm of global cooperation in which global economic, environmental and social problems can be solved.

For further information, see enclosed briefing and contact John Bunzl at ISPO. Address, Website and E-mail as below.

P.O. Box 26547

London SE3 7YT U.K.

Fax +44 (0)20-8460 2035

Email: info@simpol.org

Website: http://www.simpol.org

7/24/01
12:43:30 PM

URGENT, WITHHOLD FUNDING FOR LFA DEPLOYMENT

The Navy is about to receive approval to blast the world's oceans -- and the whales, dolphins, and other marine life that live in them -- with dangerous sonar.SEE DETAILS AT

http://www.nrdcaction.org/index.asp?step=2&item=515

As Congress decides over the next several weeks whether to appropriate funds for deploying LFA. Please tell Congress to withhold funds for this reckless new technology--LFA. Thanks.

A SAMPLE LETTER & CONTACT INFORMATION was included

Go at the URL above for more info.

You may write your own letter is you wish. Thanks for caring and help.

Important References :

1: Navy Sonar System Threatens Marine Mammals

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/nlfa.asp

2: http://www.seashepherd.org/issues/habitat/may3tostop.html

7/24/01
12:31:57 PM

Many people are seeking independent news coverage of the protests surrounding the G8 Summit in Genoa last weekend, as much of the mainstream media coverage has been inadequate. Here are four recommended articles, which can be found on AlterNet's globalization page:

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

THE BATTLE OF GENOA

Walden Bello

The Nation A blow-by-blow of the events in Genoa.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

THE MOVEMENT AGAINST ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION: COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU...

Katharine Ainger, Guardian of London

Carlo Giuliani, the young Italian shot dead at the G8 Summit, is not the first casuality of the movement challenging the globalization of neoliberal capitalism.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

FIRST TEAR GAS, NOW BULLETS

Sarah Ferguson

Village Voice Activists weigh in on the cost of confrontation.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

WHAT THE PROTESTERS IN GENOA WANT

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, New York Times

Genoa is proof once again that there is no national power in control of the present global order. Consequently, protests are directed at international organizations like the G8.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

MORE INDEPENDENT NEWS ABOUT GENOA AT

http://www.zmag.org

Starhark's first report: http://www.zmag.org/genoa_7.htm (Her second report was included in my last compilation)

If you want to show your outrage, you may write to:

Embassy of Italy

3000 Whitehaven Street, NW

Washington, D.C.

Tel: (202) 612-4400 Fax: (202) 518-2154

http://www.italyemb.org

7/24/01
12:29:24 PM

Energetic Investments and Divestments

Are you familiar with Jon Rappoport? Here is a link to his website which contains a tremendous amount of revealing material.

http://home.earthlink.net/~alto/index.html

The Great Boycott may open our eyes in a big way to the larger picture of what is going on globally in terms of the massive peddling of poisons that is occurring in the name of corporate progress. It is also very illuminating to discover that some of the largest corporate manufacturers of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and many other industrial poisons, such as Agent Orange (not to mention Aspartame, BGH, silicone breast implants and GMO's) also own several major pharmaceutical houses! Well it only makes sense doesn't it? As long as they keep mass producing and selling toxic substances that end up infiltrating our water, soil and air, they may as well have a big interest in the drug manufacturing industry too. As long as there is a market for toxic petrochemicals, these poisons will continue to find their way into our food chain and water systems. And as long as we keep on ingesting these poisons, we will keep on getting sick, and as long as we keep on getting sick, we will continue to purchase pharmaceuticals in order to allay our symptoms.

What a racket!!

Let us consider carefully, and with increased conscious awareness, how and where we invest ourselves, and what choices we make for ourselves and for our planet. As we first individually and then collectively withdraw our investments from that which is unsustainable, that which no longer serves, that which is based upon separation consciousness, competition, selfishness and greed, and instead shift our focus and our energetic investments towards that which is sustainable, that which is based upon unity consciousness, holism, cooperation and a reverence for the sacredness of all life and an honoring of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things, we may effect a quantum shift across the entire globe. It is not so much about entering into a battle against the existing unsustainable paradigms on this planet. For rallying against something only ends up energizing the very thing we are protesting, by virtue of our focus upon it. Rather it is about a divestment and refocusing of our attention, awareness and energetic investments.

What we resist persists, and what we focus upon grows.

So let us release our investments in that which no longer serves, letting go of the chords that have atttached us to it so that we may free up the energy we had invested there and redirect it towards cocreating consciously that which now does serve, that which reflects our honoring of our own bodies as well as the body of the Mother Earth as pure and sacred temples for Spirit.

Linda Zurich

7/24/01
12:21:09 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

CLIMATE DEAL REACHED IN BONN

BONN, Germany, July 23, 2001 (ENS) - In Bonn today, delegates from 180 nations gave themselves a standing ovation as they reached a broad political agreement on the operational rulebook for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The treaty will limit the emission of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-05.html

GROUP OF EIGHT PLEDGE CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION

GENOA, Italy, July 23, 2001 (ENS) - The Group of Eight (G-8) major industrialized nations have outlined a series of measures to help reduce world poverty, particularly in Africa, and have pledged to continue discussions on how to address climate change and other global environmental issues.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-02.html

HURRICANE ACTIVITY ACCELERATES IN U.S. LONG TERM FORECAST

MIAMI, Florida, July 23, 2001 (ENS) - The United States is in for 20 or 30 years of above normal hurricane activity, say researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-06.html

UK STREAMLINES PLANNING FOR BIG AIRPORT PROJECTS

LONDON, United Kingdom, July 23, 2001 (ENS) - The UK government has introduced mew measures it says will modernize the planning system to speed up decisions on major infrastructure projects like new airport and rail links while increasing the opportunities for public involvement in decision making.

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-01.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JULY 23, 2001

EPA Issues New Rules for Pesticide Producing Plants

Bacteria Eat Most Ocean Methane

U.S., Italy Pledge Cooperation on Climate Change

Monsanto Plant Spilled Tons of Mercury

Puget Sound Orcas Headed for Extinction

Rocky Flats Contractor Fined for Nuclear Safety Violations

Yellow Billed Cuckoo Needs, Does Not Get, Protection

Farm Conservation Programs Need Congressional Help

No Discharge Zone Could Protect Florida Keys Sanctuary

Conference Focuses on Digital Technologies, Environment

For full text and graphics visit:

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-09.html

7/24/01
12:17:51 PM

NEW SYSTEM DEVELOPED FOR REMOVING CONTAMINANTS FROM STORM RUN-OFF

During heavy rains, storm water runs across streets and highways, picking up oil, gasoline, soot and other contaminants and eventually depositing it in rivers, streams and bays. While a variety of methods have been used to remove the contaminants before they reach local waters, their effectiveness varies.

Thomas Boving, assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Rhode Island, may have just solved the problem by using a cheap and readily available material: shredded aspen wood.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010720093547.htm

7/24/01
12:16:23 PM

POOR READING SKILLS HAVE BOTH PHYSICAL, ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES

Reading problems in young children may be influenced by a combination of both neurological and environmental factors, according to a new study.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010720092903.htm

7/24/01
12:14:50 PM

EARTH LIKELY TO WARM 4 TO 7 DEGREES BY 2100

There's a nine out of ten chance that global average temperatures will rise 3-9 degrees Fahrenheit over the coming century, with a 4-7 degree increase most likely, according to a new probability analysis by scientists in the United States and England. The most likely projected increase is five times the one-degree temperature rise observed over the past century. As early as 2030 the planet is likely to heat up 1-2 degree, say the scientists.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010720093052.htm

7/24/01
12:13:48 PM

DIGITAL ORGANISMS USED TO CONFIRM EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

Using a revolutionary computer program that gives scientists the opportunity to watch evolution take place before their eyes using "digital organisms," a team of researchers from Michigan State University and Caltech has confirmed an evolutionary process long suspected but, until now, unproven.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010719080551.htm

7/24/01
12:12:20 PM

NEW NASA SUPERCOMPUTER MODELS EARTH CLIMATE AT WARP SPEED

Using what may be the most powerful parallel supercomputer of its kind, NASA scientists recently used a highly advanced prototype processor to significantly advance the ability to evaluate the global impact of natural and human-induced activities on our climate.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010719080840.htm

7/24/01
12:09:55 PM

CHEMICALS IN FRYING PAN A POTENTIAL HAZARD TO ENVIRONMENT

The next time you reach for your non-stick frying pan to scramble some eggs, you may want to think again. Researchers at the University of Toronto, Environment Canada and University of Guelph have discovered that using products containing Teflon and other fluorinated polymers releases a cocktail of chemicals into the environment.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010719080702.htm

7/24/01
12:09:08 PM

SOLAR-POWERED HELIOS AIMS FOR RECORD ALTITUDE

The sky is black 100,000 feet above ground, and you can clearly see the curvature of the Earth. The air is so thin it is incapable of supporting life. It is also incapable of supporting sustained horizontal flight of an aircraft -- until now. It is into that hostile environment 19 miles above ground that a small group of engineers from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA, and AeroVironment, Inc., Monrovia, CA, plan to fly the unique unmanned solar-powered Helios Prototype.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010718081813.htm

7/24/01
12:06:53 PM

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SCIENTISTS SAY GLOBAL WARMING COULD SPREAD MOSQUITO

Vanishing coastlines may not be the only peril in a global-warming world; disease-carrying Asian tiger mosquitoes may find the hotter temperatures to their liking and may show up in places they've never been seen before, according to new research published this week.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010717080820.htm

7/24/01
12:05:32 PM

AN EPIDEMIC MAY HAVE GONE UNNOTICED -- DDT USE IN US LINKED TO PREMATURE BIRTHS IN THE 1960'S

Heavy U.S. use of DDT before 1966 may have produced a previously undetected epidemic of premature births, a new study shows.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010717080945.htm

7/24/01
12:02:58 PM

CLIMATE CHANGE IN ATLANTIC LARGER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

A NASA satellite confirms that overturning in the North Atlantic Ocean - a process where surface water sinks and deep water rises due to varying water densities - speeds up and slows down by 20 to 30 percent over 12 to 14 year cycles. Scientists previously believed that a change of this magnitude would take hundreds of years, rather than close to a decade.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010717082605.htm

7/24/01
11:54:54 AM

The Escalating Costs of Space Control

By Loring Wirbel, Citizens for Peace in Space

Trappings of Empire: The Escalating Costs of Space Control

As elements of George Bush's revamped military plan were released piecemeal over the course of the summer, the contradictions and hypocrisies were as evident in the work of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's master plan as they were in the Cheney/Abraham energy policy.

The White House is trying to satisfy a Republican leadership that wants to own it all, while proving that it can move to a leaner, more agile defense establishment that fits within the boundaries of a post-tax-cut national budget. The inconsistencies are there for everyone to see, nowhere more evident than in space imperialism. Even prior to the official May unveiling of an expanded Global Missile Defense program, the Bush administration was faced with an open-ended military space program with costs that could quickly expand beyond the $100 billion level.

This is not only because U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants to accelerate peripheral missile-defense programs like airborne laser and Navy boost-phase defense, as well as the ground-based kinetic-defense program. It is also because the true costs of maintaining the type of planetary space control promoted by U.S. Space Command, includes many of the underlying costs of National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, and multiple tactical intelligence programs.

Slowly, the realization is dawning on many within the defense establishment that the Space Command rhetoric, now adopted department-wide within DoD, cannot be supported in reality without massive increases in defense spending. With Rumsfeld's pet missile-defense programs operating at cross-purposes to his weapon-systems study projects, the schisms between space imperialists and budget-cutters could manifest themselves in very public ways by the end of 2001.

[To read the complete article link to]:

http://www.peacevision.org.uk/papers/wirbel.html

7/24/01
11:52:45 AM

Deal Reached At Climate Talks

BONN, Germany -- A compromise deal to press forward with the Kyoto pact to cut greenhouse gases has been agreed.

The deal was struck after a week of meetings and more than 24 hours of continuous negotiations through into Monday morning in Bonn, Germany, a United Nations spokesman said.

During the last-ditch effort, delegates struggled with the issue of compliance -- or how to enforce an international treaty covering nearly 180 nations on greenhouse gases and how to impose penalties for violations.

The 1997 treaty aims to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2 percent of 1990 levels by 2012.

"We have finalised the rescue operation. We have rescued the Kyoto protocol. It is a major achievement because we live with this for many years to come," EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom told Reuters.

The deal leaves the U.S. -- the planet's biggest polluter -- as the only world power not to accept the Kyoto accord. President George W. Bush rejected Kyoto in March, saying it would harm the U.S. economy.

"Almost every single country stayed in the protocol," said Olivier Deleuze, the chief European Union negotiator.

"There was one that said the Kyoto Protocol was flawed. Do you see the Kyoto Protocol flawed?"

The U.S. delegation, which participated in the talks, declined to comment on the deal.

An activist from environmental group Greenpeace, Bill Hare, told Reuters news agency: "It shows that George Bush is totally isolated in the climate debate."

"It is the long-awaited second step in the implementation of the Kyoto protocol. We are calling on Japan to ratify it now," he added.

Envoys admitted the deal fell short of tight rules they initially sought, The Associated Press news agency reported.

"I prefer an imperfect agreement that is living to an imperfect agreement that doesn't exist," Deleuze said.

Hundreds of delegates waiting in the convention hall lobby hugged each other when the news came that the agreement was clinched.

The deal clears the way for nations to continue the process of ratifying the protocol, which delegates hope to achieve in 2002.

The treaty must be ratified by 55 nations responsible for 55 percent of global green gas emissions to take force. Some 30 nations have ratified the pact to date.

The European Union has been a major driving force in trying to get the Kyoto accord ratified and onto the statute books of parliaments across the globe.

But it was Japan that became the key player, with the power to make or break the treaty.

"It's a brilliant day for the environment. It's a huge leap to have achieved a result on this very complex international negotiation," British Environment Minister Michael Meacher told Reuters news agency.

Conference chairman Jan Pronk had urged the environment ministers to continue talks when they reached a deadlock after a week of meetings.

"This is a good text. It is a balanced text," Pronk said of his compromise proposal.

"It is my conviction that it is possible to reach a full agreement."

Climate talks had already failed once when a conference last November in The Hague, Netherlands, collapsed in a last-minute dispute between the U.S. and the Europeans.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/23/kyoto.talks/index.html

7/24/01
11:27:50 AM

Planet Ark World Environment News

UPDATE - Shell blows into U.S. wind market in Wyoming - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11729

Seattle adopts Kyoto limits, scolds Bush - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11717

New rescue attempt planned for infected whale - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11728

Appeals court upholds limits on "dolphin safe" tag - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11715

UPDATE - Whaling commission puts Iceland membership on hold - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11719

What they said at the Bonn climate conference - NETHERLANDS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11723

US says will not commit to climate plan timeline - ITALY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11730

Russia climate forum idea welcomed by G8 - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11727

ANALYSIS - Climate deal to lighten economic cost of Kyoto - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11724

ANALYSIS - Japan scores in Kyoto compromise play - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11721

ANALYSIS - Bonn climate deal may not bring down emissions - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11720

Officials to tackle fine print to seal Kyoto deal - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11716

UPDATE - World clinches climate deal, US isolated - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11722

Canada hopes to ratify Kyoto Protocol next year - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11718

Rain puts out fire in Brazil's oldest national park - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11726

Environment lockup hits Australia farm exports - lobby - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11725

7/23/01
8:39:02 PM

What the Protesters in Genoa Want

by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Published on Friday, July 20, 2001 in the New York Times

Genoa, that Renaissance city known for both openness and shrewd political sophistication, is in crisis this weekend. It should have thrown its gates wide for the celebration of this summit of the world's most powerful leaders. But instead Genoa has been transformed into a medieval fortress of barricades with high-tech controls. The ruling ideology about the present form of globalization is that there is no alternative. And strangely, this restricts both the rulers and the ruled.

Leaders of the Group of Eight have no choice but to attempt a show of political sophistication. They try to appear charitable and transparent in their goals. They promise to aid the world's poor and they genuflect to Pope John Paul II and his interests. But the real agenda is to renegotiate relations among the powerful, on issues such as the construction of missile defense systems.

The leaders, however, seem detached somehow from the transformations around them, as though they are following the stage directions from a dated play. We can see the photo already, though it has not yet been taken: President George W. Bush as an unlikely king, bolstered by lesser monarchs. This is not quite an image of the future. It resembles more an archival photo, pre-1914, of superannuated royal potentates.

Those demonstrating against the summit in Genoa, however, are not distracted by these old-fashioned symbols of power. They know that a fundamentally new global system is being formed. It can no longer be understood in terms of British, French, Russian or even American imperialism.

The many protests that have led up to Genoa were based on the recognition that no national power is in control of the present global order. Consequently protests must be directed at international and supranational organizations, such as the G-8, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The movements are not anti-American, as they often appear, but aimed at a different, larger power structure.

If it is not national but supranational powers that rule today's globalization, however, we must recognize that this new order has no democratic institutional mechanisms for representation, as nation-states do: no elections, no public forum for debate.

The rulers are effectively blind and deaf to the ruled. The protesters take to the streets because this is the form of expression available to them. The lack of other venues and social mechanisms is not their creation.

Antiglobalization is not an adequate characterization of the protesters in Genoa (or Göteborg, Quebec, Prague, or Seattle). The globalization debate will remain hopelessly confused, in fact, unless we insist on qualifying the term globalization. The protesters are indeed united against the present form of capitalist globalization, but the vast majority of them are not against globalizing currents and forces as such; they are not isolationist, separatist or even nationalist.

The protests themselves have become global movements and one of their clearest objectives is for the democratization of globalizing processes. It should not be called an antiglobalization movement. It is pro-globalization, or rather an alternative globalization movement — one that seeks to eliminate inequalities between rich and poor and between the powerful and the powerless, and to expand the possibilities of self-determination.

If we understand one thing from the multitude of voices in Genoa this weekend, it should be that a different and better future is possible. When one recognizes the tremendous power of the international and supranational forces that support our present form of globalization, one could conclude that resistance is futile.

But those in the streets today are foolish enough to believe that alternatives are possible — that "inevitability" should not be the last word in politics. A new species of political activist has been born with a spirit that is reminiscent of the paradoxical idealism of the 1960's — the realistic course of action today is to demand what is seemingly impossible, that is, something new.

Protest movements are an integral part of a democratic society and, for this reason alone, we should all thank those in the streets in Genoa, whether we agree with them or not. Protest movements, however, do not provide a practical blueprint for how to solve problems, and we should not expect that of them. They seek rather to transform the public agenda by creating political desires for a better future.

We see seeds of that future already in the sea of faces that stretches from the streets of Seattle to those of Genoa. One of the most remarkable characteristics of these movements is their diversity: trade unionists together with ecologists together with priests and communists. We are beginning to see emerge a multitude that is not defined by any single identity, but can discover commonality in its multiplicity.

These movements are what link Genoa this weekend most clearly to the openness — toward new kinds of exchange and new ideas — of its Renaissance past.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are the authors of "Empire.''

7/23/01
8:29:49 PM

AlterNet.org -- Genoa G8

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

THE BATTLE OF GENOA

Walden Bello, The Nation

A blow-by-blow of the events in Genoa.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

THE MOVEMENT AGAINST ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION: COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU...

Katharine Ainger, Guardian of London

Carlo Giuliani, the young Italian shot dead at the G8 Summit, is not the first casuality of the movement challenging the globalization of neoliberal capitalism.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

FIRST TEAR GAS, NOW BULLETS

Sarah Ferguson, Village Voice

Activists weigh in on the cost of confrontation.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

WHAT THE PROTESTERS IN GENOA WANT

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, New York Times

Genoa is proof once again that there is no national power in control of the present global order. Consequently, protests are directed at international organizations like the G8.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21

7/23/01
8:25:41 PM

NASA stakes out world leadership with new climate supercomputer

Monday, July 23, 2001 By Environmental News Network

NASA's new 512. The system has 192 Gigabytes of main memory, 2 Terabytes of disk storage and can reach a peak of 307 GFLOPS.

Questions about the effects of global warming will soon be a hallmark of the past. A new supercomputer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is crunching climate data at warp speed. What used to take a year to calculate might be done in less than a day on the new machine. NASA scientists are using the most powerful parallel supercomputer of its kind, 10 times more powerful than today's supercomputers, to evaluate the global impact of natural and human induced activities on the Earth's climate.

Developers say the new 512 supercomputer is 10 times more powerful than anything scientists have had until now. "This substantial increase in performance allows us to complete Earth climate simulations in days, rather than months," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator for earth science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"This tool will help us to objectively evaluate the effects of natural and human activities on global climate," he said.

"When we run the climate model after including Earth climate data from satellites, ground and air observations, we can simulate hundreds of days of global climate per day of computer processing time," Asrar added. "This is a major milestone in our nation's computing capability, and sets the stage for our next steps in advanced computing for climate models."

The announcement of this newest supercomputer comes just as world environment ministers are gathered in Bonn, Germany to hammer out the rules for the implementation of the Kyoto climate protocol.

The United States has abandoned this supplement to the United Nations climate change treay in part because of doubts in the Bush administration about the validity of the conclusions that the Earth's climate is warming because of the emission of greenhouse gases that trap the Sun's ray's close to the planet's surface.

Still, the 15 European Union nations are convinced that global warming is real and is linked to human activities such as the combustion of coal, oil and gas. The EU is leading the rest of the world in an effort to conclude the Kyoto Protocol and have it ratified by 2002.

NASA's 512 supercomputer will lead to faster and better development of climate models for the Earth science community, government and industry. "With large NASA computer codes, we now have a technique that speeds up the processing time 10-fold," Asrar said.

Scientists at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, plan to combine two 512-processor supercomputers to make an even more powerful machine. "The full 1024-processor system will be capable of doubling the speed of the climate models. The assembly of the 1024 supercomputer is to be completed in August 2001," said Asrar.

"This 1024 processor will serve as a research test-bed and once mature will be shifted to routine operations," he said. "The next step in research and development will be linking clusters of similar processors located across the nation to create a virtual supercomputer with a computational capability greater than the sum of the individual clusters."

For the last few years NASA computer scientists have encouraged corporate partner SGI of Mountain View, California to connect many computer processor chips in a new way when building large parallel supercomputers.

These machines include many central processing unit (CPU) chips instead of just one or a few CPU's like older supercomputers. Within the last five years, microprocessors have become much more powerful, and computer makers have found that building a supercomputer with thousands of processors is cost-effective.

"By means of this work, NASA is establishing its world leadership position in supercomputing," said Steven Zornetzer, director of Information Sciences and Technology at Ames. "This new ability to simulate future climate dynamics followed efforts by NASA scientists and one of their industrial partners to improve supercomputing."

Asrar said, "We envision NASA teaming with our industry partners to achieve at least two orders of magnitude improvement in American supercomputers that will support climate change research during this decade."

7/23/01
8:25:15 PM

TomPaine.com

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE KYOTO PROTOCOL?

by David Case

As Bush's negotiators show up empty-handed at the climate change negotiations in Bonn, we're reminded that Bush rejected a sweetheart deal for the world's biggest polluters. A requiem for the Kyoto protocol.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/20/3.html

The Loyal Opposition: CELL PHONE SURVEILLANCE

by David Corn

One more thing to fret about: some day soon, technology will allow companies to know our location at all times.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/20/index.html

PREVENTING THE NEXT HOLOCAUST

by Jennifer Bauduy

Mordechai Vanunu wanted to prevent world disaster. Fifteen years later, he's still in an Israeli prison.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/19/1.html

Department of Corrections

MISUNDERSTANDING THE MARKETPLACE

by Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent

The Bush administration deferred to "the marketplace" to oppose a G-8 plan to phase out fossil fuels. But the energy market isn't free: huge subsidies prop up fossil fuels.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/18/index.html

Economics Reporting Review

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

by Dean Baker

Every week, economist Dean Baker reviews business and economics reporting in major publications. This week, he notes that the New York Times quoted Tony Blair saying, "If the public knew [the protesters'] views, they'd disagree with them." But the Times never presented protesters' views in its Genoa coverage.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/07/23/index.html

"It is a position not to be controverted, that the earth ... was and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the Human race."

Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, 1797

7/23/01
5:27:25 PM

Genoa

Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001

Hello.

As most recipients of ZNet Updates likely know, July 20 began a series of demonstrations in Genoa Italy against the G8 (major industrialized nations) meetings. As with demonstrations in Seattle, Prague, and Quebec, activists seek to explain and reveal global institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO and to reverse worsening rules of international cultural and economic exchange, as well as address domestic sexist, racist, statist, and capitalist injustice. And, indeed, our steadily growing opposition to "globalization" has brought world leaders and corporate heads to fear for their most revered agendas. Bush, Berlusconi, and cohorts know that if a huge mass of humanity gains sufficient knowledge, hope, and confidence, we will force new and more participatory relations against the tide of their preferred elitist globalization. Bush, Berlusoni, et. al. have therefore decided to try their usual recourse, violence.

In Genoa they sought to send a message. Oppose us and you will pay a high price. And the simple fact is that we need to recognize that if the context of our actions leaves world rulers the option to do so, they most certainly have the military means to make good their threats. In Genoa they set loose their police, aroused beyond even normal levels of violence by grotesque fascist imagery, to brutalize dissent via torture and shooting. They seek to intimidate not solely the dissenters on the scene from even conceiving of disobeying further, but also the broader public. Bush, Berlusconi, et. al., are trying to ensure, for example, that in the next go around in Washington DC, from September 28 to October 4, there will be a small showing of manageable proportions rather than the feared immense outpouring of dissent and resistance they fear. Corporate elites want to reverse our momentum, pure and simple.

So what is our response to their violence?

Fear will exist. It is human. To read about what the police have done in Genoa can't help but arouse concerns about safety. And it ought to. We should not be ostriches about their vile capacities. But trembling should also not exist. Passivity should not exist. And we should not do their work for them, dwelling so insistently on our physical pains as to disrupt our mental focus and interfere with our broader messages. Nor should we react in a kind of dance of danger, thinking we must escalate our actions in the same terms they think about escalating theirs. The compelling and powerful answer to addressing state violence rarely varies from a simple logic. Given our resources and means, we must educate about the issues at stake more widely. We must attract and sustain ever wider and more lasting support. Our demonstrations must include so many people, with so many backgrounds, from so many parts of society and so many societies, that the effect of elites utilizing wild and intimidating repression will not be to diminish our size and capacity, but to enlarge both. We must make Bush and Berlusconi's favored tatics benefit us, not them. That is the road to victory.

If the state can enter our organizational centers, like the Italian Indymedia and organizing offices, and can beat to physical submission our members, if the state can assault our marches and rallies, and if it can do all this with impunity and without a cry of outrage not only from us but from much wider circles threatening to join us, then the state will do so.

In coming days and weeks, our discussion about tactics at our demonstrations needs to keep forefront a simple logic. What choices on our part will best widen our base of support and thereby grow our size and deepen our commitment and knowledge, entrenching our dissent and even threatening its percolation into other dimensions of social life? And what choices, at the same time, will best restrain the military capacities of the state by creating conditions under which for them to unleash their dogs of war costs them more in lost public support then it costs us in harshly broken bodies?

This is not a pretty nor even a humane calculus, but it is the logic of dissent against monstrous violaters of human civility. We need to make known the state's violence against our dissent, of course. But we need to retain our priority focus on globalization and capitalism, and on the vastly more widespread and deeper violence of these ubiquitous systems. We have to achieve growing popular support, growing morement commitment and insight, and to simultaneously saddle the state's preferred repressive options.

Michael Albert

Z Magazine / Znet

sysop@zmag.org

http://www.zmag.org

7/23/01
5:24:02 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

BRITISH PAPER FACES SUIT OVER PALAST INVESTIGATION

by Gregory Palast, Guerilla News Network

-- Last November, in the Observer of London, investigative journalist Gregory Palast "broke the biggest and least-known story behind Bush's theft of the presidency." Now Palast writes about the woes of dealing with a retaliatory libel suit.

U.S. AND JAPAN UNDER PRESSURE AT CLIMATE TALKS

by Paul Brown, The Guardian

-- The bloodshot and irritated eyes of the world are on the global climate talks in Bonn this week. Is cleaner air in the future or will the U.S. and Japan throw a wrench into the whole deal?

300 LOVE LETTERS

Web site review by Al Paulson

-- Is a person who writes personal letters to 300 complete strangers deranged? Or, as the writer herself explains, is she attempting to restore the intimacy she feels is lacking in society.

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

7/23/01
5:19:21 PM

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

A Riviera Beach, Fla., manufacturer of absorbent products says he's come up with something that could kill hurricanes by drying them up. The product is Dyn-o-Gel, made by Dyn-O-Mat, a firm run by Peter Cordani that makes environmental absorbent products. Dyn-o-Gel was developed from a soil moistener used in gardens.

A test at Palm Beach International Airport last week used a large military aircraft to drop 9,000 pounds of the powder on a cumulus cloud, causing it to lose a significant amount of moisture and virtually disappear, the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale reports.

"The people in the airport tower visually confirmed that there was a tall buildup, and the next moment it was gone," said Kevin Sullivan, control tower supervisor.

The test cost $1 million, and that's the problem, says Hugh Willoughby, a hurricane researcher for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami.

Willoughby said the powder would have to be delivered by a squadron of large military aircraft. "You'd have to have 10 of them in the eye at once," he said.

He said another problem is that the powder turns into gel, and there might be a problem flying through it. "The engines work in rain, but do they work in slime?" he said.

Cordani said versions of the product could also be used for rain-making and firefighting. He hopes to sell the gel to the federal government.

7/23/01
5:16:19 PM

PEDAL POWER

A 14-year-old Canadian boy who has been biking across Canada crossed the border into the United States at Niagara Falls, N.Y. Sunday bringing a simple message that "despite a divorce children need two parents."

"As I bike across Canada and the United States I am collecting signatures on petitions that a child should have the right to know and be cared for by two parents which I hope to give to President (George W.) Bush and get his support for shared parenting in all states," Clayton Giles told UPI.

The teenager began his 3,600-mile trans-Canada odyssey May 17 from his hometown of Calgary, Alberta, with his father accompanying him in a recreational vehicle. They stop along the way collecting signatures and talking with children of divorce. The teen has pedaled more than 1,725 miles and expects to reach Washington on Sept. 6 after stops in Buffalo, N.Y., Boston, Providence, R.I., and New York City.

Giles' trip has become a "children's crusade" to raise awareness that "kids are humans, not property, and that we deserve to be heard at the same time as our parents and this means that what is good for our parents is not automatically good for us."

Half of all marriages end in divorce. One-sixth of all children will live with only one parent at some time in their lives.

Giles made headlines in Canada when he went on a 19-day hunger strike last Jan. 1 as a protest of what he said was the courts' refusal to listen to him when he sought to be placed in the custody of his father.

"The judges don't even want to hear from kids. They make decisions for us that hurt, but we never get to say a word in the process," Giles said. "Everyone is worried about my health, especially my dad, but I felt I had to starve myself in hopes of getting people to listen to the children of this country."

After ending his hunger strike, Giles proposed the bike trip as a means of giving children a voice in divorce proceedings.

7/23/01
5:12:42 PM

Nuclear Waste's Trip Across State Rising Warnings

Train carrying 125 highly radioactive fuel rod assemblies expected through Indiana this summer, passing through Fort Wayne and West Lafayette.

By David Rohn, Indianapolis Star

This summer, a freight train with only five rail cars -- two of them carrying dumbbell-shaped casks -- is expected to rumble through Indiana on its way from NewYork to Idaho.

The casks will carry 125 used nuclear fuel rod assemblies, the first known shipment of high-level nuclear material to cross Indiana since highly radioactive waste from the Three Mile Island reactor passed through the state in 1986.

But if Congress authorizes a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, scheduled to open in 10 years, it won't be the last.

"We're looking at 8,000 shipments going through Indiana over the next 30 years when they start rolling all the nuclear waste from power plants all over the United States by rail and over the interstates on trucks," said Grant Smith, environmentalcoordinator for the Citizens Action Coalition.

Though most people say this summer's shipment itself is unlikely to pose any significant safety risks, the specter of more shipments has energized many in northern Indiana.

Smith's group has waged protests dubbed "Mobile Chernobyl" to focus attention on the more massive shipments to come. Critics say there are myriad dangers, ranging from terrorists with armor-piercing weapons to toll-booth operators who could face an increased risk of cancer because of repeated exposure to low-level radiation from the passing cargo.

The worries aren't limited to Smith's group, however.

"It concerns me," said Sharon Clark, who works at Daylight Donuts in Fort Wayne. "I don't understand why they have to travel through our state.

"But then I don't know what they can do with it. They can't burn it and make it go up in smoke."

Purdue University senior Shaun Moore is keeping this summer's shipment in perspective. "If the nuclear waste is going to its final destination and will be put in a more secure place, then it has to be moved."

However, Moore said there always is the potential for danger, citing an accident last week in Baltimore involving a train leaking acid.

"I definitely think nuclear power generation needs to be phased out so we're not continuously shipping this stuff forever," he said.

No date for the train's passage through Indiana has been announced. But Rex Bowser, radiation specialist with the Indiana State Department of Health, will be ready. He plans to measure the level of radioactivity when the Norfolk & Southern train stops for a crew change in Indiana.

John Chamberlain, a spokesman for West Valley (N.Y.) Nuclear Services, which is shipping the material, said Bowser shouldn't detect any more radiation than that generated by a chest X-ray.

Chamberlain said there is no danger of explosion. Even if the casks were breached, they pose little risk to anyone who quickly gets 100 yards away, he said.

Bowser doesn't anticipate any problems. "High-level radioactive material has been transported for 30 to 40 years in this country, and there has never been a major incident," he said.

But there have been minor ones.

According to U.S. Atomic Energy Commission reports, there have been 72 incidents involving spent nuclear fuel shipments since 1949.

They range from the overturning of a truck carrying casks to pinhole leaks of radioactive coolant.

None resulted in serious contamination or injuries directly attributable to radiation exposure.

Bowser said he isn't aware of any accidents in Indiana, except for Cold War-era crashes of bombers carrying nuclear weapons.

The safety record for shipping nuclear material does little to mollify Tim Stelle. He used to live along the tracks in Fort Wayne where this summer's shipment will pass.

Stelle, an organizer for Citizens Action Coalition, said those advocating shipments of spent reactor fuel are engaging in "bizarre double-think" by claiming the fuel is too hazardous to be kept where it is, yet is safe enough to be shipped across the country.

Robert Halstead, who works for Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects and has been analyzing possible routes for radioactive material for that state, acknowledged that Indiana could figure prominently in shipment routes.

"Indiana is one of the few states affected very heavily by either rail or truck shipment scenarios," Halstead said.

http://www.starnews.com/print/articles/nuke23.html

7/23/01
4:28:19 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

BONN JOUR

Negotiators from 178 countries reached agreement today on how to tackle climate change, fleshing out the Kyoto treaty and leaving the U.S. isolated from the rest of the world. Margot Wallstrom, the European Union's environmental commissioner, said, "The rescue operation succeeded." In the final pact reached in Bonn, the E.U. held firm against efforts to weaken enforcement mechanisms for penalizing countries that fail to meet their targets. But the E.U. did give ground on the issue of carbon sinks, allowing Canada, Russia, and Japan to count forests that absorb carbon dioxide as large credits toward emissions-reduction targets. Enviros dismissed the carbon-sinks plan as a crock, but were excited that a deal on Kyoto had been struck. Over the weekend, the leaders of the world's other major developed nations, including France, Germany, and Japan, told U.S. President Bush that they would move to ratify Kyoto by next year, even without U.S. participation.

straight to the source: New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin, 23 Jul 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/international/23CND-CLIMATE.html>

straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 23 Jul 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1452000/1452315.stm>

straight to the source: New York Times, David E. Sanger and Alessandra Stanley, 23 Jul 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/international/22SUMM.html

catch it only in Grist Magazine: A cartoon about carbon sinks! -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha090100.stm?source=daily>

INFAMOUS POTATOES

In keeping with her pattern of deferring to the positions of elected officials in the West, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton has recommended that the U.S. Justice Department not appeal a ruling by the Idaho Supreme Court that denies water rights for a federal wildlife refuge on the Snake River. In the past, the U.S. has almost always defended its water rights to protect wildlife on federal land. The assistant manager of the refuge said the loss of water could jeopardize scores of bird species. Don Barry, a former assistant Interior secretary who now works for the Wilderness Society, said the case could set a bad precedent: "Other states will look at this and say, 'Idaho got away with it, so can we.'"

straight to the source: USA Today, Tom Kenworthy, 23 Jul 2001 <http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010723/3502745s.htm>

SEN AND SENSIBILITY

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has thrown his weight behind legislation to protect the country's remaining forests. The measure would set stricter logging regulations and allow courts to jail illegal loggers for up to 10 years. Illegal logging operations have been common in the past, supported by the Cambodian military and former Khmer Rouge members. But Hun Sen has been on the hot seat to rein in the logging, because foreign-aid donors have said they will link future aid to reforms in forest management. "Forests are the prime minister's life," said Hun Sen, who has threatened to resign if his government fails to stop the logging.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 23 Jul 2001 <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11706>

FRIGHT TRAIN

Sometime this summer, the feds are planning to transport nuclear waste from power plants via train from New York to a U.S. Energy Department reservation in southeastern Idaho. Dubbing the shipment a "mobile Chernobyl," anti-nuke advocates plan to raise a ruckus when the freight train comes through. Although the shipment across the country will be the first such one in many years, it might not be the last -- the nuclear power industry hopes to have an interim storage site for the waste set up in Utah by as early as 2003. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to approve plans for a permanent storage facility under Yucca Mountain, Nev., later this year.

straight to the source: Newsweek, Adam Piore, 30 Jul 2001 issue <http://www.msnbc.com/news/603339.asp>

straight to the source: Indianapolis Star, David Rohn, 23 Jul 2001 <http://www.starnews.com/print/articles/nuke23.html>

TAKING THE "FORCE" OUT OF ENFORCEMENT

The U.S. EPA is moving ahead with plans to slash federal environmental enforcement programs and shift enforcement resources to the states. But the agency's own inspector general and analyses of EPA data by the Environmental Working Group have shown that many states seem to have little interest in enforcing the nation's clean air and water laws. The Bush administration plan would cut EPA enforcement staff by 8 percent while providing $25 million in new enforcement grants to the states. Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said, "The president's cuts take the environmental cop off the beat."

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 22 Jul 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32200-2001Jul21.html>

7/23/01
4:18:33 PM

7.23.01

Dear Friends and Members of the Press,

He had a fearlessness that will be missed.

Sander Hicks

CEO

Soft Skull Press, Inc.

for more information on Fortunate Son, please see

http://softskull.com/catalog/hatfield/fortunate_son.html

for my Publisher's Preface, please see

http://softskull.com/catalog/hatfield/fs_karlrove.html

7/23/01
4:13:06 PM

EMS.org

Republicans Announce Opposition To Bush Energy Plan

At an EMS press conference in Washington on Wednesday, July 25, Republican luminaries and elected officials will unveil a new initiative, Republicans for a Responsible Energy Plan, to urge President Bush to protect the Arctic, support renewable energy and return the GOP to its conservation roots. Speakers at the press conference will include Theodore Roosevelt IV, Susan Eisenhower, Illinois's lieutenant governor and Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY).

Go to: http://www.ems.org/advisories/bush_energy.html

Interview Availability: Global Warming

Today, world leaders reached an historic agreement that would begin to reduce global warming pollution. Environmental leaders from Union of Concerned Scientists, World Wildlife Fund, National Environmental Trust, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace USA are available from Bonn to discuss this potent political issue.

Go to: http://www.ems.org/climate/deal_reached.html

7/23/01
4:08:42 PM

Public Citizen

Consumer, Safety Groups Urge Senators to Vote for Critical Safety Provisions Regarding Mexican Trucks

Murray/Shelby Provisions of Appropriations Bill Are Key To Protecting Motorists on U.S. Highways

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Six of the nation's leading consumer and safety groups today urged senators to cast a vote that would help ensure that unsafe Mexican trucks don't endanger motorists on U.S. highways.

In a letter sent to all members of the Senate, representatives from the groups asked senators to support provisions of the transportation appropriations bill (S. 1178) authored by Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). The groups include Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Citizens for Reliable & Safe Highways (CRASH), the Consumer Federation of America, Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT), Public Citizen and the Trauma Foundation. A copy of the letter is available at

http://www.citizen.org/press/pr-auto36a.htm.

The provisions "will guarantee that Mexican trucks and buses that request interstate operating authority to travel on U.S. streets and roads meet U.S. safety rules and laws," the letter said. Any amendments - including a substitute plan modeled after California's inspection system - would not make the same guarantee, the groups stated. In California, inspectors don't verify the validity of a truck's U.S. operating authority, and inspection decals are illegally transferred between Mexican trucks.

The Bush administration plans to open the border by Jan. 1 to allow Mexican trucks to travel freely on U.S. roads. Currently, they are limited to a maximum 20-mile zone near the border. NAFTA required the United States to open its border to Mexican truck traffic last year, but the Clinton administration refused, citing safety concerns. There is a severe shortage of border inspectors, and unlike the United States and Canada, Mexico has not implemented a safety oversight system for trucks and does not enforce hours-of-service rules. The result is that many Mexican trucks are unsafe and are driven by tired truckers sometimes with invalid operating authority and no insurance coverage.

Further, the United States also suffers from a severe shortage of both safety inspectors and safety inspection facilities. With less than six months before the border is scheduled to open, only two of 27 border crossings have permanent inspection facilities, both in California.

The Bush administration's proposal for opening the border is inadequate because it would allow Mexican carriers to operate on U.S. roads for 18 months before a comprehensive, on-site safety evaluation. Also, the federal government would evaluate the safety of Mexican carriers by relying heavily on a database lacking basic information.

In contrast, the Murray/Shelby provisions would: 1) require a full on-site safety audit of Mexican trucking firms before granting them conditional operating certificates and follow-up safety compliance reviews within 18 months before a permanent operating certificate is granted; 2) prohibit opening the border to Mexican trucks until a policy is in place to ensure that Mexican truckers comply with all United States safety requirements, including hours-of-service rules; 3) provide funding increases above the administration's request for inspectors and inspection facilities; 4) prohibit opening the border until border crossings have weigh scales; and 5) require an accessible database to permit monitoring the safety performance of all Mexican firms applying for certificates to operate in the United States.

"The time line for opening the border, set by the Administration for January 1, 2001, is still irresponsibly short, and the U.S. DOT Secretary's objections to the sensible steps required by the Murray/Shelby provisions are ill-founded," today's letter stated. "The Murray/Shelby provisions include commonsense measures that assure the American public is not exposed to the unreasonable risk of catastrophic crashes with dangerous Mexico-domiciled trucks that the U.S. DOT fails to stop in its rush to meet the January deadline."

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

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

7/23/01
4:02:41 PM

Public Citizen

New Report Exposes Drug Industry's 625 Washington Lobbyists and Spending Blitz to Keep Prices and Profits High

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Embarking on an unprecedented lobbying blitz and a frenzy of spending, the pharmaceutical industry last year fought like never before to stop Congress from enacting a Medicare drug benefit, a Public Citizen report shows.

Worried that a benefit would lead to discounted prices in the lucrative senior citizen market, the industry spent a record $262 million on political influence in the 1999-2000 election cycle. The report, The Other Drug War: Big Pharma's 625 Washington Lobbyists, documents how the U.S. drug industry spent $177 million on lobbying, $65 million on issue ads and $20 million on campaign contributions - more than any other industry in 1999-2000.

"The drug industry is one of the more hypocritical industries around," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. "It claims to be working for consumers when in fact it uses profits from sales to buy access to lawmakers and defeat pro-consumer prescription drug legislation." Among the report's highlights:

· The drug industry hired 625 different lobbyists last year - or more than one lobbyist for every member of Congress - to coax, cajole and coerce lawmakers. The one-year bill for this team of lobbyists was $92.3 million, a $7.2 million increase over what the industry spent for lobbyists in 1999.

· Drug companies took advantage of the revolving door between Congress, the executive branch and the industry itself. Of the 625 lobbyists employed in 2000, more than half were either former members of Congress (21) or worked in Congress or other federal agencies (295).

· These "revolving door" lobbyists were well-connected. In addition to the 21 former members of Congress, 33 drug industry lobbyists served as chief of staff to members of Congress, 32 worked in the White House and 11 others worked for the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

· The industry's $20 million in campaign contributions and millions more in issue ads attacking candidates opposed by the drug industry aided its army of lobbyists in gaining access to congressional representatives.

A copy of the report is available at

http://www.citizen.org/congress/drugs/pharmadrugwar.html

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

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

7/23/01
3:58:19 PM

Public Citizen

New Report Debunks Drug Industry Claims About the Cost of New Drug Research and Development

Second Report Documents Industry's Intense Lobby and Political Contribution Campaign to Keep Prices and Profits High

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The pharmaceutical industry spends about one-fifth of what it says it spends on the research and development (R&D) of new drugs, destroying the chief argument it uses against making prescription drugs affordable to middle and low-income seniors, a Public Citizen investigation has found.

The findings are contained in a Public Citizen report, Rx R&D Myths: The Case Against the Drug Industry's R&D Scare Card.

The report reveals how major U.S. drug companies and their Washington lobby group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), have carried out a misleading campaign to scare policymakers and the public. PhRMA's central claim is that the industry needs extraordinary profits to fund "risky" and innovative research and development to discover new drugs. In fact, taxpayers are footing a significant portion of the R&D bill, which is much lower than the companies claim.

"This R&D scare card is built on myths and falsehoods that are maintained by the drug industry to block Medicare drug coverage and measures that would rein in skyrocketing drug costs," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch.

Public Citizen based the study on an extensive review of government and industry data and a report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Among the report's key findings:

§ The actual after-tax cash outlay - what drug companies really spend on R&D for each new drug (including failures) - is approximately $110 million (in year 2000 dollars.) This is in marked contrast with the $500 million figure PhRMA frequently touts.

§ The NIH document shows how crucial taxpayer-funded research is to the development of top-selling drugs. According to the NIH, U.S. taxpayer-funded scientists conducted at least 55 percent of the research projects that led to the discovery and development of the five top-selling drugs in 1995.

§ Public Citizen found that, at most, about 22 percent of the new drugs brought to market in the past two decades were innovative drugs that represented important therapeutic advances. Most new drugs were "me-too" or copycat drugs that have little or no therapeutic gain over existing drugs, undercutting the industry's claim that R&D expenses are used to discover new treatments for serious and life-threatening illnesses.

A second report issued today by Public Citizen, The Other Drug War: Big Pharma's 625 Washington Lobbyists, examines how the U.S. drug industry spent an unprecedented $262 million on political influence in the 1999-2000 election cycle. That includes $177 million on lobbying, $65 million on issue ads and $20 million on campaign contributions. The report shows that:

· The industry's $20 million in campaign contributions and millions more in issue ads attacking candidates opposed by the industry aided its army of lobbyists in gaining access to congressional representatives.

"The drug industry is stealing from us twice," Clemente said. "First it claims that it needs huge profits to develop new drugs, even while drug companies get hefty taxpayer subsidies. Second, the companies gouge taxpayers while spending millions from their profits to buy access to lawmakers and defeat pro-consumer prescription drug legislation."

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, added, "Not surprisingly, pharmaceutical companies have been deceiving Congress and the American public for years. I commend Public Citizen for exposing the industry's long-standing attempt to hide the truth about R&D spending."

Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), said, "This well-documented Public Citizen report shows just how much the pharmaceutical industry exaggerates its commitment to research and development and focuses instead on the bottom line."

Added Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine), "Millions of our seniors have paid taxes for decades and contributed to the development of new drugs. Now in their retirement, they pay the highest prices in the world for these drugs. . . . The public deserves better."

Public Citizen calls on Congress to pass a Medicare-run prescription drug benefit program with strong cost containment that guarantees affordable prices for middle and low-income seniors. Copies of the reports can be found at

http://www.citizen.org/congress/drugs/R&Dscarecard.html and

http://www.citizen.org/congress/drugs/pharmadrugwar.html

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

For more information, visit http://www.Citizen.org

7/23/01
3:50:03 PM

Bush Accuser Dies Of Drug Overdose

By Irene Noguchi

Police went to Hatfield's house Tuesday morning to arrest him on charges of credit card fraud, but Hatfield wasn't home, said Detective John Hubbard of the Bentonville, Ark., Police Department.

"He did have a past that he was working very hard to put behind him," Hicks said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com

7/23/01
3:46:48 PM

Author Of Bush Biography Commits Suicide

SPRINGDALE, Ark. (AP) - The author of a book about George W. Bush has killed himself, police said. James Howard Hatfield, 43, wrote Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the making of an American President in 1999. The unauthorized biography accused Bush of covering up a cocaine arrest. But during interviews about the book, Hatfield lied to reporters about his own criminal past.

A hotel housekeeper discovered the man's body about noon Wednesday, Springdale police Detective Al Barrios said Thursday. Barrios said the man apparently overdosed on two kinds of prescription drugs. Police don't suspect foul play.

... yeah, right! ;-) ;-) just like Marilyn ...

7/23/01
3:40:45 PM

New Republican Emblem

The GOP National Committee announced today that it is changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to a condom because it more clearly reflects the party's political stance.

A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

Furthermore, it was reported today that at a White House staff meeting last week there was a heated discussion about the health of Vice President Cheney and his angina problem. The President was especially perplexed when a staffer said that Cheney has "acute angina." President Bush interrupted and stated emphatically that "Men do not have anginas."

7/23/01
3:35:52 PM

One Dead, 80 Injured in Genoa - The Violent Defense of Indefensible Policies

by John Nichols

The slaying by Italian police of a demonstrator outside the Group of Eight summit in Genoa was not the first killing of a protester against corporate globalization. Dozens of activists have been killed in India, Nigeria, Bolivia and other countries where anti-globalization movements are, for reasons of necessity, more advanced and impassioned than those now taking shape in Europe and the United States.

The difference is that the killing of one protester and the wounding of more than 80 others in Genoa -- like the shootings at Ohio's Kent State University campus in 1970 -- took place in front of the cameras of western news organizations and independent reporters who transmitted the story to the world.

That is a big difference indeed -- especially when the images raise profound questions about why Italian police thought it necessary to escalate the violence to a level that resulted in a death and in so many injuries.

As a result, the clashes between civil society and the mandarins of corporate capital that for some had come to seem routine have now taken on a new character. Issues of development and democracy that demonstrators have long identified as deadly serious are now more obviously so. And the dismissals of religious, labor, farm and student campaigners for economic and environmental justice by powerful political and business elites sound all the more crude and desperate.

No action by this G8 summit, no matter how noble in rhetoric or intent, will erase the fact that the economic policies promoted by the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia are now so unpopular that their gatherings must be "protected" with deadly police violence.

In Seattle in 1999, when tens of thousands of anti-globalization demonstrators prevented the launch of a new round of World Trade Organization negotiations, Global Trade Watch organizer Mike Dolan noted the irony of WTO officials hailing free trade's benefits from behind legions of armed riot troops. "If what the WTO is doing inside those closed meetings is so great, how come they need all this muscle to protect them?" asked Dolan.

Now, his question must be updated. If the croupiers of corporate capital really believe that restructuring the global economy to limit protections for workers, the environment and human rights represents a positive development, why must they employ deadly force to defend the meetings at which they plot their warped vision of "progress"?

The answer, of course, is that the politicians gathered in Genoa are not "leading." They are being lead by corporate interests that are, by their very nature, at odds with enlightened and pragmatic public interest. And the public is rapidly awakening to this fact. Despite the police violence, the demonstrations in Genoa are already some of the largest protests in history against the neo-liberal, corporatist model of development.

An estimated 100,000 activists from around the world have made their way to Italy to echo the sentiments of former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, who announced prior to the summit that the place for those who seek a just world is in the streets of Genoa. A former G8 participant, D'Alema would have been welcome on the "European Vision" cruise ship where most visiting dignitaries will be resident, or at the "Jolly Hotel" to which the U.S. president has been moved "for security reasons." But D'Alema has taken the side of the future, as dangerous as that can be -- politically and physically.

George W. Bush may say -- as he did Wednesday -- that the activists pouring into Genoa from around the world are "no friends of the poor." He may claim that global poverty can only be addressed by freeing corporations to exploit workers, pollute the environment and reject regulation.

But the numbers of those who disagree with Bush's simplistic and wrong-minded calculations are growing. Peaceful protests against corporate globalization may now be the routine. But they are routinely larger. And the intimidation, the arrests and the violence ordered by those who cling to free-trade fantasies will never be sufficient to silence the cry that has gone up from the streets of Genoa: "Our world is not for sale."

http://www.TheNation.com

7/23/01
3:35:28 PM

Horrific raid on GSF and IMC Genoa

Report from the IMC tonight.

Tonight the carabineraie raided the IMC as many people already have probably seen on the newswire already. As we saw it the carabineraie started by pulling up about 2-300m up the road in initially around four to five vans. They got out and started to jog down the street in riot gear and batons. People saw them and started to enter both building - the main GSF building and the school.

The school had been a safe space for people to sleep and chill for a few days. In the school there were a diverse bunch of people. As the convergence center was quite close, many people came to get information on the counter conference and the solidarity marches and also to use computers. Many people who slept in the school were participants from the marches, a group of pacifists from Zaragoza had come to the school to sleep just fifteen minutes before the arrived, (as it was the only really "safe" space to sleep) and ended up with eight hospitalised and more detained by the carabineraie.

The carabineraie, having reached the school and the GSF building started to arbitrarily beat people with the batons as people scrabbled to get inside either building. The door were closed on the GSF building but they entered from, not the main door, but one which was not secured at the side - not secured as this was just not expected.

I can only tell from what happened now from the IMC as I was there working. The IMC tried to calm people down as the carabineraie came in and demanded that all of us stand spread-eagle against the wall for about 30 minutes whilst the people wandered in and out of the rooms a bit listlessly, looking for anything incriminating - as if. They then moved everyone into one area and everyone had to sit down for another twenty minutes or so.

What they found and took was some of the equipment like mini disks videos and disks and searched many peoples bags. They also took some salad knives from the kitchen and a couple of gas masks. Later after it was all over they said to the press that they saw quite a lot of black clothes inside the rooms, well excuse me.

Apparently opposite the police took all available passports and wallets and diaries from peoples bags.

The carabineraie tried to take one of the IMC people but another journalist with G8 accreditation stepped in although he was pushed back the carabineraie left the other guy alone.

They finally left when a women MP who was in the building came to our floor and had powers to make the carabineraie leave - due to the fact that we were an international group and also journo/press. The police left, but we discovered that the people on the other floors of the GSF building had had freedom to roam after only being held on the floor for a short time. Also the GSF Lawyers office was ransacked and the computers destroyed, hard drives taken and the phones smashed - so much for the law. The computers conatined all of the info relating to legal aid etc over the last few days. The carabineraie obviously had their purpose here - one mission being to search the IMC floor to find something to discredit the IMC media movement.

After they left people immediately checked their gear and recorded what was taken, and then the keypads started burning.

Then we discovered the fucking mass beatings next door where people were already sleeping and others had been eating and talking, many IMC people stayed outside to somberly record the devastation and support those in shock and disbelief at what had just occurred. Tears and shouts of "assinos" followed the police who for another half an hour or so were still blocking off exits. Many people outside had been chanting "let them free" whilst we were up against the wall and the school was being emptied with stretcher after stretcher of young men and women being carried out.

The story from across the street in the school was that when police arrived they grabbed the first people they could outside and beat them heavily - one of the first to be beaten was a uk reporter who was smashed repeatedly by a group of them - one held him by his neck while the others beat him with clubs - unconscious he was left in the street in a pool of blood (later when we were allowed out of the building the blood had been cleaned off the pavement). Their intention was clear then from the start.

Inside the building when police entered many people inside raised their hands but the police just started smashing windows. One group then ran to the third floor and managed to escape out of an upper window and down scaffolding (the building is a bit of a building site under repair) - they were lucky. The others inside were beaten everywhere but from the long stream of stretchers came out of the building they were obviously trying to injure people as seriously as possible - at least five were brought out unconscious.

Later after more arrests in the street the police and fleet of ambulances departed, leaving us access to the building. Inside the sight was sickening. There was thick dark blood all up the walls, over the floor and at the bottom of stairs. It looked like several people had been beaten while on the ground from the blood patters low down on the walls. The scene was horrible. Even the ambulance staff were obviously shocked.

The night is long and will not end to day. This is a sad day for democracy. As to the "weapons" they found in the school, the place was as we said earlier was under repair, a small section blocked off and littered with pipes and building materials etc Like us they too had knives (and forks!) for cooking and eating.

The local media and other reports have said police where there searching for weapons or drugs. No, it is obvious why they were here. The testimonies of people in both buildings, the blood on the street and inside the school and the number seriously injured in this so called search tells the true story. No doubt many things will be said about this horrific evening here at the GSF building, but whatever happens, Indymedia will continue to report the truth.

http://www.indymedia.org

7/23/01
3:32:33 PM

An Appeal From The Activists Fighting In Genoa

Genoa, early morning 22nd July 2001

We write from the building of GSF and Indymedia in Genoa after witnessing the worst human rights violations in the short history of the young movement against capitalist globalisation. Two people were killed by the police on the 20th, one in Genoa and one at the border, and someone else might have been killed in the most outrageous display of fascist state brutality that all of us have seen in our lives, just a few hours ago in front of this building.

This night the police broke into the school Diaz (across the road), one of the accommodation places of GSF were people were sleeping at that moment, and beat up everyone to the extent that most of the people could not walk out and had to be carried in stretchers out of the school. We don't know how many people were badly injured because we lost count of the amount of stretchers carried out of the school, but they brought about 30 ambulances for the injured people. The police also brought at least one body bag outside, maybe two, but we don't know yet whether there was a corpse inside either or both of them. Everybody was either arrested or taken to hospital. According to the testimony of one person who could escape before being arrested, people were lying on the floor saying 'no violence' when the police broke into the first floor where he was, and they battered people so badly that one of the officers had to intervene to stop the massacre. In one of the pictures taken by Indymedia

http://italy.indymedia.org

you can see a plank of wood with nails covered with blood lying next to a corner with big patches of blood on the walls.

The police also broke violently into the GSF and Indymedia building at the same time, but here they only destroyed and stole materials. They did not attack anyone (although in part of the building it was difficult to breathe due to the tear gas). Italian parliamentarians were also struck by policemen while they were trying to enter the school Diaz while the police were beginning to remove the injured.

On the 20th and the 21st the police terrorism in the streets was unprecedented in recent Western European history. On the 20th they murdered a young protestor from Genova, who was shot once in the forehead and once in the cheek, and drove backwards over his corpse. A young french woman was killed in the Ventemiglia border on the same day, while the police were preventing her and other people from entering the country. Police attacked and tear gassed all the different groups that took part in the action. For instance, they threw tear gas from helicopters into the assembly point of the pacifist march, charged against the tutte bianche and the Network for Global Rights before they even started their actions, and injured a still unknown number of people. They deliberately mixed the different sorts of political expression, trying to create conflicts (for instance by pushing part of the black block into the pacifist assembly point). On the 21st they massively attacked part of the demonstration for absolutely no reason, tear gassing the whole area (including the parking lot that served as the GSF convergence center and a nearby beach) and some people were forced to jump into the sea just to escape from them - only to find police boats facing them in the water. Both on the 20th and the 21st there were riots all day, all over the city, which were clearly provoked by the police. The forms of provocation were diverse: the television showed images of a group of people dressed in black going out of a police van and breaking windows, and the black block was visibly infiltrated throughout these days.

We respectfully ask our friends from the black block to reflect on the meaning of this fact, not just for them but for everybody else. This request is not meant to imply that they should not be present in large collective actions, but merely that we encourage them to rethink their role and choices in them. One possible way would be to play a role focused on solidarity and defense of other groups, similar to the one so successfully carried out by the black block in A16.

People who are taken to the hospitals are arrested immediately after receiving first aid, unless they are in an extremely bad condition. One person, a member of a nonviolent group, who was horribly beaten up while sitting on the floor with his hands up, went through that experience. In the police station he was repeatedly tortured like everyone else there. The police was hitting the already wounded areas of his body and battering him for no reason. Another person who was arrested and released says that they were beating everybody and forcing them to scream 'viva il duce', which means long live Mussolini.

The police terrorism started well before the actions. The last weeks were characterised by police searches all over Italy, followed by what everybody here considers to be a reproduction of the strategy of tension used by the Italian state in the 70s to crash social movements. Letter bombs were sent (by whom?) to policemen, the police exploded a car in the centre of Genova because it was parked in the same place for several days, and they alleged in the media that bombs had been planted in several places (including one of the accommodation spaces of the GSF) - all of these in order to create an atmosphere of paranoia, fears about demonstrators and social terror. They also arrested several people before the actions, including a particularly brutal case of a young woman who was kept in isolation for four days for having a van (which they claimed would be used to break into the red zone) where she kept a hatchet for camping purposes. The people who were arrested with her report that they were also tortured physically and psychologically, including forced exposure to a succession of three posters: a pornographic one, followed by one of Mussolini and then one of the Nazi Army in action.

We know that many solidarity and denounciation actions have already taken place all over the world and that many more are being planned see

http://italy.indymedia.org

We encourage all the groups that have not planned actions yet to do so, and to prepare for sustained actions to continue until those responsible for these outrageous human rights abuses pay the full price for their actions. We suggest to these groups that their minimum demand would be the resignation of the Berlusconi government. There is a list of Italian embassies

http://www.ethoseurope.org/ethos/embassies.nsf/

at go down to the link Embassies of Italy

We think that we need to turn this situation into a serious international problem for the Berlusconi and the other G8 governements, not just due to a basic sense of justice but also because we feel that the survival of the movement and of many of us might depend on it. This brutality shows the actual panic with which the rich and powerful are reacting to the clear fact that the world is beginning to listen to us. Seeing that they can no longer write us off as a marginal, temporary phenomenon, they are now removing all masks of ostensible democracy and showing their real face - one of oppression, violence and terrorism.

Por todos nuestros muertos, ni un minuto de silencio. Toda una vida de lucha. To honor our dead, not a minute of silence. A whole life of struggle.

7/23/01
3:31:35 PM

G8 Summit final statement at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33436-2001Jul22.html

Summit protest statement at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30506-2001Jul21.html

Who are the Genoa protesters? At

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1435000/1435610.stm

Q&A: G8 summit (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1441000/1441128.stm

U.S. Won't Commit to Climate Plan Timeline

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010722/ts/group_environment_dc_5.html

AND ESPECIALLY...

A Life and Death Struggle in Genoa - the monkeyfist collective

http://www.monkeyfist.com/articles/766

...with pictures of dead protester, 23 year old Carlo Giuliani in a pool of blood on the street and crushed under a police jeep.

7/23/01
3:30:48 PM

Chances Grow of Deal on Kyoto Pact in Bonn-Kyodo

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan, Russia, and the European Union (news - web sites) (EU) have agreed to revisions of an 11th-hour proposal to rescue the Kyoto global warming accord, and chances are improving of an agreement on Monday, Kyodo news agency said.

The agreement would cover technical provisions to implement the pact, Kyodo reported, citing unidentified sources at the talks in Bonn, Germany.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, returning to Tokyo from a Group of Eight (G8) summit meeting in Italy where the rich nations and Russia agreed to disagree on the fate of the accord, said only that he thought talks on the Kyoto agreement were headed the right way.

``I think it's headed in a good direction,'' he told Reuters when asked what his position was on the Kyoto pact to curb greenhouse gases. He did not elaborate.

Tokyo's consent is crucial to bringing the Kyoto accord into force since President Bush (news - web sites) rejected it in March.

Japanese delegates in Bonn earlier declined to comment beyond saying they were still unhappy with one element of the draft compromise deal concerning how the Kyoto treaty would be enforced. Japan favors a softer approach than the proposal for penalties for countries that failed to meet emissions' targets.

7/23/01
3:30:14 PM

"Kindness is a language, which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

Mark Twain