6/22/02
6:52:26 PM
Denied Permission To Sue, Feingold Still Pushes ABM Treaty Fight
by John Nichols, The Nation, June 21, 2002
The Senate Ethics Committee has denied US Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wi., permission to join a lawsuit that asks the federal courts to clarify whether it was appropriate for President Bush to unilaterally end participation by the United States in the thirty-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
But that does not mean that Feingold is giving up on the suit brought by 31 member of the House of Representatives, or the cause of pushing the Senate to assert its Constitutionally-defined authority role in deciding whether the US enters and exits international treaties.
"I wanted to be a part of the lawsuit because I think this is a fundamental issue for anyone who cares about the separation of powers. The fact that I am not going to be allowed to be a plaintiff does not make the lawsuit, or the issue, any less important," says Feingold, a lawyer who says he is considering filing an amicus brief in support of the legal action. "I am going to continue to do everything I can to help the members of Congress that are bringing the suit."
The Senate requires that members receive a Ethics Committee waiver from rules regulating gifts before accepting free legal assistance. Senators who are forced to defend themselves against lawsuits are routinely granted waivers. But committee staffers said the rules were read narrowly in regard to Feingold's request because he sought to become a plaintiff in a legal action.
Noting that the suit he sought to join raises an important Constitutional question, Feingold told The Nation, "I really was surprised that the waiver was denied in this case. It seems to me that this was a reasonable request for a waiver, which they should have granted."
The decision to prevent Feingold from joining the suit means that no senator is officially a party to the legal action. Since it is the Senate that approves treaties -- and that Thomas Jefferson and other founders of the nation said should decide when to exit treaties -- some legal observers say the suit's prospects will suffer because there is not a senator among the plaintiffs.
But Feingold says the suit remains vital and necessary.
"This is all very frustrating because none of this should be happening," the senator said of the conflict over the president's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. "The White House shouldn't be undoing treaties without the permission of Congress. This is shifting a fundamental aspect of our system. If presidents are allowed to withdraw from treaties whenever they want, then we really are changing the relationship between the legislative and the executive branches. That makes this a very sad moment for the Constitution and the country. If this change is allowed to be made, without objection from Congress or the courts, then we will have a very hard time getting back to the proper separation of powers."
Feingold, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, has frequently expressed concern about the failure of Senate leaders to defend the role of Congress as it relates to oversight of the White House. In addition to making an unsuccessful attempt in early June to open a Senate debate over Bush's decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty on June 13, the Wisconsin senator has in recent weeks been saying that the administration should seek Congressional approval before declaring war on Iraq.
Feingold says his concern about Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty extends beyond the Constitutional question.
"I'm very concerned about where this administration is moving in terms of arms control. For thirty years, the ABM Treaty has been the foundation for our strategic relations with the Soviet Union and Russia, and for much of the progress we've made on arms control," says Feingold, who is also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In a written statement detailing those concerns, Feingold argues, "At a time when our global strategic relationships are of paramount importance, withdrawing from the ABM Treaty risks undermining the strength and staying power of the global coalition against terrorism. Instead of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, we should be taking further steps to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to thwart the attempts of terrorists to acquire nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the means to deliver them."
Similar sentiments motivate US Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who has spearheaded the lawsuit challenging the legality of the administration's decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. Kucinich plans to continue to work closely with Feingold on the issue.
Even without a senator's name on the plaintiff list, Kucinich says, the suit remains appropriate and necessary. Noting that the House played a critical role in debates over presidential attempts to scrap treaties in the 19th century, Kucinich says there is plenty of precedent for objections from both chambers of the Congress.
"Look at the Declaration of Independence itself. In that document, the Continental Congress challenged King George for suspending legislatures and simply declaring that his word was law. This country was founded by people who objected to a ruler named George who thought he had the authority to roll over the legislative branch," says Kucinich, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "We have to reassert that founding spirit. The Constitution charges Congress with establishing laws, just as it empowers the president to carry out laws. Congress approved the ABM Treaty overwhelmingly, and it was George Bush's responsibility to carry out that law. Instead, what Bush has done is unilaterally throw out a law -- in this case the ABM Treaty."
Source: http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=76
6/22/02
6:48:51 PM
The Nation
The Senate Ethics Committee has denied US Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI., permission to join a lawsuit that asks the federal courts to clarify whether it was appropriate for President Bush to unilaterally end participation by the United States in the thirty-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
But that does not mean that Feingold, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, is giving up on the suit brought by 31 member of the House of Representatives, or the cause of pushing the Senate to assert its Constitutionally-defined role in determining when the US enters and exits international treaties.
For the full story, read the latest installment of John Nichols' exclusive Nation feature, currently available at:
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=76
6/22/02
6:44:33 PM
Soccer Field-Sized Asteroid Detected In A `Close Shave' With Earth
Thomas Wagner, Associated Press Writer, June 20, 2002
LONDON (AP) -- An asteroid the size of a soccer field narrowly missed the Earth by 75,000 miles -- less than a third of the distance to the moon and one of the closest known approaches by objects of this size, scientists said Thursday.
"In the unlikely event the asteroid had struck Earth in a populated area, it would have caused considerable loss of life," said scientist Grant Stokes. "The energy release would be of the magnitude of a large nuclear weapon."
Stokes is the principal investigator for the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Project, whose New Mexico observatory spotted the object last week.
"It was a close shave," said another scientist, Brian Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. His organization gathers information on all such encounters.
The asteroid was not detected until three days after it came close to the Earth on June 14. When such asteroids are detected, they are usually spotted well out in space when they are approaching or departing Earth.
The asteroid, provisionally named 2002 MN, was traveling at more than 23,000 mph when it was spotted, Stokes said in a phone interview from Lexington, Mass., where he is associate head of the aerospace division of MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
With a diameter of between 50 and 120 yards, the asteroid was about the size of a soccer field, which tend to be about 105 yards by 75 yards, Stokes said. The size of asteroids is estimated by measuring their brightness, without knowing their composition.
Although lightweight compared with some asteroids, 2002 MN was big enough to have caused devastation similar to the impact of one in Siberia in 1908. On that occasion, an asteroid that exploded above Tunguska flattened nearly 800 square miles of forest. The asteroid's air blast was believed to have done the damage, since no crater was found.
In general, damage on the ground depends on what an asteroid is made of, varying from solid metal to a loosely bound aggregate.
"Looking statistically at the asteroid population, maybe 50 times a year a 100-meter-class asteroid passes within a lunar distance of Earth," Stokes said. "But only a handful of such asteroids that have penetrated the Moon's orbit have been spotted by asteroid search programs."
Benny Peiser, an expert on near earth objects at Liverpool John Moore's University in England, agreed that most asteroids do not come so close, but noted the latest "reminder" comes as Britain tests telescopes on the Spanish island of La Palma to search for the objects.
"Such near misses do highlight the importance of detecting these objects," he said.
Currently, there is no dedicated program searching for objects of 2002 MN's size. NASA concentrates its efforts on bodies bigger than a one kilometer (.62 of a mile) across.
"NASA has a goal of discovering and obtaining good orbits for all the near earth objects with diameters larger than 1 kilometer," said Thomas Morgan, a scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington. "Asteroids of this size could potentially destroy civilization as we know it."
Such asteroids could theoretically hit Earth every million years, or at longer intervals.
Asteroids the size of 2002 MN are estimated to hit the Earth every 100 to several hundred years, causing local damage, but no disaster to civilization or the planet's ecosystem, Stokes said.
"It's something the public should know about, but shouldn't get nervous about," he said. "Civilization has to get used to them on some level."
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/06/20/international1918EDT0865.DTL
6/22/02
6:36:10 PM
Asteroid Gives Earth Closest Shave In Years
Paris (AFP) June 20, 2002 - A football-pitch-sized asteroid capable of razing a major city came within a whisker of hitting the Earth on June 14, but was only spotted three days later, scientists said Thursday.
Asteroid 2002 MN, estimated at up to 120 metres (yards) long, hurtled by the Earth at a distance of 120,000 kilometers (75,000 miles), well within the orbit of the Moon and just a hair's breadth in galactic terms.
It is the closest recorded near-miss by any asteroid, with the exception of a 10-metre (33-feet) rock, 1994 XM1, which approached within 105,000 kilometers (65,000) miles on December 9, 1994, they said.
"2002 MN is a lightweight among asteroids and incapable of causing damage on a global scale, such as the object associated with the extinction of the dinosaurs," the Near Earth Object (NEO) Information Centre of Britain's National Space Centre said in a press release.
"However, if it had hit the Earth, 2002 MN may have caused local devastation similar to that which occurred in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908, when 2,000 square kilometres (800 square miles) of forest were flattened," it said.
Spokesman Kevin Yates told AFP that the asteroid was only spotted on June 17 -- three days after its flyby.
Had it collided with the Earth, "the most likely thing is that it would have detonated in the atmosphere, creating a blast wave," he said.
"You're talking in the region of 10 megatonnes -- quite a lot of energy to be released in any one place," he said.
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The risk of the Earth being hit by an asteroid or comet is very remote, and most objects never come so close as 2002 MN.
NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Program website confirmed the incident and said 2002 MN was spotted by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), a project funded by the US Air Force and NASA and located in New Mexico.
The website of the US magazine Sky et Telescope voiced alarm at the near miss.
"What is most shocking is just how close it came to Earth," it said.
"Though the exact details of an impact scenario depend on the rock's composition, had it hit the Earth, the event would have been 'Tunguska-like', with a force rivalling the largest H-bombs."
US and other astronomers are working hard to map large asteroids, greater than a kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) across, that could inflict lasting climate change.
One such monster is believed to have wacked into the Earth 65 million years ago in what is modern-day Mexico, kicking up dust and debris that swathed the planet, unleashing a prolonged winter that ended the long reign of the dinosaurs.
But many specialists are worried that little sustained effort is being made to spot smaller space wanderers, which could still unleash the energy of an arsenal of nuclear bombs if they collided with our home.
In addition, the search for dangerously asteroids is overwhelmingly conducted by telescopes in the northern hemisphere. A rock approaching from the southern hemisphere could go undetected.
Astronomers spot asteroids thanks to the light they reflect from the Sun, which means that smaller ones are frequently only discovered when they are very close to the Earth and become visible.
If one of these were on a collision course, that would leave no time to launch a rocket or missiles to try to deflect or destroy it, or even prepare cities for a potential disaster.
Asteroids are often described as the rubble left over from the building of the Solar System.
They orbit the Sun, but the paths are never eternal, for the trajectories can be deflected by gravitational pull whenever the asteroid passes by a planet or goes around the star itself.
The latest calculations of 2002 MN suggest it has an orbit of 894.9 days and is unlikely ever to be any future threat to the Earth, said Yates.
The next close flyby will be in 2061 but the distance will be much greater than in the June 14 episode, he said.
Asteroids are a very remote yet real peril, because they move at such speeds that they unleash terrific energy on impact.
The Tunguska event was caused by an object estimated to be 60 metres (200 feet) long. It exploded in the atmosphere with the force of 600 times the Hiroshima bomb.
Source: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/020620121339.dc05vk7l.html
6/22/02
6:32:27 PM
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6/22/02
6:27:21 PM
Tax, Slaughter And Lies
What can Arab Americans do? James Abou Rizk* offers suggestions in an abridged version of a speech he gave to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee conference
The 2 May US House of Representatives vote, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel. On the same day the US Senate voted 94 to 2 for the same motion. That these votes occurred at the same time the Israeli army was slaughtering Palestinians in the West Bank sent the signal that no matter what Israel did it was OK with our senators and congressmen.
I do not recall my member of congress asking me if I was in favour of patting Israel on the back for its criminal violations of international law. No one else, no average American, has been asked either.
But that is the state of American politics today. The Israeli lobby has put together so much money power that we are daily witnessing US senators and representatives bowing down low to Israel and its US lobby.
Make no mistake. The votes and bows have nothing to do with the legislators' love for Israel. They have everything to do with the money that is fed into their campaigns by members of the Israeli lobby. My estimate is that at least $6 billion flows from the American Treasury to Israel each year. That money, plus the political support the US gives Israel at the United Nations, is what allows Israel to conduct criminal operations in Palestine with impunity. While the Europeans protest loudly at Israel's actions, and at Israel's ignoring of world opinion, such protests are brushed aside by Israel because its support comes from the only country that counts, the US.
What the lobby has actually done is to intervene in our democracy, manipulating one branch of our government so that it is in conflict with the other branches. And this is done for the benefit of a foreign power. Never in our history has a foreign power had such a grip on our government. We have witnessed the lobby manipulating the American media by planting stories in the press, utilising Israel's supporters in the press, the Defence Department and in the Congress to effectively tie the hands of any administration that might want to make Israel do the right thing.
Israel has, over the years, gradually pursued a strategy to align America with their fortress mentality, so that when we became victims of a terrorist attack Israel was able to commence its long planned invasion of the West Bank. The timing was perfect: Bush was retaliating in Afghanistan and could not consistently criticise Israel for what it was doing. This criminal opportunism was brought to you by the same people who attacked and destroyed the USS Liberty, who deliberately allowed the truck bombers in Beirut to drive their explosives into the Marine Barracks there, and who paid Jonathan Pollard to steal our secrets so some of them could be sold to the Soviet Union.
Congress and the administration support Israel's crimes because of the Israeli lobby's money. By paying taxes Americans are paying for the destruction of Palestine and of Palestinians. And when the time comes to rebuild the cities and villages of the West Bank, Americans will pay for that as well.
The Israeli lobby operates in the shadows. The reason for this is that members of Congress and the mainstream media allow them to do so by not speaking or writing about the lobby.
One would think that an organisation that is as widespread as the lobby deserves some kind of press coverage, that the amount of taxpayers' money handed to Israel each year deserves some commentary. But the obvious result of exposing the lobby's activities would be that the American people demand an end to this handing over of money to criminals who are slaughtering and abusing Palestinians.
If anyone else did what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians we would send in troops to put a stop to it. We did so in Bosnia, we did so in Kosovo, and we did so in Haiti. Instead, we are sending more money so Israel can continue the slaughter.
In case you're wondering, I haven't forgotten our president, George W. Here is a man torn between two conflicting urges. One urge is to keep good relations with the Arab oil countries so his family and his friends can be taken care of. The other urge is to kiss the feet of the Israelis.
Do we remember when George W first "ordered" Sharon to withdraw from the West Bank? Do we remember when Sharon effectively told the president of the most powerful country in the world to stick it up his nose?
Those who say George W is dumb had better review how quickly he learned who was the real boss of the world -- Ariel Sharon. And if you think what members of Congress have been doing is undignified, compare that to the disgraceful retreat George W conducted when Sharon told him to. This is truly an example of the tail wagging the dog, and is not befitting the man who presumably leads us, and who did not ask our permission to have him kowtow to the war criminal, Sharon.
George W Bush lied to the Arab American community during his election campaign when he said, in Michigan, that he was against the policy of using secret evidence to convict Arab Americans or to have them deported. He needed Michigan's Arab American votes and based on that policy statement, he got them.
Now that he is safely in office we see a different George Bush. When FBI and CIA shortfallings recently became public, he sent out members of his administration to say that there was no way they could have known about the World Trade Centre bombing ahead of time. Dick Cheney said that the duty of the president and himself was to make certain it wouldn't happen again. The vice-president was lying when he said that. He and Bush are not doing all they can to prevent another such attack. What they are doing is making certain that there will be another attack by announcing their support for Ariel Sharon and Israel's continued brutality against the Palestinians. They are continuing to send money, and the political support they've given Israel is criminal complicity itself. Don't kid yourself. They know what they're doing by giving some terrorist somewhere more reasons to attack the US, our citizens, and American interests somewhere around the world.
It's no secret that people around the world are distraught at our support for Israel and what it's doing to Palestinians, which is the single greatest grievance people in the Arab countries and in Moslem countries have against us. It is not, as some of the propagandists try to say, that these people hate America because we have freedoms here. Anyone who knows anyone in the Arab world will tell you that they love our freedoms. It is our policies they hate, because it is our policies that cause so much suffering in Palestine and other places.
It's appropriate now to discuss some of the other stars of the administration and the Congress. Each political party in Congress elects its own leader. In the case of the Republican House members, they elected Congressman Dick Armey. You remember him. He's the fellow who stood up on television and recommended ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Then there's Vice President Cheney, who said he sympathised with Israel in its trouble trying to occupy the West Bank. In the past he couldn't say enough nice things about Arabs when he was head of the Haliburton Company, and both he and Haliburton have gotten rich doing business with the Arab oil countries. And don't forget Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom believe that Sharon is not tough enough on the Palestinians.
We must remember, too, Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has given new meaning to the word "fascist". How else can you describe what he's done since 11 September? He has single handedly destroyed more civil liberties in this great country of ours than any other government official since Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln abolished habeas corpus during the civil war, but Ashcroft has carried that to ridiculous heights. He has authorised the wiretapping of conversations between attorneys and their clients, a little loophole that has resulted in the arrest of attorney Lynn Stewart, indicted on flimsy charges arising from the FBI listening in on her conversations with her imprisoned client, Sheikh Omar Abdel- Rahman. He has, too, supervised mass arrests of Arabs in this country, without charges and without allowing them to consult a lawyer.
Secretary Colin Powell, who seemed to have the only level head in the administration, was on television the other day telling America that, "Yes, the settlements are going to be a big problem in settling this conflict." His attitude in that respect is very much like the piano player in the house of prostitution who claims he has no idea what's going on upstairs. Here is the secretary of state of the United States, which provides Israel with some $6 billion in aid who pretends he doesn't know that it is our money that is building settlements, and that it is our money that is buying the tanks, fighter jets, and helicopter gunships for Israel to allow them to build and hold onto settlements.
But George W Bush and his administration have discovered that when our country goes into crisis, as happened on 11 September, the president's popularity polls go upward. Do you think that explains why Bush wants his war on terrorism extended forever, or at least until after the congressional elections this year and his own re-election in 2004? And when I say re- election, I do not concede that he was elected in 2000. Not to say that Al Gore would have been any better on the Middle East conflict, but at least he got more votes than Bush did.
We now know that the FBI had several strong hints that the attack was planned ahead of time, but did nothing with it. My wife's brother, who is a simple farmer in Northern Syria, has had difficulty getting a visa to visit me in South Dakota, but Mohamed Atta, the reputed ringleader of 11 September hijackers, was granted the courtesy of having his visa extension delivered to him by the INS some six months after he flew a plane into the World Trade Centre.
Bad things have been happening to us as Arab Americans for at least two reasons: first of all, we have failed to organise ourselves into a powerful political force, which is the best protection we can have against governmental abuse. And secondly, we have failed to organise ourselves to combat the depredations of Israel and its lobby.
But we cannot shy away from exposing the Israeli lobby for what it is, the lobby of a foreign government that forces Congress to act against American interest. And it does so in the shadows, which prevents the public from knowing what they and our members of congress are doing. The lobby has intimidated politicians, the press and even our president.
We will never put a stop to that until we organise and raise enough money to combat what the lobby is doing. By exposing how much money the lobby is taking from us each year we can make great progress to defend ourselves from the government and the lobby.
If the American media were doing its job reporting on the Israeli lobby and on what is happening in Palestine, it would be much easier to discuss this with the American public. But all we get from cable news networks is the one-sided trash they put out that passes for news programmes.
I want to tell you about the first time I visited the Middle East. It was in 1973, shortly after the 1973 War, and not long after I began serving in the US Senate. I spoke with every Arab leader in the area, with the exception of Saddam Hussein. To a man they told me that if Israel would withdraw to 1967 borders, allow the Palestinians a state in the West Bank, they would then sign a peace treaty and recognise Israel. That is the same proposal that Crown Prince Abdullah put on the table. But back then there was no reaction from either the US or Israel. I made a speech at the Federal Press Club about my trip, telling those attending about the offer from Arab leaders. There was a journalist in the audience who rose and asked me several hostile questions, after which he got up and left. His name was Wolf Blitzer, and he wrote a nasty article attacking me, saying, "Abou Rizk has sold out to the Arabs." You remember Blitzer -- he also wrote a book advocating that the US government release Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy.
I also want to tell you what happened in Los Angeles recently, in addition to Dr Abdel-Karim being arrested for taking humanitarian aid to Palestinians. When I was in Los Angeles two or three weeks ago on other business I was contacted by people who represented what was described as a new coalition of Palestinian groups in the area. I was told they were having a meeting to raise money for ambulances in the West Bank, and asked if I would speak to them. I readily agreed to do it, and was preparing for the appearance when, the next day, I was contacted and told that my speech was cancelled because one of the groups had non-profit, tax free status, and that they were afraid if I spoke Ashcroft would have their tax- free status revoked.
My point in telling you this is that Ashcroft's objective is to frighten Arab Americans into silence, so they can't protest giving money to Israel and so they can't try to counter the Israeli lobby. I'm here to tell you that it is a fatal mistake to allow Ashcroft to frighten you. We still have the courts in this great nation to act as a shield against such fascist activities. I know it's difficult, but you need to be aggressive in your protests against the Israeli lobby and against wrong-headed government policies. If we do not stand up for our rights, no one else will stand up for us. We have to do it ourselves, no matter how much pain and suffering it causes us. We must do it for our children and for our grandchildren. We do not want to leave them a legacy of fear and of oppression.
In closing, I'm going to tell you how to stop the suicide bombings in Palestine. There are two ways to do it.
Give the Palestinians the same weapons that the US has given Israel, the same fighter jets, the same tanks, and the same rockets and other small arms. Then the suicide bombers will no longer find it necessary to bomb pizza parlours and passover celebrations. Providing such weapons will no longer make it necessary for Palestinians to martyr themselves. They can then shoot it out with the Israeli army on an equal basis.
The second option is for Israel and the US to get the hell out of the West Bank. We must acknowledge that Israel stole most of Palestine, but that if they will relinquish what is now only the West Bank the war will be over. There would be no more suicide bombers. And the Palestinian people would be able to have some sort of peace that they deserve and that has been owed to them ever since 1948.
* The writer is a former member of the US Senate.
Source: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/591/op2.htm
6/22/02
6:23:57 PM
Amidst the US preoccupation with its 'war on terror' and new allegations about Israel's nuclear capabilities, Ayman El-Amir* argues that the international order is moving further away from the principles embodied by the UN Charter
News reports this week that Israel's three Dolphin-class submarines are equipped with nuclear-armed cruise missiles give the appearance of being messages destined for Iran and Pakistan. Both countries have recently tested new long-range missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads and which put Israel within their reach.
The reports on the submarines undermine Egypt's decade-long effort to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, and they mark the dawn of a new phase in the post- Berlin Wall world order: the revival of the nuclear arms race. Once again, the world is on a razor's edge. But this time, in the context of a unipolar world; responsibility for the direction of the world order rests squarely with the United States.
In 1945, when the Allied Forces had achieved their victory, the world breathed a sigh of relief. Fascism had been defeated, the old colonial powers were weakened and it seemed possible that a new, more egalitarian world order might be established. Henry Luce, the co-founder of Time magazine and the media magnate who was prominent in US politics for much of the 1950s and 1960s, believed that the new order would be dominated by the US. He called the new era "The American Century".
Luce's vision was not far-fetched. In the ensuing 50 years, the US played a major role in shaping and setting the pace of global developments. It was undeterred by its sometimes ill-considered involvement in foreign wars or by the challenges of the Cold War. In less than five decades, the American Century was crowned by yet another historic victory when communism, its arch-enemy, crumbled with the Berlin Wall. With the defeat of Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait in 1991 and the bombing into submission of Milosevic's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, which put an end to "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, Luce's words appeared apt. At the dawn of the 21st century, the US is not only the world's sole superpower but also a new imperial power. However, as students of history know, imperial powers invariably sow the seeds of their own demise. The US is no exception to this rule. From the vantage point of the beginning of the third millennium, many observers acknowledge that the future may well be most "un-American", indeed.
In the new scheme of things, the old order of the post-World War II era has all but vanished. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and the communist bloc it commanded created a power vacuum, which the US quickly filled. In less than a decade after the demise of the Soviet Union, the US has all but eroded the pillars of the old bi-polar system. Shaped by the difficult lessons of internecine continental, global wars and foreign conquest, the United Nation's vision for a post-World War II rested on four main pillars. Those pillars are the United Nations' charter, the decisions of the International Court of Justice, the tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the principles of international law. The UN Charter looked forward to an era in which all peoples would see their standard of living improved and their freedom expanded.
Two years into the new millennium, the optimism implied in the UN Charter with those principles has all but disappeared. Those principles have effectively been superseded by a new, superpower doctrine based on claims of "moral superiority". The new doctrine sanctions unbridled military intervention by the Western alliance, marginalises the role and authority of the United Nations and views with contempt any international judicial system, including the International Criminal Court. The doctrine has made globalisation the cornerstone of the new international economic order. It backs away from nuclear disarmament, gives the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) a new and aggressive role and undermines the international consensus on environmental protection. The new supreme power has substituted the "rule of law" by a doctrine of "ruling above the law".
Two landmark developments defined the new world order. First, in October 1999, the United States Senate, acting against the recommendation of President Bill Clinton, refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), thus weakening the underpinnings of global security arrangements. This gave existing and aspiring nuclear powers the green light to resume nuclear testing and undermined the principles of non-proliferation. Successive US administrations, wanting to maintain the prevailing monopoly on nuclear arms, had consistently bullied the US's non- nuclear allies into endorsing the CTBT, and refused to tolerate any questions on the matter of Israel's nuclear arsenal.
The Bush administration has recently announced its withdrawal from the 1972 SALT II treaty with the former Soviet Union, which limited the deployment of anti- ballistic missiles. Last week, the Russian government responded by abolishing the treaty. Successful medium- and long-range missile tests by Pakistan and Iran last month were defensible in light of US actions. China, Russia, Israel and India will probably now feel free to undertake nuclear and missile testing to fine tune their nuclear arms systems. According to Western military sources, Israeli nuclear-armed submarines have been deployed in the Persian Gulf, having previously been based in the Red Sea for easy deployment near Iran. The probable outcome of these developments is that the nuclear arms race will once again proceed at full swing.
The other major development, which occurred six months earlier, was the NATO member states' ratification in Washington of a US proposal to modify the defensive nature of the organisation. In accordance with the US proposal, NATO gave itself the right to intervene militarily in the affairs of any sovereign state without authorisation of the UN Security Council. This changed mandate provided advance justification for the bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a "humanitarian intervention".
Although NATO's new role clearly violates one of the cardinal principles of the UN Charter -- resort to the threat of or the use of force unless authorised by the Security Council -- it was comfortably endorsed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. After the recent expansion of NATO to incorporate the former countries of the Eastern Bloc and the associate status bestowed upon Russia, NATO's mandate was further strengthened when it adopted the fight against terrorism as its principal mission. Following a consultative meeting last week, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that NATO might launch strikes against targets without having incontrovertible evidence of their involvement in terrorism. This suggests that the US might launch preemptive strikes on the mere suspicion that a terrorist plot is afoot -- a new turn in international relations.
If there had been anything left of the post-1945 world order, it was shattered by the terrorist attacks of 11 September. Since the world's superpower suffered a blow it has been obsessed with retaliation. Consequently, in the new spirit of international relations, the global fight against terrorism is the highest order. Neither dissent nor even critical discussion of the matter are permitted. In its pursuit of terrorism, the new superpower is both extraterritorial and extrajudicial.
The new world order is very much a divided entity. A wide gap separates the superpower, which has renounced all checks and balances, from an underdeveloped world that largely suffers from political, economic and social injustice. This gap is to an extent bridged by a group of manipulative countries with shifting allegiances.
At the beginning of the third millennium, the global picture is dismal. Of the world's six billion people, more than two billion live in abject poverty. Less than 10 per cent of the world's population lives comfortably, while 5.5 billion persons live in constant need. More than one billion of them are unemployed or under employed and 300 million children live and work in conditions of unprecedented brutality, reminiscent of the early days of capitalism. Globalisation is wreaking economic, social and political havoc. It is destabilising political regimes and social systems. It has turned countries and peoples into businesses to be bought, held or sold. The new era is supposed to mark the triumph of justice, freedom and democracy. However, the world is dominated by totalitarian regimes, media censorship is appearing in new forms and individual freedoms and civil liberties are increasingly proscribed.
The preoccupation with the all-out war on terrorism has circumscribed the global agenda. A number of explosive regional crises are being given only the most limited attention. The crisis in the Middle East, the impending war between India and Pakistan, the deteriorating international financial situation, the rise of transnational crime and the explosion of crushing global poverty and pandemic diseases are but few examples. Only the most urgent of crises -- the Indo-Pakistani situation and that in the Middle East --have captured the attention of the world's sole superpower, but only from the narrow perspective of combating terrorism.
The new world order is at a crossroads. The Clinton administration had divided it into "allies" and "rogue states", leaving some space in between for countries with other political opinions. The Bush administration has defined the world as comprising a "coalition against terrorism" and an "axis of evil", with nothing in between. Washington's insistence on a high-powered militarism and political hounding is creating a new class of "rebel states" in the Middle East and elsewhere -- a loose alliance that is determined to halt US extraterritorialism. These factors appear set to define a new system of international relations in which the rebel states and the superpower are continually at loggerheads. Samuel Huntington, who developed the controversial clash of civilisations theory, said as much in his article "The Lonely Superpower" (Foreign Affairs, March-April 1999).
However, this dangerous course of action is neither desirable nor inevitable. If it wishes, the world's sole superpower could lead a drive towards establishing a new global contract for peace and development aiming to realise the objectives stated by the UN Charter. A new and courageous dialogue is needed -- a dialogue that will not shy away from giving weight to the causes of terrorism and not only the "war" against it. The dialogue should not be monopolised or manipulated by governments, but should be led by the genuine voices of civil society. It's only when the world's superpower begins to listen, rather than talk, to heed rather than instruct, that the promise of a new, just and equitable order could begin to be realised.
* The writer is former correspondent for Al- Ahram in Washington DC. He has also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
Source: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/591/op11.htm
6/22/02
6:17:32 PM
A Second Age Of Reason
An explosive mix of discontent and fundamentalism is brewing within the context of a new world order.
by Rushdi Said
A new world order is emerging in which the United States wields disproportionate power. Never before has a single state or empire gained dominance over virtually every corner of the earth. With a combination of military power, technological prowess and political influence, the United States has so far managed to eclipse other powers on the international scene like Russia, China and the EU, intimidate smaller nations and manipulate an impressive array of international organisations, namely, the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The world has known dominant empires before, but their geographical reach was never so complete and they were eventually challenged by lesser powers lurking about their edges. In this respect the cases of Rome and the Germanic tribes, the Byzantine Empire and the Arabs, and the Baghdad caliphate and the Moguls are instructive. The technological gap between the ancient empires and their neighbours was never all that great, which worked in favour of emerging powers. Now, the scene is more complicated. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has dominated the international scene with its extensive media reach, banking and investment prowess, military edge and political clout. In every continent, the United States has local allies who are capable of and willing to further its aims. In most countries there are businessmen, decision-makers and academics who have links with transnational businesses and who are willing to defend, or acquiesce to, US political and economic choices.
But there are chinks in the armour. The new world order may have an extensive reach and powerful agents, but it also has its challengers and internal contradictions. Even in the United States, the rise of the religious right is a potential hazard to political stability, for it opposes the two fundamental tenets of Western civilisation: reason and moral responsibility. The encroachment of the church, represented by the religious right, in state affairs introduces an element of irrationality in government decisions. Individuals and states are classified as good and evil depending on whether they are with us or against us. Values become a matter of ritual rather than responsible moral behaviour. Business corruption, like the Enron scandal, is becoming more frequent. Concern about the less fortunate is no longer a public priority. The rise of religious fundamentalism in the United States explains, at least partly, the US Congress's increasing bias towards Israel. The terrible events of 11 September have complicated the situation. The urge to protect the United States against further terrorist attacks has given rise to a series of laws and regulations restricting individual freedoms, which had previously been a strong point of the American system. These developments make the current situation a far cry from that in the aftermath of World War II when the United States assumed moral leadership in the formation of the United Nations and the drafting of the international declaration on human rights. A moral reversal has taken place over the past few decades, and not only in the United States. Countries that had abolished the death penalty are reinstating it. Young men and women whose parents shunned intelligence services in the 1960s and 1970s are now eagerly seeking careers with the CIA and the FBI.
A further challenge to the new world order is the increasingly marginal role played by human beings in the process of production due to technological advances. Less people are needed to run farms and factories and even to fight wars. As a result, many people are marginalised despite the exponential growth of the service sector. Illegal activities such as arms smuggling and drug dealing have witnessed considerable growth. The magnitude of illegal trade is difficult to gauge, but it is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
The globalisation of investment has failed to bring about a globalisation of prosperity. Countries such as Sierra Leone, Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda have fallen by the technological wayside. The pace and direction of the development of the global economy have made many people in the industrially advanced world disgruntled. A sizeable number of those have taken their discontent to the streets of Seattle, Genoa, New York and Washington. The ideological vacuum created by capitalism led to the rise of fundamentalism worldwide. From Israel to the Gulf states, from Pakistan to India and even in the United States, religious fundamentalists are reshaping the structure of vital sections of the state like the judiciary and key services like social security, health care and education.
The only hope for reforming the new world order is through a return to the age of reason, to the separation of church and state and to affirmative action on behalf of the less powerful sections of the international community.
* The writer is a Washington-based political analyst and former head of the Egyptian Geological Survey Authority.
Source: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/591/op5.htm
6/21/02
5:45:31 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
US Senate climate warming hearing delayed until July - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16489/story.htm
Republican will head US energy bill negotiations - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16490/story.htm
North Carolina gives incentive to cut utility pollution - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16496/story.htm
US firm designs airship to rain on forest fires - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16488/story.htm
Sellafield children have increased cancer risk - study - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16491/story.htm
South Korean firm to build Oman diesel plant - OMAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16497/story.htm
Greenpeace blocks Dutch nuclear waste train - NETHERLANDS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16492/story.htm
Brazil fines Shell for toxic pesticide pollution - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16493/story.htm
Solvay, Kobe Steel to set up PVC recycling plants - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16498/story.htm
FEATURE - Wild "super dogs" hunt Australian livestock - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16494/story.htm
6/21/02
5:44:14 PM
Public Citizen issued the following press releases today:
1) Variety of Groups Join Members of Congress to Advocate Spending for People, Not Corporations, When Writing Final Energy Bill
2) Free Air Time Needed to Break Special Interest Stranglehold
June 19, 2002
Variety of Groups Join Members of Congress to Advocate Spending for People, Not Corporations, When Writing Final Energy Bill
Groups: Fuel Social Programs, Don't Give to Wealthy Polluters
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Members of Congress joined consumer, environmental and public interest groups at a press conference today in response to the naming last week of conferees in the U.S. House of Representatives for upcoming House-Senate negotiations on energy legislation.
Press conference participants demanded that the conferees not sell out the American public as proposed by House energy legislation, which offers nearly $34 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to wealthy and polluting oil, nuclear and coal companies. Nearly a dozen lawmakers stressed the importance of prioritizing people over wealthy corporations.
"One provision in the House bill would let companies that want to drill for oil and gas in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico forego paying royalties to the American people. The owners of these resources, the American people, get nothing. Zero. Zilch. That is unacceptable," said Rep. Nick Rahall, ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Resources. "If you are an executive of a major oil company, you would love the House energy bill. But if you are just plain folks, a person who pays for gas for your vehicle, you have to wonder why you should be gouged twice - at the pump and at the U.S. Treasury."
Congress is currently struggling to find an additional $7 billion dollars to fund the commitments it made recently in the education reform bill. It will also need between $350 and $700 billion for a Medicare prescription drug plan. Yet the House measure offers, in subsidies and tax breaks, $2.6 billion to the nuclear industry, $5.8 billion to the coal industry, $5.8 billion to the private electric utility industry and $19.5 billion to the oil and gas industry.
A February 2002 report prepared by the minority staff special investigations division of the House Committee on Government Reform calculated the campaign contributions made by those industries in the 2000 election cycle and compared them to the dollar amount of the benefits the industries would receive in the House bill. The rate of return on the industries' investment was 47,700 percent.
The House energy measure also provides the industries with other special breaks. The government - not the coal industry - would pay the cost of industry applications to mine on federal land. The nuclear industry would get a boost by a provision that would promote the idea of building new nuclear plants on Department of Energy land. And auto manufacturers would get a huge break by not having to boost fuel efficiency of sport utility vehicles. Further, the bill does little to promote energy conservation or renewable energy sources.
"The House energy bill is yet another tax cut for the rich that does little to nothing to secure America's long-term energy needs," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). "While President Bush and House Republican leaders are giving tens of billions in tax cuts to energy companies, they are cutting federal support to elementary and secondary schools by $90 million from last year. Their energy bill and their priorities are wrong for America."
Added Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), ranking member on the Science Subcommittee on Energy and a conferee for the energy bill, "The answer to America's energy needs is conservation and increased use of renewable energy. Our number one priority must be the future of America's working families. We must develop energy alternatives to stop our dependence on dirty, exhaustible fossil fuels, and in that way we will provide a healthy, secure future for our children."
Also speaking at the event were U.S. Reps. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Sander Levin (D-Mich.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Hilda Solis (D-Calif.).
###
June 19, 2002
Free Air Time Needed to Break Special Interest Stranglehold
Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook (This statement was given at a press conference attended by Sens. John McCain, Russ Feingold and Robert Torricelli)
Free TV and radio air time for congressional candidates would significantly strengthen our democracy. Candidates wishing to represent the interests of the great majority of our people, not be beholden to corporate PACs, would find it feasible to run for office. Challengers, who lack officeholders' power to extract campaign cash from wealthy special interests, would have the capacity to communicate their ideas to voters.
Free air time would give the public wider choices. It's just not healthy for American democracy that in the last election we had an incumbent re-election rate of 98 percent in the House and 80 percent in the Senate.
Public Citizen has long supported free air time as an ingredient of comprehensive campaign finance reform that would include voluntary spending limits and public financing. Since public financing of congressional elections is not imminent, Congress should quickly pass free air time legislation to make congressional races more competitive and reduce candidate dependence on special interest money.
The biggest obstacle to this sensible reform is the broadcast lobby. The tens of millions that broadcasters spend to curry favor with politicians and lobby Congress have placed them in a privileged position. But it's time for them to be required to meet their public service obligations by allocating a small fraction of time on the public airwaves to facilitate competitive elections. After all, that's what happens in virtually every other industrial democracy in the world.
We plan to work with Congress and the many citizens' groups that are part of this coalition to fashion the strongest possible legislative proposal and mobilize the public behind it.
Public Citizen is a consumer advocacy organization with 150,000 members nationwide.
For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org
6/21/02
5:41:05 PM
To the shores of Hollywood
by David Robb
When filmmakers ask the Defense Department for help, they have to submit their screenplays to Phil Strub, the head of the department's film and TV liaison office in Washington. He reviews them for accuracy and to determine whether they will help the military's recruiting efforts. Hollywood's top producers regularly trek to Strub's office, pleading for assistance. Strub has clout. If he likes a script, he can recommend that the Pentagon give the movie's producers access to billions of dollars' worth of military hardware - ships, airplanes and tanks. But if he doesn't like a script, the producers will have to make the changes he recommends if they want the military's assistance.
For the full story on the new movie "Windtalkers," and to learn whose vision made it to the screen, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54632-2002Jun14.html
6/21/02
5:39:39 PM
Love Deeply
Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each separate fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
6/21/02
5:37:13 PM
A Road Map To Peace in The India-Pakistan Conflict
by L. Ramdas and Arjun Makhijani
India and Pakistan stand at the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Infiltration of terrorists from across the Pakistani side of the Line of Control (LoC), the massing of troops at the border by both countries, and the increasing exchanges of artillery fire matched only by the verbal volleys exchanged between the leadership of both countries, could escalate quickly into a full-scale war. This, in turn poses the threat of a nuclear exchange.
India and Pakistan signed the Shimla Agreement in 1972 and the Lahore Agreement in 1999. In both these accords, they agreed to renounce the use of force and to resolve all outstanding issues between them by peaceful means. Never has there been a time more urgent to respect the letter and spirit of those agreements than now.
We urge the governments of both Pakistan and India to immediately step back from the brink of war and nuclear holocaust by committing themselves to the following eight-point peace plan:
1) An immediate ceasefire by Indian and Pakistani forces along the LoC.
2) Pervez Musharraf must take immediate, firm, and demonstrable steps to stop cross-border infiltration from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir into the Indian-controlled side. To ensure that these steps are being taken, an International Anti-terrorist Monitoring Group should be formed and deployed. Pakistan and India should agree to full cooperation with this group.
3) If these measures are agreed to, India in turn should make a commitment not to cross the LoC.
4) Pakistan should adopt the no-first-use policy of nuclear weapons, which has already been adopted by India. These measures should be urgently instituted within a time-frame of a few weeks. Thereafter, three further steps can be taken to ensure long-term peace. These three steps are:
5) India and Pakistan should thin down their military deployments along their common border and return to pre-December 13, 2001, levels.
6) India and Pakistan should resume their dialogue on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, in the spirit of the Shimla and Lahore agreements, and pick up the threads where they left off at Agra barely 10 months ago.
7) As a part of the dialogue process, India and Pakistan should form a joint technical commission to explore and recommend how the mutual commitment to no-first-use of nuclear weapons can be verified and maintained.
8) Why not a Shimla-II? It would be truly fitting if this could take place on July 12, 2002, the 13th anniversary of the historic Shimla agreement.
*L. Ramdas is former Chief of Naval Staff of India and Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Maryland.
Source: http://www.ieer.org
6/21/02
5:35:01 PM
9/11 delivers a jump in newspaper readership
Most of the USA's biggest daily newspapers experienced circulation gains after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This, despite an overall 0.6 percent drop in readership between October 2001 and March 2002 from the corresponding period in 2000-2001, which has been part of a decade-old trend. The average weekday circulation (in thousands, unless otherwise noted) for the top 10 papers, with the difference in gain or loss from the preceding year:
1. USA Today, 2.2 million; -3.4%
2. The Wall Street Journal, 1.8 million; +0.05%
3. The New York Times, 1.2 million; +3.8%
4. The Los Angeles Times, 985,000; -5.3%
5. The Washington Post, 811,000; +0.7%
6. New York Daily News, 733,000; +2.2%
7. Chicago Tribune, 628,000; +0.7%
8. Newsday of New York's Long Island, 577,000; +0.1%
9. New York Post, 562,000; +15.4%
10. Houston Chronicle, 545,000; +0.1%
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations
6/21/02
5:32:41 PM
"The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa - giving the world a more human face."
Steve Biko (1946-1977)
6/21/02
5:30:53 PM
Greenpeace's Positive Energy
Time for Greenpeace's CLEAN ENERGY NOW! campaign's weekly good news update!!!!
-- Victory! Los Angeles Community College District Commits to Solar Want Your College or University to Go Solar? Here's How
Action Update: Victory for Los Angeles Community College District and for the Planet!
Thanks to all of you who took action and sent letters to the Board of Trustees Los Angeles Community College District. On Wednesday June 19, 2002, the Board of Trustees for the Los Angles Community College District (LACCD), the largest network of community colleges in the U.S., unanimously voted in favor of strong renewable energy standards for the 40-50 new buildings being constructed with Proposition A funding. All of the new buildings will use at least 15-25% clean renewable energy and a minimum of 10% of the energy will be generated on-site with solar photovoltaic panels.
Read all about it:
http://www.cleanenergynow.org/features/laccd_victory.html
Want to Study in a Clean Energy Environment? Start Your Own Campaign
Students working at their universities can make a huge difference and help curb the impacts of global warming by their university to utilize energy from clean, renewable resources. In many cases, doing so will not only help to protect the environment, but also save money that can be better spent improving the quality of education.
It is up to us to show our government and the world that people in the U.S. are concerned about global warming and are doing something to stop it, with or without our government. You can help lead the way.
Download our action kit by going to:
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/climate/student_toolkit.htm
The "Positive Energy" newsletter and our web site,
will give you good news about ways to achieve clean air, climate justice, and renewable energy solutions to our ongoing energy crisis.
Want to do more? Become a Greenpeace member today!
To give online, go to:
https://www.greenpeaceusa.org/join2/cen.htm
6/21/02
5:24:40 PM
Worm Turns For US Cotton Farmers
The larvae of the species destroy the crop
by Stephen Evans, BBC North America Business Correspondent
A quiet battle between genetic engineers is underway in the cotton fields of Arizona.
At a secret location there, genetically modified pink bollworms (Pectinophora gossypiella) have just been released to see how they behave in the wild.
They are the first GM insects to be released anywhere, and they have been freed under netting. But if the experiment is deemed a success, the insects will be further modified and released into the great wide spaces where they will breed but produce no offspring that survive.
In effect, they will have been modified to destroy their own species - which is where the competition between engineers comes in.
High price to pay
Such a mutant insect would be bad news for Monsanto; the chemical company already sells genetically engineered cotton plants to farmers who complain bitterly about the price.
Monsanto's modified cotton is resistant to the bollworm which devours cotton.
So, the farmers are backing the alternative genetic modification of the insect itself.
At the moment, farmers can use chemical sprays to kill the insects, or they can irradiate them in a laboratory -radiation makes the insects sterile.
Both measures are expensive. To find a cheaper way, the idea is to alter the insect's genes so the bug is sterile.
In a laboratory in Phoenix, insects have been modified, initially in a harmless way: they have been released under netting just to see whether they survive, whether they thrive even, whether they mate.
The idea then is to introduce a new gene from a fly into their make-up, and this gene will make them non-productive. The insects will mate as normal but no destructive off-spring will result.
If that works, the farmers would then not have to buy modified cotton plants from Monsanto. But will it work, and will it be safe?
The scientists involved say the strictest safeguards are in place.
Measured risk
Opponents say that already there are questions about the ability of insects to pass mutations to bacteria in the soil, for example. And once bacteria mutate, the mutation could take on unpredictable paths, they claim.
The difficulty is that there are no certain ways of predicting consequences. It is a matter of balancing risk.
On the one hand, the benefits of cheaper cotton are huge, not just for American farmers but for poorer farmers in India or Mexico, and for consumers the world over.
On the other, though, the cost of getting it wrong in terms of destroyed ecosystems could be high.
Much depends on how tough the United States Department of Agriculture decides to be in its monitoring of the tests.
There is intense pressure from the farmers to get the modified insects approved.
The unanswerable question is whether the USDA would stand against the producers if doubts about potential danger started to surface in the tests that are now underway.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2053000/2053884.stm
6/21/02
5:17:02 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
LIMELIGHT
If you plop a twist of lime into your beer bottle, drink the beer, and then want to recycle the bottle, will the lime interfere with the recycling process? It's questions like that that make us love our readers -- and make our readers love Umbra, the world's finest environmental advice columnist. In this month's installment of Ask Umbra, the Lady of the Stacks takes on the finer points of environmentally correct booze drinking, plus other curious topics from curious readers, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: Message in a bottle -- sage advice on swimming pools, bottle recycling, and more <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ask/ask062102.asp?source=daily>
THE NAME OF THE HAZE
The U.S. National Weather Service has long maintained the tradition of giving names to hurricanes, but in Toronto, the environmental organization Greenpeace is taking matters one step further by naming excessively smoggy days after national politicians. The program is designed to call attention to the failure of the Canadian government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and shame politicians into action. The naming kicked off yesterday with Smog Day Augustine, named after Parliament Member Jean Augustine, who "for nine years ... has taken Toronto's votes but done nothing to clean Toronto's air," said Greenpeace Executive Director Peter Tabuns. Tabuns would not say which Canadian politician will be (dis)honored next.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 21 Jun 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=222>
do good: Take action to call for clean energy in Canada <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#canada>
SICK 'EM
Global climate change isn't just going to make our planet hotter -- it's going to make it sicker. That was the finding of a wide-ranging study of world ecosystems, published in today's issue of Science and showing that warmer temperatures have sparked a plague of epidemics in plants and animals. From oysters to oak trees, species are suffering from new diseases or more virulent versions of old ones as warm temperatures enable disease-bearing organisms to survive longer or migrate to new latitudes and elevations. Scientists first proposed the link between climate change and disease over a decade ago, but the connection has been a controversial one, especially vis a vis human diseases. The spread of illness among humans is complicated by so many factors, including poverty, sanitation, and the quality of the public health infrastructure in the affected area, that many scientists have been reluctant to view global warming as a significant element. The new study largely sidesteps that issue by focusing primarily on plants and non-human animals, but some scientists find its implications for world ecological health sobering.
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Usha Lee McFarling, 21 Jun 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=223>
OH, I'M GLAD I'M NOT IN THE LAND OF COTTON
For the first time, genetically modified insects have been released in the wild, in a secret location in the cotton fields of Arizona. The insects, pink bollworms, were modified by scientists to effectively destroy their own species; they are designed to be sterile, so that when they mate with natural bollworms, no offspring will result. Concern about the development is coming from an unlikely corner: the pro-GM chemical giant Monsanto. Monsanto sells genetically modified, bollworm-resistant cotton at prices farmers say are exorbitant. So the farmers are backing the GM version of the bollworm instead, which, if successful, would enable them to plant regular cotton and save money on chemical pesticides. Critics of genetic engineering have bigger fish to fry. They say the mutations could take unpredictable paths, and that the health of entire ecosystems are at stake. Although the experimental batch of bollworms has been released under netting, some dread that the experiment will go awry and the modified insects will wreak havoc in the wild.
straight to the source: BBC News, Stephen Evans, 20 Jun 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=224>
only in Grist: The look, the feel, of "cotton" -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha061702.asp?source=daily>
THE SLUDGE REPORT
From the department of You've Got To Be Kidding: An internal U.S. EPA document alleges that the 200,000 tons of toxic sludge dumped by the Army Corps of Engineers into the Potomac River every year is actually good for fish, because it forces them to flee the polluted area -- and escape from anglers in the bargain. It is not a "ridiculous possibility," according to the document, that the sludge "actually protects the fish in that they are not inclined to bite (and get eaten by humans) but they go ahead with their upstream movement and egg laying." The Corps began dumping the sludge in 1989 under an EPA permit that expired in 1993. Not so the dumping, which continued until this year. The National Wilderness Institute is suing the EPA to stop the discharges, which many claim violate the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. The House Resources Committee is holding hearings this week about the sludge dumping. Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.) said, "To suggest that toxic sludge is good for fish because it prevents them from being caught by man is like suggesting that we club baby seals to death to prevent them from being eaten by sharks."
straight to the source: Washington Times, Audrey Hudson, 19 Jun 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=225>
do good: Take action to hold the Defense Department to environmental laws <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/politics.asp?source=daily#defense>
Also in GRIST MAGAZINE this week:
Say what? -- toxic sludge is good for you -- wacky quotes on the environment <http://www.gristmagazine.com/saywhat/saywhat2002.asp?source=daily#radanovich>
There's a tear on my beer -- a day in the life of Crayne Horton, Fish Brewing Company <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dearme/horton062002.asp?source=daily>
Getting the sack -- shouldering the burden of our environmental impact -- in our Global Citizen section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/citizen/citizen061002.asp?source=daily>
6/21/02
5:14:13 PM
t r u t h o u t | 06.22
Cheney Calls for the Destruction of His Client, Hussein
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.22A.cheney.hussein.htm
At Least 3 Palestinians Are Killed as Israelis Fire on a Jenin Market
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.22B.il.pale.htm
Palestinians Kill 5 Israeli Settlers in Raid on a Home
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.22C.pale.il.htm
Senate Votes to Lift Ban on Privately Financed Abortions at Military Hospitals Abroad
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.22D.abor.mil.htm
Paul Krugman | Fear of All Sums
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.22E.krug.sums.htm
Dollar Hits a 2-Year Low Against Euro
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.22F.dollar.euro.htm
Mary McGrory | Dirty-Bomb Politics
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.22G.mcgrory.dirty.htm
6/21/02
5:11:04 PM
'New' FBI, Same Old Problems
by Doug Ireland
What do you do with a federal agency of notorious incompetence that is also famous for regularly trampling on the Constitution?
If you’re George W. Bush, you give it more money and power.
That’s exactly what happened when the “reorganization” of the FBI was announced on May 29 by Attorney General John Ashcroft. By giving the FBI carte blanche to spy on speech and ideas—from libraries to the Internet, from religious groups to political meetings—and by opening its files and agents to unprecedented levels of cooperation with the CIA (heretofore prohibited from domestic spying), the Bush administration has taken another giant step toward turning this nation into a garrison state.
Legal wiretap spying on Americans had already increased in the first year of the Bush administration by 25 percent, according to the annual report of the federal court system. Federal and state police legally intercepted approximately 2.3 million conversations and pager communications in 2001 (and this number does not include all U.S. Customs surveillance—many of its records were lost in the destruction of the World Trade Center—or the secret investigations done under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).
Now, under the new Ashcroft guidelines, FBI agents will be able to monitor what you say in Web chatrooms, or in religious and political meetings, without any court order, without any evidence of a potential crime, even without approval from FBI headquarters. For the first time, the FBI also will be able to use commercial databases to monitor the books you buy, the publications you subscribe to, where you travel, your credit profile, and a wide swath of other data.
Even medical privacy is no longer sacrosanct—under new regulations to be promulgated in October by Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services, doctors and hospitals will be required to open medical records to HHS and other government agencies (including the FBI) any time they ask, without so much as a court order. It will also be illegal to enter into a contract with your doctor to protect your health information from the feds, and HHS will create a database for every possible ailment, coded down to your individual visits.
This awesome aggregation of new surveillance powers, rivaling those of the Soviet KGB at its height, is all the more disturbing because the FBI has long been the federal government’s version of the Keystone Kops. Remember Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused by the FBI—in deliberate press leaks—of the bombing at the Atlanta Summer Olympics? Then FBI director Louis Freeh, in his grudging public apology to the innocent Jewell, blamed FBI field agents for “a major error in judgment.”
Now field agents will be able to go on fishing expeditions of their own without seeking approval from the Washington hierarchy. Yet the FBI recently has given ample proof of its inability to carry out even the simplest of investigative and analytical tasks, let alone distinguish the guilty from the innocent. Consider everything from Waco to Wen Ho Lee, from the “missing” FBI files in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to the failure (even after unmasking CIA traitor Aldrich Ames) to administer regular mandatory polygraph tests that could have discovered the Russian spy in the bureau’s midst, Robert Hanssen.
Yet when these hydra-headed errors have been exposed, the insular, secretive and self-protective culture that characterizes the FBI has led to brazen cover-ups. Thus, when FBI scientist Frederic Whitehurst told his superiors how the bureau’s own crime labs had so little quality control that hundreds of prosecutions were questionable, the denizens of the J. Edgar Hoover Building suspended and transferred Whitehurst, instead of adopting his proposed reforms.
The new FBI guidelines take us straight back to the days of domestic spying under COINTELPRO, the bureau’s “counterintelligence” program in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. According to the Senate’s Select Committee to Study Government Operations, COINTELPRO was “a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association.”
COINTELPRO infiltrated radical and dissident groups engaged in lawful dissent; used agents provocateurs to push dissenters into extremist and unlawful actions; engaged in disinformation campaigns and harassment of protest organizations, including those of the civil rights movement; and in the process drove thousands of radical activists toward burnout and despair, as they blamed themselves for problems and errors that were the result of the FBI’s disruptions. Given this history, the notion that the bureau will limit itself to passive domestic spying under the new guidelines stretches credulity to the breaking point.
The previous guidelines, which have now been thrown out the window by Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller—and which required the bureau to show evidence of a crime before engaging in domestic spying—were promulgated by Ford administration Attorney General Edward Levi to prevent another COINTELPRO and other abuses of civil rights and liberties. But even the Levi guidelines didn’t prevent the FBI from going off on its own. In 1987, a decade after they went into effect, the Center for Constitutional Rights exposed the CISPES investigation of activists opposed to U.S. policy in Central America. The FBI had been keeping files on lawful dissenters and infiltrating peace groups to weaken opposition to U.S. government support for dictatorships and death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Nearly as scandalous as the new Ashcroft guidelines has been the failure of the Democrats’ poll-driven congressional leadership to denounce them. (A Gallup Poll shows two-thirds of Americans view the FBI favorably—and 8 in 10 surveyed continue to approve of Bush.)
The alarm has been sounded, but, as of this writing, only by a few constitutionally minded Republicans. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin told CNN’s Novak, Hunt, & Shields show: “I get very, very queasy when federal law enforcement is effectively going back to the bad old days when the FBI was spying on Martin Luther King. ... The Levi guidelines were designed to prevent that from happening again, and nothing has told me that adherence to the Levi guidelines were what caused 9/11.” (As the widely publicized Phoenix and Rowley memos revealed, the FBI could not even digest and act on the information it had accumulated on the terrorists under the Levi guidelines before 9/11.)
By contrast, neither Tom Daschle nor Dick Gephardt (mindful of their presidential ambitions) has uttered a word of criticism of the Aschcroft guidelines. (Gephardt’s opportunism knows no bounds: In a major foreign policy address on June 4, he even leaped on the attack-Iraq bandwagon, giving Bush a green light for this new military adventure at a time when the military has signaled its opposition.)
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, has given a blanket endorsement to FBI Director Mueller (who has been assiduous in courting his “oversight” as chairman); and in TV appearances after Ashcroft announced the new guidelines, Leahy showed himself as toothless as he was when he led Senate approval of the civil liberties-shredding USA PATRIOT Act.
The polls also have silenced the journalistic eunuchs of the mass media, who have been remarkably quiescent on the new threat to our civil liberties (with a few notable exceptions, like conservative New York Times columnist William Safire). Within 36 hours after Ashcroft unveiled the seismic policy changes, the story had effectively disappeared from the radar screen.
What all this means is that we are now entering a period that Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review, rightly describes as “Post-Constitutional America.” And in the present jingoistic climate, once our Bill of Rights protections against government abuse of power are given away, one by one, we won’t get them back. That’s arguably the terrorists’ greatest victory to date.
Source: http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/16/feature1.shtml
6/21/02
5:04:39 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
'NEW' FBI, SAME OLD PROBLEMS
by Doug Ireland, In These Times
--American rights and liberties took a blow last month when Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a "reorganization" of the FBI.
HISTORY HAPPENED HERE: A TASTE OF THE WINE COUNTRY
by Carla Davidson, American Heritage
-- Sonoma County's immigrant past lingers in the winemaking of today.
THE MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION
Web site review by Julie Madsen
-- Whether you refer to it as the "blessed event" or "the red menace," here you can throw discretion aside and find essays, artifacts, history, and answers to common questions about this often-secret subject.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
6/21/02
4:58:05 PM
"The matrix of Buddahood permeates all sentient beings.
All beings are therefore Buddhas in themselves."
Gautama Buddha
6/21/02
4:47:58 PM
California Make Micro-Pollution Standards World's Strictest
June 21, 2002
EL MONTE, Calif. (AP) _ The state's anti-smog board has adopted the world's stiffest air quality standards for particles of soot and dirt tinier than a human hair but dangerous enough to damage lungs.
The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously Thursday to limit the quantity of the pollutant known as PM10, named because they are smaller than 10 microns in diameter.
A reduction of the particles would prevent about 6,500 deaths a year, 340,000 asthma attacks and 2.8 million lost work days, according to a review of state data and health studies.
The decision does not regulate polluters, and experts said it may be a decade before technology permits California to meet all the standards.
However, the board generally adopts overall limits on a pollutant as a first step to regulating the sources.
``We're extremely pleased,'' said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, a lobbyist for the American Lung Association of California. ``From our perspective, the most important action that the board can take this decade is to adopt these standards and implement them.''
The particles are one-seventh the diameter of human hair or smaller. They can lodge in human airways, constrict breathing and causing heart and lung damage.
The pollutant is produced by a variety of sources, including car exhaust, power plants, construction work and farming.
Last year, as many as 2,431 tons of the particles were emitted daily in California, according to the air resources board.
Industry representatives pleaded with the board Thursday to reject the standards or at least put off a decision until further review.
The California standard would be stricter than those adopted by the federal government and lead to new regulations that could crush the state trucking industry, argued Stephanie Williams, vice president of the California Trucking Association.
``We are being ignored. The California trucking industry is not being represented before this board,'' she said.
But board member Matthew McKinnon said health was the issue.
``It's about particles and whether they make people sick,'' he said.
The limits, which could take effect next year, would be the tightest in the world, although the European Union tentatively has adopted the same standards for the year 2010.
Source: http://www.AP.org
6/21/02
4:43:57 PM
TomPaine.com
Independent, Commercial-free
TERRORISTS, THE INDISPENSABLE ENEMY...
...And Other Observations From Our Roving Critic
by Publicus
"As long as Democrats march in lockstep on the war, they will not be able to gain any traction on any of the issues that they are praying will damage the GOP's chances this November."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5829
WHY THE 'FRIENDLY SKIES'?
The Auto-Air Age Pollutes Skyways And Clogs Roadways
by Jane Holtz Kay
The four freedoms of flight: freedom to fill the skies with noisy aircraft. Freedom to seize our nail clippers. Freedom to pollute the airways. And freedom to support sprawl-breeding, habitat-wrecking airports.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5802
Dispatch: New Jersey
'A' IS FOR ADVERTISING
Pushing Products To Schoolkids
by Rebecca Rojer
"We're not only handed free logo book covers and textbooks with ads, but we even watch drug company-sponsored health films."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5825
Dispatch: Hoover Dam
WATER WARS IN THE AMERICAN WEST
While Warriors Celebrate, Others Voice Worries
by Shepherd Bliss
The dam drowned out thousands of miles of rivers, degrading healthy watersheds and ecosystems, pressing them into the service of humans. Development and agribusiness prevailed over wildlife and native peoples.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5831
Trigger Issue: THE WORLD'S GUN DUMP
China, Japan And Brazil Export To Us The Guns Prohibited At Home
by Tom Diaz
The eruption of Chinese imports in the U.S. of paramilitary rifles caused one of the greatest single escalations of civilian firearms lethality in the history of the United States.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5786
THE FASTEST WAY TO A BISHOP'S EAR IS THROUGH HIS PURSE STRINGS
A Lesson Equally Applicable To Politicians And CEOs
by Michael Ryan
"People are simply refusing to be dictated to by self-appointed autocrats who demand their obedience -- and their money -- without accountability and without responsibility."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5823
6/21/02
4:41:54 PM
SciTech Daily Review
Deep within the cells we're made of, squishy skeletons feel the effects of gravity ... and respond in unexpected ways
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/19jun_cytoskeletons.htm
On the 220th anniversary of its adoption the US national emblem, Robert Winkler considers the decline and resurgence of the bald eagle
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0620_020620_baldeagle.html
After four months of entertaining humans, Gaak the predator robot did what all the best robots do in science fiction: he copied his masters' most basic instinct and made a dash for freedom
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4444367,00.html
Scientists fear the romantic serenades of whales are doomed to disappear from the deep, drowned out by manmade noises
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2049000/2049976.stm
The case of the peppered moth is a striking example of evolution, which is commonly cited in biology textbooks. But the untold story behind the photos has creationists crowing (registration required)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/science/life/18MOTH.html
Cogito, Ergo Sum is Richard Watson's highly personal, wildly opinionated, and generously informative biography of René Descartes: "a proud, excitable, egotistic little man ... acid in his wit ... dogmatic about his own views"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0606/p15s02-bogn.html
Instead of one universal evolutionary tree, imagine a three-trunk stand sharing a communal root system. Carl Woese's new theory of cellular evolution presents just such a picture ... [more]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000C7E3C-BECF-1D0F-8B07809EC588EEDF&catID=1
Every dial you take: The FBI is asking for more information about what Americans do on the phone, and no one seems to be saying no
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/06/18/wiretap/index.html
Of clones and clowns: Distinguished molecular biologist Robert A Weinberg discusses the "cloning circus" and the damage it is doing to serious research
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/06/weinberg.htm
6/21/02
4:39:07 PM
Homeland Security Dir. Tom Ridge testifies
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=29281
Ridge Testifies Twice Today on Capitol Hill Homeland Security Dir. Tom Ridge testifies on the President's plan to create a cabinet-level House Hearing on Homeland Security Department LINKS TO WATCH:
http://www.c-span.org/homelandsecurity/
View the Department of Homeland Security reorganization chart, with links to affected agencies.
http://www.c-span.org/homelandsecurity/chart.asp
TALK ABOUT DOUBLE SPEAK! (Just look at Rep. Waxman's face after Ridge talks about the Homeland Security Plan) House Hearing on Homeland Security Department - Part 2 WATCH:
http://www.c-span.org/homelandsecurity/
Bush sends homeland security plan to Congress
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=8&id=220003
6/21/02
4:36:55 PM
March On The FBI And Justice Department June 29 In Washington, D.C.
http://www.InternationalsAnswer.org
6/21/02
4:33:41 PM
Beauty In The Eye Of Hubble
The Hubble telescope reveals a rainbow of colors in this dying star, called IC 4406. Like many other so-called planetary nebulae, IC 4406 exhibits a high degree of symmetry. The nebula's left and right halves are nearly mirror images of the other. If we could fly around IC 4406 in a spaceship, we would see that the gas and dust form a vast donut of material streaming outward from the dying star. We don't see the donut shape in this photograph because we are viewing IC 4406 from the Earth-orbiting Hubble telescope. From this vantage point, we are seeing the side of the donut. This side view allows us to see the intricate tendrils of material that have been compared to the eye's retina. In fact, IC 4406 is dubbed the "Retina Nebula."
Source: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2002/14/
6/21/02
4:29:44 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
"We Cover the Earth For You"
U.S. MAYORS DISAGREE WITH PARTS OF BUSH AGENDA
By Cat Lazaroff
MADISON, Wisconsin, June 20, 2002 (ENS) - The nation's mayors disagree with the Bush administration on a number of environmental issues, judging by the resolutions made at their 70th annual meeting over the weekend. The U.S. Conference of Mayors resolved to oppose cross country nuclear shipments, and to support action on global warming and power plant emissions.
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-20-06.asp
EL SALVADOR DECLARES DENGUE FEVER EMERGENCY
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, June 20, 2002 (ENS) - The government of El Salvador has declared a state of emergency and general calamity due to the increased number of dengue fever cases. Six children have died, four of whom are confirmed to have contracted the viral disease, and two of whom are still being studied.
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-20-01.asp
OIL COMPANY FINED FOR STORAGE TANK VIOLATIONS
SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 20, 2002 (ENS) - Oil giant BP-ARCO will spend $45.8 million to settle charges that it installed inadequate underground storage tanks in at least 59 Arco gas stations in California. The leaky tanks may have allowed gasoline and the additive MTBE to leak into soil and groundwater, prosecutors charged.
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-20-08.asp
BUSH CALLS FOR FITNESS ACTIVITIES ON PUBLIC LANDS
WASHINGTON, DC, June 20, 2002 (ENS) - Federal agencies will waive use fees at national parks, forests and other areas this weekend as part of President George W. Bush's Healthier US Initiative, unveiled today. Saying physical activity is the key to better health, Bush promoted the use of public lands and water for recreation, and pledged support for maintaining the nation's rivers and trails.
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-20-07.asp
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: JUNE 20, 2002
Abraham: U.S. Must Not Be Held Hostage by Oil Need
Giant Dumbells on Trucks? It's Radioactive Waste!
Arizona, Colorado Towns Evacuated Ahead of Fires
L.L. Bean Funds Buses in Acadia National Park
Birder's Hudson River Paradise Now a Park
Bioengineered Tomato Fights Cancer
Common Bacteria Killing Florida's Elkhorn Coral
Federal/NGO Team Restores Coastal Ecosystems
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-20-09.asp
6/21/02
4:21:50 PM
Dear All,
Please be advised that June 2002 letters have been posted on our website,
http://www.earthactionnetwork.org .
We appreciate you for your continuing efforts to promote healing and justice in our world. And we appreciate those of you who encourage others to join EAN.
James Shvarts
webmaster, Earth Action Network
6/21/02
4:08:21 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Old US power plants emit twice as much pollution - report - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16515/story.htm
US animal rights group opposes USDA agency transfer - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16508/story.htm
DC's muddy water, elusive fish rile US lawmakers - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16513/story.htm
IBM supercomputer to model world's oceans - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16522/story.htm
UK Energy Minister to meet MOD over wind turbines - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16502/story.htm
Origin of UK foot-and-mouth epidemic a mystery - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16521/story.htm
Seagulls not welcome in Garden of Eden - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16519/story.htm
UK carbon emissions prices rise as trade picks up - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16518/story.htm
Virus kills over 600 seals in Sweden, Denmark - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16517/story.htm
FEATURE - Spanish islands buffeted by storm over "eco-tax" - SPAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16512/story.htm
South Africa to get tough on earth summit protests - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16510/story.htm
Norway sees minor risk of oil spill from trawler - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16516/story.htm
NAFTA group to study transgenic corn in Mexico - MEXICO http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16506/story.htm
Uganda's Museveni blasts power dam critics - KENYA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16501/story.htm
Siemens in US wind farm deal with Danish NEG Micon - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16504/story.htm
Polish wind power seen blooming after EU enlargement - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16503/story.htm
US mulls WTO action to lift EU block on GM crops - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16509/story.htm
Smoggy days in Canada now named after politicians - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16507/story.htm
Brazil cane industry pushes for new alcohol program - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16520/story.htm
Australia's uranium mines come under spotlight - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16505/story.htm
Australia bill rejects GM crop exclusion zones - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16511/story.htm
6/21/02
4:07:03 PM
AlterNet Headlines
Congratulations to our partners at Tolerance.org on their Webby Award for best activist Web site! (Sure, AlterNet was nominated in the same category, but we're thrilled to see the Webby go to a site that encourages people to fight hate and promote tolerance.) Giving her required five-word acceptance speech at the ceremony, Tolerance.org producer Ashley Day urged the audience to "Examine Your Hidden Bias!"
Visit http://www.tolerance.org/ to see how.
NEW BUSH AIDS PLAN OUTRAGES ACTIVISTS
Jim Lobe, AlterNet
AIDS activists and their supporters are calling Bush's global AIDS plan a hoax that has all the earmarkings of shady alliances and backdoor tactics.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13421
THE SECRET WAR ON FBI WHISTLE-BLOWERS
Geoffrey Gray, Village Voice
A whistle-blower's story often ends years later with a subtle game of bureaucratic payback, a bitter finale the public rarely gets to witness.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13416
LOST IN AMERICA
Geov Parrish, AlterNet
An intrepid reporter braves tiger pits, marathoners, and countless umlauts to get to the bottom of the Biggest Box -- Ikea.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13337
INDECENT PROPOSAL
Hussein Ibish, AlterNet
President Bush's absurd plan for an interim Palestinian state will not resolve the bloody stalemate produced by suicide bombings and Israeli reprisals.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13423
THE TROUBLE WITH FRIDA KAHLO
Stephanie Mencimer, Washington Monthly
All the hype surrounding the late Mexican painter-cum-icon dodges certain uncomfortable truths about this season's hottest female artist.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13321
ADDICTED TO OIL: CONFRONTING AMERICA'S WORST HABIT
Ryan Singel, LiP Magazine
The relationship with America's most popular liquid has long since become self-destructive. It's time to re-examine the nature of gasoline.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13392
PORN PROVOCATEUR
Janelle Brown, Salon
Lizzy Borden, whose ultraviolent films feature women being beaten, raped and doused in vomit, insists that she is a gender pioneer whose repellent movies are morality tales.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13422
R.I.P., Politically Incorrect
Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
As 'Politically Incorrect' ends its remarkable run, the appropriate farewell is not a eulogy, but a celebration of the show's rare willingness to speak truth to power.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13400
STRIPPING AWAY BIG PHARMA'S FIGLEAF
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, AlterNet Prescription drug prices are outrageously high, and the justifications for keeping them there are based on faulty assumptions and disinformation.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13398
Six-time winner of the Foreign Correspondent of the Year award Robert Fisk talks about the war on terrorism and the crisis in the Middle East on Friday's Working Assets Radio. Listen online from 10-11amPT/1-2pmET, or call in: 866-798-TALK.
http://www.workingassetsradio.com
THE STORY OF MY LIFE -- NO, REALLY
Dennis Loy Johnson, MobyLives
Some literary critics charge that recent works of nonfiction, particularly memoirs, are fabrications being passed off as truth.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13415
SUNNY SIDE UP
Anthony Arnove, AlterNet
Indie film icon John Sayles and his partner Maggie Renzi discuss careers, collaboration and commercialization -- and their new film, "Sunshine State."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13342
6/21/02
4:02:09 PM
Whale Watching Is A Killer, US Studies Show
by Chris Stetkiewicz, June 4, 2002
SEATTLE - The hundreds of whale watchers who go out aboard motorized boats each day to watch northwest U.S. killer whales are actually helping to push the massive mammals closer to extinction, whale advocates said yesterday.
Three separate studies show noisy boat traffic makes it harder for killer whales, or orcas, to find food by using underwater sound waves, forcing them to swim harder and burn off more blubber, which is tainted with harmful chemicals.
"The presence of the whale watch fleet decreases sonar efficiency by 95-99 percent, while increasing food requirements; the resulting starvation forces the whales to draw down toxin-laden blubber, and they die," said Mark Anderson President of Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance (ORCA).
The studies were conducted by Seattle area researchers and funded by ORCA, formed five years ago to investigate the decline of the local killer whale population, which has shrunk 20 percent since 1995.
The whales' food supply, mainly salmon, appears to have declined in recent years and the fish that they do eat often contain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxins.
University of Washington researchers reported noise from boat traffic may degrade the orcas' sonar efficiency by 95 percent to 99 percent. Another University of Washington study found a "strong statistical correlation between whale population decline and boat activity."
The third study, conducted by an ORCA official, concluded that adult whales were burning nearly 20 percent more energy than they did before whale watching became popular. Nearly 100 boats follow the local pods each day.
Ironically, whale watching has raised public awareness and support for local orcas, which spend eight months a year feeding in waters off the San Juan Islands between Washington state and British Columbia.
Last month U.S. marine officials agreed to rescue a sick adolescent orca near Seattle and return it to its home waters in Canada amid a public outcry that drowned out calls to let nature take its course.
Boats ferrying dozens of camera-toting tourists depart from Victoria, B.C., Seattle and other Washington state cities each day. Larger boats are expected to keep a safe distance, but many smaller private boats often creep within yards of the striking, black-and-white giants.
Source: http://www.Reuters.com
6/21/02
3:55:01 PM
TomPaine.com