5/19/02
10:36:41 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
FEATURE - Animals have rights too, says legal eagle - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16023/story.htm
New study adds fodder to ANWR drilling debate - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16029/story.htm
US Forest Service fiddles while Alaska at risk, greens say - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16025/story.htm
Polar bears threatened by global warning - experts - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16019/story.htm
New plan for Alaska forest draws mixed reviews - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16014/story.htm
British study finds likely carcinogen in foods - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16032/story.htm
Villagers vow to fight Thai-Malaysian pipeline - THAILAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16024/story.htm
Maligned mining sector says digging for new image - PERU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16031/story.htm
Oman to combat oil pollution with radar aircraft - OMAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16030/story.htm
Pro-whaling lobby may make gains at IWC meet - group - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16020/story.htm
Iceland push for membership key test for whale meet - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16018/story.htm
Germany acts to give animals constitutional rights - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16022/story.htm
Yachting - Greenpeace disrupt France's America's Cup launch - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16016/story.htm
Finland nuclear power expansion gains in poll - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16026/story.htm
Fate of orphan Puget Sound whale still undecided - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16027/story.htm
EU says farmers face extra costs to stay GM-free - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16021/story.htm
EU aims to boost combined heat and power plants - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16017/story.htm
INTERVIEW - New Antarctic iceberg split no threat-scientist - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16028/story.htm
Shooters to kill 15,000 kangaroos on army base - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16015/story.htm
5/19/02
10:33:26 PM
t r u t h o u t | 05.20
Multiple Reports Contradict Bush Denials
House Democratic Leaders Call for White House Probe
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.20B.Conyers.Probe.htm
Italy Reported Plot to Kill Bush With Plane
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.20A.Genoa.Plot.htm
Israel's Mossad Warned in August of 2001 of "Major Assualt"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.20C.Israel.Warn.htm
Clues Surfaced Before Sept. 11
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.20D.Clues.911.htm
'99 Report Warned About Plot Like 9/11
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.20E.99.Report.htm
Chicago Tribune Editorial | America's Raucous Democracy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.20F.Raucous.Demo.htm
Mary McGrory | Lock-and-Load Ashcroft
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.20G.Lock.n.Load.htm
5/19/02
10:26:50 PM
FBI Admits No Evidence Links 'Hijackers' To 911
by Michael Collins Piper 5-18-2
The possibility that 19 Muslim men accused of being the Sept. 11 hijackers were not, in fact, the hijackers, is not so extraordinary an idea as it might seem.
After seven months of non-stop declarations by U.S. government spokesmen that there exists solid proof tying 19 Muslim men to plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller has now admitted quite the opposite.
That 19 Muslim men who have apparently disappeared have been named as the hijackers is not in doubt.
What is in doubt is whether those 19 men were actually plotting anything, either individually or together.
The amazing possibility remains that others carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, using the identities of the 19 Muslims who have been assigned guilt in the tragedy.
In an April 19 speech delivered to the Common wealth Club in San Francisco, Mueller said that the purported hijackers, in his words, "left no paper trial." The FBI director stated flatly:
In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper-either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere-that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot.
In describing Mueller's evidence fiasco, Los Angeles Times reporters Erich Lichtblau and Josh Meyer, whose article was reprinted in The Washington Post on April 30, note that:
Law enforcement officials say that while they have been able to reconstruct the movements of the hijackers before the attacks-all legal except for a few speeding tickets-they have found no evidence of their actual plotting.
The Times reporters acknowledge that Mueller's comments "offer the FBI's most comprehensive and detailed assessment to date of its investigation, remarkable as much for what investigators have not found as for what they have."
The FBI director explained away the absence of evidence by making the disingenuous assertion that the hijackers used "meticulous planning, extraordinary secrecy and extensive knowledge of how America works" to conceal their scheme.
Mueller made this claim despite the fact that in the immediate wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, a variety of U.S. officials and media sources speciously announced, almost instantaneously, that there was firm evidence not only that these 19 Muslim men were agents of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda "network" but that they were indeed the individuals who hijacked the doomed flights on Sept. 11.
Mueller seems to forget that early government and media reports loudly hyped "discoveries"-letters and other documents-in the luggage and personal belongings of the presumed hijackers which "proved" that they were on a "mission for Allah," etc etc.
Now Mueller's comments seem to contradict everything that's been said.
http://www.americanfreepress.net
5/19/02
10:21:33 PM
The Massive Intelligence "Failures" and Coverups of Prior Knowledge Can Only Be Orchestrated from the Top!
9-11 beginning of long-term plot? Group analyzes attacks, says CIA needs 'truckload of pink slips'
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27520
Official Bungling Claimed in 9-11 Intelligence
http://www.americanfreepress.net/02_17_02/Official_Bungling/official_bungling.html
The Proof of a 9/11 Frame-up is Right Before You
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/frameup.html
The Case for Bush Administration Advance Knowledge of 9-11 Attacks by Michael C. Ruppert
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/042202_bushknows.html
Scandal Inside the FBI: Did G-Men Miss the Boat on 9-11?
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/13/94339.shtml
THE MOTIVES:
How the Pentagon Learned to Love the Weapon No One Wanted
The Carlyle Connection
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0218/gray.php
THE AFTERMATH:
Strange Cluster Of Microbiologists' - Deaths Under The Microscope
http://www.rense.com/general24/exk.htm
THE HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS
Operation Northwoods And The Reichstag Fire
http://www.rense.com/general24/operationnorthwoods.htm
"U.S. GOVERNMENT PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF EMERGENCY"
by Sherman H. Skolnick 09/11/01
AMERICA'S REICHSTAG FIRE
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/pkem.html
BOOGYMAN FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
Book alleges attempts to arrest Osama bin Laden blocked by the US
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/1119/wor8.htm
5/19/02
10:18:39 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
NUCLEAR REACTOR COULD RESTART AFTER 17 YEAR SHUTDOWN
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama, May 17, 2002 (ENS) - The Tennessee Valley Authority has decided to seek permission to restart a reactor at the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant that was mothballed in 1985. On Thursday, the three member board of the federally owned utility approved a staff recommendation to return Unit 1, the oldest of the facilities three reactors, to service for another 20 years.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-06.html
DRY RIO GRANDE POINT OF U.S./MEXICO FRICTION
SILVER CITY, New Mexico, May 17, 2002 (ENS) - The Rio Grande, the river dividing the United States from Mexico, no longer reaches the Gulf of Mexico into which it has emptied for millions of years. The water has stopped flowing due to a sandbar formed by several years of low water levels plus high water usage in drought stricken northern Mexico.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-05.html
PACIFIC ISLANDS TO PHASE OUT OZONE DEPLETERS
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 17, 2001 (ENS) - The Pacific Islands have been given a major boost in their efforts to phase ozone depleting substances, as required under the Montreal Protocol.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-01.html
SUPREME COURT OF CANADA TO RULE ON ONCOMOUSE PATENT
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada, May 17, 2002 (ENS) - The right to patent genetically modified animals is at stake on May 21 when the Supreme Court of Canada hears a case concerning the Harvard mouse or Oncomouse.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-192.html
TANZANIAN ATTORNEYS FACE CHARGES OF SEDITION
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, May 17, 2002 (ENS) - Two Tanzanian environmental attorneys are facing criminal charges for speaking out against human rights abuses. Tundu Lissu and Rugemeleza Nshala of the Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (LEAT) in Dar es Salaam face charges of sedition for their work to rectify alleged human rights abuses against small scale miners in Bulyanhulu. These charges are expected to be levied on May 31.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-191.html
BRAZILIAN ENVIRONMENTALIST JOSE LUTZENBERGER DIES
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, May 17, 2002 (ENS) - José Lutzenberger, a pioneer of the Brazilian environmental movement, died of heart failure Tuesday in Porto Alegre. He was 75.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-193.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 17, 2002
Estimate of Alaska Petroleum Reserve Quadruples
Wildfire Destroys Seven Homes in Arizona
California Could Save $28 Billion, Protect Environment
Millions of California Acres Could be Protected by Senate Bill
17 States, Virgin Islands Earn Clean Beach Certificates
Wasting Disease Working Group Unites Federal Agencies
Humans Responsible for One Quarter of Sulfur Gas
Second California Condor Chick Born in the Wild
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17-09.html
5/19/02
10:12:11 PM
t r u t h o u t |
Hillary Rodham Clinton | "I Rise Today"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.18A.Clinton.Bush.NU.htm
The Gore Report on Airline Safety (Full Report)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.18B.Gore.Report.htm
Democrats End United Support of Bush on War
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.18C.Dems.911.htm
Rather Says; Patriotic Fever Caused Him to Go Easy on Questions
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.18D.Rather.Easy.htm
Venezuelan Coup Disrupting Oil to Cuba
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.18E.Ven.Oil.Cuba.htm
Israeli Tanks Enter West Bank City
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.18F.IDF.Tanks.htm
Clues Before Sept. 11 Were Plentiful
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.18G.Many.Clues.911.htm
5/19/02
10:09:25 PM
Greens Say No to Bush's Marriage Proposal
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020517125919929.html
Mass. Green and Rainbow Coalition Parties Merge
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020517094729368.html
Rob Young seeks Green nomination
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020516154310355.html
Aronowitz Opposes Budget Deal
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/2002051615370793.html
Don Hassig seeks Green nomination
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020516152828390.html
IMF Fuels Colombia Fire
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020430154827236.html
Butterflies in December
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020430153924539.html
Oil and gas wells in New York State
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020430152059624.html
One Green's report from DC
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020421105709941.html
Critical Mass cyclists arrested in DC
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020420185908950.html
Breaching the Knowledge Monopoly
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020420180157947.html
Maine Democrats contest matching funds for Green candidate
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020420154420815.html
5/19/02
10:03:27 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
DO YOU READ ME?
A little short on weekend plans? We've got a suggestion (or five): Find a cozy spot and curl up with some of this month's most interesting environmental reads. Now that the Farm Bill has passed, giving huge factory farms equally huge subsidies, check out what small organic farmers have to say about the system in the (metaphorical) pages of Salon. Or take a look at the six-part series on grassroots environmental groups and the evolution of the modern environmental movement in Rachel's Environment and Health News. In the mood for muckraking? Mother Jones dishes the dirt on companies receiving federal grants while violating federal environmental regulations. That's just the tip of the bookshelf; for more on what we're reading (and what you should be), check out Best of the Rest, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: Wild reads from Earth Island Journal, Scientific American, Mother Jones, and more -- in our Best of the Rest section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/best/best051702.asp?source=daily>
SOMETHING NOT WILD
The U.S. Forest Service yesterday came out against adding any new wilderness areas to southeastern Alaska's 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest. The recommendation was a response to a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Singleton, who sided with environmentalists last year in ordering the Forest Service to determine if there were parts of the temperate rain forest that Congress could set aside as wilderness areas (where logging, mining, and road-building would be prohibited). The Forest Service's conclusion came as a blow to environmentalists, who saw it as further proof of the Bush administration's lack of commitment to wilderness preservation. The timber lobby, however, was elated, and said any other decision would have spelled the end of a viable logging industry in the region. The public has 90 days to comment on the plan.
straight to the source: Anchorage Daily News, Paula Dobbyn, 17 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=112>
do good: Take action to save Alaska's temperate rainforests <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/forests.asp?source=daily#arca>
FERMENTING REBELLION
One fine morning just over a year ago, residents of St. Paul, Minn., woke up choking on the air they breathe. What had happened? A friendly neighborhood brewery had been converted into an ethanol plant -- without any studies to determine the potential environmental impacts -- and the plant had begun spewing the rancid fumes of fermenting corn. The foul plume blanketed most of St. Paul and many of its southern suburbs -- and mobilized Andy Driscoll to do something about it. As one of the founders of Citizens Alliance for a Safe Environment (and this week's diarist), Driscoll has been battling Gopher State Ethanol's St. Paul plant from the get-go. Read about the latest skirmishes, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: Ethanol in a day's work -- a week in the life of Andy Driscoll, Citizens Alliance for a Safe Environment -- in our Dear Me section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dearme/driscoll051302.asp?source=daily>
NUCLEAR POWER AS FOSSIL FUEL
The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power producer, decided yesterday to restart a troubled nuclear reactor at its Browns Ferry plant in northern Alabama. The reactor has been out of use since 1985, when all three of the plant's reactors were shut down after engineers discovered that the reactors did not match their blueprints. Two of the three reactors were restarted in the 1990s; restarting the third one will cost $1.7 billion and is in keeping with the energy vision of President Bush, who strongly supports nuclear power. The TVA decision drew criticism from area residents, who are concerned about possible terrorists attacks, and from environmental groups, which say that the reactor is too old to be salvaged and that the money should go toward cleaning up fossil fuel plants instead. "It's like trying to dust off an eight-track tape player rather than buying a DVD system -- they're not getting good value for their money," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear-safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
straight to the source: New York Times, David Firestone, 17 May 2002 <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/national/17NUKE.html>
only in Grist: Safety dance -- how secure are U.S. nuclear power plants? -- a two-part series by Shelley Smithson in our Main Dish Section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/smithson032602.asp?source=daily>
do good: Take action to stop the use of nuclear power in the U.S. <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#nuclear>
YUCK A-MOUNTING
In more nuclear news, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham acknowledged yesterday that a proposed nuclear waste depository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., could only handle a portion of the waste that will be generated by commercial power plants and the government in the coming decade. The acknowledgement undercut President Bush's pro-Yucca argument that radioactive waste should be consolidated into one single, more secure location. As currently planned, Yucca Mountain has a maximum capacity of 77,000 tons -- but by the time the dump opens, there will be an estimated 65,000 tons of waste already piled up around the country, and reactors will continue to produce an additional 2,000 tons of waste annually. Abraham suggested that Yucca Mountain's maximum capacity could be expanded, a move that would have unknown implications for the approval process. The Senate must vote by July 26 on whether to proceed with the depository over the objections of the state of Nevada; the House already sided with the Bush administration.
straight to the source: Las Vegas Review-Journal, Steve Tetreault, 17 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=114>
straight to the source: Las Vegas Sun, Associated Press, 16 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=115>
only in Grist: Yucky Mountain -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha030402.asp?source=daily>
5/19/02
10:00:25 PM
Subject: Bush Lying on 9/11
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=26700
How gullible do the Bush people think we are? Here's Condolleza Rice claiming they had no idea there was any plan to use a jumbo jet to slam into a skyscraper:
"Had this president known that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted on it," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice."
Yet, part of the original 1970's design specs for the WTC was that it was built to withstand just such an attack. The WTC was also the U.S. building most expected to be attacked by Islamic terrorists.
They were expecting hijackings, yet when hijacking occured as expected they did nothing to stop them, acted as if they thought the first crash was an "accident" and they did nothing to prevent them. Let's not forget Bush had an entire plan in place pre-9/11 for an Afghanistan invasion, followed by an oil pipeline.
What's their main defense? That Democrats are being, "political". What a shocking accusuation, politicians being political. Bush would never do anything like that, would he, like selling photos of himself from 9/11?
Why is Cheney "warning" against an investigation if there's nothing to hide? Because it will reveal that the Bush and bin Laden families are close business partners and that the FBI and CIA were told not to go after bin Laden - their CIA operative or the Saudis terror-financiers and other criminal business partners of the various members of the Bush administration - like Dick Cheney himself.
And the counter-attack, that Clinton failed to go after bin Laden? Both Clinton and Bush are pawns of the Rockefellers. bin Laden was an operative of the Rockefeller-CIA. That's why he's still out there today after the world's largest manhunt.
See http://baltech.org/lederman/ for the real Bush story
xoxox
NY Post 5/18/2002 - TOP AIDES RALLY ROUND THE PREZ
By BRIAN BLOMQUIST
THE DAY HE WAS WARNED: President Bush meets members of his national security staff last Aug. 6 at his Texas ranch - the date he received a 11/2-page report on Osama bin Laden. The report mentioned the possibility of a plane hijacking, aides say. UPI
May 17, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - Top White House aides yesterday aggressively defended President Bush over the 9/11 uproar, downplaying the intelligence warning he received that Osama bin Laden's terror team might hijack commercial jets.
Trying to tamp down the growing furor over what the White House knew and when it knew it, the aides insisted the Aug. 6 warning wasn't specific enough to prevent the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.
But the president's advisers did reveal the information was serious enough to alert the airlines through the Transportation Department and the Federal Aviation Administration.
"Had this president known that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted on it," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Adding more fuel to the fire, NBC reported last night that two days before Sept. 11, Bush was given a "detailed war plan" to dismantle bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
NBC reported that Bush was given a national security directive to sign for a plan that was "pretty much" the same as the one the United States followed after the attacks.
The plan included asking other countries to cooperate and share intelligence, disruption of al Qaeda cells using covert actions, the freezing of al Qaeda bank accounts and stopping its money-laundering operations.
The directive was on Bush's desk on Sept. 9, but he did not have a chance to sign it before the deadly attacks, the report said.
Questions about the Aug. 6 warning dominated a briefing by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, and Rice held a second briefing to try to shed more light on what Bush knew.
"Information about hijackings in the pre-9/11 world is totally different from information about hijackings in the post-9/11 world . . . It might as well be a different word and a different language," Fleischer said.
"There appears to be a whole lot less 'there there' than I think people first thought," he added.
Bush reportedly told a group of Republican congressional leaders that he would have acted "forcefully" if he'd known about the attacks.
"He reminded us this is the political season," said Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.).
Bush made two public appearances yesterday, but never referred to the Aug. 6 warning.
The president received the warning from CIA advisers while on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, aides said. It came in a 11/2-page "analytic report" on bin Laden that Bush specifically requested.
The FAA alert went out to the airlines July 31, a week earlier, based on an intelligence report that domestic flights could be a terror target.
It said that although nothing specific was known, "some of the current active groups are known to plan and train for hijacking" and that airlines should be on a "high degree of alertness."
xoxox
NY Post - CHENEY: DEMS' 9/11 CRITICISM IS 'IRRESPONSIBLE'
By FRANKIE EDOZIEN and VINCENT MORRIS
May 17, 2002 -- Vice President Dick Cheney last night lashed out at congressional leaders who've unleashed a barrage of criticism toward the White House for concealing terrorist threats last summer.
Cheney said Democrats in Washington "need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions . . . that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11."
The vice president appeared in Midtown to support Gov. Pataki at the 40th anniversary celebration of the state Conservative Party.
Earlier, in Washington, leaders in both political parties called for a blue-ribbon panel to investigate what the White House and President Bush knew and when they knew it.
"Was there a failure of intelligence? Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the proper way? These are the things we need to find out," said House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.).
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said the White House should reveal the contents of Bush's Aug. 6 briefing about Osama bin Laden and make public copies of an FBI memo last year warning about suspicious interest among Arabs in Arizona flight schools.
Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), leaders of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, said they're concerned that spy agencies had warnings of terror plots - but did nothing.
"There was a lot of information," Shelby said. "I believe and others believe if it had been acted on properly, we may have had a different situation on Sept. 11."
In New York, Cheney labeled some of the criticism as "thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in time of war."
He said any investigation must be conducted in a responsible fashion, devoid of leaks or outrageous commentary and conducted by knowledgeable members, "not those who would seek short-term political advantage."
"I believe, for the most part, members of the intelligence committees of both houses have conducted themselves in the proper fashion. That's not necessarily true of every member of Congress," Cheney added.
He warned that any congressional investigation must not interfere with efforts to prevent another terror attack.
"Without a doubt, a very real threat of another perhaps more devastating attack still exists. The people and agencies responsible for helping us learn about and impede such an attack are the very ones most likely to be distracted from their critical duties," Cheney said.
In brief remarks, Pataki effusively praised the leadership of Cheney and President Bush in the anti-terror war.
THE LIE WON'T STAND
http://disc.server.com/Indices/149495.html
911 - HERE IS NEW STRONGEST-POSSIBLE EVIDENCE http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=26698
US PLANES TO INVADE AFGHANISTAN MONTHS BEFORE WTC ATTACK!
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=26699
Now let's change the world! - Mike Ruppert
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=26651
Prior Knowledge, Whitewash and the Cover-up Bush Whitewashes the Extent of His Prior Knowledge as The Truth Comes Out in the Mainstream Media -- Bush Says He Had Heard There Were Going to Be Hijackings, but That Intelligence Had Never Told Him They Were Planning To Fly the Jets into Buildings. Read After the Mainstream Postings about Bush's Prior Knowledge in August for Articles Showing the Govt. Was Fully Aware of the Threat Hijackings and Suicide Jet Attacks into Buildings in 1995.
APFN - 9-11 - INFO AND LINKS:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC.HTM
`In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.'
http://disc.server.com/Indices/149495.html
5/19/02
9:49:11 PM
TomPaine.com
Independent, Commercial-free -- rare commodities in the Media Age.
BUSH'S SELECTIVE DISTASTE FOR DICTATORS
A Welcome For Our New Friend From Malaysia
by Laocoön
"Demand freedom in Malaysia and you're likely to wind up in prison and, no, George W. Bush won't be standing with you. He's standing instead with Dr. Mahathir, a repressive bigot who is another of our new best friends in the War on Terrorism."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5667
The Loyal Opposition:
CARTER GOT IT RIGHT
The U.S. Embargo And Castro's Rule Are Both Bad For Cuba
by David Corn
As progressives have mounted a principled opposition to U.S.-Cuban policy, they have not, in general, been as vocal in advocating democracy and freedom for Cuba.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5670
COULD COLOMBIA BECOME THE NEW VIETNAM?
U.S. To Pad Accounts Of Colombia's Unaccountable Military
by David Rabin
Congress seems set to pour millions of dollars more into Colombia's military. Yet critics say the Colombians have failed to stop, or even slow down, grotesque human rights violations in that country's drug-fueled civil war.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5666
ADULTHOOD WITHOUT SEX
Abstinence-Only Message Is Old-Fashioned And Dishonest
by Philip D. Harvey
In today's United States, a policy of abstinence until marriage is anachronistic. Abstinence until adulthood and then responsible, protected sex is the message we should convey.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5640
And from our CHECK IT OUT! department:
STOP WRITING? OR STOP CRITICIZING?
The Internet has made hate mail all too easy, and those who criticize Israel or American policy in the Middle East are getting more than their share, writes journalist Robert Fisk in the London-based Independent. Fisk, who has the distinction of having received a death threat from actor John Malkovich, writes:
"It used to be just a trickle, a steady drip-drip of hate mail which arrived once a week, castigating me for reporting on the killing of innocent Lebanese under Israeli air raids or for suggesting that Arabs as well as Israelis wanted peace in the Middle East. It began to change in the late 1990s.... As journalists, our lives are now forfeit to the Internet haters. If we want a quiet life, we will just have to toe the line, stop criticizing Israel or America. Or just stop writing altogether."
And don't miss other short takes in TomPaine.com's CHECK IT OUT! department:
http://www.tompaine.com/check_it_out/
5/19/02
9:42:55 PM
Knowing Much, Bush Did Little To Protect America
by James Ridgeway
hen people first raised questions about President Bush's scared-chicken behavior on September 11, they were buried in patriotic abuse. But think about it. Consider the bare facts: The attacks happened on George Bush's watch. He was in charge. And he now admits to having known in general what was going to happen. Terrorists were slipping into the country. They were studying at American flight schools. They intended to hijack planes. They were financed by Osama bin Laden.
Knowing all of this, Bush still left us totally undefended. And for this performance, his approval ratings soared.
If the president got an intelligence warning during the summer about what might soon happen, how come he didn't do something then? He could have:
1. Told Congress.
2. Improved airport security, which had already been criticized as inadequate.
3. Alerted the airlines. As it was, the airlines never raised any questions when the hijackers started laying down thousands in cash for one-way tickets.
4. Warned the FAA. The FAA control center in New Hampshire knew 10 to 15 minutes after takeoff that an American Airlines flight from Boston had been hijacked. It was more than half an hour later when it crashed into the World Trade Center.
5. Ordered improved security for the nation's nuclear power plants, the untended thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines, the harbors into which a terrorist could sail a liquid natural gas tanker and unleash a holocaust equal to a nuclear explosion.
If Bush knew so much, how come he did so little on September 11? Instead of letting his handlers move him from place to place in an utter fog, he could have returned to Washington immediately and, as commander in chief, taken charge. He could have alerted the military, which ought to have had planes in the air moments after the FAA control learned of the takeover.
Bush was much more careful when it came to defending his political power. He and his managers managed to spin his response to the attacks so well that approval ratings soared to all-time highs. Clutching his halo, the president then began pushing for various rollbacks of freedom and constitutional process. They were old ideas for him, but he wrapped them in patriotic banners and sold them to the nation. Consider what he accomplished:
1. He set in motion the installation of a secret Congress.
2. His administration marched far forward with its program for restricting civil rights and tightening immigration rules.
3. He started a shooting war in Afghanistan against a group of people—the Taliban—with whom the administration was quietly negotiating last summer. He advanced immeasurably the interests of those who want to go to war against Iraq. That's not to mention those of the Israeli war hawks who assert they are part of the campaign against terror and that their invasion of Palestinian cities and towns is thus justified.
Bush protected himself and his friends. What he left uncovered was the rest of us.
Source: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0221/ridgeway3.php
5/19/02
9:33:45 PM
"While everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates.... For I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists."
Mahatma Gandhi
5/19/02
9:32:45 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
COLOMBIAN TRIBE TOPPLES MIGHTY OIL GIANT
by Gabrielle Banks, AlterNet
-- Occidental Petroleum may have underestimated the power of the U'wa people of Siriri to keep the multinational off their land.
UK DESK: LORD MORGAN APOLOGIZES
by "Lord Morgan of Blighty Hall," Bully Magazine
-- What's with all this media drivel (like Ann Robinson of "The Weakest Link" infamy,) suddenly coming to America from the UK, you ask? Lord Morgan offers his sincere apologies on behalf of his country, but cannot take responsibility.
GARDENING AS AN ACT OF POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE
by Ed Fallon, The Populist
-- Rebellion against the status quo can be as simple as planting a garden.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
5/19/02
9:31:19 PM
AlterNet Headlines
PART IV: DELAY'S UNREGULATED PACIFIC "PARADISE"
Stephen Pizzo, AlterNet
No rules, no regulators, no inspectors, no health and safety laws. What more could a sweatshop operator ask for? Welcome to the Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate and Tom DeLay's very own pet project.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13140
-- Read Part III: DeLay's Godfather
-- Read Part II: DeLay's Judge Dread
-- Read Part I: Tom DeLay's Axis of Influence
LUST IN OUR HEARTS
Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet
We offer a mind-boggling range of excuses to justify female infidelity, but we rarely consider the obvious -- it may just be about sex.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13150
BRANDING CUBA: LA VIDA NIKE
Michael I. Niman, AlterNet
Compared to the advertising-saturated, developed capitalist world, Cuba is a blank canvas. And the corporate invasion is just beginning.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13135
FRANKENCORN THREATENS MEXICO'S ANCIENT MAIZE
Ronnie Cummins, BioDemocracy News
Agronomists and environmentalists fear that Mexican farmers have now, perhaps unknowingly, spread genetically engineered corn into most of the corn-growing regions of Mexico.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13147
MAY THE COSTUME BE WITH YOU
Jessica Lyons, AlterNet
Becoming Boba Fett or an evil Sith Lord has never been easier, thanks to a burgeoning online costuming community committed to outfitting hard-core Star Wars fans.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13131
DROP THE ROCK
Daniel Forbes, AlterNet
New York State is home to the nation's most repressive drug laws. Attempts at reform drag on while 19,000 people remain locked up -- 90 percent of them for minor possession offenses.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13097
ISRAELI REPRESSION AND THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS
Tim Wise, AlterNet
If what we see in Israel is democracy, then what does fascism look like? In a world such as this, where words have lost all meaning, we might as well just burn all the dictionaries.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13087
MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS
William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute
The Bush-Putin pact preserves the United States' nuclear arsenal and opens the door to a new kind of arms race.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13141
JAMMING CITIGROUP'S PR MESSAGE
Jennifer Bauduy, TomPaine.com
Ilyse Hogue of Rainforest Action Network explains the boycott against Citigroup bank, which lends to the fuel industry, invests in oil and logging and contributes to global warming.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13139
ARE WE DATING YET?
Lori Writer, Moxie
For a nice girl like me, sex isn't part of the try-before-you-buy phase. If you're sleeping together, you've bought it.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13106
FUN REPUBLICAN FUNDRAISING GIFTS!
David Turnley, AlterNet
With your kind donation to a Republican congressional campaign committee, you may enjoy one of many gifts, from Ari Fleischer's updated resume to a chance to clean Charlton Hestons dentures.Give now!
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13142
HUFFINGTON: Tax Avoidance And A Tan
Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
U.S. companies are slashing their tax bills by tens, and sometimes hundreds, of millions of dollars by reincorporating themselves offshore.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13153
TECHSPLOITATION: Digital Murder
Annalee Newitz, AlterNet
It seems as if most laws intended to protect people from violence are just one more way that violence gets perpetrated.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13138
5/19/02
9:30:47 PM
INTERVIEW - Italy green power output set to climb - Enel - ITALY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16002/story.htm
FEATURE - Honduran town fights to save leatherback turtles - HONDURAS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15998/story.htm
Danish parliament ratifies Kyoto protocol - DENMARK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15994/story.htm
Weird weather lashes Ottawa tulip festival - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15995/story.htm
5/19/02
9:27:39 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
US House panel to investigate FirstEnergy nuke plant - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15999/story.htm
US energy secretary sees Senate OK of Yucca site - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15991/story.htm
US House bill would toughen hard-rock mining rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16004/story.htm
US sees 9.3 bln barrels oil in Alaska Reserve - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15996/story.htm
US House panel demands govt plan for deer/elk disease - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16007/story.htm
TVA plans to restart long-idled Alabama nuke - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16000/story.htm
Spend more on biologists to save species - UK report - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16006/story.htm
Scientists seek partner for tobacco dental vaccine - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16005/story.htm
FEATURE - Arctic communities turn to ecotourism - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15992/story.htm
Stolen truck of cyanide found abandoned in Mexico - MEXICO http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15990/story.htm
Lithuania says EU must fund n-plant closure - LITHUANIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16001/story.htm
Soccer-World-Japan boosts nuclear plant security - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16003/story.htm
Meat from endangered whales said on sale in Japan - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15997/story.htm
Japan giraffe gets artificial leg after accident - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15993/story.htm
5/19/02
9:21:04 PM
What Is A Terrorist?
by Jeff Cohen
ter·ror·ist (ter'er-ist) n.
1. One who engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
2. One who leads an armed group that kills civilians as a means of political intimidation --unless he terrorizes Haitians while on the CIA-payroll, as did 1990s death squad leader Emmanuel Constant, in which case the U.S. refuses to extradite him to Haiti, even after Sept. 11, 2001.
3. One who targets civilian airliners and ships -- unless he blows up a Cuban civilian airliner, killing 73 people, and fires at a Polish freighter, like Orlando Bosch, in which case he is coddled and paroled by the Bush Justice Department in 1990, and his extradition is blocked.
4. One who leads a group that engages in kidnapping and murder -- unless the victims are Hondurans attacked by CIA-backed death squad Battalion 316, in which case Battalion architect Gustavo Alvarez becomes a Pentagon consultant, while the then-ambassador to Honduras who downplayed the terror, John Negroponte, is appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations days after Sept. 11.
5. One who uses rape and murder for political purposes -- unless the victims are four U.S. church women sexually assaulted and killed in 1980 by members of El Salvador’s U.S.-backed military, in which case excuses and distortions pour forth from then-U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick (“these nuns were not just nuns; they were also political activists”) and Secretary of State Al Haig (the nuns “may have tried to run a roadblock”).
6. One who designates civilians as “soft targets” to be attacked in the cause of political transformation -- unless the targets are Nicaraguans killed by Contra guerrillas armed and directed by the U.S who, according to Human Rights Watch, “systematically engage in violent abuses…so prevalent that these may be said to be their principal means of waging war.”
7. One who facilitates a massacre of civilians -- unless the victims are 900 Palestinians shot and hacked to death in the Sabra and Shatila camps by Lebanese Christian militia as Israeli soldiers stood guard, in which case Israel’s then-Defense Minster (now Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon remains a U.S. “War on Terrorism” ally after being censured as indirectly responsible for the massacre by an Israeli commission of inquiry.
Jeff Cohen is a media critic and author.
Source: http://www.FAIR.org
5/19/02
9:16:04 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
WHALING OPPONENTS CONVERGE ON JAPAN
TOKYO, Japan, May 16, 2002 (ENS) - The International Fund for Animal Welfare brought its objections to continued Japanese whaling into the center of Tokyo today in advance of the annual International Whaling Commission meeting next week in the whaling town of Shimonoseki, Japan.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-16-02.html
U.S. & CANADA: TOO MANY PEOPLE FOR WEST COAST HEALTH
OLYMPIA, Washington, May 16, 2002 (ENS) - The Puget Sound and Georgia Basin area on both sides of the U.S./Canadian border has too many people for its environmental good, according to the first environmental trends report for the region.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-16-03.html
EPA TOUTS POLLUTION TRADING AS CLEAN WATER FIX
WASHINGTON, DC, May 16, 2002 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a water quality trading plan aimed at increasing the "pace and success" of efforts to clean up polluted rivers, streams and lakes. While the program would be similar to existing trading schemes for air pollution, some conservation groups are concerned that there is no proof that water credit trading will improve water quality.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-16-06.html
THIN POLAR BEARS CALLED SIGN OF GLOBAL WARMING
WASHINGTON, DC, May 16, 2002 (ENS) - Hungry polar bears are one of the early signs that global warming is impacting Arctic habitat, suggests a new study from World Wildlife Fund. The report reviews the threats faced by the world's 22,000 polar bears and highlights growing evidence that human induced climate change is the number one long term threat to the survival of the world's largest land based carnivores.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-16-07.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 16, 2002
New Whistleblower Law Holds Agencies Accountable
Enviro Group Report Rebuts Federal Fire Policies
Carbon Sinks Cannot Keep Up With Emissions
Agreement Accelerates Oak Ridge Cleanup
Rio Grande Flows Spiked to Boost Minnow Spawning
Petroleum Company Fined for Washington Spill
$5.5 Million Available for Coral Conservation
Critical Habitat Proposed for Hawaiian Plants
Indiana Animal Controls Called Inhumane
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-16-09.html
5/19/02
9:13:37 PM
t r u t h o u t | special edition
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney | Terrorist Warnings
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17AA.Mckinney.Bush.NU.htm
Senate Leader Daschle | Briefing; Call For Action
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17AA.Daschle.Bush.NU.htm
5/16/02
6:14:28 PM
MIT Invents Videos Of People Saying Things They Never Said
By Gareth Cook, Boston Globe Staff, May 15, 2002
CAMBRIDGE - Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created the first realistic videos of people saying things they never said - a scientific leap that raises unsettling questions about falsifying the moving image.
In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to a song in Japanese, a language she does not speak. The results were enough to fool viewers consistently, the researchers report.
The technique's inventors say it could be used in video games and movie special effects, perhaps reanimating Marilyn Monroe or other dead film stars with new lines. It could also improve dubbed movies, a lucrative global industry.
But scientists warn the technology will also provide a powerful new tool for fraud and propaganda - and will eventually cast doubt on everything from video surveillance to presidential addresses.
''This is really groundbreaking work,'' said Demetri Terzopoulos, a leading specialist in facial animation who is a professor of computer science and mathematics at New York University. But ''we are on a collision course with ethics. If you can make people say things they didn't say, then potentially all hell breaks loose.''
The researchers have already begun testing the technology on video of Ted Koppel, anchor of ABC's ''Nightline,'' with the aim of dubbing a show in Spanish, according to Tony F. Ezzat, the graduate student who heads the MIT team. Yet as this and similar technology makes its way out of academic laboratories, even the scientists involved see ways it could be misused: to discredit political dissidents on television, to embarrass people with fabricated video posted on the Web, or to illegally use trusted figures to endorse products.
''There is a certain point at which you raise the level of distrust to where it is hard to communicate through the medium,'' said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. ''There are people who still believe the moon landing was staged.''
Currently, the MIT method is limited: It works only on video of a person facing a camera and not moving much, like a newscaster. The technique only generates new video, not new audio.
But it should not be difficult to extend the discovery to work on a moving head at any angle, according to Tomaso Poggio, a neuroscientist at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, who is on the MIT team and runs the lab where the work is being done. And while state-of-the-art audio simulations are not as convincing as the MIT software, that barrier is likely to fall soon, researchers say.
''It is only a matter of time before somebody can get enough good video of your face to have it do what they like,'' said Matthew Brand, a research scientist at MERL, a Cambridge-based laboratory for Mitsubishi Electric.
For years, animators have used computer technology to put words in people's mouths, as they do with the talking baby in CBS's ''Baby Bob'' - creating effects believable enough for entertainment, but still noticeably computer-generated. The MIT technology is the first that is ''video-realistic,'' the researchers say, meaning volunteers in a laboratory test could not distinguish between real and synthesized clips. And while current computer-animation techniques require an artist to smooth out trouble spots by hand, the MIT method is almost entirely automated.
Previous work has focused on creating a virtual model of a person's mouth, then using a computer to render digital images of it as it moves. But the new software relies on an ingenious application of artificial intelligence to teach a machine what a person looks like when talking.
Starting with between two and four minutes of video - the minimum needed for the effect to work - the computer captures images which represent the full range of motion of the mouth and surrounding areas, Ezzat said.
The computer is able to express any face as a combination of these faces (46 in one example), the same way that any color can be represented by a combination of red, green, and blue. The computer then goes through the video, learning how a person expresses every sound, and how it moves from one to the next.
Given a new sound, the computer can then generate an accurate picture of the mouth area and virtually superimpose it on the person's face, according to a paper describing the work. The researchers are scheduled to present the paper in July at Siggraph, the world's top computer graphics conference.
The effect is significantly more convincing than a previous effort, called Video Rewrite, which recorded a huge number of small snippets of video and then recombined them. Still, the new method only seems lifelike for a sentence or two at a time, because over longer stretches, the speaker seems to lack emotion.
MIT's Ezzat said that he would like to develop a more complex model that would teach the computer to simulate basic emotions.
A specialist can still detect the video forgeries, but as the technology improves, scientists predict that video authentication will become a growing field - in the courts and elsewhere - just like the authentication of photographs. As video, too, becomes malleable, a society increasingly reliant on live satellite feeds and fiber optics will have to find even more direct ways to communicate.
''We will probably have to revert to a method common in the Middle Ages, which is eyewitness testimony,'' said the University of Pennsylvania's Jamieson. ''And there is probably something healthy in that.''
Compare original and synthetic videos from MIT on www.boston.com/globe.
Gareth Cook can be reached at cook@globe.com. This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 5/15/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
5/16/02
6:04:37 PM
Stolen Skies: The Chemtrail Mystery Jet Trails in the Sky Used to Disappear. Now they Linger.
by William Thomas
It was around noon on March 12, 2000 when S.T. Brendt, the late night reporter for WMWV Radio, entered the kitchen of her country home in Parsonsfield, Maine. Her partner, Lou Aubuchont, was puzzling over what he had seen in the sky a half-hour before. The fat puffy plumes arching up over the horizon were unlike any aircraft condensation trails ("contrails") he had ever seen.
Instead of dissipating like normal contrails, these intersecting sky trails grew wider and began to merge. Looking towards the sun, Aubuchont saw what appeared like "an oil and water mixture" reflecting a prismatic band of colors.
Ordinarily, contrails flare briefly in the stratosphere as hot moist engine exhaust flash-freezes into a stream of ice-crystals. These pencil-thin condensation trails are short-lived, evaporating into invisibility as exhaust gases cool quickly to the surrounding air temperature.
As National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) meteorologist Thomas Schlatter explains, the formation of condensation trails requires temperatures lower than about minus 76 F and humidity of 70 percent or more. Because the Federal Aviation Authority requires military tankers and transporters to cross continental airspace at altitudes below 30,000 feet, ensuring safe separation from airliners flying between 35,000 and 39,000 feet, these military flights should leave no contrails at all.
But in late 1997, Aubuchont began to notice thicker trails extending from horizon to horizon. Hanging in the sky, these expanding white ribbons would invariably be interwoven by more thick lines left by unmarked Air Force jets, white or silver in color.
As Brendt glanced out the window, it looked like another gorgeous, cloudless day. But not quite. She spotted two jets laying billowing white banners to the north. Turning her gaze due west, Brendt saw two more lines extending over the horizon. She called Lou. Within 45 minutes, the couple counted 30 jets. "This isn't right," Brendt thought. "We just don't have that kind of air traffic here." While Aubuchont kept counting, Brendt started calling airports.
Alerted by a call from Brendt, Richard Dean, WMWV's assistant news director and the WMWV news staff filed outside and counted 370 lines of persistent contrails in skies usually devoid of aerial activity.
Brendt phoned a number of Air Traffic Controllers. They all stated that nothing unusual was going on. After several calls, Brendt reached one ATC manager who offered a different story. He told Brendt that his radars showed nine commercial jets during the same 45-minute span. From her location, he said, she should have been able to see only one plane.
"What about the other 29?" Brendt inquired. The ATC official confided off-the-record that he had been ordered "by higher civil authority" to re-route inbound European airliners away from an airborne "military exercise" in the area. "They wouldn't give me any of the particulars and I don't ask," he explained. The controller (who insisted on being identified only as "Deep Sky,") subsequently repeated his statements on tape before witnesses at the WMWV studio.
'It's a Military Exercise' On December 8, 2000, Terry Stewart, the Manager for Planning and Environment at the Victoria International Airport, responded to a caller's complaint about the strange patterns of circles and grids being woven over the British Columbia capitol. Stewart left a message on an answering machine tape - a message that later was heard by more than 15 million radio listeners. Stewart explained: "It's a military exercise, [a] US and Canadian Air Force exercise that's going on. They wouldn't give me any specifics on it."
Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Comox on Vancouver Island is Canada's biggest radar installation. CFB Comox is easily capable of tracking the US formations coming up from the south. When asked for a response to Stewart's statement, the base information officer at CFB Comox replied tersely that: "No military operation is taking place." Stewart later told the Vancouver Courier that his information had come directly from Comox.
By the summer of 2001, pictures of contrails were being circulated by the Associated Press and the word "chemtrails" could be overheard in coffee shop conversations across the continent
'It's a Hoax' In an April 20, 2001, letter to a US senator, Col. Walter Washbaugh, chief of the Congressional Inquiry Division for the Secretary of the Air Force in Washington, DC, called chemtrails "a hoax." Washbaugh blamed the increased number of contrails on "significant civil aviation growth in the past decade."
He is right on that score. A National Science Foundation study has found that in certain heavily trafficked corridors, artificial cloud cover has increased by as much as 20 percent.
Colonel Washbaugh ascribed widely reported grid patterns to overlapping aircraft flying north-south, east-west airways. The only thing wrong with this explanation, a Texas air traffic controller told me, is that US airways do not run north-south.
The colonel told the senator: "The Air Force is not conducting any weather modification and has no plans to do so in the future." In fact, the Pentagon has long been interested in using weather as a weapon of war. Attempts to steer hurricanes by spraying heat-robbing chemicals in their paths date from the 1950s. The recipe for creating "cirrus shields" was outlined in a 1996 US Air Force study subtitled "Owning the Weather by 2025." The report explained how "weather force specialists" were dispersing chemicals behind high-flying tanker aircraft in a process called "aerial obscuration."
Official denials reached new altitudes of absurdity when another colonel claimed: "The US Air Force (USAF) does not conduct spraying operations over populated areas." Apparently the colonel had forgotten how USAF air tankers dispensed thousands of tons of "Agent Orange" defoliants over the land and people of Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the Internet was abuzz with chemtrail conspiracy theories ranging from aliens leaving messages in the sky to government agencies dumping mind-control chemicals on an unsuspecting populace. The only problem was none of the theories were plausible.
The Welsbach Patent In 1994, the Hughes aerospace company was issued a remarkable patent. The Welsbach patent "for Reduction of Global Warming" proposed countering global warming by dispensing microscopic particles of aluminum oxide and other reflective materials into the upper atmosphere. This "sky shield" would reflect one or two percent of incoming sunlight. The patent suggested that tiny metal flakes could be "added to the fuel of jet airliners, so that the particles would be emitted from the jet engine exhaust while the airliner was at its cruising altitude."
Computer simulations by Ken Caldeira at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) calculated that employing Welsbach's chemical-sunscreen technology could stop warming over 85 percent of the planet, despite an anticipated doubling of atmospheric carbon within the next 50 years. LLNL estimated the cost of creating thisso-called Sky Shield at $1 billion dollars a year - a cheap fix to avoid threatening the massive profits of the oil industry.
At the 1998 International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies, Edward Teller, the "Father of the H-bomb," presented his Next Big Idea. Teller called for spreading reflective chemicals over the Earth to act like a mirror-shade. If it was impossible to protect the entire planet, these chemical sky shields could, at least, be extended to cover allies who secretly agreed to allow this unprecedented geo-engineering experiment to be carried out over their territory.
In the July-August 1998 Science and Technology Review, Teller argued that the Sky Shield offered a more "realistic" option for addressing global warming than drastic cutbacks in CO2 emissions.
When asked if the technology was being pursued, Teller replied: "To my knowledge the answer is negative.... My recommendation was a tentative one depending on further evidence whether expecting global warming is realistic."
In fact, the technology already exists. In 1975, the US Navy patented a device for producing "a powder contrail having maximum radiation-scattering ability." The powder contained a mixture of 0.3 micron-sized titanium dioxide pigment particles coated with 0.007 micron hydrophobic colloidal silica and 4.5 micron particles of silica gel. The purpose of the apparatus was "to generate contrails or reflective screens for any desired purpose."
The Welsbach Patent proposed using "very fine, talcum-like" powder of 10 to 100 micron-sized aluminum oxide to produce a "pure white plume" in the sky.
In a May 2000 draft report submitted to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an expert panel chosen from among 3,000 atmospheric scientists, concluded that Teller's scheme might work. But the IPCC warned against unpredictable upsets of the atmosphere. The panel also warned against angry populaces reacting to "the associated whitening of the visual appearance of the sky."
Caldeira was so concerned that he went public. Deflecting sunlight would further cool the stratosphere, he warned, and this could intensify icy clouds of ozone-gobbling CFCs that could destroy the ozone layer - the Earth's already damaged solar radiation shield.
Was Teller's Sky Shield experiment already underway? During his interview with WMWV reporters, Deep Sky hinted that it was. Were the tankers observed on ATC radars involved in climate modification? Our FAA source hesitated before responding: "That approximates what I was told." Similar military activities were ongoing in other regions, he stated.
Chemtrails and Health Problems The Internet buzzes with conspiracy theories about chemtrails being used as part of a secret government biological experiment. But after more than three years of intense investigation, I have found no proof that chemtrails constitute a deliberate biological attack. (To be effective, bio-attacks must conducted close to the ground and never in daylight, in order to avoid ultraviolet sterilization of toxins.)
In the spring of 1998, rain falling through heavy chemtrails over Espanola, Ontario was found to contain concentrations of aluminum particles seven times higher than permitted by Canadian health safety laws. Provincial health officials ordered tests after residents began complaining about severe headaches, chronic joint pain, dizziness, sudden extreme fatigue, acute asthma attacks and feverless "flu-like" symptoms. The results of the test were not released.
The reports of illness all came from residents inside a 50-square-mile area who complained that they had been subjected to "months of spraying" by photo-identified US Air Force tanker planes. The USAF denied the intrusions.
On November 18, 1998, Canadian Opposition Party Defense Critic Gordon Earle petitioned Parliament on behalf of the people of Espanola. Speaking on behalf of Canada's New Democratic Party, Earle stated:
"Over 500 residents of the Espanola area have signed a petition raising concern over possible government involvement in what appears to be aircraft emitting visible aerosols. They have found high traces of aluminum and quartz in particulate and rainwater samples. These concerns combined with associated respiratory ailments have led these Canadians to take action and seek clear answers from this government. The petitioners call upon Parliament to repeal any law that would permit the dispersal of military chaff or of any cloud-seeding substance whatsoever by domestic or foreign military aircraft without the informed consent of the citizens of Canada thus affected."
A Harvard School of Public Health team determined that particulates with a diameter less than 10 microns (one-tenth the thickness of a human hair) pose a serious threat to public health. On April 21, 2001, the New York Times warned: "These microscopic motes are able to infiltrate the tiniest compartments in the lungs and pass readily into the bloodstream, and have been most strongly tied to illness and early death, particularly in people who are already susceptible to respiratory problems."
On December 14, 2000, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that inhaling particulate matter of a size 10 microns or smaller leads to "a 5 percent increased death rate within 24 hours." Teller's sunscreen calls for spraying 10 million tons of talcum-fine reflective particulates of 10 to 100 micron sizes.
Congress Addresses Chemtrails On October 2, 2001, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced the "Space Preservation Act of 2001" (HR 2977), which called for the elimination of "exotic weaponry" from space. Among the weapons to be banned were weather-modifying weapons such as HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) and chemtrails. Though HR 3616 was later amended to remove the section that would have banned chemtrails, the original bill acknowledging the existence of chemtrail technology remains on the pages of the Congressional Record.
With "chemtrails" now officially admitted by the US government, an even bigger trial is set to begin in the court of public opinion.
An earlier version of this report appeared in the October-November 2001 issue of Nexus Magazine [PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. www.nexusmagazine.com].
Edited reprint. Not available for distribution.
Chemtrails Go Global Sightings of oddly lingering plumes sometimes resembling rocket trails are not confined to North American skies.
While on leave in Italy in the summer of 1999, the US Navy's Kitty Chastain sat on her hotel balcony and watched aerial grids being laid all day just offshore over the Bay of Naples.
In Spain, on April 27, 2000, American tourist John Hendricks dashed off a quick email from El Café de Internet: "Were we surprised to see that the chemtrails are as bad here as they are anywhere, both in Mallorca and in Barcelona."
"Add Sweden to the list," a Swedish resident wrote after spotting eight to 10 parallel contrails. "I know the commercial routes, and we have a bunch of them, but not where these trails were."
Chemtrail activity has been reported in at least 14 allied nations including Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden and the United States.
Chemtrail photos from France, Australia, Scotland and Germany may be viewed on the author's website [www3.bc.sympatico.ca/Willthomas].
Another Scary Scenario According to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co., the only way to form artificial clouds in warm dry air is to introduce enough particulates into the atmosphere to attract and accrete all available moisture into visible vapor. If repeated often enough, the resulting rainless haze can lead to drought.
Patrick Minnis, an atmospheric researcher with California Environmental Resources Evaluation System (CERES) and ardent chemtrails critic at NASA's Langley Research Center, reports that cirrus cloud cover over the US is up 5 percent overall because particulates in engine exhaust are acting as cloud-forming nuclei. As the number of flights currently exceeds 15 million annually worldwide, artificial clouds will intensify as air travel continues to climb.
Perhaps the appearance of chemtrails is a "sign from on high" that our atmosphere has become dangerously burdened with pollutants.
http://earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=585&journalID=64
5/16/02
6:00:20 PM
Indonesian Reefs Excite Scientists
May 15, 2002
Sheltered reefs fringe the islands Coral researchers have revealed the location of what they think is the most valuable cluster of reefs in the world.
It is in a remote archipelago off Indonesia, close to the coast of Papua Province, in the Malacca Sea.
The scientists have just submitted a report which estimates that more than 1,100 species of fish inhabit the area, along with 600 species of mollusc and 450 different species of coral.
The diversity of sealife among the Raja Ampat islands is described by the study's lead researcher, Dr Gerald Allen, as staggering.
Diverse species
The Museum of Western Australia researcher identified a record 283 species of fish in a single dive.
And his colleague, who had just completed the authoritative three-volume work on corals of the world, immediately stumbled across seven new species at Raja Ampat.
"As far as the fishes go, it was absolutely mind-boggling," Dr Allen told the BBC.
"Our survey ran for roughly two-and-a-half weeks and over that period I recorded 972 species, which is just phenomenal."
The extraordinary diversity of life in the area stems from the archipelago's position at the crossroads of oceans. The waters mark a meeting point for species from the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and western Indonesia.
Under threat
BBC correspondent Roger Harrabin, who this week dived among the reefs, says the area is also flushed with cooler waters that help to protect the corals from bleaching when temperatures rise during El Niño events.
But the scientists warn that even these reefs are coming under threat from illegal fishing and illegal logging, which leads to soil erosion and silts that eventually choke the living coral.
The charity Conservation International, which sponsored the Raja Ampat expedition, wants the islands made a world heritage site.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1989000/1989916.stm
5/16/02
5:56:16 PM
25-acre Island To Be Returned To Passamaquoddy Tribe
http://www.Indianz.com May 14, 2002
Domtar gives island to Passamaquoddies Returned land includes tribal burial ground
BAILEYVILLE - A 25-acre island owned by the Passamaquoddy Tribe for thousands of years next week will be returned to its historical owner, Domtar Industries Inc. officials announced Monday.
Located in Big Lake near Princeton, Gordon's Island holds a special significance to the Passamaquoddy because it is the site of an ancient tribal burial ground.
Domtar acquired ownership of the island when it bought the Georgia-Pacific pulp and paper mill.
Next week, Domtar officials and members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe will hold a special ceremony to mark the beginning of a new relationship. The event will be at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 21, on the water's edge at Peter Dana Point at Indian Township.
Domtar spokeswoman Gaile Nicholson said the company will transfer the deed to the Passamaquoddy "in the spirit of this new relationship."
On hand to help celebrate the event will be: Raymond Royer, president and chief executive officer of Domtar in Montreal, Indian Township Tribal Gov. Richard Stevens and Pleasant Point Tribal Gov. Rick Doyle.
"It is very important," Stevens said.
"We've tried for years to get the island returned to the tribe, and Domtar offered. It is one of those historical moments in terms of the tribe acquiring the island and the generosity Domtar has shown in turning over the island."
Doyle was unavailable for comment Monday.
Also at the ceremony will be Donald Soctomah, tribal representative to the state Legislature, and Debby Feck, general manager of Domtar's Woodland pulp and paper mill.
Soctomah could not be reached for comment Monday night.
The tribe is the easternmost native group in the United States. The Passamaquoddy have inhabited the land of eastern Maine and western New Brunswick for 12,000 years. At one time there were 15,000 Indians living in Maine, but by the 1800s that number had dwindled to 150 people.
Today there are around 3,000 Passamaquoddy tribal members. The tribe owns and works 140,000 acres of forestland it owns, as well as 2,000 acres of blueberry fields. Tribal members also practice traditional basket making and woodcrafts.
Domtar, which acquired the island when it purchased the mill in Baileyville, is the third-largest producer of uncoated freesheet paper in North American and the fourth largest in the world. It also is a leading manufacturer of business papers, printing and publishing papers and specialty and technical papers.
The Canadian-based company manages close to 22 million acres of certified forestland in Canada and the United States, and produces lumber and other wood products.
5/16/02
5:50:55 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
SMOKIN' REEFER
Move over, Great Barrier Reef: Coral researchers recently discovered what they think is the most valuable reef cluster in the world. Known collectively as Raja Ampat, the reefs are located in a remote archipelago off the coast of Indonesia. In the course of a two-and-a-half week expedition there, a survey team recorded 972 species -- 283 of them in a single dive. Gerald Allen, the team's lead researcher, described the species diversity as "mind-boggling"; a colleague who authored the definitive work on corals of the world immediately found seven new species at Raja Ampat. The reefs owe their spectacular diversity to their location at the intersection of different waters, bringing in species from the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. Moreover, the area is flushed with cooler waters that help protect against coral bleaching, an increasing threat to reefs worldwide. Still, scientists warn that even these remote reefs are threatened by illegal fishing and illegal logging, which causes soil erosion and silting that can choke living coral.
straight to the source: BBC News, 15 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=107>
do good: Take action to save the Great Barrier Reef <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/oceans.asp?source=daily#reef>
LISTEN TO A STORY 'BOUT A MAN NAMED JEB
In a move that divided the state's environmental community, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) signed a law yesterday that will provide millions of dollars of funding to restore the Everglades. On the up side, the law will create a bonding program worth $100 million per year -- money that will be matched by federal funds -- to finance land purchases, studies, and the removal of a decades-old U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control project set up to drain the Everglades. But the law also contains a controversial provision that some say will make it more difficult for citizens to block development by allowing only people who can prove they are personally affected by a project to challenge it. For that reason, thousands of environmentalists asked the governor to veto the bill. However, some prominent environmental groups -- the Nature Conservancy, the Everglades Foundation, and the World Wildlife Fund, among others -- supported it, partly in recognition of the desperate need for restoration funding.
straight to the source: St. Petersburg Times, Julie Hauserman and Craig Pittman, 16 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=108>
only in Grist: Why Republicans fund Everglades restoration -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha111000.stm?source=daily>
MOZAM-PIQUED
Mozambique has decided to proceed with a $520 million plan to build a harbor and industrial free-trade zone on its pristine southern coast, a decision that has outraged environmentalists. The plan seems likely to put an end to efforts to establish a transnational conservation area stretching from St. Lucia in South Africa through Swaziland and into the Maputo Elephant Reserve in Mozambique. It will also threaten coastal and sand forests, wetlands, grasslands, and one of Africa's most important reef systems, thought to be home to the ancient coelacanth. The harbor, which will be built on the elephant reserve's southern border, is also expected to attract as many as 250,000 people looking for work, a migration that could have drastic environmental consequences. A Mozambican government scientist who declined to be identified said, "This whole plan is crazy," adding that those in the government who opposed it were being sidelined.
straight to the source: South Africa Independent, Mercury, Tony Weaver, 15 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=109>
SLIM PICKINS, WHITMAN
In an apparent effort to diffuse criticism from environmentalists, the Bush administration is considering stepping up legal action against some polluting utility companies. U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman has ordered the agency's regional enforcement officials to look for companies that have violated the Clean Air Act by upgrading power plants without installing state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment, as required under New Source Review regulations. The Clinton administration sued nine companies for New Source Review violations, but no new suits have been filed in the 16 months that President Bush has been in office. On the contrary: Environmentalists and some within the EPA have suggested that the administration encouraged utilities currently involved in litigation to stall in the hopes of more lenient rules coming down the pipe. Perhaps to refute that charge, the EPA and the Justice Department sent letters last month to two such companies warning them to settle within 60 days or face court action. "What this all shows is that we are serious about cleaning up the air," said Joe Martyak, the EPA's chief spokesperson.
straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 16 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=110>
only in Grist: Read a top U.S. EPA official's resignation letter castigating the Bush administration -- in our Muckraker section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/muck/muck030102.asp?source=daily>
do good: Take action to preserve the Clean Air Act <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/air.asp?source=daily#grandfather>
SHAFT!
The cost of closing and cleaning up old and abandoned mines around the world likely runs into the trillions of dollars, an amount that is far beyond anything mining companies can handle on their own, according to Robert Wilson, chair of the metals giant Rio Tinto. Wilson, who made his comments during a mining industry conference being held this week in Toronto, put the estimated cost of cleanup in the U.S. alone at $35 billion. And that's just the tip of the iceberg: "If you look at where the real problems are, in Russia, Eastern Europe, South Africa, India, China, the extent of the legacy issues is enormous," Wilson said. Moreover, only about 5 percent of operating mines have clear plans for handling the environmental consequences of closure, according to James Kuipers of the U.S. Center for Science in Public Participation. Kuipers proposed a metals tax on consumers to help pay for cleanup, while many other conferences delegates urged governments to become more involved. But Monika Weber Fahr of the World Bank (the number one financer of mine closings) said, "It should be the polluter that should be paying."
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 16 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=111>
do good: Take action to stop Rio Tinto's uranium mine in Australia <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/mining.asp?source=daily#riotinto>
5/16/02
5:42:08 PM
t r u t h o u t | 05.17
William Rivers Pitt | The Terrorists Flew and Bush Knew
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17A.WRP.Bush.NU.htm
Gephardt on Reports of Bush Knowledge of Al Queda Hijackings
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17B.Gephardt.Bush.NU.htm
Lawmakers Push for Hearings on Warning Given to Bush
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17C.Pols.911.Probe.htm
CBS News | Bush Knew Of Hijack Threat
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17D.CBS.Bush.NU.htm
Anti-Semitic Riot at San Francisco State University
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17E.SF.State.Riot.htm
Gunmen Kill 30, Including 10 Children, in Kashmir
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17F.Kashmir.Massacre.htm
Arianna Huffington | Tax Avoidance And A Tan
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17G.Arianna.Tan.htm
Rangel and Powell | Landmark Program to Prepare Minorities for Foreign Service Careers
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17H.Rangel.Powell.htm
5/15/02
5:08:50 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
BLOWING HIS TOP
The Bush administration appealed a federal court decision yesterday that would limit mountaintop-removal mining and asked the judge to clarify that the ruling "should be read as not applying nationwide or to activities other than coal mining." On May 8, U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II of West Virginia ruled that coal mining valley fills, such as those produced by mountaintop removal, are not allowed under the federal Clean Water Act, and blocked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from issuing permits for new fills. In its appeal, the Department of Justice said the ruling "casts a tremendous cloud of uncertainty over all future coal mining in Appalachia" and would result in tens of thousands of layoffs in the region. It argued that Haden's injunction was overly broad, and that he should have stuck to analyzing Corps regulations (rather than the Clean Water Act) in coming to a decision. The coal industry is expected to file a similar appeal shortly.
straight to the source: Charleston Gazette, Ken Ward, Jr., 14 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=97>
do good: Take action to keep solid waste out of our waters <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/air.asp?source=daily#solidwaste>
ABBEY'S ROAD
Edward Abbey -- novelist, curmudgeon, wilderness Jeremiah -- regularly complained that people wrote too much about him and not enough about his books, but that hasn't deterred any number of writers from taking on Abbey as their subject. Now biographer James Cahalan joins the ranks with "Edward Abbey: A Life." The book sets out to separate reality from fiction where Abbey is concerned, and to ennoble his writing with academic and critical appreciation. Does it succeed in those tasks? Grist reviewer Gregory Gipson says yep -- but questions the worth of that success. Read Gipson's take on Cahalan's take on Abbey, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: Abbey Lives! -- a review of "Edward Abbey: A Life" -- in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/books051402.asp?source=daily>
BEAR WITH US
In northwestern Montana, the human population has grown by about 30 percent in the last decade. That's a problem for some of the region's other notable inhabitants: grizzly bears. At least half of the grizzlies in the Lower 48 live in northwestern Montana, and as the area becomes more crowded, regrettable bear-human interactions become more common. Grizzly bears are a protected species, so the traditional method of dealing with problematic wildlife -- shooting it -- is not an option. Instead, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken a more humane approach: education. For the bears, that means learning that straying too close to humans will have unpleasant results, ranging from barking dogs to rubber bullets. For people, that means a crash course in proper wildlife management: Just because it's cute (what bear educator Tim Manley calls "a golden retriever type of grizzly") doesn't mean it won't maul you.
straight to the source: New York Times, Blaine Harden, 14 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=99>
only in Grist: The simple bear necessities -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha090800.stm?source=daily>
RWANDERING FOOLS?
Tragically, education seems to have been insufficient to protect animals in Rwanda, where poachers last week killed two of the world's last remaining mountain gorillas. The poachers were attempting to capture and sell baby gorillas. According to Rwandan wildlife conservation officials, two men killed two female gorillas and trapped one baby gorilla, in the first such attack since 1985. The men are in custody, but are believed to be part of a wider criminal ring. With just 350 mountain gorillas left in the wild, the population is sufficiently fragile that the loss of any given individual is a blow. The gorillas are the biggest tourist attraction in Rwanda (where visitors pay about $250 per hour for a chance to see them), and the forests where they live are normally heavily patrolled against poachers.
straight to the source: South Africa Independent, Reuters, Helen Vesperini, 14 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=100>
only in Grist: Alternatives to elephant poaching -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha042800.stm?source=daily>
BUYING THE FARM
There might be a severe drought facing much of the nation, but billions of dollars in subsidies is soon to rain down on the bread-basket states, thanks to a farm bill signed by President Bush yesterday. Notwithstanding a White House pledge to wean farmers off of government funding, the bill is expected to cost $190 billion over 10 years, or $83 billion more than the cost of continuing current programs. A senior Republican official said Bush reversed course in the hopes of gaining an additional Republican seat in the Senate from one of the farm states next fall. The bill provides $17 billion for conservation measures. Still, it's mostly bad news for environmentalists: Generous subsidies to huge factory farms further endanger the nation's few remaining family farms. The practice of providing such subsidies dates from the early 1930s, when 25 percent of Americans lived on 6 million farms in the nation. Today, 2 percent of Americans live on 2 million farms.
straight to the source: Washington Post, Mike Allen, 14 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=98>
5/15/02
5:07:13 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
U.S., RUSSIA TO SLASH NUCLEAR ARSENALS
By Cat Lazaroff
WASHINGTON, DC, May 13, 2002 (ENS) - President George W. Bush announced this morning that the U.S. and Russia have agreed to cut their nuclear arsenals by more than 50 percent. The planned cuts were revealed within days of closed door Congressional briefings over Russia's alleged plans to resume nuclear testing, and less than two weeks before Bush's planned trip to Russia.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-13-06.html
AUSTRALIA SPENDS MILLIONS TO CONTROL FIVE WEEDS
CANBERRA, Australia, May 13, 2002 (ENS) - In a unique cooperation across state and territory borders to control a common problem, the Australian government is spending a further A$5.6 million to help control five weeds that are costing the country millions and harming the environment.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-13-192.html
WIND POWER DEMO PLANNED FOR BRITISH COLUMBIA
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, May 13, 2002 (ENS) - Wind power development is taking a tentative step forward in British Columbia. The provincial power company, BC Hydro, and AXOR Group Inc. have filed Crown Land Applications with Land and Water BC Inc. for a 10 megawatt (MW) wind power demonstration project on Vancouver Island.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-13-191.html
MERCURY FOOD ALERT ISSUED FOR SWORDFISH, SHARK
LONDON, United Kingdom, May 13, 2002 (ENS) - Pregnant women, women who intend to become pregnant, infants and children under 16 years of age should avoid eating shark, swordfish and marlin due to high levels of mercury in these fish, the UK Food Standards Agency said Friday.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-13-01.html
FLOODING RAINS IN KENYA CLAIM 53 LIVES
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 13, 2002 (ENS) - Heavy rains across much of East Africa this month have proved deadly, particularly in Kenya. Floods and landslides in Kenya have killed at least 53 people including nine people who died following a violent thunderstorm in Nairobi Sunday.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-13-04.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 13, 2002
White House Tries to Block Energy Task Force Deposition
Oklahoma Company Slammed by Enviros, Union
Physicians Group Opposes Yucca Mountain Shipments
Oceanographer to Receive National Medal of Science
Park Service Arts Program Promotes Environmental Awareness
Online Library Lists Incentives for Private Conservation
Boston Trash Hauler Pays $3.4 Million Fine
Smog Forecast Service Expanded
Solarbrate Events Highlight Solar Power
Improper Trash Disposal Endangers Wildlife
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-13-09.html
5/14/02
12:41:15 PM
The Industrialisation of Farming in The UK
Tony Blair, the UK's Prime Minister, believes that if farming is to survive it must adopt modern business practises and seek seamless integration with other enterprises such as food processing and distribution. In short Tony Blair's 'New Labour Party' regards farming as just another industrial process.
Labour's History Is A Motivating Factor.
The Labour Party is comfortable with industry - after all it was born out of the trade union movement, which represents workers in the UK's key manufacturing industries. The party likes to think of itself as both socialist and radical but the fact it has operated, and gained power, within a capitalist framework demonstrates that it is neither.
During the 1960's a number of minor aristocrats and middle class intellectuals, keen to play politics, hijacked the Labour Party. While for a few years the party did indeed appear to be revolutionary. However claiming the party was a 'broad church' and rebranding its executive as an 'electoral college' only served to reconfirm the party's position as a prisoner of the establishment.
Labour leaders claimed the national health service and a shorter working week as two of their party's main achievements. However most industrial countries, which had come to depend on skilled workforces, found means of keeping their populations healthy. In Britain the shorter working week was 'cashed in' by workers who prefered to work overtime rather than use the free hours for leisure pursuits. Industry was, therefore, happy to work with Labour as any distribution of wealth was rapidly corrected through inflation, house price crashes or the liquidation of pension funds. When real advances, such as the European directive on working hours, were put on the table Labour rejected them out of hand.
In the late 1970's the decline in trade union membership eroded Labour's powerbase. The Conservative government, under Margeret Thatcher, claimed the credit for breaking the unions. However, in truth, voters had finally realised they were no longer exploited as workers. They were now exploited as consumers - and very nice it was too. Tony Blair's 'New Labour' finally woke up to the state of Britain in the late 1990's and he shifted the party's focus away from the shop floor to the market research department. Setting up focus groups, and phoning voters, he discovered what people really wanted ( basically money and to live forever). New Labour was voted into power promising to provide economic security and an efficient health service.
Today the only problem New labour faces is that almost anyone with access to a communications channel (the media in this case) can play 'call centre politics' The Far Right can do it and so can any number of single issue groups. The first to cause Blair problems were the farmers who, along with the hunting lobby and a number of Green activists, formed themselves into the 'Countryside Alliance' - a fuzzy group of everything Tony Blair did not understand. If only farming behaved like the old industries which Labour grew up in, and which the party was now so friendly with, then the party could understand it and, eventually, bring it under control.
What Do The Farmers Think Of This?
In the main, the Industrial Revolution passed farmers by. Workers left the land to work in factories and were replaced with machines - but apart from that nothing changed for decades. Farmers had a local customer base and few competitors. Over the years advances in transport, communications and chemical engineering have brought competition from around the world, increased the leverage of the food processor over the producer and left the farmer with an addiction to a range of chemicals. While the government's offer is not a good one, and will mean farmers saying goodbye to their traditional way of earning a living, for many it looks like the only game in town.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
New labour's argument is that by adopting the efficient working practises of the UK food processing and distribution industry farming can transform itself from a motley collection of disorganised artisans into Britain's agricultural shop floor. The problem is manufacturing is a lot further away from nature than farming. Farmers are about to become the interface between a man made virtual world and nature's very real world. A manufacturer writes down the value of plant and equipment over a number of years. Farmland is not amenable to the same treatment - although try convincing an industrialist it cannot be discarded after a decade of dumping various chemicals on it. The UK farming 'industry' has already suffered from one industrial disaster in the form of BSE. Mad cow disease occurred at the interface between the food processing industry and the farm.
Perhaps the biggest mistake is assuming the food processing and distribution industry is efficient or even profitable in the long term. The most technologically advanced tool in the food distributors arsenal is CRM software. Customer Relationship Management software underpins the loyalty card schemes employed by major retailers. If this software was used 'efficiently' it would be used to monitor and improve the diet of consumers. Instead the opposite happens. It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of consumerism that even the Green movement do not regard the human being as part of the environment. Even they fail to see that the marketing of sugar and fat, in various forms, to people who are already clinically obese is an environmental disaster. If a factory pumped as much waste fat into the environment as the average supermarket chain protesters and documentary film makers would besiege its offices.
Turning farming into an industry may solve a small problem for New Labour. In the short term it may drive a wedge between the farmer and the Green movement. In the long term, however, both these gains will be reversed.
Peter Kruger Author of 'The Genesis Modification' http://www.steinkrug.com
5/14/02
11:48:58 AM
Dear All,
Please be advised that May 2002 letters have been posted on our website. We are also happy to inform you that our Success Stories section has been updated.
Thanks for your continuing efforts to promote healing and justice in our world, and for encouraging others to join Earth Action Network. And, as always, feel free to contact us (by mail, email, fax or phone) with any suggestions you might have!
James Shvarts, webmaster, Earth Action Network
http://www.earthactionnetwork.org
5/14/02
11:47:47 AM
Planet Ark World Environment News
US truckers to watch for possible terror threats - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15941/story.htm
DOE head Abraham touts energy plan progress - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15930/story.htm
FEATURE - US Senate ethanol plan stirs conflicting reactions - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15939/story.htm
USDA mandates FMD-regions clean farm machine exports - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15942/story.htm
INTERVIEW - Expert warns world is warming faster than forecast - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15934/story.htm
Taiwan CPC may cut refinery output if drought lasts - TAIWAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15928/story.htm
Taipei rations residential water to fight drought - TAIWAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15937/story.htm
Forest fires tear through Siberia, Russia Far East - RUSSIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15927/story.htm
FEATURE - Panama's Devil's Island aims to be new Galapagos - PANAMA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15936/story.htm
New Mozambique port will go ahead, says minister - MOZAMBIQUE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15935/story.htm
FEATURE - Lithuania's nuclear workers fret for future - LITHUANIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15932/story.htm
Idemitsu may sell coal with emissions rights - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15938/story.htm
UN's FAO battles locust swarms in Afghan wheat area - ITALY: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15931/story.htm
French protesters block Mont Blanc tunnel - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15933/story.htm
UN peackeeper killed by landmine in Congo - DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15929/story.htm
INTERVIEW - WHO plans to head off more African Ebola outbreaks - COTE D'IVOIRE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15940/story.htm
5/14/02
11:44:22 AM
4000 Ideas for Peace
Robert Muller, Former Assistant UN Secretary-General Visit Robert Muller's website which includes "4000 Ideas for Peace" and "Decide To" poems, plus how to order his books and links to other beautiful websites for a better world
Robert Muller gave a speech entitled "World Peace Is Inevitable" in San Diego on May 9 -- details at
5/14/02
11:28:37 AM
AlterNet Headlines
TOM DELAY'S AXIS OF INFLUENCE
Stephen Pizzo, AlterNet
In a five-part series, longtime investigative journalist Stephen Pizzo takes an in-depth look at House Majority Whip Tom Delay, reviewing a political career filled with contradictions and questionable relationships. From his deep ties to Enron to South Pacific sweatshops, Tom DeLay has built a well-financed and ruthless axis of influence. Read Part I
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13104
Coming Tuesday: Part II: DeLay's Judge Dread America's founding fathers made the judiciary independent for a reason. But never mind the Constitution -- when Tom DeLay doesn't like a decision for political reasons, he uses threats to intimidate judges.
LEVIS: MADE IN CHINA?
Dara Colwell, AlterNet
The classic American clothing company, Levi Strauss, is shutting its domestic factories and moving all production to China, leaving behind an increasingly anxious U.S. garment industry.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13095
DON'T LOOK IN THE BACK!
Jeff Prince, FW Weekly
The back pages of most alternative newsweeklies are packed with adult entertainment ads drenched in sex. But the industry is in the midst of change -- some papers are cutting back on raunchy ads, while others are enlarging their red-light sections.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12935
POLL POINTS TOWARD PEACE
Jim Lobe, AlterNet
A little-noted survey released last week revealed that most Americans do not agree with the main components of President Bush's Middle East policy.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13116
On our War in the Middle East page:
http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=28
EDWARD ABBEY'S ROAD
Tai Moses, AlterNet
Ed Abbey is still inspiring new generations of eco-guerillas and still inflaming the literati. Depending on who you talk to, he comes either festooned with an ill-fitting halo or wearing cartoon horns and a forked tail.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13114
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPION
Erin Aubry Kaplan, LA Weekly
Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who cast the lone dissenting vote in the House's measure to authorize military force in Afghanistan, tears up the roots of despair.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13102
MEDIA MASH: Moyer's NOW, Carville Crossfire
The Masher, AlterNet
Bill Moyers attacks toxics on his new PBS show NOW; Carville kicks ass on Crossfire; Newspaper circ wars; AlterNet and the Webbys.
*In MediaCulture: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=19
THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS EXPLAINS IRAQ
David Corn, AlterNet
Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy board that advises the Department of Defense, makes it sound as if Mission Iraq could be a breeze. Who's listening when he says "Trust me"?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13098
5/13/02
9:28:37 PM
t r u t h o u t | 05.14
White House E-Mail; 'Desperate to Avoid CA'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14A.WH.E.Mail.htm
Agent Alleges FBI Ignored Hamas Activities
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14E.FBI.Agent.htm
Bush Supports Creation of Palestine
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14B.Bush.Palestine.htm
Likud Rejects Palestinian Statehood | Defeat for Sharon
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14C.Likud.Palestine.htm
Carter: No Proof of Cuba Terror Link http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14D.Carter.No.Proof.htm
Small Crowds for Arafat on West Bank
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14F.Arafat.Small.htm
White House Stonewall: Day 80
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14G.Stonewall.80.htm
NRDC Applauds : Costa Rica Says No to U.S. Oil Company
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.14H.NRDC.Costa.Rica.htm
5/13/02
7:41:57 PM
Expert Warns World Warming Faster Than Expected
by Eva Sohlman, May 13, 2002
LONDON (Reuters) - Planet earth is warming up faster than previously expected, the head of a leading climate research institute said on Monday.
Dying forests, expanding deserts and rising sea levels would wreak havoc to human and animal lives sooner than anticipated as global warming (news - web sites) was accelerating, said Geoff Jenkins, head of the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research.
"It looks like it will be warmer by the end of the century than what we have predicted," he told Reuters in an interview.
Jenkins said recent revisions showed much greater output of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide than earlier estimated. These gases are blamed for global warming.
Warmer weather will generate more droughts, floods and rising sea levels which many fear will create millions of refugees from drowning island-nations and possible wars over increasingly scarce fresh water.
Economies are also likely to take a blow as farming, fishing and business will be affected by the change in climate.
A 2001 United Nations (news - web sites)' report on climate change forecast that global temperatures will rise two to five degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
But recent data suggest temperatures could rise even higher as a worst case scenario shows four times as much emitted CO2 in the atmosphere from today's levels which Jenkins said is significantly higher than previously expected.
Carbon dioxide is blamed for two thirds of all global warming and is largely produced when burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
NATURE'S DEFENSES WEAKENING
Despite efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent of 1990's levels during 2008-12 under a global Kyoto pact, the amount in the atmosphere is set to rise as warmer temperatures will curb nature's capacity to absorb the gases, Jenkins said.
Half of all CO2 emissions last in the atmosphere for about 100 years, while the rest is soaked up by seas, land and vegetation.
But the opposite effect may kick in as warmer weather and less rainfall in some places will dry out and kill trees which emit CO2 as they decompose, Jenkins said.
CO2-absorbing microbes in the soil are also set to boost emissions as higher temperatures will fuel their activities which produce the greenhouse gas.
"Instead of helping, they will make global warming worse," Jenkins said.
He echoed a warning from the Royal Society, Britain's national academy of science, that present measures to cut greenhouse gases were not sufficient to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
He said temperatures in the UK could rise by seven to eight degrees by 2080 compared with an expected four degree increase.
"We would have to cut emissions by 60-70 percent by the end of the century to stabilize CO2 levels," Jenkins said.
The European Union (news - web sites) has said it will ratify the Kyoto treaty this summer and if Russia and Japan also do so the treaty can come into force without the world's largest producer of man-made CO2 emissions -- the United States.
The U.S., which has the world's biggest economy, rejected the pact in 2001 over worries it would harm its industry.
Source: http://www.Reuters.com
5/13/02
7:28:54 PM
Asia-Pacific Countries At Risk From Mismanaged Oceans, Experts Say
AP, May 13, 2002
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) _ Poor management of the world's seas is destroying ecosystems and threatening the sustainability of fisheries, international marine experts said Monday.
``The degradation of the environment is worsening, so many of our marine ecosystems are not functioning very well,'' said Chua Thia Eng, regional program director of the Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia, which comprises scientists from 11 nations.
Chua, speaking at the start of a four-day Asia-Pacific conference on marine science, said that ineffective coastal protection policies in most countries had triggered regional problems including the destruction of coral reefs.
Bad management and man-made changes to coastlines in many countries were also worsening the effect of rising sea levels, which many scientists believe to be caused by global warming.
Pacific island countries such as Tonga, Tuvalu and Western Samoa might become ``uninhabitable'' in the next few decades, Chua said, adding that some scientists believe Tuvalu could be completely submerged within 22 years if sea levels continue to climb.
Prof. Chou Loke Ming of the National University of Singapore said Southeast Asia had 34 percent of the world's coral reefs, which were considered among the richest and most extensive. But more than half of these species were ``at high risk'' from overfishing and pollution, he said.
Countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines that rely on reefs for their fisheries and tourism industries have been forced into salvage and restoration programs, including coral transplantation and artificial reef-building, Chou said.
Law Hieng Ding, Malaysia's environment minister, said many countries struggle with trying to curb environmental damage while boosting coastal and marine-based products.
``Urgent action is required to reconcile these competing interests and activities,'' Law told the conference, which brings together more than 250 experts from 20 Pacific Rim countries to discuss marine policies.
Law said the Malaysian government is spending 30 million ringgit (dlrs 8 million) over the next five years for marine research and will soon launch a national policy for marine exploration and protection. He said Malaysia had about 700 islands, many rich in marine resources.
Source: http://www.AP.com
5/13/02
7:24:07 PM
AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
On January 28, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that he spent $8,000 of taxpayer's money for drapes to cover up the exposed breast of "The Spirit of Justice," an 18 ft aluminum statue of a woman that stands in the Department of Justice's Hall of Justice.
John, John, John, you've got your priorities all wrong. While men fly airplanes into skyscrapers, dive bomb the pentagon, while they stick explosives into their shoes, and then book a seat right next to us, while they hide knives in their luggage, steal kids on school buses, take little girls from their beds at night, drive trucks into our state capital buildings, while our president calls dangerous men all over the world evildoers and devils, while we live in the threat of biological warfare nuclear destruction, annihilation, you are out buying yardage to save Americans from the appalling alarming, abominable aluminum alloy of evil, that terrible ten foot tin tittie. You might not be able to find Bin Laden. But you sure as hell found the hooter in the hall of justice.
It's not that we aren't grateful. But while we were begging the women of Afghanistan to not cover up their faces you are begging your staff members to just cover up that nipple to save the American people from that monstrous metal mammary. How can we ever thank you?
So, in your office every morning in your secret prayer meeting while an American woman is sexually assaulted every 6 seconds while anthrax floats around the post office and settles in the chest of senior citizens, you've got another chest on your mind.
While American sons arrive home in body bags and heat seeking missiles fly around a foreign country looking for any warm body you think of another body. And you pray for the biggest bra in the world, John, because you see that breast on the spirit of justice in the spirit of your own inhibited sexuality.
And when we women see our grandmothers, our mothers, our daughters, our granddaughters, our sisters, ourselves, when we women see that statue the spirit of justice we see the spirit of strength the spirit of survival.
While every day we view innocent bodies dragged out of rubble and women and children laid out like thin limp dolls and baptized into death as collateral damage and the hollow eyed Afghani mother's milk has dried up underneath her burka in famine in shame and her children are dead at her breast.
While you look at that breast, John, that jug on the spirit of justice and deal with your thoughts of lust and sex and nakedness, we see it as a testimony to motherhood And you see it as a tit.
It's not the money it cost. It's the message you send.
We've got the right to live in freedom. We've got the right to cheat Americans out of millions of dollars and then just not want to tell Congress about it.
We've got the right to drop bombs night and day on a small country that has no army, no navy, no military at all, because we've got the right to bear arms, but we just better not even think about the right to bare breasts.
So now John you can be photographed while you stand there and talk about guns and bombs and poisons without the breast appearing over your right shoulder without that bodacious bosom bothering you and we just wanted to tell you in the spirit of justice in the spirit of truth:
John there is still one very big boob left standing there in that picture.
Claire Braz-Valentine
5/13/02
7:18:31 PM
Public Citizen
U.S. Farm Bill's Irradiation Labeling Provisions Could Harm European Consumers, Damage Confidence in U.S. Food Imports
U.S. and European Consumer Groups Call for Increased Vigilance Over Labels
WASHINGTON, D.C.- New U.S. legislation on labeling irradiated food harms consumers' right-to-know and could seriously damage European consumer confidence in food imported from the United States, according to Public Citizen and Active Consumers Denmark, two watchdog groups working together to protect consumers.
Controversial amendments in the new Farm Bill give the industry several bites at the apple to label irradiated food as being pasteurized and call for a re-examination of the labeling of irradiated foods. While the new labeling process is being determined, one provision in the bill provides significant leeway for immediately mislabeling irradiated products as "pasteurized."
"This bow to industry lobbying not only threatens U.S. consumers' right to truthful and accurate labeling, but may also complicate already tense labeling issues in trade with European countries," said Jennifer Peterson, an organizer for Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.
In Europe, all foods intended for consumers and mass caterers must be labeled as either "irradiated" or "treated with ionizing radiation," whether they are whole foods or ingredients, even if they constitute less than 25 percent of the finished product. In contrast, U.S. regulations require only irradiated foods sold in stores to be labeled, although spices are exempted.
Non-labeled irradiated food imported from the United States has been found in European supermarkets over the past year, causing alarm among European consumers and resulting in some U.S. products being pulled from store shelves. In Denmark, a guacamole mix imported from the States was recently found to contain irradiated components but was not labeled as irradiated. The product was subsequently pulled from all Danish supermarkets for violating domestic labeling laws.
"With the new U.S. Farm Bill causing confusion about the labeling of irradiated products, we strongly fear that there will be more cases of illegal irradiated U.S. food in Danish supermarkets, and that could seriously harm Danish consumer confidence in U.S. produced food," said Klaus Melvin Jensen, campaign manager of Active Consumers Denmark, which discovered the illegal product.
Irradiation uses gamma rays, X-rays or accelerated electrons that alter the molecular structure of food in an attempt to kill pathogens and insects. The process destroys nutrients, may change the taste, smell, and appearance of food, and produces new chemical compounds, some of which have been found to promote cancer and cause genetic and cellular damage in rats and human cells. Irradiation is a distinct process that is very different from pasteurization, which uses rapid heating and cooling to partially sterilize liquid products, namely milk.
"There is no reason for Europeans to lower their standards to meet the trade agendas of reckless U.S. companies," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "U.S. companies are proving irresponsible in their labeling of irradiated goods. We urge Europeans to continue removing irradiated American products from their grocery shelves."
Numerous unlabeled irradiated products also have been found on sale in the United Kingdom, including U.S. products such as ginseng health supplements.
"Supporters of irradiation insist it is perfectly safe when carried out correctly, and then dismiss the very real dangers of misuse, bad practice and poor enforcement," said Merav Shub, irradiation campaign coordinator for the London-based Food Commission. "Why should consumers believe irradiation industry assurances when even their basic right to know is flouted through the sale of illegal, unlabeled irradiated food products in High Street shops?" Due to widespread consumer rejection of irradiated food, the irradiation industry is seeking to use misleading euphemistic labels it deems less threatening to consumers, such as "cold pasteurized" and "electronically pasteurized." But consumer focus groups in the U.S. have unanimously rejected such alternative wording as "sneaky" and "deceptive."
The use of the term "pasteurization" in irradiated food labels runs counter to the official U.S. position on labeling of export products. In a discussion paper on misleading food labels, the U.S. delegation to the Codex Committee on Food Labeling, an international food-standard setting body, wrote, "Confusion often occurs because a promotional communication uses a word, phrase, symbol or image that is similar to a more familiar word, phrase, symbol or image, but that does not have a similar meaning. This may be of particular concern when labels are translated or a product is exported."
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.
For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org
5/13/02
7:17:03 PM
Public Citizen
Nuclear Industry Spends $5 Million to Woo Senators Senate Gears up for Vote on Shipping Nuclear Waste Across America
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators and senatorial candidates have taken more than $5 million from the nuclear power industry in political action committee contributions since 1997, a new report from Public Citizen shows.
PACs of corporations belonging to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's powerful Washington lobby, have contributed $1.3 million to Senate campaigns from Jan. 1, 2001, through Feb. 28, 2002, alone. The cash has been distributed in advance of a vote that will be critical to the future of the industry - whether to establish a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
"Politicians bristle at the suggestion that their votes can be purchased by campaign contributions, but the money has an effect or the industry wouldn't be handing out so much," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. "The nuclear power industry, on the other hand, candidly boasts that campaign cash influences public policy, and the industry funnels money to candidates because 'the system operates this way.' "
Public Citizen's report, Hot Waste, Cold Cash: Nuclear Industry PAC Contributions and the Senators Who Love Them, is based primarily on PAC filings with the Federal Election Commission compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain would entail tens of thousands of shipments on roads, rails and waterways in 44 states and the District of Columbia. The transportation casks that will be used have never been tested, and even the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledges that there will be traffic accidents involving nuclear waste. An accident involving just one of these shipments could be catastrophic. Local emergency response and public health infrastructures do not have the capacity to respond to a nuclear disaster.
Further, the Yucca Mountain site itself is unsuitable. It sits atop an aquifer and in an earthquake zone, and the site selection process has been rife with conflicts of interest and industry influence.
Public Citizen found that U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Ala.), ranking minority member of the Senate Energy Committee, is the indisputable "Nuclear PAC Man." The $143,582 Murkowski took from the nuclear PACs since 1997 is more than any other senator.
Among the report's other findings:
· Of the Senate's 20 leading recipients of nuclear PAC money, eight serve on the Senate Energy Committee, and six sit on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Both are key committees for legislation related to nuclear power. The top 20 also includes Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.
· All but seven current U.S. senators have accepted nuclear PAC money.
· Thus far in the 2002 campaign cycle, U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is seeking a vacant Senate seat from South Carolina, has received $62,500, more PAC money than any other candidate for Senate, including senators who are seeking re-election. Another Senate non-incumbent, Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, former St. Paul mayor, ranks fourth in nuclear PAC money so far in the 2002 cycle, with $43,250.
· Republican senators and Senate candidates receive about twice as much money from the nuclear PACs as Democrats. Of the 20 sitting senators who have accepted the most money from the nuclear PACs since 1997, 14 are Republicans, including the top four and eight of the top 10. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, is the Democrats' top Senate recipient of nuclear PAC money.
· While nuclear power utilities feature prominently on the list of corporations that contributed most heavily to senators and Senate candidates, the largest total contributions by an NEI member came from General Electric, which designs and services nuclear power plants. Other leading PAC contributors among NEI's membership include Deloitte & Touche, which provides auditing services to some of the country's largest energy and utility corporations, and Enron, whose subsidiary, Portland General Electric, has stockpiled nuclear waste at the defunct Trojan plant in Oregon.
"Yucca Mountain presents a wonderful opportunity for members of the United States Senate to reject the industry's cynical assertion that policy is for sale," Claybrook said. "The Senate should put public health and safety ahead of special interest influence, vote to uphold Nevada's veto of the Yucca Mountain project and get the nation started toward finding a truly sound method of dealing with nuclear waste, a method based on science, not politics."
To view the full report visit
http://www.citizen.org/documents/hotwastecoldcash.PDF
Attached is a chart listing the top Senate recipients of NEI PAC money from 1997 to 2002.
Senator Money from NEI member PACs 1 Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska $143,582 2 Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania $122,541 3 Conrad Burns, R-Montana $119,600 4 Robert Smith, R-New Hampshire $106,500 5 Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico $99,648 6 Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska $98,881 7 Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana $98,000 8 George Voinovich, R-Ohio $97,005 9 Christopher Bond, R-Missouri $95,224 10 Mark Crapo, R-Idaho $89,530 11 Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania $84,428 12 Ernest Hollings, D-South Carolina $82,000 13 Trent Lott, R-Mississippi $79,500 14 Larry Craig, R-Idaho $70,500 15 (Tie) Don Nickles, R-Oklahoma $70,500 15 (Tie) Gordon Smith, R-Oregon $70,500 17 John Breaux. D-Louisiana $69,500 18 Blanche Lincoln, D-Arkansas $68,500 19 James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma $68,250 20 Charles Schumer, D-New York $66,841 Top Senate recipients of NEI member PAC money, 1997-2002
Source: Public Citizen analysis of data compiled by Center for Responsive Politics and, for 2002, monthly and quarterly PAC filings with Federal Elections Commission.
5/13/02
7:13:01 PM
Radioactive Reelection Ads In South Carolina Produce Static From Washington
by Brian Faler, May 13, 2002; Page A05
The Department of Energy blasted South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges (D) last week for launching a television advertising campaign criticizing the Bush administration's plan to move more than 30 metric tons of plutonium to his state.
"It is well-established in this country that matters of national security and foreign policy are viewed as nonpartisan and certainly should never be politicized for personal gain," said department spokesman Joe Davis. "We strongly urge Governor Hodges to pull his TV ad immediately out of respect for this national security tradition."
The radioactive material is to be moved, beginning as early as this month, from a Colorado weapons plant that is being retired in accordance with a treaty with Russia. It is slated to be converted in South Carolina into fuel for nuclear power plants.
Hodges, a Democrat seeking reelection, worries that the conversion plan might fall through, leaving the material in his state forever. He has pressed the administration for some kind of enforceable guarantee to prevent that.
Last week, Hodges took his case to the airwaves, with a statewide ad campaign that, amid pictures of people in radiation suits, told viewers: "Call the Department of Energy and tell them you support our governor. Tell Washington, 'No plutonium dumping in South Carolina.' "
Kevin Geddings, a former Hodges staffer who helped produce the ads, said they will not be pulled and accused the Bush administration of politicizing the issue.
"They're taking dangerous plutonium from Colorado to South Carolina because George Bush is rampantly popular in South Carolina and probably not as popular in Colorado," Geddings said. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) is also running for reelection this year.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8424-2002May12.html
5/13/02
7:09:18 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
CHEERS FOR FEARS
Forests are being cut down, species are going extinct, wild spaces are disappearing into the maw of sprawl, and around the world, people are maiming and killing each other in the name of security, justice, or revenge. All the while, our government is systematically undermining the sort of international agreements -- from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to the anti-ballistic missile treaty -- that could make the world a safer place. Where do you find hope and courage in the face of so many grim goings-on? Grist columnist Elizabeth Sawin turns to the memory of her late colleague, scientist and environmental writer, Donella Meadows, to help fight despair -- only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: A primer to help fight despair -- in our Global Citizen section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/citizen/citizen051302.asp?source=daily>
BLOOMSDAY DOOMSDAY
Ah, a lovely rolling meadow in springtime bloom. What could possibly be more British -- or more endangered? Flower meadows in the U.K. are declining at an alarming rate, putting some species at risk, according to a survey of eight English counties conducted by Wildlife Trusts, an organization that manages 2,400 nature reserves in the country. Conditions in all eight counties were deteriorating; in Worcestershire, three-quarters of "unimproved" grasslands are gone, while in Shropshire, almost half have been destroyed. Among the causes of the degradation are intensive, non-sustainable agricultural methods and a lack of understanding of proper meadow management. The meadows are (or were) home to large number of flowering plants and insects not found elsewhere in Great Britain.
straight to the source: London Guardian, Paul Brown, 13 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=92>
VERA, VERA GOOD
Portland, Ore., has long had a reputation for attracting Birkenstock-wearing, bike-riding, tree-hugging residents. Now city officials hope to attract Birkenstock-wearing, bike-riding, tree-hugging companies. (Okay, yes, we know companies can't really ride bikes.) Last month, Danish wind-power company Vestas Wind Systems chose Portland as the base of its U.S. operations, bringing as many as 1,000 new jobs to the area. And Mayor Vera Katz and city commissioners have instructed Portland's development commission to take green business seriously when planning the city's economic future. The move has been hailed by many as a great way to unite environmentalists and business boosters. Critics, however, say the city government is tilting at windmills and should focus instead on more traditional forms of economic development.
straight to the source: Portland Oregonian, Scott Learn, 13 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=93>
do good: Take action on consumption issues <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/consumption.asp?source=daily>
CAROLINA ON THEIR MINDS
The Bush administration is unhappy about a new ad campaign attacking its plan to move some 30 tons of plutonium from Colorado to South Carolina for temporary storage. The campaign was launched last week by South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges (D), who opposes the plan, fearing that his state could become the permanent resting grounds for the radioactive waste. The feds have declined to guarantee that that won't happen, so Hodges has taken his case to the airwaves, asking South Carolinians to tell the U.S. Department of Energy to store the waste ... somewhere other than South Carolina. The DOE blasted the ads, accusing Hodges (who's up for reelection in the fall) of politicizing matters of national security and foreign policy.
straight to the source: Washington Post, Brian Faler, 13 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=94>
do good: Take action to stop the use of nuclear power in the U.S. <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#nuclear>
GO GET 'EM, TIGERS
The world's largest mangrove forest, Sundarban, spans the border between Bangladesh and India, but the countries don't have a joint plan to manage the 3,700-square-mile area. The United Nations is hoping to change that. Two U.N. entities, the International Partnership Fund and the Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, are providing funding to help Bangladesh and India develop a coordinated approach to saving the land. The Sundarban, which runs alongside the Bay of Bengal, is home to endangered Royal Bengal Tigers and the Sundari tree (which is found nowhere else in the world), among many other species. But the forest and its inhabitants are gravely threatened by illegal poaching, logging, increased salinity, and oil pollution -- and that's just for starters.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 13 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=95>
5/13/02
7:05:41 PM
Ruling On Dumping Of Mine Waste Stuns Coal Industry
by Eric Pianin
The coal industry was reeling yesterday from a federal court ruling that would end a long-standing practice of filling rivers and streams with waste rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations.
The ruling, issued Wednesday by Chief U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II in West Virginia, immediately blocked the Army Corps of Engineers from issuing new permits to mining companies that dump waste in Appalachian waterways and valleys. Mining officials warned that if the ruling stands, it will seriously harm the region's economy, forcing utility costs up and possibly eliminating 15,000 mining jobs in the next five years.
"It has the potential impact to shut down the majority of coal mining operations in Appalachia," said Bill K. Caylor of the Kentucky Coal Association, an industry group that intervened in the suit in Haden's court. "It applies to all surface and underground operations, and it stops them from having [valley] fills -- and you can't mine without putting that fill somewhere."
The 47-page ruling also rebuked the Bush administration, which last week issued rules removing a legal impediment to mining companies dumping dirt and rock waste into waterways. Officials of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, who jointly regulate the dumping of dredge spoil and other materials into waterways, had characterized the rule changes as largely a technical matter that would not significantly alter current practices.
However, since 1977, the Army Corps' own regulations have prohibited mining companies from disposing of materials considered waste, including rock and dirt, in nearby waterways. Haden described the government rule change as a special favor to the mining industry that effectively would codify what he characterized as nearly 20 years of illegal dumping condoned by the Army Corps of Engineers.
"The final rule for 'discharge of fill material' highlights that the rule change was designed simply for the benefit of the mining industry and its employees," Haden wrote. "The agencies' attempt to legalize their long-standing illegal regulatory practice must fail. . . . The regulators' practice is illegal because it is contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Clean Water Act."
A Justice Department spokesman said yesterday the government would petition the court for a stay of the injunction pending an appeal of Haden's ruling.
"We are surprised at the judge's ruling . . . and believe the court misinterpreted the Corps of Engineers' authority to issue permits under the Clean Water Act," Charles Miller, the spokesman, said. "We also believe the court erred when it seemingly invalidated -- without briefing by the parties -- a new Clean Water Act rule . . . to address the definition of fill material."
Jack Gerard, president of the National Mining Association, said that "we are startled by the scope of this decision, which appears to call into question" the Army Corps' permitting activities under the Clean Water Act.
Haden ruled in 1999 in a similar case that dumping mine waste in streams violated federal law. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling, saying Haden lacked jurisdiction because the underlying lawsuit involved a state agency.
This time, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a group of environmentalists and community activists, sued the Army Corps' Huntington, W.Va., district office, which has been responsible for approving the vast majority of the nation's "valley fills" in West Virginia and portions of Ohio, eastern Kentucky and western Virginia.
Modern mining techniques make it possible to shear off the tops of mountains to reach veins of valuable, low-sulfur coal and bulldoze the leftover rock and dirt into nearby valleys. It is a profitable, if ecologically controversial, venture.
In the past decade, mining companies have obtained permits resulting in the leveling of hundreds of square miles of Appalachia and the covering of more than 1,000 miles of streams, according to environmental groups. Caylor said most of the waterways covered were dry drainage channels, not free-flowing streams.
Environmentalists hailed Haden's ruling as a lethal blow to mountaintop mining. "This is a great victory for citizens living in the shadow of these huge mines," said Joseph M. Lovett, a lawyer in Lewisburg, W.Va., and executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment.
According to detailed March 5 EPA briefing material obtained by Lovett and James M. Hecker of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, the administration has been considering further steps to expedite mountaintop mining -- including shifting all permitting responsibility to the states -- despite clear evidence of environmental damage.
The EPA documents and consultant analyses showed, for example, that 1 percent of all streams in the four-state Appalachian region studied have been eliminated by valley fill; that mining operations have harmed downstream aquatic life and boosted the levels of sulfates and other pollutants; and that land restoration activities promised by the mining companies were "not occurring as envisioned."
An EPA consultant's report also concluded that the economic effects of restricting mining would not be as severe as claimed by industry.
The Huntington office issued 257 of the 306 valley fill permits issued nationwide in 2000. Ten federal permit applications are pending in the Appalachian region. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection also has put on hold 87 state-issued permits that require federal approval.
Source: http://www.WashingtonPost.com
5/13/02
7:02:35 PM
The Siege Of Baghdad
The US obsession with toppling Saddam Hussein is growing despite European doubts and shaky justification.
by Gay Alcorn, May 11, 2002
The last remaining suspicion that Saddam Hussein was involved in the death of 3000 Americans on September 11 seemed to be put to rest. ''US officials" scotched the ''Iraqi connection" in a series of leaks this week, saying they no longer believed the hijackers' ringleader, Mohammed Atta, held secret meetings with an Iraqi intelligence agent in the Czech capital of Prague in April last year.
For those itching to topple Saddam, Atta's meeting with an Iraqi spy had been explosive news, the ''smoking gun" needed to justify an immediate military attack against Iraq without worrying about building a case that Saddam's presumed development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons was too risky to ignore.
Newsweek said the Atta meetings were a ''phantom" and quoted unnamed law enforcement officials as saying the Czechs had quietly admitted they were mistaken, and that Atta wasn't even in Prague at the time of the supposed rendezvous.
But wait. While the world is preoccupied with the Israeli-Palestinian disaster, in Washington there is an intriguing and intense struggle to mould the truth about Iraq.
William Safire, a powerful New York Times conservative commentator, was furious at the leaks. He railed against CIA and Justice Department officials, accusing them of downplaying the Atta link to cover up their intelligence failures before September 11. A ''senior Bush Administration official" told Safire that the Czech report was not ''discredited or disproved in any way". And, perhaps to cover up their failures, a Czech Government spokesman said they were sticking to their original story: the gun still smokes.
While Arab nations and European allies seriously doubt whether an American attack against Iraq is justified, in the United States the debate is about how to justify it and how to do it.
A direct link with September 11 would make justification easy, but none is proven. The Administration is nonetheless convinced that the next big project in the ''war on terrorism" should include removing Saddam, the dictatorial leader of Iraq since 1979. Americans are convinced, with 68 per cent supporting military action against Iraq, even if thousands of American lives are lost, according to a recent Newsweek poll.
The Middle East carnage may have delayed action against Iraq, but few believe it has been shelved. Newsweek reports this week that the President, George Bush, told a meeting of Republican and Democrat leaders two months ago that ''we're taking him out". The Vice-President, Dick Cheney, also reportedly told senior Republican senators after his trip to the Middle East - where he found Arab leaders implacably opposed - that the only question was when.
Ken Adelman, the arms control director to president Ronald Reagan, says that ''liberating" Iraq would be a ''cakewalk". He explained in The Washington Post: ''(1) It was a cakewalk last time [during the Gulf War of 1991]; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps."
Ken Pollack, the expert on Iraq on President Clinton's National Security Council, has changed his mind and now wants a full-scale invasion. It's the ''least worst option", he says. ''My views haven't changed at all; the world has," Pollack, now with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, told the Herald. ''There are two alternatives. One is to go ahead and invade and the other is live with Saddam, who is likely to acquire nuclear weapons. The idea of Saddam with nuclear weapons is so troubling, is so dangerous, that the correct strategic move is to opt for the invasion."
An invasion of Iraq, apart from the potential loss of thousands of military and civilian lives, and its repercussions in the Arab world, would be a fundamental upending of the way the world has worked - more or less peacefully - since World War II. Pollack acknowledges that ''this is a massive shift ... I espouse this policy very cautiously and very reluctantly, because it does set all kinds of precedents which could make us very uneasy in the future".
International lawyer Michael Byers, who opposes an attack, says a pre-emptive strike ''would destroy an international system that for 57 years has served to protect against major inter-state wars".
The laws of war may bend according to the power of the protagonists, but the US is the world's leading power and what it does sets the example. Not all lawyers agree with him, but Byers quotes UN provisions prohibiting the use of force against sovereign nations. ''Force may not be used except in response to an armed attack which has already occurred," he said. ''Only those with a credible nuclear deterrent can contemplate a world without these protections."
Even the moderates at Colin Powell's State Department argue that the unthinkable is now thinkable. Richard Haas, the department's director of policy planning, told The New Yorker recently that ''sovereignty entails obligations; one is not to massacre your own people; another is not to support terrorism in any way. If a government fails to meet these obligations ... other governments, including the United States, gain the right to intervene. You essentially can act in anticipation if you have grounds to think it's a question of when, and not if, you're going to be attacked".
That massive change is yet to be fully explored. If the US can pre-emptively attack, what about Pakistan, or Russia, or China? A sceptic is Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, and now a staunch opponent of military attack. ''If we go against Iraq," he said, ''we're going to lose the war on terror; we will lose any support for our actions because we will be seen as an arrogant, bullying superpower who is using September 11 to pursue our unilateral world domination."
If that debate has barely started, the argument about how Saddam would be ousted is in full swing. The State Department, worried about reaction in the volatile Arab world, wants to delay an attack to build the case that an invasion is the only option. Next week, the United Nations Security Council is expected to approve new sanctions against Iraq designed to blunt Saddam's successful propaganda campaign to convince the world that sanctions were responsible for up to a million deaths. Now, there will be more money for medicine and food, but strict prohibitions on military goods will remain.
The critical question is whether Iraq and the United Nations come to an agreement on a return of inspectors to certify that there are no weapons of mass destruction, a condition for sanctions to be finally lifted. For some in the Administration, that would be a disaster, providing Saddam another chance to deceive and delay. For the US, it could mean losing the momentum and possibly public support for military strikes. The Secretary of State, Colin Powell, declared this week that inspectors and ''regime change" were ''separate and distinct and different". ''US policy is that, regardless of what the inspectors do, the people of Iraq and the people of the region would be better off with a different regime in Baghdad".
The Administration has said repeatedly that there has been no decision about a military campaign against Iraq, although contingency plans are being drawn up. Strategic leaks to the US media reveal the desires of the different players. General Tommy Franks, the commander of US forces in the Gulf, wants ''Desert Storm II", referring to the 550,000 troops deployed to evict Saddam from Kuwait in 1990-91, according to The Washington Times.
The Times is a conservative newspaper with close connections to the civilian powers in the Defence Department, and it quoted officials suggesting an Afghanistan-style strategy, using proxies among opposition groups - the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south - as well as an air campaign.
The military fought back in The New York Times, arguing that relying on opposition forces in Iraq - which are far less organised than Afghanistan's Northern Alliance and far outgunned by Saddam's estimated 400,000 troops - had been ruled out. A coup was also not an option - six had failed in a decade.
Instead, a ground invasion would be launched early next year, with up to 250,000 troops.
All this is being discussed in detail, along with which Arab countries would be essential for victory - only Kuwait, argues Pollack, although Saudi Arabia offered excellent bases. According to Pollack, the campaign would take about a month.
There is far less detailed discussion about whether an attack is justified.
With no evidence that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks, the Administration's case rests on Saddam's aggressive development of weapons of mass destruction and his presumed willingness to use them against the US or to provide them to terrorists.
The US, Britain and a slew of Iraqi defectors are convinced that Saddam has never stopped pursuing weapons of mass destruction since UN inspectors left in December 1998, just before the US and Britain launched a round of bombing designed to destroy facilities.
America's war on terrorism, once against terrorist groups of ''global reach", as it was first put by Bush, has gradually expanded. Iraq is now part of the ''axis of evil" alongside Iran and North Korea, which could one day link up with terrorist groups to threaten the US and its interests. ''We will not wait for the authors of mass murder to gain the weapons of mass destruction," said Bush.
Is the new war on terrorism a ruse to go after Saddam Hussein, long a goal of people in key positions at the Pentagon and presumably not opposed by a President whose father, former president George Bush, failed to remove Saddam from office? Why is Saddam so much more dangerous than other nations working on weapons of mass destruction or which more actively back terrorism?
Chemical and biological weapons are banned under international treaties, and only five countries - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - are allowed nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iraq is not the only country busy developing such weapons. Former defence secretary William Cohen has estimated that there are at least 25 countries doing so.
Pollack acknowledges that Iraq is well behind others such as Iran, the Sudan, Pakistan and North Korea in its active support for terrorist groups. But Saddam, who is ''evil" according to Bush, did not hesitate to use chemical weapons against the Kurds in the late 1980s, killing an estimated 5000. Iraq admitted to its chemical and biological programs, including having developed thousands of litres of biological weapons, among them, anthrax.
According to the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Iraq has a $US10 billion nuclear weapons program involving 10,000 people. It has reportedly tested a radiological bomb - a so-called ''dirty" bomb, which uses conventional explosives to distribute radioactive material. Few believe it has a nuclear device now or a method of delivering it, but former UN inspectors such as Charles Duelfer are convinced the ambition remains.
A series of defectors, including engineer Adnan Ihsan Saeed Al-Haideri, have said they worked in secret facilities on building long-range ballistic missiles that could deliver chemical, biological and nuclear warheads.
But does any of this justify an invasion?
Scott Ritter admits that the inspectors destroyed only 90-95 per cent of the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam had, and that at least 5 per cent were never accounted for. Yet he argues that the conventional thinking that Saddam is busily working on horror weapons is wrong because Saddam, an unpredictable tyrant, is not suicidal.
''Why don't you presume that he's interested in getting economic sanctions lifted? That's a more logical presumption and that's what he's been trying to do. He's trying to hold onto power in Iraq, and it would be suicidal for him to build weapons of mass destruction because, to get rid of sanctions, inspectors will have to go in eventually."
For Ken Pollack, that is a mis-reading of Saddam's record. ''Over the course of his 23 years ruling Iraq, he has threatened or attacked every single one of Iraq's neighbours; he has embarked on catastrophically destructive adventures -attacking Iran, attacking Kuwait.
''He is inherently aggressive; he is a risk taker; he is the worst kind of leader for such an unstable and important part of the world. He is hell-bent to get nuclear weapons and the problem is that once he has nuclear weapons we simply do not know what he is going to do."
The White House - and most of America it seems - is unlikely to wait to find out.
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/10/1021002391082.html
5/13/02
6:56:38 PM
Agent Alleges FBI Ignored Hamas Activities Chicagoan Sues, Saying Bureau Refused To File Charges, Disrupt Pre-Sept. 11 Crimes
by James V. Grimaldi and John Mintz Washington Post, May 11, 2002
An FBI agent in Chicago has accused his superiors of ignoring the pre-Sept. 11 criminal activities of alleged U.S. associates of the Islamic Resistance Movement, the terrorist organization also known as Hamas. The agent also alleged that the bureau steered agents away from filing criminal cases that he believes could have disrupted Hamas's operations in this country.
Agent Robert G. Wright Jr. made the accusations last fall in a complaint filed with the Justice Department's inspector general --an internal watchdog -- and the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal affairs unit that investigates the conduct of agents, said sources familiar with the matter.
On Thursday, Wright, a 12-year FBI veteran, filed a lawsuit against the bureau in U.S. District Court in Washington. He accused the FBI of violating his First Amendment rights byprohibiting him from making his complaints public. He also has written a 500-page manuscript he wants to publish as a book titled "Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission."
"FBI management failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism in the United States," Wright's lawsuit claims. "FBI management intentionally and repeatedly thwarted and obstructed Wright's attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation that would identify terrorists, their sources and methods of funding before they attacked additional U.S. interests, killing more U.S. citizens."
FBI officials strenuously denied Wright's assertions and some of the officials, speaking anonymously, said he is disgruntled about being marginalized after intense struggles with supervisors over his investigations. They added that he had only limited understanding about superiors' reasons for rejecting some of his recommendations. Wright was taken off the Hamas investigation in August 1999.
"The collective Chicago efforts are part of a much larger, national counterterrorism effort, which is ongoing," FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said.
Wright's lawsuit was filed a day after the FBI was chastised by Congress for failing to more aggressively look into a July 2001 recommendation from its Phoenix field office that U.S. aviation schools should be canvassed for Middle Eastern men seeking flight training.
Wright is represented by David Schippers, the Chicago attorney who was the House Republicans' counsel during President Bill Clinton's impeachment, and Judicial Watch, a Washington activist group that frequently sues the government.
Schippers was unavailable for comment last week. Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman and Wright both declined to comment.
Wright's complaint to the inspector general has not been made public, but elements of it appear in his lawsuit. According to sources, Wright has alleged that his immediate supervisors directed him not to open criminal investigations of people and groups allegedly affiliated with the Islamic Resistance Movement, which claims responsibility for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. The U.S. government has declared Hamas a terrorist group.
The FBI, according to Wright's complaints, spent too much time on intelligence investigations of alleged terrorist associates. Intelligence investigations are designed primarily to gather information and rarely result in indictments.
Criminal investigations could have broken up the operations of the Hamas affiliates Wright was investigating, and could have disrupted the financing of the groups by Saudi interests that also funded Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network, the lawsuit contends.
Current and former FBI officials said Wright's denunciation of intelligence operations is ill-founded. The investigations often yield valuable leads about sensitive foreign groups, while Wright's favored tactic of filing criminal charges can shut off such streams of information, they said.
Because Wright did not investigate al Qaeda, he does not directly or indirectly allege that the FBI ignored evidence regarding the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, according to sources.
But he does contend in his lawsuit that the FBI routinely gathers evidence about terrorist operatives -- "such as the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks" -- to be used to solve the crimes only after they occur, but not to prevent them.
The FBI denied the suggestion. "No information has been uncovered, either before or after Sept. 11th, that tied any of the 19 hijackers to the subjects and activities" Wright was investigating, the FBI's Kortan said.
Wright cites a positive job review in his lawsuit and notes that his work resulted in the seizure in 1998 of $1.4 million that the government said was being used by Hamas. But he has also run into trouble himself: he was investigated recently for allegedly harassing an Arab American agent and for alleged sexual harassment of a female agent. The status of the harassment complaints is not known.
In the case of the Arab American agent, sources said, Wright had asked the agent to wear a clandestine listening device to record his conversation with the president of a company suspected of having ties to Hamas. According to Wright's account, the agent allegedly refused, leading to bad blood between them.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3860-2002May10.html
5/13/02
6:54:04 PM
U.S. Military Proposes Illegal Bioweapons Research
by Russ Kick
According to documents unearthed by a nonprofit government watchdog, the United States military has proposed the development of biological weapons that would violate international treaties and federal law. In fact, they may have already developed some of these illegal, treaty-busting bioweapons. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Sunshine Project has recently pried loose some damning documents from the Marine Corps, which seems to be overseeing this area of research.
Exhibit A is a 1997 proposal from the Naval Research Laboratory to create genetically engineered bacteria and fungi that will corrode and degrade enemy matériel, such as roads, runways, vehicles, weapons, and fuel.
Then we have the document from Armstrong Laboratories at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas. The flyboys propose much the same thing as the navy—engineered microbes that can destroy enemy equipment, including explosives and chemical weapons.
The military scientists take great care to point out that the germs they want to create would be "nonlethal." But this doesn't matter. The international Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention treaty absolutely bans member nations from possessing or developing microbes, toxins, or any other biological agents for use in battle or other hostile situations. (Under the treaty, bioweapons can only be developed for defensive purposes, which is what lets the U.S. government brew anthrax with the supposed goal of developing a vaccine.) The U.S. was one of the original signatories, putting its John Hancock on the treaty in 1972.
Yet the navy lab is advocating these super-bugs for blatantly offensive purposes, saying they will "degrade opposing forces' mobility, logistical support and equipment maintenance programs prior to or during military engagements." Likewise, the air force proposal is for bioweapons that would be used to attack enemy forces: "Catalysts can be developed to destroy whatever war matériel is desired. All [military] Services would have an interest."
Both proposals claim that the destructive germs wouldn't violate the biological weapons treaty. "That's completely false," says Edward Hammond, a co-founder of the Sunshine Project. He notes that the convention makes no distinction between bioweapons that target humans and those that take out equipment or other targets. "If the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was limited to humans, it would be disastrous. Weapons that target animals, like livestock, would be legal. Destroying crops would be legal."
And let's not forget that the actual use of biological weapons, as opposed to their development, was outlawed way back in 1925 by the Geneva Convention.
The military's proposed germ research would violate more than just international treaties. "U.S. federal law explicitly states that biological weapons that attack matériel are illegal," Hammond says. "The penalty is life in federal prison. If they lifted a finger to do this research, they have violated the [Biological and Toxin Weapons] Convention and federal law."
Which leads to another crucial point. The military's proposals from five years ago reveal that they already had developed similar bioweapons. The navy lab says it has a fungus that breaks down polyurethanes. In the air force document, Armstrong Laboratories brags that it's been doing "biotechnological research at the molecular level" for eight years. Specifically, it's cooked up a bio-agent that quickly destroys rocket fuel, plastic, and other organic and artificial polymers "without fire or explosion."
Does this mean that the military has already violated the bioweapons treaty and U.S. law? "I don't want to comment on that right now," Hammond says. "We're discussing it with lawyers."
Tell us what you think. mailto:editor@villagevoice.com
Source: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0220/kick.php
5/13/02
6:51:08 PM
Party Rebuffs Sharon Over Palestinians Israel: A Likud panel rejects the concept of statehood, contradicting its premier's views. U.S. peacemaking efforts could be hampered.
by Mary Curtius, Los Angeles Times
TEL AVIV -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a humiliating defeat Sunday at the hands of his archrival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the central committee of their Likud Party ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The party's decision, formalized in a resolution backed by Netanyahu, directly contradicted Sharon's own stated acceptance of a Palestinian state as the eventual conclusion of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It came as Sharon faces mounting domestic and international pressure to find a way to stop more than 19 months of bloodshed and launch talks with the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat toured West Bank towns for the first time since his travel ban was lifted, but he skipped the devastated Jenin refugee camp, apparently to avoid possible heckling.
He responded sharply to the Likud action. "This is the destruction of the Oslo accords, which they have signed," Arafat said, referring to the interim peace agreements he reached with Israel in the mid-1990s.
The vote also seems certain to complicate the Bush administration's efforts to arrange a Mideast peace conference.
Delegates packed into Tel Aviv's Mann Auditorium brushed aside Sharon's warning that they would limit his government's diplomatic maneuvering room if they adopted the resolution. Around midnight, they turned aside Sharon's request to postpone the vote and rejected, 59% to 41%, a resolution he had offered backing his government's efforts to achieve peace and security.
"I will continue to lead the state of Israel and the people of Israel according to the same ideas that led me always: security for the state of Israel and its citizens and our desire for real peace," Sharon said in a brief, defiant statement from the podium after his motion was defeated.
Sharon and Netanyahu then left the hall. After that, delegates adopted with a show of hands, by a large majority, the anti-state measure Netanyahu and his supporters backed. The resolution read: "No Palestinian state will be created west of the Jordan [River]."
The Likud Party has traditionally opposed the idea of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan, and Sharon stirred a storm in the party when he said publicly last year that he envisioned such a state as the outcome of negotiations.
Sunday's vote is expected to weaken Sharon politically. It also puts the Likud Party and Sharon, as its leader, at odds with President Bush, who has said he supports the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
"In the midst of a terror campaign run by [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat," Likud members "don't want to envision a terrorist state which would threaten the destruction of Israel," Netanyahu said after the anti-state resolution passed.
The defeat reflected the political reality that since his election in February 2001, Sharon has been more popular with Israeli voters than he is within his hawkish party. Netanyahu demonstrated Sunday that he controls a majority of the central committee, the body that will choose who will lead the Likud into the next elections.
During the raucous gathering, Sharon engaged in a verbal slugfest with Netanyahu over who has been tougher on Arafat. Several times, the meeting degenerated into shouting matches between dozens of supporters of each man.
The spectacle, broadcast live on Israel Television, couldn't have come at a worse time for Sharon. With Israeli troops finally out of Palestinian-controlled areas occupied during the army's six-week sweep through the West Bank, there have been growing signs that diplomacy might supplant bloodshed, at least for a time.
Over the weekend, Sharon postponed a planned invasion of the Gaza Strip, partly because senior members of the defense establishment said the operation would scuttle peace efforts. The leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria held a summit and issued a joint statement saying they want peace with Israel. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister told reporters that his country and others are now pressuring Arafat to fight terrorism.
But within the Likud Party, there is growing sentiment for finishing the Palestinian Authority and getting rid of Arafat, and Netanyahu is promising that he can deliver. He and his supporters say that, unlike Sharon, Netanyahu will not form a broad-based coalition that includes the Labor Party if Likud wins elections scheduled for November 2003. Instead, they say, Netanyahu will put together a hard-right government that will finish dismantling the 1993 Oslo peace accords, which Israel signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Sharon's acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state has always been a qualified one. He has said that such a state would not field an army and would be built on less than half the West Bank.
It would not include East Jerusalem, captured by Israel from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East War. It would not have control over water resources, its borders or its airspace.
Polls show that a majority of Israeli voters share Sharon's view that a Palestinian state should eventually be established.
But among the party faithful represented in the Likud central committee, sentiment runs strongly against creation of such a state in the West Bank and Gaza.
"Any decision taken today on the final agreement is dangerous to the state of Israel and will only intensify the pressure on us," Sharon told thousands of delegates who gathered under blue-and-white Likud banners and beneath an image of the steely-eyed party founder and former prime minister, Menachem Begin. A gigantic photograph of Begin, who died in 1992, served as a podium backdrop.
"Peace is possible" with the Palestinians, Sharon said, but only if they first reform the Palestinian Authority and bring about "a complete halt to the terror, violence and incitement. The Palestinian Authority must carry out internal reforms in every way: on security, the economy, the legal system and within society."
Only then, Sharon said, would he engage in negotiations that would achieve a settlement through phases. He did not reiterate his support for a Palestinian state.
The crowd cheered the portly Sharon enthusiastically when he entered the hall flanked by security officers and supporters and lumbered onto the stage, where he sat flanked by his Likud Cabinet ministers and Netanyahu. The delegates clapped loudly when Sharon spoke of Operation Defensive Shield, the just-completed military incursion into the West Bank.
But Netanyahu's supporters began chanting and heckling when Sharon chastised previous governments for their "naivete" in signing agreements with Arafat.
"I did not shake Arafat's hand," Sharon said, referring to Netanyahu's handshake with Arafat when the two signed the Wye River agreement in Maryland in 1998. That pact reaffirmed the 1993 Oslo peace accords and ceded more West Bank territory to the Palestinians.
Netanyahu tried to quiet the crowds, although he had been heckled to a standstill several times during his own speech.
Netanyahu told the delegates that he opposes independent statehood for the Palestinians as a threat to Israel's existence.
"Sovereign rule: yes. State: no," said the former prime minister, who urged the government to expel Arafat.
"We have no choice but to exile Arafat," he told the cheering crowd. During a recent U.S. tour on behalf of the government, Netanyahu said, he needed to explain not why Israel should expel Arafat, but why it has not.
Netanyahu also criticized Sharon for agreeing to participate in a regional conference and said that even a Palestinian state without Arafat as its leader would pose a threat to Israel.
Efforts to forge a compromise between the two men continued up until the committee meeting began, to no avail.
A string of committee members who spoke to the gathering before Netanyahu and Sharon urged the party to display unity and rally around its prime minister.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's government fell because of a split within the right, as did Netanyahu's government, said Yitzhak Ben-Gad, Israel's former consul general in Chicago. "We have to stay together and support this prime minister," he pleaded.
Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and current Sharon foreign policy advisor, told the crowd that "everybody agrees a Palestinian state is not good for the Jews." But only unity, he said, will make it possible for Likud to solve the problems Israel faces.
In the end, the evening was more about tensions inside a party that realizes it may soon have to define its parameters for negotiating with the Palestinians--and that faces an all-out leadership battle--than it was about a resolution few delegates believe will actually prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
"Everyone in the Likud appreciates very much what the prime minister has done to fight terror," said Zeev Boim, head of Likud's parliamentary faction. "But the question here is: What is the future? What kind of a political solution will we pursue?"
For the first time in six months, Arafat left the West Bank town of Ramallah, traveling aboard a Jordanian air force helicopter. The Palestinian leader, who frequently hopped between world capitals in the past, was effectively grounded since last November. Israeli air strikes destroyed his helicopters, followed by increasingly tough restrictions on his movements.
Israel lifted the travel ban on Arafat as part of a U.S.-brokered deal that ended a 34-day Israeli siege on the Palestinian leader's headquarters May 2.
Arafat made three stops today in West Bank towns hard hit by Israel's military incursion in search of militants. His visit to the town of Jenin, in the northern West Bank, was also to include a tour of the devastated Jenin refugee camp, scene of heavy fighting a month ago.
Some 3,000 camp residents turned out to see Arafat, but aides said privately that Arafat could face heckling in the camp and canceled the visit, a decision that disappointed many and angered some in the crowd.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-051302likud.story
5/13/02
6:46:51 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
FIRE SALE
by Micah L. Sifry, In These Times
-- Election reform advocates in Massachusetts are auctioning off state property to finance a three-year-old "clean election" initiative the legislature has stubbornly refused to fund.
DESIGNER DRUG
by Benn Ray, Detroit Metro Times
-- The cable TV hit Trading Spaces may help viewers incorporate budget design work, but its more engrossing hook is the potential for a haute couture disaster.
ADDICTED IN ACADEME
by Anonymous, The Chronicle of Higher Education
-- Alcohol and the literary life isn't always the romantic relationship we've been taught to believe.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
5/13/02
6:45:23 PM
Soldiers of fortune Civilian employees of Dick Cheney's former company are carrying out military missions around the world – for profit.
by Pratap Chatterjee
IN EARLY JANUARY, Jon France, transportation officer at the Sierra Army Depot in Herlong, Calif., was asked to help support the war in Afghanistan by sending prefabricated military bases that could be run by private corporations.
With just two days to complete the job, France scrambled to get 100 containers of a package code-named Force Provider (see "Force Provider: The Base-in-a-Box," page 26) to Reno, Nev. where the Nevada Air National Guard was standing by to load them onto three Air Force C-5s and four 747s headed to Ramstein, Germany, Larry Rogers, a spokesperson for the army depot, told us. A day later the 21st Theater Support Command arrived in Ramstein to airlift the Force Provider package to Central Asia.
Employees of Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the Dallas-based Halliburton Corp. (once run by Vice President Dick Cheney), are scheduled to arrive at the Bagram air base in southern Afghanistan to take over the day-to-day support services at the Force Provider camp starting in late April or early May (the exact date is classified). They are also set to arrive at the Khanabad air base in Uzbekistan, one of the main military support stations for the war in Afghanistan, to run three Air Force Harvest Eagle camps (an older version of Force Provider) for the 1,500 U.S. troops based there since October, according to Daniel McGinty, a spokesperson at the Defense Contract Management Agency, which will be overseeing the contracts.
"They [Brown and Root] will be maintaining these packages, [doing] base camp maintenance, facilities maintenance, laundry services, food services, airfield services, property accountability, and supply operations," says Gale L. Smith, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Operations Support Command in Alexandria, Va. (Brown and Root is now named Kellogg Brown and Root, following a corporate merger, but is often referred to by its previous name.) She refused to confirm or deny whether Brown and Root would be working on similar bases in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, or other sites in Afghanistan and Pakistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom.
The new job is one of the first examples of a private company being awarded a lucrative contract from the Pentagon to run the day-to-day support operations on the battlefield. In December 2001, Brown and Root secured a 10-year deal called Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), according to a Pentagon press release. The contract is a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service," which basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Brown and Root anywhere in the world to run humanitarian or military operations for a profit.
And critics are alarmed. The military has a long-celebrated, cozy relationship with private industry, but Brown and Root's goes much further. For private industry will now essentially run a war operation. And the potential problems are legion, military critics warn. Not only will civilians be running around overseas with guns, but they'll also be answering to nobody.
"The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into a family business," says Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War (Seven Stories Press, 2000). "That's why we haven't seen Cheney – he's cutting deals with his old buddies who gave him a multimillion-dollar golden handshake. Have they no grace, no shame, no common sense? Why don't they just have Enron run America? Or have Zapata Petroleum [George W. Bush's failed oil-exploration venture] build a pipeline across Afghanistan?"
Deep roots
Halliburton, Brown and Root's parent company, is a Fortune 500 construction corporation working primarily for the oil industry. In the early 1990s the company was awarded the job to study and then implement the privatization of routine army functions under then-secretary of defense Dick Cheney.
When Cheney quit his Pentagon job, he landed as chief executive of Halliburton, bringing with him his trusted deputy David Gribbin. The two substantially increased Halliburton's government business until they quit in 2000, once Cheney was elected vice president. Since then another confidante of Cheney, Adm. Joe Lopez, former commander in chief for U.S. forces in southern Europe, took over Gribbin's old job of go-between for the government and the company, according to Brown and Root's own press releases (see "Dick Cheney: Soldier of Fortune," page 23). Other close friends include Richard Armitage, the assistant secretary of state, who worked as a consultant to Halliburton before taking up his present job.
Last year the company took in $13 billion in revenues, according to its latest annual report. Currently, Brown and Root estimates it has $740 million in existing U.S. government contracts (approximately 37 percent of its global business), most of which are in addition to the LOGCAP deal.
For example, in mid November 2001, Brown and Root was paid $2 million to reinforce the U.S. embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under contract with the State Department, according to the New York Times. More recently Brown and Root was paid $16 million by the federal government to go to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to build a 408-person prison for captured Taliban fighters, according to Pentagon press releases.
That's by no means all: Brown and Root employees can be found back home running support operations from Fort Knox, Ky., to a naval base in El Centro, Calif., according to information provided by the company.
And it is also snapping up contracts with American allies, according to company press releases: In September 2001 the company signed on to a $283 million project for Russia's Defense Threat Reduction Agency to eliminate liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles and their silos. In November 2001 the Philippines awarded the company a $100 million order to convert the U.S. Navy's former ship-repair facilities in Subic Bay into a modern commercial port facility. And in December it won a $420 million contract from the British Army to support a fleet of new mammoth tank transporters.
Critics charge that this is a classic example of the revolving door between government and big business. "Cheney gives new meaning to the term 'revolving door.' " says Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York. "If he does not get elected president next, I have no doubt he will return to Halliburton when he leaves the White House."
Jennifer Millerwise, a spokesperson for Cheney's office, denies that there was any contact help from the White House: "The vice president did not discuss this with anybody from Halliburton or any subsidiary of Halliburton. Nor does he comment on Halliburton's policies, since he doesn't work there any more."
The business of war
But Brown and Root is no stranger to the war business. From 1962 to 1972 the Pentagon paid the company tens of millions of dollars to work in South Vietnam, where they built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases from the demilitarized zone to the Mekong Delta. The company was one of the main contractors hired to construct the Diego Garcia air base in the Indian Ocean, according to Pentagon military histories.
The privatization of services at military camps is a relatively new concept that was introduced in 1992, when the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid Brown and Root $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies (like itself) could help provide logistics for U.S. operations abroad (see "Dick Cheney: Soldier of Fortune," page 23). Several months later the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report.
That same year Brown and Root won its first five-year LOGCAP contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would send them to work alongside G.I.s in places such as Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Bosnia, and Saudi Arabia. Brown and Root's work in the Balkans has been the most profitable for the company – the General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates the company made $2.2 billion in revenue during the military operations there, building sewage systems, kitchens, and showers and even washing underwear for the 20,000 soldiers stationed there.
A student research report written by Maj. Maria Dowling and published by the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama shows that Brown and Root employees can be required to live with soldiers, wear battle dress uniforms, and be issued guns (ostensibly for personal protection). They are substituting for conventional military support units – with acronyms that would make a vegetarian cringe – such as Prime Base Engineer Emergency Force (Prime BEEF), Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineer (RED HORSE), and Prime Readiness in Base Service (Prime RIBS).
The ratio of such contractors to military personnel is rapidly rising from 1 in 50 during Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War to 1 in 10 in Operation Just Endeavor in the Balkans, according to other Air University research papers.
Praise from the army, criticism from outside
Col. Tom Palmer, maintenance chief for Task Force Eagle in Bosnia, admiringly describes how closely he worked with private contractors such as Brown and Root in Bosnia at a Sept. 18, 1997, operation to seize and maintain control of a transmission tower on Mount Zep that was transmitting continuous, inflammatory anti-NATO Stabilization Force messages to the public. In a recent issue of Army Logistician, he wrote, "For soldiers familiar with the Bosnian area of operations, the name 'Brown and Root Services Corporation' (BRSC) became synonymous with "contractor support."
But other government agencies are more sceptical. "It is convenient to contract a lot of this work out," says Neil Curtin, director of operations and readiness issues for the GAO defense capabilities and management team. "The problem is that the government doesn't do the best job of oversight."
Policy analysts say it's simply a matter of time before something goes wrong. Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century in Washington, D.C., says, "We've been pretty lucky so far that nothing has gone wrong. The Balkans were one thing, but Central Asia is a much tougher neighborhood. Suppose a local Afghani contractor gets kidnapped or used for mischief? This has not been thought through at the policy level or opened up for public debate. There's a lot of opportunity for things to fall through the cracks and a huge security risk."
Christopher Helmand, research analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a think tank on military affairs, believes that privatization can help reduce waste and inefficiency in the military but points out that security is a big concern. "What do we do when somebody infiltrates a U.S. military base and blows it up? If we have civilians walking in and out of our bases because they are 'our allies' in the Northern Alliance or private contractors, we increase our risk considerably," he says. "We simply don't have all the bugs worked out because this is such a new area."
Sometimes the risks have come from inside. In 1994, United Nations troops armed with batons and tear gas had to be brought in to quell protests by workers Brown and Root dismissed at the end of its engagement in Somalia. In Saudi Arabia the army was alarmed when it discovered locally contracted drivers were firing up portable propane tanks to cook meals in the desert while transporting high-explosive ordnance weapons, according to the Dowling report.
Certain contractors, including Brown and Root, have also complained that the army treats them as second-class citizens. On at least one occasion, food-service contractors walked off the job in Saudi Arabia when they were not provided with proper protection against chemical attacks; another time, contractors moved out of army tents and checked into a hotel in defiance of army orders, according to a research report by Major Lisa Turner of the U.S. Air Force.
Independent agencies are still sceptical about claimed financial savings from the privatization of military support operations, and the GAO has conducted several investigations. A February 1997 study showed that an operation estimated at $191.6 million when presented to Congress in 1996 had ballooned to $461.5 million a year later.
Examples of overspending by contractors have included flying plywood from the United States to the Balkans at $85.98 a sheet and billing the army to pay its employees' income taxes in Hungary.
A subsequent GAO report, issued September 2000, showed that Brown and Root was still taking advantage of the contract in the Balkans, noting that army commanders were unable to keep track of the contract, as they were typically rotated out of camps after a six-month duration, erasing institutional memory.
The GAO painted a picture of Brown and Root contract employees sitting idly most of the time. The report also noted that a lot of staff time was spent doing unnecessary tasks, such as cleaning offices four times a day.
Allegations of fraud
In February 2002, Brown and Root paid out $2 million to settle a suit with the Justice Department that alleged the company defrauded the government during the mid-1990s closure of Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif.
The allegations in the case surfaced several years ago when Dammen Gant Campbell, a former contracts manager for Brown and Root turned whistle-blower, charged that between 1994 and 1998 the company fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting the quantities, quality, and types of materials required for 224 projects. Campbell said the company submitted a detailed "contractors pricing proposal" from an army manual containing fixed prices for some 30,000 line items.
Once the proposal was approved, the company submitted a more general "statement of work," which did not contain a breakdown of items to be purchased. Campbell maintained the company intentionally did not deliver many items listed in the original proposal. The company defended this practice by claiming the statement of work was the legally binding document, not the original contractors pricing proposal.
"Whether you characterize it as fraud or sharp business practices, the bottom line is the same: the government was not getting what it paid for," says Michael Hirst, of the United States Attorney's Office in Sacramento, who litigated the suit on behalf of the government. "We alleged that they exploited the contracting process and increased their profits at the governments expense."
Campbell's attorney Dan Schrader has a guess as to why the company was so eager to compromise. "If the company was indicted, I suspect that it might have been far more difficult for them to get new government contracts," he says.
Indeed, the company's 2001 annual report says just that in its notes on the settlement of the lawsuit: "Brown and Root's ability to perform further work for the U.S. government has not been impaired." Hirst adds, "Brown and Root was very cooperative and eager to settle. They said they wanted to maintain a good relationship with the government."
The company will have a harder time milking the contract in Afghanistan, because the government is now dispatching auditors from the Defense Contract Management Agency to monitor all purchases, but it still stands to at least make a profit on whatever it can bill. The contract allows for the company to charge a fee of up to 9 percent over cost. The exact amount depends on performance in the field.
And if the war on terrorism expands to the size of the Balkan operations, profits could add up to a few hundred million dollars. In addition to the bases in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, the army started dispatching Force Provider units to Kyrgyzstan's Manas air base as recently as January 2002 to support up to 3,500 soldiers. Whether or not Brown and Root will follow them there, the army has yet to tell the public.
"Brown and Root has not deployed nor been tasked to provide support in either country," company spokesperson Zelma Branch said, refusing to give any more details about the current LOGCAP contract. When provided with evidence that the company was indeed going to both countries, she e-mailed us, "We can not elaborate at this time. Recommend you contact the Army."
The Pentagon, on the other hand, is considering expanding the role of the private sector to do a variety of services, from refueling fighter jets and bombers in midair to running missile-tracking systems.
Inside military circles, talk has it that the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) is considering hiring private contractors to train the new Afghan police and army, which it has done in the past in places such as Croatia, where it hired Military Professionals Resources Inc.
MPRI, founded in 1988 by former army chief of staff Carl Vuono and seven other retired generals, was harshly criticized after the Croatian military, in a highly effective offensive called Operation Storm, captured the Serb-held Krajina enclave later that year, uprooting more than 150,000 Serbs from their homes.
David Des Roches, a DSCA spokesman, denied that the Pentagon had a proposal on the table at the moment but did not rule out the future possibility: "A lot of people have said, 'Ding, ding, ding, gravy train.' But in point of fact, it makes sense. They're probably better at doing these sorts of missions than anyone else I could think of."
The World Policy Institute's Hartung disagrees. "This is a company that has more experience with insider dealing and corruption than with efficiency," he says. "During the Second World War, there was a Senate committee on war profiteering. Personally I think we should set it up again and investigate Brown and Root," he says.
Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative environmental writer and producer. This article was produced with support from the CorpWatch fund for investigative journalism. (www.corpwatch.org). He is also coproducer and host of the weekly Terra Verde radio show on KPFA, 94.1-FM, Fri., 1-2 p.m.
Source: http://www.sfbayguardian.com/36/31/cover_soldiersoffortune.html
5/13/02
6:41:52 PM
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism --ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
5/13/02
6:40:25 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
US to release first-ever measurement of dioxins - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15915/story.htm
New California power agency chooses bond underwriters - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15916/story.htm
FEATURE - US Senate ethanol plan stirs conflicting reactions - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15919/story.htm
Alcan revamps slow aluminum can recycling in '01 - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15921/story.htm
US to seek ratification of marine pollution accord - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15922/story.htm
UK experts say glacier fall not climate related - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15911/story.htm
British firm accused of still making landmines - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15917/story.htm
Indonesian forests vanishing into paper - scientist - SINGAPORE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15912/story.htm
FEATURE - Man who once hunted whales now wants them safe - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15914/story.htm
Japan may allow beached whales to be eaten - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15918/story.htm
Aid can kill with kindness, say Thai mussel farmers - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15909/story.htm
Brazil bauxite miner says helping restore Amazon - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15910/story.htm
Chinese aluminium recycling seen rising sharply - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15920/story.htm
Bangladesh, India to work to save Sundarban forest - BANGLADESH http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15913/story.htm
5/13/02
6:39:28 PM
Express Support for Percy Schmeiser's Appeal This Week
Percy Schmeiser's appeal is being heard this week on May 15 and 16. The ruling will have far-reaching consequences for farmers everywhere.
Please send messages of support and best wishes for a successful outcome to
mailto:rschmeis@telusplanet.net
Details on his case are available at his website
5/13/02
6:38:02 PM
Computer Viruses
I think it is a record for me. I received six virus-infected e-mails in one morning, and around 15 through the course of this week. There's an energetic new virus on the loose!
Blocking those viruses from my computer helps justify the expense and hassles of buying anti-virus software, and keeping the virus definitions up-to-date. Those defensive costs are now an essential part of living in our electronically-connected world.
Unfortunately, there are lots of competent programmers who find a sense of power in being able to inflict damage on other's computers. And so there are thousands of computer viruses on the loose. Because of their actions, all the rest of us need to go to substantial lengths to protect ourselves from those malicious programs.
Once a virus is put in circulation, there's no way to call it back, no way to exterminate it. It will propagate and spread. Just like the biological viruses for AIDS or the flu, a computer virus can quickly spread to a whole population. All that we can do is protect our own systems, and try to keep from spreading the infection to others.
Thankfully, there are good programs that can help stave off the potential epidemics of computer viruses. The cost and the hassles are worth it -- for us as individuals, and for the broader electronic community.
This week's snail-mail brought a report and a video from the Sierra Club on genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). (A link to the on-line report is at the end of this message.)
Reading the Sierra Club report while fighting this week's surge in computer virus attacks helped me to see a parallel between these two pervasive parts of our high-tech world.
Just like a computer virus turned loose on the Internet, the genetic information of a modified plant is turned loose into a rural community when a crop is planted. Pollen and seeds are not -- and cannot be -- confined to a single field. Wind, insects, and seeds that fall from trucks spread the modified genetic information into neighboring fields, where it can mingle with the genetics of similar crops planted by a different farmer.
So what? That new genetic information can infect and corrupt the crops of a farmer. But the problem is larger than the creation of an impure field. The scope of the economic and legal issues emerge in a lawsuit filed against a Canadian farmer by agricultural giant Monsanto. Similar cases are being pursued in the US and other countries, too.
Monsanto has developed a genetically modified form of the canola plant that is resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. Monsanto patented their product, and claims total ownership of that unique genetic code. Farmers cannot buy the seed itself; they can only buy rights to plant it.
Canadian farmer Percy Schemeiser did not plant the Monsanto variety of canola, but some of the plants in his field were "Roundup resistant" because of contamination from other sources. Monsanto filed suit against Schemeiser, claiming patent infringement. The Canadian courts ruled in favor of Monsanto. The farmer was fined tens of thousands of dollars, and had to forfeit his entire harvest, for having a small amount of Monsanto's GMO in his field. (A link to the farmer's website is at the end of this message.)
What happened to Schemeiser is like getting a computer virus, and then finding out that the programmer who created the virus can sue you for having the virus, and can also claim ownership of all the data on your computer. The parallel breaks down, though, because there's nothing that corresponds to your computer's anti-virus software to keep the GMOs out of a field. There is no way to defend against the GMO infection.
Like a computer virus, once those new genes are introduced into the world, it is impossible to call them back. They will propagate and spread. Farmers cannot protect themselves from a GMO infection, and yet they are held liable by the seed companies when the new plant varieties appear in their fields.
The technology for creating new genetic strains has moved much more quickly than the legal, scientific and ethical capacity to answer the complex issues that are raised.
There are many complicated and controversial issues involved in the development and spread of GMOs. They touch on religious questions about the creation of new life forms, environmental concerns about the impact of those life forms on habitats and ecosystems, issues of human health, consumer rights to information about food ingredients, and legal questions about the ownership of patents to genetic information.
Churches can play an important role in addressing these issues through study and advocacy. Please contact Eco-Justice Ministries if you would like to explore ways of working on these issues in your congregation or community.
The links to other resources cited in this article are:
1) The Sierra Club report on Genetically Modified Organisms, with links to sites for action and advocacy:
http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/references.asp
2) The site for Canadian farmer Percy Schemeiser, with details on his legal battles against Monsanto:
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/crime.htm
5/13/02
6:29:45 PM
OPEC Chief Warned Chavez About Coup
by Greg Palast, Guardian, May 13, 2002
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, had advance warning of last month's coup attempt against him from the secretary general of Opec, Ali Rodriguez, allowing him to prepare an extraordinary plan which saved both his government and his life, an investigation has revealed.
Mr Rodriguez, who is Venezuelan and a former leftwing guerrilla, telephoned Mr Chavez from the Vienna headquarters of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Venezuela is an important member, several days before the attempted overthrow in April.
He said Opec had learned that some Arab countries, later revealed to be Libya and Iraq, planned to call for a new oil embargo against the United States because of its support for Israel.
The Opec chief warned Mr Chavez that the US would prod a long-simmering coup into action to break any embargo threat. It was likely to act on April 11, the day a general strike was due to start.
It was Venezuela which shattered the oil embargo of 1973 by replacing Arab oil with its own huge reserves.
The warning - revealed by a Newsnight investigation to be shown on BBC2 tonight - explains the swift and safe return of Mr Chavez to power within two days of his April 12 capture by military officers under the direction of the coup leader, Pedro Carmona.
Until now, it was unclear why Mr Carmona - who had declared himself president - and the military chiefs who backed the coup surrendered without firing a shot.
The answer to the mystery, Newsnight was told by a Chavez insider, is that several hundred pro-Chavez troops were hidden in secret corridors under Miraflores, the presidential palace.
Juan Barreto, a leader of Mr Chavez's party in the national assembly, was with Mr Chavez when he was under siege.
Mr Barreto said that Jose Baduel, chief of the paratroop division loyal to Mr Chavez, had waited until Mr Carmona was inside Miraflores.
Mr Baduel then phoned Mr Carmona to tell him that, with troops virtually under his chair, he was as much a hostage as Mr Chavez. He gave Mr Carmona 24 hours to return Mr Chavez alive.
Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Mr Carmona. The building was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez demonstrators who, alerted by a sympathetic foreign affairs minister, had marched on it from the Ranchos, the poorest barrios.
Mr Chavez told Newsnight that, after receiving the warning from Opec, he had hoped to stave off the coup entirely by issuing a statement to mollify the Bush adminstration. He pledged that Venezuela would neither join nor tolerate a renewed oil embargo.
But Mr Chavez had already incurred America's wrath by slashing Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding Opec, causing oil prices to nearly double to over $20 a barrel.
His opponents had made it clear that they would not abide by Opec production limits and would reverse his plan to double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies in Venezuela, principally the US petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil. The US government's panic over the calls for an oil embargo, made public by Iraq and Libya on April 8 and 9, also explains what Venezuelans see as the state department's ill-concealed and clumsy support for the coup attempt.
Mr Chavez told Newsnight: "I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of two US military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters - their names, whom they met with, what they said - proof on video and on still photographs."
Last month the Guardian reported a former US intelligence officer's claims that the US had been considering a coup to overthrow the Venezuelan president for nearly a year.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4412216,00.html
5/13/02
5:55:35 PM
t r u t h o u t | 05.13
Carter is in Cuba
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13A.Carter.Cuba.htm
Venezuela; Chavez Calls on U.S. for "Explanation"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13B.Chavez.Explain.htm
Large Tel Aviv Rally Calls for Pullout From Territories
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13C.Peacenow.htm
Daschle: "Somebody Ought to Go to Jail" for Enron Price Manipulation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13D.Daschle.Jail.htm
Thomas L. Friedman | Global Village Idiocy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13E.Global.Idiocy.htm
In One Last Trial, Alabama Faces Old Wound
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13F.Cherry.Trial.htm
Pakistan Reluctant to Pursue Al Qaeda | Political, Military Pressures at Home Cited
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13G.Pak.AlQaeda.htm
EU Takes Lead in Mid East Diplomacy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13H.EU.Mid.East.htm
John Nichols | Paul Wellstone, Fighter
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.13I.Wellstone.Fighter.htm