Earths.net

5/26/02
2:00:44 PM

3 Little Jokes

1) The Ape

One day the zoo keeper noticed that the ape was reading two books -- the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species. In surprise he asked the ape, "Why are you reading both those books?"

"Well," said the ape, "I just wanted to know if I was my brother's keeper or my keeper's brother."

2) Department of Fish and Wildlife Warning

The Louisiana State Department of Fish and Wildlife is advising hikers, hunters, fishermen, and golfers to take extra precautions and keep alert for alligators while in St. Tammany, Jefferson, & Orleans Parish. They advise people to wear noise-producing devices such as "little bells" on their clothing to alert, but not startle the alligators, unexpectedly.

They also advise the carrying of "pepper spray" in case of an encounter with an alligator. It's also a good idea to watch for fresh signs of alligator activity and be able to recognize the difference between young alligator and adult alligator droppings. Young alligator droppings are small, contain fish bones and possibly bird feathers.

Adult alligators droppings have little bells in them and smell like pepper.

3) In the Waiting Room

I was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital after my wife had gone into labour and the nurse walked out and said to the man sitting next to me, "Congratulations sir, you're the new father of twins!"

The man replied, "How about that, I work for the Doublemint Chewing Gum Company." The man then followed the woman to his wife's room.

About an hour later, the same nurse entered the waiting room and announced that Mr. Smith's wife has just had triplets. Mr. Smith stood up and said, "Well, how do ya like that, I work for the 3M Company."

The gentleman that was sitting next to me then got up and started to leave. When I asked him why he was leaving, he remarked, "I think I need a breath of fresh air." The man continued, "I work for 7-UP."

5/26/02
1:50:41 PM

A Tomato Fish Or A Fish Tomato?

by Rosa Silver, Kauai

I remember when I was a child growing up in the seventies and my Mom took me to see Woody Allen's comedy about the future, Sleeper. Most memorable was a chase scene through a garden of human-size vegetables with Woody forever sliding on a giant banana peel.

Ironic as it may seem, the existence of giant vegetables is, today, a possibility. We are on the edge of a new age in science, food production, and life on earth; the age of biotechnology, and more specifically, genetic engineering. Hawaii has more test fields for genetically modified crops than any other state in the U.S., with our share of Biotech companies and their fields stationed here on Kauai. The University of Hawaii is about to open a Biotechnology Center in Hilo. What is this new frontier we are entering and are we prepared?

In the 1970's scientists discovered a way to artificially alter or transfer genes from one organism to another. Genes are made of DNA and contain the instructions by which cells produce proteins. These proteins dictate a cell's function in the specific organism. A flounder, for example survives in the cold. Scientists could now take genes from a fish and insert them into a tomato. Why? They wanted to create a tomato that would be more frost resistant.

In the 1980's Biotechnology companies began field-testing GMO (genetically modified organism) crops for large-scale agricultural use. By 1996, GMO grains were mixed with non-GMO grains and sent to food processing plants all over America. Corn, soy and their by-products (from corn syrup to soy's "protein-enriched" additive) are used in hundreds of products. But GMOs are not only found in grains. Various genetically altered products are found in over 60 percent of all processed foods on the U.S. market, and the market continues to expand with each new genetic alteration. Chances are, you have been eating GMOs for years.

But how would you know? GMO products are not labeled. And because they are not labeled, how could we track possible side effects? Environmental and food safety groups are busy fighting for mandatory labeling of all GMOcontaining products. Biotech companies claim that these foods are safe and do not need to be labeled. Watchdog groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists believe this technology deserves special scrutiny. Jenny Rissler, former EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) scientist, explains, "The government and the industry have been too eager to assume that these plants, these crops, are substantially equivalent to existing ones. . . . But I don't think that they have done the kind of testing that a lot of us would want, to really establish the substantial equivalence. I can understand why industry and government have taken this route. For many years, they have been successful in reversing the burden of proof. The industry is not forced to prove relative safety. Rather, the burden of proof is on people like us to show that there's some risk."

But what are the risks? Many of the questions raised focus on health and the environment. How could GMOs threaten our health? What is the effect of long-term exposure? Do we want to be ingesting a plant substance that has been genetically modified to also be an herbicide? The Federal Department of Agriculture (FDA) has already warned of the decreased effectiveness of antibiotics due to the widespread use of GMO antibiotic-resistant genes on U.S. dairy farms and the UK Ministry of Agriculture cautions of the same potential risks to eight powerful antibiotics used in fighting fatal diseases. But an even greater concern is the FDA warning that GMOs could trigger allergic reactions, for some consumers this is quite dangerous.

For example, one biotech company engineered a soybean with a gene from a Brazil nut, to aid in pest resilience. (Brazil nuts are not prone to bug infestation.) Many people are allergic to Brazil nuts, some to life-threatening levels. As an example, if someone with a severe allergy to Brazil nuts were to eat, say, this specific GMO soy in tofu, they could have an outbreak. Luckily a laboratory test picked up the allergen and the soy never made it to our supermarkets.

But it goes even further. Jeremy Rifkin, author of the controversial book, "The Biotech Century" explains, "We know that 8 percent of children and 2 percent of adults have allergenic reactions to traditional foods. What we're dealing with is the introduction of new genetic foods that have genes that code for proteins that we've never consumed. We just don't know what the reaction's likely to be." A recent study done by the York Nutritional Laboratory in the UK, illustrated a 50% increase in soy allergies during 1998, a time when production of GE soy crops jumped dramatically. This was the first time in seventeen years that soy ranked so high as an allergen. Also in the report, rats that ate the transgenic soy experienced retarded growth and cows fed the same, showed shifted fat levels in their milk.

There are numerous reports raising questions about the safety of GMOs, especially to our heath. One of the most controversial was the published work of Dr. Arpad Pusztai. Dr. Pusztai is a respected Hungarian Biochemist who was working on a three-year project funded by the British government. During his study he was feeding rats genetically engineered and non-GMO potatoes. Pusztai reported and published in the noted medical journal, The Lancet, that GMO-fed rats suffered unusual thickening of the stomach and intestine lining and a weakening of their immune system. Some scientists criticized his methods.

What about the impact of genetic manipulation on the environment? Mainstream media took a good look at this threat when a Cornell University laboratory demonstrated that GE corn crops could be fatal to monarch butterflies. The monarch has now become a symbol of the potential threat to all species on the planet. How is our environment at risk?

Biotechnology is not very precise. During the genetic manipulation process, the location where a gene is inserted into an organism's genetic code is uncontrollable. Also a stable expression of the gene into the new genetically engineered organism is not guaranteed. This is why when scientists tried to clone an animal; they ended up with hundreds of deformities and other mutations before they finally succeeded. Scientists may be able to identify a specific gene, but do they understand the workings of its environment? This may be on a micro scale, but it relates to the concerns on a macro scale as well.

Do we understand all of the possible effects of releasing these altered organisms into our delicate environment and eco-systems? Questions of contamination, genetic erosion, enhanced weed problems, and the reduction or extinction of wild plant and animal populations fill pages and pages of environmental and food advocate websites. Can we predict how GMOs and their offspring will evolve?

Genetic advocates argue that we have already been tampering with nature for a long time, such as in the instance of classical breeding. But traditional breeding crosses only related species, for example when a gardener grafts a red hibiscus onto a white hibiscus. When these two varieties are crossed, thousands of genes at a time are mixed. Genetic scientists move individual genes and do something traditional breeders have never accomplished. They can move genes between different life forms! (Remember the flounder into the tomato?)

What does the organic industry have to say about all of this? When the U.S. government decided to mandate the certification on organic standards, almost 100% of the received public comments demanded GMOs not be allowed in organic food. Furthermore, GMO crops put organic farmers at risk; risk of seed contamination, rendering their natural pesticides useless, introduction of superweeds, destruction of beneficial insects, loss of certificationS. For example, Monsanto (a major GE corporation) has released genetic corn seeds containing genes that produce Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a natural bacterium used by many organic farmers including farmers here on Kauai. Bt is used by organic farmers to eradicate insect problems, but only a few times a year and for very short periods. The introduction of the Bt corn poses many problems. First, it is in the crop working every hour of every day. Therefore it is killing insects, including non-target species, all of the time. Many insects are beneficial to farmers, like say, the ladybug that eats aphids. And not only is the Bt in the plant, but studies show that Bt remains and accumulates in the soil.

"Another negative impact on organic farming is the expected resistance that insect pests will develop to Bt toxin," states The Hawaii Organic Farmers Association (HOFA), rendering useless a natural pesticide used by organic farmers for years. Also, the pollen from the Bt corn can and has cross-pollinated with organic corn, contaminating the organic corn and its seed, and risking organic certification.

David Vetter of Nebraska owns and operates a 280-acre organic farm. His fields were presumably safe, surrounded by double rows of pines and 60 feet of untilled sod to act as a buffer zone. Sadly, this buffer did not prevent transgenic pollution! Vetter Says, "It's now clear that we won't be able to have both genetically engineered and non-GE crops. As an organic grower, I can no longer guarantee that my crops are GE-free."

What about Kauai? PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) finds, "... as of January 2001, the ten states and territories that have hosted the most field test sites are: Hawaii (3,275), Illinois (2,832), Iowa (2,820), Puerto Rico (2,296), California (1,435), Idaho (1,060), Minnesota (1,055), Nebraska (971), Wisconsin (918), and Indiana (886)." Pioneer [Seed Co.] is here on the island, and there are at least a few known test fields on the west side, with rumors of expansion. Places like Kauai provide almost a perfect setting for genetic testing, given its remoteness. Is this not a lucrative alternative for all of the old sugarcane fields? Are there test fields closer to the organic growers? Given the unpredictable winds, is the mountain range enough of a buffer for our east and north side organic growers?

Patenting is yet another controversial GMO issue. Companies like Monsanto (who also produce Roundup and Rodeo) continue to file with the U.S. government and claim patents on their genetic organisms. This started in 1972 when General Electric genetically transplanted a bacterium and was granted the first patent on life by the United States. Patents also allow the 'ownership' of genes that occur in nature, leading to the current 'ownership' of the neem tree and Basmati rice by U.S. and Japanese companies. Biotech corporations claim they need the patent because the organism is new and unnatural. But when you read the same literature from these same corporations, they promote themselves as "natural".

Advocates for Biotech companies like Monsanto claim that GMOs can lower the use of pesticides and even alleviate world hunger. Just published, the work of Dr. Charles Benbrook of the Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center contradicts the first claim. He reports, "Slightly more pounds of herbicides are applied on the average acre of Roundup-Ready (RR) soybeans compared to the average acre planted to conventional soybean varieties. Herbicide use on RR soybean acres is gradually rising as a result of weed shifts, late-season weed escapes leading to a buildup in weed seed banks, and the loss of susceptibility to glyphosate (the main chemical in Roundup) in some weed species (Hartzlet, 1999; HRAC, 2001)." In regard to alleviating world hunger, this is a heated debate as well.

The British Medical Association has called for an indefinite moratorium on GE foods. Genetic foods are also banned in seven countries and 25 mandate labeling laws, restrictive agriculture, environmental, or import policies, or prohibitions. There is great pressure from the U.S. for worldwide acceptance of GMOs, especially because the U.S. is leading the biotech revolution and the market. But why isn't our government as concerned as others? The 2001 budget allocated $310 million for biotechnology in rural development and agricultural development. Organic farming received less than $5 million.

Biotechnology is expanding. Currently under test are GE salmon, trees, and even low maintenance lawn seed. Also in the works is a genetically modified banana implanted with a vaccine. According to Dr. Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes, University of Missouri-Columbia, "It's a very broad technology with very broad applications. Agriculture and food is just one application of it. Pharmaceuticals, waste management, forestry, cosmetics, energy and so on; the potential is so large that it's difficult to walk away. Nobody's walking away."

Do we have an alternative? What can one do if they are opposed to the GMO invasion? The obvious is to stop buying their products. Businesses are governed by supply, but mostly, demand. Education is key. Open up dialogue and public debate. The U.S. public is ignorant on this issue. Most Americans do not even realize that GMOs are in most of their food. Developing countries need education, education about alternative agriculture (Permaculture, for example). Support organizations and agricultural research, policies, and educational programs that involve crop rotation and sustainable agriculture. Discuss why GMOs should be labeled. Study biodiversity and crop rotation. Practice self-sustainability and educate yourself about this important issue. There are numerous sites on the web filled with information, some listed below.

Biotechnology may be our future, but this new frontier demands a deeper understanding of its implications. When man begins to artificially create life, he must reflect on deeper issues. Movies about a possible future, like Sleeper, may provide humor, but more importantly, they should stimulate thought concerning our global future due to current values and systems. The Anglican Bishop of Wellington, Bishop Tom Brown declares, "the assumption by scientists that God must have somehow got it wrong and that they need to put it right, we should stop tampering. To date too little is known, too few assurances are given and too little public debate has occurred."

Please send in your comments and questions to

Rosa Silver, mailto:rosa.hugh@usa.net

Books

"Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers" by Ronnie Cummins and Ben Lilliston

(Marlowe, $12.96; online at http://www.purefood.org)

"The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World" by Jeremy Rifkin

(www.http://penguinputnam.com)

"First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr Savr Tomato [TM] and the Birth of Biotech Food" by Brenda Martineau

(McGraw-Hill, $24.95)

GE Websites

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/rachelbio.cfm

http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/

http://www.oneworld.org/guides/biotech/index

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/

http://www.ucsusa.org/food/0biotechnology/

http://www.purefood.org

http://www.gefoodalert.org

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/

http://www.sustain.org/biotech/

http://www.psrast.org

http://www.farmingsolutions.org

http://http://www.kevinclarke.com

5/26/02
1:40:38 PM

The Truth About September 11th

From: http://www.LOVEARTH.net

My Country Right Or Wrong -- Questioning September 11th

http://www.MyCountryRightOrWrong.net

More Than 500 Great Articles Mostly Questioning September 11th

http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, And The Three Top Sins Of The Universe

http://www.September112001.net

Audios, Videos, Photographs, Polls, Petition And News Archive

http://www.9112001.net

Bush, bin Laden And War Profits

http://www.CarlyleGroup.net

5/26/02
1:38:16 PM

Rep. Gephardt Seeks Independent 9/11 Inquiry

Mon May 20, 2002

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- House of Representatives Democratic leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri introduced legislation on Monday to create an independent commission to investigate intelligence gathering before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

But the proposal, opposed by the White House, was not expected to get very far in the Republican-controlled chamber.

John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said there were no plans to bring up such legislation for a vote.

"Let's let the (House and Senate) intelligence committees do their investigations," Feehery said, echoing the administration's position.

Lawmakers increased calls for such a commission after last week's disclosure that President Bush (news - web sites) received a briefing document on Aug. 6 that mentioned the possibility that followers of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) -- blamed by the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people -- might try to hijack U.S. aircraft.

The White House insisted the warning was not sufficiently detailed to issue a public warning. But members of Congress, primarily Democrats, demanded to know what the president knew, when he knew it and what he did about it.

Republicans say they would support committee investigations of the issue. But Gephardt and other Democrats complain congressional probes could become ensnarled in election-year politics, and say to avoid this an independent commission should be established.

Gephardt joined Rep. Tim Roemer, an Indiana Democrat and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, in offering the measure to establish an independent commission to examine events leading up to Sept. 11 and make recommendations on how to avoid repeat attacks.

Roemer said he and Gephardt had about a dozen co-sponsors, and expected more. So far, he said, they had no Republicans.

Regardless, Gephardt said in a statement, "I hope the Republican majority will agree with me that this legislation deserves immediate consideration in the House. ... And I hope the president will work with us."

Similar legislation is pending in the Democrat-led Senate.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in appearances on Sunday political talk shows, said he would advise the president not to turn over to Congress the August intelligence briefing.

Cheney said the "presidential daily brief" is developed from "our most secret operations" and must be safeguarded.

Roemer said on Monday Congress should have access to the briefing, and so should an independent commission.

"We are not interested in a witch hunt but we want answers," Roemer said in a telephone interview. "We must do better."

5/26/02
1:29:06 PM

F.B.I. Agent Says Superior Altered Report, Foiling Inquiry

by James Risen

WASHINGTON, May 24 -- A senior F.B.I. agent in Minneapolis has accused a supervisor at the agency's Washington headquarters of altering a report in a way that made it impossible for investigators to obtain crucial evidence in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, government officials said today. Advertisement

Coleen Rowley, an agent and counsel in the F.B.I.'s Minneapolis field office, wrote in a 13-page letter received this week by the joint Congressional committee investigating the terrorist attacks that changes in the search warrant application made it all but impossible to convince the F.B.I.'s national security lawyers to pursue court authorization for the search. The identity of the supervisor at F.B.I. headquarters mentioned in Ms. Rowley's letter could not be determined.

Officials who have seen Ms. Rowley's letter say it accuses the supervisor of altering the application to play down the significance of information provided by French intelligence officials about Mr. Moussaoui's links to Islamic extremists.

Mr. Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was arrested in Minnesota on Aug. 16 on immigration-related charges after an employee of a local flight school notified the F.B.I. that he was acting suspiciously while taking flight lessons. F.B.I. agents in Minneapolis repeatedly questioned Mr. Moussaoui in late August, and one F.B.I. agent accused him of being a terrorist. But the F.B.I. did not obtain a search warrant to examine his computer and other belongings until after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Mr. Moussaoui has since been indicted on charges connected with the attacks.

Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, and Representative Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, the co-chairmen of the joint committee investigating the terrorist attacks, said today that they were planning to closely examine Ms. Rowley's accusations that officials at F.B.I. headquarters obstructed efforts to aggressively investigate the Moussaoui case.

Central to the dispute between Minneapolis and F.B.I. headquarters over the Moussaoui search warrant application was the quality of intelligence the bureau had received from the French intelligence service about Mr. Moussaoui.

According to Ms. Rowley's letter and other bureau officials, the Minneapolis field office believed that the French report on Mr. Moussaoui provided enough troubling information about his ties to Islamic extremism to go to court to obtain a search warrant under the federal law that allows the government to carry out searches and surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases. Under the statute, investigators do not have to show that a subject committed a crime, only that they have reason to believe the suspect is engaged in terrorist activity or espionage on behalf of a foreign power or a terrorist organization.

But headquarters officials did not believe the French report was sufficient to justify a search warrant. F.B.I. officials said today that the French report showed that Mr. Moussaoui was an Islamic extremist, but did not reveal any direct links to specific terrorist groups. The French report revealed that Mr. Moussaoui had a close friend who had fought and died with Islamic separatist fighters battling the Russians in Chechnya, but F.B.I. headquarters believed that connection was too indirect to link Mr. Moussaoui to terrorism.

Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency have also played down the significance of the French information, saying that it did not provide conclusive proof of Mr. Moussaoui's terrorist ties.

In her letter, Ms. Rowley states that F.B.I. headquarters did not take the Minneapolis agents seriously when they made their search warrant request, and that headquarters officials were too dismissive of the quality of the French information. Out of frustration, officials in the Minneapolis field office called directly to the F.B.I.'s legal attache in Paris in an effort to obtain more French information on Mr. Moussaoui. The agents in Minneapolis also went around F.B.I. headquarters and contacted counterterrorism experts at the C.I.A. to further build their case, an action that prompted a reprimand from F.B.I. headquarters.

In her letter, Ms. Rowley was especially critical of the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, whom she wrote had made "misleading" public statements on how the F.B.I. handled the Moussaoui case both before and after Sept. 11, according to officials who have read her letter. She asserted that Mr. Mueller had been covering up for the bureau on the Moussaoui case since the attacks.

"Certain facts have been omitted, downplayed, glossed over, or mischaracterized," Ms. Rowley said, referring to Mr. Mueller's public statements since the hijackings, said officials who have copies of the letter.

The Rowley letter has sent shock waves through the F.B.I. and has seriously damaged Mr. Mueller's standing with the Congressional committee just as it is preparing for it first hearings.

Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss announced today that the joint panel would hold its first closed hearing on June 4, and that it planned public hearings in late June, and Mr. Mueller and the C.I.A.'s director, George J. Tenet, would be asked to testify in those open hearings.

Officials said that particularly damaging for the F.B.I. director was Ms. Rowley's assertion that either intentionally or unintentionally, Mr. Mueller has since Sept. 11 directed people at the bureau to muddy the waters in their public statements about the Moussaoui case.

In her letter, Ms. Rowley criticizes assertions by F.B.I. leaders that the bureau's failure to act on the Moussaoui case and other clues last summer did not make a difference in preventing the attacks. She said that if the same officials at F.B.I. headquarters who handled the search warrant request from the Minneapolis office had been aware of a July memo from an agent in the F.B.I.'s Phoenix office warning that terrorists connected with Osama bin Laden might be trying to go to American flight schools, the Moussaoui case would have been handled differently.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/national/25INQU.html?todaysheadlines

5/26/02
12:55:09 PM

MEOW ISN'T LANGUAGE, BUT ENOUGH TO MANAGE HUMANS

Cornell University / NewsWise May 20, 2002

Contact: Roger Segelken Office: 607-255-9736 hrs2@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- After more than 5,000 years of human-feline cohabitation and enough elaborations on "meow!" to fill a dictionary, cats still haven't mastered language. But a Cornell University evolutionary psychology study --analyzing people's reactions to feline vocalizations -- shows that cats know how to get what they want.

"No matter what we like to believe, cats are probably not using language," says Nicholas Nicastro, a self-described cat person who has documented hundreds of different feline vocalizations in the common house cat (Felis catus ) and its ancestor, the African wild cat (Felis silvestris lybica ). His study, which he will describe June 5, 2002, at the 143rd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in Pittsburgh, "shows that some very effective cat-to-human communication is going on," he says. "Though they lack language, cats have become very skilled at managing humans to get what they want ---- basically food, shelter and a little human affection."

The communication study began when Nicastro, a graduate student, compiled a sample of 100 different vocalizations from 12 cats. No cats were harmed in the experiment, although a few human eardrums were stretched by what came next: He played back the recorded cat calls to 26 human volunteers and asked them to rate each sound for pleasantness and appeal, on a scale of 1 to 7. Nicastro played the same 100 sounds to a second set of 28 volunteers and asked them to indicate how urgent and demanding the sounds were, also on a 1-to-7 scale. He then analyzed the calls to see which acoustic features tended to go with pleasant or urgent meows.

Nicastro, who is a student in the laboratory of Cornell psychology assistant professor Michael Owren, found a clear negative relationship between pleasantness and urgency, rooted in how the calls sounded. "The sounds rated as more urgent (or less pleasant) were longer,". Nicastro says, "with more energy in the lower frequencies, along the lines of 'Mee-O-O-O-O-O-W!' Whereas, the sounds rated as more pleasant (or less demanding) tended to be shorter, with the energy spread evenly through the high and low frequencies. These sounds started high and went low, like 'MEE-ow.'"

An urgent or demanding call "is the kind we hear at 7 a.m. when we walk into the kitchen and the cat wants to be fed. The cat isn't forming sentences and saying, specifically, 'take a can of food out of the cupboard, run the can opener and fill my bowl immediately,' but we get the message from the quality of the vocalization and the context in which it is heard," says Nicastro, a two-cat owner who has been exposed to plenty of context.

A pleasant or appealing sound might be heard from a cat at the animal shelter if it hopes to be adopted by a soft-hearted human, Nicastro says. "In that context, it would not be to a cat's advantage to sound too demanding. The pleasant-sounding cats are the ones most likely to be adopted, while the demanding ones risk being left behind."

The Cornell study examined the evolutionary process of "artificial selection," which Charles Darwin pondered on the way to developing his theory of natural selection, Nicastro notes. "I was interested in learning how humans have shaped cat vocal behavior by artificial selection, and how cats have evolved to exploit pre-existing human perceptual tendencies. Seven thousand years ago, when we think the ancestors of our domesticated cats began wandering into Egyptian granaries and offering to trade rodent-control services for shelter, it was probably the pleasant-sounding cats that were selected and accepted into human society."

Curious about vocalization in the wild ancestors of the house cat, Nicastro visited South Africa's National Zoo in Pretoria and recorded African wild cats. Their calls were neither pleasant nor appealing, he reports. "Those cats sounded permanently angry. If they were looking for affection, they weren't expressing themselves very well. The first individuals to be accepted for domestication must have been exceptional, but of course that's the point from which things start to evolve."

Having said that, Nicastro turns off the lights in his Cornell office and heads home, where urgent calls for the can opener await. "They're not little people," he observes, "and they're not using true language because, among other reasons, cats do not know the meaning of their own meows. Humans (or at least well-trained cat people) can assign meaning to sounds with various acoustical qualities because, through long association with cats, we have learned how they sound in different behavioral contexts.

"Cats are domesticated animals that have learned what levers to push, what sounds to make to manage our emotions," Nicastro says. "And when we respond, we too are domesticated animals." MEOW ISN'T LANGUAGE, BUT ENOUGH TO MANAGE HUMANS Cornell University / NewsWise May 20, 2002

Contact: Roger Segelken Office: 607-255-9736 hrs2@cornell.edu

http://www.newswise.com/articles/2002/5/CATTALK.CNS.html

"Cats are domesticated animals that have learned what levers to push, what sounds to make to manage our emotions," Nicastro says. "And when we respond, we too are domesticated animals."

Source: http://www.newswise.com/articles/2002/5/CATTALK.CNS.html

5/26/02
12:55:01 PM

MEOW ISN'T LANGUAGE, BUT ENOUGH TO MANAGE HUMANS

Cornell University / NewsWise May 20, 2002

Contact: Roger Segelken Office: 607-255-9736 hrs2@cornell.edu

http://www.newswise.com/articles/2002/5/CATTALK.CNS.html

"Cats are domesticated animals that have learned what levers to push, what sounds to make to manage our emotions," Nicastro says. "And when we respond, we too are domesticated animals."

Source: http://www.newswise.com/articles/2002/5/CATTALK.CNS.html

5/26/02
12:52:16 PM

THE BOOK CAN BE PRE-VIEWED AND PURCHASED AT [Also, See Reviews Below]:

http://www.thewaronfreedom.com

COMMENTS ON "The War on Freedom" (May 2002)

"This riveting and throroughly documented study is a 'must' resource for everyone seeking to understand the attack on the World Trade Center of New York on Sept. 11, 2001 and 'America's New War' since . . . this volume provides the detailed documentation in a definitive and masterful record." Professor John McMurty, Department of Philosophy, University of Ontario; Fellow at the Royal Society of Canada; Chair of Jurists, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal at the Alternative World Summit in Toronto, 1989 (Canada)

"The most complete book I know of, summarizing the relevant background and foreground intersecting upon the events of Sept. 11, 2001 . . . A tour de force in every respect . . . I can't say how much I admire this work. It MUST be seen by as many people as possible all over the world as soon as possible."

Barry Zwicker, Producer and Host, MediaFile, Vision TV Insight; award-winning journalist on CBC-TV and CTV (Canada)

"The material you have collected is immensely important and useful. You look at the right subjects and report a number of things I had missed entirely."

Professor Peter Dale Scott, Co-Founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley (United States)

"Powerful, disturbing, and interesting indeed. Your excellent research on the background of Sept. 11 should become known to a larger audience." Professor Arno Tausch, Institute for Political Science, University of Innsbruck (Austria)

"A meticulous investigation of circumstances, events, and circumstantial evidence of what really happened before and on Sept. 11. . . Your excellent report goes deep into what really happened and what the American defense machinery had let happen."

Peter G. Spengler, Editor, Contemporary Studies (Germany)

ORDER COPIES AT: http://www.thewaronfreedom.com

5/26/02
12:48:08 PM

9/11 - More cracks in the dam

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27460

CHANDRA LEVY WAS MURDERED! CONNECT THE DOTS!

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27455

5/26/02
12:46:49 PM

Fort Stewart soldier jailed in Florida on $5 million bond

Police believe soldier tried to plant explosive device at power plant.

by Noelle Phillips Savannah Morning News

Jacksonville, Fla., police arrested a Fort Stewart soldier Saturday after finding him armed, wearing black clothes and leaving a power plant where he allegedly left an explosive.

Spc. Derek Lawrence Peterson, 27, is being held on a $5 million bond by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Department of Corrections. He has been charged with attempting to detonate an explosive device.

Peterson belongs to B Company, 1st Battalion, 64th Armor and has been stationed at Fort Stewart since March, said Dina McCain, a Fort Stewart spokeswoman.

McCain said she did not know whether Army investigators were involved with the case and referred all questions about it to Jacksonville police.

An officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office stopped Peterson at 11:15 p.m. Saturday for speeding. The officer found Peterson wearing all black clothing and black, plastic pads on his knees and elbows, according to a sheriff's department report. He also had a pistol in a shoulder holster.

The officer recognized Peterson's black 2002 Chevrolet Silverado pickup because he had noticed it backed up to the Florida Power and Light station's main gate 30 minutes earlier as he drove to assist another officer.

The officer searched Peterson's truck and found a 12-inch knife, a six-inch knife, a 12-gauge shotgun, shotgun shells, .45-caliber bullets, four ammo magazines, a six-volt battery, duct tape, speaker wire and plastic from an explosive device, the report said.

After being informed of his rights, wrote arresting officer D.F. Valiante, "the suspect advised me that he was on the power plant property to practice recon tactics."

Police followed footprints on a dirt road at the power plant and found an explosive device underneath the power lines, the report said.

Peterson allegedly told police he had placed a Hoffman explosive device, equal in power to a half-stick of dynamite. He had planned to detonate the explosive but was worried that he would be injured in the blast, the report said. Instead, Peterson removed a six-volt battery and threw it into the woods.

A bomb squad disposed of the explosive.

Peterson's next court date is June 4. He is not allowed visitors at the jail, according to the corrections department.

Military reporter Noelle Phillips can be reached at

mailto:phillips@savannahnow.com

Source: http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/051602/LOCsoldierarrest.shtml

5/26/02
12:40:49 PM

Michigan Green Party Candidate Dragged Out Of Debate And Arrested

Green Party of Michigan News Release - May 22, 2002

Green Party Candidate for Governor Dragged Out of Debate and Arrested.

(Ann Arbor, MI) -- The Green Party of Michigan responded strongly today to the expulsion and arrest of its declared gubernatorial candidate from the Gubernatorial Candidate Forum on the Environment at Brighton High School on Tuesday night. Ray Ziarno, declared Green candidate for secretary of state, was present at the forum, among a few dozen other supporters. "Democracy was not served tonight, obviously. There's no reason Doug should have been excluded."

The forum, hosted by the League of Conservation Voters, declared that "all gubernatorial candidates" were invited to speak. When Douglas Campbell, the Greens' candidate pending their convention this August 3-4, asked why he had not been invited, the League informed him that only those who were participating in the upcoming primaries were actually invited.

"It is ludicrous to consider that the only party which puts ecological and environmental concerns in the forefront of its platform should be shut out of a public forum on the environment using this ridiculous standard," said GPMI elections coordinator Peter Schermerhorn, also citing the fact that Campbell is filed as a candidate with the secretary of state in the same manner as the rest and follows the same rules.

Green party chair Marc Reichardt concurred. "How does participation in the primary system grant special status to the views of two parties, as opposed to the other three on the ballot (Green, Libertarian, Natural Law)? How does that participation validate those two parties' plans for preserving Michigan's environment (very few of which have come to fruition in the past), and invalidate ours, which are likely far closer to LCV's image of the future? This is as much a question of basic democracy and inclusion as it is of the content of the forum."

GPMI called for Michigan citizens to demand equal representation at public events for all parties on the ballot (Democratic, Republican, Green, Libertarian, and Natural Law).

Press contact: Marc Reichardt, 734 635.3541

mailto:dystopia@wwnet.com

http://www.migreens.org

5/26/02
12:30:53 PM

Congress' Sept. 11 Probe Finds More Missed Clues

By Reuters | New York Times, May 24, 2002

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A congressional investigation into U.S. intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attack has turned up more missed clues that in hindsight might have helped uncover the plot, a lawmaker said on Friday.

"There was no single piece of information that on its own would have led you to a further investigation that might have avoided September the 11th," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham told reporters.

"But the fact is, it was not a single piece of information, there were a series of pieces of information, and in fact we are continuing to surface additional pieces of information where clues were given," the Florida Democrat said.

The FBI has come under fire from Republicans and Democrats for not pursuing a memo written by an agent in Phoenix last July expressing concerns that Middle Eastern men linked to Osama bin Laden were taking lessons at U.S. flight schools.

"Of all the things I've seen, I think the Phoenix document is the brightest light," Graham said. That memo was sent to two places at the FBI in Washington -- the Radical Fundamentalist Unit and the Osama bin Laden Unit -- but not any further.

The FBI also has been criticized for not correlating that memo with the August arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who sought flying lessons in Minnesota. Moussaoui is charged with conspiring in the attack, and U.S. officials suspect he was to have been the 20th hijacker.

Among materials collected by congressional investigators were notes an FBI agent in Minnesota made about a telephone conversation with an official at FBI headquarters in which the agent said Moussaoui was going to "fly a plane into the WTC."

"There will be more coming out in our investigation," a congressional source said.

WHISTLE-BLOWERS

Four commercial airliners were hijacked on Sept. 11. Two crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers, one into the Pentagon, and one in rural Pennsylvania before it was able to reach its target, which was apparently the White House.

Washington blames the attacks, which killed about 3,000 people, on bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. Sept. 11 has become a defining event for American views and policies toward security vulnerabilities at home and extremists abroad.

Asked if there were any missed clues apart from the FBI Phoenix memo and the Moussaoui arrest, Graham replied, "The answer is yes, but I can't talk about it."

"As information starts to become public, it causes people to come forward with even more information, so it's kind of a domino effect," Graham said.

FBI Agent Coleen Rowley complained in a recent 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and lawmakers that FBI headquarters should have approved a request from the Minneapolis office for a search warrant involving Moussaoui.

Mueller has asked the Justice Department inspector general to investigate the complaints by the Minneapolis agent.

"There were statements indicating that she felt that the higher-echelon leadership in the FBI had had a pattern of submerging what they considered to be critical comment," Graham, who has seen Rowley's letter, said. Congressional investigators interviewed her on Tuesday.

Graham said the letter, which has been classified secret by the FBI in eight places, was "very serious" and that he anticipated investigators would look at the cultures inside the intelligence agencies.

Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Rowley's letter alarmed him.

"If FBI headquarters is still handling terrorism information like it handled the Moussaoui case, we're in grave danger. This was worse than dropping the ball," he said in a statement urging the FBI to declassify the letter.

"Director Mueller can label this letter classified and the FBI can circle the wagons, but a cover-up is not going to work," he said, adding he had assured Rowley of protection.

The $2.9 million joint investigation being conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees is expected to hold its first hearings next month. Initially, the hearings will be closed, but an open one with CIA Director George Tenet and Mueller as witnesses was scheduled for late June.

"We're ready," Tenet said about the coming hearings after a meeting with Graham. "I think it's important that we have hearings. The Senate and the House committees will do their job. We'll try and help them."

The investigation will look into the bureaucratic structures of the intelligence agencies and the information flow, and make recommendations on how to improve them.

The committees were expected to announce soon that the new head of the investigation would be Eleanor Hill, a former Defense Department inspector general, to replace Britt Snider who resigned over a personnel issue.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-congress-intelligence.html

5/26/02
12:18:22 PM

More Than Just His Location Remains Undisclosed: Why Dick Cheney's Secrecy Scheme For Pre-9/11 Information Makes No Sense

by John W. Dean, 24 May, 2002

Vice President Dick Cheney is at it again: More secrecy. Now he wants to bury the intelligence information given to President Bush on August 6, 2001 - over a month before the terrorist attacks. Indeed, Cheney wants Congress, far more generally, to keep its investigative nose out of issue of what intelligence the Bush Administration did, or did not, have about terrorism prior to September 11.

Nor does Cheney want Congress creating a high-level commission to look into this issue. In resisting any investigation, the Vice President advised Congress threateningly, "Be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions." Furthermore, Cheney has even gone so far as to warn the Democrats that they could be aiding the enemy by going where the Administration does not want them. The accusation takes aim not just at the wisdom, but at the purported lack of patriotism of such an investigation.

According to The Washington Post, White House political types have been putting the word out to their network of conservative radio talk show hosts throughout the country to rally the troops, set the dogs loose, and shout the Democrats down. Secrecy, however, is a tough sell, so they're going to have to attack some of their own as well.

Even Some Republicans Are Sharply Critical of the Secrecy Policy

Increasingly, stalwart conservative supporters of Bush and Cheney have become critical of what columnist Robert Novak calls their "passion for secrecy," noting that they only have themselves to blame for the public and Congressional reaction.

After all, Bush and Cheney could have revealed at the time, rather than keeping secret, that the White House had pre-9/11 intelligence warnings from the CIA and FBI about potential terrorist hijackings, and about the unexplained influx of middle-Eastern men in pilot training. Had they done so, the reaction would have been very different. No one expected the Administration to be psychic and the information, thus far, does not seem to rise to the level of a warning of the type of attacks that actually occurred, in which planes were used as missiles.

Secrecy itself has risen to the level of a policy of the Bush administration - and threatens to achieve the status of an end in itself. National security is only one of the policy's rationalizations.

Conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly has been quite blunt about this secrecy business. In March, she blasted the White House for the Vice President's refusal to turn over the records of his energy task force. (I agree with her criticism, as I discussed in a recent column .) She finds Cheney's "pursuit of secrecy" comparable to "Clinton's refusal to disclose documents revealing who attended the meetings of Hillary's task force on health care."

Ms. Schlafly declared correctly that: "The American people do not and should not tolerate government by secrecy." And she told the Bush White House that no one's "going to buy the sanctimonious argument that the Bush Administration has some sort of duty to protect the power of the presidency."

Meanwhile, Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official whose Republican credentials and constitutional scholarship are exemplary, has recently reacted to the claims of the Bush White House about the need for secrecy. The loss of secrecy, the Administration has contended, is eroding presidential power. Yet according to Fein, "What the president is claiming is legally and historically absurd and politically stupid."

Fein added, "I've been around this town a long time, almost 30 years, and I've never encountered one individual who told me he's not going to the Oval Office unless he's promised confidentiality. It's the biggest hoax in the world. Why he's making up all this stuff is utterly and completely baffling."

Why The Secrecy? Claims of Eroding Presidential Power Are Implausible.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and all their aides claim that - contrary to any impression they might be giving - they seek to hide nothing. They are keeping secrets for either national security reasons, or to protect the functions of the presidency.

This is only about fundamental principles, they say. It concerns nothing less than preserving and redeeming the power and authority of the presidency. In brief, just as Ms. Schlafly said, they are resting their claim on the "sanctimonious argument" that they are "protect[ing] the power of the presidency."

For example, in January of this year, Dick Cheney told NBC's Campbell Brown during an interview: "For 35 years that I've been in town, there's been a constant, steady erosion of the prerogatives and the powers of the President of the United States. And I don't want to be a part of that."

Most recently, according to the New York Times, Cheney repeated his comment about the last three decades of "continual encroachment by Congress in the executive branch, a weakening of the presidency." Specifically, he mentioned matters like the Congress investigating abuses by the CIA, and the Iran-contra scandal, as encroachments.

Cheney didn't like those investigations either at the time, back in 1987. He was in Congress then, and as the Times reports, he disagreed with the majority of the committee's Iran-contra investigation that accused the Reagan administration of "secrecy, deception and disdain for the law." Cheney also thought that Reagan should never have let Congress exert control over his Central American policy in the first place - by using an Executive Order to make it illegal for Congress to ban sales of weapons to Nicaraguan rebels.

President Bush recently said, "I have an obligation to make sure that the presidency remains robust and that the legislative branch doesn't end up running the executive branch." Surely he is jesting.

Ari Fleischer sings the same tune. The president's press secretary claims that presidential powers have been diminished "in multiple ways" as part of a "long-standing, gradual process." For instance, the president has little say in how the nation's budget is devised, and constraints exist with regard to the ways in which he may use the military.

In addition, Congress has placed additional restrictions on the president in military matters with the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

Fleischer also observed that the spate of congressional investigations into presidential activities -particularly during the Clinton era - that involved "the sharing, the yielding of information by the executive branch to the Congress," have tended to weaken the office.

Remarkably, Ari Fleischer may actually believe what he is saying. In fact, however, these claims of presidential power eroding are high-grade, industrial-strength, poppycock. This White House is apparently unaware of Napoleon's maxim that "The tools belong to the man who can use them."

Misreading Nixon's Shadow, and Misinterpreting His Legacy

President Bush and Vice President Cheney are, without being explicit, saying that the presidency was weakened by Watergate, which commenced 30 years ago this June 17th. But they are misreading the Nixon legacy.

No one has watched the impact of Watergate on government more closely than yours truly. I wrote a book, Lost Honor , examining the impact of Watergate ten years after the events. And I do not believe Watergate can possibly justify the secrecy arguments that are being made now. If anything, it justifies openness.

More Watergate lessons can be garnered from the work of Bob Woodward, who launched his career at The Washington Post and as a best-selling author based on his Watergate reporting. Woodward's recent book, Shadow: Five Presidents and The Legacy Of Watergate, written 27 years after Watergate, gives an excellent account of what Nixon's real legacy may be.

Woodward's "Epilogue" to Shadow is edifying. Unfortunately, he points out many presidents have ignored the obvious lessons of Watergate. Recent events suggests that George W. Bush is readying his own place on Woodward's list.

Woodward writes, "Nixon's successors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First, if there is questionable activity, release the facts, whatever they are, as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries, whether conducted by prosecutors, congressmen or reporters, to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare."

Woordward reports that, rather than learn from Nixon's mistakes, however, in varying degrees all the presidents since Nixon have repeated them. Men of widely varying temperaments and politics - Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton - have uniformly failed to understand the need to make information available, rather than hiding it. Now Bush and Cheney are making the same mistakes.

Woodward believes he knows why, and I think he's correct. "They have become victims of the myth of the big-time president," he explains. "As successors to George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt, they expect to rule. But after Vietnam and Watergate, the modern presidency has been limited and diminished."

Does that mean Woodward, too, believes in the "eroding power" argument the White House has recently retailed? I do not believe so. Rather, the loss of power Woodward describes is not a loss of power to Congress, as suggested by Bush and Cheney, but a loss of power to openness itself. Thus, it is a praiseworthy loss of a kind of power that was unhealthily insular and absolute - similar to the loss of power that occurs when a monarchy or dictatorship gives way to democracy.

Woodward says the difference is that the "inner workings" of the presidency "and the behavior of presidents are [now] fully exposed." As I read Woodward, he is simply telling presidents that they cannot operate in secret in today's information age.

Woodward is correct. Accordingly, I believe Bush and Cheney have confused the issues: a lost of presidential secrecy does not mean a loss of presidential power vis-a-vis Congressional power. To the contrary, the institutional powers of the presidency all but overwhelm those of Congress. They are, in fact, stronger today than 30 years ago. Bush and Cheney are ignoring the basics: Congress is still weaker than the President, and secrecy has only weakened the President vis-a-vis the People, the press, and the process of finding the truth.

Why Presidential Power Dominates Congressional Power Now

Ask any constitutional scholar, political scientist, or presidential historian, and they will tell you that the congressional powers and presidential powers are no longer even comparable. During our early history, the Congress and the President vied for dominance, with the Congress more often prevailing. But that is no longer true.

Since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, the executive branch has been the dominant governing power. In truth, Congress has willingly delegated most of its legislative powers to the executive branch. Our system might be better off if, in fact, Congress reclaimed some of the powers it voluntarily gave away - by, for example, allowing powerful administrative agencies to effectively make law under the aegis of broad statutes that empowered them to do so.

But that is unlikely - as the late and learned professor Philip Kurland, who devoted 43 years to teaching law at the University of Chicago, showed in a 1986 essay addressing the institutional differences between the Congress and the presidency. There, Kurland nicely summarized why a president is Gulliver among the congressional Lilliputians, remarking that:

... there is an absence of discipline among the 535 members of Congress. It is a huge body without a head. Most of its legislation does not originate within Congress but is a response to demands or instructions from executive authorities. Too much congressional time is spent as agents of constituents seeking relief in the myriad of government agencies that Congress has created but does not control. The rest of its time seems to be spent in trying to oversee the execution of the laws by way of investigatory hearings which, in theory, are held to help frame legislation but which, in fact, are more devoted to exposure than to cure.

In contrast, he explains, the executive branch has burgeoned, and continues to grow stronger. Professor Kurland found the explanation of the differences in the branches well stated by Justice Jackson in the landmark Steel Seizure Case, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer:

Executive power has the advantage of concentration in a single head in whose choice the whole Nation has a part, making him the focus of public hopes and expectations. In drama, magnitude and finality his decisions so far overshadow any others that almost alone he fills the public eye and ear. No other personality in public life can begin to compete with him in access to the public mind through modern methods of communications. By his prestige as head of state and his influence upon public opinion he exerts a leverage upon those who are supposed to check and balance his power which often cancels their effectiveness.

It seems that President Bush and Vice President Cheney want to remove the last vestiges of congressional power - the power to expose. But that will not solve their problem, because it has been the so-called fourth estate, the news media, that has collaborated with Congress in preventing the Executive Branch from operating in secrecy. The news media, as Woodward makes clear, are never going to return to the pre-Watergate days when a president's actions were not questioned. Nor should they, even in a time of war.

Of course, there should not be exposure for exposure's sake - as is the case with too many Congressional investigations, past misguided Independent Counsel investigations, and occasional sensational news coverage. But nor should there be secrecy for secrecy's sake, as appears to be the case now with the Bush Administration.

To claim a need for secrecy to restore presidential power is disingenuous at best, and a deliberate falsehood at worst. Secrecy is the way of dictatorships, not democracies.

Source: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20020524.html

5/26/02
12:09:02 PM

Agent Complains FBI Covered Up Moussaoui Case

by Reuters | New York Times, May 24, 2002

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Thursday he asked the Justice Department inspector general to investigate complaints by a Minneapolis agent that FBI headquarters mishandled the case of Zacarias Moussaoui before the Sept. 11 attacks on America.

Agent Coleen Rowley complained in a recent 13-page letter to Mueller and lawmakers that FBI headquarters should have approved a request from the Minneapolis office for a search warrant involving Moussaoui, who was being held in August after arousing suspicions at a Minnesota flight school.

"I immediately referred this matter out of the FBI to the (Justice Department's) inspector general for investigation," Mueller said in a statement.

The classified letter surfaced a day after the Senate Intelligence Committee questioned Mueller about it in a closed session. It was the first known time that any of the FBI's own agents have formally complained about the bureau's failure to pursue aggressively potential warnings before Sept. 11.

Moussaoui was in custody in Minnesota when the September attacks occurred but was charged in December with conspiring to carry out the attacks. Authorities suspect he intended to join the 19 men who hijacked four passenger planes that day.

The FBI already is under fire from lawmakers for failing to properly piece together information available before Sept. 11, including a memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix expressing concern that Middle Eastern extremists who might be tied to Osama bin Laden were attending U.S. flight schools.

The memo, written in July, was never acted on and no one at the FBI linked the memo to Moussaoui at the time of his arrest on immigration violations in mid-August, or shared it with agents in Minneapolis.

Lawmakers said the Moussaoui warrant would have been obtained if the FBI officials making that decision had known about the Phoenix memo.

Mueller said in the statement he could not comment on the specifics of Rowley's letter, but added, "I am convinced that a different approach is required."

CIRCLING THE WAGONS

In the letter, Rowley said she and her Minneapolis

colleagues came to the "sad realization that someone, possibly with your approval, had decided to circle the wagons at FBI Headquarters in an apparent attempt to protect the FBI from embarrassment and the relevant FBI officials from scrutiny," ABC television reported.

"I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle

shading -- skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring," she said.

Officials familiar with the letter said Rowley had complained about a lack of coordination, some mix-ups and that agents in Minneapolis were hampered by the way the case was handled by headquarters.

According to the letter, the Minneapolis field office felt the case should have been treated more seriously by headquarters and there was a last-minute effort to circumvent FBI headquarters and go to the CIA to get approval for the warrant.

"There is no room after the (Sept. 11) attacks for the types of problems and attitudes that could inhibit our efforts," Mueller said, adding that the FBI was being "open and candid" with the investigations under way in Congress.

"This letter has me very alarmed about the nation's security," Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who was briefed about the letter with other Senate Judiciary Committee members, said in a statement.

"If FBI headquarters is still handling terrorism information like it handled the Moussaoui case, we're in grave danger. This was worse than dropping the ball. This was bureaucrats at headquarters actively interfering with an investigation that had a terrorist in hand."

A Justice Department official said the issues raised in the Rowley letter were "being addressed" at both the Justice Department and FBI.

In early October Mueller told reporters the FBI had turned down a request from its agents in Minneapolis for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to review Moussaoui's computer hard drive because there was "insufficient probable cause".

Law enforcement officials said in October the FBI later conducted the search after Sept. 11, but did not find anything related to the hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed 3,000 people.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-fbi.html

5/26/02
11:32:28 AM

t r u t h o u t | 05.26

French Prepare for Massive Anti-Bush Protests

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26A.french.protests.htm

Agent Complains FBI Covered Up Moussaoui Case

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26B.hide.moussaoui.htm

John Cory | The Devil's Boneyard

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26C.devil.boneyard.htm

John W. Dean | Why Dick Cheney's Secrecy Scheme For Pre-9/11 Information Makes No Sense

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26D.dean.cheney.htm

Robert Torricelli | Radio Address -- Jeffords Switch

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26E.torricellijeffords.htm

Congress' Sept. 11 Probe Finds More Missed Clues

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26F.missed.clues.htm

Enron Probe Reveals Heavy Influence at White House

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26G.enron.wh.htm

Protesters Follow Bush Around Russia

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.26H.russia.protests.htm

5/25/02
2:49:48 PM

The Truth About September 11th -- From 23 Informative Websites

LOVEARTH NETWORK

Connecting Through 1,000+ EcoHumanePolitical Websites

Don't You Want To Know The Real Truth

About What Happened On September 11th?

Lovearth.net Has Put Together 23 Informative Websites

To Help You Educate Yourself About This "War On Terror"

1) My Country Right Or Wrong - Questioning September 11th

An Indepth Four Part Article With 30 Sections Of Questions Including - Part II -- The most important questions regarding September 11th that every U.S. corporate media outlet is still unwilling to ask can be found in The "Smoking Gun" September 19th press release from NORAD - Fighters Were 8 Minutes Away From WTC - Part II is a critical analysis of the alarming number of inconsistencies found in this NORAD press release -- in which NORAD had almost 8 day to produce

http://www.MyCountryRightOrWrong.net

2) More Than 500 Great Articles About 911 From Around The World

http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net

3) Tuesday, September 11, 2001, And The Three Top Sins Of The Universe

http://www.September112001.net

4) Audios, Videos, Photographs, Polls, Petition And News Archive

http://www.9112001.net

5) Bin Laden Family Money & Bush 41 & 43 Conflict Of War Profit Interest

http://www.CarlyleGroup.net

6) The History Of Oil And War - The U. S. And British Oil Imperialism

http://www.OilCompanies.net

7) The Unelected Commander In Thief - Articles, Photos, Books And Polls

http://www.GeorgeWalkerBush.net

8) How The USA PATRIOT Act Subverts 6 Amendments Of The Bill Of Rights

http://www.BillOfRights.net

9) The USA PATRIOT Act Search Law Will Provoke 4th Amendment Challenge

http://www.SneakAndPeek.net

10) Preserving Freedom By Wholesale Abrogation Of Our Civil Liberties?

http://www.Police-State.net

11) How The Fourth Estate Have Become Corporate Lap Dog Stenographers

http://www.FreedomOfThePress.net

12) Book Banning In United States Is Alive And Well In The 21st Century

http://www.Freedom-Of-Speech.net

13) The U.S. Is Unilaterally Violating Numerous International Treaties

http://www.UnitedStatesGovernment.net

14) eMail Addresses Of All 535 Congress Members Plus The V.P. And Bush

http://www.eMailCongress.net

15) Articles On The Perversity Of War And How To Bring Peace On Earth

http://www.PeaceOnEarth.net

16) Ashcroft Covers Up The Spirit Of Justice And Majesty Of Law Statues

http://www.Fascistic.net

17) Why Bush Is Addicted To Perpetual War - Lessons Learned From Daddy

http://www.Orwellian.net

18) Bush's Bay Of Piglets - Many Articles On The Failed Venezuelan Coup

http://www.Imperialist.net

19) International Articles On The Israeli War Against The Palestinians

http://www.EndWar.net

20) Congressman Dennis Kucinich Is The One

http://www.DennisKucinich.com

21) Latest EcoHumanePolitical News - Thousands Of Archived Articles

http://www.Earths.net

22) An Extensive Archive Of The Top EcoHumanePolitical Articles

http://www.EarthsNews.net

23) Connecting Through 1000+ EcoHumanePolitical Top Level Websites With Our New Search Engine You Can Find Thousands Of Archived Articles

http://www.Lovearth.net

We Are Opposed To Cunning And Deceit

Lovearth Network Executive Director: Mark Elsis

5/25/02
2:40:12 PM

Venezuelan Coup Plotter Escapes

By The Associated Press | New York Times, May 24, 2002

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- The man who briefly replaced Venezuela's president during a short-lived coup was seeking asylum in the Colombian Embassy Friday after escaping from house arrest.

Pedro Carmona went for a walk outside his home in Caracas on Thursday morning, then slipped away, his lawyer said. A day earlier, a court had ordered him transferred from house arrest to jail.

The 60-year-old Carmona faces up to 20 years in prison for rebellion and conspiracy for the April 12 coup, which was reversed two days later, bringing Chavez back to power and landing Carmona in custody.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Luis Alfonso Davila confirmed Carmona's asylum bid, but did not say how his government planned to react.

In Bogota, Colombian Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez said his nation would try to decide on the request quickly.

Carmona's lawyer, Juan Martin Echeverria, had said that the appeals court ruling, which cannot be appealed, violated his client's right to be tried in freedom.

Meanwhile, in Caracas, tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators took to the streets Thursday, accusing Venezuela's attorney general of bias in the investigation of the coup last month and demanding he resign. The march was the third massive anti-government demonstration since Chavez's return to power.

Chavez was ousted April 12 by military generals after a massive demonstration against his rule ended in bloodshed. He quickly regained power with the help of loyalist troops and an outpouring of popular support.

Carmona, former president of the country's largest business association, helped organize a general strike and march leading up to the coup. Claiming Chavez had resigned, military generals installed Carmona as president.

A day after Chavez's ouster, Carmona closed Congress, the Supreme Court, threw out the constitution and promised general elections within a year. Carmona was promptly arrested after Chavez returned to power.

He has denied conspiring to overthrow the government and said he accepted the presidency because he believed Chavez had resigned.

In Caracas, the demonstrators protested what they said was the government's biased investigation into deadly violence during the protests that briefly toppled Chavez, a leftist former paratrooper whose close ties to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Iraq's Saddam Hussein have irritated U.S. officials.

``We are marching to demonstrate that Venezuelans are waiting for justice, and we won't have justice while the attorney general is a man clearly partial to the government,'' said opposition lawmaker Andres Velasquez.

After almost six weeks, few results have emerged from Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez's investigation into dozens of deaths during civilian and military uprisings that deposed and quickly restored Chavez.

Seventeen people died and hundreds were wounded April 11 when gunmen opened fire on an opposition march, pro-Chavez protesters and security officials trying to keep the two sides from clashing.

Thursday's march coincided with mounting calls for early elections, including from members of the president's own coalition, the Fifth Republic Movement.

Fifth Republic Movement director general Francisco Ameliach said a referendum was the only way to prevent an explosion of violence like the one that prompted last month's coup.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Venezuela-Coup.html

5/25/02
2:30:54 PM

George W Bush, Political Terrorist

by William Rivers Pitt, May 23, 2002

The earthquake began on Thursday, May 16th: The Bush administration had been warned by the CIA months before September 11th of Al Qaida terrorists and plans to hijack airplanes. Nothing of substance was done to address the threat – "The proper agencies were warned," we were told, but no representative of any pertinent agency has since stepped forward to acknowledge receipt of any warnings.

In fact, the spokesman for Massport, the Massachusetts state agency responsible for security at Logan airport, stated bluntly in the pages of the Boston Globe that his agency never heard from the Federal government regarding any hijacking threat. The two aircraft that destroyed the World Trade Center towers and killed thousands of Americans went wheels-up at Logan.

By Friday the news was sprayed across the headlines of virtually every newspaper on the planet: Bush Knew.

The implications were deadly for the Bush White House. Information had been given that indicated terrorist attacks were imminent, but little if anything was done to prevent them. Concern for the profit margins of the airline industry, which would have been crippled had a serious terrorist warning been disbursed in high summer, were first offered as a good reason why no true measures were taken to prevent the hijackings.

Later, spokesmen like Ari Fleischer and Dick Cheney came forward to claim that the warnings were "vague" and "non-specific" and therefore not worthy of notice. We were told that the hijack warnings pertained to "traditional hijacking" scenarios, as if that forgave the lapse in security. The weekend political talk shows became a showcase for spin, and the word went out for all to hear – the Bush administration is blameless, and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor.

The truly interesting part came on Monday. All of a sudden, the world was coming to an end. FBI Director Mueller claimed there was no chance that another terrorist attack could be stopped. Dick Cheney stuck out his jaw and stated bluntly that another terrorist attack was inevitable. Don Rumsfeld said terrorists would definitely get their hands on nuclear or biological weapons, and then use them to terrible effect. The newswires vibrated with images of suicide bombers on New York subways, and a warning went out to apartment building landlords – watch for suspicious characters, because the next WTC-type catastrophe could be yours. The Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge were draped with bullseyes by the administration, though no one spoke of means to prevent these horrors.

The effect of these warnings was dynamic. People from coast to coast felt the clutch of fear in their guts as images of smallpox and mushroom clouds flickered behind their eyelids. New York City, battered and bruised, clenched its collective fist in a spasm of dread. It must be real, these threats, because the President and his people say so. Let there be terror and meekness in equal measure on the streets of the greatest city on earth.

And yet comes Wednesday, and an extraordinary series of revelations. An article in the May 21st edition of the Toronto Globe and Mail reported that, "the White House quietly acknowledged that the threats are not urgent and that they are partly motivated by political objectives" and that "the blunt warnings issued yesterday and Sunday do not reflect a dramatic increase in threatening information but rather a desire to fend off criticism from the Democrats."

It seems that everyone can calm down. Horrific terrorist attacks are not, in fact, imminent. Everything is well in hand. The Bush administration is merely using the fear and horror that another September 11th-type attack may happen again as a means to deflect legitimate criticism from the Democratic Party. Nothing to see here. Go about your business. This is, after all, just politics.

It was bad enough that Bush had made his crass 'trifecta' joke eight different times. You know this one: Someone reported that Bush promised not to raid social Security or dive into deficit spending unless the nation was faced with war, recession or national emergency. After 9/11, Bush was heard to crack on eight separate occasions, "Lucky me, I hit the trifecta." Let it be noted that the country is running a $66.5 billion deficit seven months into the budget year, and the 9/11 death toll between America and Afghanistan stands above 5,000 souls.. That is one hell of a trifecta, and no laughing matter.

It was bad enough that Bush and his people were selling photographs of his phone calls during the 9/11 attacks to raise political funds. Al Gore called the practice "disgraceful;" the word is not strong enough. The English language is deficient in words required to describe those who seek to profit from a day of such blood and horror.

Now, with leaders like Daschle and Gephardt calling for a public investigation into the obvious intelligence failures behind 9/11, we have well-known members of the Bush administration going on national television to terrify the American people so as to avoid any questions. It wasn't enough for Condoleeza Rice to go on CNN's 'Late Edition' to state that the administration was against a public investigation into 9/11, as she did on May 19th. The American people needed to feel the wrath of pure terror from this administration, to ensure that it would get what it wanted – a continued veil of secrecy and the surety that prickly questions would go unasked.

Why the veil of secrecy? Perhaps it is as simple as the story told by respected British journalist Gordon Thomas, who has reported that Israel warned the American government on five separate occasions of terrorist plots to attack prominent targets. As late as August 24, 2001, the Israeli security agency Mossad informed the CIA that "terrorists plan to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture."

There are those who believe the absolute worst – that Bush and his cronies knew of the 9/11 attacks in advance, and allowed them to happen so they could advance nefarious personal and political goals. For the time being, such accusations are totally unprovable and essentially irresponsible. The truth in hand, however, is worse than the darkest conspiracy theory.

The Bush administration had specific information in hand from the CIA pointing to an airplane-based attack on American targets. They did not warn agencies responsible for security at American airports, nor did they beef up airline security by fiat. The FBI had specific warnings of terrorist attacks in hand earlier in the summer of 2001, but a failure in the chain of command caused these warnings to go unheeded.

The same administration that had the 9/11 attacks happen on its watch has fought tooth and nail to keep any investigation into the security failures that led to the attack from happening. Basically, those security failures are still there, intact, deadly to us all. The warnings of impending catastrophe from the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Mueller may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophesy because this administration refuses to take responsible action to address them.

In fact, the Bush administration has proven itself more than willing to go to wretched extremes to keep any investigation from gaining steam, by frightening the public with warnings of doom that they themselves admit have far more to do with politics than reality.

We were wide open to attack on September 11th because of these security failures. We are wide open to attack today, because the same irresponsible leaders in charge on 9/11 are calling the shots today. Rather than work to protect Americans, they seek to terrify Americans as a means to cow any Democratic move towards an investigation into the causes behind the 9/11 attacks.

If we are attacked again, they will have no one but themselves to blame. The Democrats asking for an investigation are doing so because they want to protect Americans. Bush and his people are fighting this because they want to protect themselves. They are purposefully making people afraid to further this agenda. They play politics on a field littered with the bones of American dead, and they peddle fear to a nation already saturated with woe.

Such foulness is beyond contempt, and reeks of desperation. There will be a reckoning.

Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24A.Political.Terror.htm

5/25/02
2:20:32 PM

t r u t h o u t | 05.25

Marc Ash | Responding to Senator John McCain

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25A.Respond.McCain.htm

John McCain | Probe Deep, and Fairly

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25B.McCain.Probe.htm

Jane Mayer | The House Of Bin Laden

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25C.Mayer.Bin.Laden.htm

Sierra Club | Judge Rules Against Cheney Energy Task Force

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25D.Sierra.Judge.htm

Geoffrey Gray | Ari's Faux Pas?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25E.Gray.Faux.Pas.htm

Paul Krugman | America the Scofflaw

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25F.Krugman.Scofflaw.htm

White House Acknowledges More Contacts With Enron

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25G.More.Contacts.htm

Venezuelan Coup Plotter Escapes

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25H.Plotter.Escapes.htm

BBC's Nick Bryant | On tour with President Bush - Day Two

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.25I.Bryant.Day.2.htm

5/25/02
2:18:18 PM

Military Used Nerve Gas In '60s

By Matt Kelley, Associated Press Writer, May 24, 2002

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon (news - web sites) admitted for the first time that chemical and biological weapons were tested on Navy ships in the 1960s, and said anyone who was harmed could be eligible for health benefits.

Two kinds of nerve gas and a biological toxin were sprayed on the ships, military officials said Thursday. Four tests in the Pacific from 1964 to 1968 used either the deadly nerve agent sarin, the nerve gas known as VX, or a biological toxin that causes flu-like symptoms, Defense Department statements said.

Sketchy records of the tests and ships' logs do not indicate any of those involved in the tests suffered serious health problems at the time, said Dr. Michael E. Kilpatrick, a Defense Department health official.

"We believe if anything catastrophic happened or if there were large numbers of ill people, it would be in the log," said Kilpatrick, who was involved in reviewing the records. "There's no indication on any of these tests that that had occurred."

The Department of Veterans Affairs (news - web sites) has mailed letters to about 600 veterans who may have taken part in the tests, VA Secretary Anthony Principi said Thursday.

"There's always been a question whether veterans and active-duty service members became ill as a result of that testing," Principi said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's been controversial, so we were sending out letters to veterans to ask them to take a physical and to see if they are entitled to any benefits."

The Pentagon released details about six tests from a 1960s program to evaluate chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them. The Defense Department agreed two years ago to begin releasing details about the tests and contacting participants after pressure from Rep. Mike Thompson (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., and veterans involved in the tests.

"I'm somewhat alarmed by it," Thompson said. "It seems to me enough time has passed that someone over there should have known who was involved and what was going on."

The tests also used chemicals and bacteria meant to simulate weapons, as well as fluorescent or radioactive chemicals used as tracers, the Defense Department said. One type of bacteria used to simulate germ weapons was later found to cause infections, and a separate test where that germ was sprayed on San Francisco is believed to have caused an infection that killed a man.

The tests were among 113 conducted as part of a project called SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense. The Pentagon has acknowledged using chemical and biological simulants before, but has not admitted using the actual weapons agents themselves.

Sarin, the deadly nerve gas used by a cult to kill a dozen people in a Tokyo subway in 1995, was used in a 1964 test off the Hawaiian coast. Both sarin and a chemical simulant were also sprayed onto the USS George Eastman and injected into the ship's ventilation system, the Pentagon statement said.

Crew members wore gas masks during the tests, and those who worked most directly with the sarin wore chemical protection suits, the statement said.

Monkeys were used as test subjects during the exercises using nerve gas and were later "sacrificed" to determine whether they were exposed to the weapons, Kilpatrick said. Although records do not say how potent the sarin was, the fact that participants used protective gear indicates it was in a harmful or deadly form, Kilpatrick said.

Tests in 1964 and 1965 used VX, another deadly nerve gas. During tests in 1965, George Eastman was sprayed with VX and a simulant to test decontamination procedures. VX gas tagged with radioactive phosphorus was also sprayed on a barge to test decontamination procedures.

That second test used a compound that was 90 percent VX — "the most lethal nerve agent" and one that can linger for weeks, Kilpatrick said. But there is no evidence any people were on the barge sprayed with VX, which was towed nearly a half-mile behind a tugboat, he said.

A 1968 test used staphylococcal enterotoxin Type B — a poison produced by bacteria that causes flu-like symptoms such as fever, muscle aches, cough, vomiting and diarrhea.

During that test, the toxin was sprayed over five tugboats, the USS Granville S. Hall and parts of a Pacific atoll to evaluate how it could be spread from the air.

Source: http://www.AP.org

5/25/02
2:08:53 PM

Dan Rather: Bush Issued Bogus Terror Alert to Cover Up 9-11 Bungle

May 22, 2002

"CBS Evening News" anchorman Dan Rather accused the Bush administration Wednesday morning of issuing an unwarranted FBI terrorist alert to New York City yesterday primarily to distract from questions about its handling of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence information.

Appearing on the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, Rather said he "believed" his network's report a week ago that the White House received a CIA briefing before 9-11 on possible al-Qaeda hijackings prompted the administration to issue the alert for political damage control.

"I can believe that the president and the people around him were surprised and peeved, to say the least," Rather contended, "that the information got out last week with [CBS's] report that President Bush had been briefed about some things that, in retrospect after Sept. 11, would indicate that, well, maybe somebody should have done something."

The CBS newsman continued:

"And I can also believe that, as with every president, somebody's in the White House scratching their heads saying, 'How can we change the subject.' Now, the subject has been changed, suddenly and very effectively, from 'How is it that the FBI and the CIA didn't move on the information they had? Where was the president briefed about what, when?'

"The subject's been changed," Rather explained, "from that, to suddenly one administration official after another, and each escalating it, [issuing] a new set of warnings."

The CBS anchor said he doubted the confluence of events was coincidental:

"Maybe these two things are not connected, but surely the people in the administration could forgive us for perhaps thinking, well, perhaps there's some connection here."

Prior to outlining his terrorist alert conspiracy theory, Rather sounded dismissive about the latest warning that had Manhattan in a virtual traffic lockdown Wednesday morning.

"We're on some kind of alert because somebody heard something that somebody may blow something up. [But] as a citizen, what are we supposed to do with that information?"

Rather also defended Democrat calls for a 9-11 investigation into the Bush White House, saying:

"We're not interested in just looking in the rearview mirror so we can nail somebody, you know - 'What did you know and when did you know it?'

"But this is pretty important stuff," he insisted. "Given the stories about intelligence failures that we already have heard about, who can argue that we don't need some kind of commission ... led by professionals that goes into how the situation with al-Qaeda was handled before Sept. 11, what mistakes were made and what we can learn from that."

Rather insisted that curiosity about a possible Bush 9-11 cover-up had nothing to do with partisan politics.

"That's not playing partisan politics. There's already too much of that. That's trying to get information that can help us all in the future."

The CBS newsman also accused Attorney General John Ashcroft of taking advantage of insider information about terrorist warnings to fly on private jets, while the public was kept in the dark about the secret alert, telling Imus:

"If the attorney general is given information that convinces him, 'Hey, I don't want to be on any commercial airliners just now. I'm gonna take government planes everywhere.' If the attorney general was told that ... then it raises a question. Why wasn't the public alerted?"

"Some people probably would not have flown" had they also received the Ashcroft warning, he complained.

After the CBS news anchor's interview, NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski called Imus to correct the record, explaining that Ashcroft's decision not to fly commercial aircraft last summer was prompted by threats against his life - and had no connection whatsoever to pre-Sept. 11 intelligence information.

Source: http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/5/22/95452

5/25/02
2:05:36 PM

Most oil polluting the oceans comes from runoff, rivers, small boats, not tanker spills

by Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press, May 24, 2002

WASHINGTON — Leaking oil tankers produce dramatic photos, but a new study says the vast majority of the human-related petroleum released into U.S. coastal waters comes from consumers, not the ships that carry the oil. The National Research Council reported Thursday that about 29 million gallons of oil enters the oceans around North America each year as a result of human activities. Of that, the largest share, 15.6 million gallons, comes from rivers and runoff, largely from such things as street runoff, industrial waste, municipal wastewater, and wastewater from refineries.

In addition, 1.6 million gallons of the pollution comes from recreational vessels, where two-stroke engines that mix oil and gas are often used in personal watercraft and as outboard engines.

"Oil spills can have long-lasting and devastating effects on the ocean environment, but we need to know more about damage caused by petroleum from land-based sources and small watercraft," commented James M. Coleman of Louisiana State University, chairman of the committee that prepared the study.

The heavily populated coastline from Maine to Virginia accounts for more than half of the land-based oil pollution in U.S. waters, with another 20 percent in the Gulf of Mexico.

The report urged that federal officials work with state agencies to better monitor oil discharges and suggested that the Environmental Protection Agency work to phase out two-stroke engines.

Another significant source of pollution was "atmospheric deposition," that is oil that is deposited on the ocean surface as a result of emissions into the air from motor vehicles, power generating facilities, industrial plants, and similar sources. That was estimated to total 6.1 million gallons.

Spills from tankers accounted for 1.5 million gallons of pollution, and 551,000 gallons came from pipeline spills, the report found. "This doesn't mean we can ignore hazards from drilling and shipping, however. Although new safety standards and advances in technology reduced the amount of oil that spilled during extraction and transport during the last two decades, the potential is still there for a large spill, especially in regions with lax safety controls," added Coleman.

The single largest source of oil in the oceans bordering North America is natural seeps from undersea oil sources, releasing an estimated 46.4 million gallons annually.

Worldwide, vessel and pipeline spills were blamed for release of 32.5 million gallons annually into the oceans. Runoff adds another 41 million gallons, and international operational discharges from vessels, such as from cargo washing, was listed as producing an added 78 million gallons of pollution. Such discharges are illegal in North American waters.

The National Research Council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters.

Source: http://www.AP.org

5/25/02
2:03:32 PM

NRC to test shipping canisters for proposed Yucca repository

May 24, 2002

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will conduct full-scale tests of nuclear waste shipping canisters as part of the licensing review for the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, commissioners said Thursday. Opponents of the Yucca Mountain project have expressed concern about the testing of canisters because the NRC currently relies on computer modeling and tests on small-scale versions or containers to assure they will not be dangerously breached in an accident.

NRC Chairman Richard Meserve told a Senate hearing on Thursday that the computer modeling and limited tests ``are sufficient to assess the effects of an accident.''

``We have a great deal of confidence in this approach,'' Meserve separately wrote to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a recent letter, calling the use of computer models and scale model testing a ``good engineering practice.''

Nevertheless, when pressed on the issue at the hearing, Meserve reiterated the NRC plans to ask Congress for money to conduct full-scale tests of casks that would be used to ship tens of thousands of tons of reactor waste to the Yucca Mountain site if it is approved as the country's central radioactive waste storage facility.

Engineers at the Sandia National Laboratory likely would conduct the test, NRC officials said.

The transportation issue was the focus for the second straight day as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee wrapped up hearings on whether to allow the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project to proceed.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., committee chairman, has scheduled a June 5 vote on a resolution to override Nevada's objections to the waste repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The full Senate must approve the resolution by July 26, or the Yucca project will come to a halt.

Meserve testified that the Transportation Department will have the primary role in approving a transportation plan for the waste, now scattered at commercial reactors and federal nuclear sites in 39 states.

But he said the NRC, which must issue construction and operating permits for the facility, will approve the canisters to be used for transport.

Separately, Energy Undersecretary Robert Card rejected criticism that the administration is pursuing approval for Yucca Mountain without a plan to get waste to the site.

``I would reject the notion that we don't have a (transportation) plan,'' Card told the committee. He said an environmental impact analysis includes potential routes and transportation options.

The Energy Department strongly favors shipping 90 percent of the waste by rail rather than the Interstate highway system. Using trucks would require about 2,200 shipments annually, while a rail proposal would reduce that to about 175, with trains carrying three large transport casks per shipment.

In separate testimony, Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and now a consultant for the state of Nevada, said a transportation plan ought to be completed before Congress is asked to give the Yucca project its go-ahead.

Hall acknowledged that nuclear waste transport has had a clean safety record, but added that ``we're talking about volumes and distances never seen before'' and new concerns about terrorism.

Reid has been trying to convince fellow senators to block the project and keep the waste where it is.

Source: http://www.AP.org

5/25/02
2:01:48 PM

Utility agrees to buy reactor head to replace corroded one at Ohio nuclear plant

May 24, 2002

AKRON, Ohio (AP) _ The owner of the Davis-Besse nuclear plant on Thursday said it would replace a 6-inch-thick reactor head that was eaten nearly all the way through by acid.

FirstEnergy Corp. had considered repairing the existing reactor head at the 25-year-old plant in Oak Harbor, about 20 miles east of Toledo. Federal regulators, however, said replacement was a better option.

``Based on our analysis, replacing the head is our preferred option,'' said the utility's Lew W. Myers, who is overseeing the project.

Replacement is expected to cost as much as $75 million, including the price of the unused reactor head from an unfinished nuclear plant in Midland, Mich.

The Davis-Besse plant was shut down in February after inspectors found the hole in the steel reactor vessel cap enclosing the reactor's core. The rust was caused by a buildup of boric acid from reactor cooling water that had been leaking from nozzle cracks since the mid-1990s.

Only a thin noncorrosive stainless steel membrane kept the hole from bursting open.

It was the most extensive corrosion ever found atop a U.S. nuclear plant reactor. The discovery prompted inspectors to order an industrywide review of U.S. plants with similar designs.

Source: http://www.planetsave.com/ViewStory.asp?ID=2565

5/25/02
1:59:53 PM

EPA says biggest polluters are hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants

May, 24 2002

WASHINGTON (AP) _ America's largest toxic polluters during 2000 were hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants, responsible for nearly two-thirds of the chemicals that industry says were released into the nation's air and water.

Toxic chemicals spewed into the U.S. environment declined 8 percent from 1999, from 7.7 billion pounds to 7.1 billion pounds, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said the data can provide a powerful tool for the agency and citizens alike to identify pollution in communities and make decisions how to protect the environment.

But critics said the EPA's annual Toxics Release Inventory focuses on chemicals that industry says were released into the environment, not the entire amount produced. Jeremiah Baumann, environmental health specialist for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy group, said the huge increase in the amount produced is significant because more toxic waste escapes into the environment than is accounted for.

In 2000, the amount of chemicals that industry reported as waste from production rose to 38 billion pounds, an increase of 26 percent over the nearly 30 billion pounds in 1999.

Of the 7.1 billion pounds reported as having been released into the environment, mining of gold, silver, uranium, copper, lead, zinc and molybdenum accounted for 3.4 billion pounds released while coal-burning electric generating plants caused another 1.2 billion pounds.

Four mining states, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Alaska, had the highest volume of toxic releases: Nevada with 1 billion pounds; Utah, 956 million pounds; Arizona, 744 million pounds; and Alaska, 535 million pounds.

The same four states headed the list in 1999 and 1998, the first year in which mining wastes were calculated in the EPA report.

``We end up reporting a lot of naturally occurring metals that are in the rock,'' said Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association.

President Bush's home state of Texas ranked fifth for toxic releases, based on reporting by manufacturers. During 2000, the last year Bush was governor, the state released 301.5 million pounds of toxic pollution, or nearly 11 percent of all the releases reported by manufacturing industries nationwide, according to the EPA.

The latest inventory was expanded to include eight new toxic chemicals, including dioxin. It also includes new reporting requirements for 20 other chemicals such as mercury and PCBs that are worrisome in even small amounts because they persist and accumulate in the food chain.

EPA officials said the annual inventory should be used as a guide and not necessarily an indicator of health risk because the report provides no information on exposure or specific toxicity of the chemicals.

But some say the inventory _ a huge, time-consuming project for EPA _ isn't as helpful as it could be, since it contains information about pollution from a year and a half ago.

``EPA should do everything in its power to get the data out in real time so that residents know the real risks they face today,'' said Carol Andress, an economic development specialist for Environmental Defense, a New York-based advocacy group.

EPA Toxic Release Inventory: http://www.epa.gov

5/25/02
1:55:59 PM

Man Files Lawsuit Against Bush For 9/11 Intelligence Failures

May 24, 2002

A man is ready to sue President Bush for failing to prevent the 9-11 attacks!

San Francisco area attorney Stanley Hilton this week filed a $7 billion lawsuit on behalf of a handful of attack victims' relatives claiming that America's leader failed to carry out his constitutional duties.

Hilton also named top members of the Administration for failing to carry out their duties to protect the United States.

The suit claims the President 'allowed' September 11th to happen.

The attorney says he is representing several people who lost loved ones on September 11th however, they wish to remain 'anonymous.'

Source: http://www.drudgereport.com/flash9.htm

5/25/02
1:48:14 PM

Did FBI Miss More Clues?

WASHINGTON, May 24, 2002

(CBS) An FBI whistle-blower alleges that FBI headquarters rewrote Minnesota agents' pre-Sept. 11 request for surveillance and search warrants for terrorism defendant Zacarias Moussaoui and removed important information before rejecting them, government officials said.

Agent Coleen Rowley wrote that the Minnesota agents became so frustrated by roadblocks erected by terrorism supervisors in Washington that they began to joke that FBI headquarters was becoming an "unwitting accomplice" to Osama bin Laden's efforts to attack the United States, the officials said.

As new details emerged about the letter Rowley wrote to FBI Director Robert Mueller, key members of Congress sought to extend her whistle-blower protections and encouraged more agents to come forward.

A joint panel of House and Senate members set the first hearings to examine what the government knew before Sept. 11 about terrorist threats and what mistakes it made.

"This (Rowley) letter documents exactly what headquarters knew and when, and how midlevel officials sabotaged the Moussaoui case before the attacks," Sen. Charles Grassley said Friday.

Officials familiar with Rowley's memo said she alleged that FBI headquarters terrorism supervisors rewrote the Minnesota office's warrant applications and affidavit and removed intelligence about Moussaoui before sending them to a legal office that then rejected them as insufficient.

She alleged that some of the revisions "downplayed" the significance of some intelligence linking Moussaoui to Islamic extremists, and blamed the changes on a flawed communication process.

"Obviously, verbal presentations are far more susceptible to mischaracterization or error," Rowley wrote in her 13-page letter, excerpts of which were obtained by The Associated Press.

The Minnesota office was concerned after arresting Moussaoui at a Minnesota flight school in August 2001 that he was seeking to hurt Americans and wanted to gather more information through national security and search warrants, including getting information off his computer.

Some of that information came from an associate of Moussaoui who told the FBI the flight student held extreme anti-American views. Other intelligence came from France linking Moussaoui to radical Islamic extremists in the region although not directly to al-Qaeda, officials said.

The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Rowley identified the warrant revision process as flawed, particularly complaining that Minnesota was never consulted about the changes that were made before the warrant applications were forwarded to the offices that rejected them.

Officials said Rowley in other parts of the memo attacked the public explanations that Mueller and other FBI senior officials have offered about why the FBI failed to connect the dots before Sept. 11.

Rowley wrote she had come to the "sad realization" that officials had skewed facts in the post-Sept. 11 accounts and were trying to "circle the wagons" to protect FBI headquarters from embarrassing disclosures.

She also criticized the culture of Washington headquarters, saying FBI higher-ups were too concerned with "petty politics" and too afraid to make tough decisions that could affect their career ascensions, the officials said.

"There were statements indicating that she felt that the higher-echelon leadership in the FBI had had a pattern of submerging what they considered to be critical comment,'' Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham said.

Grassley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Rowley's letter alarmed him.

Several times, Rowley complained in the letter that Minnesota had never been told of a separate memo written in July by a Phoenix FBI agent warning that Arab pilots in Arizona with ties to radical Muslims were training at flight schools.

FBI officials have repeatedly said the agency failed to connect the two matters before Sept. 11.

CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports the FBI confirmed Friday that for a critical period stretching from the middle of July, when the first warning memo appeared, to just before Sept. 11, the FBI unit responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden did not have a permanent unit chief.

Rowley emerged as a central figure this week after authoring a letter Tuesday to Mueller and senators alleging FBI headquarters erected a "roadblock" to the efforts to prove before Sept. 11 that Moussaoui was a terrorist.

After the attacks, Moussaoui was charged as the lone accomplice so far to bin Laden and the hijackers.

Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who are heading Congress' inquiry into U.S. intelligence and the attacks, said their first hearing will take place June 4 but will be closed to the public so they can discuss classified intelligence sources.

The committees' investigation is examining the U.S. intelligence response to terrorism since 1985, as well as looking into specific information that might have pointed to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/23/attack/main510040.shtml

5/25/02
1:34:19 PM

Massive Pullout From World Summit

Drawbacks and Shortcomings

Many groups from around the world say NO to their earlier planned participation at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg later this year.

by John Bamau

The mainstream Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and especially those ones, who cover for the United Nations as "representing the people", gear up for the Development Summit. Some like the Global Youth Forum are even paid by the United Nations (UN) to do so and others are paid to (moderately please!) "protest". The world wonders what actually is going on, since more and more voices are heard, which call the Global Summit of this decade a non-starter.

The UN-selected groups as well as some continent-hopping professional protesters will most likely still go and sit or fight with participating governments at this summit in South Africa, but many hundreds if not already thousands of civil society organizations and individuals have terminated their plans and stepped off the road to Johannesburg. The number of resisters is growing every day. A total flop of the whole conference is immanent and after the rather failed preparation conference more likely than ever.

CLIP

"The summit will just be another public relations gimmick by and for those who continued to collect our knowledge and vision over the last thirty years since Stockholm [the first global summit] in order to produce them as their own bright ideas and to feed them back to us, while secretly putting the strategic countermeasures in place against those of our demands, which don't fit into their money oriented concepts", Claude Dechamps, an obviously frustrated board member of a community based organization in the south of France wrote in her latest newsletter.

CLIP

"Who will benefit from the summit?", asks Patricia Hutton in an e-mail from Canada and she continues: "I don't believe that anything good will come out from a conference, organized, financed and steered by a cartel of nation governments, which can not even agree to do something effectively against the manmade changes of the world climate.

CLIP

Still UN Secretary General Kofi Annan reiterates his Mantra of WEHAB (Water and sanitation, Energy, Health, Agriculture, Biodiversity) as the five areas where solutions are long overdue to be found. But only the officials, who still pat on each others back, and those, who directly are busy to make money with the conference event, or those who got the expensive tickets for the preparation conference in Bali, an island still unfree and occupied by Indonesia and its military, continue to proclaim that the Global Summit will make the world a better place. For them maybe yes, but if for the billions of impoverished people is not only another question - it is at least already out of that specific question, which is answered daily by the natural world itself: It just disappears! Nature and Humanity disappear with lightning speed, while "global leaders" continue to meet and meet and meet and - if at all - today only gather in extremely policed states.

See also:

The Earth Summit Website http://www.earthsummit2002.org/

World Summit on Sustainable Development http://www.johannesburgsummit.org

Annan urges world summit to rehabilitate the earth. http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-14-01.html NEW YORK, May 14, 2002 (ENS) - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is looking ahead a little more than three months to August 26 when the World Summit on Sustainable Development opens in Johannesburg, South Africa. Intended as a 10 year reinvigoration of Agenda 21 agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Annan sees the gathering as a means to rehabilitate the Earth. (...) Annan stated concrete goals for each of the five areas he wants to see the WSSD take action to achieve.

Water: Provide access to at least one billion people who lack clean drinking water and two billion people who lack proper sanitation.

Energy: Provide access to more than two billion people who lack modern energy services; promote renewable energy; reduce overconsumption; and ratify the Kyoto Protocol to address climate change.

Health: Address the effects of toxic and hazardous materials; reduce air pollution, which kills three million people each year, and lower the incidence of malaria and African guinea worm, which are linked with polluted water and poor sanitation.

Agricultural productivity: Work to reverse land degradation, which affects about two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands.

Biodiversity and ecosystem management: Reverse the processes that have destroyed about half of the world's tropical rainforest and mangroves, and are threatening 70 percent of the world's coral reefs and decimating the world's fisheries.

World Resources Institute - Earth Trends

Stressed Seafloors - The world could be trawling at least 20 million km? of the seafloor-an area nearly 2.5 times the size of Brazil. Some equate the effects of trawling on the seafloor to the effects of clearcutting on forest ecosystems.

http://earthtrends.wri.org/index.cfm

UN warns of looming water crisis

More than 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages by the year 2025 if the world continues consuming water at the same rate, the United Nations has warned. A new report released to mark World Water Day on Friday says that another 2.5 billion people will live in areas where it will be difficult to find sufficient fresh water to meet their needs. The looming crisis is being blamed on mismanagement of existing water resources, population growth and changing weather patterns. (...) The commission is calling for greater effort to be made in the developed world to conserve and protect water resources. The UN body says wasted water is costing Europe around $10bn a year. According to the report, by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an estimated 1.1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water, 2.5 billion lack proper sanitation and more than five million people die from waterborne diseases each year - 10 times the number of casualties killed in wars around the globe. Less than 3% of the Earth's water is fresh and most of it is in the form of polar ice or too deep underground to reach. The amount of fresh water that is accessible in lakes, rivers and reservoirs is less than a quarter of 1% of the total. (...) The UN says that the implications of the water crisis will be extreme for the people most affected, who are among the world's poorest, limiting their ability to grow crops, which they need to survive. Agriculture consumes about 70% of the world's available water, but experts say that, where there are competing demands for water, small farmers are the first to lose their supply.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_1887000/1887451.stm

Source: http://www.observer.co.uk

5/25/02
1:28:20 PM

How Can We Possibly Go On?

by Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive."

- His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Maybe it is just because of my heightened sensitivities at the one year anniversary of the birth of my son, but recently I have felt a profound despair at the depth of cruelty, ignorance, greed, and lack of concern for the health of the Earth and her people and animals going on all around me. The newspaper sickens me, the endless reports of the Bush administration's elimination of environmental rules for industry sicken me, and even reading my own reports of the greed and destruction in our world makes me nauseous. I wonder how I can go on in the midst of this madness.

I know that I am not the only one feeling this way. A friend of mine who is a holistic doctor in Southern California told me the other day that nearly every one of his patients is feeling the negative effects of something profound going on. Emails I receive from readers all over the world mirror this upset.

I have always believed that awareness of the true magnitude of the environmental and social devastation around us is vital to forming a solution. But this awareness now feels like a heavy weight surrounded by a deep, dark cloud that only the smile of my son can get through.

How can we go on in the light of revelation after revelation of profound cruelty and insanity?

How can we go on after learning that for the last 18 years, Mark Laudenslager, Ph.D. of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center has been conducting maternal deprivation studies with macaque monkeys? When the monkeys are six months old, Laudenslager separates the infants from their mothers and isolates them for two weeks. The "maternally deprived" monkeys are then shipped to researchers at the University of Washington who inject them with a version of the HIV virus.

The University of Washington is currently under investigation for undue cruelty towards the monkeys under their care.

Has this longstanding research project achieved any meaningful results, or is it simply one of many that have become a business, fueling the archaic, brutal animal experimentation industry?

How can we go on after learning that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has legitimized the illegal dumping of all manner of waste that has been going on by mine operators for decades, in spite of the opposition of many members of Congress? U.S. Senators Jim Jeffords and Joe Lieberman wrote, in a letter to President George W. Bush, that "the proposed rule would jeopardize the health of the nation's streams, wetlands, lakes, rivers, and other waters." Their warning went unheeded and the rule was signed on a Friday night at 5:15pm, a time that opponents claim was intentionally chosen to avoid publicity.

How can we go on knowing that President Bush has refused to allow the U.S. to sign treaties reducing global warming and stopping the use of land mines that kill and maim thousands of people every year? And he has created a valueless nuclear treaty with Russia that insures that we will have enough nuclear missiles to kill the world many times over and leaves the option open to develop new, more deadly nuclear weapons.

How can we go on after learning that our efforts to keep our bodies safe from pesticides by eating expensive organic produce have been useless? A study released earlier this month revealed that almost one-fourth of the organic produce in grocery stores could contain traces of pesticides, including long banned chemicals like DDT. Decades of pesticide use has polluted most of the land in the world and drift from farms that are miles away from organic farms can end up on the produce.

How can I go on after learning, in spite of working so hard during his first year of life to keep my son away from harmful chemicals, that we may have been putting him in harm's way every night? Even though we use cloth diapers, we have been using disposable diapers overnight. I just learned this week that the diapers we chose contain the very chemicals we were trying to avoid. Nature Boy and Girl Diapers, a product that claims to be good for the environment, does not list anywhere on their packaging that they contain synthetic oil based polymer salts, also known as sodium polyacrylate, sodium polymer salts, or SAP, that cause great concern among some parents.

These moisture absorbing granules swell up and become a gel that comes into direct contact with a baby's skin, continuing to leach moisture from it. I believe that the rectal bleeding my son has been experiencing may be because of that gel.

Is it safe anywhere?

Can you trust anyone?

Just when the blackness from all this misery felt like it was about to envelop me this week, a tiny ray of light made its way through the darkness. After discovering that the disposable diapers we were using at night contained SAP, I immediately sent email to the board of directors and the store managers of the PCC Natural Markets, a major food cooperative in Seattle with seven stores.

The next day, I received the following unexpected email message:

"Hello Jackie, Thank you so much for letting us know of the quality issues with products offered at our store. I have just heard back from our grocery merchandiser and include her comments below:

'Upon receipt of the following letter (your letter), PCC was able to determine that SAP's are indeed used in the Nature Boy and Girl diapers. Although the company's information lists this as 'considerably less' than the market's leading diapers, we feel that the known risks associated with this ingredient justify discontinuing the brand from our product mix... Thank you for your attention to this matter.'

"Your input on products is important and incredibly helpful to our staff. Thank you again for letting us know the results of your experience and research." Mary Kirman, PCC Community Relations Leader, Greenlake

The quick action of PCC, their responsiveness and dedication to their community and their values, has reminded me that we can only survive by taking each day as it comes, doing our very best to honor what we believe in, working to end any suffering we become aware of, and trusting that millions more feel as we do.

We can go on - we must go on - by taking little steps forward and cherishing the occasional light that shines through the blackness. Those that honor only greed and deception as their deity cannot win and we have to survive to be around to pick up the pieces after they are gone.

We will go on.

RESOURCES

Please go at http://www.ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17g.html to review those excellent resources.

Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World, A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light," available at:

http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html or your local bookstore.

Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at:

mailto:jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his web site at:

http://www.healingourworld.com

Source: http://www.ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-17g.html

5/25/02
1:20:11 PM

How One Creature Drives So Many Species To Extinction

Scores of animals and plants are being driven out of existence each year -and scientists say that mankind is almost always to blame

by Steve Connor, Science Editor, May 21, 2002

Planet Earth is going through its sixth and probably its most devastating period of mass extinction with scores, and possibly hundreds of species of animals and plants dying out each year. But unlike the previous five extinction waves, this time the culprit is just another lifeform, Homo sapiens.

A United Nations report on the environment, to be published tomorrow, will highlight the scale of a problem many conservationists believe is likely to rapidly worsen over 30 years as wildlife congregations are destroyed or invaded by a less diverse range of species.

Some scientists believe the "sixth wave" of mass extinction is between 1,000 and 10,000 times greater than the normal "background" rate at which species are lost naturally.

Such a dramatic fall in biological diversity is identified as one of the most pressing problems facing humanity, by the scientists who contributed to the Global Environment Outlook-3 (Geo-3) report of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).

The report will identify some 11,046 species of plants and animals known to face a high risk of extinction, including 1,130 mammals – 24 per cent of the total – and 12 per cent, or 1,183 species of birds.

Human activities, from habitat destruction to the introduction of alien species from one area to another, are listed as the main causes of this dramatic loss in biodiversity. In the report, scientists also identify 5,611 species of plants known to be on the verge of extinction. They say the true figure is likely to be far higher, given that only 4 per cent of the world's known plant species have been properly evaluated.

The Geo-3 report covers almost every aspect of environmental degradation, from forest destruction to water pollution. It is designed to set the framework for the world summit on sustainable development to be held this summer in Johannesburg.

Geo-3 looks back on the past 30 years of environmental degradation, since the 1972 Stockholm conference on the human environment, to assess the likely prospects for the next 30. It is likely to warn that many of the factors that led to the extinction of species in recent decades continue to operate with "ever-increasing" intensity.

Serious threats to life on Earth are over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution, habitat destruction, the introduction of alien species and global climate change, say the scientists who advised Unep.

They identify the loss of habitats by human encroachment as one of the most pervasive threats to wildlife. Habitat loss and fragmentation of breeding grounds are behind the precarious predicament of 89 per cent of threatened birds, 83 per cent of threatened mammals and 91 per cent of endangered plants, the Unep scientists say.

In addition to growing poverty and climate change caused by global warming, Unep has identified alien invasive species as another serious threat to biodiversity, affecting 30 per cent of threatened birds and 15 per cent of threatened plants.

The black rat, which since 1800 has stowed away on ships sailing to the remotest corners of the world, is held responsible for the biggest slaughter of birds, especially those on uninhabited islands.

Another of man's hitchhikers has caused havoc to native wildlife from Hawaii to the Seychelles and Zanzibar. The crazy ant, so called because of its frenetic movements, killed three million crabs in 18 months on Christmas Island alone.

A host of other invasive aliens have also inflicted enormous environmental and economic damage throughout the world. The list includes the brown tree snake, the small Indian mongoose, the Nile perch, the strawberry guava, the water hyacinth, the zebra mussel and the brushtail possum.

Several species of animals and plants in Britain are threatened by a similar invasion of aliens. The water vole is being killed off by the American mink, the eggs of rare wading birds nesting in the Outer Hebrides are being eaten by hedgehogs introduced from the mainland, and the wetland habitats of the Norfolk Broads suffered decades of destruction by the coypu, a South American rodent.

Jeff McNeely, chief scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Geneva, said the next 30 years could be the defining moment for life on Earth. Either we can finally recognise the problems and do something about them, or we do not, he said.

"It could go either way. It could be a golden age of nature conservation, or it could be a disaster scenario. If we assume a doomsday scenario then we're going to live in a greatly oversimplified world.

"Most of the remaining species are going to be widely dispersed and cosmopolitan. We will have lost many of the large mammals and birds, and life in general will be more homogeneous, with a smaller capacity to adapt to a changing environment."

Within the next 30 years, if the biodiversity crisis is not addressed, it is likely that the last tiger, rhinoceros, Asian elephant, cheetah and mountain gorilla will have been lost in the wild, Dr McNeely added.

Often it is the well-known animals and plants which are at greatest risk. The Chinese alligator is the most endangered crocodilian, with only 150 individuals in the wild. Half of the world's insect-eating pitcher plants are threatened and one, the green pitcher plant, is critically endangered because of the loss of its wetland habitat.

Scientists have identified and named about 1.5 million species but they believe that between 5 million and 15 million species have yet to be formally classified. It is now generally assumed that many unnamed animals, plants and micro-organisms are going extinct before they are even known to science.

Lord May, an Oxford zoologist, believes present extinction rates are likely to increase further over the next century. He said: "This represents a sixth great wave of extinction, fully compatible with the big five mass extinctions of the geological past, but different in that it results from the activities of a single other species rather than from external environmental changes."

This catalogue of extinction is in danger of going unrecorded as fewer scientists are being trained in the field of taxonomy, the science of systematic classification.

Last week, the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology warned that a shortage of taxonomists and underfunding of the research centres for systematic biology was jeopardising efforts to protect wildlife. How can biodiversity be protected if no one is recording what is there? "We have a cultural and moral obligation, as well as a pragmatic economic need, to record and, as far as possible, conserve the diversity of life with which we share the planet," the committee said.

The Natural History Museum and Kew Gardens in London are two world-reknowned centres for animal and plant taxonomy yet the committee found that both were finding it difficult to provide a service because of financial constraints. "It has also placed the reference collections of specimens comprising a wide range of biodiversity, which are housed in these institutions, at considerable risk," the committee added.

Professor Paul Henderson, director of science at the Natural History Museum, said systematics and the description of species was critical to the preservation of animals and plants, and the key to economic prosperity for many of the poorer nations in the world. He said it was at the heart of the sustainable development theme of the forthcoming world summit.

"We helped to identify the screw-worm when it invaded African livestock from South America," Professor Henderson said. "Without recognising it early on, it would have wreaked havoc with enormous economic consequences,"

Yet being able to name species will not, in itself, stop the inexorable decline, he said. "In 30 years? We'll still be heading for very fast rates of extinction comparable to today simply because we're not doing anything about it," the professor said. "I have to be a bit gloomy on the 30-year time-scale. There's not been very much action to justify being optimistic."

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=297239

5/25/02
1:15:29 PM

Planet at the crossroads

An authoritative United Nations report says human activity is likely to mark more than two-thirds of the Earth's surface within 30 years. The choices this generation makes will be crucial for our descendants, according to a United Nations report.

Planetary stress

Population pressure: There are 2,220m more people alive today than in 1972. Soil decline: Around 2bn ha of soil, 15% of the Earth's surface, is now classed as degraded by human activities. Water: About half the world's rivers are seriously depleted and polluted. Serious water shortages were affecting 40% of the world's people by the mid-1990s. Forests: Since 1990 they are estimated to have declined by 2.4%. Wildlife: Nearly 25% of mammal species and 12% of birds are regarded as globally threatened. Fish: Just under a third of global fish stocks are defined as depleted, over-exploited, or recovering from over-fishing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1987000/1987396.stm

1,000 die in India heat

The death toll from the heat wave in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has now passed 1,000, according to the local authorities. The state government said that reports from districts across the state had now been collated, bringing the current toll to 1,030 for the period 9-15 May. The heat wave began earlier in May and at one point, the temperature soared to between 49C and 51C in some areas. (...) Heat-related deaths have also been reported from other parts of India, as well as in neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan. Reports from the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, said the toll over the past two days had reached 45.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_2002000/2002523.stm

5/24/02
8:36:15 PM

LOVEARTH NETWORK Connecting Through 1,000+ EcoHumanePolitical Websites

Don't You Want To Know The Real Truth About What Happened On September 11th?

Lovearth.net Has Put Together 23 Informative Websites To Help You Educate Yourself About This "War On Terror"

1) My Country Right Or Wrong - Questioning September 11th An Indepth Four Part Article With 30 Sections Of Questions Including - Part II -- The most important questions regarding September 11th that every U.S. corporate media outlet is still unwilling to ask can be found in The "Smoking Gun" September 19th press release from NORAD - Fighters Were 8 Minutes Away From WTC - Part II is a critical analysis of the alarming number of inconsistencies found in this NORAD press release -- in which NORAD had almost 8 day to produce

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5/24/02
7:46:40 PM

Greenpeace's Positive Energy Newsletter

Inside this edition:

~ Hollywood Comes Out In Support of Clean Energy

~ A Week of Global ExxonMobil Action

~ Cracking the Whip on the Kyoto Protocol

~ San Francisco/Bay Area Volunteer Meeting

Hollywood Comes Out In Support of Clean Energy

This week, Hollywood celebrities like Charlize Theron, Dennis Hopper, Billy Zane, and Ed Begley Jr, showed their support for clean energy solutions that help stop global warming by attending a premier screening of "The Wind," a public service announcement designed by Greenpeace and the Earth Communications Office.

To learn more about clean energy solutions visit, our website at:

http://www.cleanenergynow.org/cleanenergy/

A Week of Global ExxonMobil Action

Greenpeace staged an action at an ExxonMobil petrochemicals plant in France to protest ExxonMobil's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and the United States' rejection of the agreement. Activists dressed in tiger suits blocked roads while the Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior II, blocked the coastal entry way leading to the refinery. Dubbing ExxonMobil as climate enemy no. 1, this action sets off a global week of action against ExxonMobil to criticize the US oil giant's campaign to debunk the science of global warming and derail the Kyoto Protocol.

To learn more about Greenpeace's campaign against Exxon Mobil go to:

http://www.stopexxonmobil.org

Cracking the Whip on the Kyoto Protocol

Denmark is on its way in becoming the first EU nation to ratify the Kyoto Protocol - making it the milestone 55th nation to consent to the treaty. In order for the 1997 climate pact to be ratified, the treaty has to be adopted by 55 nations representing 55 percent of the 1990 greenhouse gas emissions of "Annex I" countries. Unfortunately, many of the key nations seem to be wavering in their grasp of the treaty's principles. The 55 nations that have adopted the protocol represent only 2.4 percent of the required emissions; and out of the 55 nations, Romania is the only other Annex I nation to have acceded to the protocol. Although the EU looks poised to meet its ratification goals before the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg this September, Russia, Canada and Australia continue to waver in their commitment and the United States seems persistent in its obstruction of the international treaty.

Voice your commitment to Climate Protection and Renewable Energy by signing on to the global petition for "Positive Energy," go to:

http://www.choose-positive-energy.org/

Special Announcement for SF/Bay Area Students on Summer Break

School's out, you're bored, and you've always wanted to do something for environmental and human rights protection. There is a Volunteer Meeting at the Greenpeace, San Francisco office at 7pm on Thursday, May 30th. Find out how you can stay involved by helping out in one of our various campaigns. There will be delicious pizza provided, and a short training workshop.

If you are interested, please contact Ashby Smith, our Outreach Coordinator, by phone at: (415) 255.9221 x 314 or send her an email at:

ashby.smith@sfo.greenpeace.org.

The "Positive Energy" newsletter and our website, will give you good news about ways to achieve clean air, climate justice, and renewable energy solutions to our ongoing energy crisis

http://www.cleanenergynow.org

5/24/02
7:44:12 PM

Public Citizen

May 24, 2002

Pinellas Charitable Solicitation Ordinance Designed to Generate Paper, not Prevent Fraud

Groups Suing County Request That Judge Enjoin County From Enforcing Ordinance

TAMPA, Fla. - The purpose of a Pinellas County ordinance regulating solicitations by charitable organizations appears to be requiring groups to produce reams of duplicative paperwork that gets stuffed in a file cabinet - not preventing fraud, according to a legal brief filed in federal court on Friday.

The brief was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the county alleging that the ordinance is unconstitutional. The brief asks the judge to determine that no debate exists as to the law's unconstitutionality and to enjoin the county from enforcing it against charities. Those suing the county include the national nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, Greenpeace, American Charities for Reasonable Fundraising Regulation, and the Nonprofit Federation, a division of the Direct Marketing Association that represents hundreds of nonprofit organizations.

The groups, who sued in May 2001, contend that the ordinance is unduly burdensome and violates both the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause. The law requires charitable organizations to provide highly detailed and invasive information as a condition of obtaining and keeping a license to solicit contributions from Pinellas County residents. It gives the county discretion to deny groups the right to solicit donations based on a review of the wording of solicitation letters-a form of censorship. The law also requires nonprofits to register with the county simply because they receive an unsolicited contribution via the Internet, thereby sweeping within its reach charitable groups worldwide that have no connection whatsoever to the county, although the county has announced its intention to repeal that provision.

Already, charities file extensive information with the state of Florida and the IRS. Several aspects of the Pinellas law go well beyond that, seeking information that is of questionable value and would be almost impossible-and possibly illegal-to obtain. For example, the ordinance requires each charity to provide highly personal information about its officers and directors, such as their dates of birth and drivers' license or Social Security numbers-information that is rife with the potential for abuse. Similarly, the law requires disclosure of whether any director, manager, or specified official has ever been employed by or a member of another organization registered in Pinellas County. Answering this would force charities to take the unusual step of investigating not only the employment and professional histories of its various directors, officers and employees, but also their affiliations with other groups, whether political, religious, or social. The law also demands charities to make detailed financial disclosures that exceed what either the IRS or the state of Florida require, and are so extensive that a charity attempting to register would have to totally revise its accounting system to provide the data in the manner requested.

Pinellas County does not have the staff, expertise or procedures in place to stop charitable organizations from making fraudulent solicitations, as is the ostensible purpose of the county's ordinance, the brief says. Further, the county receives virtually no complaints about fraudulent solicitations, county workers admitted in depositions. The county does not verify information on the forms charities submit. Nor does it review materials for potential fraud -unless there is a complaint. Workers just file the forms away.

In fact, the county admits that it has received no complaints that a charity has committed solicitation fraud in Pinellas County, and it knows of no instances in which a charity has provided false information in its registration materials. This is important because case law says that a government regulating speech to redress past harms or anticipate future harms-such as fraud-must demonstrate that the harms are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will alleviate the harms. For the ordinance to withstand a legal challenge, then, the county must show that solicitations by charitable groups are causing real harm in Pinellas County-which they aren't, according to the county-and that workers use the ordinance to prevent the harm, which they clearly are not, since they don't verify information on forms or conduct investigations.

Further compounding these problems, the plaintiffs argue, the ordinance also violates the First Amendment because it requires that a charity obtain the county's permission before it sends a single piece of solicitation mail into the county. The issuance and revocation of permits in the county is a highly subjective affair dependent on differing interpretations of the county's complicated ordinance and forms, and on the exercise of considerable discretion by county officials. There are inadequate procedural safeguards to alleviate the risk of censorship and to ensure that charities promptly receive their permits, the plaintiffs say.

"From top to bottom, this ordinance is unconstitutional. There are so many legal problems with it that it is difficult to know where to start," said Bonnie Robin-Vergeer, the Public Citizen attorney handling the case. "This legal challenge is of critical importance. Nonprofit groups already are struggling under the weight of the requirements imposed by 40 states. If only a tiny fraction of local governments across the country enacted ordinances half as burdensome as Pinellas County's, then the largest of national charities could be forced to close up shop."

A copy of the brief is available at

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Pinellas-SJMem.pdf.

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

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

5/24/02
7:42:40 PM

The Nation

George W. Bush is currently in the political cross-hairs for the failures of the FBI and CIA in identifying and understanding terrorist threats. And there's nothing wrong with that. Bush is president, after all.

But the key question is not the 1970s cliche, What did the President know and when did he know it? The more appropriate query is, What did US intelligence know--and what did the President know and do about that?

For more on this story, read the latest installment of David Corn's Capital Games. Exclusively available at:

http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=63

And see these related editorials from the June 10, 2002 issue of The Nation for background:

NATION EDITORS: September 11 Questions

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=editors

JOHN NICHOLS: McKinney Redux

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=nichols

MICHAEL TOMASKY: As The Press Turns

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=tomasky

You can also find new web-only features currently at:

http://www.thenation.com:

FSP | Playing With Fire

by MATT BIVENS - America's highest national security priority should be to keep Russia from becoming a terrorist's Home Depot.

http://www.thenation.com/failsafe/index.mhtml?bid=2&pid=64

ARTICLE | Corporate Welfare at its Worst

by REP. BERNIE SANDERS - One of the most egregious forms of corporate welfare can be found at an obscure federal agency called the Export-Import Bank.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=sanders20020521

ARTICLE | The 'Talibanization' of Bangladesh

by RUTH BALDWIN - While the international community looks the other way, religious fundamentalists are terrorizing the people of Bangladesh.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=baldwin20020517

ARTICLE | Allies for Abstinence

by DOUG IRELAND - At a UN special session on children, George W. Bush declared war against the condom as a weapon in the fight against AIDS.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=ireland20020516

And don't miss these new pieces just published in the June 10, 2002 issue of The Nation on a wide-range of topics:

EYAL PRESS: Joseph Stiglitz: Rebel With A Cause

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=press

JONATHAN KOZOL: Malign Neglect

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=kozol

EDWARD KLARIS: Justice Can't Be Done In Public

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=klaris

KATHA POLLITT: And Another Thing...

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=pollitt

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Knowledge (and Power)

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=hitchens

MICHAEL MASSING: The Israel Lobby

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=massing

5/24/02
7:39:52 PM

DAILY GRIST

TRI A LITTLE TENDERNESS

The amount of toxic chemicals released into the environment dropped 8 percent in 2000, continuing a decade-long trend of declining industrial pollution, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA. The Toxics Release Inventory compiles data from more than 23,000 factories, refineries, hard-rock mines, power plants, and chemical manufacturers, which together reported pumping 7.1 billion pounds of toxics into the nation's air, water, and land in 2000. That's down from 7.8 billion pounds in 1999, and represents a 48 percent decrease since 1988. The worst offenders were hard-rock mining companies, which accounted for 3.3 billion pounds of the toxics, followed by the utility industry, which was responsible for 1.1 billion pounds. For the first time, the report tracked chemicals such as dioxins, mercury, and PCBs, which tend to be released in small quantities but are extremely dangerous. Environmentalists called the findings a mixed bag, noting that the decline in direct toxic releases was more than offset by a 25 percent increase in managed toxic waste that wound up in Superfund sites, landfills, incinerators, and recycling facilities.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 24 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=137>

do good: Take action to find the polluters in your neighborhood using TRI data <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/toxic.asp?source=daily#scorecard>

TAIPEI PERSONALITIES

More than 200 former employees of an RCA television and semiconductor plant in northern Taiwan have died of cancer and at least 1,000 others are suffering from the disease, in what industry watchdogs are calling the worst cancer cluster in the history of high-tech. A group of former plant workers arrived in Silicon Valley yesterday to tell their story and plead for justice, which has to date been elusive. Workers believe that the plant polluted the groundwater with toxic chemicals, leading to stillborn babies and cancer cases, but a 1999 lawsuit filed in Taiwan by former workers was dismissed, and a study conducted by the Taiwanese government showed no correlation between the company facilities and the health problems. After two decades of operation, the plant was shut down in 1991 and declared a toxic site by the Taiwanese Environmental Protection Agency. General Electric, former owner of RCA, and the French company Thomson Multimedia, the current owner, spent millions of dollars to clean up the site, but deny that the plant could have caused health problems. In the Bay Area, the former workers are meeting with environmental groups, AFL-CIO leaders, U.S. Labor Department officials, and members of Congress, and they are contemplating filing suit in the United States.

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Matthew Yi, 24 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=139>

GRACELESS SLICK

Massive ships spilling sheets of oil across the sea might make for dramatic photo ops -- yet the vast majority of oil pollution in North America comes not from leaking oil rigs or troubled tankers, but rather from thousands of small, diverse sources, most of them on the land, according to a new report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. These non-point pollution sources are estimated to equal an Exxon Valdez-scale spill -- 10.9 million gallons -- every eight months. In total, non-point sources, which range from oil-streaked streets to lawn mowers to personal watercraft, account for about 85 percent of the 29 million gallons of marine oil pollution in North America every year. Meanwhile, spills from oil transport vessels totaled less than 250,000 gallons in 1999, down from more than 6 million in 1990, largely thanks to substantial tightening of environmental regulations following the 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez. Non-point pollution sources are far harder to regulate and at least as damaging to the environment, because runoff often carries oil into sensitive bays and estuaries.

straight to the source: New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin, 24 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=138>

BLAIR SWITCH PROJECT

In what some observers saw as a thinly-veiled attack on environmentalists and animal-rights activists, British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned that his nation risked being overtaken by other countries if it let public sentiment and vocal protesters stand in the way of scientific progress. Speaking yesterday to the Royal Society in London, Blair said Great Britain's economic future was jeopardized by protests against animal experiments and genetically modified crops, and urged British citizens to judge new ideas based on their scientific merits. Environmentalists viewed the speech with skepticism. Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth, said the government seemed willing to defer to science only when it backed business, and Lord Melchett, policy director for the Soil Association, accused Blair of "regurgitating chemical industry propaganda."

straight to the source: BBC News, 23 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=140>

SNOOP DOG

Almost everyone's been embarrassed at one time or another by an over-eager dog sniffing in the wrong places. Now car owners have to worry about the "smog dog," designed to "sniff" tailpipes to detect air pollution. Formally called the AccuScan Remote Vehicle Emissions Testing System, the smog dog analyzes exhaust from cars as they pass roadside monitors. A camera adjacent to the smog sensors takes pictures of the cars' license plates, and the owners are notified of the results. Polluters are hauled in for an official emissions inspection, while in some states, owners of very clean cars get a letter of congratulations waiving their next emissions appointment. Smog dogs are already in use in several Western states and are currently being tested in Virginia, which could face sanctions from the U.S. EPA if it can't clean up its air. Most of the pollution in that state is from vehicles, and of that, 10 percent of the cars account for 50 percent of the pollution.

straight to the source: ABC News, Tech Live, Gary Nurenberg, 24 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=141>

do good: Take action to pledge to buy an eco-friendly car <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/autos.asp?source=daily#pledge>

5/24/02
7:37:10 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

PACIFIC TOO HOT FOR CORALS OF WORLD'S LARGEST REEF

TOWNSVILLE, Queensland, Australia, May 23, 2002 (ENS) - Coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park may be the worst on record, scientists said today after the most comprehensive aerial survey ever conducted. The survey was aimed at helping unravel the implications of global warming for reef management.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-23-01.asp

JEFFORDS HONORED BY THOSE HE HELPED

By Cat Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, May 23, 2002 (ENS) - Democrats and conservation groups celebrated Senator Jim Jeffords this week, one year after his desertion of the Republican party handed control of the Senate to the Democrats.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-23-07.asp

BRITISH COLUMBIA PROTECTS GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST

VICTORIA, British Columbia, Canada, May 23, 2000 (ENS) - British Columbia has passed regulations to establish 20 new protection areas for the white Kermode bear and its wilderness habitat in the rainforests of the central coast, known as the Great Bear Rainforest.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-23-02.asp

ENGINEERED MOSQUITOES COULD HELP BATTLE MALARIA

CLEVELAND, Ohio, May 23, 2002 (ENS) - A genetically altered mosquito could help reduce the threat of malaria, a disease that kills about two million people each year - mostly African children under the age of five. The insect being developed in Cleveland, Ohio, would be less likely to carry the disease, offering an alternative to the use of toxic pesticides to combat malaria.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-23-06.asp

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 23, 2002

Heavy Hurricane Season Ahead

Conservation Acres Opened to Livestock Grazing

California Canal Will Finally Be Water Tight

New Tactics May Keep Elephants Out of Crops

Convicted Tiger Dealer Sent to His Room

Pheasant Farmers Charges With Killing Protected Birds

Wild Puerto Rican Parrot Population Increases by Nine

Northwest Folklife Festival Features Forest Fun

Radio Tagged Fish Become Sturgeon Detectives

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-23-09.asp

5/24/02
7:32:32 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

SET YOUR SPELING FREE

by Ry Rivard, Wiretap

-- Spelling reformists are organizing on the Web and articulating their hopes for a language.

WHAT IS CHILD PORN?

by Declan McCullagh, Wired Online

-- Attorney General John Ashcroft is championing a bill that outlaws child pornography - even if the images are not of children.

MY TURNING POINT

Web site review by Julie Madsen, myturningoint.com

-- Read and compare the life-altering insights of contributors to this site, or present your own for a creative means of self-discovery.

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

5/24/02
7:30:34 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

PACIFIC TOO HOT FOR CORALS OF WORLD'S LARGEST REEF

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-23-01.html

JEFFORDS HONORED BY THOSE HE HELPED

By Cat Lazaroff

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-23-07.html

BRITISH COLUMBIA PROTECTS GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-23-02.html

ENGINEERED MOSQUITOES COULD HELP BATTLE MALARIA

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-23-06.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 23, 2002

Heavy Hurricane Season Ahead

Conservation Acres Opened to Livestock Grazing

California Canal Will Finally Be Water Tight

New Tactics May Keep Elephants Out of Crops

Convicted Tiger Dealer Sent to His Room

Pheasant Farmers Charges With Killing Protected Birds

Wild Puerto Rican Parrot Population Increases by Nine

Northwest Folklife Festival Features Forest Fun

Radio Tagged Fish Become Sturgeon Detectives

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-23-09.html

5/24/02
7:28:47 PM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

Independent, Commercial-free -- rare commodities in the Media Age.

THE ARMS CONTROL SHELL GAME

Bush's Nuke Policy Treats The Public As A Pawn

by Peter Ferenbach

The recent Bush/Putin nuclear agreement is a cynical shell game designed to cover the perilous new nuclear posture of the Bush administration -- which includes pre-emptive first strikes against non-nuclear nations.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5688

OUR PRO-ISRAEL, PRO-PALESTINIAN MEDIA

With Both Sides Charging Bias, What's An Editor To Do?

by Brendan O'Neill

"With America's leaders scrabbling around for a policy on the Middle East, it isn't surprising that the U.S. media seems more confused about how to report the Arab-Israeli conflict without upsetting either side."

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5682

WALL STREET'S HOT NEW TREND: CORPORATE MEA CULPAS

Investment Houses Say, 'Trust Us. Integrity Is Back.'

by James Welborn

The new American Business Model: Try not to get caught. But when you do, have the public relations and advertising campaigns ready to roll.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5692

Dispatch: Arizona

LIGHTING UP THE RESERVATION

Solar Power Catches On Where Sun -- And Not Much Else -- Is Plentiful

by Ken Shulman

"What better location for a solar-panel factory than a sunlit desert with a natural market for this technology?"

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5684

A GREEN BILL OF HEALTH?

The Government Backs Biobased Manufacturing

by Laura Iiyama

The research on biobased products is not yet complete, or conclusive. But a little-noticed provision in the new farm bill could spark a surge in sales.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5681

And from our CHECK IT OUT! department:

TAXPAYERS GET BURNED ON NATION'S BEACHES

The federal government shells out millions of dollars a year to refurbish the coastal playgrounds of the rich and famous with fresh sand, in an ongoing instance of welfare for the well-off known as "beach renourishment."

Some of the wealthiest beach communities in the nation benefit from beach renourishment, which involves dredging sand from the ocean's floor and blasting it to the shore -- at a cost to taxpayers of $6.7 million per mile. Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that 21 coastal towns on Worth magazine's list of wealthiest places will receive federal subsidies of $1.7 billion over the life of the projects. Denizens of these lucky towns could see their property values go up by tens of thousands of dollars as a result.

And don't miss other short takes in TomPaine.com's CHECK IT OUT! department:

http://www.tompaine.com/check_it_out/

5/24/02
7:26:13 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

NRC raises safety concerns at Entergy La. nuke - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16108/story.htm

Nebraskans blinded by dust storms amid drought - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16118/story.htm

Winds whipping up Colorado wildfire - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16120/story.htm

Ocean oil pollution blamed on US rivers and boats - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16102/story.htm

Line outage hurts Long Island, NY power supply - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16109/story.htm

FirstEnergy bumps up cost of Ohio nuke repairs - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16107/story.htm

Bush admin to issue weaker air conditioner rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16106/story.htm

US says regrets Japanese stand at whaling talks - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16123/story.htm

Energy Dept kills Clinton-era air conditioner rule - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16103/story.htm

UK approves its biggest onshore wind farm - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16114/story.htm

EU proposals on GM food labels unworkable - UK report - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16117/story.htm

Blair takes on GM, animal rights activists - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16121/story.htm

INTERVIEW - Mexico farmers abandon coffee for forests - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16122/story.htm

INTERVIEW - Sweden says cut subsidies endangering environment - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16115/story.htm

Iran casts shadow as Bush arrives in Moscow - RUSSIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16111/story.htm

Norway PM unwittingly smuggled ivory from Nigeria - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16104/story.htm

Austria's EXAA to launch hydro power trading July - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16113/story.htm

Foreign firms win from Dutch green power plan - EON - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16110/story.htm

INTERVIEW - No problem financing a new Finnish n-plant - TVO - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16112/story.htm

Euro MPs vote to ban cosmetics tested on animals - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16119/story.htm

China's oldest giant panda in captivity dies - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16124/story.htm

Shell Brazil unit may be shut as toxic case looms - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16126/story.htm

Urban sprawl up, air pollution down in EU - report - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16105/story.htm

Call for increase in Australia's renewable energy - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16116/story.htm

5/24/02
5:37:00 PM

AlterNet Headlines

http://www.alternet.org

ARE WHITE HOUSE SCANDALS THE BEGINNING OF THE END?

Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet

There are signs that Ari Fleischer's magic and President Bush's teflon coating may finally be fading.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13198

AM I A FOOD SNOB?

Jay Walljasper, Utne Reader

Wealthy, educated urbanites who would never permit themselves to poke fun at welfare mothers or immigrants freely make cracks about spongy white bread and Miracle Whip.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13206

THE DIVINE MS. M?

Nina Willdorf, Boston Phoenix

Once the supreme doyenne of domestic bliss, Martha Stewart now finds that all is not coming up roses.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13214

IN DEFENSE OF ONLINE DATING

Michelle Chihara, AlterNet

Why does everyone insist on bashing online personal ads? The truth is, online and off, bad dates happen.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13178

MEATMARKET.COM

Heather Havrilesky, Salon

In the competitive world of online dating, singles brand themselves as sexy commodities. But what happens when the wrapping comes off?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13185

PART V: DELAY'S MISCELLANEOUS MACHINATIONS

Stephen Pizzo, AlterNet

It's one thing for voters back home to send someone as far outside the mainstream as Tom DeLay to Congress. But the prospect of him becoming the second most powerful member of the House is another thing.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13151

SAIPAN SWEATSHOPS WIN REFORM

AlterNet Staff, AlterNet

We end our series on Tom DeLay with some good news. In a landmark decision, a federal court has just ordered major reforms of one of "America's worst sweatshops," in the Mariana Islands -- home of Tom DeLay's very own "free-enterprise petting zoo."

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13197

BUSH IS NO BERLINER

Editorial Staff, Independent UK

President Bush should listen to what he is told during his European trip.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13215

CONSIDERING KUCINICH

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich shot into prominence when he made a passionate and eloquent speech questioning the war on terrorism. Kucinich's visibility has steadily grown since then and many of his supporters are now talking about a possible run for the White House in 2004. David Corn and Katha Pollitt mull it over.

DEEPER RIVERS

David Corn, LA Weekly

By establishing himself as an iconoclastic legislator who pushes issues few others will touch, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich's candidacy would tread where others can't reach.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13181

REGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVE?

Katha Pollitt, The Nation

Congressman Dennis Kucinich may have the right liberal stance -- anti-death penalty and pro-environment -- but his opposition to abortion rights reveals another side to his politics.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13171

DOOMSDAY MONGERING

Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com

The Bush administration has found the perfect post-9/11 spin strategy: repeatedly hit the panic button so no one asks the really important questions.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13179

FEAR, LOATHING AND ETHNIC PROFILING

Behzad Yaghmaian, AlterNet

To an Iranian-born writer, the U.S. is a haven from the everyday violence of the Islamic Republic -- until he discovers that he fits the 'perfect profile' of an imagined terrorist.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13195

HEAVY METAL HARM

Jim Motavalli, E Magazine

The toxic heavy metal, mercury, is everywhere -- in tuna, auto parts and water. The movement to get it out of the atmosphere has taken on a new urgency as the dangers become better known.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13113

FANTASIES OF FAME

David McGrath, PopPolitics.com

In this age of extreme adventure vacations, you can, for the right price, indulge any lifelong fantasy for a week or a day. Welcome to my literary weekend with Ann Beattie in Key West.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=19

SIZE DOES MATTER

Liz Langley, Orlando Weekly

Alternate-fueled vehicles may seem fringe, but they're inarguably more patriotic than SUVs. Isn't independence from foreign oil what all the flag-waving is about?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13196

5/24/02
5:32:25 PM

MoJournal

http://www.motherjones.com/

Free thinking, non-conforming investigative reporting online.

Volume 1, Issue 21, May 22, 2002

MoJournal Reader:

Those of you that are regular readers of the MotherJones.com Daily Briefing may have noticed a change in the format. Our hope is to provide the same valuable information -- links to thought-provoking coverage of important news stories from mainstream and unusual sources -- in a more entertaining fashion. Consider making the Daily Briefing a regular stop on your daily informational journey.

http://click.topica.com/maaankraaShgaa4pkFbb/

Will Tacy

Editor, MotherJones.com

Visit the world's largest energy educational event! * THE RENEWABLE ENERGY & SUSTAINABLE LIVING FAIR June 21-23, 2002, Central Wisconsin. Hosted by the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. Including hundreds of workshops, exhibits, family entertainment, and a fun-festival atmosphere. For info: www.the-mrea.org or call (715) 592-6595.

WEB EXCLUSIVES

Updates - Easing Access to Bush's Texas Records; 7-Up Bubbles Over Prison Rape; Bypassing a Drug-Law Boondoggle; Suing Greenwashers

http://click.topica.com/maaankraaShgca4pkFbb/

Opinion - Clone-Spotting: Not so long ago in a place not so far away, there emerged an empire bent on ... deregulation. Cartoon by Mark Fiore.

http://click.topica.com/maaankraaShgda4pkFbb/

News Beat - Europe vs. Les Etats-Unis; High Court Split on Porn, Playing With the Planet; more ...

http://click.topica.com/maaankraaShgaa4pkFbb/

Capitol Beat - Cheney's One Request; White House Transparency; Dean on the Scene; more ...

http://click.topica.com/maaankraaShgha4pkFbb/

FROM THE MAGAZINE

Building a Better Bomb: Meet the Penetrator, one of the 'mini-nukes' the Bush administration wants to develop for conventional wars.

http://click.topica.com/maaankraaShgfa4pkFbb/

5/24/02
5:29:50 PM

Public Citizen

Oscar-Nominated Actor and Activist James Cromwell Joins Fight Against Dangerous Nuclear Waste Programs; Celebrity Urges Opposition to the Yucca Mountain and Private Fuel Storage Debacles

May 23, 2002

Oscar-Nominated Actor and Activist James Cromwell Joins Fight Against Dangerous Nuclear Waste Programs

Celebrity Urges Opposition to the Yucca Mountain and Private Fuel Storage Debacles

WASHINGTON, D.C. - James Cromwell, long-time Native American rights activist and Oscar nominated-actor, joined environmental, public interest and religious groups at a press conference outside the Capitol today to urge lawmakers and regulators to reject two dangerous proposals for radioactive waste facilities in the Great Basin. The event took place as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee gathered for the third and final Senate hearing on the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.

"The proposals for radioactive waste dumps at Yucca Mountain and on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah put us all at risk - today and for generations to come," Cromwell said. "We cannot afford to be silent on these important issues."

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is proposing to dump 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from commercial power reactors and DOE nuclear sites at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The project is opposed by the Western Shoshone and Paiute people for whom Yucca Mountain is a sacred site. The DOE's dose modeling, used to determine "acceptable levels" of radiation release from the proposed repository, does not adequately take into account traditional Native American lifestyles and would impose a disproportionate toxic burden on indigenous communities in the area. The Senate is expected to vote on the Yucca Mountain proposal later this summer.

Similarly, Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of commercial nuclear utilities lead by Minnesota's Xcel Energy, is seeking a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to open a "temporary" storage facility for 44,000 tons of high-level waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah. The community there is divided over the issue. Private Fuel Storage has paid undisclosed amounts of money to supporters of the project, while tribal opponents have launched lawsuits against the Bureau of Indian Affairs and intervened with the NRC in an effort to stop the dangerous project. The NRC is expected to rule on the Private Fuel Storage license application before the end of this year.

"These two programs stem from the same highly flawed processes and policies by which public health and safety play second fiddle to the profit-motivated interests of the nuclear industry," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. "The Yucca Mountain and Private Fuel Storage projects must be stopped. We are calling for a thorough review and reorientation of nuclear waste policy."

Added Rev. Ron Steif, director of the United Church of Christ's Justice and Witness Ministries, "Christians, and people of all faiths, are entrusted by God to protect the people and resources of the earth. U.S. nuclear policy has historically and consistently sacrificed the land, health and traditional ways of Native Americans, and we have a moral obligation to oppose this latest attempt to dump deadly nuclear waste in the homelands of the indigenous peoples of the Great Basin region."

Speakers at the press conference also raised concerns about the dangers of transporting nuclear waste to the Great Basin, which is distant from most nuclear reactors. The DOE has indicated that shipments would pass through 44 states and the District of Columbia. Nuclear waste transport containers have not been physically tested to ensure they can withstand a crash. An accident or terrorist attack involving a high-level radioactive waste shipment could be catastrophic.

"The risks of transporting deadly nuclear waste, the environmental justice impacts and the long-term health effects of both these projects are untenable," Cromwell said.

Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) also spoke at the press conference.

The Yucca Mountain and Private Fuel Storage proposals are widely opposed by safe-energy advocates. The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), a network of 200 indigenous organizations, traditional societies and communities across North America, also opposes these projects. IEN's statement is online at

http://www.ienearth.org/nuclear_waste.html.

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

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

5/24/02
5:28:34 PM

Public Citizen

Government's Ground Beef Testing Program Leaves Consumers Vulnerable to Dangerous Bacteria; USDA Records Show Systemic Breakdown in Salmonella Testing Regimen

May 23, 2002

Government's Ground Beef Testing Program Leaves Consumers Vulnerable to Dangerous Bacteria

USDA Records Show Systemic Breakdown in Salmonella Testing Regimen

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The federal government's main microbial testing program for meat is riddled with systemic breakdowns that allow large quantities of potentially contaminated ground beef to land on supermarket shelves, according to a five-month investigation by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and Public Citizen.

Many of the largest ground beef plants in the United States repeatedly flunked salmonella tests but were permitted to continue sending ground beef stamped as government-approved to market, according to an analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) records documenting the government's salmonella testing at ground beef plants throughout the country. The records showed that the program, which began in 1998, is implemented in a highly sporadic and inconsistent manner, and that USDA pronouncements about the program's success are not supported by data in the records.

The findings were contained in a report, Hamburger Hell: The Flip Side of USDA's Salmonella Testing Program. The report was released before the Memorial Day weekend, just as the country kicks off the summer grilling season. The findings are particularly important because salmonella is the only microbe for which the government routinely tests and is touted by the government as an indicator of the safety of the country's ground beef. The testing program is part of a larger government effort to make the meat industry - instead of the government - responsible for overseeing meat packing operations and ensuring that meat stays uncontaminated.

"The USDA typically has sought to protect the program first, the industry second and consumers last," said Felicia Nestor, director of GAP's Food Safety Project. "Their official policy is to avoid testing plants, not report on the bad plants and candy-coat the results by overcounting results from the very best plants that produce less than one percent of the product."

The report lists 77 plants in 26 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico that failed at least one salmonella test "set," which consists of a series of tests. Large plants that have failed are located in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When considering plants of all sizes, the states with the most failing plants were Texas, with 19 failing plants, and California, with 10 failing plants.

"The ineffectiveness of this program makes it a waste of taxpayer dollars and an abuse of the public trust," said Patty Lovera, deputy director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "The government simply is not living up to its promises about the safety of ground beef on supermarket shelves."

In 1996, the government instituted major changes in the federal meat inspection system with the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) program. Under this system, meat plants are responsible for determining where in their production system hazards are most likely to occur and controlling them. The role of government inspectors shifted to the role of auditor, and under HACCP, inspectors have less authority to require corrective action when they see a problem. As part of the new regulatory system, the government launched its salmonella testing program.

Public Citizen and GAP obtained testing data from Jan. 26, 1998, when the program began, through Oct. 1, 2001. The government is supposed to conduct sample sets, which consist of tests conducted on meat during 53 consecutive days in which ground beef is produced. If a plant fails the set, with more than five samples testing positive for salmonella, the USDA is supposed to initiate re-testing in 60 days.

But the government isn't following its own protocol, the records showed. Among large plants, which produce ground beef almost daily, sample sets were completed within 84 days (a time frame chosen to allow for weekends) in less than 40 percent of completed sets. It took the government nearly a year to complete sets at some large plants that eventually failed to meet the standard. Even if a ground beef plant failed six tests - enough to fail a set - before the 53 days was up, the USDA did not take corrective action until all 53 samples were taken. And long periods of time went by - in some cases more than a year - between sets.

The salmonella testing program was originally proposed as a "three strikes" program. But under a 2001 USDA directive, if a plant fails a set twice and the USDA believes the plant will fail a third time, the agency waits until it appears as though the plant can pass before starting another set.

During the period analyzed, the USDA allowed failing plants to send products to market for a cumulative total of nearly 1,000 weeks after the sixth positive salmonella test (which means that the plant failed the set) without informing plant operators of the problems or requiring them to take corrective action. During the 121 weeks of delays that occurred at large plants alone, the USDA knowingly allowed an estimated 218 million pounds of potentially contaminated ground beef - enough for about a billion hamburgers - to enter the market bearing the USDA seal of approval before it informed plant managers of the need for corrective action.

U.S. Reps. John Baldacci (D-Maine) and Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) were scheduled to speak at the press conference to unveil the report and urge improvements in the testing program.

In light of the findings, Public Citizen and GAP recommend that microbial tests be taken daily, large plants be subject to more testing than small plants, the government test routinely for other pathogens and the government take action as soon as a plant fails enough tests to fail a set.

"This is a very important report," said Donna Rosenbaum, food safety consultant with Food Safety Partners, and co-founder and former executive director of Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP). "It shows that our confidence in the microbial testing system of HACCP has been misplaced and premature. Dirty meat from the plants in this report is reaching consumers, killing them and making them sick. It's a shame that nine years after Jack in the Box, USDA still can't get it right."

A copy of the report is available at

http://www.citizen.org/documents/salmonellareport.PDF

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

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

5/23/02
6:07:04 PM

Homeschoolers Outshine Public Fool System

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27324

US senator asks for 9-11 investigation (as of May 15)

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27320

Chandra Levy knew too much.... - Terry Anderson

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27306

Civilian employees of Dick Cheney's former...

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27273

All the desperate lies and spin don't change the fact.. - Dick Eastman

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27269

Prior Knowledge Hits Mainstream – InfoWarz

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27244

5/23/02
6:03:06 PM

The Nation - Gore Vidal

A prolific novelist, playwright and essayist, and one of the great stylists of contemporary American prose, Gore Vidal made his debut with his novel Williwaw at the age of 19, while still a soldier in the US Army.

Called the "master essayist of our age" by The Washington Post, Vidal has also been a longtime voice of reason with his incisive political commentary, both in the US and abroad.

Perpetual Peace for Perpetual War, Vidal's most recent collection of essays became an instant best-seller across Europe with its provocative analysis of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the insidious influence of the religious right in US politics.

Recently published by NationBooks, Perpetual Peace for Perpetual War is now available in the United States. Currently number #12 on the New York Times bestseller list, the book has also been residing on the best-selling lists of The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and Amazon.com--a remarkable achievement for a heavy-hitting political polemic. A high-quality paperback, the book is very reasonably priced at $10.00. So buy a copy (or two or ten) today. They make terrific gifts.

You can order online now via The Nation Books site at:

http://www.nationbooks.org/perp.shtml

5/23/02
5:14:01 PM

t r u t h o u t | 05.24

William Rivers Pitt | George W Bush, Political Terrorist

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24A.Political.Terror.htm

"Ich Bin Ein Berliner"? Not, it Seems, Any More

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24B.Bush.EU.D1.htm

Bush Arrives in Moscow to Controversy Over Iran Statements

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24C.Moscow.Iran.htm

Robert Scheer | Hiding Behind a Veil of Executive Privilege?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24D.Scheer.Veil.htm

FBI Agent's Report in July "Was Very Specific."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24E.Very.Specific.htm

White House Faces First Enron Subpoena

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24F.Enron.Subpoena.htm

Special Report | GOP Protects Offshore Tax Havens

http://www.truthout.org/mm_01/4.dnc.gop.tax.report.pdf

Daschle: One Year After the Jeffords Switch

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24H.Daschle.Jeffords.htm

Israeli Embasy in Paris Burns, Envoy Attempts to Calm Nightmare Fears

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24I.Israeli.Embasy.htm

5/23/02
4:58:46 PM

Connecting The Dots: 9/11 And The Bigger Picture

by Kent Southard, Bush Watch, May 19, 2002

So.... according to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, the 'Administration' knew of the warnings in May; according to Ari's fevered late night Lexis-Nexis search, he says Diane Feinstein knew in early July. Senator Feinstein says yes, she was among a group of senators briefed about a 'spectacular' attack in the offing. Ari and Condi Rice flatly stated this week that the warnings concerned overseas targets; the administration now admits the warnings specifically concerned domestic targets.

Now notice the chronology laid out by the Bush administration itself -- Bush himself was not briefed until early August, a FULL MONTH after prominent senators were already briefed, and something like three months after the 'Administration' knew of the warnings. What happened in the intervening weeks and months before Bush was briefed while on vacation in rural Texas? Well, that's a question that answers itself -- he was sent to rural Texas for the entire month of the highest danger, away from the presumed terrorist targets in Washington. Just as Dick Cheney had absented himself for the month to the wilds of Wyoming. So the White House has, however inadvertently, finally answered the question of who the real president is -- George W. Bush is, literally, the last to know, merely going where he is told when he is told to go for whatever photo-op or fundraiser. Dick Cheney knew in May, and sent himself and junior on August vacations before giving the OK to brief the Dauphin.

If Diane Feinstein and other senators were briefed in early July, who else was 'in the loop?' Well, John Ashcroft, for one. Ashcroft took the unprecedented step of refusing to fly on commercial airliners at the end of July due to a "threat assessment", using expensive charter jets on the taxpayer tab for even personal fishing trips. It's interesting that of all the cabinet members, Ashcroft should be the one chosen to survive the attacks at all costs. Ari Fleischer says the 'dots couldn't be connected' until after passage of the USA-Patriot Act; this is complete nonsense, of course, the FBI agents in the field were prevented from connecting the dots before 9/11 because Ashcroft and the Administration had shut down the granting of FISA warrants (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Whereas, the record of the Clinton administration and Janet Reno was that no FISA requests were refused, under Ashcroft and the Bush administration FBI field agents were unable, after repeated requests, to obtain a FISA warrant against Zacarias Moussaoui even after French Intelligence had named him as having Al Qaeda connections. Among other useful things, Moussaoui's computer held the phone number of Mohamed Atta's roommate.

It might be remembered that the USA-Patriot Act was the product of Ashcroft and the White House without any input at all from the Justice Department that Ashcroft allegedly represented. Whereas, the Bush administration had previously refused to issue a FISA warrant against Moussaoui, a known terrorist engaging in exactly the sort of behavior that had its chief executives cowering in the hinterlands, under USA-Patriot the government now has the authority to conduct FISA type spying on ordinary American citizens merely on the OK of any judge anywhere in the country. So, yeah, it's interesting that the Administration would seek to protect Ashcroft, the indispensable man in the Administration's apparent effort to abrogate the Bill of Rights.

So, Dick Cheney setting us up to accept a police state? Well, they did steal the presidency, and their favorite justice, Antonin Scalia, offered at the time his opinion that 'the constitution does not contain any guarantee of the right to vote for president.' Which is to say they do tend to think this way. And we know what the totality of the agenda is. ABC's Nightline a couple of weeks ago did a two-night special on 'our' oil interests in Central Asia, that region of great untapped wealth that surrounds forlorn Afghanistan. With as careful wording as possible, we were informed that the U.S. is building military bases throughout the region, always adjacent to oil pipelines, with the ostensible purpose of 'protecting against terrorism.' It was reported that there had never been terrorists in these areas, but there were these oil pipelines. At the series' conclusion, Ted Koppel gave perhaps the most precisely nuanced reading I think I've ever heard -- the U.S. is already "deeply invested" in Central Asian oil, Koppel said, and we wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. What he could have added is that Central Asian oil isn't for American SUV's, it will fuel the economic expansion of China and India, and whoever controls it will control the future of the world's largest economies. As has now been admitted, the war against the Taliban was already in place prior to 9/11, a war to give us the Afghan oil pipelines.

Cheney is now promising more devastating attacks than those of Sept. 11th, and I for one don't doubt him. I don't doubt him because we now know that this Administration's true commitment is to its agenda for world power, rather than protecting the citizens of the United States. And of course I can't stop thinking about the historical fact of Operation Northwoods, where the American military planned acts of American domestic terrorism to be blamed on Cuba, to justify war on Castro. Kennedy squashed that plan, but with Cheney, who knows? Who knows?

Source: http://www.bushwatch.net/kent.htm

5/23/02
4:54:09 PM

Bush Opposes Independent September 11 Probe

May 23, 2002

By Steve Holland

BERLIN (Reuters) -- President Bush said Thursday he opposed a special commission to probe how his administration handled pre-September 11 terror warnings and opted instead for a Congressional inquiry that would protect intelligence.

"I, of course, want the Congress to take a look at what took place... the investigation would best be done in the Intelligence Committee," Bush told reporters during a news conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, is pushing for an independent commission after disclosures suggesting the White House missed a series of hints last year that critics believe might have helped prevent the attack.

Bush said that, because "we're still at war," it was important the information he received "be protected because we don't want to give away sources and uses and methodology of intelligence gathering."

The president's comments came as he faced U.S. reporters for the first time since the revelations that he was briefed prior to the September 11 terror attacks that Islamic militant followers of Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) might try to hijack American aircraft.

The United States blames bin Laden's al Qaeda network for the attacks in which 19 men hijacked four U.S. commercial aircraft, driving two into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon (news - web sites). The fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a scuffle between passengers and the hijackers.

The debate over an independent commission flared after last week's disclosure, confirmed by the White House, that Bush received an analysis on August 6 raising the possibility of al Qaeda seeking to hijack planes.

Critics have seized on the August 6 analysis and on a recent disclosure that an FBI (news - web sites) agent in Phoenix recommended last summer that his superiors look for al Qaeda members training at U.S. flight schools as evidence the Bush administration did not do everything it could to prevent the attacks.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has come under fire for what lawmakers say were missteps in failing to act on the memo written by FBI agent Kenneth Williams in July, two months before the attacks, and not correlating that with the August arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who sought flight lessons in Minnesota and is now charged with conspiring in the attack.

FBI Director Robert Mueller briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on a plan to restructure the bureau so that such lack of communication would not occur again.

Bush expressed confidence in the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) and the FBI and said both agencies were doing a better job since September 11.

"Communications are much better than ever before," he said. "They are doing a much better job of sharing intelligence."

5/23/02
4:53:06 PM

White House Confesses Partisan Scare Campaign

No Bigger Threat -- Except From Democrats!!

Bush Official: [Scare] Campaign As Phony As A $3 Bill

Stung by the refusal of even the Media Whores to fall for their latest bullying ploys, White House officials have confessed what everyone else figured out some time ago -- that the scare campaign launched over the weekend is just a political scheme to fend off criticism and attack the Democrats.

The Toronto Globe & Mail reports that, Wednesday, the White House quietly acknowledged that the threats are not urgent and that the warnings are partly motivated by political objectives.

"There will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it," [F.B.I. Director Robert] Mueller told a gathering of prosecutors in Virginia. "It's something we all live with."

However, White House officials told reporters that the blunt warnings issued yesterday and Sunday do not reflect a dramatic increase in threatening information but rather a desire to fend off criticism from the Democrats.

The Bushies' cynicism here is breathtaking -- more so even than with their original cynical ploy!!

The White House thinks it can scare the hell out of millions of Americans in order to advance its partisan political agenda, and then, when caught red-handed, can simply say, like Gilda Radner's old Emila Latella on Saturday Night Live: "Oh! Never mind!" And THEN the White House imagines it can get away with it.

Breathtaking.

But maybe they can get away with it.

You know, who reads the Toronto papers, right? [...snip...]

http://www.mediawhoresonline.com/

5/23/02
4:51:44 PM

White House Defends Terror Warnings

May 22, 2002, Las Vegas Sun

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney denied Wednesday that a flurry of public terror warnings was prompted by criticism over how the Bush administration handled pre-Sept. 11 warnings of an attack.

In an interview taped for airing Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live," Cheney said "irresponsible" comments by Democrats did not influence the administration's warnings to the public this week.

"The fact is there is reason to believe that the threat level has increased somewhat," Cheney said. "We see more noise in the system, more reporting that leads us to be cautious here. We haven't changed our practices at all in terms of when we decide to go public and caution people."

Full Story:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-wh/2002/may/22/052204325.html

xoxox

But Ari Admits Criticism Behind Warnings

Alerts tied to memo flap

By Joseph Curl, May 22, 2002 , THE WASHINGTON TIMES

...The latest alerts were issued "as a result of all the controversy that took place last week," said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, referring to reports that the president received a CIA briefing in August about terror threats, including plans by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to hijack U.S. commercial airliners. [...snip...]

Full Story: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020522-217139.htm

5/23/02
4:49:29 PM

Phoenix Memo Went To Frustrated NYC Patriot-Martyr

John O'Neill, FBI Hero, Got Word in July, Was Rebuffed, "Retired" In Anger

NY Times, Incredibly, Reports And Then Blows Huge Story

A Crucial Piece Of The Bush Scandal Puzzle?

In a stunning revelation, the New York Times has reported that among the two FBI office counterterrorism chiefs who received the now famously neglected Phoenix memorandum last July was none other than John O'Neill -- then the top counterterrorist officer in the FBI's New York City's office, and the FBI's leading expert on Osama bin Laden.

O'Neill knew perfectly well what Al Qaeda was up to, and had been knocking on doors (and, at times, heads) for years to get his colleagues and superiors to understand what he did.

The last straw came in July 2001, when (as he told the French authors Guillaume Dasquie and Jean-Charles Brisard in an interview), O'Neill became fully aware that the Bush administration, anxious over negotiations for a Caspian Sea oil pipe line, had decided to back off of tracking bin Laden and opposing the Taliban, lest it risk alienating powerful Saudi families. Instead of going after the Taliban and bin Laden, the Bush Administration decided to negotiate and try to buy off the Taliban and bin Laden.

Unfortunately for the Administration, the pipe-line negotiations broke down in August.

And on September 11, bin Laden struck.

What no one has known until now is that at the very moment that O'Neill was finally giving up, in July, he was being apprised of the Phoenix memorandum -- a memo, it seems, that practically nobody inside the Bush Administration was willing to treat seriously other than himself.

At the end of August, in disgust, O'Neill left the FBI to take what he somewhat ruefully regarded as his "retirement" job --as head of security at the World Trade Center. There, on September 11, John O'Neill died at the hands of his arch-enemy bin Laden's fiendish followers.

Connect the dots? Well, duh! O'Neill got the Phoenix message. No one would listen. No one. The Bushies had backed off bin Laden. So O'Neill changed jobs -- and went on to die a martyr's death. While all the people who ignored him, on up the chain to the Oval Office, live on -- ghoulishly making political hay out of his sacrifice and their own incompetence -- and, in a sense, their own perfidy.

But here's the really amazing thing -- having unearthed this blockbuster, the New York Times reporters David Johnston and Don Van Natta, Jr., simply bury it in their story.

They report, incredibly, that O'Neill simply "retired" back in August -- ignoring the well-known background, leaving the dots unconnected!!

What did O'Neill know back in July? Whom did he try to warn? What happened when he did so? What did his "retirement" -- and its tragic consequences -- have to do with his frustrated efforts to get Bush's people to listen to him about the Phoenix memo, and/or about everything else he knew about Osama bin Laden's clear and present danger to American lives?

Here are some questions that the Bush people don't want asked, by the New York Times, by a National Board of Investigation, or by anyone else.

Who among ye Whores will have the guts to ask them -- and then have the additional guts to find the answers?

If you can't be stirred by common decency or by human justice or by old-fashioned professionalism, listen to this -- there's a Pulitzer Prize here for someone with enough guts.

Just connect the dots -- and do some intelligent reporting.

In death, the hero John O'Neill may just turn out to be the central clue to solving the Bush 9/11 scandal.

Which will still be cruel -- but at least might lead to justice.

Source: http;//www.mediawhoresonline.com

5/23/02
4:44:11 PM

DAILY GRIST

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

GIVE IT TO ME, BABY

As you are no doubt aware, Grist in the midst of its first-ever fundraising drive. Here's the story: Grist consists of precisely four paid staff members. We send out information by email at no charge to 60,000 people a day, and we post top-notch environmental news, commentary, and features on our website. Plus we point you to more opportunities for environmental activism than any other site on the web. And (admit it) we make you laugh. Trouble is, our shoestring budget is fraying. Help us keep Grist alive and snide by making a tax-deductible donation; money received by June 7 will be matched by generous Grist-lovers, so hop to it. We'll even suspend our normal silliness for a moment of heartfelt thanks.

support Grist: Click here to make a tax-deductible donation <http://www.gristmagazine.com/about/support.asp?source=daily>

UNKEMPT

We're not sure whose job it is to go through all the thousands of pages of documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney's formerly secretive energy task force, but they sure are having a grand old time. This week, the needle in the haystack was a memo sent to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham by Jane Hughes Turnbull, an executive at a California renewable energy company. In the memo, Turnbull chalked up her resignation from the National Coal Council to President Bush's decision to reverse a campaign pledge to cut carbon dioxide emissions. She said his reversal stemmed from vigorous lobbying by the coal industry and was a "monumental mistake" and "profoundly short-sighted." Meanwhile, a letter from former Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp praised Bush's move and credited the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank backed in part by the coal industry, for providing Bush with the "intellectual support and political cover to 'do the right thing'" on CO2 emissions. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued to obtain the Cheney documents, said the two memos are further evidence that industry officials played key roles in shaping U.S. energy policy.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 23 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=133>

only in Grist: Confessions of an energy task force member -- diary of Dick Cheney's secretive group discovered! -- satire in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/imho/imho062901.asp?source=daily>

SHIVA ME TIMBERS

Water rights in the western United States are often determined by what you might call the I-was-here-first principle. This frontier-era rule reserves plenty of water for early birds, less for latecomers, and none at all for the rivers themselves. It also turns a river into a sort of used-car lot, allowing people to buy, sell, and steal as many shares of water as they possibly can. As Indian physicist and activist Vandana Shiva writes in "Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit," that kind of "cowboy economics" increasingly governs water management worldwide -- much to the detriment of the world's ecosystems and poorer citizens. Reviewer Michelle Nijhuis delivers the verdict on "Water Wars," only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: The early bird gets the river -- a review of "Water Wars" -- in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/books052302.asp?source=daily>

STRANGER IN A FAMILIAR LAND

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, sometimes it makes for strange enemies as well: Tensions are brewing between environmentalists and animal-rights activists over federal efforts to establish the health effects of industrial chemicals and pesticides by testing them on laboratory animals. Under pressure from environmentalists, who were concerned about humans being exposed to tens of thousands of environmental pollutants, the U.S. EPA established three chemical-testing programs, all of which use lab animals. In response, animal-rights advocates, who claim the programs lead to needless suffering and death for the animals, joined the pesticide industry in a lawsuit to block one of the three programs, and may sue the EPA over another as well. In addition, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched a website, www.meangreenies.com, attacking the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Wildlife Fund, and Environmental Defense for backing the use of lab animals.

straight to the source: Knoxville News-Sentinel, Scripps Howard News Service, Joan Lowy, 21 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=134>

ALONE RANGER

The Bush administration may feel increasingly isolated over the course of the next few weeks, as the member nations of the European Union fulfill their pledges to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Germany, Finland, Spain, and Denmark have all climbed aboard, and Italy and Greece are expected to do so by the end of this month. All this, even though the continent tilts ever-more rightwards. The obvious but still-stunning lesson for the U.S. is that our friends overseas are so convinced of the dangers of climate change that limiting greenhouse gas emissions is no longer a political issue. Will the U.S. ever catch on? Leonie Haimson weighs the odds in her monthly comprehensive catch-up on climate change, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: This just in -- the latest news from the climate front -- in our Heat Beat section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/heatbeat/thisjustin052302.asp?source=daily>

GET WITH THE PROGRAMME

Despite some bright spots, the outlook for the global environment in the next generation is largely bleak, according to a report published yesterday by the U.N. Environment Programme. The report is the work of more than 1,000 authors and attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of how the environment has changed since UNEP was established in 1972 -- as well as look at trends for the next 30 years. The good news: some improvements in water and air quality in Europe and North America, impressive success on halting damage to the ozone layer, and more wild areas set aside for protection. The bad news: Within 30 years, more than half the world's population could be living with severe water shortages and more than 70 percent of the surface of the Earth could be marked by development.

straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 22 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=135>

straight to the source: New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin, 23 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=136>

5/23/02
4:40:03 PM

"Our concern is that if we lay another investigation on top of that we'll just multiply potential sources of leaks and disclosures of information we can't disclose. ... The key to our ability to defend ourselves and to take out the terrorists lies in intelligence."

Dick Cheney, talking about how a special, independent commission into how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11 would result in intelligence leaks.

5/23/02
4:13:05 PM

America Can Persuade Israel To Make A Just Peace

by Jimmy Carter

In January 1996, with full support from Israel and responding to the invitation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Carter Center helped to monitor a democratic election in the West Bank and Gaza, which was well organized, open, and fair. In that election, 88 members were elected to the Palestinian National Authority, with Yasir Arafat as president. Legally and practically, the Palestinian people were encouraged to form their own government, with the expectation that they would soon have full sovereignty as a state.

When the election was over, I made a strong effort to persuade the leaders of Hamas to accept the election results, with Mr. Arafat as their leader. I relayed a message offering them full participation in the process of developing a permanent constitutional framework for the new political entity, but they refused to accept this proposal. Despite this rejection, it was a time of peace and hope, and there was no threat of violence or even peaceful demonstrations. The legal status of the Palestinian people has not changed since then, but their plight has grown desperate.

Ariel Sharon is a strong and forceful man and has never equivocated in his public declarations nor deviated from his ultimate purpose. His rejection of all peace agreements that included Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands, his invasion of Lebanon, his provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the destruction of villages and homes, the arrests of thousands of Palestinians, and his open defiance of President George W. Bush's demand that he comply with international law have all been orchestrated to accomplish his ultimate goals: to establish Israeli settlements as widely as possible throughout occupied territories and to deny Palestinians a cohesive political existence.

There is adequate blame on the other side. Even when he was free and enjoying the full trappings of political power, Yasir Arafat never exerted control over Hamas and other radical Palestinians who reject the concept of a peaceful Israeli existence and adopt any means to accomplish their goal. Mr. Arafat's all-too-rare denunciations of violence have been spasmodic, often expressed only in English and likely insincere. He may well see the suicide attacks as one of the few ways to retaliate against his tormentors, to dramatize the suffering of his people, or as a means for him, vicariously, to be a martyr....

[But] with the ready and potentially unanimous backing of the international community, the United States government can bring about a solution to the existing imbroglio. Demands on both sides should be so patently fair and balanced that at least a majority of citizens in the affected area will respond with approval, and an international force can monitor compliance with agreed peace terms, as was approved for the Sinai region in 1979 following Israel's withdrawal from Egyptian territory.

There are two existing factors that offer success to United States persuasion. One is the legal requirement that American weapons are to be used by Israel only for defensive purposes, a premise certainly being violated in the recent destruction of Jenin and other villages. Richard Nixon imposed this requirement to stop Ariel Sharon and Israel's military advance into Egypt in the 1973 war, and I used the same demand to deter Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 1979. (A full invasion was launched by Ariel Sharon after I left office). The other persuasive factor is approximately $10 million daily in American aid to Israel. President George Bush Sr. threatened this assistance in 1992 to prevent the building of Israeli settlements between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

I understand the extreme political sensitivity in America of using persuasion on the Israelis, but it is important to remember that none of the actions toward peace would involve an encroachment on the sovereign territory of Israel. They all involve lands of the Egyptians, Lebanese, and Palestinians, as recognized by international law.

The existing situation is tragic and likely to get worse. Normal diplomatic efforts have failed. It is time for the United States, as the sole recognized intermediary, to consider more forceful action for peace. The rest of the world will welcome this leadership.

Jimmy Carter, former U.S. president, is chairman of the Carter Center, which works worldwide to advance peace and human health.

Source: www.CarterCenter.org

5/23/02
4:09:32 PM

Speaking The Truth About Poverty

by Jim Wallis

The best role for faith-based initiatives in America is not only in the provision of social services, but also in the shaping of public policy to secure social justice. We learned that lesson this week in Washington, D.C.

Call to Renewal's Pentecost 2002 Mobilization was called "Speaking the Truth About Poverty." It drew more than 300 faith-based leaders from 42 states to press their senators toward a compassionate and just reauthorization of welfare reform. Out of 84 potential Senate visits, we had 83 - a remarkable accomplishment in this town. Twenty national church and organizational leaders had a very positive dialogue with a bipartisan group of senators, and the key Senate staff members who are crafting a bipartisan welfare bill met with our whole group to discuss their progress and what the most important issues ought to be.

Over and over again, our delegations heard this response from lawmakers: "We can't do this without you." They wanted to hear stories of what is working in local communities and on the street. They wanted our facts, research, and experience. And they were told about the human face of poverty.

Those who came were pastors and lay people, executive directors of faith-based organizations and heads of denominations, community organizers and service providers, and former welfare recipients who came with moving testimonies of how they have escaped poverty. They run shelters and food banks, do job training and economic development, provide health care and education, lead councils of churches and interfaith coalitions that address the most basic problems in their communities.

We said that the mostly single mothers trying to move from welfare to work needed and deserved the adequate child-care support that really enables moms to take care of their kids, especially if work requirements are increased. We said that education and training should be generously counted toward the definitions of "work" hours so that parents will get the jobs they need to support their families. We said that legal immigrants who work and pay taxes should be eligible for the assistance they need too. We said that successful programs to support healthy marriages and families will help overcome poverty, as long as we protect against domestic violence and adequately fund other programs - that we must stop making false choices between being pro-family or pro-funding. We testified how faith-based initiatives are finding real solutions to poverty, but that churches and congregations can't succeed without good public policy. And the Senate listened.

Each night, in the tradition of Call to Renewal, we joined in worship with great choirs, preaching, and testimonies. One night we processed to the U.S. Capitol, where delegation members huddled around their state signs to pray for prophetic boldness and open ears. At a dramatic and inspiring prayer breakfast, Congressman Tony Hall was given our first annual "Joseph Award," for a person in a position of influence who feeds the hungry and serves the poor. Tony told us how Christ and watching people die in Ethiopia had changed his life forever. Then Reverend Darren Ferguson received the "Amos Award," given to a person from humble beginnings who becomes a prophet of justice. The former Sing Sing inmate and now Harlem youth minister moved the entire audience to both tears and hope for a whole generation of urban youth and offenders who are most often forgotten and invisible in official Washington.

In my opening remarks I reminded the faith-based leaders that our vocation is not only to "pull people out of the river, but to go upstream to find out what or who is pushing them in." This week, the faith-based providers came upstream. In the midst of a debate on historic social welfare legislation and on the occasion of the church's season of Pentecost, the timing seemed right. The result of the coming of the Spirit in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, says the book of Acts, was an economic sharing so transformational that "there was not a needy person among them." For another generation of Christian disciples in Washington, D.C., last week, that became not only a prayer, but a commitment. As the quiet voices of prayer were mingled on the west lawn of the Capitol on Monday night, a participant was heard to comment, "This is what Pentecost must have sounded like."

Source: http://www.SoJo.net

5/23/02
4:05:06 PM

Ozone Hole Cooling Antarctica And Other Stories

Adapted by Kathleen Wong, California Academy of Sciences, May 23, 2002

The same ozone hole that makes sunning in Australia a burning proposition may be contributing to the cooling of Antarctica.

Instead of being absorbed in the atmosphere by ozone molecules, ultraviolet radiation zips directly to the ground, is reflected by Antarctica's snow and ice, and bounces back out into space. The result: a net cooling of the Antarctic atmosphere.

David W. J. Thompson of Colorado State University and Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., have found that the cooling effect includes the lowest atmospheric layer known as the troposphere. They report in the journal Science that the cooling of air layer that extends six miles up from sea level strengthens the wind vortex that traps cold air at the South Pole, chilling conditions further. Scientists expect the effect to wane as quantities of ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons, being phased out for use in refrigeration, decline in the atmosphere.

Deadly Algae Bloom Killing California Marine Life

Hundreds of ailing seals, sea lions, dolphins, and seabirds are being found along California's beaches, sending researchers on a hunt for signs of a toxic marine algae bloom. Scientists suspect the culprit is a type of diatom known as Pseudo-nitzchia.

When conditions are right, the single-celled species of algae can produce a deadly nerve toxin known as domoic acid. Marine mammal centers around the state are being deluged by animals suffering from dehydration and disorientation, classic signs of domoic acid poisoning. Anchovies gorging themselves on the diatoms, and then eaten by predators such as pinnipeds and gulls, dose predators high in the marine food chain with large quantities of the poison.

Scientists aren't sure what conditions trigger the blooms but believe it is a natural phenomenon. The California Department of Health Services is warning people not to eat sport-harvested bivalve shellfish, including clams, oysters, and mussels. The last recorded Pseudo-nitzchia bloom, in 1998 killed more than 400 sea lions in one month off the coast of Central California.

Last Wild Condor Set Free

The last wild California condor remaining in captivity was set free to prowl Southland skies last week. Its release is a testament to the success of the once-controversial condor recovery program.

After a 15-year sentence among the program's breeding colony, 22-year-old AC9 was released on May Day in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in Los Padres National Forest. Three other 1-year-old condors were released at the same time. The release of the four birds brings the number of condors flying in the wild to 68.

AC9 was the last free-flying condor to be trapped in the breeding roundup and joined 26 other birds in the program in 1987. Scientists hope to cultivate two condor breeding populations, one wild and one captive, with at least 150 birds each. The birds are being bred in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Boise, Idaho. The largest birds in North America, California condors must still avoid lead shot poisoning, entanglements with power lines, and the other human interferences that decimated their numbers in the 20th century.

Sea Yields Tiny New Type of Bacterium

A teeny-tiny microbe that may have contributed to the emergence of complex cells has been found at the bottom of the ocean. Only 400 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter) across, the Nanoarchea's collection of only 500 million DNA base pairs is one of the smallest genomes known.

Karl Stetter and colleagues at Regensburg University, Germany, report in the journal Nature that these microbugs comprise a new branch of the most ancient forms of life known, the Archea. The scientists discovered the microbe while cultivating Igniococcus archean bacteria taken from hot undersea vents 120 meters deep off Iceland. They noticed 30 to 50 small blobs attached to some Igniococci, and genetic sleuthing turned up a wholly novel genome.

The researchers were unable to culture the Nanoarchea alone, suggesting the microbes depend on the Igniococci for some unknown resource. Other scientists speculate that the Nanoarchea may have been the precursors to the organelles carried within higher eukaryotic cells.

Chickadees Cheat with Song Stars

Female chickadees form an unforgiving audience. When their mates engage in daily singing contests with other males, female black-capped chickadees listen very closely. Should he ever have a bad song day and emerge the loser, she'll sneak off for a quickie with his rival. Then she'll return to the nest to raise a family with her social mate as if nothing had happened.

But the clutch of eggs she eventually bears will have at least two fathers, according to a new study by Daniell Mennill of Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. Mennill reports in the journal Science that males appear oblivious to these brief flings. He also noted that females with the highest social status were also the most likely to cheat. And if the flock's alpha female gets killed, the fickle beta female will immediately divorce her mate and take up with the ruler of the local roosts.

First Steps on Dry Land

Faint traces of multitudinous feet found in a Canadian quarry suggest that animals scurried about on land long before plants made it out of the water. The trackways were made by lobster-sized ancestors of today's insects approximately 500 million years ago. The find pushes back the date of first animal landfall by 40 million years.

Robert MacNaughton of the Geological Survey of Canada and colleagues have found that the sandstone surrounding the 25 trackways shows many signs of having been laid down on dry land. They report in the journal Geology that the rock formations may date back as far as the late Cambrian era. Back then, the world was a treeless wasteland scoured by winds unfettered by so much as a blade of grass. Only algae lined the margins of damp pools and marshes.

The patterns and appearance of the tracks suggest the creatures had eight walking legs and moved with a gait more typical of animals accustomed to swimming. The animals were living along the shoreline of a vast inland sea that had submerged much of eastern North America.

Source: http://www.calacademy.org

5/23/02
3:56:40 PM

End Of 'Free Ride' On Ecosystem CO2 Absorption

Public release date: May 15, 2002, Duke University

Contact: Dennis Meredith mailto:dennis.meredith@duke.edu 919-681-8054

DURHAM, N.C. -- According to a new study, the world may soon see the end of the "free ride," in which carbon absorption by natural ecosystems ameliorates the rise in atmospheric CO2 due to fossil fuel burning and loss of forest. The precise ecosystem study of the reaction of a Texas grassland to a range of carbon dioxide levels has shown that soil nitrogen availability may limit the capacity of ecosystems to absorb expected increases in atmospheric CO2. The researchers said their study emphasizes the urgency with which the U.S. and other nations should adopt stringent limitations on CO2 emissions, as outlined in the international Kyoto accord on climate change.

The researchers, led by Duke University ecologist Robert Jackson and USDA Agricultural Research Service researchers Wayne Polley, and Hyrum Johnson, published their findings in the May 16, 2002, Nature. First author of the study is Richard Gill, a former Duke postdoctoral associate, now a faculty member at Washington State University. The research was supported by the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"Based on fossil fuel emissions, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere should be going up twice as fast as it currently is," said Jackson. "However, natural systems such as the regrowing Eastern forests are currently taking up that extra carbon dioxide, so we're really getting a free ride now.

"Many of us, myself included, believe that this free ride won't continue to the same extent that it has, because the incremental benefits of the extra CO2 get smaller and smaller relative to other nutrient constraints," he said. The policy implications of their findings are apparent, said Jackson.

"Considering the expected population increase, greater resource use per capita and the inability of natural systems to take up CO2, we may well be looking at increases per year that are double what they are now, with atmospheric CO2 concentrations as high as 800 parts per million in this century," he said. "This means that the current lack of interest by the U.S. in participating in the Kyoto accords is especially unfortunate." According to Jackson, the study offered a new approach to studying the ecological effects of increased CO2.

"The study is unique in enabling us to study the effects of CO2 concentrations ranging from those before the Industrial Revolution to those projected for the next century," said Jackson. "It is also unique in providing a continuous gradient of CO2 in the field, allowing us to examine nonlinear and threshold responses and limitations of the system. Nitrogen availability appears to be one such limitation on the ability of plants to absorb CO2."

The researchers chose a section of north Texas prairie as the site for their experimental apparatus, which began operation in May 1997. The apparatus consists of two 60-meter-long long plastic-covered chambers -- resembling giant segmented worms -- erected over the grassland. The chambers measured about a meter wide and a meter high.

In one chamber, the scientists expose the grasses to a smooth gradient of CO2 concentrations ranging, from the current 365 parts per million (ppm) level down to the 200 ppm present at the end of the last ice age. The scientists achieve this concentration gradient by blowing ambient air into one end of the chamber, and as the air flows the length of the chamber, CO2 uptake by the grasses reduces CO2 concentrations down to 200 ppm.

In the other chamber, the scientists pump into one end air enriched to a CO2 concentration of 550 ppm -- the expected level over the next century -- and the plants' CO2 absorption reduces this to 350 ppm at the opposite end. The chamber also includes controls to ensure that moisture and temperature levels match those outside.

"There have been few experiments, even in growth chambers, that could explore the effects of changes since before the Industrial Revolution, but our design enables us to do just that," said Jackson. "Thus, it gives us insights into what changes occurred in the past and improves our understanding about will happen in the future." Operating the apparatus over multiple growing seasons, the scientists conducted detailed biochemical and biological analyses of the grass plants as well as the soil. They also measured how the species composition of the plant community changed.

"We found that many of the plants' physiological processes responded fairly linearly to increases in carbon dioxide, and plant production went up," said Jackson. "However, production and soil carbon storage basically saturated above 400 parts per million, a CO2 concentration very close to the current one.

"For me, this was the most interesting part of the study, because it indicates that we are now right at a threshold where the benefits of extra CO2 may not be all that great." Particularly important, said Jackson, were the measures of soil nitrogen availability. Soil bacteria metabolize organic matter, mobilizing nitrogen as ammonia and nitrate, which serves as the plants' nitrogen nutrient source

"Our measurements showed that soil nitrogen decreased about threefold in a nonlinear way, such that as CO2 went up, available nitrogen went down," said Jackson. "So that's where the fundamental nutrient limitation of the system occurred. The decrease in nitrogen availability apparently constrains the ability of the plants to use extra CO2. "

According to Jackson, the findings by him and his colleagues agree with tentative findings by the Forest-Atmosphere Carbon Transfer Storage (FACTS-1) facility at Duke (http://www.env.duke.edu/forest/FACTSI.htm). In that facility, sections of open forest are maintained at high CO2 levels, to study their effects. Data from a prototype FACTS-1 facility indicated that the forest section under study had stopped responding to high CO2 levels with enhanced growth.

The researchers plan future studies using the apparatus to examine another potential limitation, water availability, said Jackson.

Source: http://www.Duke.edu

5/23/02
3:51:40 PM

Chevron Helped Dictate U.S. Energy Policy

Sharon Buccino and Rob Perks, Natural Resources Defense Council

Bush Administration's Energy Task Force Adopted Several of the Oil Company's Recommendations

WASHINGTON (May 22, 2002) - Among the roughly 1,500 additional documents from the Energy Department related to Vice President Cheney's energy task force, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has uncovered evidence showing the Bush administration implemented energy policies requested by Chevron Corporation. The company provided several recommendations, ranging from easing federal permitting rules for energy projects to relaxing standards fuel supply requirements, which ultimately were included in the president's national energy plan.

NRDC unexpectedly received these documents late last night, 41 days after the final court deadline for their release. According to Sharon Buccino, NRDC senior attorney, "The administration has unlawfully delayed the release of some of the most embarrassing evidence of industry involvement in the Bush energy plan."

In a February 5, 2002, letter to President George Bush and copied to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Chevron CEO David J. O'Reilly recommends four short-term actions the administration should take to "eliminate federal barriers to increased energy supplies." The energy task force - officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) - included Chevron's recommendations in its report to President Bush on May 17, 2001. Examples follow:

Permitting for Energy Projects

Chevron Recommendation: "Charge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator to identify and address federal barriers to permitting energy projects (e.g. projects to develop new supplies of energy, and projects that produce cleaner transportation fuels)..."

Task Force Recommendations: "The NEPD Group recommends the President issue an Executive Order to rationalize permitting for energy production in an environmentally sound manner by directing federal agencies to expedite permits and other federal actions necessary for energy-related project approvals on a national basis. This order would establish an inter-agency task force chaired by the Council on Environmental Quality to ensure that federal agencies responsible for permitting energy-related facilities are coordinating their efforts. The task force will ensure that federal agencies set up appropriate mechanisms to coordinate federal, state, tribal, and local permitting activity in particular regions where increased activity is expected.

"The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Secretary of Energy to take steps to ensure America has adequate refining capacity to meet the needs of consumers.

* Provide more regulatory certainty to refinery owners and streamline the permitting process where possible to ensure that regulatory overlap is limited.

* Adopt comprehensive regulations (covering more than one pollutant and requirement) and consider the rules' cumulative impacts and benefits.

"The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy and other relevant agencies, to review New Source Review regulations, including administrative interpretation and implementation, and report to the President within 90 days on the impact of the regulations on investment in new utility and refinery generation capacity, energy efficiency, and environmental protection."

"Boutique" Fuel Requirements

Chevron Recommendation: "Promote legislation to address the balkanization of transportation fuels. Recent federal, state and local regulations have led to a patchwork of boutique fuel requirements, which have contributed to supply constraints and increased fuel costs. Comprehensive energy legislation should address the regulatory requirements affecting the nation's motor fuel supply. A federal plan should be developed to move the U.S. to nationwide performance-based standards for gasoline and diesel fuels."

Task Force Recommendation: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Administrator of the EPA to study opportunities to maintain or improve the environmental benefits of state and local 'boutique' clean fuel programs while exploring ways to increase the flexibility of the fuels distribution infrastructure, improve fungibility, and provide added gasoline market liquidity. In concluding this study, the Administrator shall consult with the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, and other agencies as needed."

Offshore Oil Exploration - Gulf of Mexico

Chevron Recommendation: "Proceed with domestic energy development, including Lease Sale 181 in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico scheduled for later this year. This announcement would complement and reinforce your support to open ANWR, and demonstrate a commitment to reject unjustified opposition to new energy leasing and development."

Task Force Recommendations: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior to consider economic incentives for environmentally sound offshore oil and gas development where warranted by specific circumstances: explore opportunities for royalty reductions, consistent with ensuring a fair return to the public where warranted for enhanced oil and gas recovery; for reduction of risk associated with production in frontier areas or deep gas formations; and for development of small fields that would otherwise be uneconomic.

"The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior to re-examine the current federal legal and policy regime (statutes, regulations, and Executive Orders) to determine if changes are needed regarding energy-related activities and the siting of energy facilities in the coastal zone and on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

"The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretary of the Interior continue OCS oil and gas leasing and approval of exploration and development plans on predictable schedules."

Trade Sanctions

Chevron Recommendation: "Oppose any attempt to reinstate the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) which sunsets on August 5, 2001, and consider lifting or modifying the current Executive Order that prohibits U.S. companies from doing business with Iran. U.S. energy policy should recognize the global nature of energy supply, and the role that foreign countries play in our nation's energy security. We urge your administration to support U.S. based companies efforts to expand and diversify the supply of energy throughout the world. This includes your support for eliminating ineffective, unilateral trade sanctions and promoting open trading relationships."

NEPDG Recommendation: "The NEPD Group recommends that the President direct the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to initiate a comprehensive review of sanctions. Energy security should be one of the factors considered in such a review."

The Bush administration's National Energy Policy Report is on the Web at:

http://www.fe.doe.gov/general/energypolicy.shtml .

Other documents reveal key involvement by the National Mining Association, the National Petroleum & Refiners Association, General Motors and other major industries in the development of the Bush energy plan.

As part of its ongoing efforts to obtain additional energy task force documents that the administration continues to withhold, NRDC will be back in federal court tomorrow.

Source: http://www.NRDC.org

5/23/02
3:47:03 PM

democracy summer 02

knowledge, training, action!

June 25th-July 2nd

Washington, DC

democracy: keepin it real

Whether you're a citizen, student or activist, a voter or a non-voter, one thing is clear: democracy in the US is not living up to its name. Just over a year after the 2000 elections memorable for butterfly ballots, voter intimidation, illegal voter roll purges, and the supreme court selection of the President, young people are still being told that we're apathetic because we don't participate! In a democracy full of corruption, racism, boring candidates and inequality, our question is, Participate in what!?

Enter the second annual democracy summer, a diverse gathering of youth from all over the country committed to tackling the most burning issues of our democracy. After the week, you will have mastered the knowledge needed to approach the issues, gotten extensive training in organizing, and put your skills into action. Go to <http://www.democracysummer.org> and see for yourself!! Space is limited! Call 202-234-9382 x257 and we'll tell you more! Email democracysummer@excite.com if you would like to receive updates or brochures in the mail (specify number please).

Knowledge Sessions include:

Keepin Democracy Real: why voting is not enough

Systemic Solutions: our Voters Bill of Rights

Towards a constitutional right to vote

Clean Money: Ending the corporatization of government and public life

Shaking the Foundation: Electoral justice as it connects with global and local issues.

Opening it up! Centralizing youth, people of color,and the poor in the reform movement.

Civil Liberties and Democracy Post 9/11

Firestarters! Learning from those that have come before

The Last Colony: The disenfranchisement of 600,000 people in our nation s capital

Training sessions:

Youth-led community organizing

Training for youth trainers prepping to take the message back home

Organizing on your campus and beyond

Coalition building with diverse groups

SPIN! How to work effectively with the media

Using art, slams, music, and creative force to recruit and sustain

Voter registration drives and getting your voice heard

Gleaning lessons from recent electoral reform victories learn what works!

Action!

Takin' it to the streets: creative action for DC and the nation

Exercising your power: meet with members of Congress

Pass it on: The art of street canvassing

Building the movement: Sparking local action at home with DAWG!

We hope to hear from you soon!

Source: http://www.democracysummer.org

5/23/02
3:41:34 PM

A Horse's Ass

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells? The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, in some of the old, long distance roads in England, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot, and bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story...

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big boosters attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. (Do you see what's coming??) The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is, as you now know, about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So; a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!

5/23/02
3:37:14 PM

Israeli Settlements Control Nearly Half Of West Bank

by Jim Lobe

While Israeli settlements currently constitute less than two percent of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, they control a total of 41.9 percent of the territory, according to a report released by Israel's most important human rights organization Monday.

The group, B'Tselem, or the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, charged that Israeli authorities have created a "regime of separation based on discrimination," in which they apply two different systems of law in the same area, basing the rights of individuals there on their nationality.

"This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of the distasteful regimes of the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa," according to the report, entitled 'Land Grab: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank.'

Its publication comes at a critical moment in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Recent invasions by Israeli military forces in the West Bank in retaliation for suicide bombings have been widely denounced by the international community as major setbacks to the Oslo peace process, which was based on the principle that Israel would eventually vacate most of the settlements in exchange for a permanent peace agreement with the Palestine National Authority headed by Yasser Arafat.

The polarization caused by the conflict, the latest and most violent phase in the so-called al-Aqsa intifada that began in September, 2000, has hardened the position of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, while nominally in favor of the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, has more recently vowed not to give up any Israeli settlements.

On the other hand, a poll taken just last week by the Dahaf Institute in Israel found that 59 percent of Israelis believe that a withdrawal that includes evacuating most of the settlements will lead to a renewal of the peace process, and 72 percent said it would also improve Israel's battered international standing.

The poll was released in advance of the biggest peace demonstration in Israel since the latest intifada began. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Israelis turned out in Tel Aviv this past weekend in support of a Saudi peace plan which calls for Israel to dismantle the settlements and withdraw fully from the occupied territories in return for full peace with all of its Arab neighbors.

B'Tselem's report charges that Israel's settlement policy--that has resulted in some 380,000 Israeli citizens living in the West Bank--violates international humanitarian law which bans an occupying power from transferring its citizens into occupied territory and from making any permanent changes in occupied areas unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population or for urgent military needs.

"Israel's settlement policy violates these regulations," the report concludes, noting that Israel has used the settlements to "justify numerous violations of the Palestinians' human rights, such as the right to housing, to earn a livelihood, and the right to freedom of movement."

"The drastic change that Israel has made in the map on the West Bank prevents any real possibility for the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian state as part of the Palestinians' right to self-determination," according to the report, which is particularly critical of what it calls "the manipulative use of legal tools in order to give the settlement enterprise an impression of legality."

Thus, when Jordanian legislation served Israel's goals, it applied Jordanian law, arguing that international law obliges it to respect the legislation in effect before occupation on the West Bank of the Jordan River. On the other hand, where Jordanian legislation interfered with Israel's plans, it was changed through military legislation.

B'Tselem called such practices "cynical and biased," as well as violations of international conventions to which Israel is itself a party.

To redress these injustices, the report called for an immediate halt to the construction of new settlements and building within settlements; a freeze on the planning and construction of new bypass roads and the expropriation of land for those purposes; a return to the Palestinian communities of all undeveloped areas within the municipal boundaries of the settlements; and the abolition of special planning committees in the settlements which are used to extend their control.

Source: http://www.OneWorld.net

5/23/02
3:35:14 PM

Five Questions

by William Rivers Pitt

I often fantasize about having one hour alone with George W. Bush, armchair to armchair as it were, so I might put five questions to him. The questions change from week to week; this busy administration hardly passes a day without saying or doing something that, twenty years ago, would have obsessed the national media for weeks. It would be nice to hear him speak on these things, to listen to the insider's view.

After all, Bush is privy to virtually every decision made by Dick Cheney. It stands to reason, therefore, that George would know better than most what motivating factors move the White House. Cheney would never deign to sit with me; power like that has no time for the truth. Bush, on the other hand, could easily spare me an hour down in Crawford. He's there all the time, inspecting the patch of desert he calls a 'ranch.'

Below are the questions I'd ask if he called me down there tonight. They'll probably change twice before Monday, but only if we're lucky.

1. What is the true nature of the Saudi Arabian connection to 9/11, and why has this connection not been a priority for Bush's State Department?

Just today, American Undersecretary of State John Bolton gave a speech to the conservative think tankers at the Heritage Foundation entitled, "Beyond the Axis of Evil." In it, he leveled a military finger at Lybia, Syria and Cuba, accusing them of pursuing development programs for the creation of weapons of mass destruction.

In essence, Lybia, Syria and Cuba have joined the long line of potential targets along with Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Yemen, the Republic of Georgia, the Philippines, and Colombia. For some of these nations, it is the suspicion of the presence of the aforementioned weapons program that draws the ire of the State Department. For others, it is the shadowy accusation of fealty to the Al Qaida cause that brings forth our attention. Afghanistan has already been obliterated.

In all of this, there is scant mention of Saudi Arabia. The vast majority of the September 11th hijackers called Saudi Arabia home. Many Saudi Arabians fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. One of those was named Osama bin Laden. The Bin Laden Group, a massive construction firm with deep business ties to America that was created by bin Laden's father, is based in Saudi Arabia. The extreme fundamentalist Wahabbi sect of Islam is rooted in Saudi Arabia, and it is from this movement that scores of would-be terrorists have grown.

The silence surrounding Saudi Arabia has been huge. How can we fail to pursue Saudi Arabia with the Bush Doctrine guiding our way? Nations that sponsor terrorism, or have terrorists operating freely within their borders, are in grave danger of invasion and destruction. This Doctrine was established in Afghanistan, and it appears many other countries face a similar fate. Yet Saudi Arabia, a veritable birthing bed for international terrorism, escapes taint.

Is this silence due entirely to Saudi Arabia's supply of oil? If so, please explain the details behind this necessity. Thousands of Americans have died, and the world has been plunged into war. If the prime suspect behind the 9/11 crime has been given a free pass, it is essential that we understand exactly why. Names and numbers, please.

2. Why has the Bush administration not been the loudest, most strident advocate for a far-reaching investigation into 9/11?

On the eve of Bush's State of the Union address, it was reported that he and Cheney issued a request to Senate Majority Leader Daschle that many interpreted as a veiled threat. Soft-pedal the 9/11 investigation, Bush and Daschle said. Don't interfere.

In the time between, the Bush administration has changed its tack somewhat, claiming to welcome an investigation. Yet there is silence, and silence, and silence on this front.

How can this administration fail to be the most ardent, vociferous advocate for an investigation into September 11th? How is it possible that the glaring security loopholes that allowed the attack to take place are not publicly dunned in the vigorous fashion that is required? These missed signals must be investigated and deconstructed, so that the security gaps they slipped through can be closed.

Why did the government's lead investigator into 9/11 quit?

What role did a planned natural gas pipeline through the subcontinent play in 9/11? What role does it play in the post-9/11 international relations situation?

The American people deserve to know exactly what happened on that day, and why. "The attackers hated our freedom and our way of life" is unconscionably insufficient. As this happened on this administration's watch, how is it they have failed to push relentlessly for answers that will undoubtedly enhance our security?

3. What, precisely, is the legal basis for a war with Iraq?

The resolution agreed to by Congress and the White House on September 14th gave Bush wide latitude to "use all and necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks."

The resolution further allowed Bush to use military action "to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States" by those who perpetrated the September 11th attacks.

Iraq falls under neither heading. No proof whatsoever has linked Saddam Hussein or his government to the 9/11 terrorists. No proof exists that he intends to help any entity or nation to perpetrate future attacks. The state of his weapons program exists in a state of innuendo, as there have been no inspectors over there for some time.

Why do we threaten Iraq with war while leaving Saudi Arabia unmolested and unthreatened? Which aspect of the Bush Doctrine applies to this apparent double-standard?

Speaking tactically, how do military threats levied against Syria, Jordan, Iran, Lybia and Yemen strengthen our fighting capabilities in the region surrounding Iraq? We'll need those countries to keep their powder dry, as they did during the Gulf War, to avoid a region-wide conflagration. Moreover, we'll need neighboring allies (Saudi Arabia again) unmiffed enough to allow us to base troops and fighters for jump-offs towards Baghdad.

It looks as though we are cruising towards a conflict with Iraq that has little to do with the September 14th resolution, and in the process we seem to be alienating and infuriating other nations in that region in a manner that will make a war with Iraq far more dangerous and destabilizing. Please explain the wisdom of these policies.

4. Where is the anthrax killer?

There is not much to add after the initial query. There's a killer with deadly poison in hand wandering free in this country. The evidence points directly to home-grown terrorism. What is the status of this investigation, and how is it that such a dangerous killer has escaped detention?

5. What role did America play in the recent failed coup in Venezuela?

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was ousted from office in a coup perpetrated by Venezuelan military officers and businessmen early in April, the Bush administration fell over itself in a rush to welcome the new government into the family of nations. Never mind that Chavez won two popular elections in that democratic nation. As administration officials admitted, winning an election does not necessarily convey legitimacy.

The collapse of the coup and the reinstatement of Chavez left a large wad of egg on the face of the Bush White House. As the story behind the failed coup has begun to coalesce, several prominent American officials have been named by the foreign media, and by Chavez himself, as having had a hand in the overthrow. Among them are:

Eliot Abrams, member of the White House National Security Council, once convicted for lying to Congress about the Reagan administration's role in the Iran/Contra scandal, is reported to have given American approval for the coup;

Otto Reich, senior White House policy advisor on Latin America, once the American ambassador to Venezuela under Reagan, met several times with Pedro Carmona, the erstwhile coup leader ousted after 24 hours of rule. Reich, after the coup began, gathered the Latin American ambassadors to him and stated bluntly that democracy had not been violated in Venezuela, and that America would support Carmona;

John Negroponte, American ambassador to the United Nations, former ambassador to Honduras under Reagan who held that post during the worst atrocities of the Iran/Contra affair, was reportedly warned of the coup as early as last January;

Lt. Colonel James Rodgers, assistant military attaché to Venezuela, who was spotted with the coup plotters right up to the moment the plot unfolded.

What is the truth behind all of this? Where are America's hands, and are they as dirty as they seem? As Venezuela leads OPEC, and is a major petroleum source for the United States, are we dealing with yet another foreign policy fiasco based upon oil? How can the Bush administration condone the overthrow of a democratically-elected government?

So...those are the questions for today. I will have more tomorrow. Hopefully, someone in the mainstream press with access to Bush will read these and choose to ask them, tape recorder in hand. I'm still waiting for my call from Crawford.

Source: http://truthout.com/docs_02/05.09D.WRP.5.Qs.htm

5/23/02
3:32:41 PM

Breast Cancer: A Pinch of Cancer - Can Wearing A Bra Kill You?

by William Thomas

If you didn't burn yours in the 'Sixties, you might want to put it away now. "Bras cause breast cancer. It's open and shut," says medical researcher Syd Singer.

The Singers became breast cancer sleuths in 1991. On the day Soma discovered a lump in her breast, the husband-wife team was studying the effects of Western medicine on Fijians. In the shower, Syd noticed that Soma's shoulders and breasts were outlined by dark red grooves. He remembered a puzzled Fijian woman asking his wife about her brassiere:

"Doesn't it feel tight?"

"You get used to it," Soma had replied.

Could bras be constricting breast tissue, Syd wondered, hampering lymph drainage and causing degeneration? Soma decided to stop wearing hers. But when Syd searched the medical literature he found no known causes of breast cancer, which

rarely appears before a woman's mid-thirties, most often after 40. The highest death rates from breast cancer are in North America and northern Europe, with the developing world catching up fast.

The World Health Organization calls chemical toxins the primary cause of cancer. But poisons accumulating in breast tissue are normally flushed by clear lymph fluid into large clusters of lymph nodes nestling in the armpits and upper chest. The Singers found that "because lymphatic vessels are very thin, they are extremely sensitive to pressure and are easily compressed." Chronic minimal pressure on the breasts can cause lymph valves and vessels to close.

"Less oxygen and fewer nutrients are delivered to the cells, while waste products are not flushed away," the Singers noted. After 15 or 20 years of bra-constricted lymph drainage, cancer can result.

Looking at other cultures, Soma and Syd were struck by the low incidence of breast cancer in poorer nations awash in pesticides dumped by northern nations. They didn't find peasant women wearing push-up bras. Instead, they discovered that the Maoris of New Zealand integrated into white culture have the same rate of breast cancer, while Australia's marginalized aboriginals have virtually no breast cancer. The same trend held for "Westernized" Japanese, Fijians and other bra-converted cultures.

In Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, the researchers also observed that just before a woman begins her period, estrogen floods her system, causing her breasts to swell. If she continues wearing the same bra size, life-saving lymphatics will be even more tightly squished. Had they found the "estrogen link" to breast cancer?

Childless women never fully develop their breast-cleansing lymphatic system. Nor do women who have never breast-fed. Working women who wear bras everyday and postpone having children could be at higher risk, the Singers warn.

Even worse, a young woman's coming of age is often "marked" by her first bra. Like the ancient Chinese practice of foot-binding, "breast-binding" at puberty can eventually lead to severe medical complications.

Could bras be the "missing link" in a growing epidemic of breast cancer? Beginning in May, 1991, Soma and Syd Singer's 30-month "Bra and Breast Cancer" study interviewed some 4,000 women in five major US cities. All were Caucasian of mostly "medium income" ranging in age from 30 to 79. Half had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Almost all of the women interviewed were unhappy with the size or shape of their breasts. Women who chose a bra for appearance, ignoring soreness and swelling, had twice the rate of breast cancer of those who did not.

But the most startling statistic was that three out of four women who wore their daytime bras to sleep contracted breast cancer. So did one out seven women strapped into a bra more than 12 hours a day. Bra-free women have just a one in 168 chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer, says Singer. The same as bra-free men.

"Don't sleep in your bra!" Syd Singer pleads. "Women who want to avoid breast cancer should wear a bra for the shortest period of time possible --certainly for less than 12 hours daily."

Syd also submits that some 80% of bra-wearers who experience lumps, cysts and tenderness will see those symptoms vanish, "within a month of getting rid of the bra."

Not everyone is ready to hang up her halter. As one woman told the team, "My tits will sag all the way to my navel without a bra." But Surgeon Christine Haycock at the New Jersey College of Medicine says that inherited traits -- not ligaments or breast size -- are the reason some breasts give in to gravity. Bouncing bosoms help clear the lymphatics.

Well aware that their findings were "explosive," the Singers sent their survey results to the heads of America's most prestigious cancer organizations and institutes. None responded. Like the cancer business, the bra business is huge. Multiply how many worldwide women buy several $25 bras every year and you end up with a multiple of the $6 billion-a-year US bra business.

Syd Singer says that establishment censorship of the bra-breast cancer connection is killing women. Pointing to the biggest commonality among breast cancer patients, he's emphatic that it's bra-squeezed lymphatics.

Going bra-less for all occasions, Soma began dressing to de-emphasize her breasts. She also began regular breast massage and bicycle riding, vitamin and herbal supplementation, and drinking only purified water.

Two months later, her lump disappeared.

At the first frightening sign of a lump, an angry Syd Singer says, "women should take their bras off before they take their breasts off." Why wait, when you can liberate your lymphatics now.

IF YOU MUST WEAR A BRA:

Push-up and sports bras are out. Choose loose-fitting cotton bras. Make sure you can slip two fingers under the shoulder-straps and side-panels. The higher the side-panels, the more severe the restriction of major lymph nodes. Don't wear this disastrous device to sleep. Take it off at home. Massage your breasts every time you remove your bra. Sing your lymphatics into health -- or at least breathe deeply.

Source: http://chetday.com/breastcancerandbras.htm

5/23/02
1:16:32 PM

Islay Set For hydrogen Power

by James Freeman and Vicky Collins

Scientists want to turn Islay into the world's first hydrogen-powered island.

They plan to make the clean fuel by treating water with electricity generated from a wave power station already operating on the island. They will then store the hydrogen in batteries known as "fuel cells", which local people will take home to run everything from tumble-driers to tractors.

The plan is the brainchild of the Scottish Fuel Cell Consortium, a grouping of scientists and businesses backed by Scottish Enterprise. One of its leading figures, Professor Sinclair Gair, of Napier University, Edinburgh, said yesterday that the possibility of Islay as the ultimate "green-powered" island was very real.

"The feasibility of large-scale hydrogen production and use on the island is not in doubt," he said. "We need business partners in the first instance.

"We know we can convert vehicles to use hydrogen fuel cells. The next move is to power a public building, which we think we have already identified, in Islay. The intention is to show everyone where the future is, and in 10 or 20 years it is going to be a hydrogen future."

The consortium will present the plan to island businesses at a meeting in the Ardbeg Distillery on Islay tomorrow. A full public meeting will follow quickly.

Islay was picked because of its ground-breaking Limpet power wave power station in the village of Portnahaven. Built by the Inverness company Wavegen, the Limpet is the first wave-driven power station to feed renewable energy directly into the national grid.

The Islay project is a UK leader at a time when governments and industry across the world, faced with diminishing fossil fuel resources, instability of oil supply, and rampant global warming, are engaged in a dash to master hydrogen fuel cell technology. There has been a particular upsurge of interest in the technology in the United States since the September 11 terrorist attacks, with car manufacturers ploughing funds into developing hydrogen vehicles.

Robin Currie, a local councillor and a board member of the Islay Development Company, welcomed the project.

"I have always believed that Islay should be at the forefront of the green energy revolution. This initiative is excellent, very welcome, and fits in with the work of the IDC on electric cars and buses and our plan for photovoltaic cells in our new Gaelic school."

If the dream is realised, green electricity from the wave power station will be used to power a hydrolysing machine - already in common use to make commercial hydrogen -which will then be compressed, bottled, and can be used to feed fuel cells to provide green electricity for everything from industry, vehicles, public buildings to a crofter's cottage. The continuously regenerating batteries produce electricity from the combination of hydrogen and oxygen in a catalyst, leaving water as the only "emission".

It is hoped the Islay initiative will allow the UK to recover lost ground in the field of renewable energy. Previous governments' failure to invest in wind and wave power meant the industry moved to Europe. Denmark is now the world leader, although much of the technology was pioneered in Britain.

John MacLellan, manager of Bunnahabhain whisky distillery in the north of the island, welcomed the plan and said he would attend tomorrow's meeting.

Anything that would help the economy and environment of the island would be embraced by local residents, he said.

"The last year has been difficult in some ways for Islay. Although we didn't have foot-and-mouth here, it did affect tourism and the local creamery closed, which has hit some farmers.

"Islay is an upbeat sort of place though, and we are all adaptable to change. It is certainly a very interesting idea, and anything that is going to bring work or prosperity to the island is at least worth trying."

Race is on to produce most eco-friendly vehicle

The world's leading car manufacturers are in a race to be first with hydrogen fuel cell production models.

Germany, Japan, and America are spending billions but Iceland is well set to become the world's first hydrogen economy.

Strathclyde University students plan to convert a Glasgow City Council van from conventional petrol drive to fuel cell power.

First Bus already has an electric-engined bus that may be converted to have its battery fed by a hydrogen fuel cell.

A sports car, which is already driven by electricity, is in the process of having a hydrogen-fed fuel cell added.

Source: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/15-5-19102-0-17-14.html

5/23/02
1:12:45 PM

Forget Kyoto deal for another 10 years, says Bush adviser

The United States has in effect ruled out any possibility of taking part in the Kyoto treaty to reduce greenhouse gases for at least another 10 years, its senior climate negotiator said yesterday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=294861

Species under threat as their habitats are cut in half

Life on Earth is facing an extinction crisis that could be far worse than previously thought, according to two leading ecologists who have studied the rate at which animal populations are being lost.

http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=291369

Iceland walks out of whaling summit

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=297275

Islay to be world's first hydrogen-powered island

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/15-5-19102-0-17-14.html

September 11, 2001: No Surprise

(...) the success of the 911 attacks reveals gross incompetence, criminal negligence, and general stupidity on the part of intelligence and other aspects of the government.

http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/September11.html

Monsanto Web of Deceit

http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html

5/23/02
12:33:19 PM

Healthy Oceans Key To Fighting Poverty

by Anne Platt McGinn

WASHINGTON, DC - May 21, 2002 - Because of the importance of oceans in the global economy and climate system, we will not achieve lasting and sustainable development without healthy coasts and oceans. Well-managed, productive fisheries play a significant role in global economic development, food security, poverty alleviation, trade, and human health. But since the Earth Summit in 1992, most coastal resources have suffered from overuse and degradation. Current efforts to protect coasts and oceans will fail to achieve their full potential unless they are better integrated in the broader social development agenda that is the focus of the upcoming 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Coastal and marine resources provide rich assets for building a sustainable world. The value of marine ecological goods and services is estimated to be $21 trillion annually, 70 percent more than terrestrial systems. One billion people rely on fish as their primary source of animal protein, primarily in developing countries. Some 90 percent of the world's commercial fish are caught in coastal regions and along the continental shelves.

Human pressures on coastal resources are increasing rapidly. Nearly half of humanity—some 2.8 billion people—lives within 100 kilometers of a coast today, up from 2 billion in 1992. Most of the world's mega-cities (more than 8 million residents) are coastal. By mid-century, the number of coastal dwellers is expected to swell to 6.3 billion people, some 75 percent of the world's population. Coastal regions also support the highest concentration of supporting infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, energy use, tourism, and food production in the world. Given their enormous economic and ecological value, it is critical to protect these areas.

Since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, scientists have recognized that overfishing has become the major driving force behind marine ecosystem collapse in many regions. The global fish catch has stagnated since 1990. Seventy percent of fish stocks are now fully- or over-exploited. Commercial fishing is also grossly wasteful: in the process of harvesting 85 million tons of fish each year, fishers routinely discard at least 20 million tons of “bycatch,” unwanted fish and marine species that are usually killed.

During the 1990s, the world's coral reefs took a serious beating. Between 1992 and 2000, the share of coral reefs that has been severely damaged from direct human pressures and global warming climbed from 10 percent to 27 percent. And 60 percent of the world's coral reefs could be destroyed by 2030 if ocean waters continue to warm.

Pollution, overfishing, and land-based activities—like deforestation, agriculture, freshwater diversions, and industrial development—all contribute to the degradation of valuable coastal habitats. Half of the world's coastal wetlands have been filled in or irreversibly altered by development.

Coastal impairment also has direct effects on human health. In developing countries, 70 percent of industrial wastes and 90 percent of sewage are released untreated into surface waters where they pollute aquifers, freshwater resources, and coastal areas. People develop an estimated 250 million cases of gastroenteritis and upper respiratory diseases each year from swimming in contaminated sea water. And toxic chemicals have contributed to reproductive failure in marine mammals and health problems in people who eat fish. (Two-thirds of marine mammals are now classified as threatened species under the IUCN Red List.)

Fish farming has increased fish yields while damaging coastal areas. Since Rio, global aquaculture production has more than doubled, from 15 million metric tons (MT) of fish in 1992 to 36 million MT in 2000. About 40 percent of farmed fish are raised in coastal and marine areas. These fish farming operations have resulted in the destruction of mangrove swamps, the widescale pollution from antibiotics and other chemicals, and the displacement of traditional fisheries.

One of the largest potential threats to all marine and coastal resources is global warming. Global climate change will warm average ocean temperatures, alter marine circulation patterns, and affect marine biological productivity.

Climate change will also contribute to rising sea levels, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting a one-meter rise in sea levels during the next 80 years. Higher sea levels increase the impact of storm surges, accelerate habitat degradation, alter tidal ranges, change sediment and nutrient circulation patterns, and exacerbate flooding.

Rising sea levels will displace approximately one billion people who live within a few meters of sea level. Many of these people will be living in the poorest and most heavily populated countries of the world.

SOLUTIONS

Countries have negotiated a number of strong, ecologically-based marine agreements since Rio, including the U.N. Convention on Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (hereafter, UN Fish Stocks Agreement) and the Global Program of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities. But we are still far from putting these agreements fully into practice around the world. Johannesburg offers a good opportunity to build momentum to comply with these agreements, and to highlight the importance of healthy oceans in addressing poverty, food security, and population issues. To protect oceans and coastal resources, we need to implement coastal management programs, improve the management of fisheries, increase consumer and business pressure for sustainable fisheries, and stop global warming.

Implement Coastal Management Programs

Chapter 17 of Agenda 21 and the Jakarta Mandate on Marine and Coastal Biological Diversity of the Convention on Biological Diversity called on countries to implement national plans to protect coastal resources. While there has been progress in putting these plans in place, half of the world's coastal countries still do not have any type of coastal legislation in place. And a majority of countries have no formal mechanism to coordinate coastal and ocean issues, let alone to integrate marine issues with land use, urbanization, and population issues.

To be effective, integrated coastal management should engage local representatives from various sectors that affect coastal areas, including tourism and agriculture, as well as underrepresented stakeholders, especially women.

In order to achieve the U.N. Millennium Declaration's goal to cut in half the number of people living in poverty by 2015, the World Bank and foreign aid agencies should target poverty reduction programs in growing coastal areas.

As called for under the Jakarta Mandate, countries should work to identify areas of high marine biological diversity, especially coral reefs and threatened shallow waters, and enact regionally-based networks of Marine Protected Areas.

Countries should heed the Global Program of Action's call to voluntarily improve sanitation and municipal wastewater management to protect human health and coastal resources.

Improve Fisheries Management

The U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement came into force in December 2001, but 15 of the top 20 fishing nations have not yet ratified the agreement. It is critical that all distant-water fishing nations ratify the agreement.

Fishing states should quickly implement the International Plan of Action to Prevent Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing. Countries must invest in better enforcement and monitoring in international and territorial waters. The October 2001 Reykjavik Declaration on Responsible Fisheries and the 1995 Food and Agriculture Orgainization (FAO) Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries both call for an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. To meet this goal, fishing nations should apply right-to-know principles to fisheries data collection.

In recognition of the success of the 1991 U.N. Moratorium on High Seas Driftnets, U.N. member states should limit other types of damaging fishing gear, especially longlines and industrial trawlers with high rates of bycatch. Fish-consuming countries should pressure the world's top fishing nations to examine and phase-out $15 billion in annual fishing subsidies.

Many subsidies buy access rights for industrial country vessels to fish in developing countries, where they often compete with small-scale fishers. Developing countries should thus negotiate stricter terms of access and prohibit entry altogether where the resource is depleted.

Increase Consumer and Business Pressure for Sustainable Fisheries

FAO, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and World Trade Organization (WTO) should create a regime by which fish that are independently certified as ecologically sound, through groups like the Marine Stewardship Council, can receive preferential treatment under bilateral trade agreements.

Consumer organizations should evaluate fisheries on whether they are sustainably managed, in addition to the information these groups already supply about chemical and biological contamination.

Seafood retailers, restaurant and aquarium suppliers, and consumers should purchase ecologically-sound certified fish whenever possible

Address Global Warming

Currently 25 percent of the world's energy supplies come from coastal and offshore resources. To help slow the rise in carbon emissions, companies involved in marine-based energy operations should receive tax credits for investing in renewable, ocean-based energy sources, including tidal, offshore wind, and ocean thermal.

NOTE: Anne Platt McGinn will be appearing on a live chat on the Worldwatch website on Friday, May 24 from 12:00-1:00 EST (17:00-18:00 GMT).

To join in, go to http://www.worldwatch.org/live/

From Rio to Johannesburg:

The Worldwatch Institute is pleased to send you the fifth in our series of World Summit Policy Briefs, From Rio to Johannesburg: Healthy Oceans Key to Fighting Poverty, by Senior Researcher Anne Platt McGinn. The World Summit Policy Brief series highlights and provides recommendations on key environmental and sustainable development issues that will shape this year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development.

http://www.WorldWatch.org

5/23/02
12:21:24 PM

Greenpeace Seeks Court Order Delaying Construction Of Nuclear Reactor

The Associated Press, May 22, 2002

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) _ International environment group Greenpeace launched legal action Wednesday seeking to delay construction of a new nuclear reactor in suburban Sydney.

Greenpeace told the Federal Court that the reactor should not be built until it was clear what was to be done with radioactive waste from the site.

``The government is hell-bent on constructing this reactor,'' Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner Stephen Campbell said outside the Sydney court. ``They at least have to make sure for the communities of Australia that they put into place international best practice in relation to the waste management coming from the reactor.''

The federal government gave the 300-million-Australian-dollar (U.S.-dlrs-165-million) project the green light in April despite protests from environmentalists and residents living near the site of the reactor.

Work has already started on foundations for the new reactor, which will produce radioactive material for use in medicine and research but will not generate power. It is being built near an aging reactor at Lucas Heights in southwest Sydney that will be decommissioned once the new reactor starts work in 2005.

Spent nuclear fuel and waste from the Lucas Heights reactor is currently shipped to France for treatment and reprocessing.

Greenpeace wants the Federal Court to overturn the construction license for the new reactor, which was issued by the federal government's nuclear regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

In documents tendered to the court Wednesday, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization, a federal government agency which is responsible for the Lucas Heights reactor, said the law did not require the issue of waste to be taken into account at the current stage of construction.

It was not immediately clear when the court would issue a ruling.

Source: http://www.AP.org

5/23/02
12:11:02 PM

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE

http://ens-news.com

"We Cover the Earth For You"

UNEP 30 Year Outlook: Development Conquers Earth

LONDON, United Kingdom, May 22, 2002 (ENS) - Over 70 percent of the Earth's land surface could be impacted by roads, mining, cities and other infrastructure developments in the next 30 years unless urgent action is taken, the United Nations warns in a long term global outlook report issued today.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-22-01.html

ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS SHOW INDUSTRY INFLUENCE

WASHINGTON, DC, May 22, 2002 (ENS) - Vice President Richard Cheney's energy task force met with industry representatives 25 times for every one contact with conservation and public interest groups, shows a review by the group whose lawsuit prompted the release of thousands of Energy Department documents. The review was released the same day that the energy agency delivered another 1,500 pages of previously withheld task force information.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-22-07.html

WARMING STREAMS COULD WIPE OUT SALMON, TROUT

WASHINGTON, DC, May 22, 2002 (ENS) - Rising water temperatures caused by global warming could drive trout and salmon from many U.S. waterways, warns a new report from two environmental groups. Their study of eight species of fish suggests that the cold water habitat required by these species could shrink by more than 40 percent over the next century if steps are not taken to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-22-06.html

TECH TOXICS LEAVE TARNISHED LEGACY

By Jim Crabtree

BERKELEY, California, May 22, 2002 (ENS) - California high tech manufacturing companies are degrading the environment in developing countries, a new research report confirms. Case studies done in Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Costa Rica by the California Global Corporate Accountability Project document water pollution and inadquate waste management resulting from component production.

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-22-05.html

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 22, 2002

Enviros Pan U.S.-Russian Arms Pact

Bioterrorism Bill Commits Billions for Readiness

Particulate Pollution Blamed for California Health Problems

Vacationers Often Find Unhealthy Beaches

Groups Plan Suit Over Albany Lead Program

West Nile Virus Crops Up Again

Paddlefish Caviar Lands Dealers in Court

Humorous Energy Efficiency Ad Wins Award

http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-22-09.html

5/23/02
12:00:22 PM

Michigan Democrats Say Some Candidates Fake

by Amy Franklin, May 22, 2002

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - The Michigan Democratic Party is accusing state Republican leaders of planting fake Democratic candidates in eight Senate races to force legitimate Democrats into primary contests.

The four public notaries who certified the personal information of the eight candidates work for two Republican state senators, the Republican Senate policy staff and the Michigan Republican Party.

State Democratic Party chairman Mark Brewer filed a complaint Tuesday with the state Elections Bureau against all eight candidates and the four notaries. The complaint asks the Board of State Canvassers not to certify the candidates for the Aug. 6 primary ballot. It also asks for an investigation into whether the candidates or the notaries committed perjury by signing affidavits they knew were false.

"They don't have to be a member of the Democratic Party, but there has to be evidence that they are a Democrat," Brewer said, adding that none of the candidates has ever been a party member or worked with the party.

State GOP officials called the Democrats' allegations wild and reckless.

"After filing a lackluster crop of candidates, Democrats are back to their 'Hail Mary' strategy of lobbing baseless accusations in the media," GOP chairman Rusty Hills said in a written statement.

If the Board of Canvassers investigates and finds wrongdoing, it can turn the case over to the county prosecutor or the attorney general. A perjury conviction carries a maximum $1,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

The candidates listed in the complaint are: Julie Whalen, Randall Smith, Wade B ielby, Clarence Lackowski, James Shepley, Ranae Gallagher, Dan Geiersbach and Denise Kluka.

Whalen said she is not a dues-paying member of the Democratic Party but relates more to the Democrats than the GOP. She said she is not actively campaigning and considers herself a "symbolic" candidate.

Smith would say only that he recently became a Democrat and has not been doing much campaigning.

The other candidates did not immediately return calls.

The complaint also named public notaries Melinda Jones, Marilyn Plummer, Michael Gallagher and Mike Severino. None of the notaries immediately returned calls.

Source: http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20020522/D7JLQDB82.html

5/23/02
11:57:03 AM

Planet Ark World Environment News

USDA allows grazing on Western lands amid drought - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16096/story.htm

GM, Suzuki explore making electric vehicles - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16099/story.htm

GM mosquito new weapon in fight against malaria - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16087/story.htm

Wave power pioneer turns to rain-making - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16095/story.htm

UN environment report sees regional challenges - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16089/story.htm

Saving dolphins can endanger tuna - scientists - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16078/story.htm

Total, EDF win 13mln euro Morocco solar power deal - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16086/story.htm

World facing critical choices on environment - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16079/story.htm

ANALYSIS - Swedes sweep nuclear power under carpet before vote - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16084/story.htm

Civil society in cash crunch at Earth summit - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16088/story.htm

Norway seeks to destroy whale blubber mountain - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16097/story.htm

Lithuania drafts 2009 nuke closure if EU pays - LITHUANIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16081/story.htm

No matter how you slice it, whale tastes unique - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16090/story.htm

Indigenous hunting sparks anger at whaling meet - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16091/story.htm

US woman suffers for anti-whaling stand - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16098/story.htm

Hungary n-plant plans to buy British nuclear fuel - HUNGARY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16085/story.htm

Bush in Berlin, demonstrators take to streets - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16092/story.htm

INTERVIEW - Finnish minister urges "no" vote on nuclear plant - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16083/story.htm

Finland set to boost atomic power against EU trend - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16082/story.htm

Canada sets C$260 mln initiative to harness wind - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16093/story.htm

Alberta won't OK Kyoto, may take Ottawa to court - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16094/story.htm

FEATURE - Mermaid myths and travellers help rare Mekong dolphin - CAMBODIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16080/story.htm

5/23/02
11:55:17 AM

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those could not hear the music."

Frederick Nietzsche

5/23/02
11:48:00 AM

Thousands March In Berlin Protest Against Bush Visit

by Tony Paterson in Berlin, May 22, 2002

German MPs joined thousands of demonstrators on the streets of Berlin yesterday to protest against the policies of President George Bush, who is due to arrive in the capital today for a 19-hour visit.

Waving red flags and banners that read "We don't want' your war" and "Axis of evil – Washington-Paris-London-Berlin", more than 10,000 anti-Bush protesters marched through the centre of the city in a series of demonstrations. The rallies drew protesters from 240 groups throughout Germany.

A peaceful anti-Bush demonstration by members of the Green party, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's coalition partners, was called off within minutes of the start yesterday after radical anarchists stormed a podium where Green MPs were to speak. Riot police with tear gas and water cannon drove back and arrested the anarchists, who chanted "Warmongers" and "Hypocrites".

Claudia Roth MP, the Green party leader, said: "This is not a good omen for our democracy. We had wanted to send a clear signal that we are opposed to US plans in Iraq."

Christian Stroeble, a senior Green party MP, said: "There are many reasons to demonstrate against George Bush. His plans for a war against Iraq and his government's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol on the environment are but a few."

Other anti-Bush protests were held by the reform-Communist Party for Democratic Socialism (which strongly opposes US military intervention in Afghanistan), the anti-globalisation movement Attac and a broad coalition of environmentalist and peace groups called "Axis for peace." Philip Hersel, a spokesman for Attac, said: "We feel Chancellor Schröder is just as bad as Bush because he unquestioningly follows the line dictated by the American President."

One protester, teacher Christa Peter, 46, from Berlin said the demonstration "is not against Bush or his visit, but his war policy". She added: "This theory of the 'axis of evil' is dangerous, and allies like Germany need to take this opportunity to warn him."

Mr Bush is to make the first address by a US President to the German parliament and hold meetings with Chancellor Schröder and the President, Johannes Rau. In his speech, Mr Bush is expected to underline the importance of Europe's contribution to the war against terrorism and the role of Nato and Russia.

Condoleezza Rice, America's National Security Adviser, has demanded that Germany act to prevent Iraq from obtaining products that could help Saddam Hussein build weapons of mass-destruction.

The scale of the demonstrations yesterday obliged city authorities to put Berlin on a near-war footing. An unprecedented 10,000 police were drafted into seal the central area around the Brandenburg Gate and nearby Adlon hotel where Mr Bush will stay. He is bringing a 600-strong security team.

Police sharpshooters are on the top of buildings and divers are dredging the Spree river in search of bombs. The cost of the security operation was estimated at €3m (£1.9m).

Chancellor Schröder warned protesters that any violence "would be met with the full force of the law". Joschka Fischer, his Green Party Foreign Minister, appealed to demonstrators to avoid violence. "Otherwise, completely the wrong message will be sent to our American friends."

The coverage given to Mr Bush's visit in the German press demonstrated growing public concern at his policies. A poll in Der Spiegel magazine showed 76 per cent of those questioned thought Washington "was too involved in the affairs of other countries". Only 19 per cent thought Mr Bush was doing a good job.

Germany's opposition parties have bitterly criticised the Greens and the reform-Communist PDS. "These parties are outdoing in each other in their anti-Americanism to garner votes from the far left," Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the liberal Free Democratic Party, said.

The right-wing Christian Democrat politician Roland Koch said: "I am both concerned and ashamed that some political parties intend to make Mr Bush's stay in Berlin as unpleasant as possible."

Two years ago, when Mr Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton visited Berlin, crowds applauded outside a fashionable city restaurant where Mr Clinton and Mr Schröder dined and swapped cigars.

Yesterday one of the few signs welcoming Mr Bush to Berlin was from Deutsche Telekom which superimposed a giant image of the White House on tarpaulins covering the Brandenburg Gate which is being renovated.

Agenda - Bush's itinerary

Today Berlin

President George Bush begins European trip, dining with the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

Tomorrow Berlin, Moscow

Makes keynote speech to the Reichstag on US-European relations. Joined by Laura Bush from Czech Republic. Travels to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin.

Friday Moscow

Signs arms control treaty with President Putin in the Kremlin. Lays wreath at Tomb of Unknown Soldier.

Saturday St Petersburg

Visits President Putin's hometown, tours synagogue, church and museum.

Sunday Paris

Travels to France. Dines with President Jacques Chirac.

Monday Normandy, Rome

Commemorates Memorial Day by visiting US military cemetery at Omaha Beach. Meets Pope in Rome.

Tuesday 28 Rome

Attends Nato summit near Rome to sign Nato-Russia council agreement with Mr Putin and Nato secretary general, George Robertson. Returns to Washington.

Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=297610

5/22/02
9:01:15 PM

FBI Turns Anthrax Probe Towards Fort Detrick Maryland

Polygraphs for Fort Detrick Workers Investigators Searching for Culprit in Anthrax Mailings

By Pierre Thomas ABCNEWS.com Tuesday, 20 May, 2002

The government will launch a wide-ranging program of polygraph testing to determine if one of its own employees is responsible for last year's anthrax attacks, ABCNEWS has learned.

As many as 200 current and former employees at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and a number of other labs across the nation will face questioning and voluntary polygraph tests in the hope that one of them might produce a lead.

Sources told ABCNEWS those targeted include people who have expertise in the production of anthrax or have had access to it.

"In the absence of a prime suspect, the FBI has to build its case through subtraction, taking away the elements that don't fit, trying to make their theory work," said Kyle Olson, an analyst in the field of weapons of mass destruction.

Law enforcement officials say the scientific analysis of the anthrax sent in letters that killed five people is consistent with the Ames anthrax strain housed by the U.S. military at Fort Detrick and distributed to a number of labs for research.

"The anthrax strain from the Florida case was very similar to an anthrax strain that was derived from one distributed through Fort Detrick," said Timothy Read, an assistant investigator for the Institute for Genomic Research.

Investigators Face Dead Ends

Frustrated for months and with no clear suspect, the mass lie detector tests, which are expected to start in June, constitute the latest government attempt to generate new leads.

Earlier this year, the FBI sent a letter to the 43,000-member American Society of Microbiology, which said: "It is very likely that one or more of you know this individual Š Based on his or her selection of the Ames strain Š one would expect that this individual Š had legitimate access" to biological agents.

One law enforcement source told ABCNEWS that investigators, who have faced a lot of dead ends, have to start somewhere.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/anthrax020520.html

5/22/02
8:58:50 PM

t r u t h o u t | 05.23.pm

NRDC | Chevron Letters to White House Show Massive Influence

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Aa.Chevron.Letters.htm

As Bush Arrives in Europe Thousands Protest

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Bb.Bush.EU.3.htm

Sierra Club Goes to Court With Dick Cheney

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Cc.Sierra.Cheney.htm

Suicide Bomber Wounds at Least 20 Near Tel Aviv

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Dd.20.TelAviv.htm

White Supremacist Found Guilty in '63 Bombing of Church

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Ee.Cherry.Gone.htm

India Prepares Troops for 'Decisive Fight'

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Ff.India.Prepares.htm

US / EU | Goodwill Lost to Tension Over Trade and Military

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Gg.US.EU.Lost.htm

FBI Turns Anthrax Probe Towards Fort Detrick Maryland

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Hh.Anthrax.Detrick.htm

White House Stonewall: Day 82

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23Ii.Stonewall.82.htm

5/22/02
8:55:47 PM

NEWS FROM THE WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE

May 22, 2002

CONTENTS:

1. Live Web Chat on Healthy Oceans with Anne Platt McGinn

2. Check out "The Path to Johannesburg," a new online interactive timeline and resource guide to major events in world environmental history over the last forty years.

Live Web Chat: Anne Platt McGinn on Healthy Oceans

Please join us on Friday, May 24 for a "salty" chat with Worldwatch Senior Researcher Anne Platt McGinn, who has just published a Worldwatch World Summit Policy Brief on the importance of healthy oceans to sustainable development. She will be online live on Friday, May 24 from 12:00-13:00 EDT (16:00-17:00 GMT). Point your browser to http://www.worldwatch.org/live and follow the "Discussion with Anne Platt McGinn" link to go to the chat.

In her policy brief, McGinn argues that well-managed, productive fisheries play an important role in global economic development, food security, poverty alleviation, trade, and human health. To protect oceans and coastal resources, we need to implement coastal management programs, improve the management of fisheries, increase consumer and business pressure for sustainable fisheries, and stop global warming. You can read her brief at:

http://www.worldwatch.org/worldsummit/briefs/20020521.html

To join the chat on Friday, go to http://www.worldwatch.org/live and click on the "Discussion with Anne Platt McGinn" link to go to the chat.

The Path to Johannesburg

To build momentum for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which will open in Johannesburg, South Africa in a little over four months, the Worldwatch Institute has produced an interactive web-based timeline and resource guide--The Path To Johannesburg.

You can find The Path to Johannesburg at

http://www.worldwatch.org/worldsummit/timeline

The timeline begins in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the book that launched the modern environmental movement, and ends with this year's World Summit. The timeline provides a snapshot of some of the last four decade's most significant environmental moments. And the associated links for each event give you immediate access to relevant Worldwatch publications, as well as other key web sites.

We hope that The Path to Johannesburg is a useful tool for you, and invite you to share it with your colleagues and friends.

ABOUT THE WORLD SUMMIT ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:

>From August 26 to September 4, 2002, the United Nations will host the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa. The WSSD will bring together world leaders, concerned citizens, international agencies, multilateral financial institutions, and other major actors to assess global change since the historic United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) (also known as the Rio "Earth Summit"). The WSSD offers a rare opportunity for all countries to come together and find practical ways to set the world onto a path of sustainability. Visit Worldwatch's special World Summit web page for more information at

http://www.worldwatch.org/worldsummit

5/22/02
8:53:32 PM

Greenpeace USA May 2002 Newsletter:

What's new and noteworthy at http://www.greenpeaceusa.org

--"Stop ExxonMobil" Campaign Launches

--Saving the Whales at the IWC Meeting in Japan

--Dow: Life Poisoned Daily

--Congress Voting on Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods!

"Stop ExxonMobil" Campaign Launches

ExxonMobil has been driving an ongoing campaign to derail international agreements to solve global warming.

From campaign contributions to greenwashing that denies that global warming is a threat to the environment, ExxonMobil's sordid history has made it the number one villain against protecting the climate.

Greenpeace, along with many other groups, is now launching a campaign to "Stop ExxonMobil" from wielding their dirty power against environmental protections.

Find out more:

http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/features/exxonmobil.htm

Saving the Whales at the IWC Meeting in Japan

After commercial whaling drove most whales to the brink of extinction, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) decided that it had to stop. A moratorium on all commercial whaling took effect in 1986. However two countries, Japan and Norway, continue to flout the moratorium and are still whaling.

Now Japan is poised to win resumption of large-scale commercial whaling at the IWC meeting going on now in Japan.

Stay updated on events as they unfold:

http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/features/iwc_meeting.htm

Dow: Life Poisoned Daily

"It is my hope that the gravity of our situation can be understood by our willingness to travel around the world to state our case for five minutes," said Dr. H. H. Trivedi, a Bhopal survivor.

Survivors from Bhopal India, site of the worst chemical spill in history, were recently in the U.S. to attend Dow Chemical's annual shareholder meeting. They demanded that the Dow Chemical company take responsibility for the accident and work to prevent future disasters at all Dow facilities.

Find out more about Bhopal and Dow:

http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/features/dow_bhopal.htm

Congress Voting on Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods!

As you know, there are currently foods on our supermarket shelves with genetically engineered ingredients from soy, corn, canola and other crops, with no labeling. There is no evidence that these foods are safe in the environment or our bodies, yet the Food and Drug Administration does not currently require safety testing or labeling.

The moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived!

This week Congress with be voting on whether or not to require labeling of all genetically engineered foods.

For updates and opportunities for online action, check back later in the week at:

http://www.greenpeacusa.org/ge

Want to do more? Become a Greenpeace Member today!

https://www.greenpeaceusa.org/join

5/22/02
8:49:49 PM

FAIR -- Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

Media analysis, critiques and activism

THE JUNE 2002 ISSUE OF EXTRA! IS NOW AVAILABLE