6/1/02
3:33:28 PM
The Way To A Peaceful Future
In Jerusalem And All Over The World
by John McConnell - Founder of Earth Day, Speaks for Earth
For many years the major trouble spot on our planet has been Jerusalem -- hallowed by Christian, Jewish and Muslim history.
At the moment this is written, there is violence in the Holy Land. Again, there is an attempt to settle differences by the power of bombs.
The Way to a Peaceful, Prosperous Future -- in Jerusalem AND all over the world:
The reason for poverty, pollution and war is the lack of a well defined agenda for peaceful progress. As a result adversaries lack a basis for peaceful resolution of differences.
Discussions too often neglect areas of honest accord. Peace efforts then stall in spite of international laws and United Nations agreements and resolutions. We need to stress where we agree and what we have in common.
EARTH TRUSTEE SOLUTION
The Earth Trustee solution is for every individual and institution to think and act as a Trustee of Earth, seeking choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will eliminate pollution, poverty and violence on our planet."
THIS WILL BRING THE REJUVENATION OF OUR PLANET AND FAIR BENEFITS FOR EVERYONE.
We will see a change of attitude and conduct world-wide from fear and despair to hope and faith. People will act, each in their own way, as responsible trustees of Earth. They will sincerely act as trustees of Earth because they know it will be best for them as well as for others.
This will provide a moral equivalent of war-- a Peace Blitz for a Better World. Instead of wealth being spent for war, it will be devoted to projects that heal, build and unite. (1)
To succeed, leaders and laymen are asked to avoid the historic mistakes of humanity's past. Instead of emphasis on our differences, let us call attention to the important matters in which we agree. We all want a world without war and the end of poverty. We would like a stake in Earth's natural bounty -- for ourselves and everyone, including the disinherited poor.
Now is the time for the realization of human potential -- physical, mental, spiritual in a world of freedom and order.
To achieve this we should look below the surface at the root causes of civilization's sickness. In the past individuals identified with and were most loyal to their clan, nation, religion or business. The narrow view of competing groups often led to conflict and sometimes war.
Today, the astronauts and cosmonauts have provided a global view of our planet. "We set out to explore Space - and discovered Earth!"
We are now aware that one fragile planet is our home, the home of one human family. Now we have a chance to see in our diversity a unity which will enable us to fairly adjust our differences with new solutions -- unseen in the past.
In all decisions we must now consider how they affect the nurture and protection of Earth and the rights of individuals to the use of our planet. Seeing the whole picture will help us make the right choices.
Part of the problem is faulty economic policies and institutions. A basic mistake in history is the development and establishment of unfair, inefficient systems of money and credit. We have a planet with assets in the trillions of dollars -- much of it in developing countries. Once we see that money is not wealth -- wealth is land, raw materials, technology, factories, people with skills, etc. -- we might avoid the folly of war prosperity, followed by peace depression -- with more money for money manipulators than producers and workers.
By a change in monetary policies to fair, free credit -- based on adequate assets, and by making money an honest medium of exchange backed by assets and available in the measure needed for stable exchange of goods and services, we could soon bring prosperity to our whole planet.
To take advantage of the amazing new technology that covers the Globe, a vital necessity is to tap the spiritual and emotional resources of our religious faith ... in ways that will not compromise our separate creeds and beliefs.
Love of God, love of people, love of Earth, honesty, fairness and truth are to be found in every major religion. I may totally reject the creeds of other religions where they relate to a future life and at the same time approve their actions that heal and help people and planet. A deeply held shared goal aids communication and promotes more openness to each others point of view -- often resulting in a basic unity that helps resolve many differences, with accommodation or separation where needed. True love of God will result in love of neighbor and nature.
Once the primary universal goal of Earth Trusteeship is established and affirmed by leaders and world public opinion, controversy will more constructively sort out differences and find areas of agreement.
This will increase understanding and bring better definitions of issues -- how they relate, provide direction, or help achieve global goals. Then, with the aid of an enlightened, responsible mass media, world public opinion, a powerful force, will promote good will, peace, justice and Earth's rejuvenation.
Now is the time to mobilize our faith and our institutions in an Earth Trustee Campaign for Earth. Now is the time, especially, for a new sense of purpose and responsibility by public media. Let them sponsor a Media Blitz for Earth's rejuvenation, with features and headlines for the many solutions that are working and need attention. Call attention to places where Earth Trustee words are being followed by Earth Trustee actions.
EARTH MINUTES
To aid inner commitment we are urging all radio and TV stations worldwide to program daily Earth Minutes at 0300, 1100, and 1900 GMT (Convert to local time in each time zone). These minutes without words will have locally produced music, views of Earth from Space, nature, children.
When you hear Earth Minute announced you can link your thought, your prayer, with others all over the world.
At other times during the day, there can be reports and features about Earth care solutions, planned or in progress. This can provide a new sense of Earth Trustee identity that will tap the best of our personal religious convictions, diminish fear, hate, greed and lust and assure an era of peaceful progress.
We ask radio, TV stations and newspapers to start an Earth Trustee Media Blitz. We have the raw materials, the technology, instant global communications -- and there are people ready and willing around the world.
All that is needed is to get their attention. The picture here presented can then bring the needed Earth Trustee choices in words and actions -- and peaceful progress will prevail.
What a great thing it would be to see Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders in Jerusalem thinking and acting as Earth Trustees. By focus on our common humanity and the right of everyone to an Earth Claim, they could provide homesteads for homeless constituents. Their actions would result in friendly communities throughout the Mid-East. Soon the whole world would see the Earth Trustee solution and we would be on our way to a Global Peaceful Future.
(1) Examples of projects that "heal, build and unite."
American Friends Service Committee FOR - Fellowship Of Reconciliation Franciscans
P. S. Individuals and groups who are working for a better future should provide examples of what their programs have done to help people and planet. We need more than words.
You will find a partial record of what Earth Day and its Earth Trustee agenda has accomplished at:
http://www.wowzone.com/mc-lee.htm
Earth Day/Earth Trustees: http://www.EarthSite.org
6/1/02
3:21:27 PM
Marijuana Prohibition Insane Public Policy
by Bob Newland, Rapid City (SD) Journal; May 4, 2002
Public school teachers are permitted only to speak of the evils of cannabis, forbidden to teach its 5,000-plus years of history of service to man. Politicians spout absurdity after slander when they speak of it at all. Misinformed people are moved to anger, threaten violence, or wax childish ("Oh, wow!") when the subject confronts them.
Within this melee of babble, a large and growing number of credible people are expressing doubt about the efficacy of marijuana prohibition. The politicians and their sycophants accuse us of advocating "giving drugs to babies." They say we're "supporting terrorism." They even make absurd statements like State Rep. Stan Adelstein made at a speech to the United Campus Ministries luncheon at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology on Nov. 22, 2001:
"I know the marijuana laws work, because only one of my three sons smoked marijuana. The other two didn't smoke it, because it's illegal. They told me so."
Adelstein refused to answer when asked if he thought his son who smoked marijuana should have gone to prison for it, as millions of others have.
Fact is, Adelstein's family is squarely in the mainstream. The National Institute on Drug Abuse's annual national household survey continually says that about one-third of adults in the U.S. have smoked marijuana. Yet, we continue:
Arresting people at the rate of one every 45 seconds for possession or sale of marijuana.
Confiscating folks' cars, houses, cash and children for mere suspicion of trafficking in marijuana. If they're convicted, we throw them in prison, also.
Paying snitches to create marijuana crimes so that law enforcement can confiscate even more property and children.
Allowing law enforcement agencies to keep most of the plunder they steal, thus perpetuating the vicious and counterproductive cycle.
Preventing legal access to marijuana for sick, disabled and dying people who currently benefit from it, albeit illegally.
Caught up in this insanity is industrial hemp, which has a potential worldwide market of $500 billion or more, but which is banned from production in the United States (but allowed in Canada and 30 other nations). Even more insanely and cruelly, the politicians maintain that there is no medical use for cannabis, in spite of disagreement from thousands of doctors and tens of thousands of patients.
How arrogant and stupid to make the statement that an herb has "no medical use." A fifth-grader wouldn't even make such a blanket statement about tomatoes or horseradish.
Here is the simple truth. Cannabis was first taxed out of the market, then made illegal in the United States in order to benefit the stockholders in a large consortium of industries which now do not have to face competition from industrial hemp. For that purpose, the politicians are willing to imprison millions and cruelly deny medical relief to tens of thousands of sick people.
When one understands that industrial hemp can be used for any purpose served by trees, cotton or flax, and petroleum, and that hemp seed is the most nutritious single food item in the world, one begins to understand the scope of the industries served by keeping it illegal. One begins to grasp whose ox will be gored by re-establishment of industrial hemp at the forefront of American farm products.
These are some of the reasons I've staked my life, my possessions, and my honor on exposing the truth about cannabis, knowing that, like countless others, I could be stopped, "found" in possession of something illegal, and imprisoned at the whim of the politicians.
It's just one more of the cruel truths of the so-called "war on drugs": that innocent people are sometimes silenced by police who frame them by "finding" drugs on them. Cops have unlimited access to drugs to use for such purposes. It's also sad that we must paint all policemen and women with the same brush, because the bad cops' and the good cops' uniforms look the same.
And it is for these reasons that SoDakNORML organized the Rapid City segment of the Million Marijuana March, an educational event being held in over 160 cities worldwide today. We're appealing to governments everywhere to stop all cannabis arrests, to stop lying about cannabis, to release cannabis as medicine to sick people, and to stop imprisoning people for simply trying to feel better.
There's more good information about cannabis on the Internet than just about any other subject. Simply inquire "hemp," "cannabis," or "marijuana" on any search engine. For a tragic laugh, see what the major disseminators of misinformation, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Parents for a Drug-Free America (whose largest funder is Anheuser-Busch) have to say on the subject.
It's time for all good people to help end this horrible cycle. Civilian and soldier, cop and just-folks alike, we must hold our local politicians and our federal delegations accountable for the carnage and economic damage created by marijuana prohibition.
Bob Newland is the founder and president of SoDakNORML, an affiliate of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
Source: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com
6/1/02
3:15:43 PM
Enron: A Tailor-Made Republican Logo
GOP's Golden Boy May Lose His Connecticut Shirt Because of It
By Alan Bisbort
May 30, 2002 - HARTFORD (APJP) -- Don't let the twang, the cowboy hat and line-dancing boots fool you.
The Bush family hails from Connecticut, not Texas. Their roots run much deeper in the rocky soil of the mannerly Nutmeg State than in the hot sands of the gun-totin', cow-pokin' Lone Star State. Indeed, most of the extended Bush clan never left Connecticut, and George Sr. and George Jr. always have a port in the storm here.
One of those ports is Gov. John G. Rowland. Rowland is the golden boy of the Republican Party, a smooth-talking, young (45), faux moderate who has often been spoken of as a possible Vice Presidential replacement should Bush seek reelection or Cheney be led away in handcuffs. Last fall, Rowland was named chairman of the Republican Governors Association, and he is currently running for his third term as governor of Connecticut. He is-or was, until a month ago-the odds-on favorite to lead a pack of 27 Republican governors up for reelection with a landslide victory over an inexplicably timid state Democratic Party's candidate.
Gov. Rowland is such a close friend of the Bush family that when the president visits the Nutmeg State, he refers to the governor as "Johnny" and the two of them hug affectionately, like long lost friends. That photogenic hug, however, may haunt Rowland the way Sammy Davis Jr. was never allowed to forget his kiss of Richard Nixon.
First, Rowland's bear hug speaks of an intimacy with a president who is not popular in Connecticut -- John McCain beat him soundly here in the Republican primary and Al Gore whipped him here in the presidential election. Second, and most importantly in an election year, Rowland's bear hug has all the staying power of a bear trap. That is, it comes with a heavy price tag that may drag the once popular two-term governor right out of office.
The reason is as simple as one word: Enron.
Enron is a tailor-made designer logo for Republican financial chicanery, greed, deceit and hypocrisy. Just saying the word instantly conjures an image that once easily catapulted Democrats into office: fat cats sticking it to the little guy. Whether the Democrats will capitalize on this elsewhere is another matter. But they finally have someone in Connecticut who is willing to do the job. And because of this, that someone has leapt from a faceless pack of candidates to take a commanding lead for the Democratic nomination.
That someone is Bill Curry, a one-time golden boy of the Democratic Party who, after losing to Rowland in the 1994 governor's race, went to work as an advisor to President Bill Clinton. Written off as a bitter has-been by the state's fawning pro-Rowland press, Curry has nonetheless found his footing in the past month, and his campaign is gaining traction. Whether or not his surge convinces the status quo-loving pundits is unimportant, because it's resonating with the famously independent Connecticut voters.
The reason: "Johnny" Rowland is almost as deep into the Enron scandal as "Kenny Boy" Lay. The Bush bear hug gives it away.
That is, during his watch -- in December 2000, to be precise -- Rowland met with three Enron executives to discuss, according to him, a fuel cell project in Danbury. Not only did the fuel cell project never come to fruition, but the timing of Enron's further dealings with the state could not be more suspicious.
Four days after Rowland met with Enron officials, the board of the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority (CRRA), an "autonomous" agency whose directors are appointed by the governor and legislature, unanimously approved a contract in which the CRRA advanced $220 million to Enron. For this wad of the taxpayer's dough, Enron agreed to buy energy from the CRRA's trash-to-energy facility for $2 million a month over the next 11 years. When Enron collapsed, the $220 million in public funds was lost, and the CRRA was forced to raise the rates it charges towns for trash disposal to make up the loss.
In the ensuing investigation, it was learned that Rowland's co-chiefs of staff were both intimately involved with CRRA and that one of his largest contributors was an Enron consultant. Also, Enron made an $80,000 soft-money commitment to the Republican Governors Association (which Rowland heads) and another, separate contribution to Rowland's campaign "war chest."
While the whole sordid affair has been made to appear like a complicated transaction that baffles even the disingenuous Gov. Rowland, it sounds pretty simple to most people. How much more simple could it be? Sleazy Texas oilmen come in, sweet talk one of Texas oilman Bush's best buddies, who happens to be the governor of Connecticut, and four days later they walk off with over 200 million dollars that belong to the people of Connecticut.
And yet, showing the arrogance of power that seems to be genetically encoded in Republican office holders, Rowland blithely dismissed the scandal in a recent interview with David Broder of the Washington Post. Perhaps because Broder is (inexplicably) dubbed the "dean of Washington press corps," Rowland was feeling his oats and let his guard down, telling Broder that the scandal is nothing but "a lot of connect the dots. . . . It's kind of a fun little web they can put together, but it's pretty hard to explain to people. The good news is I don't think anybody in the state cares who my chief of staff is."
He also said that, "If the Enron thing weren't a national story, it probably wouldn't have much juice."
Rowland's smug dismissal notwithstanding, Bill Curry isn't having any trouble explaining it to Connecticut voters.
"The flip, cynical tone of the Governor's remarks is astonishing to me," said Curry. "State taxpayers lost $220 million dollars because of an illegal loan engineered by the Governor's top staff and here's the Governor taking refuge in the public's supposed inability to 'connect the dots'. Gov. Rowland actually believes that no one would really care about the greatest financial loss in state history if it weren't connected to a national news story."
Curry continues: "What is astonishing is to hear the Governor talk about the issue only in terms of political tactics, never in terms of ethics --the deal is rife with campaign cash and influence-peddling at the highest levels of state government. Criminal and civil investigations are underway, and nearly everyone who was in charge is out of a job. But the Governor thinks we can't 'connect the dots?' And here I thought I was the only person the Governor underestimated. It turns out he underestimates us all. It's comforting, in a way."
Ed Ericsson, Jr., an investigative reporter for Hartford Advocate, has been far ahead of the field on this story. He put it this way to me in an email:
Rowland says it's too complicated to explain to people, and Broder obliges by not explaining it. The real story here is ENRON LIVED ITS LAST 6 MONTHS ON CT'S MONEY. THE STORY TO TELL IS, HOW WOULD THE NATION -- AND THE WORLD--BE DIFFERENT IF ENRON RESTATED ITS FOURTH QUARTER 2000 PROFITS IN MARCH OR APRIL OF 2001 -- WHICH IT WOULD HAVE HAD TO IF ANYONE AT CRRA DID SOME DUE DILIGENCE AND THE $220M DIDN'T COME THROUGH IN MARCH? AND THEN ENRON DECLARES BANKRUPTCY CIRCA JULY. THE FUROR AROUND BUSH, ARMY SECTY WHITE, A PILE OF OTHERS IS HITTING FULL STRIDE THEN JUST ABOUT THE TIME THE RECOUNTS IN FLA ARE COMPLETED. BUSH'S POPULARITY IS IN THE SH*TTER. THEN SEPT 11 . . . AND INSTEAD OF OBSCURING THE ENRON STORY THE TERRORIST ACT PILES ON. WE'D BE IN A DIFFERENT WORLD TODAY, MAN, AND A LOT OF INSIDERS AT ENRON WOULD BE MILLIONS -- 10S OF MILLIONS -- POORER BECAUSE THEY WOULD NOT HAVE HAD SUCH A LONG GRACE PERIOD IN WHICH TO CASH OUT.
Instead we get a lunch money story.
Well, maybe not. A federal grand jury issued subpoenas to the CRRA as part of an investigation "into the possible commission of a felony."
When they connect the dots, perhaps Rowland's face will magically appear.
Source: http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020530Bisbort.html
6/1/02
3:07:39 PM
Wall Street Journal: FBI Director Mueller Should Resign
NewsMax.com Wires - Friday, May 31, 2002
In a lead editorial today in the Wall Street Journal, the nation's most respected financial paper called on FBI Director Rober Mueller to resign.
The Journal asked that in the wake of 9-11, "The issue now is whether, and how, the CIA and FBI can regain public confidence and deter future attacks."
The Journal said Mueller had clearly lost the confidence of the American people.
Though Mueller only took the helm the of the FBI weeks before Sept. 11, the Journal said that Mueller's reforms proposed this week were only rearranging "bureaucratic furniture."
In the aftermath of Sept, 11. when accountability of the FBI was demanded, the Journal said that Mueller had made clear "the lesson is that mistakes will go unpunished or be covered up, especially if they're committed close to the top. Specifically, this goes to the heart of the credibility of Mr. Mueller."
"The highly publicized letter from veteran agent Coleen Rowley is devastating on this score. Mr. Mueller can't be blamed for September 11--he took office only on September 4. Yet his statements since that date have been, to say the least, embarrassing. First he proclaimed that the FBI had no information on possible terrorist attacks prior to September 11. This was the line he kept up for months-'circling the wagons,' as Agent Rowley put it.
"Then, as information dribbled out--the Phoenix agent's memo on Arabs enrolling at flight schools, the Minneapolis agents who had identified Zacarias Moussaoui as a terrorist threat--he amended it to say that despite the information nothing the FBI might have done would have changed anything. Agent Rowley puts it succinctly: 'I think your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to protect the FBI at all costs.' Specifically, she accuses Mr. Mueller and senior FBI officials as having 'omitted, downplayed, glossed over and or mischaracterized' her office's probe of Moussaoui."
The Journal notes that only after Rowley's memo was released, which demonstrated the director was indeed engaging in a cover-up, did Mueller act.
"So now that his job is on the line, Mr. Mueller has apologized more or less. He concedes that the 9/11 attacks might have been detectable, even going so far as to thank Agent Rowley for her memo. This is a step forward, but the question for his future leadership is whether everyone in the FBI will see this for the self-protection it is."
The Journal pointed out that "If Mr. Mueller had wanted to send a message to change the FBI mindset, he would have fired the supervisory special agent who ignored the Minneapolis warnings on Moussaoui. Instead, Ms. Rowley says, that agent was promoted."
The Journal's editorial comes in the wake of new revelations. Veteran FBI Agent, Robert Wright, who had been assigned to the FBI's Counter-terrorism office, went public Thursday saying the FBI leadership could have prevented 9-11, but field agents were deliberately thwarted in doing their jobs.
Wright's allegations deal with warning he made before 9-11, but at his press conference yesterday, his attorney, Judicial Watch chairman Larry Klayman, said that that Mueller and the FBI has sought to censor Agent Wright, and have threatened him with criminal prosecution if he reveals embarrassing information about the Bureau.
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27811
FBI Whistleblower: Agent Robert Wright
CSPAN2 Video Clip of Judicial Watch Press Conference -Concerning FBI Agent Robert Wright (requires Real Media Player) (May 30, 2002)
http://video.c-span.org:8080/ramgen/idrive/ter053002_judicial.rm
Warnings Ignored Agent: FBI Could Have Prevented 9-11
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/30/161204.shtml
The Disintegration of the FBI - How FBI Fell Apart?
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/30/183028.shtml
FBI & WACO!
http://www.newsmax.com/hottopics/Waco.shtml
Records: FBI Had No Plan to Fight Fire (This makes me sick!)
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/3/2/115533
Editor's Note:
Get the exclusive audiotape in which an FBI whistle-blower details the wholesale breakdown of America's national security apparatus. Few know the truth like Gary Aldrich.
http://www.newsmaxstore.com/nms/showdetl.cfm?&Product_ID=741&DID=6
WHISTLEBLOWER PAGE:
Former Naval Intelligence Officer Delmart Edward "Mike" Vreeland warned of impending terrorist attacks a month before 9-11. WHO IS LEO EMIL WANTA? - Scottsboro, Al Status: Arrested 7/7/93 in Geneva, Switzerland, which resulted in conviction for money laundering and sentenced to 4 months - then extradited to Wisconsin to stand trial for tax evasion, which resulted in his being sentenced to 22 years, then on 2/1/97 released on $90,000 bail....hummm! WHERE'S THE FBI WHEN YOU NEED THEM?
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC_whistleblower.htm
OPERATION HOME RUN
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/home_run.htm
Ripping Apart a Nation - In the Back Room - Tom DeWeese
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27805
Ending Immortality in Government
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27803
Missiles smuggled into U.S. - Bill Gertz (Warning)
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27797
ALERT: Dynamite Cache Stolen; ATF Offers $5,000 Reward
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,54158,00.html
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27816
No American Left Alone - Charlotte Iserbyt
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27794
The truth is out there ... right?
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/911_truth.htm
"WE ARE APT TO SHUT OUR EYES AGAINST A PAINFUL TRUTH... FOR MY PART, I AM WILLING TO KNOW THE WHOLE TRUTH; TO KNOW THE WORST; AND TO PROVIDE FOR IT."
---- Patrick Henry
http://www.apfn.org/old/apfncont.htm
6/1/02
3:03:13 PM
A Road Map To Peace
by L. Ramdas and Arjun Makhijani
India and Pakistan stand at the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Many people from all over the world including businessmen, politicians, strategic analysts, diplomats, scientists, peace activists and common people above all have all voiced their concern regarding the rapidly deteriorating situation in South Asia. Infiltration of terrorists from across the Pakistani side of the Line of Control, the massing of troops at the border by both countries, and the increasing exchanges of artillery fire matched only by the verbal volleys exchanged between the leadership of both countries, could escalate quickly into a full-scale war.
This, in turn poses the threat of a nuclear exchange, which would be catastrophic for both the countries, South Asia in particular, and affect the world at large.
India and Pakistan signed the Shimla Agreement in 1972 and the Lahore Agreement in 1999.
In both these accords, they agreed to renounce the use of force and to resolve all outstanding issues between them by peaceful means.
There has never been a time more urgent and more important to respect the letter and spirit of those agreements than now.
We urge the governments of both Pakistan and India to immediately step back from the brink of war and nuclear holocaust by committing themselves to the following seven-point peace plan. We urge all those Governments that endorsed the U. N. resolutions against terrorism in the wake of September 11, 2001, to use their good offices with the Governments of India and Pakistan to accept this peace plan and to help put it into effect with the greatest urgency. The proposed plan:
1) There should be an immediate ceasefire by Indian and Pakistani forces along the LoC.
2) Pervez Musharraf should take immediate, firm, and demonstrable steps to stop cross-border infiltration from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir into the Indian-controlled side. To ensure that these steps are being taken, an International Anti-terrorist Monitoring Group should be formed and deployed. Pakistan and India should agree to full cooperation with this group.
This would provide a neutral means of ensuring that Pakistan's commitments about stopping cross-border infiltration are being carried out.
3) If these measures are agreed to, India in turn should make a commitment not to cross the LoC.
4) Pakistan should also adopt the no-first-use policy of nuclear weapons, which has already been adopted by India. These measures should be urgently instituted within a time-frame of a few weeks. Thereafter, three further steps can be taken to ensure long-term peace and towards resolution of a crisis that has now lasted well over half a century. These three steps are:
1) India and Pakistan should thin down their military deployments along their common border and return to pre-December 13, 2001, levels.
2) India and Pakistan should resume their dialogue on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, in the spirit of the Shimla and Lahore agreements, and pick up the threads where they left off at Agra barely ten months ago.
3) As a part of the dialogue process, India and Pakistan should form a joint technical commission to explore and recommend how the mutual commitment to no-first-use of nuclear weapons can be verified and maintained.
4) Why not a Shimla-II? It would be truly fitting if this could take place on July 12, 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of the historic Shimla agreement.
(The writers are, respectively, former Chief of the Naval Staff and president, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Maryland, U.S.)
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/05/31/stories/2002053102501100.htm
6/1/02
2:57:18 PM
Participate in this National Day of Action to Get Genetically Engineered Ingredients Out of Our Food
When: Saturday, June 8, 2002
What: People across the country will be going to their supermarkets to demand that food chains like Safeway and Shaw's/Star Market remove genetically engineered ingredients from their store brand products. Supermarkets will only change their practices if they hear from customers like you. So take action on June 8th!!
Where: Events will be happening throughout the country. To find out if there is an event near you, check out:
http://www.truefoodnow.org/communitycenter/
(Events are added daily, so check back regularly)
If there isn't an event listed for your community and you would like to organize one, please send an e-mail to
Include your name and postal address and we'll send you information on how to organize your own Day Of Action!
Be sure to send us an e-mail by Monday, June 3rd so we can get materials to you in time.
Want to do more? Become a Greenpeace member online!
https://www.greenpeaceusa.org/join
6/1/02
2:55:09 PM
Greenpeace's Positive Energy Newsletter -- May 27- June 2, 2002
Time for the Greenpeace CLEAN ENERGY NOW! campaign's weekly good news update!!!
Inside this edition:
- The Will for Wind
- ExxonMobil Shareholders Push Drive for Renewables
The Will for Wind
Greenpeace and the wind energy industry released a global blueprint to provide 12 percent of the world's future electricity through wind power by 2020. This report is a call to governments at the final pre-World Summit on Sustainable Development(WSSD) meeting in Bali to stop standing in the way of a renewable energy revolution.
For more information about WSSD and renewable energy, please visit:
http://www.greenpeace.org/earthsummit/index.html
ExxonMobil Shareholders Push Drive for Renewable Energy
A coalition of ExxonMobil investors is leading the way to push the corporation to adopt a renewable energy resources plan. Although the resolution was not passed, it was approved by more than 20 percent of current shareholders compared to 9 percent in 2001.
This is a direct challenge to ExxonMobil's denial of the effects of global warming as linked to emissions from the use of the fossil fuels. And it's fossil fuels that form the core of ExxonMobil's product line.
Peter Altman, national coordinator of Campaign ExxonMobil stated, "mainstream investors are questioning whether ExxonMobil is really protecting shareholder value with its isolated position on renewable energy and global warming. For the first time, mainstream investors are saying that they need to see the rationale behind the company's strategy of saying 'just trust us and don't ask questions' isn't going to work anymore."
An article on this issue can be read on:
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-29-05.asp
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,
Want to do more? Become a Greenpeace member!
https://www.greenpeaceusa.org/join2/cen.htm
6/1/02
2:52:27 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE BALI
Most people go to Bali to play, but right now, the Indonesian island is the site of some very hard work. This week and next, Bali is hosting the Fourth Preparatory Committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held later this summer in Johannesburg, South Africa. There is no Fifth Preparatory Committee, so any work that needs to get done before the World Summit has to happen in Bali. But what exactly is getting done -- and is it getting us anywhere, environmentally speaking? Those are the questions weighing on Thomas Brendler and William Faries, Grist correspondents in Bali. Read their dispatches from PrepCom IV, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: A week in the life of Thomas Brendler, executive director of the National Network of Forest Practitioners at the Bali PrepCom <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dearme/brendler052802.asp?source=daily>
only in Grist: A week in the William Faries, environmental journalist at the Bali PrepCom <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dearme/faries052802.asp?source=daily>
SWISS BLISS
Organic farming results in a smaller yield than conventional agriculture, but is far more energy efficient and better for the land. That might sound intuitive to many organic advocates, but it took a 21-year study by Swiss scientists to prove it. Research published in the most recent issue of Science showed that organic farming is a viable alternative to conventional methods -- i.e., those that are heavily reliant on pesticides and other chemical treatments. The findings are based on a study begun in 1978, in which scientists compared potatoes, barley, winter wheat, beets, and grass clover grown using different methods. The organic fields averaged 20 percent less yield, but used between 34 and 53 percent less fertilizer and energy, and 97 percent fewer pesticides. Per unit of energy, the organic systems produced more food, and the organic soils housed a larger and more diverse community of organisms. The scientists said they hoped their findings would encourage farmers to consider switching to organic agriculture.
straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 30 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=158>
NAPA TIME
How do you put a price tag on nature -- on its worth, on the cost of protecting it, and on the expenses incurred by destroying it? In an effort to marry wise environmental policy with sound economics, more and more conservationists are seeking to answer that question. In "The New Economy of Nature," Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and Gretchen C. Daily, one of the world's leading ecologists, track the efforts to create an economy that recognizes the value of natural systems. Sometimes, creating that new economy requires looking at cost and benefit in a whole new way, as happened in Napa, Calif., when residents and government agencies set out to solve the problem of regular river flooding. Read about the Napa solution, in an excerpt from "The New Economy of Nature," only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: How a town can live with a river and not get soaked -- an excerpt from "The New Economy of Nature" by Gretchen C. Daily and Katherine Ellison, in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/books053102.asp?source=daily>
CALIFORNIA SCHEMING
This week's announcement by President Bush that his administration would spend $235 million to protect Florida's pristine areas from oil and gas drilling has aroused both the ire and the envy of California environmentalists, who saw the deal as a family favor designed to aid the reelection bid of First Brother and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R). California greenies, who have been fighting to stop 36 offshore drilling leases, continue to hope that the president might seek to boost his own reelection prospects by currying favor in their state as well. They say that an oil spill from one of the leases could devastate fragile coastal areas. But prospects for a Florida-esque deal in the Golden State are far from certain. Such an arrangement would be far costlier than its Florida counterpart, because oil and gas companies originally paid over $1 billion for drilling leases in California.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, John Koopman and Jane Kay, 31 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=159>
straight to the source: New York Times, James Sterngold, 31 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=160>
G-RATIFY-ING NEWS
It's official: All 15 nations of the European Union have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, solidifying their commitment to combat climate change and highlighting the difference between European and U.S. environmental politics. The ratification was formalized during a ceremony held this morning at United Nations headquarters in New York City. E.U. Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom called the mass ratification "an historic moment" and in virtually the same breath chastised the U.S. for failing to participate. "The United States is the only nation to have spoken out against and rejected the global framework for addressing climate change. The European Union urges the United States to reconsider its position," Wallstrom said. With the E.U. ratification, the Kyoto Protocol came significantly closer to taking effect; for that to happen, 55 countries representing 55 percent of developed nations' carbon dioxide emissions must ratify. Altogether, 70 nations representing 26.6 percent of First World emissions have ratified so far. Japan's parliament gave its approval to ratification today and the Japanese cabinet is expected to give its final okay next week. Russia and New Zealand are expected to follow suit soon.
straight to the source: ABCNews.com, Reuters, 31 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=162>
straight to the source: Japan Times, 01 Jun 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=161>
only in Grist: This just in -- the latest climate change news -- in our Heat Beat section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/heatbeat/thisjustin052302.asp?source=daily>
ENVIRONMENTAL PROCRASTINATION AGENCY?
Health and environmental organizations in eight Southeastern states announced yesterday that they would sue the U.S. EPA for "dragging its feet" in implementing a strict air-quality standard established five years ago. The new standard limits ozone, the primary component of smog, to 0.08 parts per million instead of 0.12 ppm. The EPA claims it has delayed implementing the tougher standard because of industry lawsuits, but the last such challenge was struck down in March. Environmental organizations say that 59 cities or counties in the Southeast aren't meeting the strict standard, and that as a result, more than 23 million people from North Carolina to Mississippi are exposed to harmful levels of ozone pollution. Pam Lewis, executive director of the American Lung Association's Alabama chapter, said federal action was crucial to ensure compliance: "The sooner the EPA does its work, then the sooner the state does its work and the residents breathe healthier air."
straight to the source: Louisville Courier-Journal, Associated Press, Colin Fly, 31 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=163>
only in Grist: A week in the life of Ulla-Britt Reeves, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy <http://www.gristmagazine.com/week/reeves111300.stm?source=daily>
do good: Take action to clean up the Southern Company utility <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/air.asp?source=daily#southern>
6/1/02
2:35:20 PM
Nothing Urgent
by George Szamuely
Let’s revisit the curious lack of military action on the morning of Sept. 11. That morning, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, was having a routine meeting on Capitol Hill with Sen. Max Cleland. While the two men chatted away, a hijacked jet plowed into the World Trade Center’s north tower, another one plowed into the south tower and a third one into the Pentagon. And still they went on with their meeting. "[W]hen we came out," Myers recounted to American Forces Radio and Television Service, "somebody said the Pentagon had been hit." Myers claims no one had bothered to inform him about the attacks on the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, in Florida, just as President Bush was about to leave his hotel he was told about the attack on the first WTC tower. He was asked by a reporter if he knew what was going on in New York. He said he did, and then went to an elementary school in Sarasota to read to children.
No urgency. Why should there be? Who could possibly have realized then the calamitous nature of the events of that day? Besides, the hijackers had switched the transponders off. So how could anyone know what was going on?
Passenger jet hijackings are not uncommon and the U.S. government has prepared detailed plans to handle them. On Sept. 11 these plans were ignored in their entirety. According to The New York Times, air traffic controllers knew at 8:20 a.m. "that American Airlines Flight 11, bound from Boston to Los Angeles, had probably been hijacked. When the first news report was made at 8:48 a.m. that a plane might have hit the World Trade Center, they knew it was Flight 11." There was little ambiguity on the matter. The pilot had pushed a button on the aircraft yoke that allowed controllers to hear the hijacker giving orders. Here are the FAA regulations concerning hijackings: "The FAA hijack coordinator…on duty at Washington headquarters will request the military to provide an escort aircraft for a confirmed hijacked aircraft… The escort service will be requested by the FAA hijack coordinator by direct contact with the National Military Command Center (NMCC)." Here are the instructions issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on June 1, 2001: "In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will…forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."
In addition, as Vice President Cheney explained on Meet the Press on Sept. 16, only the president has the authority to order the shooting down of a civilian airliner.
The U.S. is supposed to scramble military aircraft the moment a hijacking is confirmed. Myers’ revelation to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 13 that no fighter planes had been launched until after the Pentagon was hit was therefore surprising. Senators and even some tv commentators were a little incredulous. Dan Rather asked: "These hijacked aircraft were in the air for quite a while… Why doesn’t the Pentagon have the kind of protection that they can get a fighter-interceptor aircraft up, and if someone is going to plow an aircraft into the Pentagon, that we have at least some…line of defense?"
Good question. Clearly another, more comforting, story was needed, and on the evening of Sept. 14 CBS launched it by revealing that the FAA had indeed alerted U.S. air defense units of a possible hijacking at 8:38 a.m. on Tuesday, that six minutes later two F-15s received a scramble order at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod and that by 8:56 the F-15s were racing toward New York. Unfortunately, the fighters were still 70 miles away when the second jet hit the south tower. Meanwhile, at 9:30 a.m., three F-16s were launched from Langley Air Force base, 150 miles south of Washington. But just seven minutes later, at 9:37 a.m., Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon. The F-16s arrived in Washington just before 10 a.m.
This story, which has now become the "official" version, raises more questions than it answers. F-15s can travel at speeds of 1875 mph while F-16s can travel at 1500 mph. If it took the F-16s half an hour to cover 150 miles, they could not have been traveling at more than 300 mph–at 20 percent capability. Boeing 767s and 757s have cruising speeds of 530 mph. Talk about a lack of urgency! Assuming Otis Air National Guard Base is about 180 miles away from Manhattan it should have taken the F-15s less than six minutes to get here. Moreover, since Washington, DC, is little more than 200 miles from New York, the two F-15 fighters would have had time to get to DC, intercept Flight 77 and grab breakfast on the way.
Ah, but of course the transponders were turned off. So no one could keep track of the planes. If it were true that the moment a transponder is turned off a plane becomes invisible there would be no defense against enemy aircraft. Normal radar echo return from the metal surface of an aircraft would still identify it on the radar scope.
Luckily, we still have first-rate establishment media to make sure that we retain confidence in our government.
Source: http://www.nypress.com/15/2/taki/bunker.cfm
5/31/02
3:41:08 PM
t r u t h o u t
William Rivers Pitt | The Politics of Treason
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01A.wrp.treason.htm
Wright Video | A Tearful FBI Agent Accuses Superiors of 911 Cover-up
Ashcroft Permits F.B.I. to Monitor Internet and Public Activities
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01B.fbi.internet.htm
F.B.I. Faces No Legal Obstacles to Domestic Spying
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01C.fbi.ok.2.spy.htm
Trust in Government Declines
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01D.no.trust.htm
Paul Krugman | Heart of Cheapness
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01E.krugman.cheap.htm
Arianna Huffington | Why Is Washington Ignoring The Warning Signs Of Economic Devastation?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01F.arianna.ignoring.htm
Judge Halts Grazing Near Yellowstone
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01G.yellowstone.htm
Tribe Sues in Land Management Row
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.01H.tribe.sues.htm
5/31/02
3:11:03 PM
The Nation
Since September 11, conspiracy theories have spread fast, purporting to explain the attacks and the continued war on terrorism. But their advocates imply far more than they prove, and, in one case, a key player in the alternative-9/11 world may be peddling theories to conceal a criminal past.
One key factor propelling these alternative scenarios is that when a government is as reluctanct to probe its own errors as the Bush Administration, it opens the door wide for those who would turn anomalies and coincidences into outlandish explanations.
For a thorough examination of the 9/11 X-Files, check out the latest installment of David Corn's Capital Games.
Available exclusively at:
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=66
And see these recent Nation articles for background on what Bush and the FBI knew and when they knew it:
NATION EDITORS: September 11 Questions (June 10, 2002)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=editors
DAVID CORN: The 9/11 Warning Game (WEB ONLY)
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=63
JOHN NICHOLS: McKinney Redux (June 10, 2002)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=nichols
You can also find these new web-only features currently:
ARTICLE | Singing to Power
by HILLARY FREY - Billy Bragg has to be the only popular musician who could score airtime with a song about the global justice movement.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=frey2002029
BEAT | Dems on the Fast Track
by JOHN NICHOLS - Grassroots Democrats should remember how their party's potential presidential candidates voted when the Senate had the chance to derail Bush's Fast Track initiative.
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=65
EDITORIAL | Pass ENDA Now!
by DOUG IRELAND - Twenty-seven years after its introduction, the first
comprehensive gay civil rights bill in the history of Congress is likely to come before the Senate this summer.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=ireland20020524
5/31/02
3:07:46 PM
AlterNet Headlines
BEWARE OF BOLTON
Ian Williams, AlterNet
Meet Jesse Helms' political heir: John Bolton, Undersecretary of State and right-wing warrior extraordinaire.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13256
ARE GIRLS MEAN?
Nina Shapiro, Seattle Weekly
A new wave of books about so-called 'mean girls' is generating a media frenzy and playing into ongoing debates about gender and kids.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13250
AFRICA NEEDS AID THAT WORKS
Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet
Rockstar Bono and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill are teaming up to help sub-Saharan nations. Is their tour going to produce concrete results or just great PR?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13234
CORPORATE ARMIES VS. GALACTIC GOVERNMENTS
Ed Janzen, AlterNet
Fans flock to Star Wars to see a high-stakes galactic drama with dazzling special effects. But does it also have a political agenda, foisted onto passive consumers?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13249
WE'RE LOSING OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES FOR NOTHING
David Morris, AlterNet
Director Robert Mueller has acknowledged the FBI's flaws. But the Bush Administration's post-9/11 strategy is to expand the invasive powers of government, not remedy the weakness.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13255
HERE COME THE BUNS
Janelle Brown, Salon
Just a few years ago, it was considered in bad taste to reveal your butt crack. Now butt cleavage isn't just for the plumber anymore; it's in your face and it's de rigeur.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13238
SHARK JUMPING IN AMERICA
John Powers, LA Weekly
If there's anything more depressing than Bush calling Fidel Castro a "tyrant," it's lefties who cling to the Cuban leader as the last flickering flame of some enduring torch of freedom.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13240
GAGGED BY GOOGLE
Laura Flanders, WorkingForChange.com
The activist founder of the Body Shop has been censored by the Web's most popular search engine. So much for the equal-access glories of the Internet.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13254
MEDIA MASH: FROM MOORE TO MALKOVICH
The Masher, AlterNet
This week from the Masher: Rumpled, hyper-unstylish author and filmmaker Michael Moore takes Cannes by storm; actor John Malkovich threatens journalist Robert Fisk.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13260
A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE
Is the battle to defend a women's right to choose moving from Washington, DC to state capitals across the country? How California is safeguarding reproductive rights on Monday's Working Assets Radio with Laura Flanders.
Listen online from 10-11amPT/1-2pmET, or call in: 866-798-TALK.
http://www.workingassetsradio.com
US GETS FAILING GRADE ON AMNESTY REPORT CARD
Gabrielle Banks, AlterNet
Amnesty International's annual report alleges that the US government overlooked international human rights violations for the sake of increased national security.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13248
THE FAKE PERSUADERS
George Monbiot, The Guardian
Biotech companies are creating false citizens to try to change the way we think. They call it Internet lobbying.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13236
EXTREMELY MUNDANE?
Andrew John Ignatius Vontz, AlterNet
Now that extreme sports are being re-packaged as mainstream entertainment Scooby Snacks, the soul of skateboarding could be in jeopardy.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13237
5/31/02
2:55:00 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
CONFRONTING RACISM THROUGH ART
by Wayne Dunkley, ShareMyWorld.net
-- For the last three years, African-American photographer Wayne Dunkley has posted 260 photocopied images of himself in downtown Toronto and Montreal which have subsequently been torn down, covered up and defaced -- actions, Dunkley says, that advance the dialogue about race and perception.
U.S. MEDIA COWED BY PATRIOTIC FEVER
by Matthew Engel, Guardian
-- Feeling pressured by the patriotic sentiment following the September 11 attacks, CBS news anchor Dan Rather admits he softened his reporting about the war on terrorism.
FROM FAST FOOD TO FAST TRUCKS: 'BIODIESEL' IS ON ITS WAY
Dave Williamson, TomPaine.com
-- Virtually edible and less toxic than table salt, biodiesel could be coming to a filling station near you.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
5/31/02
2:53:37 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
BUYOUT COULD BLOCK DRILLING IN EVERGLADES, GULF
WASHINGTON, DC, May 30, 2002 (ENS) - About 765,000 acres of Florida park and preserve land would be protected from future oil and natural gas drilling under an agreement announced Wednesday by the Bush administration. The Department of Interior has agreed in principle to spend $235 million to buy back drilling rights beneath the Florida Everglades and in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida panhandle.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-30-06.asp
EUROPE WILL RATIFY KYOTO CLIMATE PROTOCOL FRIDAY
BRUSSELS, Belgium, May 30, 2002 (ENS) - Representatives from all European Union governments and the European Commission will formally ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change at a ceremony Friday at UN Headquarters in New York. The move marks a key step towards entry into force of binding greenhouse gas emission limits for industrialized countries.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-30-01.asp
AFGHANISTAN RACES AGAINST TIME TO DESTROY LOCUSTS
By Mohammad Shafiq Haqpal
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, May 30, 2002 (ENS) - A plague of locusts is threatening to devastate Afghanistan's farmland, just as tens of thousands of refugees return. Farmers, aid organizations and even the militia are working around the clock to kill off the last of the spring locust nymphs before they can take to the air and ravage more of Afghanistan's much needed harvest.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-30-02.asp
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: May 30, 2002
Wilderness Bill Targets Washington's Lowlands
Glacial Retreat Seen Worldwide
New EPA Facility Supports Environmental Research
Virginia University to Aid Developing Nations
Heavy Rains Reduce Eastern Drought
Critical Habitat Proposed for Hawaiian Plants
Rio Grande's Artificial Surge Prompts Spawning
Habitat Restoration Headed for Dakota Battlefield
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-30-09.asp
5/31/02
2:51:53 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
FEATURE - Water crisis hurts US - Mexico farmers - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16208/story.htm
UK's Beckett urges England to boost recycling - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16210/story.htm
Britain's high court delays mahogany verdict - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16212/story.htm
INTERVIEW - UK green power firm EPRL aims for 2003 listing - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16216/story.htm
Animal activists protest against Korean dog cruelty - SOUTH KOREA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16206/story.htm
FACTBOX - Major automakers' eco-friendly efforts - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16205/story.htm
FEATURE - Hydrogen puts Iceland on road to oil-free future - ICELAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16207/story.htm
FEATURE - Diesel's European future safe as drivers go green - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16204/story.htm
French rapper fined for TV assault on pet monkey - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16209/story.htm
Asian elephant experts want ivory ban to stay - CAMBODIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16213/story.htm
FEATURE - Brazilian Indian chief leads tribe back to life - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16215/story.htm
EU wants multinationals to publish ethical reports - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16211/story.htm
EU tells Spain stop calling non-organic food "bio" - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16214/story.htm
5/31/02
2:49:19 PM
GM Crops Threat To Organic Farming
by Geoffrey Lean, May 27, 2002
Organic farming will be forced out of production in Britain and across Europe if GM crops are grown commercially, a startling new EU report concludes.
The report - which is so controversial that top EC officials tried to stop it being made public - shows that organic farms will become so contaminated by genes from the new crops that they can no longer be licensed or will have to spend so much money trying to protect themselves that they will become uneconomic. Conventional non-GM farms will also be seriously affected.
Drawn up as a result of two years of studies in Britain, France, Italy and Germany, it provides the most damning confirmation to date of the arguments, long advanced by environmentalists, that it is not possible for GM and organic farming to coexist and that, as a result, shoppers will be denied a choice of what to buy.
The conclusion is politically explosive because the demand for organic produce is increasing rapidly across Europe, while consumer resistance to GM food has forced supermarkets not to stock it.
The Director General of the EC's Joint Research Center, which produced the report, submitted it with a letter saying: "In view of the sensitivity of the issue, I would suggest that the report be kept for internal use within the Commission only."
Publication of the findings is embarrassing for the Government. On Friday the Prime Minister denounced GM opponents as using "emotion to drive out reason".
The report - which follows a study by the European Environment Agency warning that genes from GM crops will travel long distances, creating superweeds - studies the effects of growing modified maize, potatoes and oilseed rape commercially on several types of farms.
It found that even if only a tenth of a country or region was planted with them - far less that the 54 per cent of Canada now under GM crops - keeping contamination at a level that would allow organic farming to continue would be "extremely difficult for any farm-crop combination in the scenarios considered".
It adds that when contamination occurred every year through "the wide-ranging cultivation of GM crops" in an area "organic farms will lose their organic status and face severe problems to grow their crops according to the regulations given by the EU".
GM farmers would also be at risk, it added, because organic farmers might well be entitled to compensation.
Yesterday, Adrian Bebb, food campaigner of Friends of the Earth, said: "This report shows that if GM crops are grown in Britain farming will be plunged into even greater crisis and consumers will be denied their fundamental right to choose what they and their children will eat."
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk
5/31/02
2:41:41 PM
U.S. Ignored Warnings From French
by James Ridgeway, Villagevoice.com, Tuesday, 20 May, 2002
A key point in unraveling why the FBI failed to follow up leads on Al Qaeda terrorism now centers on the Bureau's contemptuously brushing aside warnings from French intelligence a few days before 9-11. In a footnote to her May 21, 2002, letter to FBI director Robert Mueller, Coleen Rowley, the director of the FBI's Minneapolis office, cryptically alluded to the FBI supervising agent in Washington being given info on the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, by the French last summer, but choosing not to act on it.
French officials were long known to have been frustrated with Washington's neglect. Shortly after the attack, Le Monde reported on a meeting between French and U.S. intelligence: "The first lapse has to do with the processing of intelligence items that come out of Europe. According to our information, French and American officials did in fact hold important meetings in Paris from the 5th to the 6th of September, that is, a few days prior to the attacks. Those sessions brought representatives of the American Special Services together with officers of the DST (Directorate of Territorial Security) and military personnel from the DGSE (General Overseas Security Administration).
"Their discussion turned to some of the serious threats made against American interests in Europe, specifically one targeting the U.S. Embassy in Paris," Le Monde continued. "During these talks, the DST directed the American visitors' attention to a Moroccan-born Frenchman who had been detained in the United States since August 17 and who was considered to be a key high-level Islamic fundamentalist. But the American delegation, preoccupied above all with questions of administrative procedure, paid no attention to this 'first alarm,' basically concluding that they were going to take no one's advice, and that an attack on American soil was inconceivable. It took September 11 for the FBI to show any real interest in this man, who we now know attended two aviation training schools, as did at least seven of the kamikaze terrorists."
In her report, Rowley presents a picture of an agency asleep at the wheel. "For example, at one point, the Supervisory Special Agent at FBI HQ posited that the French information could be worthless because it only identified Zacarias Moussaoui by name and he, the SSA, didn't know how many people by that name existed in France. A Minneapolis agent attempted to surmount that problem by quickly phoning the FBI's legal attache in Paris, France, so that a check could be made of the French telephone directories. Although the attache did not have access to all of the French telephone directories, he was able to quickly ascertain that there was only one listed in the Paris directory. It is not known if this sufficiently answered the question, for the SSA continued to find new reasons to stall."
Source: http://villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway2.php
5/31/02
2:39:07 PM
t r u t h o u t | 05.31
FBI Director Contridicts Bush; Attacks Might Have Been Prevented
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31A.Muller.Bush.htm
U.S. Ignored Warnings From French
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31B.french.warn.htm
Conyers Blasts Ashcroft's Further Expansion Of Fbi Surveillance Authority
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31C.conyers.survail.htm
FBI to Be Given More Room for U.S. Surveillance
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31D.fbi.more.survail.htm
Democrats Press Ashcroft on Failure to Pursue Voting Rights Violations in Florida
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31E.dems.fla.htm
Ceremony Without Words Ends Recovery Effort at Twin Towers
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31F.wtc.end.htm
Dozens Injured in India Bomb Blasts
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31G.india.bombs.htm
Salman Rushdie | The Most Dangerous Place in the World
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.31H.rushdie.ind-pak.htm
5/31/02
2:33:33 PM
Forest Service to Recommend Opening Alaska Forest Area
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON, May 16 -- In its first major decision on wilderness protection, the Bush administration plans to recommend that nine million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska be opened for logging, mining and road building, while 1.4 million acres of the state's Chugach National Forest receive the highest designation of protection.
The Forest Service is to announce the recommendations on Friday. In documents, it said it was acting "to ensure that the many wild and beautiful areas along with the abundant fish and wildlife resources of the Tongass were protected while maintaining the availability of some of the Tongass for more intensive resource management in support of the economies of southeast Alaska and its scattered small communities."
Congress must approve all declarations of wilderness, which is the highest protection except for a national park or monument.
Alaska lawmakers and the timber industry were relieved that the administration had refrained from designating more of the Tongass forest as wilderness. Already, 6.6 million acres of the Tongass, an old-growth rain forest, are protected as wilderness. The forest is 16.8 million acres, about the size of West Virginia.
Senator Frank H. Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said enough of the Tongass forest was already protected.
"Nearly 97 percent of the forest is fully protected," Mr. Murkowski said. "It is only reasonable that 3 percent be left for multiple use so that Alaskans can have jobs that allow them to live in the region."
Tom Puchlerz, the Tongass forest supervisor, said that only about 10 percent of the nine million acres would be open for development.
"The economic development in our communities in southeast Alaska is important, as are the materials for the nation in terms of timber and minerals," Mr. Puchlerz said.
Environmentalists said the decisions bode poorly for the protection of other wilderness and roadless areas across the country. They said that the recommendation for the 5.5 million-acre Chugach forest protected too little of the forest's accessible land and that the Tongass recommendation was a gift to the timber industry.
The Chugach forest, the nation's second-largest national forest after the Tongass, is southeast of Anchorage and has just 100 miles of roads on the 4.1 million acres that the administration is not seeking to designate as wilderness. The part that would be protected includes forested islands, rugged mountains, extensive ice fields and tidewater glaciers.
Sue Libenson, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Coalition, said the Chugach areas recommended for wilderness designation were remote rocky and glacial parts, mostly unsuitable for economic development anyway.
"We are concerned they will not support wilderness for the areas that are biologically important or accessible to the general public," Ms. Libenson said of the Forest Service.
Administration officials said they were doing better than the Clinton administration on the Chugach forest by recommending any wilderness designation. As for the Tongass forest, they said, they were simply affirming the position of the Clinton administration.
Environmentalists, however, said the Bush administration was playing a shell game with these terms, noting that the Clinton administration had not reviewed the areas for wilderness designation and had designated parts of the Tongass forest as roadless areas.
Jeremy Anderson, a spokesman for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said: "Clinton said, You can't log or road in these areas, and now the Bush administration is saying, Have at it. They're pushing more than 30 timber sales in these areas."
Mark Rey, under secretary for natural resources and environment in the Agriculture Department, said the Chugach forest recommendation, which is final, was the largest wilderness designation that any administration had sent to Congress since 1984.
The Tongass recommendation is a draft statement from the Forest Service. It will be subject to public comment for 90 days before being proposed as a final rule. Both sides predicted that the matter would be settled in court.
Since the middle of the last century, the timber industry has clear-cut hundreds of thousands of acres of the Tongass's old-growth forest and built more than 4,600 miles of roads.
Ms. Libenson of the Alaska Coalition said the announcement on both the Tongass and Chugach forests was an effort by the Forest Service "to cover a very bad, embarrassing decision on the Tongass with a second-rate decision on the Chugach."
Mr. Rey said the Chugach decision was not meant to distract from or counterbalance the Tongass one, but that since both forests were in Alaska, the recommendations might as well be announced simultaneously.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/politics/17FORE.html?todaysheadlines
We do not know of any prepared action letters for this issue. In lieu of something more specific, we suggest going to the following website:
There you can enter your zip code and be able to send a message telling how you feel about this issue (or about any issue) to 4 government officials with just one click of your mouse: to your two US Senators, your US Congressperson, and to pResident Bush.
If you know of a more targeted action, please let us know and we will send that info out to this group.
5/31/02
2:31:37 PM
Participate In This National Day Of Action To Stop Genetically Engineered Food
When: Saturday, June 8th
What: People across the country will be going to their supermarkets to demand that food chains like Safeway and Shaw's/Star Market remove genetically engineered food from their store brand products. Supermarkets will only change their practices if they hear from customers like you. So take action on June 8th!!
Where: Events will be happening throughout the country. To find out if there is an event near you, check out: (Events are added daily, so check back regularly)
http://www.truefoodnow.org/communitycenter
If there isn't an event listed for your community and you would like to organize one, please send an email to: geteam@truefoodnow.org with your name and address and we can mail you materials. Be sure to send us an email by Monday, June 3rd so we can get materials to you in time.
Want to do more? Become a Greenpeace Member today!
https://www.greenpeaceusa.org/join/tfn.htm
5/31/02
2:28:50 PM
New Tire Pressure Monitoring Rule: A Fraud On Consumers
Statement of Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook, May 30, 2002
The federal rule issued today giving auto manufacturers the choice of installing one of two types of tire pressure monitoring systems is inadequate and perpetuates a fraud on consumers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) earlier had proposed a stronger rule that would better protect consumers. We are deeply disappointed that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) unwisely overruled NHTSA.
Proper tire pressure is critical. When tire pressure is low, tires experience more wear and tear, which can lead tires to fail. Congress required NHTSA to issue a tire pressure rule requiring manufacturers to equip vehicles with systems that enable consumers to know when their tires are underinflated.
After receiving nearly 200 comments and holding at least 20 meetings, NHTSA recommended the installation of a "direct" system, which monitors the pressure of all four tires even when the car is stopped and provides drivers with comprehensive and accurate information. "Indirect" systems, which can be installed only in vehicles with anti-lock brakes, measure differences in the rotational speed of tires. They do not work if all four tires are equally underinflated or if the vehicle is not moving.
The new regulation gives manufacturers a choice of installing either a direct or indirect system. This will provide consumers with fewer safety benefits. Companies likely will install the indirect system as standard equipment because it is cheaper, allowing them to charge a high mark-up for the superior direct systems.
Because this standard is wholly inadequate, Public Citizen intends to sue NHTSA to force it to adopt a rule that better protects the public.
*Joan Claybrook was NHTSA administrator from 1977 to 1981.
Note: To view a March 11, 2002, letter sent to the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs about the tire pressure monitoring rule, go to
http://www.citizen.org/congress/regulations/bush_admin/articles.cfm?ID=7270
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.
For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org
5/31/02
2:25:47 PM
Heavy Metal Harm
The Fight Against Highly Toxic Mercury in the Environment Has Just Begun
by Jim Motavalli
The late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro loved to eat tuna fish. An avid environmentalist, she was shocked to hear that her favorite food was contaminated with the toxic heavy metal mercury, and she expressed her anger in a song. "I'm young enough, I'm old enough in the city machine/Where industries fill the fish full of mercury (it's tax free)."
Nyro was right to worry about eating fish, and right about industrial mercury use. Forty states have issued advisories about eating fish that may have high levels of mercury in their tissues. As recently as last July, Massachusetts public health officials warned young women and children under 12 to stop eating "most" fish caught in state rivers and lakes, and to avoid certain seafood. Tuna was on the list, as was swordfish.
Mercury is a persistent heavy metal, processed into a liquid from mined cinnabar, that accumulates in water and in the tissues of humans, fish and animals. It was declared a hazardous air pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1971. According to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, long-term human exposure to mercury in either organic or inorganic form "can permanently damage the brain, kidneys, and developing fetuses." A potent neurotoxin, mercury is slowly being phased out of many commercial uses, including consumer thermometers, but it is still used in many industrial processes and is in such products as fluorescent lights, home and appliance thermostats, and even toys.
Ask most people about mercury in the environment and they're apt to think of broken thermometers. But the truth is that industry, in the form of coal-fired power plants, electric arc furnaces (which melt and recycle the steel from old cars) and municipal waste incinerators are the major sources. In landfills and in water, bacterial contamination turns mercury into its most toxic form, methyl mercury. Mercury also gets into the environment in pharmaceutical products, and through ritual religious uses, especially in Latin American Santeria (see sidebar). Mercury sells for less than $2 a pound on the wholesale market, and even when it is "recycled," it may still end up in the environment.
Progress is being made to end some of mercury's more visible uses, but the campaign is far from over. Five states have laws that either put some restrictions on mercury use, sale or disposal or require labeling of products containing it. Similar bills are pending in 15 state legislatures. "Despite state and local bans, thousands of retailers still sell mercury thermometers to consumers who aren't aware of the risks," says Felice Stadler, policy coordinator of the National Wildlife Federation's Clean the Rain campaign.
"Just one seventieth of a teaspoon of atmospheric mercury can contaminate a 20-acre lake for a year," says Michael Bender, executive director of the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project. "We have to take mercury permanently out of commerce. It's not that difficult to containerize it and store it indefinitely. An ideal solution would be the kind of 'producer responsibility' laws they have in Europe, which make companies responsible for their waste."
U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has proposed legislation that would create a task force to address the mercury problem on a national scale. Under her bill, the Mercury Reduction and Disposal Act, S.351, the sale of thermometers containing the metal would be banned nationally, and the mercury inside them would be stockpiled and treated similarly to nuclear waste. Stadler says, "Enacting a nationwide ban on sales is essential."
In response to a campaign led by Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), five drugstore chains, including CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and Eckerd, have agreed to stop selling mercury thermometers. These companies represent 71 percent of chain pharmacies, but mercury thermometers are still on sale at Kroger, Medicine Shoppe, Publix and Fred's stores. "It's appalling that there are retailers that continue to sell potentially dangerous mercury devices to their customers, especially when safe alternatives exist in the marketplace," says Jamie Harvie, mercury coordinator of HCWH. Eight states and a number of cities have banned or restricted the sale of mercury thermometers, and 600 hospitals and clinics have agreed to get mercury out of their waste streams.
But mercury thermometers are only one, very visible part of the problem. Because mercury has many uses and applications, the movement to get it out of the atmosphere must take a multi-pronged approach. Some of the campaigns have made more headway than others, but all have acquired a new urgency as the dangers of mercury become better known.
Fish Filled With Mercury
According to a 2001 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study, one of 10 American women of childbearing age is at risk for having a baby born with neurological problems due to in utero mercury exposure. Statistically, that means 375,000 babies are at risk every year. Nearly six million women who might be considering having a child already have mercury levels above EPA safety guidelines.
As recounted in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC study was based on a national survey of mercury in blood and hair, while previous studies were estimates based on per capita fish consumption. "New studies show that far more women are at risk of exposure to methyl mercury than previously thought," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. She urges the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to monitor commercial seafood and to remove unsafe fish from the market.
A federal General Accounting Office (GAO) report, commissioned by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) in 1999, concludes that the FDA has failed in its efforts to protect the public from mercury-tainted seafood. The report faulted the FDA's Hazard Analysis Critical Point regulations for not providing proper guidance to the fishing industry about safeguarding the public. A joint report by the Mercury Policy Project and California Communities Against Toxics in 2000 charged that the FDA had stopped mercury monitoring for tuna, shark and swordfish, despite the fact that the FDA's previous testing found more than one part per million (considered the "action level") of mercury in more than half the swordfish it evaluated. Some 33 percent of shark tissue studied by the FDA was found to exceed the action level for mercury, as was four percent of tuna. In 2001, the FDA finally recommended that women of childbearing age not eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish. Tuna was not mentioned.
"The GAO report shows that mercury pollution threatens both sportfish and seafood," says Eric Uram of the Sierra Club's Midwestern office. "Consumers need to watch what fish they eat, no matter where it comes from-- the restaurant, store, lake or seashore."
A 2001 study that looked specifically at the New England states gave them a mixed report card for their efforts to reduce mercury levels in the environment, and warn the public about the risks. The New England Zero Mercury Campaign praised the states for developing health-based advisories about mercury in fish, but it urged them to do more to "effectively communicate these health warnings to women who may become pregnant and families with young children -- .Strategically targeted and culturally sensitive outreach and education is needed to prevent dangerous mercury exposure from fish, especially from commonly eaten seafood."
Prenatal mercury exposure, said the New England report, "can hurt children's ability to remember, pay attention, talk, draw, run and play, and increase the number of children who have trouble keeping up in school or require special education, according to the National Academy of Sciences." According to Dr. Ted Schettler of Physicians for Social Responsibility, "Relatively small amounts of contaminated fish eaten often, or larger amounts eaten occasionally, can harm developing fetal brains during windows of vulnerability. The fetus is extremely sensitive to mercury."
Switching Off Auto Mercury
What do the high-intensity headlights, anti-lock brake systems, global positioning screens and trunk- or hood-mounted light switches on your car have in common? They all may contain highly toxic mercury. The Clean Car Campaign, a coalition of several environmental groups, is trying to persuade the auto industry to not only stop all uses of mercury, but also to take responsibility for the heavy metal already installed in hundreds of millions of on-the-road vehicles. The industry has agreed to phase out most uses of mercury switches by the end of the 2001 model year, but it is not surprisingly balking at the monumental effort needed to remove existing switches, many of which it says would prove difficult to locate. (At presstime, the state of Maine passed landmark legislation requiring carmakers to pay for a mercury auto switch recovery program that will take at least 90 pounds of the metal out of the environment every year.)
According to the Mercury Policy Project's Bender, the auto industry installed 10 tons of mercury in car switches in 1995, although that amount was dramatically reduced by the 2001 model year. Mercury light switches are now used in only a few General Motors vehicles. Most European and Japanese auto manufacturers stopped installing mercury convenience light switches in the mid-1990s. But even as the switches are being phased out, many domestic and foreign companies are equipping their cars with headlights, brake components and navigational systems containing mercury.
The EPA, in a report to Congress in 1997, estimated that 158 tons of the metal are released into the atmosphere annually from manmade sources in the U.S. "The auto industry is not the major source, but it's definitely a significant source," says Bender, who points to coal-fired power plants and waste combustors as the prime culprits nationally for mercury release.
Charles Griffith, the auto project director of Michigan's Ecology Center, a member of the Clean Car Campaign, says that the mercury in auto switches is released into the atmosphere when steel recovered from scrapped automobiles is melted down in electric arc furnaces (EAFs). A study produced jointly by the Ecology Center, the Buffalo-based Great Lakes United and the University of Tennessee Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies estimates that 15.6 metric tons of mercury are released annually by EAFs, more than all other manufacturing sources combined.
Bob Kainz, a senior manager for pollution prevention and life cycle programs at DaimlerChrysler, says that only two of the company's 2001 products, the Jeep Cherokee and Wrangler, still had mercury switches in their ABS brake systems, and that both models will be free of the heavy metal when they're redesigned over the next few years. "There are better ways of handling this problem than going after the carmakers," Kainz says. "Eighty-seven percent of the mercury going out into the atmosphere is coming from utility boilers, waste combustors, coal-fired power plants, cement plants and medical incinerators." Kainz adds that DaimlerChrysler's records do not consistently identify which cars or trucks actually have mercury switches.
The auto industry, through such trade groups as the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, has lobbied against the laws, arguing that it is phasing out mercury on its own. Greg Dana, vice president for environmental affairs of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, says that General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler began removing mercury from their products in 1995 under an agreement with the state of Michigan. The mercury switches in existing cars, he says, should be removed when the car is at the end of its life. "The recyclers are already taking out the gasoline, oil, and air-conditioner refrigerant," Dana says. "It's a simple add-on for them to rip out the mercury switches."
The auto trade groups support legislation requiring recyclers to remove the switches as part of the dismantling process, but this has produced a fierce reaction from junkyard operators and scrap steel dealers. Both the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA) and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries say they have little financial incentive to take on the task, with each switch containing only a gram of the metal and mercury trading at less than $2 a pound. According to ARA Vice President Bill Steinkuller, "The auto manufacturers engineered the vehicles to include mercury switches, produced the product and profited from it. From our point of view, it defies logic that they now want to deny any responsibility for the mercury and put the onus on the dismantlers."
The auto industry and the recyclers are fighting a war of words over mercury, but there is some chance of reconciliation. "We're not trying to pick a fight with the manufacturers," Steinkuller says. "If we get beyond the rhetoric, we can probably get together and handle this problem." Unfortunately, ARA's proposed solution-- in which the carmakers foot the bill for a nationwide program of mercury collection and storage--is precisely the kind of high-cost program the auto industry is trying to avoid.
Chewing on Mercury
Anita Vasquez Tibau was a young college dance major 20 years ago when she suddenly found herself unable to breathe. "I could hardly walk," she told Dr. L.A. McKeown in an article for WebMD Medical News. "I couldn't do anything. I was using my inhaler every half hour." These problems plagued Tibau for 20 years until, in 2000, a blood test showed she was highly sensitive to mercury. After Tibau had a dentist remove all 13 of her mercury fillings, her health improved dramatically. She no longer uses any asthma medicine, and she reports much higher energy levels and an increased attention span.
The American Dental Association (ADA) reports that 76 percent of dentists use dental amalgam-- a mixture of metals, including silver, dissolved with mercury. The ADA denies that there are any safety problems with dental amalgam. "Studies have failed to find any link between amalgam restorations and any medical disorder," the association says. But it concedes that "a very small number of people" are allergic to the fillings. "Fewer than 100 cases have ever been reported," says the ADA. "Symptoms of amalgam allergy are very similar to a typical skin allergy."
The ADA defended its position in court last year after Consumers for Dental Choice sued the ADA and the California Dental Association, claiming that both groups were misleading the public about the mercury content of what they call "silver fillings." But the ADA says it has never tried to hide the mercury connection.
A paper prepared by Consumers for Dental Choice and DAMS, another anti-amalgam advocacy group, charges that every amalgam filling releases 10 micrograms of mercury into the body daily, which is two-thirds of the excretable mercury level. The report also charges that mercury can cross the placental barrier into the tissue of a developing fetus, and it implicates the metal in kidney impairment, loss of immune function, antibiotic resistance and lowered fertility.
Boyd Haley, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, has been an expert witness before Congress on the mercury issue. "They place this stuff in people's mouths and it's toxic before it goes in, and it's toxic when it is placed in your tooth, so how does it suddenly become safe?" he asks. Many dentists, under pressure on the mercury issue, have switched to alternatives. According to Richard Epstein, a Connecticut-based dentist, "While I believe that the studies disparaging silver amalgam are seriously flawed, the alternatives are effective enough to warrant switching. I now use gold and composite materials."
Dentists have also been under fire for releasing unused amalgam into the waste stream, where it can enter the aquatic food chain. Some have invested in disposable amalgam traps, which catch the metal before it goes down the drain. Recaptured amalgam can be shipped to groups like Dental Recycling North America, which recovers 90 to 95 percent of the mercury in the fillings.
Congresswoman Diane Watson (D-CA) introduced legislation last year that would ban all mercury-based dental amalgam in five years. The New York State Dental Association has fought a proposed bill that would, among other things, require dentists to use mercury containment traps, file an annual amalgam report, and no longer use the fillings for pregnant or under-15-year-old patients. The association claims the legislation is "misguided" and "would detrimentally alter the practice of dentistry."
From the Smokestack
According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), dirty power plants, especially those that burn coal (which contains mercury naturally), are the single largest source of mercury emissions, resulting in an estimated 40 tons a year. Eighty-five percent of all mercury pollution in the U.S. is released either by coal plants or municipal and medical waste incinerators burning mercury-tainted trash. Only the incinerator emissions are regulated. In 2000, a NAS report urged that mercury releases from power plants be drastically curtailed. Before leaving office, the Clinton Administration announced that it would develop new, stricter standards, to be proposed in 2003 and finalized in 2004. Then-EPA Administrator Carol Browner noted, "The greatest source of mercury emissions is power plants, and they have never been required to control these emissions before now."
Upon taking office, the Bush Administration signaled that it might reverse campaign promises about power plant carbon dioxide and mercury emissions. The move came after heavy industry pressure from the Utility Air Regulatory Group, which represents 50 large power plants.
Environmentalists loudly protested the administration's proposed reversal. "Countless studies have documented that mercury emissions from U.S. sources, including coal-fired electric utilities, contaminate lakes and streams, the fish within those water bodies, and the people and wildlife who eat the fish," said National Wildlife Federation Senior Scientist Mike Murray.
In April 2001, the Bush Administration again changed course, attempting to quash an Edison Electric Institute lawsuit aimed at the Clinton-era mercury rules. Environmentalists were cautiously optimistic, but Bush's EPA is likely to phase in smaller mercury reductions over a longer period of time.
In model legislation created by the Mercury Policy Project, coal-burning electric utilities would be required to reduce their mercury releases 95 percent by 2008, but the Bush Administration is likely to impose a much weaker standard. Groundbreaking legislation is instead coming from the states, including Vermont, which passed the Mercury Reduction Act in 1998. That bill requires manufacturers of "mercury-added" products to label them as such when sold to the public. The legislation also banned trash disposal of products containing mercury. Vermont's bill prompted a lawsuit by fluorescent lamp manufacturers, who claimed an undue financial burden and argued that their First Amendment right not to disclose information had been violated. The lawsuit was later thrown out by two federal appeals courts.
Several other states intend to model legislation on Vermont's law. In 2001, Massachusetts unveiled strict new final standards for power plant emissions, becoming the first state in the nation to regulate mercury releases. The state's power plants will be required to phase in 50 to 75 percent nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emission reductions by 2008. "From a national perspective, this mandatory reduction of four major pollutants from the state's oldest and dirtiest power plants is a very important precedent," says Cindy Luppi, organizing director of Clean Water Action.
One final irony is that U.S. campaigners may be very successful in removing mercury from domestic commerce, only to see the deadly neurotoxin "recycled" to ready buyers overseas. That was exactly the case last year, when HoltraChem, a mercury-based chlor-alkali plant in Maine, shut down. Some 130 tons of mercury were sold to a broker, which resold it for use in India. Madhumita Dutta, coordinator of the Indian group Toxics Link, calls this kind of transaction "toxic trade." Vehement protests in both India and the U.S. succeeded in at least temporarily stopping the deal, but there is an estimated 3.5 to five million pounds of mercury on-site at 11 other American chlor-alkali plants.
For environmentalists, the battle against mercury has many fronts. It's not just in thermometers, but also in pharmaceutical products and vaccines (in the form of thimerosal, a preservative), and it is in car parts, too. As soon as legislation is passed to take it out of some consumer products, it pops up in others. A worrisome new use is in high-tech gadgetry, like global positioning screens and high-density auto headlights. Mercury pours out of smokestacks and arc furnaces and, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, tons of it (stored in foliage and ground litter) goes up in smoke during wildfires. It's an elusive enemy, but one well worth fighting.
Source: http://www.emagazine.com/may-june_2002/0502feat1.html
5/31/02
2:15:14 PM
The Lost Art Of Muckraking
by Steve Weinberg May 28, 2002
Until the Sea Shall Free Them: Life, Death, and Survival in the Merchant Marine, by Robert Frump, Doubleday, 341 pages, $24.95
Muckraking!: The Journalism That Changed America, edited by Judith Serrin and William Serrin, published by the New Press in July 2002, 432 pages, $25.
Journalists expose corruption on a regular basis. Often those exposés cause a ripple or even a tidal wave of reaction, but most often those responsible for the corruption return to business or government as usual.
However, quite a few of those exposés actually lead to permanent change -- such as the numerous reported cases of innocent individuals who are freed from prison after the investigations of intrepid reporters. In some cases the corrupt officials who put the individuals behind bars lost their jobs, and authorities implemented changes to avoid similar future injustice.
Investigative journalists are also often the ones who expose corporate fraud -- such as the exposé on Standard Oil Company trust by McClure magazine journalist Ida Tarbell some 100 years ago. Tarbell's articles described the company's agreement with suppliers to fix prices in order to drive competitors out of business. As a result of the ensuing scandal, the chief executive officer was fired, and the board of directors instituted internal controls. The government also issued new guidelines on the relationship between companies in oligopolistic industries and their suppliers.
Unfortunately, journalists too rarely write about the long-term impact of their investigations. As a result, most people have no idea how frequently "the system works," not because those inside the system responded adequately, but because talented, dedicated journalists forced the issue.
Two new books -- one by former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Robert Frump, and one -- an anthology edited by journalists Judith Serrin and William Serrin -- detail important examples of investigative reporters serving as catalysts for reform.
For years Frump, who has left journalism to work for a financial services firm, wanted to tell the world about how he and others at the Inquirer played an important role in making U.S. commercial ships safer after a string of fatal sinkings killed thousands of merchant marines. But despite the Inquirer's long-running exposé in the mid-1980s, Frump and book publishers never reached agreement. Years later, unable to get the story out of his head, Frump re-entered the book contract market, and finally signed with Doubleday.
His just published book, "Until the Sea Shall Free Them," is a first-rate account of the sinking of the Marine Electric in February 1983, just 30 miles off the east coast of the United States. Of the 34 merchant marines on board, only three survived. Most news organizations reported on the tragedy briefly, and then moved on.
But not the Philadelphia Inquirer. Why? According to Frump, the Inquirer stayed on the story because of the top editor at the time, Gene Roberts. In the first of his interspersed chapters on why the Inquirer conducted its investigation, how the staff functioned and the newspaper's role in righting a wrong, Frump starts with Roberts. The date is Feb. 13, 1983:
By 10:30 on the Sunday morning after the sinking of the Marine Electric ... Roberts ... was calling editors and reporters at their homes. There seemed no plausible explanation for why he was doing this. Roberts was not a morning man, for one thing. He preferred working late into the evening as the newspaper drove toward its first edition deadline. Moreover, few Marine Electric crew members were from his circulation area, and Philadelphia was 102 nautical miles up the Delaware River from the sea. So there was no strong local angle to mobilize his news staff...[Yet Roberts] was about to set a team of investigative reporters upon a world that was rarely covered by the American media.
Initially there wasn't tremendous public interest in the event. But Roberts, who had covered the waterfront as a Virginia newspaper reporter, suspected that there was a bigger story behind the sinking of one commercial vessel. He wanted his reporters and editors to go deep, to figure out why so many ships were sinking.
So Frump started digging through government documents, court records and other repositories on the paper trail. Along the way he talked to the ignored seamen, the usually ignored sources at the Coast Guard, the National Transportation Safety Board, the corporations that owned the ships and the unions that supplied the labor to operate them.
As hardworking journalists often do, Frump had a eureka moment: He and his colleagues discovered that the Marine Electric's class of ship was structurally unsound, and always had been.
"The T-2 tankers, built during World War II, were serial sinkers. Some even sank at dockside. They were built of dirty steel. They contained tired iron. By one count, more than 500 men had died on old ships in accidents that never should have happened. The Marine Electric may finally have sunk on Feb. 12, 1983. But it had begun slipping beneath the waves four decades earlier."
The Inquirer's first investigative stories appeared in May 1983. Congress held hearings, and numerous politicians promised reform. Then, as often happens after investigative reports are forgotten, nothing changed. But the Inquirer team did not give up. They published articles about delays in the Marine Electric investigation and the larger reform measures needed to halt the sinkings.
The stories embarrassed the corporations that owned the ships, the unions staffing the ships, the government agencies inspecting the ships, and even the legislature. Eventually, the Inquirer's unrelenting initiative forced the authorities to pinpoint blame, take responsibility and become involved in altering a fatal system.
Frump's is just one story of the power of journalism at its best. Husband and wife team Judith and William Serrin bring together many more similar tales in their anthology. The anthology compiles some 300 years of reportage, highlighting investigative reports that were successful in bringing about institutional change. Both Serrins have extensive reporting experience. William also edited a previous book about the corporatization of news.
The Serrins said they chose to assemble journalism that "contribute[d] to change…" One of those cases was an exposé on pedophile priests done, not in 2002 during the recent spate of reporting on the issue, but 17 years ago, by Arthur Jones of the National Catholic Reporter newspaper. Jones wrote about a priest who abused boys in Louisiana.
Between 1972 and 1983, Father Gilbert Gauthe committed hundreds of sexual acts with dozens of boys in four south Louisiana Catholic parishes. He also took hundreds of pornographic photographs, which have disappeared. The priest, suspended by the Lafayette diocese in 1983, is now in a Connecticut mental facility. The situation has no real precedent in American case law. The criminal trial expected this fall is thought to be one of the largest single cases of pedophilia on record. A Lafayette diocese defense attorney has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Millions of dollars in damage claims are at stake, and millions have already been paid.
In his article, Jones detailed the cases of additional priests caught molesting young people, and of church officials who tried to cover up the scandals. For about two years, the National Catholic Reporter broke story after story with almost no follow-up from journalists elsewhere. But as a result of his reporting, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops established policies to deal with sexual abuse. The stories also warned the laity about specific priests and about church leaders who participated in cover-ups.
Often journalists have been at the forefront of breaking public taboos or pushing topics like suffrage for women, racial equality, environmental pollution, or wartime misconduct. The Serrins' said they pondered writings such as these that pressured national and regional political bosses to abolish slavery, such as the writings of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and Elijah Lovejoy. They also reflected on historical journalism, selecting writings that helped create the United States, such as the newsletters of Samuel Adams and the essays of Tom Paine, which inspired colonists to fight British rule.
Over the decades reporters have uncovered so many important stories by looking again and again "in the same places -- mental hospitals, programs for the poor, prisons," to name a few, the Serrins wrote.
Journalists must persevere with independent investigations rather than depend on officials to reveal the truth. Journalists must take the initiative to penetrate closed or official circles of those who "find privacy a convenient shield," the editors wrote.
"Not everyone has an advocacy group or a lawyer," the Serrins wrote. "Even for those that do, their complaints and their legal work mean nothing unless someone verifies their work and spreads the word. Those someones are journalists."
Source: http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5690
5/31/02
1:27:49 PM
TomPaine.com
Independent, Commercial-free -- rare commodities in the Media Age.
THE LOST ART OF MUCKRAKING
by Steve Weinberg
From sinking ships to pedophile priests, stories uncovered by investigative reporters have served as catalysts for change throughout the nation's history. Two new books celebrate crusading journalists that search beyond the spin to expose corruption.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5690
Dispatch: Sonoma County
TREADING NOT-SO-LIGHTLY
A County Measures Its 'Ecological Footprint'
by Ann Hancock
An EPA-funded study revealed that Sonoma County's consumption exceeds its ecological capacity by about four times. These results shocked many residents, who would like to believe they could live off the fruits of the local biosphere.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5693
HEAVY METAL HARM
The Fight Against Highly Toxic Mercury In The Environment Has Just Begun
by Jim Motavalli
Most people associate mercury in the environment with broken thermometers. But industry -- especially coal-fired power plants and municipal waste incinerators -- is the major sources of this potent neurotoxin.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5701
ECONOMICS REPORTING REVIEW: MAY 18 - MAY 24
A Weekly Compendium And Commentary
by Dean Baker
The Right in Europe ... Copyrights and Protectionism ... Living Wage Laws ... Free Trade and Latin America ... Amazon.com ... and more.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5703
And from our CHECK IT OUT! department:
BIG BROTHER GOES RETAIL
Market research -- gathering information about what appeals to consumers -- has gone underground in a new phenomenon dubbed "retail ethnography." Retail outlets use hidden cameras, microphones, and even body-temperature sensors to map the movements of shoppers -- not to prevent theft, but to record consumer reactions to products and their display. ...
Corporate snooping and surveillance of this sort is perfectly legal, but the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is working to change that.
And don't miss other short takes in TomPaine.com's CHECK IT OUT! department:
http://www.tompaine.com/check_it_out/
5/31/02
1:25:15 PM
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
http://www.constitution.org/usdeclar.htm
5/31/02
1:22:29 PM
Liberty!
by Rebecca Knight
Memorial Day May 27, 2002
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has pressured American citizens to silence their concerns or criticisms about policies implemented or actions taken in the name of national security or in unified support of the war on terrorism. Considering the history of this nation, this is an appalling strategy for an American president, vice-president, and attorney general to pursue. By seeking to squelch open debate, they may accomplish the opposite. They may have heightened the curiosity of Americans who are ingrained with a most powerful sense of right and wrong and the ability to discern the difference.
Perhaps the time has come for all Americans to give serious consideration to what our freedoms mean to us, the glorious fight of our founding fathers, and our most revered documents that established the bold experiment that is America.
In debating the American Revolution, Patrick Henry, one of the most brilliant orators in history, spoke these words:
"No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the house. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony.
Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Our founding fathers struggled mightily in determining their most eloquent wording in our beloved Declaration of Independence and Constitution, for they wanted our independence and our freedoms to pass the test of time. Originally the Constitution was remarkable in that it represented a radically new governmental concept by quantifying the liberties with which Americans are endowed. However, during the ratification process a heated debate ensued because it did not address the right to individual freedoms. Patrick Henry dissented on principle during the ratification process over his concern for individual liberties. The ratification convention was notable as a showdown between Henry and James Madison on this issue. As a result, James Madison authored our Bill of Rights, guaranteeing our individual rights.
Our First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Democracy and liberty are not the same thing. Democracy provides the right of the people to vote for public officials in fair elections, and make most political decisions by majority rule. Liberty means that even in a democracy, individuals have rights that no majority should be able to take away.
The Constitution's framers wanted to protect certain rights from government abuse. These rights were referred to in the Declaration of Independence as "unalienable rights." They were also called "natural" rights, and to James Madison, they were "the great rights of mankind." Although it is commonly thought that we are entitled to free speech because the First Amendment gives it to us, this country's original citizens believed that as human beings, they were entitled to free speech, and they invented the First Amendment in order to protect it. The entire Bill of Rights was created to protect rights the original citizens believed were naturally theirs.
Is our First Amendment under attack by those who would attempt to silence criticism? Absolutely! Those who love America should not be pressured to conform to any leader's requests for silence, nor should they be labeled anti-American. Patriotism does not require blind loyalty to any leader. It simply requires loyalty to the documents, laws, and institutions that govern this nation. Patriots zealously love, support, and protect the best of America and strive to make it greater. In that respect, principled dissent is patriotic.
President Theodore Roosevelt expressed those sentiments with this statement:
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.
It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.
In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth -- whether about the President or anyone else -- save in the rare cases where this would make known to the enemy information of military value which would otherwise be unknown to him."
Now is not the time for American citizens or elected officials to be cowered into accepting whatever our leaders espouse. The motivation behind Dick Cheney warning Democrats "to not seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9-11" and suggesting they be "very cautious" about their criticism is obvious. The Bush administration is trying to squelch dissent in an effort to avoid any kind of investigations. No one should fall for this obvious political ploy.
Anyone who does not believe that our liberty and freedom of speech are under attack should consider this statement made by Attorney General John Ashcroft in his testimony before the Senate: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this," he said. "Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil."
Mr. Ashcroft's words indicate a fundamental lack of respect for the First Amendment, for if it stands for anything it is that the government cannot shut down the citizens' right to criticize their leaders. The power of speech to persuade others is a gift and if it convinces others that our leaders are wrong in actions they take on our behalf, we are within our rights to do that.
The Bush administration, by declaring a full-scale war on terrorism, may have only heightened the anger of those who hate America. Since Sept. 11, America's wealth and attention has been focused on broad military actions, rather than homeland security. Police work and intelligence at home and abroad seems to have been neglected. Rather than focus their attention on the problems America faces and work to make progress in avoiding terrorism at home, they seem to be determined to avoid any criticism or investigation, thus causing themselves even more problems. They seem to be their own worst enemies for they are at the mercy of their basest fears of political survival. Their own paranoia and unhealthy penchant for secrecy may be their downfall because it is indicative of leaders who are deathly afraid of being caught at something illegal or unethical, thus causing their critics to be even more inquisitive.
The appropriate response to constructive criticism would be to accept it as contributing to a healthy national dialogue. While they may be acting out of concern for proper legal procedures, they would be wise to apply the same honorable motives to their critics. The fact that they do not, does not bode well for the Bush administration.
So, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Ashcroft, we who dissent are not anti-American. We are not disloyal. We most definitely are not traitors. We are not causing your problems. We merely want some answers. We have the liberty given to us by our founding fathers to disagree with you and to ask probing questions. When you attempt to take away that liberty, it is you who have become the traitors in our midst. It is you who are anti-American. It is you who are responsible for eroding our national unity. Leaders who have nothing to hide have no problem answering questions.
The liberties we were granted by our founding fathers are what make America great! We will continue to speak out. We will continue to ask questions. We will continue to demand accountability from our leaders. That is our duty as patriotic citizens. We willingly and lovingly embrace that responsibility. We treasure our liberty!
A BUZZFLASH MEMORIAL DAY COMMENTARY
Rebecca Knight may be contacted at mailto:tennessee_gal655@yahoo.com
The Declaration of Independence:
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
The U.S. Constitution: http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html
The 25 Amendments to the Constitution: http://www.bigduck.com/AMMENDM.html
The full text of Patrick Henry's speech: http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/henry-liberty.html
Rebecca Knight is a native daughter of Tennessee.
Source: http://www.buzzflash.com
5/31/02
1:17:43 PM
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
Samuel Adams, US "Founding Father" & Patriot
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.
It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.
In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth -- whether about the President or anyone else...."
Theodore Roosevelt, US President
"Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."
Patrick Henry, US "Founding Father" & Patriot
5/31/02
1:10:40 PM
From arsenic to phosphorous, tiny pollutants have global reach and effect
5/30/02
LOS ANGELES _ Atop Hawaii's Mauna Loa, thrust 13,677 feet (4,103 meters) into the sky, one would expect nothing but the freshest air, save the occasional gaseous burp from the volcano.
But environmental monitoring stations crowding the peak find arsenic, copper and zinc that was kicked into the atmosphere five to 10 days earlier from smelting in China, thousands of miles distant.
When industrial pollution first showed up at Mauna Loa a few years ago, scientists were startled. Now, after intense study, they know that the pollution that dirties the world's largest cities affects the whole Earth.
``It turns out Hawaii is more like a suburb of Beijing,'' said Thomas Cahill, a University of California, Davis, atmospheric scientist.
Along the West Coast, a campaign to measure the pollutants as they make landfall after bridging the Pacific ends this month.
Since April, scientists have used data gathered on the ground and from an airplane flying along the coast to measure aerosol pollutants that waft eastward each spring, carried by the prevailing winds. For the United States, China is a major source. For Europe, it's the United States, and likewise down the line, complicating the blame game.
``It's kind of a natural human condition to point to someone else who is causing your problems,'' said David Parrish, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ``Each state points to the state upwind and says, 'You're causing our problems.'''
Scientists previously supposed only greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide were so global in reach and effect. They now understand that the microscopic, suspended particles of pollutants _ generically called aerosols by atmospheric scientists _ also wrap the globe, even if they persist for just hours before settling to the ground.
This class of pollutants includes soot, salts, dust and other byproducts of the burning of fossil fuels and vegetation.
``It happens on a small scale but the implications are on a global scale,'' said V. Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
During their time aloft, the particles affect everything from global warming to human mortality to the rainfall that ultimately scrubs them from the atmosphere. Given their tremendous variety in shape, size, composition and distribution, their effects are unpredictable.
Scientists long thought aerosols were day-trippers, settling close to their point of origin. In fact, many are. The big cloud of smoke, dust and pollutants from the attack on the World Trade Center didn't travel very far, researchers note.
Beginning in the 1950s, scientists began noticing layers of haze in places like the Arctic, far from any significant source of pollution. The haze suggested aerosols were capable of traveling jet-setter distances.
Now, armed with satellites, airplanes, balloons, ship- and land-based observatories, scientists track with accuracy the pollutants and the winds that carry them.
``If there's anything we've learned over the years, it's there is a lot of long-range transport up there that no one was ever aware of,'' said Ken Rahn, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.
Large storms can hoist a plume of particles high enough to hook up with the jet stream. Once high enough, dust from the Sahara or smoke from big fires ``can easily travel halfway across the globe,'' said Yoram Kaufman, a senior scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Once plugged into higher altitude winds, the sometimes vibrant plumes can be charted.
The best example is the billowing clouds of dust kicked up each spring in Mongolia's Gobi Desert. That dust blows east, passing through cities like Beijing. There, the particles of dust are frosted by various pollutants, many of them toxic. The noxious confection continues to blow eastward, arriving in the United States within days.
There, its effects are dramatic: In May 1998, Cahill and others measured the highest atmospheric concentrations of arsenic ever seen in the western United States in tiny Jarbidge, Nevada, population 12.
``It's nothing that is going to get anyone sick. It's just that it shouldn't have been there,'' Cahill said.
The problem isn't just China. Aerosols have been tracked from the Sahara to the Caribbean, from Ontario to Rhode Island, and from Germany to Sweden. Within them travel toxic metals, nutrients, viruses and fungi.
``We live in a small world. We breathe each other's air,'' Cahill said.
Nor is the problem new: Pollutants generated by the smelting of ores by the Greeks and Romans show up today, more than 2,000 years later, in trace amounts in ice cores drilled from Greenland.
``These dust plumes don't go away right away. They can be carried over great distances and are forcing people to take a global perspective on pollution,'' said Barry Huebert, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii.
The effects of aerosols are obvious in cities like Beijing, where the springtime mantle of dust and pollution cuts visibility to feet (meters).
There, Cahill jokes, you can tell it's a sunny day if the sky is bright brown. If it's rainy, it's still brown, just a darker shade. ``You're living in a sepia world,'' he said.
The tiny particles make for spectacular sunsets, but they also pose a serious health hazard, as they can lodge deep in the lungs, contributing to increased mortality.
Aerosols may also harm agriculture by blocking portions of the spectrum of light from the sun, effectively starving crops like wheat and rice of the energy they need to grow.
The biggest worry, and the one least understood, is the effect aerosols have on weather and climate.
Some aerosols can cool the planet by literally shading it from the sun. Others can warm it by absorbing and trapping the sun's heat.
''(Aerosols) are clearly right at the center of some important climatic issues,'' said Huebert.
Aerosols may also have the peculiar ability to aid in the formation of clouds, while retarding their rainfall, scientists reported in a study in the journal Science in December.
Water drops will coalesce around aerosols in clouds, but not clump together to form the larger drops that gravity pulls from the sky as rain.
``We humans may be pushing precipitation away from populated regions,'' said NASA's Kaufman.
The dust is not all bad news, though; the wafting plumes also carry nutrients to regions that depend on them. In Hawaii, plant life relies on Asian phosphorus and calcium to grow. Phytoplankton _ those bottom feeders of the food chain _ in the waters off the Alaskan coast crave Asian iron, which blows eastward by the millions of tons.
Still, scientists believe it's important to trace the origin of the pollutants and say they can do that by using the unique chemistry of aerosols as a fingerprint.
Rahn, the oceanography professor, has developed a roster of about 150 compounds, each with its own distinct signature. With some work, scientists can distinguish between soot from a power plant burning low-sulfur coal in Colorado and a fire raging in the Brazilian rain forest.
``Once the scientists say these particles are coming from here, here and here, at that point it's finger-pointing,'' says Ramanathan, who has proposed a national effort to study aerosols. ``That's something we have to leave to the politicians to figure out.''
Source: http://www.AP.org
5/31/02
1:08:19 PM
Bush Says Federal Government Will By Bck $235 Mllion I Florida Everglades Rights
5/30/02
WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Bush wants to use $235 million in federal funds to protect Florida's Everglades and beaches from oil and gas drilling in a move likely to help his brother's campaign for re-election as governor.
``Florida is known worldwide for its beautiful coastal waters and the Everglades. Today we are acting to preserve both,'' the president said Wednesday in a written statement.
Environmentalists applauded the action but called on Bush to apply similar protections to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Rocky Mountain Front and other areas he wants to open to energy production.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, seeking a second term in November, escorted to the White House members of the Collier family, who are to receive $120 million for their oil and gas drilling rights if Congress approves the agreement.
A separate $115 million settlement buying out nine oil and gas leases to preclude drilling in Gulf of Mexico areas closest to Pensacola, does not require legislation, said Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
Asked whether his campaign will benefit, Jeb Bush, the president's younger brother, replied: ``I hope so. But more importantly, it is good public policy and when there's a convergence of good politics and good public policy, I don't think we should be ashamed about it.''
Jeb Bush also addressed the apparent discrepancy between the president's push to open the Alaskan refuge to oil drilling at the same time he was bargaining to take substantial areas in Florida off the table for energy production.
``I find nothing ironic about it at all,'' the governor said, noting that the Florida economy relies heavily on tourists who want clean beaches. He said it is for others to decide the Alaska question.
At the Natural Resources Defense Council, policy analyst Lisa Speer said the deal was good news but amounted to a ``double standard'' when weighed against the administration's interest in developing energy resources in Alaska and the Rocky Mountain Front.
But the Natural Gas Supply Association called the deal a setback to the U.S. energy supply, noting that Destin Dome represented enough potential gas to supply 1 million American households for 30 years.
The proposed $120 million buyout of the Collier family would nullify its substantial oil and gas rights in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge and Big Cypress National Preserve, which is adjacent to Everglades National Park.
The $115 million payment settles a lawsuit by several petroleum companies accusing the federal government of throwing up regulatory hurdles to their development of oil and gas leases in Destin Dome, the large natural gas field in the Gulf of Mexico offshore from Pensacola. By buying back the development leases in question, the Bush administration is precluding oil and gas production in the area.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush supported offshore drilling but promised to consult with governors and back those, like his brother, who seek bans off their state coastlines.
Source: http://www.AP.org
5/31/02
1:04:22 PM
A Beautiful Friendship
By BILL KELLER, NY Times, 5/18/02
Thanks to some dogged diplomacy and a little skillful spin, two once implacable foes this week achieved a surprising, if temporary, rapprochement.
No, not Russia and the United States, although it has been a pretty good week for those former adversaries too, and we'll get to that in a moment. I mean the Bush Pentagon and the Bush State Department. For followers of the engrossing battle between the treaty-loathing, gloom-mongering go-it-aloners who march with Donald Rumsfeld and the alliance-friendly, deal-cutting pragmatists with Colin Powell, this was a week when creative tension produced a constructive compromise. The agreement to cut Russian and American nuclear arsenals, along with other warm-up exercises for Mr. Bush's Moscow summit meeting next week, represents both the Pentagon view that we can act like masters of the universe and the State Department view that it's not always in our best interest to do so.
First let's dispose of some hype. The arms agreement completed this week does not, as Mr. Bush claimed, "liquidate the legacy of the cold war." (After all, what's Dick Cheney?) The three-page treaty merely codifies cutbacks both sides wanted to make anyway, the Russians because they can't afford the duct tape to keep their missiles in service, the Americans because the strategic nuclear balance is no longer the issue that keeps us up nights. As an arms treaty, it is more loophole than law. It doesn't require that any warheads be destroyed; at the Pentagon's insistence, they can all go into storage for the next crisis. There are some funny counting rules that make the cuts seem deeper than they are. The treaty has a more liberal cancellation clause than some apartment leases. In short, as a Bush official told The Times's military expert Michael Gordon, "That's our kind of treaty."
A hard-core cynic might even say that with this treaty Mr. Bush managed to humiliate simultaneously both Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, by establishing America's power to dictate whatever terms we like to Russia, and his own father, by undoing an important Bush Senior legacy, the ban on multiple-warhead missiles. (Russia likes the big ten-pack missiles because they are a cheap way to flood the zone.)
But that would be greatly overstating the emptiness of the agreement. The fact is, this is a real treaty, not just a handshake and a wink. The seemingly weightless three pages come with a hefty 500-page appendix --all the enforcement and verification protocols of the 1991 Start 1 treaty have been attached to this agreement. That means the Russians and Americans will be in each other's faces more, inspecting and securing and locking down warheads, which is a very good thing if you worry about nuclear weapons and materials falling into the wrong hands.
And treaties usually create a kind of momentum. It is true neither side is obliged to retire a single weapon until 2012, but in reality taking nuclear weapons apart is a long, painstaking procedure that will have to follow a timetable. Unlike his father's last big arms treaty, Start 2, which has languished nine years without Senate ratification, Mr. Bush's deal, bearing both Powell and Rumsfeld seals of approval, should pass without great difficulty. The logic of this agreement should lead to renewal of the Start 1 treaty (it expires in 2009) and an extension of this one when it runs its course, and -- who knows? The arms control process may remain on life support, but it is alive.
The new arms agreement is not being hailed by Russia's elites as a triumph for Kremlin diplomacy. The newspaper Nyezavisimaya Gazyeta dismissed the deal as "the most lightweight in the entire history of arms control." It does, however, give Mr. Putin what he needs to keep the paranoids in his military at bay, including recourse to those hydra-headed missiles.
Beyond its minor contribution to the safety of mankind, the agreement represents a continuing maturity in President Bush's relationship with Russia, which has lurched from indifferent to giddy and finally settled into something rather promising. [...snip...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/opinion/18KELL.html?todaysheadlines
5/31/02
12:59:02 PM
FAIR -- Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
ACTIVISM UPDATE: New York Times: Same Problem, Different Answers
May 30, 2002
On May 7, the New York Times published an editor's note about the paper's coverage of a large pro-Israel demonstration on May 6. The Times had accompanied the story with a front-page photo with a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the foreground, despite the fact that they were a small minority of those present. As the Times put it, "the effect was disproportionate. In fairness the total picture presentation should have better reflected The Times's reporting on the scope of the event, including the disparity in the turnouts."
This is a commendable principle-- or rather it would be, if the Times used it in every case.
In a similar incident a few months ago, the Times severely underestimated the crowd size of anti-war demonstrations in Washington, D.C.-- "a few hundred" was the count in their September 29 article, versus the police estimate of 7,000. The following day, the only photograph of the second day of protests was of a lone counter-demonstrator holding a sign that read "Osama thanks fellow cowards for your support."
At the time, FAIR and hundreds of media activists wrote to the Times protesting the photo choice and poor reporting of the march's size. The paper's response was less than positive. Senior editor Bill Borders sent out emails accusing FAIR of spreading misinformation, saying, "I don't know why they did this; you might want to ask them."
The Times did upgrade their crowd estimate in the Final Edition of the September 29 paper, but they never ran a correction informing the readers of the earlier editions that it had misinformed them about the crowd size. And the paper never acknowledged in an editor's note that it was misleading to represent a march of thousands with a photograph of a single counter-demonstrator.
After seeing how the Times handled the problem with the May 6 story on the pro-Israel march, FAIR wrote to the paper inquiring about the different treatment these two very similar errors received-- one was prominently corrected, while in the earlier case the paper responded by attacking FAIR for pointing it out.
The Times' only response to the letter was an angry phone call from Borders to FAIR. Complaining that FAIR chose to dig up such an "old" story, he repeatedly asserted that FAIR's claim that the Times had miscounted the protesters was a "lie," since the final edition of the paper was changed to more accurately reflect the actual crowd size. Of course, the Times often prints corrections to stories that were amended in later editions, so that readers will be aware of an error in an edition of the paper they may have read. Borders added that FAIR's work "over the years" has been based on lies, but he declined to elaborate on the charge.
Interestingly, Borders actually agreed that the photo choice at the anti-war demonstration had been an error: "We covered it wrong," said Borders. Nonetheless, Borders was so hostile to FAIR's inquiries that he at one point suggested that the staffer he was speaking with "get a job at Macy's."
The New York Times returned to the issue of the pro-Israel march in a May 23 article by Felicity Barringer about threats of boycotts by supporters of Israel against several newspapers, including the Times. "Critics of the Times dispatched hundreds of e-mail messages and angry commentary earlier this month when it published a front-page photograph of the Salute to Israel parade in Manhattan that showed a small group of pro-Palestinian counter-demonstrators in the foreground and pro-Israeli marchers and their supporters in the background," Barringer reported. Given the disparity in the size of the marches, she reported, this raised the question of whether the Times was "straining to create a sense of equivalence."
There certainly does not seem to be any sense of equivalence at the Times when the exact same complaint, conveyed in both cases by hundreds of email messages, is treated so disparately.
ACTION: Please write to New York Times executive editor Howell Raines and point out that while it's encouraging that an editor privately acknowledged the paper's error regarding coverage of the September anti-war protests, it's the public record that matters most. Ask Raines if the paper would consider issuing a public statement, as it did in the case of the pro-Israel march, indicating that it was wrong to illustrate a story about an anti-war march with a photo of a lone counter-demonstrator. Encourage the Times to be more consistent in applying its stated policy of prominently correcting errors.
CONTACT: New York Times
Howell Raines, Executive Editor
mailto:executive-editor@nytimes.com
Source: http://www.FAIR.org
5/31/02
12:53:23 PM
TIME MAGAZINE ONLINE POLL:
Did the FBI do all it could to foil the 9/11 plot? Total Votes Cast: 33469
21.7% YES
78.3% NO
"DEMAND FBI HEADS BE BROUGHT UP ON OPSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE CHARGES!!"
FBI (SA) Robert G. Wright: Blows the Whistle on 9-11
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=27722
Whistleblower: FACT: Prior Knowledge of 9-11
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wtc_whistleblower.htm
FBI 'admits' terror warning failure
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_2016000/2016154.stm
FBI Given More Latitude New Surveillance Rules Remove Evidence Hurdle By Susan Schmidt and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, May 30, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30427-2002May29.html
9/11 - APFN INFO AND LINKS:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC.htm
Click: Find elected officials, including the president, members of Congress, governors, state legislators, local officials, and more.
http://congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/
5/31/02
12:38:20 PM
Fubar Bureau Of Investigation?
by Eric Umansky, May 30, 2002
The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times all lead with FBI Director Robert Mueller's comments that, contrary to previous Bush administration statements, the FBI might have been able to thwart 9/11. Here's what he said: "I cannot say for sure that there wasn't a possibility we could have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers." Mueller also told reporters that while there weren't specific warnings, "that doesn't mean that there weren't red flags out there, that there weren't dots that should have been connected to the extent possible." The Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide newsbox with word that 300 British troops have begun a new operation to hunt for al-Qaida fighters near Khost in eastern Afghanistan. USA Today leads with news that the U.S. has "begun drawing up plans" to evacuate American civilians and soldiers in India and Pakistan.
USAT cites officials saying there are about 63,000 American civilians in the region and 1,100 U.S. troops. (Given that, the article's subhead could have been clearer: "64,000 U.S. troops, citizens in region.") The paper says that if in fact war breaks out and all these folks get airlifted, it would "dwarf the evacuation of Americans from Vietnam."
According to early morning wire reports, Kashmiri militants have infiltrated an Indian police camp, killing at least two. India typically holds Pakistan responsible for such attacks.
As USAT emphasizes, Director Mueller also said that FBI agent Coleen Rowley was "absolutely right" when she wrote a letter complaining that HQ should have done more to investigate Zaccarias Moussaoui last summer.
By the way, here's another letter-story, which most of the press has skipped over: Last Saturday's LAT reported that in December, a Phoenix-based FBI agent--not the one you've already read about--wrote a letter to Mueller complaining that the Phoenix office's counter-terrorism program "ground to a halt a couple years ago because of the micromanaging, constant indecision, and stonewalling." (And, in case you're wondering, no, Today's Papers hadn't noticed it until today either.)
Meanwhile, everybody goes high with the FBI's disclosure that it's happened upon two more memos that may point to missed warning signs. In one memo, from 1998, an FBI pilot in Oklahoma reported that he was suspicious about a "recent phenomenon" of "large numbers" of Middle Eastern men receiving training at local flight schools. The FBI agent's supervisor decided not to investigate. (According to an AP report, the memo was marked "routine.")
In the second memo, which seems less significant, intelligence officials noted that a country in the Middle East tried, unsuccessfully, to buy a restricted U.S. flight simulator program.
As everybody notes, the FBI director's admissions came as he formally announced that the FBI will be re-jiggered to focus on preventing terrorism. Among the changes, about 400 agents will be moved from drug investigations to counterterrorism. (The NYT's lead editorial concludes, "Mr. Mueller's blueprint is too timid to get the job done.")
The WP and NYT front new Justice Dept. guidelines that relax the rules under which FBI agents can search for evidence. As the papers note, civil libertarians said the changes are a bad move. Hmmm. According to the NYT, "Under the old guidelines, surfing the Internet for the sole purpose of developing leads was prohibited."
Everybody goes high with a federal judge's ruling that the government's blanket policy of holding secret deportation hearings for people detained in post-9/11 sweeps is unconstitutional, and instead needs to be done on a case-by-case basis. The Justice Dept. is expected to appeal.
The WP reports that not only has al-Qaida moved into major Pakistani cities (as yesterday's NYT mentioned), but now there's "fresh evidence that Pakistani militant groups that [once] worked independently--and toward differing goals--have coalesced around al-Qaida to combat the United States and its allies."
"So many linkages," said one Pakistani observer. "This really scares us."
The NYT stuffs word that al-Qaida may also have another new friend: Fundamentalist Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who appears to be teaming up with OBL's troops to try to bring down Afghanistan's interim government by launching terror attacks there. The U.S. tried, unsuccessfully, to kill Hekmatyar last month, and it's not sure where he is now.
The NYT fronts news that the Bush administration has delayed plans to hold a Mideast peace conference. In the past, the administration had said the meeting might happen in June. Now, officials are simply saying it'll be a summer-time event, and as one official pointed out, "Sept. 20 is officially the last day of summer." Sources told the Times that the conference has been delayed because the White House needs to first figure out what's likely to happen at it.
The NYT notes that the administration also appears to be backing away from the idea (floated in the WP earlier this week) that it will offer a detailed outline of a suggested settlement.
Meanwhile, the NYT notes that the White House announced that CIA Director George Tenet will leave for the region tomorrow to focus on figuring out how to rebuild Palestinian security forces.
The papers front President Bush's announcement that the feds will buy back $235 million-worth of oil and natural-gas rights off the coast of Florida and in the Everglades in order to curtail drilling there. As everybody notes, the move will help the re-election efforts of Florida Gov. (and First Brother) Jeb Bush, who, it turns out, was at the White House today to help promote the plan.
The WSJ profiles defense reporter Raymond Cromley, sole representative of Cromley News Service. He's 91-years-old and still dutifully attends nearly every Pentagon press conference. In fact, Cromley has only slowed down in one small respect: He hasn't filed a story since 1996. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Pentagon officials still enjoy his company. According to the bureaucrat in charge of press credentials, "I don't know for a fact that [Cromley's] not writing and I don't really want to know. As far as I am concerned, he is a working journalist employed by Cromley News Service."
Source: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066348
5/31/02
12:34:53 PM
Mother Jones
The more you spend, the more you make. It's long been an adage for business wonks, and now it's also the guiding mandate for at least one government contractor. Kellog Brown and Root Services, a division of Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton Companies, has captured a new contract to provide support services to the Army. The contract is worth millions, and there is a twist: The company is reimbursed for each dollar they spend to meet the Army's demands. The more they spend, the more they're guaranteed to make.
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/halliburton.html
WEB EXCLUSIVES News - A 'Notorious' Cleric: American Catholic leaders are insisting that priests who abuse children will be dismissed. But in the case of at least one cleric already found guilty of rape,those pledges ring hollow.
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/priest_pensions.html Commentary - Selling Sept. 11: Republicans are shocked --shocked! -- that Democrats would seek to use tragedy for political gain.
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/commentary/humor/taxcut.html
News Beat - Colombian Hardliner Walks Fine Line; Musharraf's Many Woes; Europe's Organic Panic
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/news_beat.html Capitol Beat - Highs and Lows for the Dems; Wooing Latino Voters; Consoling the Laid-Off
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/capitol_beat.html
Updates - Easing Access to Bush's Texas Records; 7-Up Bubbles Over Prison Rape; Bypassing a Drug-Law Boondoggle
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/updates.html
5/31/02
12:32:17 PM
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
Mark Twain
5/31/02
12:28:30 PM
Toyota Tops 100,000 Hybrid Sales
May 29, 2002
Toyota Japan has announced that world sales of Toyota hybrid vehicles (powered by a combination of petrol and electricity) have topped the 100 000 mark, with nearly 103 000 units sold by the end of March this year. This represents a 90% share of the world hybrid vehicle market.
Toyota's most popular hybrid is the Prius, which was first offered in Japan in 1997. With more than 33 000 units sold by the end of 1999, the proven technology of the Prius debuted in the North American market in June 2000, soon followed by the start of sales in Europe in September that same year. The Prius is now sold in more than 20 countries.
Since the arrival of the Prius, TMC's hybrid vehicle lineup in Japan has grown to include the Estima Hybrid minivan, which came out in June 2001, and a mild hybrid version of the Crown luxury sedan, released the following August.
Key hybrid components in the Prius include an Atkinson cycle engine, a drive-power-supplying nickel-metal hydride battery and an electrically controlled transmission that serves as a continuously variable transmission.
The Estima Hybrid's performance-enhancing electric 4WD and comprehensive four-wheel drive-and-braking control are world firsts for a mass-produced vehicle, and so is the Crown mild hybrid's practical application of a 42V electrical system.
Toyota intends to continue actively developing hybrid systems, including those incorporating fuel cells. In addition to the Prius and Estima hybrid systems, Toyota is currently engaged in the development of a variety of other systems, including the simplified mechanism of the mild hybrid system (THS-M) and fuel cell-based FCHVs.
Source: http://www.toyota.com/html/shop/vehicles/prius/index.html
5/31/02
12:04:59 PM
New Life Blown Into Old Idea
May 29, 2002
Nusa Dua, Bali - The answer, sang folk musician Bob Dylan in the Sixties, back when the world was a less polluted place, is blowing in the wind.
Four decades later it seems he may have been right, at least when it comes to generating electricity in a way that does not end up pumping millions of tons of harmful gases into the atmosphere.
On the Indonesian island of Bali, the venue over the next 10 days for the United Nation's final preparatory meeting before the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg later this year, one non-governmental organisation has taken a fresh look at an old solution to the problem.
The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) is one of more than 700 NGOs at the Bali conference, and in a 50-page report this week, EWEA has presented a "global blueprint" for wind power, which, it said, could provide 12% of the world's future electricity by the year 2020.
This is provided the political will to implement the plan exists, and governments create the required supportive regulatory framework.
Report offers 'major opportunities'
A representative from a South African environmental NGO, present when the document was tabled, said the ideas the report contained offered major opportunities for advancing the use of renewable energy sources on the African sub-continent.
Using the wind to generate electricity is not a new idea and has been around for decades. But, according to the EWEA, technological advances over the past few years have changed wind-powered generators from an eccentric alternative into one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
"Huge technological progress has caused enormous growth in the industry," EWEA spokesperson Christian Kjaer told delegates and journalists at a briefing on his organisation's report.
Over the past five years, the world's wind-power market had experienced an average growth rate of 39.5%.
"By the end of 2001, global wind power installed had reached a level of almost 25 000MW.
"This is enough power to satisfy the needs of over 35-million people.
"Governments coming to the table to sort out the energy needs for the future through the WSSD will fail in their mandate if they ignore the industrial potential of wind power," he said.
'No technical barriers'
The most dramatic technological improvement had been an increase in the size and performance of wind turbines.
"From machines of just 25kW twenty years ago, the typical size range sold today is 75 to 1 300kW.
"The largest machines commercially available today have a capacity of 2 500kW, with 80m diameter rotors on 70 to 80-metre-high towers."
Kjaer said the report showed there were no technical barriers or resource limits preventing the world from enjoying the dual benefit of affordable energy and a sustainable environment.
"If governments ceased their perverse subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear power - between $250 billion and $300 billion worldwide a year - we will have clean affordable energy for the world," he said.
A spokesperson for the Johannesburg-based Earthlife Africa, Muna Lakhani, said after the presentation his organisation believed the potential in South Africa for electricity generation using wind power was enormous.
"It could easily supply all the growth in our electricity needs for the foreseeable future.
"It has a maximum potential for job creation way above conventional fuel sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear power."
Taking health into account
Exciting development work was being done on wind turbines in South Africa, and although this was on a small scale, local manufacturing of turbines was "certainly on the cards".
"There's a proposed wind farm in the Western Cape (at Darling) that will go up to 100 megawatts and will supply commercial electricity, regardless of the problems with access to the (national electricity) grid and the lack of equity in the pricing of energy sources.
Lakhani said wind power, if costed correctly, was a cheaper way of generating electricity than coal-burning or nuclear power stations.
"If you figure in just the health costs, between what is impacted on people by, for example, coal-fired power stations, and you take that health cost and apply it to (energy) competitors, you'll find that wind power is actually cheaper for the country than coal-fired power stations.
"The same applies to a far greater extent to nuclear power, given the long life of the radioactive waste."
He said the government should halt its subsidisation of the fossil fuel and nuclear industry, and promote renewable energy sources.
"A mix of renewable energy sources - such as tidal, wave, geothermal, solar, solar-thermal and wind power - would more than happily look after our energy needs for the future.
"We could take the lead internationally - there's no reason we couldn't do that - and in partnership with our African neighbours develop energy for all," he said.
However, many NGOs here in Bali remain sceptical of the WSSD's ability to deliver meaningful action plans to promote sustainability.
"If current language prevails," states one NGO newsletter, "the summit will deliver zero added value to sustainable energy".
Many groups are lobbying for the introduction of worldwide renewable energy targets.
These involve countries committing themselves to generating a percentage of their electricity - typically, between five and 20 percent - from renewables by a certain target date.
"The technology is available and the resources will never run out," says the EWEA, "we now need stronger political signals to deliver."
A partner in the production of the EWEA's report is the environmental group Greenpeace.
5/31/02
11:50:33 AM
The Dangers Of Cloning
5/29/02
Paris - Fresh evidence emerged on Sunday about the perils of cloning, amid claims by rogue scientists that the first human replicant may be born just months from now.
Research published in the journal Nature Genetics highlighted abnormalities among cloned animals which powerfully back fears that a cloned child could die in infancy or be condemned to life as a freak or a cripple.
A team led by Jerry Yang at the University of Connecticut found that cloned cows had flaws in nine out of 10 genes studied on their X-chromosome - one of the two sex chromosomes that determine a mammal's gender.
Females have two X chromosomes, whereas males have an X and a Y chromosome. Among females, one of the X chromosomes is "silent": It does not activate genes.
Among the cloned cows, though, the flaws meant the copy of the X chromosome was incompletely switched off.
Rather like a computer which receives spluttering, conflicting instructions from two sets of the same software programme, the cow's protein-making machinery went haywire, with catastrophic results for the animal's survival.
Yang team member Cindy Tian said the findings were important because the secret labs trying to replicate a human being basically use the same cloning method.
"It's a very similar procedure," she said. "It's very dangerous to use this current cloning technique for humans. What we have found is really a warning against it."
She predicted that "99 percent (of cloned human embryos) will fail to come to term, and of the one percent that might live, a high percentage will die shortly after birth because of gene expression problems."
Cloning provides a genetic duplicate of another creature.
The predominant method around the world entails removing the nucleus, or core, from an egg and replacing it with DNA from a donor. This DNA "reprograms" the egg, transferring into it the entire genetic code of the donor.
The big problem, however, is to ensure that all the genes in this transferred code work properly, performing the dazzlingly complex business which is the making of tissue and the repairing of it.
Malfunctioning genes
Wide-ranging tests in lab animals, and the experience of cloned farm animals including Dolly the Sheep, have found that - even though all the genes are there - many of them do not appear to switch on and off as they should.
Malfunctioning genes can cause an embryo to become malformed, prompting the body to expel it in a miscarriage.
Or they can stealthily pass on tiny flaws that later show up in crippling handicaps or chronic ill-health.
Among cloned animals, only one in six of the embryos survive to birth and many die within a few weeks because of malformation.
Many biotechnologists are repelled by the ethical dilemma posed by human cloning as well as the risk to the first cloned babies, and many governments have raced to pass laws that ban reproductive cloning.
Yet this has not prevented a race among scientific mavericks to become the first to clone a human.
One of them, Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori, told the French daily Le Monde in an interview that three women were currently pregnant with clones.
All were derived from the nuclear transfer method, he said.
"Two of them are in Russia and the third is in another country," Antinori said. "The births should take place in December 2002 or January 2003."
There are five groups of scientists racing to produce the first cloned human baby, US specialist Panos Zavos said in testimony to the US Congress on May 15. Zavos said he expected the world's first clone to be born some time in 2003.
One of those teams is headed by French chemist Brigitte Boisselier, who works for the Raelian religious sect, which believes that mankind was created by extra-terrestrials. - Sapa-AFP
Source: http://www.planetsave.com/ViewStory.asp?ID=2570
5/31/02
11:15:21 AM
The 80-Year Problem
By David Warsh, 10/14/2001
Not many have paid attention to Osama bin Laden's explanation last Sunday for why ''the sword fell on America after 80 years.'' He mentioned that periodization not once but twice. ''What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted,'' he said. ''Our Islamic world has been tasting the same humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years, its sons killed, their blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds.''
So what happened 80 years ago? It was roughly then that the conclusion of World War I brought about the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. That in turn ended 600 years of religious rule in provinces that stretched from the lower Balkans and Constantinople to Yemen at Arabia's southern tip eastward to the Persian Gulf. That much is indisputable. Various commentators have speculated in the last week about precisely what bin Laden might have had in mind. For example:
The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 drew up the plans for dividing the Arab lands of the Middle East among the French and British empires, noted Slate's Chris Suellentrop, who last week formulated a lively discussion of the 80-year problem in his webzine ''Explainer'' column.
Britain's mandate to govern Palestine, granted by the League of Nations, took force officially in 1922 - on Sept. 11, no less, according to Jim Phillips, a Mideast analyst for the Heritage Foundation.
Almost exactly 80 lunar years in the Islamic calendar (each slightly shorter than a year in the West's Gregorian calendar) have passed since the caliphate was outlawed in 1924 by a Turkish government bent on Western-style modernization, according to other scholars. Caliphs were religious leaders viewed as the successors of the prophet Mohammed. Their influence in the Ottoman Empire was more pervasive than that of corresponding Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian popes.
All such turning points may tempt a terrorist with a taste for anniversary commemorations. And all are easily understood in terms of the Balfour Declaration, the British government communique in 1917 that called for establishment of a homeland in the Holy Land for the Jews. Israel finally was created in 1948, and Arabs - the Palestinian Arabs, in particular - have been furious ever since that their own claims to the same land have been ignored.
But there were other things besides politics going on 80 years ago. Many of them had to do with oil.
The latter part of World War I saw a serious worldwide oil crisis, especially acute in England and France. Something like 65 percent of the world's petroleum came from the United States; German submarines were taking a terrific toll on shipments to European allies. Pleasure driving was banned in England in 1917. A joint Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference was established to coordinate oil supplies and shipping the following year.
Then after the war ended in 1918, demand for petroleum products surged dramatically around the world as the automobile came into its own as a consumer item. But US oil reserves were dwindling. The director of the US Geological Service warned of a ''gasoline famine,'' and exhorted American companies to emulate their European rivals and explore abroad.
So what were Messrs. Sykes and Picot thinking when they went about carving up the remains of the Ottoman Empire and awarding present-day Syria to France, and most of Iraq and Iran to Britain? Not the claims to the political unity of Islam, that's for sure. In his page-turning bestseller ''The Prize'' (from which these few details are drawn), historian Daniel Yergin noted that by the time the British Army captured Baghdad in 1917, control of Mesopotamian and Persian oil supplies had become a major British war aim.
Within weeks of the war's end, French Premier Georges Clemenceau and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had divided up the spoils. ''The Great War had made abundantly clear that petroleum had become an essential element of the strategy of nations,'' writes Yergin. ''Politicians and bureaucrats, though they had hardly been absent before, would now rush headlong to the center of the struggle.''
The patchwork quilt of nations in the Middle East emerged from European conference rooms during the next few years. In bin Laden's view, it seems, everything else is a footnote.
It may make sense to limit the dissemination of future tapes made by Osama bin Laden - assuming there are future tapes - to edit them and curtail his ability to incite hatred and cruelty. His grievance in no way justifies the bombing. But we ought not close our ears to its essence, which is that the West has placed its business interests over popular sovereignty in the Middle East for 80 years. There is no way of turning back the clock to 1920, nor would we want to. But Middle Eastern oil will be important for another 80 years. With 1 billion followers of Islam in the world, listening to the other side has never been more important.
David Warsh can be reached by email at mailto:warsh@globe.com
This story ran on page E2 of the Boston Globe on 10/14/2001.
Source: www.boston.com/globe/
5/31/02
11:12:17 AM
From The Desk Of... Greenpeace's Executive Director
Liberation from Corporate Power
May 29, 2002
One way to look at human history is through the periodic struggles between those embodying the corrupting influence of power and those who have kept such power in check or even successfully undermined it. The American Revolution is arguably the birth of the freedom movement in the Western world, although the British might argue it began with the Magna Carta. But, stories of great liberators can be found in most eras and in most parts of the globe.
Regardless of where it began, every massive center of unaccountable power, whether it be the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, the city states of Europe or the ideology-based governments of the last century, have all ultimately lost their power when enough people were pushed to the breaking point and chose to take back their unalienable rights.
Corporations now have such power. Unaccountable to the governments around the world and here in the United States, they call out orders to the White House, run afoul of countless regulations governing environmental behavior and pay politicians for favors. Corporations that have sought haven in democracies and then used these rights to circumvent, ignore or change laws to their whims have now come under the glare of modern day freedom fighters. And that is reason for hope.
Activists around the world over are now targeting corporations like ExxonMobil, Monsanto, and Dow Chemical. History has provided spectacular examples of David beating Goliath across the 20th century including the movement led by Gandhi to free the Indian people, the U.S. civil rights movement and the movement to bring down communism in Poland.
I have no doubt these corporations too will fall or reform in due time. Wrongful behavior, whether out of malice or ignorance cannot long stand. In the meantime, we at Greenpeace will do everything in our power to speed the change. Now is the time to add another victory for the environment and democratic rights to the arc of history.
Rave on,
John Passacantando
Source: http://www.Greenpeace.org
5/31/02
11:09:41 AM
Tracking Genocide
by Donald E. Miller
Every April I find myself grieving over the levels of violence of which humanity is capable. April 6, 1994, was the first day of the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis by their Hutu neighbors. April 24 is the day on which Armenians commemorate the genocide that claimed the lives of a million or more of their ancestors in Turkey.
Both of these genocides - the first and last of the 20th century - have deep personal resonance. My father-in-law and his sister were the only ones out of a family of nine to survive the deportation marches of 1915. And recently, I was in Rwanda interviewing women and orphans who survived the most efficient genocide the world has known. Eighty percent of the 800,000 Tutsis who died were killed in the first six weeks, while the United States and the United Nations were debating intervention.
Our eyes oftentimes glaze over when faced with statistics, so let me put a human face on one victim of the violence in Rwanda. Jennifer, not her real name, is a tall, beautiful woman in her 30s who is missing an arm and is dying of AIDS. Like many Tutsis, she was stopped at a roadblock set up by Hutus shortly after President Habyarimana's plane was shot down as it was landing in Kigali. Even though it is likely that the president was killed by right-wingers within his own Hutu party, plans had obviously been laid to blame and then exterminate the minority Tutsi population.
Jennifer was raped multiple times at the roadblock, but rather than being killed immediately she was held as a sex slave. One of her two children and her husband died in the violence. Her infant child was spared until her captor and his friends grew tired of Jennifer and decided to kill her. They decided to throw her into a ditch along with a grenade. The child Jennifer was clutching shielded her chest, but the explosion severed her arm. Later, someone helped her out of the ditch, but by the time she could seek medical care her wound was crawling with maggots. When Jennifer finally returned to her village, she surmised that she might be HIV-positive. One of her captors and a neighbor who had raped her had died of AIDS.
Quite legitimately, we can ask how it is possible for neighbors to treat each other with such inhumanity. The ultimate answer to this question is best left to philosophers and theologians. But historians and political scientists have suggested some ideas regarding the mechanisms of genocide. First, genocides do not happen in a vacuum. They typically occur during periods of war, substantial social change, and/or economic disruption. Secondly, a minority target population is singled out as a scapegoat for what is occurring. Typically, they are of a different race, nationality, or religious background. And, thirdly, there is a legitimating ideology that justifies the elimination of the threat (e.g., racist philosophies, extremist expressions of nationalism, etc.)
As a professor of religion, I am quite aware of the use of religion to polarize and divide. That is its dark side. Religions also contain equally strong traditions celebrating the sanctity of God's creation, especially human lives. The rhetorical dehumanization of individuals as infidels, cockroaches, or part of an "axis of evil" flies in the face of these traditions and establishes the framework for guiltless killing.
We must guard against this rhetoric in times of strife and war. In extreme instances it has been, and can still be an important plank in the platforms of massacre and genocide.
*Donald E. Miller is professor of religion at the University of Southern California and executive director of USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. He is also the author, with his wife Lorna Miller, of Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (University of California Press, 1993).
Source: http://www.SoJo.net
5/31/02
11:07:49 AM
Australian Corporations Viewed As Least Corrupt
Transparency International (TI), the global anti-corruption organization, released its Bribe Payers Index (BPI) 2002. According to the new report's findings, several disturbing trends have emerged:
*Companies in nations - both rich and poor - continue to pay bribes in exchange for contracts
*Many countries are not enforcing laws against corruption
*Only one in five business experts in the world's emerging markets is aware of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, a landmark piece of legislation passed by the United Nations to fight corruption - a figure unchanged from 1999
*The propensity of U.S. firms to pay bribes overseas has increased since 1999.
TI's BPI is based on surveys conducted in 15 emerging market economies by Gallup International Association. A ranking of nations' perceived corruption follows (with the least-corrupt country listed first):
Rank by country
1. Australia 2. Sweden 3. Switzerland 4. Austria 5. Canada 6. Netherlands 7. Belgium 8. United Kingdom 9. Singapore 10. Germany 11. Spain 12. France 13. United States of America 14. Japan 15. Malaysia 16. Hong Kong 17. Italy 18. South Korea 19. Taiwan 20. People's Republic of China 21. Russia
Source:
http://www.globalethics.org/newsline/members/issue.tmpl?articleid=05200214333987
5/31/02
11:01:23 AM
New Arab Bombing in Israel Deepens a Sense of Dismay
A Palestinian suicide attack on a cafe said to be filled with many women and children killed a baby girl and her grandmother and wounded 40 others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/28/international/middleeast/28ISRA.html
Israel; Women and Children Targeted in Latest Bombing
PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (AP) -- One moment, mothers sat on plastic chairs with their babies in carriages next to them at an outdoor shopping center cafe. The next, a huge blast sent bodies flying in all directions, killing a baby and her grandmother. The latest Palestinian suicide bombing, outside the Espresso Bar in the center of Petach Tikvah, a city of 165,000 next to Tel Aviv, also wounded several people and left bloodstains everywhere. (...) A six-week Israeli assault on the West Bank, in which soldiers took control of Palestinian towns and refugee camps to hunt down militants, destroy explosives labs and confiscate weapons, failed to stop the stream of bombers. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the Petach Tikvah attack in a message to The Associated Press. "We will not stop our operation as long as the occupation continues in our land,'' it said. Al Aqsa did not identify the bomber, but Palestinians said it was Jihad Titi, 18, a cousin of Mahmoud Titi, an Al Aqsa leader killed by Israeli fire last week. The involvement of teen-agers in suicide bomb attacks has increased. On Wednesday, a 16-year-old bomber blew himself up in Rishon Letzion, south of Tel Aviv, killing himself and two Israelis.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29A.petach.tikvah.htm
Is DOJ Saying That Gore Won Florida?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27A.jvb.doj.fl.htm
Florida Counties Seek to Avoid Suit Over Election
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27B.fl.avoid.suit.htm
Justice Department Suit a "Sham" to Protect Harris, Bush
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29C.palast.sham.htm
Hard-Liner Elected in Colombia With a Mandate to Crush Rebels
Bitter after three years of fruitless peace talks, Colombian voters gave a resounding victory Sunday to a hard-right candidate for president.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/27/international/americas/27COLO.html
Colombian President-Elect Softens Tone on Rebels
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/28/international/americas/28COLO.html
5/31/02
10:57:07 AM
Revelations Of Pre-September 11 Warnings Require USA PATRIOT Act Repeal
by Peter Erlinder
Peter Erlinder is a Professor of Constitutional Criminal Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild.
ST. PAUL, MN. -- The storm of questions and criticism following revelations that the Bush Administration had numerous warnings of an impending hijacking attack before the September 11 tragedy have focused primarily on the Nixon-era mantra, "what did he know, and when did he know it?" But, even if a Congressional investigation agrees with Bush Administration protestations that the warnings weren't specific enough to know what to do, Bush Administration policy AFTER September 11 is going to require some explaining, too.
The "lack of specific warnings" defense may justify a lack of action before the airliners hit the World Trade Center, but it can't explain away the lies that were told to Congress and the American people after September 11, to justify the Bush Administration's "war on civil liberties." The recent disclosures reveal that the Bush Administration has been cynically using their own failure to act on intelligence developed under then-existing laws to justify vastly increasing their own power at the expense of civil liberties.
Within a month of September 11, Ashcroft packaged an old FBI "wish list" as the USA/PATRIOT ACT and demanded Congress pass it without discussion, because of the threat of yet another "Pearl Harbor-like attack". He told us the Administration needed new "tools" to prevent "unexpected" terrorist attacks -- new wiretap authority... secret searches... the use of secret evidence... secret immigration hearings... taping lawyer conversations... locking up "undesirables" on his command, the list goes on.
We were told that civil liberties questions and abuse of power concerns had to be shelved because of the "unexpected" new threat by no less an expert than Supreme Court Justice O'Connor. Members of Congress have been accused of being the next thing to "traitors" for questioning Administration policy and have even been forcibly expelled from Ashcroft's "secret" immigration hearings. Thousands have been locked up and deported without finding any "terrorists," and our allies are objecting to holding prisoners in violation of international law.
The press has been cut off from normal access to govern-ment information by Presidential decree. Local law enforcement is being "deputized" for federal immigration duty and Ashcroft is indicting lawyers who represent "terrorist" clients a bit too independently. Even at the state level, in places like Minnesota, local law enforcement has gotten on the "more tools" band wagon with state "anti-terrorism" bills that ape the Ashcroft proposals and actually go beyond them.
All of this has been justified in the name of preventing another "surprise attack". All of these attacks on American civil liberties have occurred long after the Bush Administra-tion had incontrovertible evidence that the law enforcement and intelligence "tools" that were in place before September 11 were very effective, IF the Administration had known how to use them.
Now we know that we were all deceived, after the September 11 tragedy proved that existing investigative powers were effective, Bush and Company used their own failure to act on the warnings they had received to justify grabbing even more power... at the expense of our civil liberties, by deceiving Congress and the American people.
The USA/PATRIOT ACT became law in less than a month, without any hearings. Now that we know it was passed under false pretenses, Congress should repeal it just as quickly. And, the Bush Administration should rescind the policies that diminish our civil liberties, until we can get an honest assessment of what went wrong in the months before September 11.
Source: http://www.commondreams.org
5/31/02
10:54:57 AM
Ashcroft's Wasted Summer Johnny Come Lately
by James Ridgeway
Critics have long lambasted America's lousy intelligence system, but last summer the system itself—if not the administration running it—appeared to be working. In June, the rise of information about impending terrorist acts caused the State Department to issue a general warning to American travelers. On July 5, Bush asked Condoleezza Rice to look into the threats, and the next day a counterterrorism group met under the aegis of the national security adviser.
By the middle of the month more threats had piled up, most of them relating to the G-8 meeting in Genoa. These included a specific threat against Bush himself. Mid-level officials at the FBI received the Kenneth Williams memo about flight schools at the end of July.
In early August, Bush was told that aircraft hijackings might be a goal of Al Qaeda. On August 13 Zacarias Moussaoui was nabbed on immigration charges. On August 21, as part of its investigation into the USS Cole, the CIA became suspicious of Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi and alerted the INS that they were possible terrorists. Two days later, the CIA realized al-Midhar was already in the U.S., and alerted the FBI. But the Bureau couldn't locate him. Both al-Midhar and Alhazmi were hijackers on the jet that hit the Pentagon.
None of this intelligence helped, because low-level requests were rejected by superiors and so much data was ignored.
Anyhow, Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Justice Department staff may have had their minds elsewhere. That summer, the AG was involved in Operation Avalanche, a scheme to crack down on child pornography. His people were trying to settle the Clinton-era tobacco suits. In May, Ashcroft caused a furor by sending a letter to the National Rifle Association backing an individual's right to own guns. He stirred up more controversy when he found there was no intentional racial or ethical bias in federal death penalty cases.
Preoccupied with his own domestic agenda, the attorney general had no time for international terrorism—although Justice must have thought something was up because Ashcroft began traveling by private jet. As luck would have it, 9-11 became a launching pad for some of the administration's other domestic programs.
We now know that soon after the attacks, Ashcroft was informed of the Williams memo, but kept it a secret. As if making up for a lost opportunity, he began targeting anyone resembling a Muslim, snaring untold hundreds in a dragnet and imprisoning them on the flimsiest of pretexts. He came up with the rights-limiting Patriot Act, which sailed through Congress, then instructed federal officials to resist at all costs releasing information under the Freedom of Information Act. Top government officials soon joined Congress in blaming the overall intelligence system—a neat scapegoat for themselves, asleep at the switch.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway.php
Bilderbergers Reduced to Chain Hotel Leave a Light On
by James Ridgeway
This weekend the Bilderbergers—a tiny clutch of rich people who think they run the world—will hold their annual secret meeting just outside Washington, in the heart of the industrial military complex, at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia. This is a dreadful comedown for these people, who are used to meeting in ancient castles and on splendid estates where nobody can see them or know they're even there. And to be but a stone's throw from the Pentagon must give them the jitters as well. Talk about a target!
The Bilderberg Group was founded by moderate British lawmaker Denis Healey, David Rockefeller, and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1954. The idea was to develop understanding between Europe and America during the Cold War by bringing together the people who matter—financiers, industrialists, politicians, and opinion molders. People, that is, who have had a proper education, dress appropriately, and know how to comport themselves in public.
Bilderbergers quite rightly think of themselves as rather important people. Henry Kissinger may be the best known. Member Vernon Jordan vouched for Bill Clinton in 1991, and he got in. New Jersey senator Jon Corzine sits on the American steering committee. Paul Wolfowitz, arguably the Bush ally most gung ho to whack Iraq, is in the ranks as well.
Not long ago Healey, now Lord Healey, described the essence of a Bilderberger to The Guardian: "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing."
When push comes to shove, you can't shove a Bilderberger around. "I will tell you this," Healey continued. "If extremists and leaders of militant groups believe that Bilderberg is out to do them down, then they're right. We are. We are against Islamic fundamentalism, for instance, because it's against democracy."
Source: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway.php
5/31/02
10:49:16 AM
Bush Spent Terror Week Smiling For The Camera While You Were Freaking
by James Ridgeway, Village Voice, May 25, 2002
As his advisers scared the nation stiff with talk of doomsday, Shrub immersed himself in a hectic, heavyweight schedule. Let's start with the week of Monday, May 13, which the prez kicked off by inking an arms deal with Russia, signing the farm bill -- and flying to Illinois for a fundraiser for state attorney general Jim Ryan, a candidate for governor.
Back in Washington on Tuesday, he attended a black-tie gala fundraiser for the Republican Party, which raised $30 million, and released the first of a set of photos of himself on Air Force One, engaged in a phone conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney after the September 11 attacks. Reserved for those who donate at least $150 to GOP legislative hopefuls, the pics capture a moment when, in the president's own words, he was just trying to stay out "of harm's way."
The next day, May 15, Bush went to Capitol Hill for a discussion of welfare reform. News broke of an FBI agent's early 9-11 warning, but it wasn't until the weekend that the administration got it together enough to cover its ass.
On Thursday, May 16, the prez attended a ceremony honoring Ronald Reagan.
Thanking God it was Friday, Bush busied himself presenting the Commander in Chief trophy to players from the Air Force Academy football team.
On the sixth day he rested. Then came the storm. Growing furor in Congress over the FBI's failure to respond to early alarms left the administration with two choices: counter convincingly or thunder more loudly. Thus on Sunday, May 19, Cheney announced that more attacks in this country are "almost a certainty." The next day, FBI chief Robert Mueller said suicide bombings here are "inevitable." On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put in his two cents with the dire warning that the terrorists "inevitably will get their hands" on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
Meanwhile, the commander in chief was having himself a good old time. Bush opened the workweek of May 20 with a White House attack on Fidel Castro, a sturdy punching bag. This presumably was a swipe at that peanut farmer turned one-term president turned international appeaser and current Havana visitor, Jimmy Carter. Standing before Washington reporters, Bush sought to lift the Cuban menace to new heights, labeling the island nation a redoubt for bioterrorism -- a charge which appears to have no credibility. Ramping up, he traveled to Miami that very day, where he gave Castro another kick for the benefit of the Cuban Americans in Miami, a gesture designed to get brother Jeb a key bloc of votes in his upcoming gubernatorial fight. Then he dashed off to Jeb's fundraiser, while his top advisers began suggesting that the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of Liberty might be taken out sooner or later.
Back on the White House South Lawn, the president spent Tuesday, May 21, socializing with this year's NCAA champions. He met with the University of Maryland men's basketball team (the Terrapins), the Connecticut women's basketball squad (the Huskies), and the Minnesota men and women hockey skaters (the Bulldogs).
Through all this, the Homeland Security office never changed its alert from yellow, insisting the tips were too vague. They couldn't have been much vaguer than Bush. "The FBI director, yesterday, I talked to him. He comes in every morning, by the way," Bush explained before taking off for Europe. "So this subject, he came up this morning. He was talking about, he was speculating based upon a lot of intelligence that indicates that the Al Qaeda is active, plotting, planning, you know, trying to hit us. So he was speculating. He basically said, Look, I wouldn't be surprised if there is another attack, and it's going to be difficult to stop them, is what he said."
With that, the commander left his now jittery homeland on Wednesday, May 22, for ice cream in Berlin and another groundbreaking effort: condemning Hitler.
Source: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway.php
5/31/02
10:42:29 AM
COSMIC IMPACTS IMPLICATED IN BOTH THE RISE AND FALL OF DINOSAURS
New abilities to detect layers of "space dust" in the earth's crust are building geological evidence that comets or asteroids colliding with earth not only helped wipe out the dinosaurs, but may have originally helped bring them to prominence about 200 million years ago.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020517080716.htm
"WARM TO THE TOUCH" GENE FOUND
A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) have identified and cloned the first-known gene that makes skin cells able to sense warm temperatures.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020520075300.htm
END OF "FREE RIDE" ON ECOSYSTEM CO<SUB>2</SUB> ABSORPTION
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.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020516081713.htm
STUDY SUGGESTS INFANTS "TUNE IN" TO FAMILIAR FACE GROUPS
How good are you at recognizing the faces of monkeys? Chances are, you were very good at six months of age, but by nine months you were only good--or at least fast--at discriminating between faces of people. That's the conclusion of a study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and two English universities, who say it provides evidence that the brain's ability to perceive faces normally narrows as infants develop. The findings may help guide the treatment of people who suffer impaired ability to recognize faces or read emotions from facial expressions.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020517080606.htm
NEW EVIDENCE FOR DARK DWARF GALAXIES SUPPORTS DARK MATTER THEORY
Two scientists have found evidence that galaxies are surrounded by halos containing hundreds of invisible dwarf galaxies. Their discovery, described in a paper in the June 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, provides strong support for the theory that most of the matter in the universe is in the form of some undetected type of slowly moving particles called cold dark matter.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020521072151.htm
ENGINEERS CREATE ROBOTIC SYSTEM TO MAKE COMPOSITE MATERIAL
A team of researchers is developing a robotic system to reduce the production cost of a lightweight, heat-resistant composite material, offering promise for future widespread applications.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020521072249.htm
NEW TECHNOLOGY CREATES "SUPER SOAP"
Scientists have developed innovative soap technology that significantly reduces the attachment of bacteria to the skin. They report their findings today at the 102nd General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020521072838.htm
STANFORD RESEARCHERS ESTABLISH LINK BETWEEN CREATIVE GENIUS AND MENTAL ILLNESS
For decades, scientists have known that eminently creative individuals have a much higher rate of manic depression, or bipolar disorder, than does the general population. But few controlled studies have been done to build the link between mental illness and creativity. Now, Stanford researchers Connie Strong and Terence Ketter, MD, have taken the first steps toward exploring the relationship.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020522073047.htm
SEPSIS ON THE INCREASE IN U.S., ACCORDING TO EMORY UNIVERSITY AND CDC STUDY
The incidence of sepsis a severe, whole-body immune response to infection is increasing by an average of 16% a year in the U.S., according to research by investigators at Emory University School of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During the 20-year period from 1979 to 1999, the incidence of sepsis increased by more than 329%, from 78 to 259 cases per 100,000 people. Sepsis is a major public health problem, consuming more than $15 billion in healthcare costs annually in the U.S.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020522073456.htm
PENN RESEARCHERS USE LASER TWEEZERS TO STUDY STRENGTH OF LIGAND-RECEPTOR BINDING
Using "laser tweezers," researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have measured the strength of the bond between a single integrin molecule on the surface of a platelet and a molecule of fibrinogen, a clotting protein found in the bloodstream. An article detailing their findings was published in the May 14th online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will be featured in the May 28th print edition.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020522072723.htm
WILL GALLIUM NITRIDE REVOLUTIONIZE ELECTRONICS AS IT HAS OPTOELECTRONICS?
Umesh Mishra, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), has teamed up with his old mentor and dissertation advisor at Cornell, Lester Eastman, to write an article on the prospects for the gallium nitride transistor. The article, "The Toughest Transistor Yet," is the cover story of the May issue of IEEE Spectrum.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020522073746.htm
"MEOW" ISN'T LANGUAGE, BUT ENOUGH TO MANAGE HUMANS
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.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020522073630.htm
HUNGER HORMONE MAY BE KEY IN WEIGHT LOSS
Thousands of obese Americans know firsthand that gastric bypass surgery can achieve long-term weight loss when dieting, exercise and medications have failed. The reason for the difference may hinge on a recently discovered appetite-stimulating hormone, according to an article in the May 23 New England Journal of Medicine.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020523075818.htm
STUDY FINDS AUTOIMMUNE LINK IN JUVENILE BATTEN DISEASE
For years, researchers have tried to determine how the defective gene in juvenile Batten disease leads to the seizures, mental impairment, and other symptoms of this devastating childhood disorder. A new study shows that mice lacking the gene that is altered, or mutated, in this disorder have an immune reaction that disables an important enzyme in the brain. The study also found signs of this reaction in children with Batten disease. The finding provides a new clue about how Batten disease may damage the nervous system and could lead to treatments for the disorder.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020523075332.htm
INSECT YIELDS CLUES TO EVOLUTION OF SPECIES
Studies of a California insect, the walking stick, are helping to illuminate the process of evolution of new species, according to research published in this weeks issue of Nature.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020523075718.htm
NEW PROGRAM HELPS PROTECT ASIAN ELEPHANTS THROUGH CROP-RAIDING PREVENTION
A team of scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and members of local groups and communities have launched a unique initiative designed to reduce crop raiding by the world's largest garden pest - the endangered Asian elephant. Using a variety of methods including natural guard towers, tripwires, and a harmless-but-fiery chili juice, the team is looking to reduce elephant-human conflicts, which often result in extensive crop damage, human injury, and death to the elephants.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020523075410.htm
RESEARCHERS IDENTIFY NEW SIGNS OF DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY IN PATIENTS
Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that patients who report that they have poor health and high levels of pain or disability are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression than other patients in a primary care environment. Female gender was also an indicator of anxiety and depression, they found.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020522074046.htm
PREHISTORIC HUMAN FOOTPATHS LURE ARCHAEOLOGISTS BACK TO COSTA RICA
Ancient, buried footpaths visible using satellite instruments but invisible on the ground to the human eye will be studied in Costa Rica this summer after a 20-year hiatus by University of Colorado at Boulder and NASA archaeologists.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020521071618.htm
NEW AMINO ACID DISCOVERED; FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCK OF LIFE
Two teams of researchers from Ohio State University reported today that they had identified the 22nd genetically encoded amino acid, a discovery that is the biological equivalent of physicists finding a new fundamental particle or chemists discovering a new element.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020524072924.htm
MICROWAVE IMAGER PROBES UNIVERSE "FIRST LIGHT" TO ANSWER COSMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS
Astronomers operating from a remote plateau in the Chilean desert have produced the most detailed images ever made of the oldest light emitted by the universe, providing independent confirmation of controversial theories about the origin of matter and energy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020524073132.htm
HUGE ANTARCTIC ICEBERGS BREAK AWAY NEAR NSF RESEARCH HUB
Two new and very large icebergs broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica earlier this month in a natural calving process that returned the edge of the shelf to its pre-exploration position of the early 1900s, researchers say.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020524073026.htm
LASERS COAX LARGE MOLECULES TO CHANGE THEIR SHAPE
Lasers are used to carry out functions ranging from reading a bar code label at the grocery store to shooting down enemy missiles in space. Now, chemists at Purdue University are using lasers to coax individual molecules to change their shape, a step that may someday enable scientists to direct molecules to perform specific functions.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020524072553.htm
NUT-CRACKING CHIMPS: FIRST PRIMATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG UNCOVERS NEW TOOL DEVELOPMENT LINKS
A study of chimpanzees' use of hammers to open nuts in western Africa may provide fresh clues to how tools developed among human ancestors. A paper published in the May 24 issue of the journal Science documents the first archaeological examination of a non-human primate workplace and establishes new links between the use of tools by chimpanzees and similar developments among human ancestors (hominids).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020524073245.htm
5/30/02
5:17:44 PM
DAILY GRIST
BROTHERHOOD HAS ITS PRIVILIGES
Some of Florida's natural wonders will be protected from oil and gas drilling, thanks to two major deals announced yesterday by President Bush. The first, a completed $115 million buy-back of drilling leases off the shores of Pensacola, will protect the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, while the second, which offers companies a total of $120 million in cash or future drilling credits in exchange for retiring their mineral rights in the Everglades, must be approved by Congress. Environmentalists rejoiced over both deals, but it wasn't lost on anyone that the agreements were extraordinarily at odds with the Bush administration's push to expand oil and gas exploration in the rest of the nation. National Environmental Trust President Phil Clapp described the deals as "a $235 million campaign contribution to the Re-Elect [First Brother and Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush Committee, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers." Interior Secretary Gale Norton defended the administration's quixotic approach to energy development policy, saying that, "Each case must be evaluated individually."
straight to the source: Washington Post, Michael Grunwald and Eric Pianin, 30 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=151>
straight to the source: St. Petersburg Times, Bill Adair, Julie Hauserman, and Craig Pittman, 30 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=152>
do good: Take action to stick up for the Everglades <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/forests.asp?source=daily#everglades>
only in Grist: Please don't take my Sunshine State away -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha111000.stm?source=daily>
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS THING
Does access to information protect us, or put us at risk? That question is at the heart of an environmental debate that's taken on a different shape -- and different stakes -- since Sept. 11. At issue is the public's right to know about chemical plants and other factories manufacturing hazardous materials. Environmentalists maintain that people have a right to know about hazards in their communities -- and that access to such knowledge is one of the driving forces behind environmental improvements. The chemical industry and its allies, however, argue that making such information public poses a risk to national security by essentially granting would-be terrorists blueprints to potentially devastating targets. So far, the industry is winning the ideological battle; in the name of national security, the government has limited access to previously public data about chemical accidents, and stripped websites and reading rooms of materials showing the location of potential targets. But environmentalists aren't bowing out; Greenpeace, for one, is planning to post a map on the Internet showing how an attack on a New Jersey bleach plant could unleash a lethal cloud of chlorine vapor over New York City.
straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Ann Davis, 30 May 2002 (access ain't free) <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=153>
do good: Take action to find the polluters in your neighborhood <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/toxic.asp?source=daily#scorecard>
DEAD BIRD FLYING
Upon hearing reports of his own demise, Mark Twain famously retorted that rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. The same could be said of the golden-crowned manakin, a small Brazilian bird thought to have gone extinct almost a half-century ago but recently rediscovered in the Amazon rainforest. The bird was found by German ornithologist Helmut Sick in 1957. That was also the last year anyone ever saw a golden-crowned manakin, and the bird was eventually given up for dead -- until two Brazilian scientists, Fabio Olmos and Jose Fernando Pacheco, found a single male member of the species last week. (Pacheco has a reputation for bringing back the dead, having previously rediscovered the kinglet cotinga, a bird that hadn't been seen since the 19th century.) Unfortunately, unlike in Twain's case, rumors of the species' demise were only slightly exaggerated; scientists fear that habitat destruction poses a major threat to the long-term survival of the bird.
straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 30 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=154>
DREADING WATER
Industrial pollution in U.S. and Canadian lakes, rivers, and streams rose 26 percent from 1995 to 1999, according to a report released yesterday by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the environmental watchdog agency of the North American Free Trade Association. The report, entitled "Taking Stock," examined data on 210 chemicals from 21,500 facilities in the U.S. and Canada. (Under NAFTA agreements, Mexico is not yet required to report on pollution releases and transfers, although 117 facilities voluntarily reported.) About 8 percent of the total releases included chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, and reproductive problems. The biggest regional polluters were Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ontario, and just 15 of the 21,500 facilities accounted for 7 percent of the pollution produced.
straight to the source: MSNBC.com, Reuters, 29 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=155>
TIME TO GET EXXONMOBILIZED
ExxonMobil, long a target of progressive activists for its appalling environmental and human rights record, is now catching flak from more mainstream critics as well. In an unusual move, shareholder advisor Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., recommended that ExxonMobil's shareholders vote for two controversial proposals, one to outline plans to promote renewable energy use, and the other to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians. ISS said failure to implement the policies could hurt the company's bottom line. ExxonMobil is subject to a boycott in Europe for its poor renewable energy policies. Shareholders voted down both measures during the company's annual meeting in Dallas yesterday, but both received more than twice as many votes as last year, when they were also on the ballot but not supported by ISS.
straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Thaddeus Herrick, 29 May 2002 (access ain't free) <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=156>
straight to the source: New York Times, Reuters, 29 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=157>
only in Grist: Changing the world from a desk chair -- a week in the life of Peter Altman, Campaign ExxonMobil <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dearme/altman040802.asp?source=daily>
do good: Take action to ask ExxonMobil to contemplate the climate <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#exxonmobil>
5/30/02
5:15:05 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
US EPA urges recycling, not dumping, computers - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16190/story.htm
NY acid rain rules seen tightening energy supplies - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16199/story.htm
US protects Florida beaches, park from drilling - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16197/story.htm
Cargill, California set $100 mln SF Bay wetlands deal - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16196/story.htm
US officials in China discuss soybean biotech rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16195/story.htm
FEATURE - Fill 'er up - at home, with hydrogen - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16188/story.htm
Long Island power line fails, conservation urged - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16194/story.htm
Famine stalks 10 million southern Africans - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16202/story.htm
Britain trials new test in fight against bovine TB - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16200/story.htm
UK regulators raise radiation risk from tritium - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16191/story.htm
Wind power could grow 50-fold by 2020 - Greenpeace - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16185/story.htm
Sweden nuke closure wouldn't hit supply-Vattenfall - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16186/story.htm
Dead seals found in Sweden as Danish plague spreads - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16201/story.htm
Mexico finds missing cyanide from truck robbery - MEXICO http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16203/story.htm
FACTBOX - Major automakers' eco-friendly efforts - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16187/story.htm
FEATURE - Hybrid cars try merging into the mainstream - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16184/story.htm
EU energy liberalisation boon for monopolies - study - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16189/story.htm
Czech nuclear plant second reactor approved - CZECH REPUBLIC http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16183/story.htm
Tinder-dry forests fuel Canadian wildfires - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16198/story.htm
Canada - US industrial water waste rising - study - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16192/story.htm
Most EU beaches unpolluted, holidaymakers told - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16193/story.htm
5/30/02
5:13:30 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
EXXONMOBIL SHAREHOLDERS POWER UP RENEWABLES DRIVE
DALLAS, Texas, May 29, 2002 (ENS) - A broad coalition of ExxonMobil investors has won more votes than ever before for a resolution asking the corporation to adopt a renewable energy resources plan. While the resolution was not passed, it was approved by 20.3 percent of current shareholders, representing more than $55 billion worth of stock.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-29-05.asp
RUSSIA PLANS NUCLEAR DUMP FOR SOVIET TEST SITE
MOSCOW, Russia, May 29, 2002 (ENS) - Russia has chosen the former Soviet nuclear test site Novaya Zemlya in the far north as a disposal site for high-level nuclear waste.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-29-04.asp
EUROPE WILL SIGN AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY TREATY
BRUSSELS, Belgium, May 29, 2002 (ENS) - The European Union Council of Ministers has decided to sign the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The treaty aims to protect the world's most important agricultural plant species in order to safeguard global food security.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-29-03.asp
EPA AIMS TO REDUCE ELECTRONIC WASTE
WASHINGTON, DC, May 29, 2002 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed changing its existing waste regulations for computers, televisions and mercury containing equipment to discourage the flow of these materials to municipal landfills and incinerators.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-29-06.asp
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 29, 2002
$100 Million Will Buy California Salt Ponds
Activist Arrested After Blockading Forest Service Office
New Center Focuses on Transportation Solutions
Environmental Estrogens Could Hamper Songbird Breeding
Hot Polymer Catches Carbon Dioxide
Appalachian Trail Group Opposes Wind Farm
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-29-09.asp
5/30/02
5:10:27 PM
t r u t h o u t | 05.30
LA Times: Italy Warned US in Detail, Prior to Attacks
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30A.italy.warn.htm
Memo: FBI Destroyed Evidence in Bin Laden Case, After Glitch With E-mail Surveillance System
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30B.fbi.evidence.htm
3 Israeli Teenagers Gunned Down by Palestinian
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30C.Israel.3.teens.htm
Thomas L. Friedman | Six Wars and Counting
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30D.friedman.6.htm
Maureen Dowd | W.'s Spaghetti Western
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30E.dowd.spaghetti.htm
Paul Krugman | Where's the Boom?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30F.krugman.boom.htm
Texas Executes Man Who Killed at Age 17, Victims Family Had Ties to U.S. Supreme Court Justices
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30G.execute.17.htm
Ashcroft-DOJ: Now Say; Florida Did No Wrong
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.30H.doj.no.wrong.htm
5/29/02
7:30:11 PM
DAILY GRIST
IS THIS THE PLACE?
Tooele County, Utah, is already the hazardous heartland of the United States -- the place where the Army tests anthrax and other chemical, nerve, and biological agents, and incinerates half of the nation's chemical weapons; where the Air Force has its largest bombing and cruise missile ranges; where a private company buries low-level nuclear waste; and where some of the country's dirtiest industrial polluters spew their stuff. Now, if some members of the tiny Goshute Indian tribe have their way, Tooele County will also be home to 40,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. The waste would be kept on their reservation, 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, until a permanent depository is built, most likely at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The tribe's arrangement with eight utility companies, which would foot the bill for the $3.1 billion project, is awaiting only the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, because tribes do not have to answer to most state and local regulations. That infuriates other Utahns, who do not want the waste stored in their state.
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Tom Gorman, 29 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=146>
do good: Take action to stop the use of nuclear power in the U.S. <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#nuclear>
MARSH-A-MARSH-A-MARSH-A
An agricultural company has agreed to sell 16,500 acres of salt ponds around the San Francisco Bay, paving the way for what could be the nation's biggest wetlands restoration project outside of the Florida Everglades. Cargill Inc., an international agriculture and food company, signed a preliminary agreement yesterday with state and federal governments and private foundations to accept $100 million over five years in exchange for turning the land over later this year. The deal was brokered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) and has been welcomed by environmentalists as the culmination of a 10-year campaign to restore tidal marsh in the San Francisco Bay, which has lost 80 percent of such marshes to development. Taken together, the salt ponds are twice the size of the city of San Francisco, and restoring them would vastly increase the amount of public shoreline in the Bay Area and provide habitat for millions of waterfowl and shorebirds.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Jane Kay, 29 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=147>
THEY'D RATHER GO NAKED THAN WEAR GOLD
What if the environmental movement could do to gold what the animal-rights movement did to fur -- convince the public that far from being a badge of success, it is a symbol of cruelty and vanity? Some environmentalists would like to do just that, and they've got the facts to back them up: Gold mining leads to cyanide contamination in water sources, which is harmful for plants, fish, and humans. Even more alarming, gold mining is highly resource-intensive, with the industry using more water in Nevada -- where most gold in the U.S. is mined -- than is consumed by people. All that, for an entirely non-essential industry: Not only is gold unnecessary for subsistence and survival, 90 percent of the gold that has ever been mined is still around, either in bank vaults or dripping off the rich and famous. Still, anti-gold-mining activists are fighting an uphill battle: The industry is healthier than ever, and there are hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs on the line.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Peter Galloway, 29 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=148>
do good: Take action to stop a gold mine from poisoning an Australian lake <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/mining.asp?source=daily#cowal>
THE LITTLE SOLAR STATION THAT COULD
The Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant at Washington state's Hanford nuclear reservation, sits just one mile from the White Bluffs Solar Station. For the past three weeks, Energy Northwest, the Pacific Northwest's nuclear power producer, has been generating a tiny amount of electricity from solar panels at White Bluffs and selling it to the Bonneville Power Administration. Energy Northwest says it's experimenting with solar power because it would like to be known as an environmentally conscious utility, and because it recognizes a growing market demand for clean energy. Still, the experiment is miniscule; the 1,200-megawatt nuclear power plant produces enough juice to power metropolitan Seattle, while the 38.7-kilowatt White Bluffs produces enough to light six houses. There's also a price disparity; although solar power from White Bluffs is affordable thanks to subsidies, the average national cost for electricity production is 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, while solar generally costs 20 to 25 cents per kilowatt-hour. Still, the BPA says it's happy to buy supplementary power from White Bluff, and the experiment could mark a shift in Northwest power production trends.
straight to the source: Seattle Times, Associated Press, Linda Ashton, 29 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=149>
do good: Take action to get cleaner energy <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#powerscorecard>
HE'S MADSEN AND HE'S NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE
In yesterday's edition of the Daily Grist, we reported on the problem of international environmental crime. Today we're reporting on a guy who thinks he's got the solution. Frank Madsen, an advisor to the European Union on illegal logging, a former Interpol detective, and a former head of security for U.S. drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb, wants to create an international Environmental Crime Intelligence Unit. The unit would work closely with national environmental agencies as well as with Europol, Interpol, and nongovernmental organizations, but would have the cross-border power Madsen says is currently lacking in the fight against environmental criminals. The unit would conduct stake-outs, surveillance, and discreet detective work to track down smugglers, dumpers, and illegal loggers and build watertight cases against them for prosecution by national governments.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Jeremy Lovell, 29 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=150>
5/29/02
7:26:22 PM
FBI's email Surveillance Tool Flawed
"Carnivore" tool picked up messages from non-suspects
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, May 29 -- Technicians threw out legitimate wiretap information from an investigation of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network after flaws were discovered in the FBI's e-mail surveillance system, bureau documents show.
The episode was described in documents made public through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington advocacy group.
ACCORDING TO a March 2000 memo to FBI headquarters, the surveillance device, once known as Carnivore, not only picked up the e-mails of its target "but also picked up e-mails on non-covered targets." "The FBI technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all the e-mail take, including the take on" the suspect, whose name is redacted. The memo, from federal law enforcement agents in Denver to M.E. Bowman, the FBI's associate general counsel for national security, refers to the "UBL Unit," an FBI team that investigates bin Laden's agents in the United States. The specific target is not named.
NO COMMENT FROM FBI FBI spokesman Paul Bresson refused to identify the case, citing national security concerns. He said the bureau has no comment on the documents, but said the Denver e-mail was not an official report. The episode was described in documents made public through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington advocacy group. The material was not included in an original release, but only became public after a federal judge ordered the bureau to give out more documents. The memo surfaced as the FBI was addressing concerns it mishandled intelligence on terrorism groups before the Sept. 11 attacks. The agency is to form a new office of intelligence and strengthen its oversight of counterterror investigations. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were expected to outline high-profile changes Wednesday at the FBI's headquarters, including closer ties to the CIA and an overhaul of the FBI's outdated computer systems.
Privacy groups and members of Congress have complained that the FBI's e-mail wiretap device has the potential to collect more information than allowed by a warrant. "Here's confirmation of the fact that not only did it do that, but it resulted in a loss of legitimately acquired intelligence," said David Sobel, general counsel of EPIC, which sued to get the documents released.
"GET ITS ACT TOGETHER" Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, an FBI critic, said, "Whether it's a bungled software program or obstinate bureaucrats, the FBI needs to get its act together."
A Justice department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday night that the e-mails were not destroyed. The official did not elaborate or try to reconcile the statement with the memo.
The unintended targets of the FBI's snooping may have deserved notification that the mistake was made, the FBI memo said. The unnamed author of the e-mail said Denver agents installed Carnivore on March 16, 2000, but the device did not work correctly. Agents got authorization to install Carnivore using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, designed to battle espionage. The technician had no supervision, the e-mail author says. Henry H. Perritt, who led a team authorized by the FBI to review Carnivore, said he was surprised the technician deleted the e-mails.
"The collection is supposed to be retained for judicial review," Perritt said. "If an agent simply deleted a whole bunch of files without the court instructing, that's not the way it's supposed to work." Another document released through the privacy group's request explains the bureau's policy for overcollection on a surveillance warrant. The memo, dated just a week after the Denver e-mail, says the e-mails should be kept under seal so that senior FBI officials can figure out how the wiretap went wrong.
Authorities have used Carnivore-type tools more than 25 times in all types of criminal cases, to catch fugitives, drug dealers, extortionists and suspected foreign intelligence agents. Carnivore is now called DCS-1000.
Perritt's review panel recommended that the FBI change Carnivore so that it is more difficult to accidentally collect too much information. They also said Carnivore needs a stronger audit mechanism so it could be traced back to individual FBI technicians. The FBI has not announced any changes to the system.
Source: http://www.AP.org
5/29/02
7:22:58 PM
Gold Diggers Draw Ire From Environmentalists
by Peter Galloway, REUTERS NEWS SERVICE, May 29, 2002
TORONTO -- What if gold were no longer an object of desire but an object of disgust? What if environmentalists were able to do to the image of the glittering metal what animal rights activists did to the fur coat - paint it as a symbol of cruel and thoughtless vanity, not of brilliant success?
Many environmentalists want just that, but it's not yet an idea whose time has come. At a high-profile mining conference on sustainable development in Toronto this month, which is home to some of the world's biggest gold miners, several proposals were advanced to put an end to gold extraction.
But the anti-mining calls probably won't come to much. The gold-mining industry is healthier than it's been for years, with prices rising and the precious metal in strong demand. Gold prices are way up and probably going higher, analysts say. Spot gold prices were above $320 an ounce in Europe on Friday after starting the year at $279. The stock prices of gold miners are rising apace.
Also, there are hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs tied up in the gold industry. The metal, once described by renowned economist John Maynard Keynes as a "barbarous relic," is in fact back, showing new life as an investment favorite.
But, some adamantly argue, there is no need to mine more gold.
"Gold mining and cyanide use in gold mining has had an unjustifiable and irrevocable impact on the U.S. West," Stephen D'Esposito of the U.S. Mineral Policy Center, said at the Toronto conference. "How much new gold do we really need?"
None, detractors say, noting that more than 90 percent of all the gold that was ever mined is still around - a lot of it sitting in central-bank vaults, and a lot clinging to the necks, wrists and fingers of the rich, famous and beautiful.
Also, environmentalists insist, gold mining is dangerous to people's health and ruinous to the environment.
The mining industry, in general, acknowledges the environmental sins of the past and promises to do better.
"We could take the view, much like the anti-fur people, that we don't need furs and why should women wear fur coats," said Jay Hair, a U.S. conservation movement leader and Vietnam War veteran who was wooed by the mining industry to become secretary general of the International Council for Mining and Metals, a London-based body set up to help miners get greener.
"But my problem with that is that on the other side of the coin there are thousands of poor people, for better or worse, who are employed by the gold industry," Hair told Reuters in an interview. "If they do not have employment opportunities, they are back in that vicious cycle of abject poverty, and I for one am not willing to trade them off for this notion that we don't need gold."
Hair conceded that "mining gold can be a pretty messy issue." But he added that, "The gold industry, at least the ones I've talked to, are sensitive about cleaning up their acts."
There is a lot of cleaning up to do, critics say. Project Underground, a Berkeley, California-based advocacy group, has put out "Fool's Gold", a Top 10 list of problems with gold mining that was published in "Dollars and Sense" magazine last year.
"From California's Sierra Nevada in the 1850s to the lands of the Pemon in Venezuela today, people have ruined rivers by using high-pressure hoses to spray down the banks and sifting through the sediment for gold," says Project Underground.
"Runoff flows downstream, destroying plant and fish life. But modern mining is even more destructive of water resources: the gold industry in Nevada - where most gold in the United States is mined - consumes more water than all the people in the state."
The Project says that cyanide is the chemical of choice for miners to extract gold from crushed ore but that cyanide always leaks into the ecosystem. It points to the case of a cyanide spill at a mine part-owned by Canada's Cameco Corp. in Kyrgyzstan in 1998 that resulted in four deaths and the evacuation of thousands of people living downstream.
"At one southern Colorado mine, Summitville, taxpayers have already paid out $100 million for the Environmental Protection Agency to simply contain - not clean up - contamination in local rivers," the Project says.
It also describes the hundreds of thousands of tons of mercury pumped into the environment over centuries to separate gold from ore.
"Over 85 percent of gold mined today will end up as jewelry tomorrow," Project Underground says. 'Gold mining is not an essential industry like the harvesting of food or even paper production. It is certainly not sustainable, nor is it just."
At the recent Toronto conference of the world's top miners, companies pledged commitment to more sustainable, environment-friendly mining in a document they called the Toronto Declaration.
"This is the first important step in this new era and is the commitment from the industry to improve its performance," said Hair. "The goal now is for all parties to establish a meaningful framework around which constructive engagement and real progress can occur in the future."
And Doug Hock, spokesman for Newmont Mining Corp., the world's No. 1 gold producer, noted that gold mining is done because the world wants it.
"We believe in the free market and that the market should decide what it wants. There is a demand for gold. Part of it is aspirational and part of it is as a form of investment," he said. "So it is for the free market to decide, and our role is too mine in a responsible way.
"We use best practices and very high standards to ensure that no cyanide escapes from our operations."
5/29/02
7:21:31 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
THE RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS
by Richard Florida, The Washington Monthly
-- A city's economic vitality relies increasingly on its ability to foster creative and diverse communities.
I COME IN PEACE AMERICA
by Rohit Gupta, Flak magazine
-- Accessing American textsmay be a quick and dirty operation in this country, but after September 11, it's anything but easy in India.
HARMFUL ENRON PRACTICES WIDESPREAD
by Scott Klinger, United for a Fair Economy
-- We know all about Enron, but which other companies are engaging in questionable, profit-driven practices?
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
5/29/02
7:20:09 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
CLONING MAY BRING EXTINCT TASMANIAN TIGER TO LIFE
SYDNEY, Australia, May 28, 2002 (ENS) - The last Tasmanian tiger died in captivity in 1936, but biologists at the Australian Museum are working to bring the species back by cloning.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-28-03.asp
MINE PROSPECT LOOMS OVER NORTHERN PERUVIAN FARMERS
By Mary Powers
LIMA, Peru, May 28, 2002 (ENS) - The Tambogrande district in northern Peru has become the focus of an international controversy over whether a high-grade mineral deposit underneath the town can be developed into a gold, copper, zinc mine without causing harm to the environment and a fertile agricultural valley where lemons, mangoes and papayas are grown for export.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-28-01.asp
FEDERAL JUDGE FLIP FLOPS ON GROUNDFISH DECISION
WASHINGTON, DC, May 28, 2002 (ENS) - A federal judge the District of Columbia has overturned her own ruling covering the steps required to protect New England groundfish populations and habitat in answer to a flood of motions for reconsideration. Groundfish are such species as cod, haddock, flounder that feed close to the bottom of the ocean from the Canadian border to Cape Hatteras.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-28-02.asp
OVERALL TOXIC RELEASES DOWN, HAZWASTE UP IN 2000
WASHINGTON, DC, May 24, 2002 (ENS) - Industries in the United States released about 7.1 billion pounds of toxic wastes into the environment in the year 2000, a decline of about eight percent from the previous year, shows new data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-28-06.asp
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 28, 2002
Judge Refuses to Dismiss Energy Task Force Suit
Air Conditioner Efficiency Standards Lowered
Fast Track Trade Approval Could Harm Environment
Chemical Warfare Agents Released Over Navy Ships
Ashland Fined $10.7 Million for Refinery Fire
Conference Produces Wildfire Management Plan
Deep Sea Expedition Explores Galapagos Vents
2003 Parks Pass to Feature New Mexico Monument
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-28-09.asp
5/29/02
7:18:42 PM
Saving Mountain Streams
May 28, 2002, Washington Post
AT LEAST for the moment, the Army Corps of Engineers won't be issuing any new permits allowing coal companies to bury Appalachian streams under tons of rubble from mountaintop mining operations. The Bush administration recently issued rules explicitly allowing such permits, but U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II quickly said no. In a sharply worded opinion, he ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers had overstepped their authority by crafting rules that allowed waterways to be used as dumps for mining waste. The agencies essentially tried to rewrite the Clean Water Act through their regulation, the judge held, and that power belongs only to Congress. The agencies and mining companies can be expected to appeal, but his ruling was a clear, firm and welcome reminder of the law's fundamental requirement to protect the nation's waters.
The new rules were first proposed under President Clinton after Judge Haden wrote, in an earlier case, that the Corps was improperly approving permits for mining operations to fill valleys with the dirt and rocks left over when they blew the tops off mountains to get at coal deposits. The Clinton officials backed off after environmental groups protested, but their successors picked up the proposal. When the Bush administration issued the rules May 3, officials said they amounted to simple technical changes that brought regulations into line with existing practice. The judge wasn't buying that. Past permit approvals, he wrote, were "contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Clean Water Act." When earlier court decisions spotlighted the illegal practices, he said, "The agencies undertook to change not their behavior, but the rules that did not support their permit process." This effort, he declared, "must fail."
The practice of mountaintop mining has grown exponentially in recent years as new technology has made it possible for companies to use this approach to extract cleaner-burning low-sulfur coal at prices competitive with producers in the West and overseas. Coal companies argue that they have no safe alternative for disposing of rock and dirt among the steep Appalachian hillsides, and they say thousands of jobs will be lost if future permits are blocked. Judge Haden noted that the federal agencies are under immense political and economic pressure to make sure mountaintop mining can continue. But he also found that only Congress has the authority to decide whether that pressure warrants a change in the law that protects the nation's waters. He was right to slam the door on this rule.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18122-2002May27.html
5/29/02
7:16:39 PM
AlterNet Headlines Brief summaries of leading stories from AlterNet -- the independent news and syndication service -- for May 29, 2002. http://www.alternet.org
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'ENOUGH' IS NOT ENOUGH Bernice Yeung, AlterNet The new J. Lo movie, 'Enough' could have helped increase awareness of a long-neglected social problem. But instead it fuels popular misconceptions about domestic violence. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13209
GAMES AND SCOUNDRELS Stephen Pizzo, The Daily Enron With only six months to November elections, the Enron clouds are gathering over the heads of Republican governors. Also, while their ads may wave American flags, many companies are fleeing to incorporate abroad. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13227
COCA-COLA: LATIN AMERICA'S SECOND RELIGION Kari Lydersen, LiP Magazine With former Coke exec Vicente Fox now employed as president of Mexico, Coca-Cola is winning its battle for the mouths and hearts of Latin America. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13226
THE NAKED UNTRUTH Emmanuelle Richard, AlterNet The mainstream media's love affair with covering the adult industry continues its several-year run, and still fails to uncover the basic facts. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13212
U.S. TELLS TEEN GIRLS WORLDWIDE TO JUST SAY NO Barbara Crossette, Women's ENews The Bush administration is urging the U.N. to adopt its abstinence-only approach to family planning. But opponents say pre-teen moms in developing countries often don't have that option. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13229
KUCINICH IS THE ONE Studs Terkel, The Nation In AlterNet's ongoing coverage of potential presidential candidate Congressman Dennis Kucinich, oral historian Studs Terkel remembers a visit with the 'Boy Mayor of Cleveland.' http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13225
DON'T DO DRUG ADS Cynthia Cotts, Village Voice Here's a downer story for the media: despite the $929 million spent on them over the past five years, drug ads don't work. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13189
IT'S NOT SO SLICK WHEN OIL ENDS UP IN THE SEA Editorial Staff, Environment News Service A new study says oil pollutants from airplanes, recreational boating and runoff from the land are doing just as much damage to North American oceans as massive oil spills. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13228
WHY WARNINGS FELL ON DEAF EARS Jason Vest, American Prospect For the Bush administration, the Cold War never ended -- so al-Qaeda had to get in line behind more serious enemies. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13217
5/29/02
7:11:47 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
UK invites bids for green power research funds - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16171/story.htm
Expert proposes world eco-cops to guard resources - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16175/story.htm
FEATURE - Britons in the dark on missile defence - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16177/story.htm
Gurkhas called up in fight against egg poaching - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16179/story.htm
Mexico to develop deep water oil production know-how - MEXICO http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16178/story.htm
Many animals may have eaten tainted feed in Germany - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16180/story.htm
Energy security overlooked in "Earth Summit 2" - IEA - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16176/story.htm
EU executive plans fleet cut to save fish stocks - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16174/story.htm
Danish wise men say wind power now profitable - DENMARK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16172/story.htm
FEATURE - Gold diggers draw ire from environmentalists - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16173/story.htm
Extinct Tasmanian Tiger one step closer to cloning - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16170/story.htm
5/29/02
6:57:04 PM
t r u t h o u t | 05.29
Israel; Women and Children Targeted in Latest Bombing
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29A.petach.tikvah.htm
India-Pakistan Nuclear Confrontation a Real Danger
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29B.ind.pak.nuk.htm
Greg Palast | Justice Department Suit a "Sham" to Protect Harris, Bush
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29C.palast.sham.htm
Pakistan Conducts Another Test of Ballistic Missile Systems as India Considers Response
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29D.pak.test.htm
NATO Accepts Russia as Junior Partner in Alliance
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29E.russia.nato.htm
White House Stonewall: Day 95
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29F.stonewall.95.htm
Court-Appointed Commander
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29G.cort.ap.comm.htm
Supreme Court to Hear Appeal on Cross - Burning Law
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.29H.sc.cross.burn.htm
5/29/02
6:55:01 PM
DAILY GRIST
IT'S A CRIMING SHAME
Environmental crimes are the train robberies of the 21st century: High-profit and low-risk, they are generally carried out by perpetrators that are better informed, better organized, and better funded than law enforcement agencies. That was the message delivered by the Environmental Investigation Agency at a Royal Institute of International Affairs seminar held yesterday in London, where speakers warned that international environmental criminals are lining their pockets with lucrative and illegal activities such as dumping toxic waste, manufacturing and selling illicit chemicals, trading in endangered species, and illegal logging. Gavin Hayman, an associate fellow with the institute, put the price tag for environmental crimes at about $40 billion per year. But tackling the criminals is a tall order, because enforcement agencies are under-funded, unable to cover the vast territories assigned to them, and frequently open to bribery at the local level.
straight to the source: South Africa Independent, Reuters, Jeremy Lovell, 27 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=142>
only in Grist: Take the mahogany and run -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha052802.asp?source=daily>
WE'VE GOT MAIL
It's vox populi time again here at Grist Magazine. From bones to pick to praises to sing, our readers get talking about what gets them going: chemtrails in Portland, consumerism in Korea, corporate waste, nuclear haste, eco-terrorists, Mormon conservationists -- you name it and there's a Grist reader writing about it in our letters to the editor section. Go read the work of our favorite unpaid contributors, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: Violent objections -- Grist readers write letters to the editor <http://www.gristmagazine.com/letters/letters052802.asp?source=daily>
GET THE BALI ROLLING
The fate of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August, could rest on a meeting that opened yesterday on the Indonesian island of Bali. The U.N.-sponsored meeting, which runs for two weeks, aims to smooth out differences among nations on how to achieve the twin and rather daunting goals of protecting the environment and eliminating poverty. The U.S. decided against sending any high-ranking officials to the talks, a move environmentalists say demonstrates a lack of commitment to sustainable development. In part because of U.S. obstructionism, environmentalists fear the Bali talks will not achieve anything of lasting significance. But Emil Salim, a former Indonesian environment minister who heads the U.N. committee paving the way for Johannesburg, played down such concerns: "I sense a mood of optimism, a sense of getting conclusions [at Bali] so that Johannesburg will be successful," Salim said.
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Dean Yates, 28 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=143>
do good: Take action to send your leader to the World Summit <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/politics.asp?source=daily#summit>
INUIT INTUITION
There is no word in the Inuit language for a robin, but suddenly, there are robins in Inuit territory -- the vast, frozen lands of the Arctic. Mostly frozen, that is; this spring, there are bare spots in the tundra snow, just one of many signs that the far north is thawing. Other signs include receding glaciers, eroding coastlines, disappearing lakes, rising temperatures, and once-unheard of thunderstorms. None of those have escaped the attention of the Inuits, whose knowledge of the land used to be dismissed by the scientific community. Recently, however, scientists have begun to incorporate Inuit observations into studies of climate change. Canada has even mandated that government agencies take traditional knowledge into account when making land-use decisions. That's all well and good, but it doesn't reverse climate change, which poses a dire threat to the Inuit way of life. "When you think in terms of the long-term negative effects of climate change, this could be the beginning of the end of the way of life for a whole people," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference of Canada.
straight to the source: Washington Post, DeNeen L. Brown, 28 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=144>
do good: Take action on climate issues <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily>
FISCHLER-ING FOR TROUBLE
The E.U. has announced a proposal to overhaul Europe's fisheries policy, a move that would save endangered species but cost some 28,000 jobs. The reforms would entail cutting the size of the fishing fleet by 8.5 percent, a reduction that E.U. Fisheries Commissioner Franz Fischler called necessary for the future of European fishing. "Either we have the courage to make bold reforms now, or we watch the demise of our fisheries sector in the years ahead," Fischler said. Despite efforts to protect fish species by imposing annual catch quotas on E.U. nations, the stocks of many European fish have fallen to dangerously low levels, and two-thirds of Northeast Atlantic stocks are below safe biological limits. Environmentalists welcome the plan to protect the fish, but southern European countries and Ireland, which will be most strongly affected, are expected to resist it.
straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 28 May 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=145>
GIFT RAP
So far, the first-ever Grist fundraising drive has been an unprecedented success. (eGrants.org, the organization that's making it possible to do fancy things like process your online credit card donations safely and securely, wants to know what the heck we've done to inspire such a love-in among our readers.) Donors have sent enthusiastic notes saying they're happy to fork over some dough so long as we keep providing first-rate environmental news, the latest opportunities for activism, and features from the county's best environmental writers -- not to mention a daily dose of laughter. What with all the warm fuzzies, we're finding that fundraising can be mighty fun. But we'd rather get our jollies doing what we do best -- writing about the trials and (occasional) triumphs of Mama Earth. So if you haven't given yet, please do. We run a tight ship here, but we need help from you to keep it afloat. It's true what they say about every little bit counting, so please give whatever you can. Along with all that good Grist content, we promise fountains of gratitude in return.
support Grist: Click here to make a tax-deductible donation <http://www.gristmagazine.com/about/support.asp?source=daily>
5/29/02
6:51:41 PM
We Must All Prevent War
by James Carroll, May 28, 2002
THE SHOCK OF headlines leaves us unable to distinguish between the merely awful and a world historic threat. The Catholic crisis and even the war on terrorism will be mere footnotes to the present age if the conflict between India and Pakistan moves from border skirmishing to general war. As the prospect of such escalation grows more likely by the day, here are several points deserving of renewed emphasis:
There has never been a shooting war between two nuclear powers. And war, by definition, carries its own irrational momentum. The possibility of new Hiroshimas on the subcontinent is real, perhaps imminent.
>From within the dispute between India and Pakistan, issues of national sovereignty and religious identity seem worth the risk even of nuclear war, but from outside there is no conceivable justification of that risk. This is the position of the United States and other nations.
But that contradiction adheres in every situation of war. From within a dispute, drastic action is always justified. From outside it, compromise, negotiation, and restraint are always seen as preferable to violence. The India-Pakistan war, in other words, is a revelation of the futility of war as such. Therefore it is not enough for the United States and other nations to urge restraint on New Delhi and Islamabad.
The escalation of this conflict has not occurred in a vacuum. Two things have made it possible: a broad international climate of moral approbation in favor of war, and widespread indifference to the threat still posed by nuclear weapons. The real and immediate prospect of a nuclear war must generate changes on both these fronts.
There was a time when the populations of nations got out ahead of their governments on the urgent question of nuclear war. From the ''Ban the Bomb'' movement of the 1950s to the ''Nuclear Freeze'' movement of the 1970s, from student activists to aging peaceniks, from the scientists of Pugwash to the mothers of Womens' Action for Nuclear Disarmament, from antinuclear organizations of physicians and lawyers to those of business people and bishops - the voices of ordinary citizens have been raised in the past to tremendous effect on this question. Indeed, it may be that the arms race itself was reversed by those voices, once governments were forced to hear them.
Where are such voices today? Or, to ask the question another way, what happened to the tradition of ''resistance''? During the height of the Cold War, many human beings across the globe discovered that the only way to live humanly in the nuclear age was in active opposition to the coming prospect of the nuclear nightmare. After 1990, the danger seemed to abate, and the resistance evaporated.
The same broad population that once regarded the risk of nuclear war as an urgent public problem accepted the myth that nuclear war would never happen. In America, this led to indifference even as government officials abandoned nuclear-limiting treaties (Test Ban, ABM), proposed new nuclear weapons programs (battlefield nukes, militarization of space), and reiterated the dogma that American power rests on its permanent nuclear arsenal.
Hardly anyone seemed to notice as these trends in the United States reinforced the determination of other nations to wield such power. Hardly anyone seemed to notice, even more concretely, when the moral capacity of the United States to object to nuclear testing by India and Pakistan was undercut by the US Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The context within which India and Pakistan have moved to the brink of nuclear war has thus been defined not only by the irresponsibility of other governments, but by the detachment of citizens everywhere who no longer see the prevention of such war as involving them. And now? Are we really to watch the unfolding of the crisis along the border of India and Pakistan as if it is the Catholic bishops, say, in contest with the press? As if it is the FBI in blame-game competition with the CIA?
We owe it to the ''fate of the earth,'' in Jonathan Schell's great phrase, to do far more than that. We must, first, think the unthinkable again, imagining what the world after even a limited nuclear war would be like. And we must face the question that such a possible future already puts to every one of us: What are you doing to try to prevent this disaster?
The only way to live humanly - still - is in resistance to war. The prevention of war, in the nuclear age, must be a central purpose of every person's life. Scientists, physicians, lawyers, bishops, mothers, students, writers - where are you? We must remember what we learned already, but forgot; what the leaders of India and Pakistan are showing us again: If we human beings leave this problem to governments, we are doomed.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
5/29/02
6:49:56 PM
Oil Moves The War Machine
by Michael T. Klare, June 2002
Since its inception, the Bush Administration has launched two great foreign policy initiatives: a global war against terrorism, and a global campaign to expand American access to foreign oil. Originally, each possessed its own rationale and mode of operation. As time has passed, however, they have become increasingly intertwined, so that today the war on terrorism and the struggle for oil have become one vast enterprise.
For the complete article, see:
http//www.theprogressive.org/June%202002/klare0602.html
5/29/02
6:46:38 PM
BUSH'S LITTLE SECRET
The President knew last August that terrorists might be planning to hijack an airliner. What else is the White House not telling us?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13174
FBI Agent's Report in July "Was Very Specific"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.24E.Very.Specific.htm
Larry Chin has the facts and the implications of those facts
All the desperate lies and spin don't change the fact that the Bush administration had foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin051902/chin051902.html
Daschle Calls for 9-11 Independent Commission
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23A.Daschle.Ind.911.htm
9/11 Halt to Flights Aids Cloud Study
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks spurred the government to ground all commercial air flight for days. Now that action may help researchers better understand global warming. (...) Researchers were able to track just 10 planes that flew in the eastern part of the country, from about Ohio to Virginia. The crafts' contrails created cirrus clouds that lasted nearly seven hours and stretched over nearly 8,000 square miles. By calculating normal conditions, researchers determined that the normal volume of aircraft would have produced clouds covering about 77,000 square miles.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0520-05.htm
This Futile Campaign
Western Intervention Has Done Little for the Afghans and Less to Beat Terrorism
http://commondreams.org/views02/0520-01.htm
Senate Adds 'War on Terrorism' to Trade Bill - URGENT ALERT!
The Democratic Substitute to the Andean Trade Act (a pro 'Fast Track' bill being debated at this moment on the U.S. Senate floor) now establishes that any country within this agreement which does not support the U.S. 'War on Terrorism', will not receive special trade status with the U.S. (...) This amounts to nothing more than economically bribing and strong arming South American countries into helping the U.S. war machine attack and dominate the planet. (More at the URL above)
http://www.indymedia.org:8081//print.php3?article_id=181604
Senate Clears Way for Bush Trade Powers Bill
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23B.Senate.Trade.htm
Bush Seeks to Redefine Entirely, The Power of the Presidency
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.23G.Bush.Power.htm
There Is A Firestorm Coming, And It Is Being Provoked By Mr Bush President Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of Osama bin Laden
http://commondreams.org/views02/0525-08.htm
5/29/02
6:38:26 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
BALI: ACTION URGED FOR SUSTAINABILITY SUMMIT
BALI, Indonesia, May 27, 2002 (ENS) - Everyone is calling for action to reduce poverty and stop environmental degradation around the world, but exactly what action and by whom is still in question. The last negotiating session before the World Summit on Sustainable Development considered these issues at informal meetings over the weekend at the Bali International Convention Center, and convened in formal session this morning.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-27-01.asp
FINNISH GREENS RESIGN OVER NEW NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
HELSINKI, Finland, May 27, 2002 (ENS) - Finland's Green Environment Minister Satu Hassi today resigned in protest at Friday's parliamentary vote in favor of constructing a new nuclear power station.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-27-03.asp
MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF OIL RUN OFF TO THE SEA
WASHINGTON, DC, May 27, 2002 (ENS) - About 29 million gallons of petroleum enters the oceans off North America each year, shows a new study by the National Research Council. The report finds that about 85 percent of that pollution can be blamed not on massive oil spills, but on the lesser amounts released by airplanes, swept into polluted rivers and from the largest culprits: recreational boats and runoff from the land.
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-27-02.asp
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE WORLDSCAN: MAY 27, 2002
RUSSIA: Russia Signs POPs Treaty
INDONESIA: President Calls for Logging Halt
ANTARCTICA: Southern Lights Over U.S. Polar Station
NORTH AMERICA: NAFTA Agency Probes Molymex Pollution
CANADA: B.C. Writes Sustainability Principles
TAJIKISTAN: Memo May Save Bukhara Deer from Extinction
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002-05-27-19.asp
5/29/02
6:36:07 PM
Pre-9.11 And The Bush Admin., It's All Clinton's Fault, Right?
by Kent Southard, Bush Watch, May 24, 2002
The following are all uncontroversial facts reported in the mainstream media:
On or about Jan. 20th, 2001, as the Clinton administration transitioned to the Bush, NSC chief Sandy Berger briefed Condi Rice extensively on the terrorism threat posed by bin Laden, telling her she would be spending more time on this threat than she ever imagined. At the Dept. of Defense, William Cohen was performing the same courtesy for Don Rumsfeld, again with a sharp reminder of the terrorist threat in the form of a hand-written letter to Rumsfeld containing the phone numbers of people in the Pentagon Rumsfeld needed to speak to directly on the subject. On Jan. 26th, the CIA confirmed to the new Bush administration that bin Laden and Al Qaeda were responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole which killed 17 American sailors.
The response of the Bush administration was to cease Predator drone surveillance flights to track bin Laden, reassign the cruise-missile equipped submarine stationed in the Indian Ocean with the specific mission of targeting bin Laden, reassign the AC-130 gunships on scramble alert that could be on top of bin Laden after a six hour flight, suspend the special forces operations targeting bin Laden already based in Uzbekistan for the purpose thanks to a treaty signed by Bill Clinton.
In May, June and July, the sole remaining Clinton appointee, CIA Director Tenet, was frantic with concern over incoming intelligence indicating a huge terrorist attack on American soil. Vice-President Dick Cheney was head of a new counter-terrorism task force, yet held no meetings. Attorney General John Ashcroft refused FBI requests for hundreds of new agents to be assigned to counter-terrorism; his concerns were drugs and pornography, yet in late July he stopped flying commercial airliners due to a "threat assessment." The general threat assessment was considered to be the most severe in decades according to CIA's Tenet; members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were briefed on the situation on July 5th.
Also in July, an Arizona FBI agent wrote the 'Phoenix Memo,' expressing concern about possible Al Qaeda members taking flying lessons in this country towards the end of terrorist attacks. One of the two FBI officials to see it before the attacks was New York counter-terrorism chief John O'Neill; contemporaneous with the timing of this memo was O'Neill's remarks to the authors of 'Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth,' wherein O'Neill expressed his outrage with the Bush administration's thwarting of counter-terrorist efforts in the interests of protecting its Saudi sponsors. John O'Neill would soon quit the FBI in disgust, only to die at his new job as chief of security at the WTC.
Also in July, the FAA rescinded the rule allowing airline pilots to be armed, a rule that had been in force since 1961.
August found George W. Bush 'vacationing' for the entire month in rural Texas, while Dick Cheney similarly spent the month in rural Wyoming. On August 1st actor James Woods as flying from Logan to Los Angeles, sharing 1st class with four Middle Eastern men, who ate nothing, drank nothing, read nothing, nor slept the entire flight, only making occasional low comments to one another. Woods remarked to the flight attendant that 'These guys act like they're going to hijack the plane,' and once the plane landed he repeated his concerns to the FAA. All four men were hijackers on Sept. 11th. On Aug. 6th, Bush himself was apparently finally briefed about the specific threat of attacks on American soil. His vacation continued. On Aug. 17th, the Minneapolis FBI office arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, on the basis of an expired student visa and very curious pilot training requests. FBI field agents at this office were convinced of Moussaoui's intentions as a terrorist, and repeatedly tried to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant to search his computer. In early Sept., French Intelligence informed both the CIA and the FBI that Moussaoui had Al Qaeda connections. A FISA warrant remained ungranted against Moussaoui, even though under Clinton and Janet Reno no FISA request had been refused.
As an interesting aside, before 9/11 Ashcroft was known to put in 3 1/2 day work weeks at the Dept. of Justice. In the early months of the administration, FBI agents flew to Ashcroft's home in rural Missouri to obtain his signature on a wire-tap for a terrorism investigation. Ashcroft was so displeased to see the agents, he had them stand out in the cold while he sat in his pickup to read and sign the documents.
On Sept. 4th, Cheney's counter-terrorism task force met for the first time. According to the Pentagon's liaison for terrorism, Gen. Kerrik, Clinton's had met almost weekly, but with Bush he "didn't see that same kind of focus." On Sept. 10, Diane Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee briefed on July 5th, asked Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby when the administration would start focusing on these terror threats which had so pre-occupied CIA's Tenet, the most severe in decades - she was told it would have to wait another six months.
So, obviously, it's all Clinton's fault.
Source: http://www.bushwatch.net
5/29/02
6:33:11 PM
Unscrub Alert
http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=7382
On 5-22-02 at 9 am, the Military District of Washington at
site was unscrubbed, including most of the Pentagon planning article. But a page of photos remains scrubbed:
http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/news_photos/Contingency_Planning_Photos.html
So the mystery continues! In the meantime, keep calling Congress and the media -- the story of Condi's Big Lie has received NO coverage outside of Democrats.com!
SCRUB ALERT 5-21-02
On 5-20-02, Democrats.com exposed Condi Rice's Big Lie that no one ever expected the Pentagon to be hit by a civilian airliner. According to the official government Web site of the Military District of Washington, the Pentagon ITSELF planned in detail how it would respond to just such a scenario from October 24-26 2000. And this was no low-level exercise, since it took place in the Office of the Secretary's of Defense conference room! Folks, we must have found something REALLY EXPLOSIVE --because not only did Rove & Rumsfeld & Rice scrub this article -- they scrubbed the whole Military District of Washington Web site! Luckily, we kept a copy of the article (see below). Call your Representatives (202-224-3121) and the media and demand the truth about the Pentagon's civilian airline crash exercise in October 2000!
On 5-20-02, Democrats.com found this article here:
http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Contingency_Planning.html
Shortly after Democrats.com published this link, the article was SCRUBBED -- along with the entire Web site of the Military District of Washington at
For the Democrats.com Scrubbers Compendium, go to:
http://democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Scrubbers
Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies
Story and Photos by Dennis Ryan
MDW News Service
Washington, D.C., Nov. 3, 2000 -- The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas.
Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one. The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room.
On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents. To conduct the exercise, emergency personnel hold radios that are used to rush help to the proper places, while toy trucks representing rescue equipment are pushed around the exercise table. Cards are then passed out to the various players designating the number of casualties and where they should be sent in a given scenario. To conduct the exercise, a medic reports to Army nurse Maj. Lorie Brown a list of 28 casualties so far. Brown then contacts her superior on the radio, Col. James Geiling, a doctor in the command room across the hall. Geiling approves Brown's request for helicopters to evacuate the wounded. A policeman in the room recommends not moving bodies and Abbott, playing the role of referee, nods his head in agreement. "If you have to move dead bodies to get to live bodies, that's okay," Abbott says as the situation unfolds.
Geiling remarked on the importance of such exercises. "The most important thing is who are the players?" Geiling said. "And what is their modus operandi?"
Brown thought the exercise was excellent preparation for any potential disasters. "This is important so that we're better prepared," Brown said. "This is to work out the bugs. Hopefully it will never happen, but this way we're prepared."
An Army medic found the practice realistic. "You get to see the people that we'll be dealing with and to think about the scenarios and what you would do," Sgt. Kelly Brown said. "It's a real good scenario and one that could happen easily."
A major player in the exercise was the Arlington Fire Department. "Our role is fire and rescue," Battalion Chief R.W. Cornwell said. "We get to see how each other operates and the roles and responsibilities of each. You have to plan for this. Look at all the air traffic around here."
Each participant was required to fill out an evaluation form after the training exercise. "We go over scenarios that are germane to the Pentagon," Jake Burrell of the Pentagon Emergency Management Team said. 'You play the way you practice. We want people to go back to their organizations and look at their S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) and see how they responded to any of the incidents."
Burrell has coordinated these exercises for four years and he remarked that his team gets better each year. Abbott, in his after action critique, reminded the participants that the actual disaster is only one-fifth of the incident and that the whole emergency would run for seven to 20 days and might involve as many as 17 agencies. "The emergency to a certain extent is the easiest part," Abbott said. He reminded the group of the personal side of a disaster. "Families wanting to come to the crash sight for closure."
In this particular crash there would have been 341 victims.
(Ryan is a staff writer with the Fort Myer Military Community's Pentagram.)
5/29/02
6:29:57 PM
The Rowley Memo
by William Safire, NY Times, May 27, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Why did F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller desperately stamp "classified" on last week's memo to him from the Minneapolis agent and counsel Coleen Rowley?
Answer: Because he is protecting the bureau's crats who ignored warnings from the field before Sept. 11, and because he is trying to cover his own posterior for misleading the public and failing to inform the president in the eight months since.
In an example of gutsy newsmagazine journalism, Time reports this week on "The Bombshell Memo: How the FBI Blew the Case." The entire 6,000-word memo from the field agent who dared to blow the whistle -- edited presumably for national security and libel -- can be found on the Web site of time.com
[ http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html ]
Last summer, the Phoenix field office, on the trail of a couple of radical Islamists, recommended strongly that F.B.I. headquarters examine flight schools around the nation for potential terrorists; the Washington bureaucrats did nothing.
Soon after, Minneapolis agents took action to jail another radical, Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen now accused as "the 20th hijacker," for overstaying his visa. The agents asked F.B.I. headquarters for permission to examine his laptop computer. Permission was denied, despite reports from French intelligence relayed from our Paris embassy of his involvement with international terrorists. Not until after Sept. 11 did we learn it contained the phone number of Mohamed Atta's roommate.
Intimidated by the brouhaha about supposed ethnic profiling of Wen Ho Lee, lawyers at John Ashcroft's Justice Department wanted no part of going after this Arab. F.B.I. Washington bureaucrats were, in agent Rowley's words, "consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis F.B.I. agents' efforts."
To this day, Mueller -- Eric Holder's gift to Justice, held over by an entranced Ashcroft and determined to protect his benefactor from embarrassment -- insists that even an unencumbered investigation would not have stopped 9/11. Not so, says Rowley; her memo told Mueller last week that his protestation was "an apparent effort to protect the F.B.I. from embarrassment and the relevant F.B.I. officials from scrutiny."
She asserts that "discovery of other terrorist pilots prior to September 11th may have limited the attacks and resulting loss of life" and "your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to protect the F.B.I. at all costs."
This is an unprecedented indictment not only of the time-servers at Justice and F.B.I. headquarters last summer, but also of the director who has been insisting that the bureau is blameless ever since. Rowley, a 21-year veteran of the F.B.I. and mother of four (superagent and supermom), suggests that Mueller's men have been neglecting their duty to report potential violations of relevant directives to the president's Intelligence Oversight Board (as if that sleepy gang would lift a finger).
I was struck by deja vu in her account of headquarters' dismissal of the warning from French intelligence about the suspect detained in Minneapolis. Higher-ups told the field agents that maybe it was another Zacarias Moussaoui -- just as the spooks at C.I.A. told reporters that the Arab photographed meeting an Iraqi spymaster in Prague was another man with the name of Mohamed Atta.
Last week, recalling last August's request by George W. Bush to the C.I.A.'s George Tenet for a memo detailing the terrorist threat inside the U.S., I opined that the president had asked the wrong man. The officer charged with that responsibility is the director of the F.B.I., and the C.I.A. chief failed to ask the F.B.I. for his information. That would have blasted loose the suppressed reports from Phoenix and Minneapolis.
In unattributable response, a "senior administration official" claimed that some analyst at C.I.A. talked to somebody down the line at the F.B.I. That's foof dust; when the president needs to know the threat, our national security staff must knock top heads to provide it quickly and thoroughly.
Instead of identifying and promoting the best antiterrorist field agents experienced in operating within the U.S., as Rowley suggests, Director Mueller is importing from the C.I.A. a flock of analysts he touts as a "super squad." That compounds his mistakes and may undermine law enforcement. The C.I.A. and F.B.I. can work more closely together while remaining distinctly apart.
Mr. Bush: don't tear down that wall.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/27/opinion/27SAFI.html?todaysheadlines
5/29/02
6:26:49 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
ANALYSIS - Short-range nukes little use to India, Pakistan - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16157/story.htm
Iran says allowing inspections of nuclear plant - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16159/story.htm
Eco-crooks outwitting law agencies - experts - UK: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16164/story.htm
Sweden wants full-scale green certificate trading - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16158/story.htm
Swedish minister unsure of Barseback closure date - SWEDEN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16161/story.htm
Climbers bury bodies, gather Mt. Everest garbage - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16156/story.htm
Iran says Bush acting like a "cowboy" - IRAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16160/story.htm
Key talks on "Earth Summit 2" kick off in Indonesia - INDONESIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16166/story.htm
German eco-farming hit by tainted poultry feed - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16163/story.htm
Bush-Chirac warmth leaves French press cold - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16165/story.htm
Finnish Greens opt to quit govt after nuclear vote - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16162/story.htm
Australia recalls soy product in cancer scare - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16167/story.htm
5/29/02
6:24:00 PM
"I awake in the morning, torn between a desire to save the world, and a desire to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day."
E.H. White
5/29/02
6:19:40 PM
Agent Claims FBI Supervisor Thwarted Probe Stopping Some Hijackers Said Possible
by Dan Eggen Washington Post, May 27, 2002; Page A01
The FBI might have been able to stop some of the Sept. 11 hijackers if it had more aggressively pursued an investigation of alleged terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was in custody for more than three weeks prior to the attacks, the FBI's chief lawyer in Minneapolis wrote in a blistering letter to headquarters last week.
Coleen Rowley, in a highly unusual and bitter letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, was particularly critical of a supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters, whom she accused of "consistently, almost deliberately, thwarting the Minnesota FBI efforts."
Even on the morning of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Washington supervisor instructed Rowley and her colleagues to hold off on action against Moussaoui, arguing that his arrest after suspicious behavior at a flight school was probably a coincidence, the letter said.
Moussaoui, who is thought by U.S. officials to have been training as the "20th hijacker," now faces a death-penalty trial in Alexandria for alleged complicity in the attacks.
"Although I agree it's very doubtful that the full scope of the tragedy could have been prevented, it's at least possible we could have gotten lucky and uncovered one or two more of the terrorists in flight training prior to Sept. 11, just as Moussaoui was discovered, after making contact with his flight instructors," Rowley wrote.
Brimming with indignation and at times personally critical of Mueller, Rowley's correspondence provides the most pointed indictment yet of the FBI's failure to properly read clues available before Sept. 11 that al Qaeda terrorists seemed focused on aviation. The claims in Rowley's letter comprise the most specific allegation yet that U.S. officials may have been in a position to at least diminish the attacks.
The single-spaced, 13-page, footnoted letter -- revealed in snippets last week after it was delivered to Mueller and congressional intelligence committees -- was first reported in its entirety yesterday by Time magazine, which posted an edited copy on its Web site.
FBI spokesman Steven Berry declined to comment yesterday on the letter, which is considered classified by the FBI.
Senior FBI officials in Washington, including Mueller, have for months insisted that the bureau did everything it could to ascertain Moussaoui's intentions. They have said they aimed to secure a warrant for a laptop computer found in Moussaoui's possession, but that FBI attorneys -- including Rowley -- had agreed there was not enough evidence to do so under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
In the days leading up to Sept. 11, officials have said, U.S. law enforcement put in place a plan to rapidly deport Moussaoui under heavy guard to Paris, where French authorities would take possession of the laptop and use more aggressive statutes there to examine it.
"The fact that there were a number of individuals that happened to have received training at flight schools here is news, quite obviously," Mueller said on Sept. 15. "If we had understood that to be the case, we would have -- perhaps one could have averted this."
To Rowley and her colleagues in Minneapolis, such statements were misleading at best and ignored significant evidence that could have been used to pry open Moussaoui's laptop and possibly learn more about the impending plot.
Rowley said Minneapolis agents were hampered at every turn by bureaucrats in Washington, who allegedly resisted seeking a warrant, sought to micromanage the case and admonished the field agents when, in desperation, they turned to the CIA for help.
Rowley is especially critical of one supervisory special agent (SSA) at headquarters, who was "consistently, almost deliberately, thwarting the Minnesota FBI efforts," according to the letter.
At one point, Rowley alleges, the unnamed SSA changed a warrant application in such a way that FBI lawyers would be more likely to reject it, as they did.
Headquarters, Rowley said, "continued to almost inexplicably throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis's by now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause."
What's more, Rowley wrote, she and her co-workers were dismayed further by the reactions of FBI officials to revelations this month about another case in Phoenix.
FBI agent Kenneth Williams, who was investigating possible terrorists at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., wrote to headquarters July 10 suggesting that U.S. aviation schools should be canvassed and raising the possibility Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network might be trying to infiltrate the aviation field.
The request was formally closed within a few weeks, and it was never acted upon. The Radical Fundamentalists Unit, a recipient of the Phoenix memo, also never connected Williams's suggestions with the investigation of Moussaoui a month later, officials have said.
Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month that, although the Phoenix memo should have been pursued more aggressively, it would not have led investigators to the Sept. 11 plot.
"I don't know how you or anyone at FBI Headquarters, no matter how much genius or prescience you may possess, could so blithely make this affirmation without anything to back the opinion up than your stature as FBI Director," Rowley wrote. "The truth is, as with most predictions into the future, no one will ever know what impact, if any, the FBI's following up on those requests would have had."
In addition to criticizing the handling of the Moussaoui case, Rowley is blistering in her condemnation of FBI culture, which she portrays as dominated by careerists who are too afraid of internal discipline to be aggressive in their work. In addition, Rowley complains that headquarters staff involved in the Moussaoui case were central to the post-Sept. 11 probe and that the SSA most to blame was actually promoted.
The FBI enforces a "double standard which results in those of lower rank being investigated more aggressively and dealt with more harshly for misconduct, while the misconduct of those at the top is often overlooked or results in minor disciplinary action."
Rowley also takes aim at Mueller's plans to create an anti-terrorism "super squad" at FBI headquarters in Washington, which would control all terrorism cases and would rely heavily on a centralized Office of Intelligence. Rowley, a 21-year FBI veteran, argues in her letter that the Moussaoui and Phoenix incidents show that FBI headquarters is the problem, not the solution.
Staff writer Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14516-2002May26.html
5/29/02
6:17:00 PM
t r u t h o u t
Agent Claims FBI Supervisor Thwarted Probe
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28A.fbi.probe.htm
BBC | Bomb Hits Israeli Shopping Centre, At Least 2 Dead - 20 Injured
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28B.bomb.centre.htm
Airliners Cancel Flights Amid NATO Summit Fears
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28C.nato.no.fly.htm
Maureen Dowd | W.'s Grand Tour
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28D.dowd.tour.htm
Peter Erlinder | Patriot Act's Supposed Justification is Gone
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28E.erlinder.usapa.htm
Roman Polanski Wins at Cannes
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28F.polanski.htm
Among New Yorkers a Strong Voice for Rebuilding Twin Towers
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28G.nu.towers.htm
No Longer a Suspect, But Still a Detainee; U.S. Won't Release or Deport Prisoner
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.28H.911.prisoner.htm
5/29/02
6:12:37 PM
The Phoenix FBI Agent
Kenneth Williams, Human Rorschach Test.
by Chris Suellentrop, May 24, 2002
Who is Kenneth Williams? The FBI agent, who authored the now-famous "Phoenix memo" and who testified behind closed doors before three congressional committees this week, remains the Soviet Union of the post-9/11 recriminations scandal: a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. We know startlingly little about the man. Because of that paucity of information, Williams has become a human Rorschach test—observers impute their own meanings to him, and what a person says about him says as much about the speaker as it does about Williams.
Here's the inkblot: A former San Diego cop, Williams has worked for the FBI for roughly a decade. He's in his early 40s. He coaches Little League. As an agent, he's well-regarded by his colleagues, at least the ones who have spoken to the press. One former supervisor gave the Los Angeles Times this Spinal Tap assessment of Williams: "On a scale of 1 to 10, he's a 10. Maybe an 11." Another former colleague was similarly, if slightly less, effusive in his praise, noting, "Of all the people I knew and worked with in the Phoenix office, I'd put him in the top three or four." And one colleague told Newsweek, "He thinks of everything in terms of Bin Laden." For his part, Williams has remained scrupulously silent since his memo was unearthed by the Associated Press on May 3. His lone quote to the media was politely apologetic: When a Time reporter tracked him to his North Phoenix, Ariz., home, Williams told him, "I'm really sorry, but I would get into trouble if I talked to you." After Sept. 11, he became the lead agent for the FBI's post-9/11 investigation in Arizona. According to testimony he gave at a February trial, he's been working 16- to 18-hour days since the terrorist attacks.
That's it. That's the grand total of what we know about the alleged Cassandra of Sept. 11. Plus his memo, of course. But it is similarly mysterious. The members of Congress on the intelligence committees who have read it aren't saying much, even anonymously. Based on press reports, it's short, either three or five pages long. Written July 10, 2001, it named no Sept. 11 hijackers, but it theorized that followers of Osama Bin Laden were trying to infiltrate the U.S. civil aviation system. Williams specifically named eight apparent Islamic radicals who were attending flight schools in Arizona. He wanted the FBI to canvas the nation's flight schools for possible Islamic radicals, but he did not request that any arrests be made, and he marked his memo "routine," not "urgent." He was concerned about prospective flight students, not just current ones. At least two of the men Williams mentioned are currently under FBI surveillance, and another who has left the country is now believed to have been an al-Qaida member. (One paragraph of the otherwise classified memo has been released; you can read it at The Smoking Gun.)
Neither Williams—who testified in private before a congressional committee—nor FBI Director Robert Mueller believes that Williams' proposed action, by itself, would have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks. But the discovery of the memo, coupled with other pre-9/11 warnings about al-Qaida hijackers, has given the lie to the Bush administration's claim that absolutely no one could have foreseen the possibility that terrorists would use planes as missiles. Before this week, pointing fingers at the Bush administration was the province of evidenceless conspiracy nuts like Cynthia McKinney. Now the taboo has been violated by a loyal Organization Man, and in an Emperor's New Clothes sort of way, people are gleefully speaking out when they previously would have kept silent.
Not that anyone can agree on the significance of the memo, other than the emerging Washington consensus that an independent commission of wise men should investigate the intelligence failures that led to Sept. 11. Among the reactions that say as much about the accuser as the accused: William Safire, a columnist obsessed with internecine bureaucratic battles, unsurprisingly sees the memo as evidence of a turf war: CIA Director George Tenet didn't want to ask the FBI for help when he prepared a presidential briefing on al-Qaida threats to the United States before Sept. 11. Safire is a conservative, so being able to pin the blame on Tenet, a Clinton appointee, is something of a bonus. Reliable Bush critic Maureen Dowd, by contrast, says the memo is evidence of a failure of vision at the highest levels of the administration: The Bushies' pre-9/11 obsession with missile defense blinded them to the more urgent threat of Bin Laden. In addition to conveniently bashing missile defense, this theory fits snugly with Dowd's belief that Bush is too stupid to have foreseen the terrorist attacks. Others take the opposite McKinney view: that Bush is an evil genius who covered up evidence of the oncoming attacks so that his family could profit from the resulting war. And Sen. Joe Lieberman repeats something he knows from his congressional Enron investigation: The late discovery of Williams' memo shows that this administration is overly, and perniciously, obsessed with secrecy.
Even those who have read the memo can't quite agree on its meaning. Sen. Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, says optimistically that the memo shows that if someone had examined all the relevant evidence, the Sept. 11 attacks could have been stopped. Sen. Richard Shelby, the committee's ranking Republican, says pessimistically that it shows that the FBI is inept. FBI Director Mueller trumps Shelby's pessimism, saying that despite the efforts of his best agents, terrorism can't always be stopped.
All these statements (except the McKinney theory) are no doubt true, even the seemingly contradictory ones. The FBI's failures are certainly worrisome (especially if they haven't been fixed), and Kenneth Williams and his memo are emblematic of those failures. But Kenneth Williams and his ignored memo also carry a comforting message: that al-Qaida is not impenetrable, that their plans can be thwarted. The president can't know everything, and he can't read every intelligence report or turn the government upside-down on every agent's hunch. But through the efforts of ordinary agents like Kenneth Williams, terrorism can be stopped. At least, that's one way to read the inkblot.
Source: http://www.Slate.com
5/29/02
6:02:39 PM
More useful background articles and statements regarding recent developments follow...
From major corporate media:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/752980.asp?pne=msn
From Truthout.org:
William Rivers Pitt | The Terrorists Flew and Bush Knew
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17A.WRP.Bush.NU.htm
From Capital Hill:
Gephardt on Reports of Bush Knowledge of Al Queda Hijackings
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17B.Gephardt.Bush.NU.htm
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney | Terrorist Warnings
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17AA.Mckinney.Bush.NU.htm
Senate Leader Daschle | Briefing; Call For Action
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17AA.Daschle.Bush.NU.htm
Lawmakers Push for Hearings on Warning Given to Bush
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.17C.Pols.911.Probe.htm
5/29/02
5:59:09 PM
Agent's Role In Inquiries Is Questioned
by Neil A. Lewis
WASHINGTON, May 25 -- A bipartisan group of senators has demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation explain why a senior agent who had access to two important strands of counterterrorism information never put the information together in a way that might have helped thwart the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to the three senators, a warning last summer from a Phoenix F.B.I. agent about terrorists using American flight schools was sent to the same unit of the bureau that was dealing with the Minnesota field office and its suspicions about Zacarias Moussaoui, a flight student there who officials now say was supposed to be the 20th hijacker.
The senators, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont; Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa; and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, raised questions about the bureau's performance in a letter sent on Friday to the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III.
The senators, who released a copy of the letter to news organizations, asked Mr. Mueller to explain how the head of the bureau's Radical Fundamentalist Unit, David Frasca, dealt with the information from Minnesota and Phoenix.
"Please explain his role and the role of the R.F.U. in evaluating the requests from the Minneapolis field office in the Moussaoui case," the senators wrote. "What connection, if any, he or others drew between the two ongoing investigations; and whether he or others brought such a connection to the attention of higher level F.B.I. officials."
Mr. Grassley, in separate comments, was more blunt. He castigated Mr. Mueller for refusing to release to the Senate Judiciary Committee a letter that Coleen Rowley, a senior F.B.I. agent in the Minneapolis office, wrote to him on Tuesday asserting that officials at bureau headquarters stymied the Moussaoui investigation.
"This letter has me very alarmed about the nation's security," Mr. Grassley said today. "If F.B.I. headquarters is still handling terrorism information like it handled the Moussaoui case, we're in grave danger."
Mr. Grassley added: "This was worse than dropping the ball. This was bureaucrats at headquarters actively interfering with an investigation that had a terrorist in hand."
Steven Berry, a supervisory agent at F.B.I. headquarters, said today that officials had no comment on the senators' letter or on Mr. Frasca's role.
Mr. Grassley, a persistent critic of the bureau, also said: "Director Mueller can label this letter classified, and the F.B.I. can circle the wagons, but a cover-up is not going to work. This letter documents exactly what headquarters knew and when, and how midlevel officials sabotaged the Moussaoui case before the attacks."
The letter from the senators and the harsh comments from Mr. Grassley indicate a new level of Congressional anger at the bureau for its handling of intelligence issues relating to the Sept. 11 attacks.
David Carle, a spokesman for Mr. Leahy, said the senators believed that "understanding Mr. Frasca's role may be a key to understanding how these and other clues were handled." The senators' letter also urged Mr. Mueller to see that no steps were taken against Ms. Rowley in retaliation for her own letter.
Government officials said today that Kenneth Williams, the Phoenix F.B.I. agent who had warned about the flight schools in a July 10 memorandum, had sent the memorandum directly to the attention of Mr. Frasca. Mr. Frasca was also the liaison in Washington for the Minnesota field office's requests about Mr. Moussaoui.
The officials said it was unclear whether Mr. Frasca saw the Williams memorandum before Sept. 11.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/politics/26FBI.html?todaysheadlines
5/29/02
5:53:30 PM
CANADIAN TELEVISION: 9-11 Overview by Vision TV, Bush / CIA Complicity in 9-11, Real Player Video Stream at:
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/mayday/mediafile.ram
BBC TELEVISION INDICTS BUSH / CIA IN 9-11 TERROR COMPLICITY:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/newsnight/attack22.ram
5/29/02
5:50:17 PM
t r u t h o u t
Is DOJ Saying That Gore Won Florida?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27A.jvb.doj.fl.htm
Florida Counties Seek to Avoid Suit Over Election
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27B.fl.avoid.suit.htm
Back Into Bethlehem
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27C.back.2.beth.htm
Frank Rich | Thanks for the Heads-Up
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27D.rich.heads.htm
Dan Barry | Sifting the Last Tons of Sept. 11 Debris
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27E.wtc.debris.htm
Castro to Americans: Don't Fear Cuba
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27F.castro.safe.htm
White House Stonewall: Day 91
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.27G.stonewall.91.htm