11/21/01
6:30:06 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
THE PRIVATE BUSINESS OF PUBLIC RADIO
by Patrick J. Kiger, Washington Business Forward
-- Listeners are deserting commercial radio in favor of National Public Radio, but as the network thrives, it faces more competition from other public radio networks.
RIO GRANDE NO LONGER?
by Dan Oko, The Austin Chronicle
-- Along the Texas-Mexico border, environmentalists fighting to protect what is left of the Rio Grande clash with agricultural and economic interests vying for their share of the scarce water supply.
ONE MORE TERRORIST
by Annalee Newitz, metroactive.com
-- "Now that the anti-terrorist USA Act has passed, I am officially a terrorist," writes Annalee Newitz in this article for metroactive.com. And, according to the many varied and vague definitions of "terrorists" presented in the bill, she certainly is. Are you? You might be surprised at the answer.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
11/21/01
6:28:20 PM
WILLIAM SAFIRE | Seizing Dictatorial Power
http://www.truthout.com/11.16A.Safire.htm
DASCHLE | Rally for Economic Recovery
http://www.truthout.com/11.16B.Rally.htm
GEPHARDT-RANGEL | Economic Stimulus, Airline Security, and Fast Track
http://www.truthout.com/11.16C.Stimulus.htm
KENNEDY | Economic Recovery and Assistance for American Workers Act
http://www.truthout.com/11.16D.Kennedy.htm
BBC Video | Royal Marine Commando Advance Force in Afghanistan
11/21/01
6:26:53 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
CHALILLO DAM PROJECT CLEARED BY BELIZE GOVERNMENT
BELIZE CITY, Belize, November 15, 2001 (ENS) - The government of Belize has decided to approve construction of a massive hydroelectric dam in a jungle valley, destroying some of the richest rainforest habitat in the country. The Chalillo Dam is expected to flood 1,100 hectares (2,718 acres) of pristine forest, engulfing the valleys of the Macal and Raspaculo rivers.
http://www.ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-15-06.html
NEW ATIBIOTIC FOUND IN FISH
RALEIGH, North Carolina, November 15, 2001 (ENS) - A new antibiotic isolated from fish may have implications for treating diseases in both humans and animals, say the North Carolina Sea Grant researchers who discovered it. The study is reported in today's issue of the journal "Nature."
http://www.ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-15-07.html
REPORT SEEKS NEW VISION FOR BLM LANDS
WASHINGTON, DC, November 15, 2001 (ENS) - A new report by two conservation groups concludes that the Bureau of Land Management is failing to protect the long term health of America's public lands and the natural resources they support. The report suggests that programmatic and organizational changes are necessary to correct past mistakes and ensure sustainable future management of the more than 264 million acres of public lands under the agency's stewardship.
http://www.ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-15-08.html
11/21/01
6:24:35 PM
Greenpeace Action Alert
Tell Your Representatives to End Nuclear Power -- Don't Subsidize it Even More!
After September 11th, it has become increasingly evident that nuclear power should have no role in our energy future. However, Congress is still looking to pass an energy bill that will give additional money to the nuclear industry and extend the licenses of creaky old reactors. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11th made many American's re-examine the serious threat that nuclear power represents. An accident at a power plant could kill tens of thousands of citizens, make parts of our landscape uninhabitable and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. These plants will always be subject to accidents and sabotage. Now is the time to make sure your representatives in Congress put an end to this dangerous source of electricity.
Contact your Representatives and Senators today!
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/save/alerts/nuclear-direct.htm
Find out more about the risk nuclear power from Greenpeace's new report, Risky Business: The Probability and Consequences of a Nuclear Accident.
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/nuclear/
11/21/01
6:18:28 PM
I love my country. But perhaps not this one.
by Bill Kauffman
The Office of Homeland Security. Has a nice retro-Soviet ring to it, eh? Or how about Operation Infinite Justice, the Orwell-by-way-of-Madison-Avenue moniker that Pentagon image-makers first hung on our nascent World War Three? When the propagandists adopt phrases plucked from dystopian novels, we're in trouble.
We are not yet living in a police state; not even close. But neither are we quite living in America any more. Erstwhile civil libertarians endorse national ID cards. The ominous whisper of a military draft is in the air. When in the privacy of the family homestead I ventured the opinion that the 11 September attacks were a wicked response to wrong-headed US intervention in the Middle East, a dear family member counselled, "Don't say that too loud, Bill. Someone will report you to the police." She was serious.
The American precepts of individual rights, local self-rule and avoidance of foreign wars are so deeply buried under the rubble of empire that to mouth what once was a commonplace ("let's keep our noses out of others' business") is now a virtual act of sedition.
"Our calling" has become the eradication of terror from the world, according to President Bush. We are to "rid the world of evil", vow his speechwriters: mad and hubristic guff from callow thirtyish policy geeks who don't know a gun's stock from its barrel.
As an ardent patriot I love my country because it is mine. I suppose I should be pleased by the ubiquity of the red, white and blue banner. Flags fly from pizza shops, porches, car antennae.
Those whose knowledge comes from the idiot box will believe America to be the sum of Friends and Madeleine Albright and the preppies of the Family Bush, and they will hate us – understandably. But there is an untelevised America, a land of Iowa poets and rural volunteer fire departments and villages of faith and neighbourliness and the continuity of generations. This is the America I love, one that the keyboard bombardiers of DC would destroy in a New York minute.
Patriots – by which I mean Americans who love their untelevised country – despise war, not least for its catastrophic domestic consequences. In time of war, power flows to the centre. Regional culture withers, idiosyncrasies are smothered, young men are sent across the globe to serve as armed employees of the central government. People shift their loyalties from the local and immediate to the abstract and remote; already, local charities are reporting huge shortfalls as generous souls send their donations to the bureaucracies of New York and Washington. Through it all, the belligerent eggheads of the militaristic right and world-reforming left piss their pants with glee.
I defer to no one in my desire that the homicides who orchestrated the evil acts of 11 September be given their measure of justice, thrice over. But I will not watch silently as my country disappears. Empire is not worth a single American (or Afghan) life; defending Israel is not worth sacrificing what remains of our traditional liberties; overthrowing the Taliban is not worth bleaching the colour out of regional America.
The time for dissenters to keep quiet out of respect for the dead is over. Simple patriotism demands that we take up the plaint of a peaceable statesman from the Vietnam era: Come home, America. Come home now, while there is still a recognisable America.
Bill Kauffman's books include 'America First! Its History, Culture and Politics'
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=104269
11/21/01
6:14:44 PM
BBC Report: Bush/CIA/Saudi connections may have caused WTC disaster
From: http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1030259305
Bush took FBI agents off Laden family trail
LONDON: America was itself to blame for the events of September 11 because the US administration was using "kid gloves" in tracking down Osama bin Laden and "other fanatics linked to Saudi Arabia", a special BBC investigation has alleged in a damning indictment of the two presidents Bush and American foreign policy.
The report, which the BBC claimed was based on a secret FBI document, numbered 199I WF213589 and emanating out of the FBI's Washington field office, alleged that the cynicism of the American establishment and "connections between the CIA and Saudi Arabia and the Bush men and bin Ladens" may have been the real cause of the deaths of thousands in the World Trade Centre attacks.
The investigation, which featured in the BBC's leading current affairs programme, Newsnight, said the FBI was told to "back off" investigating one of Osama bin Laden's brothers, Abdullah, who was linked to "the Saudi-funded World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a suspected terrorist organisation," whose accounts have still not frozen by the US treasury despite "being banned by Pakistan some weeks ago and India claiming it was linked to an organisation involved in bombing in Kashmir".
Newsnight said there was a long history of "shadowy" American connections with Saudi Arabia, not least the two presidents Bush's "business dealings" with the bin Ladens and another more insidious link revealed by the former head of the American visa section in Jeddah.
The official said he had been concerned about visas issued to large numbers of "unqualified" men "with no family links or any links with America or Saudi Arabia", only to find out later that it "was not visa fraud" but part of a scheme in which young men "recruited by Osama bin Laden" were being sent for "terrorist training by the CIA" after which they were sent on to Afghanistan.
In a reiteration of a now well-known claim by one of George W Bush's former business partners, the BBC said he made his first million 20 years ago on the back of a company financed by Osama's elder brother, Salem. But it added the more disturbing assertion that both presidents Bush had lucrative stakes along with the bin Ladens in Carlyle Corporation, a small private company which has gone on to become one of America's biggest defence contractors. The bin Ladens sold their stake in Carlyle soon after September 11, it said.
American politicians later told the BBC programme that they rejected the accusation that the establishment had called the dogs of the intelligence agencies off the bin Ladens and the royal House of Saud because of a strategic interest in Saudi Arabia, which has the world's biggest oil reserve.
MUST READ ALSO:
Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm
BBC NEWSNIGHT REPORT - Transcript
The CIA and Saudi Arabia, the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. Did their connections cause America to turn a blind eye to terrorism? There is a hidden agenda at the very highest levels of our government. CLIP
Bush family's dirty little secret (Must Read! Lots of juicy revelations)
http://www.americanfreedomnews.com/afn_articles/bushsecrets.htm
President's oil companies funded by Bin Laden family and wealthy Saudis who financed Osama bin Laden
11/21/01
6:12:53 PM
War Profiteering webpage
In this time of national crisis, amid calls for sacrifice, here's the Republican idea of an economic stimulus package:
$1.4 billion for IBM $833 million for General Motors $671 million for General Electric $572 million for Chevron Texaco $254 million for Enron
While our nation was reeling from the Anthrax threat, the House voted to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax on corporations. This law normally requires hugely profitable companies to pay at least some tax, no matter how many loopholes they can find. Its repeal would allow many companies to pay zero U.S. income tax in perpetuity - a loss of more than $12 billion in revenue next year alone.
The repeal is retroactive, so companies would get rebates of all the Alternative Minimum Tax they've paid for the last 15 years. The numbers above are a sampling of these rebates. The House also voted to allow corporations to store their profits overseas as a tax shelter. That's right - this "stimulus" would actually take money *out* of the U.S. economy. It's backwards.
http://www.moveon.org/warprofiteering/
11/21/01
6:12:10 PM
Did you know this?
Did you know that in 1986 the World Court convicted America of being a war criminal for its crimes committed in Nicaragua in '83 and '84? They insisted that America face the music, and the American government refused. And the only reason that no one could enforce the decision that the World Court came to is because America is currently the foremost superpower in the world. If that wasn't the case though, maybe America would have been bombed, and some of the people in other countries would have felt that we deserved it, just like many Americans now feel that it's unfortunate but necessary that innocent Afghani civilians are killed in the current bombings if it means that maybe bin Laden and the Taliban will be killed in the process.
You can find out more about America being convicted by the World Court for its war crimes in Nicaragua at:
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idecisions/isummaries/inussummary860627.htm
11/21/01
6:11:28 PM
Corporate Patriotism
by Ralph Nader
U. S. corporations aren't even subtle about it. Waving a flag and carrying a big shovel, corporate interests are scooping up government benefits and taxpayer money in an unprecedented fashion while the public is preoccupied with the September 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan. Shamelessly, the Bush Administration and Congress have taken advantage of the patriotic outpouring to fulfill the wish lists of their most generous corporate campaign donors. Not only is the Treasury being raided, but regulations protecting everything from personal privacy to environmental safeguards are under attack by well-heeled lobbyists who want to stampede Congress to act while the media and citizens are distracted.
Only a handful in the Congress--members like Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and Representatives Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Barbara Lee of California--have shown the courage to question the giveaways and the quick wipeout of civil liberties and other citizen protections. In most cases, such as the $15 billion airline bailout and corporate tax breaks, legislation has been pushed to the forefront with little or no hearings and only fleeting consideration on the floor of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
One of the boldest grabs for cash has been by corporations seeking to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which was enacted during the Reagan Administration to prevent profitable corporations from escaping all tax liability through various loopholes. Not only do the corporations want relief from the current year's AMT taxes, but they are seeking a retroactive refund of all AMT taxes paid since 1986.
This giveaway, as passed by the House of Representatives, would make corporations eligible for $25 billion in tax refunds. Just 14 corporations would receive $6.3 billion of the refund. IBM gets $1.4 billion; General Motors, $833 million; General Electric $671 million; Daimler-Chrysler $600 million; Chevron-Texaco $572 million. The 14 biggest beneficiaries of the minimum tax repeal gave $14,769,785 in "soft money" to the national committees of the Democratic and Republican parties in recent years.
Soon to join the bailout parade is the nation's insurance industry, which is lobbying the Congress to have the federal government pick up the tab for future losses like those stemming from the attack on the World Trade Center. Proposals are on the table for taxpayers to either pick up losses above certain levels or to provide loans or loan guarantees for reinsurance.
The insurance companies want federal bailouts, but they continue to insist on regulation only by underfunded, poorly staffed state insurance departments, most of which are dominated by the industry. Any bailout or loan program involving the insurance companies must include provisions which ensure that insurance companies cannot refuse to write policies and make investments in low, moderate and minority neighborhoods. Allegations about insurance company "redlining" or discrimination against citizens in these areas have been prevalent for many years. It would be a terrible injustice for citizens to be forced to pay taxes to help bail out insurance companies that discriminate against them. Congress needs to address this issue before it even considers public assistance for the industry.
People-concerns have been missing in all the bailouts. When the airline companies walked off with $15 billion plus in bailout money, the thousands of laid-off employees--airline attendants, maintenance crews, baggage handlers and ticket counter employees--received not a dime. Attempts to include health benefits and other help for these employees were shouted down on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Last month, more than 400,000 employees lost their jobs nationwide and the national unemployment rate rose to 5.4 percent, the highest level since 1996. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said roughly a fourth of the lost jobs were the direct result of the terrorist attacks of September 11. Bailouts, benefits or other aid for these victims of the attacks? No, that's reserved just for the corporations under the policies of the Bush Administration and the present Congress.
Yet it is the workers in the low-wage jobs--like those in restaurants, hotels, retailing and transportation--who are bearing the brunt of the layoffs in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, according to a report from the New York State Department of Labor. Almost 25,000 people told the department that they lost their jobs because of the trade center disaster. An analysis by the department of the first 22,000 of the claims found that 16 percent worked at bars, 14 percent worked at hotels, 5 percent worked in air transportation and 21 percent in a category termed "business services." Only 4 percent worked at Wall Street brokerage firms.
While more workers lose jobs, the Administration is pushing for authority to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) under new "fast-track" authority. The Department of Commerce concedes that at least 360,000 jobs have been lost under NAFTA, and private research groups estimate the total may be twice that number. Now, with unemployment rising to alarming levels, the Administration decides to cave to pro-NAFTA corporate demands which will only make the labor picture worse. No bailout for laid off workers, just a hard crack across the knees.
As Bill Moyers, the author and national journalist, commented: "They (the corporations) are counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They're counting on you to stand at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket."
The present crisis cries out for shared sacrifice--not the opportunism so blatantly displayed by the nation's corporate interests. President Bush and the Congress must summon the courage to resist the self-serving demands--the kind of courage and shared sacrifice that guided the brave rescue workers on September 11.
For More Information: http://www.citizenworks.org