9/30/01
12:31:05 PM

When we stand at the bottm of the Mountain of what we want to become..... We fear the ferocity of what it will make us...

'Human' no-ONE more no-ONE less but ONE, all the same!

Bring the bigger picture into focus.

Simon

firstcore.netfirms.com

9/20/01
4:23:03 PM

September 18th 2001

Dear Friends,

We are all New Yorkers. That is the gist of the message that I have been receiving from the thousands of e-mails, countless phone calls and faxes, and communications from people writing or calling me from over 30 countries. The outpouring of love, of service, and even of life itself is the miracle of humanity surpassing itself. All over this country and throughout the world people are affirming their unity with us, and more, the unity of all people. This tragedy brings us together in shadow and in light, for richer and for poor, in sickness and in health for as long as we all shall live. The desecration that occurred is also the announcement of a potential global union.

I have often spoken of how technology and the Internet gave us the world mind taking a walk with itself. But in the light of the events of September 11th, we now must speak of the world heart, the world stomach, the world spirit. America is not longer insulated from the pathos of other nations.

We are present at the birth of an opportunity that exceeds our imagination. Christopher Fry writes, "Thank God, our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took." All oppression rises in our time, all shadows, all terrors, and factors unique in human history also arise around us to compound our folly and confuse our desire. We yearn for meaning and deal with trivia. We are swept in currents over which we have no control. Government has become too big for the small problems of life and too small in spirit for the large problems. The tyranny that threatens to destroy us is not just terrorism; it is the tyranny of the unjust demands we have made of Nature and the tyranny of some nations being kept in economic slavery by other nations.

We are the ones who have the most profound task in human history--the task of deciding whether we grow or die. This will involve helping cultures and organizations to move from dominance by one economic culture or group to circular investedness, sharing and partnership. It will involve putting economics back as a satellite to the soul of culture rather than having the soul of culture as satellite to economics. It will involve deep listening past the arias and the habits of cruelty of crushed and humiliated people. It will involve a stride of soul that will challenge the very canons of our human condition. It will require that we become evolutionary partners with each other.

This is a huge test we find ourselves in. We have newly emerged from a century of war and holocaust. Our hopes for the new century, the new millennium were for a new way of being between nations and people, between the earth and ourselves, between spirit and matter. Those hopes still live, if anything, they have become more powerful, more necessary. For America it will mean a deep shift of our attitudes to other cultures around the world to one of service and support rather than exploitation and dominance. Yes, the perpetrators have to be found and dealt with through therapeutic law and international justice. They are not a nation, they are a cancer, and a cancer is rarely removed through a cycle of violence. Rather, as in holistic medicine, they have to be subdued by the strengthening of the healthy immune system, the envisioning of the pattern of health, and yes, the removal of the cancer wherever it can be excised.

The metaphor is apt. Our health, our security, is built on friendship. Instead of spending so many billions for weapons of destruction (which we manufacture ourselves and sell globally), what if we were to use some of those billions to the feeding of the hungry (one in every three persons), the housing of the homeless, the making of those efforts that can result in the healing of the wounds of nations. Real security demands real friendship, global marriage. As one of my correspondents brilliantly addressed these issues, "The problem is not just terrorism. The problem is generations of beings who experience not having an identity. The question is what made human beings incapable of feeling love, compassion or empathy towards themselves or anyone else, and thereby, becoming destroyers of their own species? What happened that human beings could become so psychologically, emotionally and spiritually distorted that they could believe that Islam, one of the most spiritual paths in the world, could encourage murder and suicide to gain heavenly reward?"

Friends, these are not Muslims. These are marginalized fanatics who have made a travesty of their faith. The issue is how we can join together to create a world in which such pathology will no longer be nurtured.

Many of us are feeling impotent before the enormity of the prospect. Some of you, I know, have experienced "meltdown", some have seen visions, had dreams. Many have had the portals of their minds blown open to deeper realities, potent reflections. Tragedy has drawn us closer, sent us deeper, and given us the option of preparing for life rather than death.

I have been considering some of the things that you may wish to do in the days and weeks to come that will give expression to your feelings and need to act. What I offer below is drawn primarily from my own reflections as well as others, particularly some prescriptions offered by Yes! magazine.

1. In these spirit quaking times, align with your own spiritual resources. Take time to meditate, pray, reflect in solitude and in nature. Allow yourself daily time and space to be re-sourced. Consider living daily life as spiritual exercise Watch your finer intuitions and ideas, and share them with others. Commune with your spiritual allies, archetypal friends, quantum partners. In the place of spiritual connection feel strength and compassion and intelligence flow. Become creative in your actions. Plot scenarios of optimal healing and begin wherever you can to put them in place for events as well as people. Practice miracle management.

2. Give yourself vacations from television. So much of it anyway is infomercials for war.(However the local New York City stations are filled with human stories of compassion and courage.) But do listen occasionally to talk shows and call in with your own opinions and ideas for making a better world. Write that letter to the editor. Write or call your congressman and local government officials. Handwritten faxes seem to be the things that are most likely to get through, followed by phone call. e-mails, alas are the least likely. You can find your U.S. representatives at www.house.gov or for Senators, www.senate.gov. Above all, Let Your Voice Be Heard!

3. Gather in groups and, if possible in ongoing teaching-learning communities of wisdom and empowerment. But let everyone speak, and do not deny them the authenticity of their feelings even if they diverge widely from your own.

4. Talk to the kids, your own or other people's children. Let them express their feelings, tell you what is on their minds. Give them a grasp of the larger issues at hand. Tell them about mercy and compassionate action. If possible engage them in service oriented activities. Let them see the larger story.

5. Show up at town meetings, or other places where people meet to pray and talk and engage each other. Sign petitions if you are willing and join in other activities that are "sending a big message". have vision circles to put forth images of what the world can be. Envision the possible society together. (For ideas, you might want to look at my book, authored with Margaret Rubin, Manual of the Peacemaker, which deals with the Iroquois creation of a better society.)

6. Get thee to a mosque! Give support and compassion to Arab friends, colleagues, or people you happen to meet of middle eastern origin. Stamp out hatred and fear surrounding these people wherever you can. Let them tell their stories, their hopes and dreams. In fact, try and learn as much as you can about the Middle East, the political situations there, as well as the teachings of Islam. For key information on the crisis and well considered information and opinions about the Middle East you may want to go to Lovearth.net or Alternet.org or CommonDreams.org

7. Give up your own holding patterns on your old self. This is the time to become or at least to enact the possible human. Let your senses take pleasure in the glory of this world. Let your heart celebrate the incredible gift of life. And share this with others.

I live in a double domed house that was the last design of my old friend Buckminster Fuller, completed just before he died. I asked my house what words it would give you and it responded with Bucky's own. They came out of a time of tremendous personal crisis in his life.

"So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me - each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else' opinion, credo's and theories. I vowed to apply my own inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth."

Much Love and High Regard,

Jean Houston

9/20/01
3:39:16 PM

AS WE MOURN the tragic death of innocent people, contemplate the root causes of violence and hatred, and attempt to develop a wise strategy for response, a powerful realization dawns. We have reached a crisis of evolutionary proportions. We are at the threshold of a quantum jump -- either towards greater violence and destruction, or transformation through cooperation.

This crisis must serve as a call for convergence among people who are peace builders, conflict resolvers, compassionate listeners, those who search for common ground -- the healers, social innovators, communities of faith. We must develop a new social process of synergy and cocreation to bring to birth out of this pain the new world that has been struggling to be born in our midst for thousands of years.

We are the generation with the choice. What we choose now will affect the lives of generations to come, and all life on the planet.

Within every sector of society there are initiatives already active that are supporting the transformation of our current social and environmental systems, but they are not yet fully connected or communicated. We believe that by bringing about a greater synergy among these initiatives a comprehensive plan of action will be revealed. As a service to the emerging global community the Foundation for Conscious Evolution is developing the "Peace Room" on Internet. It is an operating hub to scan for, map, connect, and communicate the people and innovations now working to heal and positively evolve our world. At present we are inviting Evolutionary Colleagues from every sector of society to inform the Peace Room of the current situation and emerging initiatives in their sectors, and a proposed response to the crises and opportunities at hand.

While we pray for the thousands of people who are suffering from this tragedy, let us also actively connect and cooperate to bring about a planetary awakening in our lifetime. Together we make a difference.

Barbara Marx Hubbard and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution

http://www.consciousevolution.net

9/20/01
3:36:12 PM

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. --Thomas Jefferson

NOW MORE THAN EVER WE NEED TO AWAKEN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS.

The Prophets Conferences call for us to come together to Reenvision and Reconfigure Reality. By bringing together many of today's leading spiritual and scientific teachers we learn to broaden our understanding of our place in the Universe and in so doing we all become the new prophets creating a new cycle of manifested existence.

The Prophets Conference ~ Florida Keys, taking place November 16-18, is bringing together much needed Healers and Heroes and one of them is BROOKE MEDICINE EAGLE who is an American native Earthkeeper, teacher, ceremonial leader, sacred ecologist, Feng Shui practitioner, singer / songwriter, catalyst for wholeness, and author of a spiritual autobiography, Buffalo Woman Comes Singing. Her dedication is to bringing forward the ancient truths concerning how to live a fully human life in harmony with All Our Relations. Brooke's recent book, The Last Ghost Dance, focuses on the practices of Earth magic and ascending into our greater humanity.

http://www.greatmystery.org/floridaconference.html

THE LAST GHOST DANCE: Spiritual Activism through Energetic Prayers We are learning through many challenging experiences that we attract into our lives what we energize through the quality of feeling we carry and project forward. The quality of the means we use is the end we produce.

A glaring example of this is the terrorism that American leaders have been perpetuating on the world for decades finally coming back to terrorize American civilians. Does the fact that 40,000 children a day starve to death in our human world also need to come home to our own shores before we awaken to creating a different kind of world? Let us do our homework so that it does not.

In order for us to change the technologies which rule the world, we must come into maturity with our spiritual technologies-understanding how to act powerfully upon our loving hearts and our highest principles, even though we do not have all the money and material power dedicated to good. This is the lesson, this is the practice.

Love and the quality of vibration we send forward is the answer. This means we need to 'step ahead' of our usual emotional process (I'll be happy, the world will be OK, when ..........) to understand that we create our own and mutual reality by what we project forward. It's a 'pay it forward' kind of world, and the sooner we learn the principles which underlay the creation of our reality, the more rapidly we will be able to create peace, harmony, beauty and a sweet and radiant Earth for the coming generations.

The prophecies about the crises and challenges of this time on Earth are certainly coming true. We have the opportunity to do as the Ghost Dancers of old were shown in vision: dance your life in a holy way that holds all and everyone in the present moment light of a radiant new world. We must not again fail though divisiveness, hatred, fear, and unconscious negativity.

There is a beautiful new world awaiting our calling. Let us come together and call it forward with a joyful song in our hearts NOW.

We ARE creating Heaven on Earth....NOW.

9/20/01
2:42:24 PM

by Kent Madin

A military response, particularly an attack on Afghanistan, is exactly what the terrorists want. It will strengthen and swell their small but fanatical ranks.

Instead, bomb Afghanistan with butter, with rice, bread, clothing and medicine. It will cost less than conventional arms, poses no threat of US casualties and just might get the populace thinking that maybe the Taliban don't have the answers. After three years of drought and with starvation looming, let's offer the Afghani people the vision of a new future. One that includes full stomachs.

Bomb them with information. Video players and cassettes of world leaders, particularly Islamic leaders, condemning terrorism. Carpet the country with magazines and newspapers showing the horror of terrorism committed by their "guest". Blitz them with laptop computers and DVD players filled with a perspective that is denied them by their government. Saturation bombing with hope will mean that some of it gets through. Send so much that the Taliban can't collect and hide it all.

The Taliban are telling their people to prepare for Jihad. Instead, let's give the Afghani people their first good meal in years. Seeing your family fully fed and the prospect of stability in terms of food and a future is a powerful deterrent to martyrdom. All we ask in return is that they, as a people, agree to enter the civilized world. That includes handing over terrorists in their midst.

In responding to terrorism we need to do something different. Something unexpected… something that addresses the root of the problem. We need to take away the well of despair, ignorance and brutality from which the Osama bin Laden's of the world water their gardens of terror.

9/20/01
2:36:31 PM

Fighters Were 8 Minutes Away From WTC

The Associated Press Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2001; 9:18 a.m. EDT

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. –– Fighter jets were only eight minutes away from one of the hijacked airliners when it crashed into the World Trade Center, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said in newly released data.

Two other military jets were 12 minutes away when an airliner hit the Pentagon, according to NORAD's official timeline, released Tuesday.

President Bush had not authorized military pilots to shoot down any civilian planes until after the crash at the Pentagon, and military officials have questioned what fighters would have been able to do even if they had been in time. Nonetheless, the NORAD timeline quantifies how close they were to the scene of the Sept. 11 hijackings.

According to the timeline:

–The Federal Aviation Administration alerted NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, N.Y., at 8:40 a.m. EDT that American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked after taking off from Boston en route to Los Angeles. At 8:43 a.m., the FAA notified NORAD that United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles had also been hijacked.

–NORAD ordered two F-15 jet fighters into the air from Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth, Mass., at 8:46 a.m. At about that time, American Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center.

–The F-15s were airborne at 8:52 a.m. Just after 9 a.m., as United Flight 175 struck the World Trade Center, the F-15s were eight minutes away, or 71 miles.

–The FAA notified NORAD at 9:24 a.m. that a third jet, American Flight 77 bound from Washington to Los Angeles, had been hijacked. NORAD ordered two F-16 fighters from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to intercept the airliner.

–The fighters were airborne at 9:30 a.m., but were 12 minutes, or 105 miles, away when the airliner struck the Pentagon.

After the Pentagon strike, Bush authorized fighters to shoot down any other aircraft that threatened targets in Washington.

United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco was by then over Pennsylvania, headed back to the East Coast. F-16s from Langley flew protective patterns over Washington after the Pentagon strike, but as Flight 93 headed toward them, it crashed outside Shanksville, Pa., at approximately 10:03 a.m., NORAD said.

Last week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee questioned Air Force Gen. Richard Myers about why the fighters hadn't been able to get airborne sooner. Myers, since confirmed as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out that far fewer aircraft have been detailed to watch for attacking planes since the end of the Cold War.

He added that when the threat became clear, the military scrambled fighters, AWACS radar planes and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft had been hijacked.

NORAD monitors the skies over the United States and Canada for threats. Its operational center is inside Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station and its headquarters are at Peterson Air Force Base, both near Colorado Springs.

9/17/01
1:57:49 PM

TomPaine.com

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

General Motors' Money Will Corrupt Smithsonian History

The Smithsonian Institution wants its new transportation exhibit to "tell stories of how transportation changed America."

But now that GM has pledged $10 million for that exhibit -- to be named the "GM Hall of Transportation" -- will the Smithsonian tell its visitors about one of the most important events of U.S. transportation history? It's the story of how GM and other corporations conspired to destroy clean, efficient and popular public transit systems in more than 45 U.S. cities in the 1930s, '40s, and 50s.

The results: big profit for GM; gridlock, sprawl and pollution for everyone else.

GM took us for a ride.

On September 17, the Smithsonian's Board of Regents - Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Vice President Dick Cheney among them - will vote whether to accept GM's offer.

"Of all the acquisitions made by the Smithsonian in over 150 years, the most significant by far is the trust of the American people," members of the museum's Congress of Scholars wrote in May in an open letter expressing their concern over the leadership of Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small.

A "GM Hall of Transportation" would be a violation of that trust.

...READ OUR OP AD...

http://www.tompaine.com/img/op_ad_010916_large.jpg

...And Read These Op-Ad Features...

THE STREETCAR CONSPIRACY

How General Motors Deliberately Destroyed Public Transit

http://www.tompaine.com/history/2001/09/10/index.html

Open Letter

SMITHSONIAN SCHOLARS RAISE A RED FLAG

Jeopardizing the Integrity of This Beloved Institution

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/09/07/2.html

Q & A

HISTORY AND POLITICS OF POLLUTION

How the Auto Industry Has Shaped Our Lives

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/09/10/index.html

THE SMALL CONTROVERSY

Is the Nation's Curator Becoming a Vehicle for Corporate PR?

A compendium from www.CommercialAlert.org.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/09/15/index.html

9/17/01
1:23:16 PM

The StreetCar Conspiracy

How General Motors Deliberately Destroyed Public Transit

by Bradford Snell

The electric streetcar, contrary to Van Wilkin's incredible naïve whitewash, did not die a natural death: General Motors killed it. GM killed it by employing a host of anti-competitive devices which, like National City Lines, debased rail transit and promoted auto sales.

This is not about a "plot" hatch by wild-eyed corporate rogues, but rather about a consummate business strategy crafted by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., the MIT-trained genius behind General Motors, to expand auto sales and maximize profits by eliminating streetcars. In 1922, according to GM's own files, Sloan established a special unit within the corporation which was charged, among other things, with the task of replacing America's electric railways with cars, trucks and buses.

A year earlier, in 1921, GM lost $65 million, leading Sloan to conclude that the auto market was saturated, that those who desired cars already owned them, and that the only way to increase GM's sales and restore its profitability was by eliminating its principal rival: electric railways.

At the time, 90 percent of all trips were by rail, chiefly electric rail; only one in 10 Americans owned an automobile. There were 1,200 separate electric street and interurban railways, a thriving and profitable industry with 44,000 miles of track, 300,000 employees, 15 billion annual passengers, and $1 billion in income. Virtually every city and town in America of more than 2,500 people had its own electric rail system.

General Motors sought to reduce competition from electric railways through a variety of measures, including the use of freight leverage. GM, for decades, was the nation's largest shipper of freight over railroads, which controlled some of America's most extensive railways. By wielding freight traffic as a club, GM persuaded railroads to abandon their electric rail subsidiaries.

With a pack of notorious mobsters, GM helped purchase and scrap the street railways serving Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Members of GM's special unit went to, among others, the Southern Pacific, owner of Los Angeles' Pacific Electric, the world's largest interurban, with 1,500 miles of track, reaching 75 miles from San Bernardino, north to San Fernando, and south to Santa Ana; the New York Central, owner of the New York State Railways, 600 miles of street railways and interurban lines in upstate New York; and the New Haven, owner of 1,500 miles of trolley lines in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

In each case, by threatening to divert lucrative automobile freight to rival carriers, they persuaded the railroad (according to GM's own files) to convert its electric street cars to motor buses -- slow, cramped, foul-smelling vehicles whose inferior performance invariable led riders to purchase automobiles.

As the largest depositor in the nation's leading banks, GM also enjoyed financial leverage over the electric railways, which relied heavily on these banks to supply their capital needs. According to U.S. Department of Justice documents, officials of GM visited banks used by railways in Philadelphia, Dallas, Kansas City and other locations, and, by offering them millions in additional deposits, persuaded their rail clients to convert to motor vehicles.

Where these measures were unavailing, GM formed holding companies to buy up and motorize the railways directly. Thus, it helped organize and finance United Cities Motor Transit as a wholly owned GM subsidiary, as well as Greyhound, Rex Finance, Omnibus Corporation, National City Lines, Pacific City Lines, American City Lines, City Coach Lines, Manning Transportation and numerous other concerns, which acquired rail systems across the country, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, San Diego and Oakland.

With officials of Greyhound and National City, it helped acquire and dismantle the $50 million North Shore Line, the fastest electric service in the world, providing Wisconsin's lakeshore cities and Chicago's northern suburbs high-speed access to the downtown loop. With a pack of notorious mobsters, it helped purchase and scrap the street railways serving Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Where rail systems could not be bought, GM bought rail officials instead, giving Cadillacs to those who converted to buses.

And where rail systems were publicly owned and could not be bought, like the municipal railway of St. Petersburg, Florida, GM bought their officials instead, according to FBI files, providing complimentary Cadillacs to those who converted to buses.

GM admitted, in court documents, that by the mid-1950s, its agents had canvassed more than 1,000 electric railways and that, of these, they had motorized 90 percent, more than 900 systems.

Van Wilkins, in his piece, went to considerable lengths to discount GM's role in the death of the American trolley, perfervidly propounding alternative explanations such as "proliferating" autos (this, properly, not the cause but rather the result of the trolley's demise), government road building (inspired, fundamentally, by GM-organized road lobbies), and unsympathetic traffic engineers (virtually all of whom, at one time or another, studied at GMI, the automaker's private accredited university).

National City Lines

He even endeavored to whitewash GM's criminal conviction regarding National City Lines, declaring, not without sarcasm, that "no one was convicted of plotting to destroy the street railway industry." In fact, everyone involved knew that GM's purpose in organizing National City was, precisely, to destroy the electric railways and to replace them with GM buses. The federal prosecutors knew. In their draft indictment, they declared that the rationale underlying GM's financing of National City was "adoption by defendant National of a program to eliminate electrically propelled conveyances...."

The assistant U.S. attorney general knew. The "result" of GM's plans, he declared, "has been the elimination of electrically propelled vehicles and the substitution of motor buses in a number of cities."

"An organized campaign to deprive the American public of their splendid electric railway systems."

E.J. Quinby, president and founder of the Electric Railroader's Association, who bravely persuaded the government to bring the lawsuit against GM and its powerful automotive allies, also knew. GM, he wrote in a detailed 25-page letter to the U.S. attorney general, had combined with Standard Oil of California (Chevron), Phillips Petroleum, and Firestone, to form National City as part of "an organized campaign to deprive the American public of their splendid electric railway systems..."

Van Wilkins sought to diminish the significance of National City Lines by claiming that, with regard to railways acquired in Tulsa, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, the decision to abandon at least some of the electric lines had already been made. Yet this was not at all unexpected, for National was but part of GM's multifaceted anti-rail strategy. Tulsa, for example, as acquired and converted by another GM-assisted holding company, Rex Finance, before it was turned over to National. GM agents pressed Salt Lake City to convert to buses before GM's Pacific City Lines bought the system.

Likewise, GM was involved in Los Angeles Railway decades before its acquisition by National. As early as 1923, interests associated with GM threatened to parallel the railway with double-decker buses and "skim the cream" of its short-haul trade, thereby weakening its resolve; by 1939, National and other holding companies allied with GM (namely, Omnibus and City Coach) were jockeying to buy the railway and convert it to GM buses.

[Van Wilkins] claimed, with respect to Baltimore, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Oakland, cities in which National acquired the railways expressly to abandon them, that other factors, including the antipathy of traffic engineers and politicians, might also have contributed to the trolley's demise. Indeed, this was possible, given GM's willingness to generously reward those who promoted its mobilization objectives.

Finally, he derived solace from a list of cities not acquired by National that nevertheless lost all or part of their electric railways. But here, as before, he failed to comprehend that National was but one of myriad devices employed by GM since 1922 to eliminate the trolley. The railways of Boston, Detroit, San Francisco, Seattle, as well as those of Canada were publicly operated and unavailable for purchase; but this did not preclude GM, which was equally active in Canada, from using bribes and other inducements to persuade their officials to motorize.

Indeed, in San Francisco and Seattle, it arranged for one of its former regional bus managers, the ex-president of its United Cities subsidiary, to become manager and transit czar. In northern New Jersey, Atlanta, Kansas City, Denver, Dallas, and Houston, it relied on banking connections to facilitate abandonment; in Chicago and Milwaukee, it relied on Greyhound, Omnibus, City Coach, and National; in Portland, on United Cities, Pacific Cities and Manning Transportation; in Miami, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, and Pittsburgh, on freelance agents and former GM and National officials; in New Orleans and Indianapolis, on gifts to high-placed executives; in Minneapolis, on unprincipled gangsters.

GM Killed the Trolley

The streetcar did not die, as Wilkins contended, because of demographics or economics or disinvestments or evolution; it died because GM in 1922 made a conscious decision to kill it and, for the next several decades, pursued a strategy designed to accomplish this objective. Yet, by reason of timidity or negligence or ignorance or cowardice, Wilkins simply cannot bring himself to admit that a powerful corporation would seek to maximize profits by eliminating its competition.

He refused, in his piece, to admit GM had motorized a single system: when he alluded, for example, to the motorization of Manhattan, he said only that its railway "came under the control of bus interests."

Which bus interests?

Well, he declined to specify.

Why?

Because they were affiliated with GM -- a corporation he felt obliged to protect.

Take courage, Van Wilkins, before the only rails left in America are those used to reinforce concrete in the double-deck freeways GM has projected for Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas.

The subject of GM and the electric railways is far too complex and detailed to summarize in a few pages. I have attempted briefly to describe some of the major activities undertaken by GM, directly or indirectly, since 1922 to destroy the nation's electric streetcar and interurban systems.

Postscript: For further information, I would direct those interested to my earlier treatise on this matter, "American Ground Transport," which is to be found in Part 4A of Hearings in S. 1167, The Industrial Reorganization Act, before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee of the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C.: 1974).

Bradford Snell is a former U.S. Senate Counsel. His 1974 report gave national prominence to the General Motors/National City Lines conspiracy case. His history of GM will be published in 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf.

Editor's Note: The following article was originally published in The New Electric Railway Journal in Autumn 1995. In it, Mr. Snell responsed to an earlier article by Van Wilkins, who claimed commuter rail lines vanished due to causes other than the conspiracy by GM and other companies to put them out of business.

Source: http://www.tompaine.com/history/2001/09/10/index.html

9/17/01
11:10:30 AM

Barbara Lee, Congresswoman (east bay) was the ONLY vote against giving Bush sweeping powers to do whatever he wants in this "war". We talked to her this morning, and Barbara is already getting hate calls. She needs to hear from those who support her position and respect her courage, because you can be certain she will be bombarded by those who oppose her act of wisdom and conscience.

Her email is barbara.lee@mail.house.gov

9/17/01
10:46:04 AM

On The Bombings

by Noam Chomsky

The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt. The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom.

The events reveal, dramatically, the foolishness of the project of "missile defense." As has been obvious all along, and pointed out repeatedly by strategic analysts, if anyone wants to cause immense damage in the US, including weapons of mass destruction, they are highly unlikely to launch a missile attack, thus guaranteeing their immediate destruction. There are innumerable easier ways that are basically unstoppable. But today's events will, very likely, be exploited to increase the pressure to develop these systems and put them into place. "Defense" is a thin cover for plans for militarization of space, and with good PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a frightened public.

In short, the crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains. That is even putting aside the likely US actions, and what they will trigger -- possibly more attacks like this one, or worse. The prospects ahead are even more ominous than they appeared to be before the latest atrocities.

As to how to react, we have a choice. We can express justified horror; we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes, which means making an effort to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators. If we choose the latter course, we can do no better, I think, than to listen to the words of Robert Fisk, whose direct knowledge and insight into affairs of the region is unmatched after many years of distinguished reporting. Describing "The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people," he writes that "this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps." And much more.

Again, we have a choice: we may try to understand, or refuse to do so, contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead.

9/17/01
10:09:34 AM

TomPaine.com

WHAT DOES RETALIATION MEAN IN A MEDIA WAR?

by John Rieger

"Terrorism is a new kind of warfare, tailor-made for the Information Age. Terror spreads with the news. It's a war of impressions, of ideas, of symbols."

TP.commentary -- AUDIO and TEXT -- produced by Steven Rosenfeld.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/09/12/1.html

A TIME FOR PEACE, NOT RETALIATION

by Elijah Wald

"It would be insane to say that it was our turn for a tragic loss of civilian life, but it was a fantasy that we could be spared forever."

TP.commentary -- AUDIO and TEXT -- produced by Sharon Basco.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/09/11/index.html

OP-ED PAGES TROT OUT THE WHITE HAWKS

by Nina Burleigh

"The morning after the worst terrorist attack in history, the nations' great editorial pages offered up the wisdom of a group of middle-aged white men whose claim to fame is that they lost the Vietnam War."

TP.commentary -- AUDIO and TEXT -- produced by Steven Rosenfeld.

http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/09/12/index.html

Poetry

ALL THINGS FALL AND ARE BUILT AGAIN

by Lloyd Schwartz

"William Butler Yeats wrote that what is destroyed can be built again. And that art can give us the courage to keep our human dignity, not to fall apart even in the face of the worst that can happen."

TP.commentary -- AUDIO and TEXT -- produced by Sharon Basco.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/09/12/index.html

A TERRORISM READER

from the TomPaine.com Staff

In an effort to comprehend the incomprehensible, we turned to surfing the Internet... here's a short selection of what we found.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/09/12/index.html

9/17/01
10:02:29 AM

IMF'S FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION London Observer April 29, 2001

How crises, failures, and suffering finally drove a Presidential adviser to the wrong side of the barricades By Gregory Palast

It was like a scene out of Le Carré: the brilliant agent comes in from the cold and, in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of an ideology gone rotten.

But this was a far bigger catch than some used-up Cold War spy. The former apparatchik was Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank. The new world economic order was his theory come to life.

He was in Washington for the big confab of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing meetings of ministers and central bankers, he was outside the police cordons. The World Bank fired Stiglitz two years ago. He was not allowed a quiet retirement: he was excommunicated purely for expressing mild dissent from globalisation World Bank-style.

Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'.

Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.

But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.

Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.

Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if it's a corrupt election." '

Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.

Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.

After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.

Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.

And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.

At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' -- as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.

There are other examples -- the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests -- with cold accuracy -- that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side -- for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.

Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz has two concerns about the IMF/World Bank plans. First, he says, because the plans are devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, never open for discourse or dissent, they 'undermine democracy'. Second, they don't work. Under the guiding hand of IMF structural 'assistance' Africa's income dropped by 23%.

Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, Botswana. Their trick? 'They told the IMF to go packing.' Stiglitz proposes radical land reform: an attack on the 50% crop rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide.

Why didn't the World Bank and IMF follow his advice?

'If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda.'

Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises, failures, and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo.

'It's a little like the Middle Ages,' says the economist, 'When the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.'

Maybe it's time to remove the bloodsuckers.

gregory.palast@observer.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4177445,00.html

9/17/01
9:56:58 AM

IT'S OUR OWN FAULT

When the fall out is gone and blame is being meted out we don't have to look far for the culprits. Just look into the mirror, folks, because the blame for this incident rests with you, me, all the citizens of this great country. When the president is elected by 25% of the people, that makes it our fault. We elected a government that allowed this to happen, and that makes this our fault.

When we destabilize governments around the world with our misguided drug policies, that allows terrorism to flourish. When our country is run by international conglomerates, we allow that by our political complacency. When AOL/Time-Warner/CNN help set national policy, we've allowed that. When GE promulgates it's corporate greed through Russert, and we actually listen, that bogus punditry allows these kinds of incidents. When the stench of hate is daily broadcast from the likes of Rush, and we listen....

WE don't have to look very far to find the culprits. Sure the terrorists were maybe Islamic fanatics but the conditions that birthed their complaints have come from the shortsighted, unresponsive, corporate plutocracy that our own political absence has allowed the myopic policies to become. It's just possible that the sacrifice of the thousands of dead and wounded citizens will help us to right these wrongs. It maybe possible for the righteous anger of all of us to sweep the corporate greed from our society or we might just continue as before.

John Mark

Portland, Oregon

9/10/01
8:22:10 PM

Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

THE SLUSH OF MOUNT KILIMANJARO

Many favorite vacation spots around the world are threatened by global warming. For example, the snow atop Mount Kilimanjaro may be around for just 15 more years and the glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana may last just 70 more, according to recent studies. Would you like to travel to an uncomfortably hot and smoggy Paris -- or a Martinique beset by hurricanes? "Global warming is a train wreck about to hit the world tourism business, and I think we've all been asleep at the switch," says Jerry Mallet, president of the Adventure Travel Society, an international trade association. Tourists themselves are contributing big time to the problem, burning fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere with each new trip they take.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Mike Tidwell, 09 Sep 2001 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56850-2001Sep7.html>

BAD COMPANY

Commercial recycling is hit or miss in the U.S. -- in some cases, for example, companies assume that recycling is occurring, but their cleaning companies are actually mixing recycling with garbage and throwing everything out as trash. From 35 to 45 percent of waste produced in the U.S. in 1999 was commercial, according to the U.S. EPA. Unlike in Europe, however, the U.S. government doesn't require commercial recycling and only a few states or local communities do. The EPA's WasteWise program encourages companies to throw out less and buy recycled products. So far, it has helped 1,100 big businesses, start-ups, and nonprofits set waste-reduction and recycling goals.

straight to the source: Christian Science Monitor, Amanda Paulson, 10 Sep 2001 <http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0910/p11s1-wmwo.htm>

BAY CITY ROLLERS

Hybrid cars are all the rage in the San Francisco Bay area. About one in five hybrids sold in the U.S. has been purchased in the Bay area, and the average waiting time to buy a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight is five months at local dealers. Drivers say heads turn as their cars cruise by; some folks even talk of the sex appeal of the vehicles. In related news, across the U.S., about 37 percent of people in the market for a new vehicle in 2001 considered themselves "extremely concerned" about the environment -- more than triple the percentage who said they had that level of concern in 1996. Still, alternative-fuel vehicles have made up only 50,000 of the 16 million vehicles sold in the U.S. this year.

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Joe Garofoli, 09 Sep 2001 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/ 09/09/MN122118.DTL>

straight to the source: New York Times, Micheline Maynard, 09 Sep 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/business/yourmoney/09FUEL.html>

read it only in Grist Magazine: Oh, what mixed feelings -- the Toyota Prius sounds great, but why is it so hard to get one? -- by Edward Flattau in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/imho/imho101800.stm?source=daily>

CASH CROPPERS

Nearly two-thirds of the $27 billion in farm subsidies given out last year went to just 10 percent of American farm owners, including Fortune 500 companies, wealthy members of Congress, and other millionaires, according to a study of federal data by the Associated Press. Studying the same data, the Environmental Working Group says that fewer than one-fourth of farmers received 84 percent of subsidy payments. The new farm bill before the U.S. House would add to the big payments. But some House Democrats and moderate Republicans are proposing an amendment to shift $20 billion in payments to conservation programs, spreading a total of $55 billion for environment and conservation programs to more farmers in more states.

straight to the source: Billings Gazette, Associated Press, John Kelly, 10 Sep 2001 <http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?section=business&display=co ntent/business/agaid.inc>

straight to the source: New York Times, Elizabeth Becker, 09 Sep 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/politics/09FARM.html>

SAVING PRIVATE XYLEM

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) is asking the state Board of Forestry to pass a rule tomorrow that would require private landowners to get state approval before cutting down ancient trees on their property. Landowners would have to go through a multiagency environmental review before receiving permission to log a single ancient tree. The proposal appears designed to head off a more stringent ballot measure that enviros hope will win approval in 2002. The measure would ban logging of all trees that are more than 150 years old.

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Angelica Pence, 10 Sep 2001 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/0 9/10/MN208517.DTL>

9/10/01
8:11:59 PM

New Analysis: Green Energy Standard Best For California

By Environmental News Network

The 50 MW, biomass Wheelabrator Shasta power plant in Anderson, Calif., runs on residues produced by nearby forest-industry companies.

A diversified electricity mix including 20 percent renewable energy could save California consumers up to $1.8 billion and provide greater economic stability for the state, according to a new report issued by the Washington, D.C.–based Union of Concerned Scientists. The California Energy Commission has approved the construction or retooling of 16 large new power plants this year. All but two are fired by natural gas. More than 95 percent of the contracts California now has in place for future energy production are committed to producing that energy by burning natural gas.

While natural gas is cleaner burning than oil or coal, the scientists' organization says there are dangers to becoming over-reliant on that fossil fuel.

The report "Powering Ahead" analyzes the economic impacts of the so-called renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in California, a market-based mechanism that gradually increases the portion of electricity produced from renewable sources.

The scientists' report concludes that diversifying California's power portfolio with 20 percent renewable energy will help protect consumers from problems that have plagued California during the past six months, including price hikes, blackouts, and air-emission increases.

"California has experienced first hand the dangers of a market dominated by volatile fossil fuels," said report author Deborah Donovan, Union of Concerned Scientists senior analyst.

"Now we have the hard numbers to prove renewable energy is beneficial for California's economic health. Just as you diversify your stock portfolio, diversifying the state's power plan with California's abundant, cost-effective renewable resources will reduce price volatility and make the state less dependent on fossil fuel and electricity imports," she said.

Gov. Gray Davis has announced funding for four renewable energy power plants in California. In making the announcement Aug. 24, the governor said, "Renewable power has long been a staple of California's portfolio approach to its energy supply."

Of the four plants, two are small hydroelectric plants, one is biomass plant that generates power by burning agricultural and forest waste, and one is a landfill gas project.

Gov. Davis has committed his administration to increasing the state's total renewable energy production from today's 12 percent to a projected 17 percent by 2006. "These four renewable plants take us a step closer to reaching that goal," he said.

To date, the renewable portfolio standard has been adopted by 12 states: Arizona, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

The most successful to date is Texas, the seat of the nation's oil and gas industry, where requirements for new renewables have been set high enough to trigger market growth that will enable Texas to meet its renewables target several years ahead of schedule.

In California, natural gas prices have been volatile, with price spikes 10 to 20 times the historical average last year.

At the same time, the cost of renewable energies has been declining. Wind power at three cents per kilowatt hour, for example, is now cheaper than electricity generated using natural gas.

But the California Department of Water Resources, which buys power for the state, uses a formula that eliminates wind power. This creates a market disincentive for new wind investment.

"Price fluctuations, combined with the fact that renewable energy producers have not been appropriately paid for environmental benefits, have reduced the incentive to invest in renewable projects," said Richard Norgaard, professor of energy and resources at the University of California Berkeley.

"The beauty of the renewable portfolio standard is that it creates a long-term market for renewable generators. This allows new projects to be financed cost effectively, escaping the boom-bust cycles that this industry has historically experienced and bringing the price down," Norgaard said.

If California adopts a renewable portfolio standard of 20 percent by the year 2010, the Union of Concerned Scientists report predicts that consumers could see a total combined savings of up to $1.8 billion on their electricity bills.

The amount of natural gas saved will be as much as would be burned in 15 or more new natural gas plants in a year, and the reduction in natural gas consumption will likely drive down natural gas prices.

Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by an estimated 24 million metric tons per year by 2010, the equivalent of taking 3.7 million cars off the road. Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas linked to global warming.

A renewable portfolio standard in the state would reduce air pollution, says the report, especially nitrogen oxides (NOx), a component of smog.

A California renewable portfolio standard would stimulate investment in new renewable energy, creating jobs and income in rural areas as well as in the high tech and manufacturing sectors, the Union of Concerned Scientists predicts.

http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/09/09102001/s_44884.asp

9/10/01
8:05:30 PM

THE PERVERSE SUBSIDIES OF FOSSIL FUELS

We Don't Just Pay at the Pump

Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent are the authors of Perverse Subsidies: How Tax Dollars Can Undercut the Environment and the Economy.

Island Press, 2001 http://www.islandpress.com/books/SearchResults.tpl

"The Bush administration plans to oppose an international drive to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and increase financing for nonpolluting energy sources worldwide, administration officials said today. ... The White House says its opposition to the proposals is based on a desire to let the marketplace, rather than government, decide how quickly renewable energy sources are adopted worldwide." --New York Times, July 14, 2001

In this excerpt from Perverse Subsidies: How Tax Dollars Can Undercut the Environment and the Economy, Myers and Kent explain how the fossil fuel industry is propped up by all of us through hidden subsidies. Pollution from fossil fuels incurs billions of dollars in damages each year, but fossil fuel companies can ignore these costs, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill.

Fossil fuels cause many environmental problems apart from the better-known forms of pollution, including landscape scars, mining tailings, and oil spills. While these are generally local in scope and often ephemeral in nature, they can cause considerable loss of amenity to immediate communities. Their collective cost, in billions of dollars worldwide, is not to be dismissed just because it does not match the more widespread injuries deriving from fossil fuels, such as urban smog, acid rain, and global warming.

It is the grosser-scale types of pollution, however, that we shall consider here, notably from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, particulates, and carbon dioxide, all of which stem primarily from use of fossil fuels. (Certain of these costs are covered in the next chapter, on road transportation, so they are not touched upon here in order to avoid double counting.) ...

Acid rain has long been attributed to fossil-fuel pollutants, among other factors. The environmental harm imposed by acid rain is well known, though there are only a few estimates of economic costs. For example, the health benefits of controlling acid rain in the United States are in the order of $12-$40 billion per year. ... (In Britain, a program to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, the main source of acid rain, confers benefits worth $29 billion per year, mostly in terms of human health.) ...

In Europe, there is an annual loss of commercial timber worth $30 billion. There is also some emergent injury to tropical forests, as manifested already in southern China, where "acid haze" causes $14 billion worth of damage per year. It should shortly affect several other sectors of tropical forests, notably those that have acidic soils and hence are very vulnerable to acid rain, with a total expanse of more than 1 million square kilometers, or over one-eighth of remaining tropical forests. Extensive as this tropical forest damage could be, there is no indication of how costly it could eventually become.

There are still other costs from air pollution. Each year, Germany loses $4.7 billion in agricultural production, especially crops; Poland loses $2.7 billion; Italy, $1.8 billion; and Sweden, $1.5 billion.

Air pollutants (together with other contaminants from fossil fuels) are taking one year off the lives of American people living in cities.

More important is pollution from fine airborne particles, that is, those that have an aerodynamic diameter of ten microns or less and are able to move thousands of kilometers (carbon particulates from smokestacks in Beijing have been tracked to Hawaii), whereupon they cause severe and even lethal respiratory infections. These pollutants (together with other contaminants from fossil fuels) are taking one year off the lives of American people living in cities, and as many as 60,000 people die prematurely each year from particulate air pollution. The putative "life value" of these deaths is $240 billion. Worldwide, at least 460,000 avoidable deaths occur every year as a result of particulates, and by 2020 there will have been over 8 million such deaths if current patterns of fossil-fuel use continue. In California alone, particulates cause 3,000 deaths per year and an additional 60,000-200,000 cases of respiratory infections in children.

Relatively small reductions in fossil-fuel emissions worldwide, together with their fine particulates, could save some 700,000 lives annually by 2020. While four out of five of these saved lives would be in developing countries, the number in developed countries such as the United States would equal the number of projected deaths from traffic injuries or infection by HIV. This analysis does not take account of health benefits through avoidance of illness and lost workdays, nor does it consider deaths associated with pollutants other than particulates.

Because of these fine particulates, urban residents in China will, under a business-as-usual scenario, face health costs rising from $32 billion (or $129 per resident exposed) in 1995 to almost $98 billion (or $197 per resident) in 2020; these costs include 600,000 premature deaths, 5.5 million cases of chronic bronchitis, more than 5 billion restricted-activity days, and 20 million cases of respiratory illness each year. When adjusted to the projected increases in income, the costs in 2020 will total more than $390 billion, or 13 percent of China's GDP.

Global warming could cost the world $1 trillion per year. It is far and away the greatest environmental problem we can expect within the foreseeable future.

By far the biggest environmental externality is, or rather will be, global warming. There seems little doubt that it is indeed on its way, if not already arriving, and that it is due in major measure to fossil-fuel emissions, not just carbon dioxide but also methane and nitrous oxide. Uncertainties lie in the speed of its onset and its regional manifestations. Nor is there much doubt about the scale (though not the size) of its economic costs, at least as minimally reckoned in trillions of dollars in the long run. Regrettably, no estimate can be advanced here, not even in the form of a range, as to the size of ultimate costs of global warming beyond preliminary assertions that it could eventually cost the United States at least 1-2 percentage points of GDP. Extrapolated to the rest of the world, this means that the total cost could readily reach $1 trillion per year and probably much more (supposing, of course, that there is no rapid phase-out of fossil fuels forthwith). Suffice it to say here that global warming is far and away the greatest environmental problem we can expect within the foreseeable future. From this standpoint, let alone other pollution effects, all use of fossil fuels is here regarded as environmentally adverse to a significant extent. But because of lack of solid estimates of costs and insofar as this will be a cost in the mid- to long-term future, the hidden subsidy levied on our descendants is left out of further consideration. ...

Despite these many instances of environmental externalities stemming from fossil fuels (let alone nuclear energy), there is no way to come up with a quantified estimate of all environmental externalities in the fossil-fuel sphere. But several items are certainly indicative: annual health costs from air pollution in Indonesia, $0.5 billion, and in India, $1.7 billion; health costs from acid rain in the United States, $12-$40 billion (say $20 billion), and in Britain, $29 billion; timber losses from acid rain in Europe, $30 billion; agricultural costs from air pollution in four European countries, $10.7 billion; health costs in China, $32 billion; acid haze damages in China, $14 billion; and cost of lives lost to particulate pollution in the United States, $240 billion. Let us exclude the last item, valid though it is in itself; if we considered all such premature deaths in the developed countries, that item alone would approach, if not exceed, $1 trillion, making it an extreme "outlier." The other items total $138 billion.

The calculation of these other items is limited to a degree. For instance, they cover only three developing countries and almost entirely with respect to health costs. They cover only four European countries with respect only to agricultural costs, and they cover Europe as a whole with respect to acid rain damage only to timber supplies. So a reasonable estimate, albeit very rough and ready, for all environmental externalities worldwide surely runs to several hundred billion dollars. Conversely, not all the pollutants stem from fossil fuels, just the majority. The reader will readily think of various other qualifications. In order to come up with an estimate of some order, the authors postulate a total of $200 billion per year. Preliminary and exploratory (even speculative) as this is, it is more realistic than to say we cannot quantify these externalities in worthwhile fashion at all and hence imply that their value is nil.

9/10/01
7:58:40 PM

TomPaine.com

FROM DURBAN TO DISNEYLAND

Thoughts on Returning from the U.N. Conference on Racism

by Howard Winant, BRC-NEWS

After a week at the U.N. conference, the whole U.S. has that same Disneyland "what, me worry?" feel, at least where the subject of racism is concerned.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/09/09/index.html

THE PERVERSE SUBSIDIES OF FOSSIL FUELS

We Don't Just Pay at the Pump

by Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent

Our reliance on fossil fuels costs us dearly in many indirect ways, including degraded health, a polluted environment, and lost agricultural yield. The authors cautiously estimate the total at $200 billion annually.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/08/01/index.html

Dispatch: Arctic Alaska

GROUND ZERO

by Debbie S. Miller, Amicus Journal

Big Oil offered a village of Inupiat Eskimos jobs and an economic boom. All it asked in return was their way of life.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/07/10/1.html

THE GREAT LAKES AS EARLY WARMING ECOSYSTEM

by Lester Graham, Great Lakes Radio Consortium

Finding that weather is becoming more chaotic, scientists in the Great Lakes Basin are examining ways that global warming is affecting the region today and far into the future.

http://www.tompaine.com/features/2001/09/07/3.html

9/10/01
7:55:36 PM

Public Citizen

Irradiated Meat Fails in Florida, Wisconsin; Major Chain, Producer Drop Controversial Beef Patties

Wal-Mart, Publix Also Shun Irradiated Hamburgers; California Irradiation Company's Stock Price Tumbles

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Citing poor sales and low consumer interest, more than 80 grocery stores and meat markets in Florida and Wisconsin that began selling irradiated ground beef last year have pulled the products from their shelves, representing a significant test-market failure for the irradiated food industry. Also, one of the first major meat packers to market irradiated hamburgers in the U.S. has stopped making the products.

Additionally, major retailers Wal-Mart and Publix have backed out of deals to sell a Florida meat packer's irradiated ground beef, according to an official from the meat-packing company, Colorado Boxed Beef. And despite claims of increased sales, the stock price of a major California irradiation company has fallen by more than 50 percent since May.

"Consumers are voting with their dollars," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Based on these early returns, irradiated food is losing by a landslide."

In Florida, six independently owned grocery stores and meat markets that started selling irradiated hamburger patties last year have since pulled the products from their shelves, according to store owners or employees contacted in the past week by Public Citizen. Owners said there wasn't enough consumer demand and that customers weren't buying the meat.

The Florida stores that have pulled the products are DeLoach's Meat Mart in Lakeland, Laurenzo's Italian Specialty Food Market in North Miami Beach, Mac's Meat Market in Winter Haven, Smitty's Old Fashioned Butcher Shop in Fort Lauderdale, Stuart Fine Foods in Stuart, and Wyndle's Foodland in Plant City.

"We experimented with it for a short time, but there was not enough consumer demand or interest," one store owner told Public Citizen. "For us to carry an item, we actually have to sell the stuff - but it didn't sell. It was almost as though people didn't care."

Added another store owner, "We've tried selling it two or three times. The last time we tried it, the guys who work on the front line of our store said, 'Not again.' "

The six stores were purchasing irradiated beef from Colorado Boxed Beef of Auburndale, Fla., which made national news in June 2000 when it began distributing its "New Generation" line of irradiated hamburger patties. Mac's Meat Market stopped selling Colorado Boxed Beef's irradiated hamburger patties even though two of three brothers who co-own the beef company - Bryan and Steve Saterbo - are also corporate officers of Mac's, according to Florida Secretary of State records.

When Colorado Boxed Beef announced plans to sell irradiated hamburger patties, the company said in a press release that it had commitments from two major supermarket chains to sell the patties. However, not only have all six independently owned stores in Florida dropped irradiated beef, but the two major chains, Wal-Mart and Publix, have backed out of deals to sell the products, a company executive told Public Citizen last week.

Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported in July that the 80-store Pick 'n Save chain in Wisconsin has stopped selling irradiated hamburger patties. A Pick 'n Save spokesperson told the newspaper that "there has been absolutely no consumer acceptance." The newspaper stated that "interest in the so-called 'safer' meat is virtually non-existent in the Milwaukee area," despite last year's E. coli outbreak that killed a 3-year-old girl and sickened dozens of other people.

Pick 'n Save had been selling irradiated ground beef products by Emmpak Foods of Milwaukee and irradiated by SureBeam, which is devoted solely to irradiating food and is an affiliate of San Diego-based defense contractor Titan Corp. Since May, SureBeam's stock has plummeted from $19.45 a share to $8.55 at the close of business Friday. The Journal-Sentinel also reported that Emmpak, one of SureBeam's first clients, had stopped producing irradiated beef altogether.

Other states where irradiated beef is still being test-marketed include California, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. Except for the Twin Cities, sales are predominantly occurring in rural areas.

Few irradiated food items are being sold even though the Food and Drug Administration legalized the irradiation of wheat in 1963, potatoes in 1964, spices in 1983, pork in 1985, fruit and vegetables in 1986, poultry in 1990, red meat in 1997, and eggs last year. Public opinion polls show that a vast majority of Americans do not want to eat irradiated food. Despite claims by several companies that their irradiated food products are selling well, no company has ever made its sales figures public. Omaha Steaks recently began giving away irradiated hamburger patties to customers who purchase steaks.

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

For more information, visit http://www.Citizen.org

9/10/01
7:46:06 PM

UTNE WEB WATCH

The Best of the Alternative Web

CENTRAL AMERICA'S SILENT KILLER - THE MAN-MADE CAUSES OF DROUGHT AND FAMINE

by Paul Jeffrey, Pacific News Service

-- Ten years ago, when European bankers financed many Third World coffee-growing projects, they helped set off a chain of events that continues to drive small farmers in Central America out of business: cutting down drought-preventing forests in order to survive.

THE VANISHING VERB

by Terence Smith, Online NewsHour

-- Verbs endangered, suggests satirical article. Brevity now the rule in newspeak.

HMONG FACE CULTURAL HURDLES TO MENTAL HEALTH CARE

by Kaomi Goetz, Minnesota Public Radio

-- When the Hmong people were brought to the U.S. after the Vietnam war, they were "jumping 200 years into the future from their hill tribe way of life." The result of this cultural shock can sometimes be tragic.

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

9/10/01
7:42:57 PM

15,000 Wild Pot Plants Burned

by Amy Becker, The Pioneer Press

A vestige of Minnesota's farm history went up in smoke in northern Washington County on Thursday, under the watchful eyes of Minnesota National Guard members and county narcotics officers.

They mowed, piled and burned about 15,000 naturally occurring marijuana (hemp) plants.

The effort was part of a National Guard program to eradicate marijuana, conducted in cooperation with the county sheriff's office.

"It's a situation we try to keep under control for public safety," said Sgt. Patrick Olson with the Washington County Sheriff's office narcotics task force.

People are more likely to get sick than high from smoking the wild marijuana, authorities say. But sometimes higher-octane plants can be found among the wild growth. And some people still harvest the wild pot and mix it with cultivated marijuana.

"Every year we get a complaint of kids picking ditch weed," Olson said.

The National Guard program, "Emerald Harvest," has been around for four years, said Spc. Anna Le wicki, a Minnesota National Guard spokeswoman. Teams killed about 3 million plants in the first three years but destroyed more than 4 million (hemp) plants this year alone.

The boost comes from better reporting of problem areas, better equipment and a higher profile, Lewicki said. One large field in Sherburne County recently yielded more than a million plants, which authorities burned.

How times change.

Once those piles of marijuana (actually hemp) would have been a farmer's cash crop, to be processed into fiber and related products. Now they are listed among the 11 noxious weeds in Minnesota.

One farmer even mowed a large stand of wild weed on his property recently after an officer told him it was there, saving the team the trouble.

Farmers grew it roughly during the first and second World Wars, said Bob Olson, an extension educator for the Washington County extension service. "It's not uncommon to find hemp growing all around the state of Minnesota."

Yet the purple haze on Thursday may be one of the last big burns in Washington County, said Sgt. Patrick Olson of the narcotics unit.

"I think there will always be a little bit growing around, but for the bigger fields, this will be about the end of it," he said. (END)

Amy Becker, who covers Washington County, can be reached at abecker@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5465.

NOTE: A 1998 Vermont legislative study of the DEA's "Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program" showed 99.28% of the "cannabis" eradicated was "ditchweed-hemp", while less then 1% of the "cannabis" was actually marijuana.

9/10/01
7:40:47 PM

A Nuclear Nightmare

They look tough, but some plants are easy marks for terrorists

by Douglas Pasternak

He called it Project Worst Nightmare. And in the twisted mind of Donald Beauregard, commander of the 77th Regiment Militia in St. Petersburg, Fla., it surely was. Beauregard's plan was simple–disable the electric power grid feeding the nearby Crystal River nuclear power plant with explosives stolen from a National Guard armory. That would shut down the plant, blacking out St. Petersburg. This was no idle fantasy. When the cops finally caught up with him, Beauregard and his "strike team" had a 20-mm cannon, a .50-caliber machine gun, and a few pipe bombs primed to blow.

Beauregard might have succeeded if an informant hadn't tipped the police. He was prosecuted and clapped off to prison last year. But the FBI took Beauregard's plan seriously enough to incorporate it into a test it ran last May against the Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona.

And here lies the rub. In the past decade, nearly half the nation's 103 power plants have failed mock terrorist attacks against them. The plants that failed, in other words, would not have stopped the Donald Beauregards of the world.

In the parlance of counterterrorism, nuclear power plants are among the world's most "hardened" targets. Barbed wire, surveillance cameras, motion sensors, armed response teams–all are designed to make the plants impenetrable to even the most determined saboteur. But interviews with current and former Nuclear Regula- tory Commission inspectors, security experts, and plant guards paint a very different picture. Often, security measures at nuclear plants don't work as they should or don't work at all. A re- view of recent incidents by U.S. News reveals numerous breakdowns in plant security, from criminals being granted access to sensitive areas to inadequate security that places vital equipment within easy reach of an attacker who never even enters the plant's perimeter.

Security experts say a terrorist is far more likely to attack a so-called soft target– such as a government building–than a nuclear power plant. Indeed, argues Lynnette Hendricks of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power trade group: "We believe the plants are overly defended at a level that is not at all commensurate with the risk." But in light of attacks against fortified targets such as U.S. embassies, threats against nuclear plants are now considered very real. And concerns about security are likely to mount as the Bush administration calls for greater use of nuclear power. Last year, for instance, Japanese police arrested a man with seven pipe bombs who was planning to blow up a uranium processing plant. Last September, Ukrainian police arrested a group planning to sabotage the Chernobyl reactor. And in the United States, officials list at least 30 threats against nuclear plants since 1978. Most have been hoaxes, but in the mid-1980s, for instance, three of four power lines leading to the Palo Verde plant were sabotaged. And in 1989 four members of Earth First!, a radical environmental group, were charged with conspiring to disable three nuclear power plants in the Southwest.

Rating risks. Despite the threats and the documented security flaws, the nuclear industry has convinced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission–the federal agency that oversees nuclear power plants–that security at these sites would function better with less federal oversight. So starting this fall, the NRC will launch a pilot program allowing the power companies to design their own security exercises–a function formerly performed by federal terrorism experts. The industry says the new program will cost the plants less, yet allow for more frequent tests. But opponents, including many within the NRC, say the industry's track record has hardly earned it the right to looser regulation. In the past year alone, NRC inspectors have discovered alarms and video surveillance cameras that don't work, guards who can't operate their weapons, and guns that don't shoot. "I am very skeptical about the nuclear industry's ability to regulate itself," says Rep. Edward J. Markey, a vocal critic of nuclear security.

High on critics' lists of concerns is the failure rate in the NRC-run mock terrorist assaults–attacks that, if real, could have released radiation more lethal than the 1986 Chernobyl accident that resulted in an estimated 32,000 deaths. These exercises, called Operational Safeguards Response Evaluations, or OSREs, have been run by an outspoken former U.S. Navy SEAL captain named David Orrick. In a typical exercise, a team of three "terrorists" armed with small weapons and basic knowledge of how a plant works attempts to penetrate the facility. They evade or disable security equipment and destroy a set of targets in an effort to damage the plant's nuclear core, causing a radioactive release. In some cases, the mock terrorists make it all the way to the sensitive control room–even though they give plant operators ample advance notice of when they intend to strike.

Proponents of the NRC's mock attacks say they teach valuable lessons. In 1999, the Waterford 3 Nuclear Plant in Taft, La., failed a preliminary mock attack, but the plant's managers said that the exercise did not reflect the plant's true capability. So Orrick's team returned last year to conduct a more rigorous exercise against the plant. "We [the NRC team] just ate them alive," says one NRC inspector. The Waterford 3 site then hired more guards, improved training, and fortified physical barriers. They finally passed an NRC exercise last January. And in May, security guards easily apprehended a man with a history of mental illness who scaled a 10-foot, barbed-wire fence surrounding the site.

Still, critics charge that even the NRC's mock terrorist attacks do not reflect today's real-world scenarios. "There is nothing about protecting against a helicopter assault or a missile taking out one of our positions," says one plant security guard. Last September, for instance, an anti-nuclear demonstrator landed a motorized parafoil on the roof of a nuclear reactor in Bern, Switzerland, before being apprehended by security guards.

While nuclear plant operators design much of their security to prevent attacks from the outside, the record suggests that the greater danger lies within. "If somebody got a job as a janitor and got access to the plant, that's the real threat," says Erik Pakieser, former nuclear security officer at the Prairie Island nuclear generating plant in Minnesota. For instance, at the same time Donald Beauregard was cooking up his Project Worst Nightmare, a maintenance technician at the Crystal River site discovered that someone had intentional- ly disabled one of the plant's |emergency diesel generators. Some nuclear security experts also believe that sabotage should not have been ruled out so quickly as a possible cause of the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory found striking similarities between the incident and a computer-generated sabotage scenario they had run several months earlier.

Two decades later, critics remain troubled by the sorts of individuals who can gain access to a nuclear plant. In the early 1990s, a carpenter named Carl Drega got jobs at three nuclear power plants in the Northeast despite an arrest record and a job reference that described him as "volatile." Two months after Drega left the third plant, in 1997, he shot four people to death, including two state troopers, a judge, and a newspaper editor. An NRC investigation of the incident found that none of the three plants had violated their regulations by hiring him.

Easy access. Another insider, a computer programmer who once worked in the control room at the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant, goes to trial next year for murdering seven of his coworkers at a small Massachusetts technology company. Plant coworkers said the programmer, Michael McDermott, slept in a coffin and told a colleague he was sometimes so angry he felt like killing someone. In 1998, a worker at the Turkey Point nuclear plant in Florida had free access to critical areas of the plant for more than a month before officials learned of his 14 arrests. And at the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, officials took eight months to learn that a worker was an illegal Mexican immigrant with fake identification papers and an arrest record. "Charles Manson could get access to a nuclear power plant," says former nuclear security officer Richard Kester.

But some experts worry that attackers can succeed even without getting inside. Classified reports from Sandia National Laboratories show that a well-placed truck bomb would not even have to enter a site's property to destroy vital equipment, leading to a possible release of radiation. In addition, experts say, the water-intake systems at some plants are particularly vulnerable to sabotage by either cutting off the water supply by clogging the intake valve or introducing volatile chemicals into the reactor's cooling system.

An even more accessible target may be spent nuclear material piling up at these plants. Large cooling pools inside reactor containment buildings were designed to store this fuel, but several years ago the pools began to fill up. Now, at many plants, the highly radioactive fuel is stored in cooling pools outside the containment building. "A lot of the spent nuclear fuel casks can be hit with a shoulder-fired missile by someone standing outside the fence," says Dave Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Yet at plants that are being decommissioned, the nuclear fuel is even less closely guarded. The Maine Yankee plant, which has stored 700 tons of spent fuel in outside cooling pools, has removed all of its vehi- cle barriers and received the NRC's permission to eliminate its armed guard force once the fuel is placed into dry casks.

The chairman of the NRC, Richard Meserve, says that no matter who runs the security drills, the plants remain among the world's most heavily guarded sites. And he says that the NRC mock attacks are expensive for both the commission to run and the plants to prepare for. "The reason we are making a big deal about this," says the Nuclear Energy Institute's Hendricks, is that the corrective actions resulting from these exercises " can have a tremendous impact" on a plant owner. "It can cost a million dollars to make these upgrades [of plant security]," she says. In any case, says Meserve, the new self-assessment pro- gram is only a trial: If it doesn't work, he says, it will be scrapped.

But the chorus of nuclear industry critics continues to grow. "The overall focus [at these sites] is not to protect the public but to get the NRC's blessing and ensure profits," says one nuclear security officer. Starting next week, the Waterford 3 plant, which had boosted security to pass the NRC's terrorist exercise, will begin to reduce its training programs and its guard force. "As soon as the NRC leaves," says one guard, "they downgrade security."

Source: http://www.USNews.com

9/10/01
7:36:04 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

UPDATE - Taiwan tanker collides with Vietnam ship - VIETNAM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12331/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

UPDATE - Congress mulls taking White House to court - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12337/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

'Green' US farm payments may run afoul of WTO - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12349/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Oklahoma residents oppose water sale to Texas - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12348/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

US firms pay $120 mln to clean Texas dump site - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12346/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Florida moves to ban shark feeding - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12345/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

US western states want final say on transmission - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12340/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

US Senate panel delays action on Alaska drilling - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12338/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

US 2000/01 corn exports dented by StarLink - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12335/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Some Oregon farmers embrace land buy-out plan - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12332/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Glow-in-the-dark salmon startles Alaskans - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12330/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

BNFL chief says UK must encourage new nuke plants - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12327/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Aventis takes UK government to court on pesticide - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12341/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Philippine farmers ravage GM corn test site - SINGAPORE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12343/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Singapore moves rare turtle eggs to hatch safely - SINGAPORE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12351/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Norway gives thumbs up to Statkraft for wind park - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12326/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

NZ should not rush into Kyoto climate pact - CHH - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12329/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

India may pull old vehicles off roads - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12328/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

French GM critics urge Jospin to ban GM crops - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12342/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Lenders to discuss Russia eco-projects in Stockholm - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12344/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

UPDATE - Estonia Energia, NRG sign plant upgrade deal - ESTONIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12350/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Inco, Falconbridge under pressure on emissions - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12339/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Teck-Cominco admits errors over toxic thallium - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12334/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Animal rights group suggests "Eat the Whales" - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12347/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

WWF leaders urge quick action to save the Arctic - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12333/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

Energy Conferences ... - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12336/newsDate/10-Sep-2001/story.htm

9/10/01
7:29:28 PM

Policy vs. Crusade?

by Peter Freyne

Pardon the pun, but this week the pot thickens.

You may recall last week's item on the big marijuana bust in Burlington's verdant Intervale area. And you'll also recall the photo that police provided to the local daily. It was a shot of a smiling, pot-bellied Burlington police officer standing alongside the alleged illegal drugs the cops had harvested.

But something "smelled" wrong about that photo and the way it was marketed to the local newspaper.

"When I saw the picture in the paper," said State Rep. David Zuckerman (P-Burlington), "I had to chuckle, because it looked a lot more like hemp to me than marijuana. The two are related," Zuckerman told Seven Days, "but what people smoke is a fairly highly cultivated product and that just wasn't it."

Make no mistake, Zuckerman knows his vegetation. For the past three years he's farmed in the Intervale about a mile up the dirt road of this alleged crime.

After more than two decades in Burlap, yours truly has grown accustomed to these annual Intervale "marijuana" busts. In the past, we recall the local gendarmes indicating that smoking the Intervale "pot" would produce a headache, not a "high," since its THC content is minimal.

"What the police hauled away," said Zuckerman, "was ditch weed that's been in the Intervale forever."

Bummer.

You see, 60 years ago, during World War II, part of the Intervale was used to grow hemp for the war effort. Hemp, the same plant species as marijuana, produces fiber used to make rope and other products. In fact, at Saturday's Burlington Farmers' Market, we spotted one stall selling upscale $49 hemp handbags and clothing. Pricey stuff. Growing hemp is illegal in the U.S., but perfectly legal in Canada and elsewhere in the civilized world.

Sunday morning, yours truly bicycled down to the scene of the "crime," located along the path to the canoe access behind the old brick Caulkins' farmhouse. It was hard to miss the bare patch where the coppers had cut down about 100 "marijuana" plants. But the real shockeroo was the sight of about 1000 more medium-sized "marijuana" plants growing wild in thick clumps along the border of the field. Never seen anything like it!

Tuesday morning we contacted BPD to follow up. We told Detective Lt. Emmet Helrich about our Sunday site visit and the comments of Rep. Zuckerman. We wanted to know if the pot the cops seized had been tested for THC content.

Helrich said he'd check with the officer who heads the department's drug effort. A half-hour later, the detective called back.

"It appears you are correct," said Helrich, somewhat sheepishly. The "pot" was not tested for THC, he said, and it was promptly burned across the street from the scene of the "crime" at the McNeil Power Station.

Asked why BPD was spending time and effort on such a lark, the normally chatty detective suddenly got tongue-tied.

"It's foolish to be wasting our money, time and efforts on hemp and marijuana," said Rep. Zuckerman. But waste 'em we do.

According to Lt. James Colgan of the Vermont State Police, Vermont receives an annual federal grant to run a "marijuana eradication program." The grant has been level-funded for 10 years at $50,000, said Colgan, a 23-year veteran with 14 years of service on the state police drug unit.

The federal dollars, he said, are used to pay pot cops overtime and cover training, "like how to get out of a running helicopter," he said. More on helicopters later.

And unlike the case of the Big Burlington Intervale Pot Bust, the state police do send plant samples to the University of Mississippi for testing. The THC content of the Vermont crop, said Lt. Colgan, normally runs in the 3 to 6 percent range.

Last year, said Colgan, the statewide eradication effort bagged 3417 Cannabis sativa plants. "Give us $100,000 a year," suggested the veteran drug officer, "and those figures will change."

Lt. Colgan told Seven Days the marijuana eradication effort is a "24-hour-a-day, 12-month-a-year program." But the outdoor surveillance activity is stepped up from June through October. Apparently pot doesn't grow well in snow.

Just kidding.

Lately, there's been quite the buzz over the frequent-flyer miles being racked up by National Guard choppers scoping out marijuana patches from on high. Apparently, citizens we've talked to do not get a warm and cozy feeling hearing their government at work overhead, protecting Vermonters from the ravages of home-grown Mary Jane. The cost of those helicopter flights is picked up by the National Guard.

According to Major Tom Powers of the Vermont Air Guard, two choppers and their crews are made available to assist law enforcement in the annual marijuana patch hunt. The Vermont Guard, said Powers, has participated for the past six years. The cost is covered by a federal grant. Your tax dollars at work!

Cool.

Hey, the gendarmes are just doing their job. Just carrying out a public "policy" that the duly elected representatives of our democracy want carried out, right?

"We'll do whatever the Legislature wants us to do," said Colgan. And the message from Montpeculiar of late has continued to be one that tells Vermont law enforcement to crack the whip on illegal drug use and traffic: Catch 'em, lock 'em up and throw away the key.

But why is this "drug policy" never put to the test like any other public policy? Why don't results count? Why is anyone who questions this particular policy accused of being soft on drugs or a drug user?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we got 30 years of results that indicate our sacrosanct drug "policy" does not work? Why is this loser of a War on Drugs above reproach?

Perhaps it's because it is not really a "policy" at all. It's a "crusade." A policy is judged by its results. A crusade is judged by how good it makes the crusaders feel, usually politicians seeking election. Logic and common sense are the first casualties. Interesting, eh?

P.S. Word is, get ready for another blitz of even bigger heroin busts in the Green Mountains. And get ready for more politician/crusaders to call for even tougher drug laws. They think it's what you want to hear. They think you're stupid.

Are you?

NOTE: A 1998 Vermont legislative study of the DEA's "Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program" showed that 99.28% of the "cannabis" eradicated was "ditchweed-hemp", while less then 1% of the "cannabis" was actually marijuana.

9/10/01
7:21:05 PM

EQUAL EARTH

It's Your Responsibility

THE GLOBAL BOOM AND BUST CYCLE MANIPULATION update: criminal price-fixing cartels The boom cycle starts when the manipulators hype stocks and shares and simultaneously drive up the stockmarkets by going long; i.e. taking massive "long" positions on stocks and shares that exceed many times the total available number of stock in existence, thereby creating a buying frenzy as everybody is forced to jump on the bandwagon or lose their shirts. This buying frenzy drives up the price of stocks to totally unjustifiable and absurd heights.

The corporations behind the stock - often directly or indirectly involved in the hype and manipulation - create an aura of unstoppable success and invincibility which is hyped additionally by the media sharks; the colluding and conniving mouthpieces of the glowing falsehoods and misrepresentations which deceive and ultimately defraud savers and pensioners and employees. This boom syndrome affects the national and global economy as it is reflected in a expansion frenzy that conjures up endless growth and profitability and false and dishonest projections of a global "win win" situation for everybody.

Corporations blinded by their ever rising share price and their own deceptive and fraudulent hype start up new factories, flood the markets with ever more products and services.

Importers, Distributors, Wholesalers and Retailers are desperate to take on vast stocks, even building new warehouses, to avoid a "shortage" and consequential "inability to meet demand".

This madness can be prolonged for several years as ever more quick buck riffraff jump on the bandwagon and business schools proliferate the economics of misrepresentation, deception and fraud; hoodwinking the consumption/tourist zombies that spending well beyond means is good for the economy and good for jobs and good for the future.

Reality catches up only slowly as the consumption zombies start to drown in ever more debts and hardware and software that already exceeds needs and simply does not need replacing just because there is a new, shinier or split second faster model on the shelves; accompanied by ever more misleading, false, dishonest, unscrupulous, deceptive and fraudulent services underpinned by equally false and untrue marketing and advertising campaigns. As the consumption zombies develop buying fatique in the high streets and shopping malls; the manipulators start selling the stocks and shares "short"; i.e. taking "short" positions that exceed the total number of stocks and shares in the market many times thus driving the stock down in price.The pensioners, savers and employees are the victims in this manipulated and orchestrated global scam.

While the media hype still flows and Importers, Distributors, Wholesalers and Retailers keep on fulfilling their contractual obligations to take on massive stocks despite the first signs of market saturation. Market saturation that is now so gigantic that even an increase in consumption would still leave the market drowned in surplus goods and services; leading to criminal price-fixing, racketeering cartels, trusts and monopolies.

Now the manipulators force the corporations whose stocks and shares they had driven up with criminal intent to enrich themselves to repay the loans the corporations had incurred on the back of the rising share price and the apparently unlimited market expansion for their products and services. Realising that in this global poker game their cards had been called by those who had unlimited access to finance to drive the market in whichever way they chose, the corporations now started to issue profit warnings compounding the effect.

The corporations run by the same charlatans and criminals as the manipulators, people who have only one objective; i.e. to line their own personal pockets regardless of who gets hurt in the process, now sack employees, close factories, warehouses and write off stocks that only a few months earlier were supposed to grow in value to unlimited new heights. As one corporation starts to tighten its belt others feel the mutual effect and a global economic downturn starts to reflect the massive over-saturation of markets.

As stocks and shares continue to slide in value the manipulators thrive on the ever greater profits they make from selling "short" in the same way as they made equally vast profits from buying "long" during the boom phase. The losers are the sacked employees, the savers and pensioners. And who are the consumption/tourist zombies other than a noisy, rowdy, uncouth, illiterate and ignorant mass of herd animals? They are the humans whose selfish egocentric megalomania is constantly reinforced by the political/religious/business mafia that sees a global benefit in ever greater destruction and chaos.

Because the boom and bust cycle that they manipulate is the cause of the planetary wastelaying and environmental and habitat destruction - in itself described as a marvellous business and job creation opportunity - crime, violence, war and pollution, deforestation, water and resource depletion, the poisoning of the global air, water and soil with chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, algicides and fungicides, desertification and consequential climate change causing ever more floods and droughts -accelerate beyond rectification and inflict systemic poverty, discrimination, exploitation and self-destruction.

While every day some 50,000 humans die from malnutrition (in 1970 it was 10,000 a day) the consumption zombies are comforting themselves in their make belief world of plastic, fastfood, religious/political hocus pocus and artificial, meaningless lifestyles that corrupt and pervert the planet. They hypocritically wail about the sancity of life and wear Hitler's breeding cross while murdering more than 10 million animals every day to stuff their bellies.

The animals that inhabited the planet long bef