9/14/02
7:04:50 PM

PM says U.S. attitude helped fuel Sept. 11

By SHAWN MCCARTHY, OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF, September 12, 2002 – Page A1

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien says the United States and the West must shoulder some of the responsibility for last year's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington because of their wealth and exercise of power in the world.

In a CBC interview taped in July and aired last night, Mr. Chrétien suggested that the root causes of the Sept. 11 attacks were global poverty and an overbearing American foreign policy.

"It's always the problem when you read history -- everybody doesn't know when to stop. There's a moment when you have to stop, there's a moment when you are very powerful," he said.

Immediately following Sept. 11, Canadian politicians rejected the "root causes" argument, saying the attacks were the work of irrational fanatics that had nothing to do with legitimate grievances.

But Mr. Chrétien told CBC that religious fanatics are using the anger and resentment of the world's poor to fuel their terrorism.

"I do think that the Western world is getting too rich in relations to the poor world," he said.

"And necessarily, we're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more."

The Prime Minister said he was in New York prior to the terrorist attacks and heard complaints from Wall Street capitalists about Canadian economic ties to Cuba and other foreign-policy disagreements.

"I told them: When you are powerful like you are, you guys, it's the time to be nice," he said.

"And it is one of the problems -- you cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation of the others.

"And that is what the Western world -- not only the Americans but the Western world -- has to realize."

Yesterday, Mr. Chrétien attended memorial services in New York City, saying he wanted to show solidarity with mourning Americans.

Suggestions that the United States bears some responsibility for the attacks have been angrily dismissed by American officials.

The CBC interview, part of a documentary that traced the actions of senior government officials that fateful day, revealed that the Prime Minister had essentially authorized U.S. fighter jets to shoot down a Korean airliner over Canada if it diverted from a planned emergency landing in Whitehorse.

While still over Alaska, the pilot of the Korean Airlines 747 had erroneously sent coded signals indicating the airliner had been hijacked. The pilot was ordered to land in Whitehorse, and was met by U.S. jet fighters while still over American territory.

NORAD command in Winnipeg agreed the airliner could enter Canadian airspace accompanied by the U.S. fighters, but insisted the decision to shoot it down must be the Canadian government's.

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, Mr. Chrétien received a phone call and was told the airliner might have to be shot down.

"I said, 'Yes, if you think they are terrorists, you call me again but be ready to shoot them down.' So I authorized it in principle," he said.

"It's kind of scary that . . . [there is] this plane with hundreds of people and you have to call a decision like that. . . . But you prepare yourself for that. I thought about it -- you know that you will have to make decisions at times that will [be] upsetting you for the rest of your life.''

9/14/02
6:47:57 PM

US Military Builds Up Huge Attack Force

by Julian Borger in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor

September 13, 2002

The Guardian/UK

As George Bush was displaying his grasp of diplomatic vocabulary in front of the UN yesterday, 7,000 miles away in the Gulf his fellow Americans were speaking a different language.

Their words were military terms: frigates, bombers, air defense fighters, refueling tankers, carrier battle groups, reconnaissance planes, special forces. All these things are on their way to the region or already in position in readiness for a possible attack on Iraq.

In the most blunt indication yet that the US administration's threat is not an idle one and it will force Iraq if necessary to meet its UN pledges, the US central command will move its headquarters to Qatar in November, perhaps indefinitely. The relocation is the culmination of a series of low-key moves on the Gulf chessboard designed to put all the pieces in place for a rapid US assault should the UN route now being pursued by Washington fail.

The establishment of command posts and the pre-positioning of heavy equipment in the region over the past year have put central command (CENTCOM) in a position to launch a strike on Baghdad within a fortnight of the order being given, if it is decided to mount the operation with a fast and light force of 50,000. There are about 30,000 American troops in the region already.

"It would take 10 days to bring in the additional equipment, 10 days to airlift the troops and 10 days to get to Baghdad," said John Pike, the head of GlobalSecurity.org, a thinktank which closely monitors military movements.

Nor would it take long to complete the military build-up if it were decided to play it safe and gather an overwhelming force of 200,000 or more before striking. Under CENTCOM's blueprint for a full-scale invasion, Operation Plan 1003, the force could be assembled in two months. That would be much faster than the six months' build-up in the last Gulf war, partly because it would involve fewer troops, partly because the sluggish US military machine has become gradually more nimble.

The deployment of CENTCOM's headquarters from Florida to Qatar is officially part of a biennial exercise called Internal Look and is supposed to last a week. However it is highly unusual for General Tommy Franks, the man who would command an Iraqi invasion, and 600 of his top staff, to take part in such a distant relocation. The Pentagon has also made it clear that the move could be permanent.

In the past few months, the $1.7bn al-Udeid base in Qatar has been expanded and enhanced to serve as an alternative to Saudi Arabia, which acted host to US headquarters in the first Gulf war, but which has refused to get involved this time. Some Pentagon officials still believe that the Saudis will relent at the last moment, and say that the Prince Sultan air base near Riyadh, where a hi-tech command and control center was completed last summer, is their first choice.

The US air force has since the spring been moving computer equipment and munitions to al-Udeid, home to the region's longest runway (4,500 meters). Engineers are also at work replicating the base's state-of-the-art combined air operations center, from where complex large-scale air raids can be coordinated.

Viewed on their own, each of these individual chess moves looks quotidian. Taken together, they start to look like a well-implemented game plan.

There are already 400 US warplanes in the region.

In another small sign of military wheels turning faster, the Washington Kurdish Institute received a call yesterday from the US air force seeking a "crash course" in Kurdish. It would have to start soon, an air force officer said, and some students might have to leave at short notice.

Gen Franks's force commanders are also already in the Gulf, having quietly established and expanded command posts there over the past few months.

The US third army, CENTCOM's ground component, set up its headquarters in Kuwait in November, and work has been under way since then to transform it into a hub for ground operations. A specialized marine unit with equipment to detect chemical biological or radiological attacks, is also on the way to Kuwait.

The marine headquarters was ordered to Bahrain in January this year, to set up camp alongside the US navy's 5th fleet, which has been based there for years.

Reinforced

US special forces are also believed to have been considerably reinforced in the Gulf. The navy seals have set up a headquarters in Bahrain. Other units are in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, where the SAS is also training.

Large amounts of equipment have been warehoused in the Gulf so that it is instantly available when the order to invade is given. Mr Pike said there were enough tanks, armored cars and munitions in place in Qatar and Kuwait for three heavy mechanized brigades (a total of up to 15,000 troops).

Less visible, but no less definite, is the British move towards military preparedness. The Royal Navy's flagship, the Ark Royal, is on long-planned exercises in the Mediterranean. It could provide a floating command and control center for British forces and base for Royal Marine commandos and special forces.

There are two specific ways in which the RAF could help the US - refueling US navy aircraft and providing intelligence from high-flying Canberra planes equipped with aerial reconnaissance cameras. The third - passive -contribution would be the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. It was used by B-52 bombers in the 1991 Gulf war and in the recent Afghanistan campaign. Equipment loaded on to ships ready to sail from Diego Garcia could be in the Gulf within a week.

On the ground, Britain's contribution would consist of two distinct elements - paratroopers from the 16 assault brigade, SAS troops, and possible marine commandos dropped into Iraq by helicopter, and - in the event of a full-scale land invasion - two heavily armored brigades equipped with Challenger 2 battle tanks.

These are based in Germany and are unlikely to be ready for action in the Gulf before the end of the year, British defense sources say. On top of this litany of military preparations, the bombing, of course, is already under way. Senior British defense sources yesterday told the Guardian that US and UK aircraft were stepping up "no-fly" patrols over southern Iraq to destroy the air defense system, as a prelude to a possible invasion.

British defense sources said yesterday that US and UK planes were patrolling in an "unpredictable" way. However, the past week's air strikes show that they are attacking targets over a wide area.

The targets have included a large Iraqi military base 250 miles south-west of Baghdad and an anti-ship missile base near the southern port of Basra. One of the reasons why the patrols have increased is that US radar-jamming "Prowler" aircraft have returned to the Gulf after action in Afghanistan. British Tornado fighters and bombers based in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia rely on American planes to jam Iraqi radar.

British defense sources have now given up the pretence that the southern no-fly zone is a humanitarian exercise designed to protect Iraqi Shias and Marsh Arabs. They too are increasingly bluntly speaking the language of war.

9/14/02
6:41:14 PM

Greenpeace's Positive Energy

September 7 - September 13 , 2002

Time for Greenpeace's CLEAN ENERGY NOW! campaign's weekly good news update!!!

In this issue:

- Report Card from the World Summit on Sustainable Development

- Los Angeles to Offer Rebates to Consumers Buying Energy Efficient Appliances

- Scotland Commits to 40% Renewable Energy by 2020

- Another Renewable Victory in California

The World Summit on Sustainable Development has come to an end and surprise-surprise the U.S. continues to hold back the rest of the world from moving toward a sustainable future. International groups agree that US was the single leading reason that the Summit failed to commit to clear renewable energy targets. On the closing day of the summit, Colin Powell addressed the plenary and was met with jeers and chants of "Shame on Bush" when he scolded the crowd for not accepting U.S. genetically modified foods, and when he defended the U.S. position on renewable energy.

For more on WSSD see:

http://www.greenpeace.org/features/details?features_id=25094

To view the WSSD report card go to:

http://archive.greenpeace.org/earthsummit/report_card/index.html

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) will introduce, for the first time in its history, rebates for residential customers who purchase qualified energy-efficient appliances and related products. The new program makes $3 million available for rebates through the end of this year, with rebate amounts ranging from $10 to $500. To support the new rebate program, the Home Depot and the LADWP will begin a sweepstakes through September, which will give Los Angeles residents the opportunity to win one of two free brand-new energy-efficient refrigerators or Home Depot Gift Certificates. All rebate applications received by September 30, 2002 are automatically entered.

For details on how to apply go to:

http://www.greenla.com/efficiency/index.htm

Scotland First Minister Jack McConnell reiterated a commitment to increase the share of electricity generated from renewable sources to 40% by the year 2020. This is an aggressive target that can be reached with the tremendous wind and tidal resources available in Scotland. Minister McConnell made this commitment in a speech at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, where he lamented the fact that no firm global commitments to renewable energy were reached.

For more information see:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/pages/news/2002/09/SEFM054.aspx

Gray Davis put his money where his mouth is yesterday by signing into law the Renewables Portfolio Standard and Public Benefits Fund. The Renewables Portfolio Standard will mandate that all private utilities must purchase at least 17% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2017. In addition, the Public Benefits Fund will support renewable energy programs by charging consumers a miniscule fee for every kilowatt hour sold by the state's private utilities. Both of these laws are crucial for the state as we transition into a Clean Energy Economy!

9/14/02
6:39:46 PM

DAILY GRIST

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT, I HOPE TO SEE A STAR TONIGHT

Not too long ago, the Indian capital of New Delhi was one of the most polluted cities in the world; now, you still might not want to run a marathon there, but the city is making serious strides toward cleaning up its air. Dilip Biswas, chair of the city's Central Pollution Control Board, says pollution has dropped 25 percent since 1995, as levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates in the air have fallen sharply. "Now you can see the stars at night," he says. Vehicles account for about 70 percent of the city's pollution, while power plants kick in an additional 15 percent. At the prodding of India's highest court, the government ordered all forms of public transport -- defined as taxis, buses, and three-wheelers -- to switch from diesel to compressed natural gas. So far, about 6,000 of 12,000 buses have made the change, as have thousands of the other vehicles.

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, 13 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=471>

GREEN DAVIS

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) kept the green ink flowing yesterday by signing several more environmental measures into law. Perhaps the most significant of the laws -- what Davis termed "the most ambitious" renewable energy standard in the country -- requires that 20 percent of the electricity produced by private utilities in the state come from green sources by 2017. Enviros cheered the law, while current renewable energy producers called it overly complicated. Davis also gave his stamp of approval to a bill giving agricultural officials greater ability to regulate the application of pesticides within a quarter-mile of school grounds.

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Nancy Vogel, 13 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=468>

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Fred Alvarez, 13 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=467>

only in Grist: Power Shift -- looking for leadership on climate change -- a special edition of Grist Magazine <http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/powershift073102.asp?source=daily>

do good: Take action to plead for a world run on renewable energy <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#positive>

SUNNY DELIGHT?

No, you wouldn't be on another planet if you saw this billboard: "Sun, 93,000,000 miles. Solar-powered station, the Bronx." You'd be in Times Square, Manhattan, looking up at an advertisement for a BP filling station. However, don't be thinking victory is at hand for enviros. The station doesn't power up cars on rays from the sun. Solar energy merely runs the pumps at the site; the product for sale is old-fashioned gasoline. In fact, no signs at the station even mention the solar connection. Still, BP says it has 157 solar-powered gas stations across the U.S., with solar panels providing 6 to 15 percent of the electrical needs of each site. Not everyone is thrilled. "A solar gas station is like a very clean cigarette factory," said Dan Becker of the Sierra Club.

straight to the source: New York Times, Phil Patton, 13 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=466>

only in Grist: Got Sun? -- BP markets clean energy -- by Amanda Griscom in our Powers That Be section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/powers/powers082902.asp?source=daily>

NOT SO JOLLY

An Italian ship carrying 400,000 gallons of diesel and fuel oil as well as highly toxic chemicals grounded yesterday just off a park in South Africa that is home to rare birds, fish, turtles, and plants. A fire has been raging on the Jolly Rubino for days, and the ship has come to rest seven miles south of the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park's main estuary. Oil is reportedly spilling out of the boat, which is in danger of breaking apart and whose crew has been evacuated. The United Nations named the park a World Heritage site in 2000.

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 13 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=469>

WAR CRIMES

War can be hell on the environment, but in the case of Afghanistan, no one knows just how hellish. Under the auspices of the United Nations, five teams of foreign and local scientists are examining the impact of almost 30 years of fighting on the country's natural resources. By December, the teams hope to identify urban pollution hotspots and immediate and long-term threats to vulnerable areas. They also hope to generate ideas for restoring sites where damage has occurred and to train Afghan experts to carry out environmental work in the future. According to former Finnish Environment Minister Pekka Haavisto, who is chairing the U.N. effort, less than 1 percent of Afghanistan's land is currently protected. He said that deforestation (some 30 percent of the country's forests have been lost since 1979) and threats to biodiversity were among the scientists' top concerns.

straight to the source: BBC News, Alex Kirby, 13 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=470>

9/14/02
6:36:20 PM

What War Looks Like

by Howard Zinn

In all the solemn statements by self-important politicians and newspaper columnists about a coming war against Iraq, and even in the troubled comments by some who are opposed to the war, there is something missing.

The talk is about strategy and tactics, geopolitics and personalities. It is about air war and ground war, weapons of mass destruction, arms inspections, alliances, oil, and "regime change."

What is missing is what an American war on Iraq will do to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ordinary human beings who are not concerned with geopolitics and military strategy, and who just want their children to live, to grow up. They are not concerned with "national security" but with personal security, with food and shelter and medical care and peace.

I am speaking of those Iraqis and those Americans who will, with absolute certainty, die in such a war, or lose arms or legs, or be blinded. Or they will be stricken with some strange and agonizing sickness that could lead to their bringing deformed children into the world (as happened to families in Vietnam, Iraq, and also the United States).

True, there has been some discussion of American casualties resulting from a land invasion of Iraq. But, as always when the strategists discuss this, the question is not about the wounded and dead as human beings, but about what number of American casualties would result in public withdrawal of support for the war, and what effect this would have on the upcoming elections for Congress and the Presidency.

That was uppermost in the mind of Lyndon Johnson, as we have learned from the tapes of his White House conversations. He worried about Americans dying if he escalated the war in Vietnam, but what most concerned him was his political future. If we pull out of Vietnam, he told his friend Senator Richard Russell, "they'll impeach me, won't they?"

In any case, American soldiers killed in war are always a matter of statistics. Individual human beings are missing in the numbers. It is left to the poets and novelists to take us by the shoulders and shake us and ask us to look and listen. In World War I, ten million men died on the battlefield, but we needed John Dos Passos to confront us with what that meant: In his novel 1919, he writes of the death of John Doe: "In the tarpaper morgue at Chalons-sur-Marne in the reek of chloride of lime and the dead, they picked out the pine box that held all that was left of John Doe, the scraps of dried viscera and skin bundled in khaki."

Vietnam was a war that filled our heads with statistics, of which one stood out, embedded in the stark monument in Washington: 58,000 dead. But one would have to read the letters from soldiers just before they died to turn those statistics into human beings. And for all those not dead but mutilated in some way, the amputees and paraplegics, one would have to read Ron Kovic's account, in his memoir, "Born on the Fourth of July," of how his spine was shattered and his life transformed.

As for the dead among "the enemy"--that is, those young men, conscripted or cajoled or persuaded to pit their bodies against those of our young men--that has not been a concern of our political leaders, our generals, our newspapers and magazines, our television networks. To this day, most Americans have no idea, or only the vaguest, of how many Vietnamese--soldiers and civilians (actually, a million of each)--died under American bombs and shells.

And for those who know the figures, the men, women, children behind the statistics remained unknown until a picture appeared of a Vietnamese girl running down a road, her skin shredding from napalm, until Americans saw photos of women and children huddled in a trench as GIs poured automatic rifle fire into their bodies.

Ten years ago, in that first war against Iraq, our leaders were proud of the fact that there were only a few hundred American casualties (one wonders if the families of those soldiers would endorse the word "only"). When a reporter asked General Colin Powell if he knew how many Iraqis died in that war, he replied: "That is really not a matter I am terribly interested in." A high Pentagon official told The Boston Globe, "To tell you the truth, we're not really focusing on this question."

Americans knew that this nation's casualties were few in the Gulf War, and a combination of government control of the press and the media's meek acceptance of that control ensured that the American people would not be confronted, as they had been in Vietnam, with Iraqi dead and dying.

There were occasional glimpses of the horrors inflicted on the people of Iraq, flashes of truth in the newspapers that quickly disappeared. In mid-February 1991, U.S. planes dropped bombs on an air raid shelter in Baghdad at four in the morning, killing 400 to 500 people--mostly women and children--who were huddled there to escape the incessant bombing. An Associated Press reporter, one of the few allowed to go to the site, said: "Most of the recovered bodies were charred and mutilated beyond recognition."

In the final stage of the Gulf War, American troops engaged in a ground assault on Iraqi positions in Kuwait. As in the air war, they encountered virtually no resistance. With victory certain and the Iraqi army in full flight, U.S. planes kept strafing the retreating soldiers who clogged the highway out of Kuwait City. A reporter called the scene "a blazing hell, a gruesome testament. To the east and west across the sand lay the bodies of those fleeing." That grisly scene appeared for a moment in the press and then vanished in the exultation of a victorious war, in which politicians of both parties and the press joined. President Bush crowed: "The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian peninsula." The two major news magazines, Time and Newsweek, printed special editions hailing the victory. Each devoted about a hundred pages to the celebration, mentioning proudly the small number of American casualties. They said not a word about the tens of thousands of Iraqis--soldiers and civilians--themselves victims first of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and then of George Bush's war.

There was no photograph of a single dead Iraqi child, no names of particular Iraqis, no images of suffering and grief to convey to the American people what our overwhelming military machine was doing to other human beings.

The bombing of Afghanistan has been treated as if human beings are of little consequence. It was been portrayed as a "war on terrorism," not a war on men, women, children. The few press reports of "accidents" were quickly followed with denials, excuses, justifications. There has been some bandying about of numbers of Afghan civilian deaths--but always numbers.

Only rarely has the human story, with names and images, come through as more than a flash of truth, as one day when I read of a ten-year old boy, named Noor Mohammed, lying on a hospital bed on the Pakistani border, his eyes gone, his hands blown off, a victim of American bombs.

Surely, we must discuss the political issues. We note that an attack on Iraq would be a flagrant violation of international law. We note that the mere possession of dangerous weapons is not grounds for war--else we would have to make war on dozens of countries. We point out that the country that possesses by far the most "weapons of mass destruction" is our country, which has used them more often and with more deadly results than any nation on Earth. We can point to our national history of expansion and aggression. We have powerful evidence of deception and hypocrisy at the highest levels of our government.

But, as we contemplate an American attack on Iraq, should we not go beyond the agendas of the politicians and the experts? (John le Carre has one of his characters say: "I despise experts more than anyone on earth.")

Should we not ask everyone to stop the high-blown talk for a moment and imagine what war will do to human beings whose faces will not be known to us, whose names will not appear except on some future war memorial?

For this we will need the help of people in the arts, those who through time--from Euripedes to Bob Dylan--have written and sung about specific, recognizable victims of war. In 1935, Jean Giraudoux, the French playwright, with the memory of the first World War still in his head, wrote "The Trojan War Will Not Take Place." Demokos, a Trojan soldier, asks the aged Hecuba to tell him "what war looks like." She responds: "Like the bottom of a baboon. When the baboon is up in a tree, with its hind end facing us, there is the face of war exactly: scarlet, scaly, glazed, framed in a clotted, filthy wig."

If enough Americans could see that, perhaps the war on Iraq would not take place.

Source: http://www.Progressive.org/webex/wxzinn082802.html

9/14/02
6:20:31 PM

http://www.TomPaine.com

WHY AREN'T U.S. JOURNALISTS REPORTING FROM IRAQ?

If They'd Go, They Know Why Cheney's Claim Of A Saddam-Al Qaeda Axis Is Absurd

by Nina Burleigh

American journalists have totally fallen down on the job when it comes to reporting from Baghdad. That allows the White House to make increasingly hyperbolic -- and false -- claims about the Iraqi threat to America.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6363

MEMORIALS: SACRED FOR TODAY; COMPELLING FOR TOMORROW

by Jane Holtz Kay

"The mission of memorial-makers is to serve times to come... to enhance the space of the living along with the dead."

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6368

TURNING THE DEBATE ON IRAQ TO A DEBATE ON THE UNITED NATIONS

An Analysis Of George W. Bush's U.N. Address

by Richard Blow

The President begins the international debate on war with Iraq by making support for that war a referendum on the United Nations itself.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6373

PUBLIC OPINION WATCH:

August 26 - August 30

A Weekly Compendium And Commentary On Recent Polling

by Ruy Teixeira

Faltering Economy, Anxious Workers... Sure We Really Need Those Ground Troops?

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6333

AND CHECK OUT OUR MOST RECENT OP AD ONLINE...

TOWARD A MORE PERFECT UNION

Learning From 9/11

An Essay by Sam Smith

"The 9/11 attackers, and the tens of millions around the world who share some measure of their anger, have only seen our money and our fist -- not the decency, democracy, and dream that made America strong in the first place."

http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opad.cfm/ID/6355

AND DON'T MISS THESE SPECIAL FEATURES:

A LIBERAL PATRIOT

Steven Rosenfeld's exclusive interview with singer/songwriter STEVE EARLE

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6262

THE PATH TO SECURITY, AT HOME AND ABROAD

The second of two special 9/11 essays by HOWARD ZINN

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6277

THE IMPLACABLE OTHER

by BARBARA EHRENREICH

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6367

9/14/02
6:17:16 PM

Support for independent 9/11 commission?

by Dana Bash, CNN Washington, September 12, 2002

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Members of Congress stood united as they marked the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks. But will they also stand together to support an independent commission to investigate 9/11 intelligence lapses?

Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut says he's likely to offer an amendment to the Homeland Security bill to create such a commission, perhaps next week.

A GOP congressional source says that as many as four or five Republican senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee may now be willing to support an independent commission, even though the Bush administration is against the idea.

Apparently frustrated by the minimal progress the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee is making, senators who were once reluctant to support an independent commission now believe it may be the only way to get some answers as to why intelligence agencies were caught flat-footed on September 11.

The joint committee's funding runs out in February, and lawmakers on the committee say they have been met with consistent resistance in getting information from the agencies they are investigating.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, now supports the idea and even Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham, D-Florida, who was reluctant to vote for a commission earlier this year, now says through a spokesman he would vote for it if it came up.

As for Lieberman, he knows the "Big Mo" when he sees it.

"Both Senator McCain and I feel this is an appropriate vehicle. What could be more appropriate than the Department of Homeland Security bill to make certain we know everything we can know about September 11?" Lieberman said.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, told reporters earlier this week he is still skeptical of any and all commissions because no one pays attention to them.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/12/inside.buzz/index.html

9/14/02
6:01:39 PM

Fallout: The Hidden Environmental Consequences of 9/11

by Juan Gonzalez, In These Times, September 10, 2002

On Sept. 17, 2001, less than one week after the World Trade Center collapse, tens of thousands of office workers returned to their jobs near Ground Zero after receiving the go-ahead from federal and local safety officials.

Federal and city government wanted New York and the rest of the nation, which had been virtually paralyzed in the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, to return to normal as quickly as possible. President George W. Bush, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and other leaders needed to show the world that the United States would not be intimidated by terrorism.

There was another more pressing imperative at work, however: The longer that Wall Street and the nation's chief financial markets remained closed, the greater the likelihood of a stock meltdown and perhaps long-lasting damage to investors and the U.S. economy.

To achieve a rapid return to normalcy the government needed to persuade a jittery public that it was safe for civilians to reoccupy the scores of commercial skyscrapers and residential buildings in Lower Manhattan. With uncontrolled fires still raging in the debris of the towers, with thousands of bodies still buried in the rubble, and with the trauma of the terrorist attacks still fresh in their minds, many New Yorkers were understandably reluctant to return so quickly. Nonetheless, Wall Street and much of Lower Manhattan reopened for business on September 17.

The nation's top environmental official, Christie Todd Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who had given her preliminary endorsement of the reopening a few days earlier, issued an official statement of approval on Sept. 18. "I am glad to reassure the people of New York ... that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink," she announced.

Similar assurances were given by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the New York City Department of Health. Even as they made those statements, however, officials knew that their own preliminary environmental tests of the air, dust and water in Lower Manhattan had revealed some troubling readings.

The tests found that considerable amounts of asbestos and heavy metals had been detected in dust samples throughout the area. Within a few weeks, officials would also receive the first results of aerial surveys conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) pinpointing the precise locations of hundreds of asbestos "hot spots" on rooftops, buildings and streets throughout the area, including some that were half a mile or more from the collapsed buildings. Before the end of September, the USGS would also report that dust on the ground and in the air downtown was highly caustic, with alkalinity levels that made it as potent as household drain cleaner. Health officials withheld this information from the public for several months.

Given the scale and unprecedented nature of the World Trade Center catastrophe, it is understandable that during the first few days after Sept. 11, everyone, including public health officials, was focused on guarding against any further attacks and on rescuing the thousands of victims buried beneath the rubble. Surely, no American city has ever confronted a calamity of this scale, nor has any nation faced the simultaneous release of such a complex array of toxic substances into a densely populated downtown area.

Despite their initial safety assurances on Sept. 18, officials were scampering to compile a comprehensive inventory of what contaminants or hazardous materials had been stored inside the mammoth Trade Center complex before the attacks. They needed the information to know what materials were feeding the dozens of fires burning at temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and persisting despite all efforts to extinguish them.

EPA officials and fire-fighting experts were well aware, from previous studies of a handful of spectacular and tragic fires in hotels, commercial buildings and downtown areas, that such blazes are capable of releasing a witch's brew of some of the most toxic substances known -- including mercury, benzene, lead, chlorinated hydrocarbons and dioxins. Despite this prior knowledge, federal officials rushed to dismiss or understate potential health dangers to the public and rescue workers at the site during those first few days.

Initially, the various health agencies also withheld from the public most results of their environmental testing. The state's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) refused outright to release the data, claiming that the test results were part of a "criminal investigation" --presumably the Sept. 11 hijackings -- and the city has yet to release all of its data.

On the surface at least, the EPA was more responsive than either the city or state agencies. It began to report some of its test results on its Web page on Sept. 27. Coincidentally, that was the same day the agency learned that environmental lawyer and activist Joel Kupferman of the nonprofit New York Environmental Law and Justice Project had contacted my newspaper, the New York Daily News, and provided us with the results of independent tests he had conducted of World Trade Center debris. Kupferman's results became the first direct challenge to Whitman's all-clear pronouncements. They revealed high levels of asbestos and fiberglass in a substantial portion of the samples. From then on, the EPA sought to calm the public by publishing on its Web page summaries of daily monitoring reports for asbestos in outdoor air, and the agency eventually expanded those summaries to include the results of periodic tests for more than a dozen toxic substances. The summaries invariably highlighted those results that indicated no danger, while the agency repeatedly downplayed or withheld test results that might raise public alarm.

The federal government has never established ambient safety levels for many of the contaminants detected in air samples taken around Ground Zero. Instead of admitting they had no certainty of what danger these substances might cause, EPA risk experts at the New York regional headquarters devised ad hoc safety "benchmarks" or "removal action guidelines." They then misled the public into believing these were federally approved safety levels and reported that only a few of their test results were above these levels.

Once displaced workers and residents returned to their jobs and homes near the disaster site, a significant number of people began to suffer from respiratory and other health problems. Mark Bodenheimer was one of them. A veteran teacher at Stuyvesant High School, the city's most prestigious public school, Bodenheimer and the rest of the students and staff returned to the building, which is located a few blocks north of Ground Zero, on Oct. 9, when the city's Board of Education reopened the school for classes after conducting a $1 million asbestos cleanup.

"The air in the building smelled terrible," Bodenheimer said. "I had no respiratory problems before this, but I was back there just five days when I started getting constant sore throats and severe headaches." His doctor advised him to get out of the school. Bodenheimer, a Stuyvesant graduate who had taught there for decades, reluctantly accepted a transfer to the Bronx.

Bodenheimer was no isolated case. A survey of three residential areas near the site, conducted quietly in October by the Centers for Disease Control and the city's own health department, revealed just how widespread such symptoms were: Nearly 50 percent of those questioned reported physical problems likely to be related to the Trade Center collapse, such as nose, throat and eye irritation, and 40 percent said they were suffering from persistent coughing. Like other disturbing information about the environment around Ground Zero, the public never heard much about this survey. The results were released quietly by the health department in a press release late one Friday afternoon in January 2002 --three months after it had been conducted -- and received virtually no media attention.

Yet there were too many people getting sick to ignore them all. According to a February 2002 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, at least l0,000 people in Lower Manhattan suffered immediate health problems from exposure to the air near Ground Zero. Faced with a massive public outcry and growing doubts about the environment, federal and local officials hunkered down and kept repeating the same line: Any respiratory problems were temporary, a result of smoke and dust from fires that would soon be extinguished. While such symptoms were discomforting, the officials claimed, they posed no serious short-term or long-term dangers.

The contaminant that got the most attention at first was asbestos, a mineral widely employed as fireproofing material before the federal government banned many of its uses in 1975. Asbestos fibers, once lodged in the lungs, can cause asbestosis, cancer and mesothelioma, a rare and fatal disease of the lining of the lung. The federal asbestos ban took effect while the Twin Towers were under construction; thus, the mineral was used for fireproofing of steel beams and insulation of pipes in approximately 40 floors of one tower and 20 floors of the other. Ever since the ban, the government has regulated removal of asbestos from buildings.

EPA rules clearly spell out when and how asbestos must be removed, but city and federal officials ignored those regulations at the Trade Center site. EPA officials misled the public about what federal regulations define as a "safety standard" for exposure to asbestos as well as what the legal requirements are for handling asbestos-contaminated matter. In fact, asbestos levels measured in many parts of Lower Manhattan were higher than those found in places like Libby, Montana-where the EPA is currently conducting a massive cleanup because of the town's widespread asbestos contamination.

News of toxic substances other than asbestos being released into the air was not made public until Oct. 26, six weeks after the collapse of the towers, when the Daily News published my front-page column on the subject. My information had been gleaned from a quick review of nearly 800 pages of EPA test data, which the agency had been forced to release after Kupferman filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Only then did EPA officials concede that their testing had found elevated levels of other contaminants, including benzene, dioxins, PCBs, lead and chromium in the air and in water draining into the Hudson River from the Trade Center. However, agency officials insisted at a City Hall press conference that such high readings had occurred only as occasional "spikes"; that they were confined almost exclusively to the immediate vicinity of the debris pile; and that they would soon disappear following the extinguishing of the fires. The fires, however, turned out to be far more difficult to put out than anyone had initially predicted. They burned for nearly four months and even in late January were still smoldering below sections of the debris pile.

In the case of dioxins, among the most toxic substances known, the EPA repeatedly told the public that its test results showed very few readings above the agency's "removal action guidelines." In fact, the EPA has no standards for safe dioxin levels in air. Faced with high-level dioxin emissions around Ground Zero more typical of a volcanic eruption, the agency's top officials in the New York region simply asked their risk assessors to devise their own removal action guidelines. They then told the public that few of its tests had exceeded those guidelines, when in fact a substantial number of them had. EPA scientists in other parts of the country were shocked when they learned that the New York region was posting safety benchmarks for dioxin that had not gone through the agency's normal peer review process.

It wasn't until December that the agency began releasing results of ambient air tests it had conducted for dioxin outside of the actual Ground Zero site. Some of those tests showed high dioxin levels as far as half a mile away from the trade center. Other agency tests showed dangerous levels of PCBs in dust nearly a mile north of Ground Zero, in an area that had been reopened to the public on Sept. 17.

"What happened here is at the level of Watergate," says Dr. Marjorie Clarke, scientist-in-residence at Lehman College in New York and an expert on dioxin and furan emissions from incinerators. "They covered up important information. It just seems to me that, from the get go, a decision had been made from some high-up government types that there is not going to be a problem here."

Federal health and safety officials were not alone in misleading the public, however. Mayor Giuliani, New York City Health Commissioner Neal Cohen and Joseph Miele of the city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) abandoned their responsibility to safeguard the public's health and grossly neglected safety issues for thousands of rescue workers at Ground Zero.

From the first moments of the attacks, Giuliani assumed direct operational control over all aspects of the governmental response. The mayor made virtually all major announcements, whether about the death toll, the identities of officials who had perished, the progress of the rescue work, public security procedures, assessments of physical damage to Lower Manhattan, traffic restrictions for commuters, assistance to businesses and families of victims, and even dates and locations for funerals of firefighters.

Yet when it came to public health issues and environmental damage, Giuliani and his health commissioner said very little, except reiterate the EPA's assurances about air quality. It seems unlikely that Giuliani and Cohen were simply repeating what the EPA told them out of naivete. Both men had in the past evinced an arrogant-some would say reckless-disregard for public health matters. From 1999 to 2001, for instance, Giuliani spearheaded a massive pesticide-spraying campaign throughout the city to combat an outbreak of West Nile virus, first with the controversial pesticide malathion, then with the less potent but still dangerous Anvil. The spray campaign, perhaps the largest government urban pesticide experiment in U.S. history, sparked a huge public outcry when hundreds of city residents fell sick from the pesticide fumes and when thousands of fish began to turn up dead in Long Island Sound and in Staten Island's freshwater ponds.

So it should come as no surprise that after the Sept. 11 attacks a legendary hands-on administrator like Giuliani paid so little attention to the public health aspects of the tragedy. Within days of the collapse the various levels of government agreed to a division of labor on safety concerns: City Hall left the responsibility for all testing of the outside air and water around Lower Manhattan to federal and state health officials, while it assumed responsibility for checking and certifying the safety of the interior of any commercial or residential areas.

The city's portion of the work, in turn, was left to the 6,000-member DEP, an agency whose primary job is to maintain and monitor the city's vast drinking water and sewage disposal system, but that also has responsibility for handling hazardous-waste problems. The department, however, did not have nearly enough staff to cope with the pollution hazards it now confronted. Instead of admitting the problem and seeking help from other levels of government, city officials opted for allowing owners of private buildings to carry out their own testing and cleanup with little or no government oversight.

To understand the enormity of the environmental problem, we need to come to grips with the sheer size of what was destroyed on Sept. 11. The quantity of contaminants contained within the buildings is truly staggering.

Consider just one substance, lead, as an example. Lead is an extremely dangerous heavy metal. Inhaling even minute quantities of lead dust over an extended period can cause brain damage. The use of lead in paint has been banned in the United States for decades, but the interiors of many inner-city tenements still contain undercoats of it. At the Trade Center, the danger came not from lead in paint, but from lead inside computers. The average personal computer contains anywhere from four to eight pounds of lead. We know that approximately 50,000 people worked in the two towers, and that most of them used personal computers. Several thousand more worked at Seven World Trade Center, a 47-story building just north of the Twin Towers, and at other, smaller structures on the site that were also destroyed. We can thus assume that at least 10,000 PCs, in addition to hundreds of servers and mainframe computers connected to them, were pulverized into dust that day or vaporized by the fires in the subsequent months. It is likely, therefore, that a minimum of 200,000 to 400,000 pounds of lead were released into the air, ground and buildings around the site.

Even if all individual contaminants in the air had been below permissible federal safety levels, there is yet another troubling concern for many scientists, what some call the "unknown synergistic effect" of exposure to even low levels of a variety of toxic substances at one time. "There were probably a thousand or more chemicals in that soup," says industrial hygienist Monona Rossol. "No one knows how that could affect a person."

Yet for weeks after the collapse, even when hope of finding any survivors had long faded, safety officials failed to coordinate or enforce efforts to ensure that thousands of firefighters, police, and rescue and cleanup workers at the site were properly protected against toxic releases. More than 200 New York City firefighters who served at Ground Zero are now on medical leave, and as many as 700 have exhibited respiratory problems-what is now called the World Trade Center cough. Many of those have been assigned to light duty, and it is feared a good portion may never be able to fight fires again.

In addition, a troubling number of rescue workers from other parts of the country who had volunteered at Ground Zero are reporting serious health problems. In Ohio, 37 of 74 members of Ohio Task Force One, a group of emergency responders who volunteered to work at Ground Zero, have become ill since returning home. In California, 100 of 395 emergency responders who worked at Ground Zero between Sept. 12 and Oct.. 7 have filed workers' compensation claims because of illness they say is related to the World Trade Center catastrophe.

Five months after the disaster, Dr. Stephen Levin of the Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital stated that "high rates" of the hundreds of iron workers and other recovery personnel at Ground Zero examined by his center have experienced respiratory problems. Experts who have carried out long-term studies of the health effects of such fires suggest that this is only the tip of the iceberg of the health problems firefighters and rescue and cleanup workers will face in the future.

Whitman, Giuliani and other public officials should have told New Yorkers the truth from the start-that no one could guarantee the air around Ground Zero was safe because no one had ever confronted a disaster of such proportions. They should also have released all the raw data on government testing as soon as they had the results and made clear that safety levels for many of these toxins did not even exist.

The early blanket assurances that government officials issued were a grave mistake, and their continued defense of those assurances in the face of widespread public skepticism was inexcusable. Thousands of people may end up paying for that deception through unnecessary illness or premature death in the decades to come. In their rush to return New York City and Wall Street to business as usual, these shortsighted officials paved the way for a second wave of victims from the World Trade Center tragedy.

Juan Gonzalez is a columnist with the New York Daily News and a contributing editor of In These Times. This article is excerpted from "Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse" (The New Press).

Source: http://www.inTheseTimes.com

9/14/02
5:58:47 PM

AlterNet Headlines

http://www.alternet.org

THE ANNIVERSARY OF A NEO-IMPERIAL MOMENT

Jim Lobe, AlterNet

Bush's foreign policy -- including the plan to attack Iraq -- is not about fighting terrorism, but dreams of global dominance as revealed in a document leaked 10 years ago.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14097

Got something to say? Take part in a lively debate on Iraq in AlterNet's discussion forums:

http://forums.alternet.org/guest/motet?show+Currents+543+725-

ECSTASY BEGETS EMPATHY

Sheerly Avni, Salon

Psychiatrist and drug researcher Dr. Charles Grob sees value in MDMA -- when it's taken in therapy, not at a rave.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14090

12 THINGS TO DO NOW ABOUT CORPORATIONS

Sarah Ruth van Gelder, YES! Magazine

Corporate excess goes much further than flawed accounting --it has corrupted our very democracy. Here are 12 things ordinary citizens can do about it.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14086

CHANGES WROUGHT BY 9/11: NOT WHAT YOU EXPECTED

Don Hazen and Tai Moses and Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet

What were you afraid of on Sept. 11, 2001? What frightens you today, one year later? Chances are, the two answers are quite different.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13923

THE YEAR IN YOUTH ACTIVISM

It's been a landmark year for youth organizing. WireTap's Youth Activism Timeline shows that young people everywhere are coming forward to demand a better world.

*In WireTap: http://www.wiretapmag.org/story.html?StoryID=14081

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS

Eric Alterman, The Nation

Ann Coulter's very existence as a public figure is insulting to our collective intelligence. Yet her slanderous screed garners praise from even liberal outlets.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14089

WEN HO LEE NEXT TIME -- PATRIOT ACT THREATENS ASIAN AMERICANS

Victor M. Hwang and Ivy Lee, Pacific News Service

With continuing perceptions that Asian Americans are disloyal to America, it's time to gauge the impact of the Patriot Act on the community.

*In Rights & Liberties: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=33

HOW GLOBAL WARMING WILL BURN BUSH

Stephanie Mencimer, Washington Monthly

In the hopes of spurring Dubya into action on climate change, here is a projection of what global warming will do to his beloved Crawford, Texas, summer home ranch.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14045

FALLOUT: THE HIDDEN ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF 9/11

Juan Gonzalez, In These Times

Environmental and city officials repeatedly withheld clear evidence of toxic contamination around Ground Zero for political reasons.

*In EnviroHealth: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=18

9/14/02
5:56:04 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

US nuclear guards said overworked, undertrained - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17739/story.htm

US still investigating ship off New Jersey shore - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17743/story.htm

New California law doubles renewable energy target - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17745/story.htm

US bill would streamline Alaska natgas pipeline - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17746/story.htm

USDA donates 200,000 tonnes of US crops to Jordan - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17750/story.htm

Flotilla sails to protest UK nuclear fuel ships - REPUBLIC OF IRELAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17751/story.htm

"Free Willy" star flooded in offers for retirement - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17742/story.htm

FEATURE - Indian capital breathes easy after pollution checks - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17741/story.htm

German beer can row rattles Stoiber poll campaign - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17749/story.htm

More fish farms set for Canada's Pacific coast - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17747/story.htm

EU's Byrne outlines tighter foot-and-mouth control - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17744/story.htm

EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17748/story.htm

Geodynamics shares start trade up one cent - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17740/story.htm

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:

CHINA : Hong Kong Actor Ekin Cheng, Singer Elle Chiu and Mango Wong Pose in Hong Kong -http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17753

TURKEY : Two Three-and-a-Half Month Old Lion Cubs Rest in their Cage in a Zoo in Izmir http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17752

9/14/02
5:55:10 PM

Public Citize

Sept. 12, 2002

Congressional Rejection of Nuclear Security Is Irresponsible

One Year After Sept. 11 Attacks, Energy Bill Conferees Opt Against Security Provisions in Price-Anderson Act

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senate and House members of the energy bill conference committee who today rejected amendments to improve security at nuclear power plants acted irresponsibly, Public Citizen said.

Conferees met to vote on the controversial Price-Anderson Act. The legislation, widely opposed by public interest and environmental organizations, extends insurance subsidies to the nuclear industry and caps the amount of monetary damages nuclear operators must pay in the event of an accident, leaving the government - i.e., taxpayers - to pick up the tab. Existing reactors are covered regardless of whether Price-Anderson is reauthorized; however, extending the act means that any new nuclear reactors will also get the liability protection.

The House last fall reauthorized the Price-Anderson Act as stand-alone legislation (H.R. 2983) that included certain security provisions drafted by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The Senate never acted on the bill but agreed to include the Price-Anderson reauthorization as an amendment to the energy bill (H.R. 4), but without the security provisions. Both versions were on the table during today's energy bill negotiations.

"Reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act increases nuclear risks by encouraging the construction of new reactors," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "But having deciding to limit the nuclear industry's liability, it is stunning that energy conferees refused to include even modest nuclear security provisions. This increases the potential liability of the taxpayer."

U.S. Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and James Jeffords (I-Vt.) today introduced as an amendment the Nuclear Security Act, which was approved unanimously in July by the Environment and Public Works Committee. Among other provisions, the amendment would establish a task force to assess vulnerabilities at nuclear facilities and require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct "security response evaluations" every three years using a mock terrorist team to test the ability of security forces to guard nuclear facilities.

The Reid/Jeffords amendment was withdrawn due to opposition from a majority of the Senate conferees. Senate conferees had already rejected the House proposal to adopt security provisions contained in H.R. 2983 as "outside the scope of the conference." House Republican conferees, blaming Senate conferee opposition and citing a misplaced desire to expedite Price-Anderson reauthorization, then voted down additional safety and security amendments introduced by Markey and Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

The Senate's Homeland Security Act, moving toward a possible vote next week, similarly fails to address the issue of nuclear security.

"It is appalling that one year after the September 11 attacks, Congress has yet to enact legislation to address nuclear security," said Lisa Gue, senior energy analyst with Public Citizen. "In light of the recent revelations about terrorists targeting these facilities in the future, now is the time to pass strong security provisions. What is Congress waiting for? And why is it using procedural excuses to avoid enacting nuclear facility and material security when President Bush is pushing to go to war over Iraq's effort to gain access to nuclear materials?"

Following news reports earlier this week of terrorist plots against nuclear power plants, a coalition of national environmental and public interest organizations circulated a letter to energy conferees urging them not to reauthorize Price-Anderson and to consider issues of nuclear security.

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

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

9/14/02
5:52:59 PM

Corporate Dominance Of U.S. TV

WHO OWNS WHAT

Adbusters.org 9-12-2

Currently, the realm of television in its entirety is controlled by 6-7 mega-corporations in the U.S. and strongly dominated by three worldwide. When only a few players run the most powerful medium of our time with the same agenda, the small fry (read: you and I) are shut out of the culture-making process.

In the face of increasing homogenization, we incite you to join the http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/twominute.html>Two Minute Media Revolution - a collective demand that broadcasters set aside two minutes of airtime every hour for citizen-produced advocacy messages.

Find out who's big and what they own http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#ge> GENERAL ELECTRIC http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#westing> WESTINGHOUSE / CBS http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#viacom> VIACOM INTERNATIONAL http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#disney> DISNEY http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#time> TIME-WARNER http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#fox> NEWS CORPORATION / FOX NETWORKS GENERAL ELECTRIC Television Holdings:

NBC: includes 13 stations, 28% of US households. NBC Network News: The Today Show, Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, NBC News at Sunrise.

CNBC business television; MSNBC 24-hour cable and Internet news service (co-owned by NBC and Microsoft); Court TV (co-owned with Time Warner), Bravo (50%), A&E (25%), History Channel (25%).

Other Holdings:

GE Consumer Electronics. GE Power Systems: produces turbines for nuclear reactors and power plants. GE Plastics: produces military hardware and nuclear power equipment. GE Transportation Systems: runs diesel and electric trains. http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#top>

WESTINGHOUSE / CBS INC. Television Holdings:

CBS: includes 14 stations and over 200 affiliates in the US. CBS Network News: 60 minutes, 48 hours, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, CBS Morning News, Up to the Minute. Country Music Television, The Nashville Network, 2 regional sports networks. Group W Satellite Communications.

Other Holdings:

Westinghouse Electric Company: provides services to the nuclear power industry. Westinghouse Government Environmental Services Company: disposes of nuclear and hazardous wastes. Also operates 4 government-owned nuclear power plants in the US. Energy Systems: provides nuclear power plant design and maintenance. http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#top>

VIACOM INTERNATIONAL INC. Television Holdings:

Paramount Television, Spelling Television, MTV, VH-1, Showtime, The Movie Channel, UPN (joint owner), Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Sundance Channel (joint owner), Flix. 20 major market US stations.

Media Holdings:

Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Video, Blockbuster Video, Famous Players Theatres, Paramount Parks. Simon & Schuster Publishing.

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#top>

DISNEY / ABC / CAP Television Holdings:

ABC: includes 10 stations, 24% of US households. ABC Network News: Prime Time Live, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America. ESPN, Lifetime Television (50%), as well as minority holdings in A&E, History Channel and E! Disney Channel/Disney Television, Touchtone Television.

Media Holdings:

Miramax, Touchtone Pictures. Magazines: Jane, Los Angeles Magazine, W, Discover. 3 music labels, 11 major local newspapers. Hyperion book publishers. Infoseek Internet search engine (43%).

Other Holdings:

Sid R. Bass (major shares) crude oil and gas. All Disney Theme Parks, Walt Disney Cruise Lines.

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#top>

TIME-WARNER TBS - AOL

America Online (AOL) acquired Time Warneröthe largest merger in corporate history.

Television Holdings:

CNN, HBO, Cinemax, TBS Superstation, Turner Network Television, Turner Classic Movies, Warner Brothers Television, Cartoon Network, Sega Channel, TNT, Comedy Central (50%), E! (49%), Court TV (50%). Largest owner of cable systems in the US with an estimated 13 million subscribers.

Media Holdings:

HBO Independent Productions, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, Castle Rock, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera. Music: Atlantic, Elektra, Rhino, Sire, Warner Bros. Records, EMI, WEA, Sub Pop (distribution) = the worldâs largest music company. 33 magazines including Time, Sports Illustrated, People, In Style, Fortune, Book of the Month Club, Entertainment Weekly, Life, DC Comics (50%), and MAD Magazine.

Other Holdings:

Sports: The Atlanta Braves, The Atlanta Hawks, World Championship Wrestling.

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/mediacarta/toolbox/who_owns/#top> NEWS CORPORATION LTD. / FOX NETWORKS (Rupert Murdoch)

Television Holdings:

Fox Television: includes 22 stations, 50% of US households. Fox International: extensive worldwide cable and satellite networks include British Sky Broadcasting (40%); VOX, Germany (49.9%); Canal Fox, Latin America; FOXTEL, Australia (50%); STAR TV, Asia; IskyB, India; Bahasa Programming Ltd., Indonesia (50%); and News Broadcasting, Japan (80%). The Golf Channel (33%).

MEDIA HOLDINGS:

Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Searchlight. 132 newspapers (113 in Australia alone) including the New York Post, the London Times and The Australian. 25 magazines including TV Guide and The Weekly Standard. HarperCollins books.

OTHER HOLDINGS:

Sports: LA Dodgers, LA Kings, LA Lakers, National Rugby League. Ansett Australia airlines, Ansett New Zealand airlines. Rupert Murdoch: Board of Directors, Philip Morris (USA).

Excerpted from http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Bureau/1646/list_txt.html

Disney

DISNEY/CAP CITIES (Ranked No. 48 in Forbes 500) ABC: Television stations covering 24.5% of US households; ABC Radio (owns 21 stations, largest radio

network in US; 24% od US households).ABC Network News: Good Morning America, Prime Time Live, World News Tonight, 20/20, Nightline, World News with Peter Jennings TV and Cable: Disney Channel, Disney Television (58 hours/week syndicated programming); Touchstone Television (Ellen, Home Improvement), A&E (37% with Hearst and GE), LIfetime Network (50%), ESPN (80%), ESPN 2 (80%), Buena Vista Television. Magazines: Chilton Publishers (trade publications), Fairchild Publications (W.Wear Daily), L.A. Magazine, Institutional Investor, Disney Publishing Inc. Motion Pictures: Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Film Corp., Buena Vista Pictures (distribution). Book Publishing: Hyperion Books, Chilton Publications Retail: 429 Disney Stores Music: Hollywood Records, Wonderland Music, Walt Disney Records Multimedia: Disney Interactive, Disney.com, Americast, ABC online Sports Teams: Mighty Ducks, California Angels Theme Parks/resorts: Disneyland, Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Paris (39%), Tokyo Disneyland, Disney Vacation Club, WCO Vacationland Resorts, Disney Institute, Disney Cruiseline Newspapers: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Kansas City Star, St. Louis Daily Record, Narragansett Times, Oakland Press & Reminder (Pontiac, MI), County Press (Lapeer, MI), Times-Leader (Wilkes-Barre, PA), Belleville News-Democrat (IL), Albany Democrat (OR), Daily Tidings (Ashland, OR), Sutton Industries and Penny Power (shoppers) Major investors include Sid Bass et al (oil and gas production), Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffet, and State Farm Insurance.

General Electric

Media: NBC, CNBC, MSNBC (50% with Microsoft), Court TV, Bravo, A&E, The History Channel (with ABC and Hearst) NBC Network News: The Today Show, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, NBC Nightly News/Tom Brokaw, Nightside Transportation: GE Transportation Systems (diesel and electric trains) Turbines for nuclear reactors and electric power plants: GE Power Generation Electrical Equipment: Electrical Distribution and Control Communications: GE Americom (satellites), GE Capital Communications Services (long distance telephone) Motors and Controls: GE Motors and Industrial Systems Insurance: GNA Corporation & other insurance firms Aircraft engines: GE Aircraft Engines Lighting: GE Lighting Appliances: GE Appliances (GE, Hotpoint, and others) Medical Services: GE Medical Systems (MRIs, X-rays) Networking Software: GE Information Services Financial: GE Capital (private label and bank credit card loans, mortgages & other loans; asset management) Westinghouse

Media: CBS: 14 US TV Stations CBS Network News: CBS Morning News, 60 Minutes, CBS This Morning, 48 Hours, Face the Nation, Up to the Minute, CBS Evening News/Dan Rather CBS Radio: 21 FM stations, 18 AM stations; 1,900 stations carry some CBS programming; about 450 carry CBS News. Cable: CMT, Country Music Television (33% owners with Gaylord Entertainment); Home Team Sports, TNN The Nashville Network Nuclear power plant design and manufacture: Energy Systems (40% of the world's nuclear plants use Westinghouse engineering). Waste disposal (including hazardous and radioactive:Resource Energy Systems; Scientific Ecology Group; Westinghouse Remeiation Services; GESCO (this branch of the company also operates 4 government owned nuclear facilties, including Savannah River; installed reactors in Sea Wolf, the Navy' new nuclear submarines; and refueled the U.S.S. Enterprise, the first nuclear aircraft carrier. It also recently won a contract to dispose of 2,253 tons of stockpiled chemical weapons at an Army base in Anniston, Alabama.) Group W Satellite Communications (satellite istribution of TV programming) Parts for electric power plants: Power Generation Communications and Information: Telephone, network and wireless communications systems; security systems. Westinghouse Pension Management WPIC Corporation (insurance, communications, financing.) Brandywine Asset Management (investment advisors)

9/14/02
5:51:30 PM

DAILY GRIST

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

MUSHROOM CLOUD

"There are practically no cases of radioactive watermelons this year," was the triumphant announcement of Andrei Buyanov, one of Moscow's corps of atomic food inspectors. Unfortunately for Muscovites, there were plenty of other radioactive fruits and vegetables. Moscow is 415 miles from Chernobyl, where an atomic reactor blew up in 1986; food found in the region can still be contaminated. Last year, inspectors seized more than 3,000 pounds of radioactive food bound for the stalls of the city's 69 outdoor markets; this year, they expect to haul in 10 percent more. The riskiest foods are those foraged in forests -- mushrooms, berries, and the like, which are generally handpicked in the wild, making them harder to monitor than food grown on farms. Mushrooms, for instance, which are a staple of Russian cuisine, are prone to absorbing Cesium 137, a radioactive element with a half-life of 30 years.

straight to the source: New York Times, Michael Wines, 12 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=463>

CLOTHES CALL

In yet another trend-setting environmental move by California, Gov. Gray Davis (D) signed into law this week a bill requiring old, inefficient washing machines to be replaced with water-efficient ones by 2007. New washers must now meet a standard of using 9.5 gallons of water to wash one cubic foot of laundry -- well below the 13.3 gallons averaged by washers sold in 1994. The measure comes as the Golden State heads into its fourth straight year of drought, and as neighboring states, also hit by a lack of rainfall, clamor for a bigger share of the Colorado River water that California has guzzled for decades. Supporters of the law say residents say it could save about 1 billion gallons of water annually, or enough to supply 6,000 households statewide. Critics claim the law will force consumers to spend money on new washers, but advocates counter that the money will be recouped by water and energy savings.

straight to the source: Christian Science Monitor, Daniel B. Wood, 12 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=462>

do good: Take action to do a home energy audit <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#audit>

IN THE DRINK

In other news from the Golden State, regulators in California are reviving a campaign to clean up perchlorate, a Cold War-era pollutant that has been showing up in drinking water supplies across the country. Since the 1950s, the substance has been used as an oxidizer in rockets, munitions, and fireworks. It was not considered particularly dangerous to humans until a decade ago, when the U.S. EPA determined that it disrupted thyroid function when consumed. Earlier this year, the agency proposed a maximum perchlorate level of one part per billion, a standard the defense industry and the Pentagon oppose as overly strict and too costly. Eight states have set their own provisional levels, ranging from one to 18 parts per billion. California's current level is four ppb, but contamination far exceeds that in San Bernardino County, where defense contractors and others have manufactured, tested and stored explosives for decades -- and where wells have tested at hundreds of parts per billion. A California task force plans to publicly accuse the county government today of gross mishandling of a landfill suspected of harboring massive quantities of perchlorate.

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Peter Waldman, 12 Sep 2002 (access ain't free) <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=465>

WE'VE GOT MAIL

You talkin' to us? Looks like it: In this month's mail bag, Grist readers wax loquacious about the virtues of biodiesel, the vices of Ford Motor Company, the woes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the history of fire-fighting in the U.S., and more. Check out what your fellow readers have to say in our Letters to the Editor section, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: Vegetable shortening -- Grist readers write letters to the editor <http://www.gristmagazine.com/letters/letters091202.asp?source=daily>

CECI N'EST PAS UNE CITIZENS GROUP

U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton has nixed the idea of a citizens panel to oversee the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, to the dismay of many environmentalists. Green groups and oil company watchdogs have called for the creation of such a group, similar to the citizens councils mandated by Congress after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, to provide for more public input on the management of the pipeline. Pipeline operations are now overseen by the Joint Pipeline Office, a coalition of six federal and seven state agencies. Not surprisingly, spokespeople from the office say there is already sufficient oversight, but environmentalists say the JPO is not sufficiently critical of the pipeline operator, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. Norton threw her weight behind the status quo this week, saying that "working through the existing processes would be better than creating a new process."

straight to the source: Anchorage Daily News, Associated Press, 12 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=464>

only in Grist: Put this in your pipeline and smoke it -- domestic oil and gas is not the ticket to U.S. energy security -- by Amory and L. Hunter Lovins <http://www.gristmagazine.com/imho/lovins112001.asp?source=daily>

9/14/02
5:41:23 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

Zambia says won't feed refugees GM milled maize - ZAMBIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17727/story.htm

Lead paint poses new legal threat for US companies - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17723/story.htm

US lawmakers may drop Alaska pipeline subsidies - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17726/story.htm

Senate measure would ease thinning of US forests - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17728/story.htm

NRC raises security level at US nuclear plants - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17732/story.htm

An oil tanker seeking shelter from a tropical storm ran into rocks on the south China coast - SINGAPORE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17737/story.htm

INTERVIEW - Security problems block Afghan aid - World Bank - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17730/story.htm

Slow takeoff seen for hybrid electric vehicles - ITALY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17738/story.htm

Giant dam could cause geological disasters - China - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17724/story.htm

China slows soymeal exports on GMO worries - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17731/story.htm

World Bank sticks by Chad-Cameroon pipeline - CAMEROON http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17729/story.htm

Greenpeace,oil cos cleared of Australia naptha deal - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17725/story.htm

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:

JAPAN: Young Women Eat Free Beef Dishes on Anniversary of Japan's Case of Mad Cow Disease in Tokyo http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17735

FRANCE: Aerial View of Heavy Floods Near Orange in Southern France http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17733

IRAQ: Iraqi Youths Work in Tigris River in Baghdad http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17734

9/14/02
5:40:01 PM

9 - 11- 01 Impact on Our Lives Peace, come by here Oakland family of Sept. 11 victim responds by working against war on terrorism

Sam McManis, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, September 8, 2002

Words come hard, sometimes not at all, for Barry Amundson. He struggles to articulate the emotions roiling inside him, to share his thoughts about family and grief, about waging war and peace. Sentences start, then fork in several directions. He often digs fingertips into his forehead, hard, as if trying to massage the words into a coherent shape.

Talking about Sept. 11, the day that forever altered his life, can be painful.

"I'm getting better," Amundson says, "about all this, but . . ."

Now he lifts his tall, slim frame off the couch in the Oakland apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Kelly Campbell. He heads for the VCR, rifling through VHS tapes. Amundson's always been more visual than verbal, so to augment his words about his brother, Craig, who died when a hijacked airplane crashed into the Pentagon that day, he pops in a video.

Sitting back down, still trying to talk about his kid brother's death and its aftermath, Amundson can't help but steal glances at the TV screen. It captures Craig acting in one of his teenage films from the '80s, when the three Amundson boys were growing up in Marion, Iowa.

"This is the one that was a parody of a trip to the dentist from that movie called, you know, the one with Steve Martin and the killer plant," Amundson says. "I think it was in 1984 when Craig convinced my parents to buy this big, old video camera you had to strap across your shoulder. He lugged it around everywhere."

Barry is left with a stack of Craig's old improvisational home movies. But don't say that's all he is left with.

NONVIOLENT RESPONSE

No, the memory of Craig Amundson, an Army specialist who worked as a creative illustrator at the Pentagon, lives on. It lives not only in the hearts of his family but also in a national organization that Barry, 32, and Campbell, 30, helped to form in the months after Sept. 11 and the United States' subsequent bombing of Afghanistan.

The advocacy group is called Peaceful Tomorrows, which seeks nonviolent responses to terrorism. Started last winter by Campbell and the Amundsons, as well as several families of other victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the East Coast, Peaceful Tomorrows has raised both consciousness and ire by speaking frankly about their opposition to a vengeful war on terrorism and by traveling to Afghanistan to meet with family members of victims of errant U.S. bombs.

In the past year, Peaceful Tomorrows has become the centerpiece of Amundson and Campbell's lives. She quit her job working for an environmental group in San Francisco to work full time as the organization's West Coast coordinator. He has accepted only freelance design work for advertising companies, while he helps administer Peaceful Tomorrows' Web site.

Ryan Amundson, Barry and Craig's little brother, has spent the year crisscrossing the country in his car speaking to groups about nonviolent responses to terrorism. Often, Ryan, 24, is joined by Amber Amundson, Craig's widow and the mother of his two children, Elliott, 5, and Charlotte, 3.

"It's one of those strange things," Barry says. "After we lost Craig, it drew us all closer and made us love one another even more. Amber's even more part of the family now than before. And we've found that the other members of the group feel the same way in their lives."

In his own soft-spoken way, Amundson is adamant about not wallowing in what he calls victimhood.

"There's not some holier-than-thou conceit with Kelly and me," he says. "At the root of it, we're still the same selfish creatures that fall into the same old traps."

Campbell, whose fresh freckles belie her age, 30, playfully shoves Barry to show her dissent. Sept. 11, they say, has brought them closer as a couple. Peaceful Tomorrows members have formed something of an unofficial Sept. 11 grief support group, even though they mostly communicate via the Internet or by telephone.

"This is like my new family," says David Potorti, the group's East Coast director whose brother, Jim, died in the World Trade Center collapse. "We share pictures and feelings and problems. They really are the only people who truly know what it's like to lose somebody on that day. I can get verbally beaten up by Bill O'Reilly on TV, and Peaceful Tomorrows people give me the support to keep going."

Criticism -- and there has been lots of it from people who call Peaceful Tomorrows members the "new Hanoi Jane Fondas" -- won't deter people like Amundson and Campbell from getting their message across.

The Amundsons certainly are unlikely activists, hardly cut from the outspoken cloth of the radical movement.

The three brothers grew up in Iowa, where they would sometimes spend afternoons in the nearby woods re-enacting battle scenes from the movie "Red Dawn" with BB guns. Barry was four years older than Craig and eight years older than Ryan, but the three shared a wry sense of humor and a love of '80s new wave independent music and movies.

'ALIKE IN MANY WAYS'

Barry eventually went to the University of Iowa, where he met Kelly, who was from Cedar Rapids -- "the big city," she laughs. Craig eventually followed Barry to Iowa and was a film major.

"He and Barry were alike in many ways," Campbell says. "They both were interested in art and drawing. They both were DJs at the college radio station.

Even after college, they'd burn CDs and send them to each other. I remember talking to Amber on the phone, and we'd laugh about their similar personality traits, like their indecisiveness. We'd go, 'Yup, that's them.' "

After college, Barry and Kelly drifted to the Bay Area for jobs and because,

well, "it was San Francisco and anything's possible," Barry says. Craig graduated a few years later, married Amber and started a family. He decided to join the Army, even though Barry tried to persuade him to move to the Bay Area and start a computer-design firm with him.

"I don't know," Barry says. "Maybe it was too big a jump for him, from the Midwest to California. I wish he had . . ."

Barry's voice trails off once more, but his point is clear. Had Craig moved to California, he wouldn't have been working in the Pentagon on Sept. 11. He would still be alive.

"Craig wanted the job security the military could provide, the health benefits for his family," Campbell says.

Craig Amundson's widow, in an opinion piece published last September in the Chicago Tribune, wrote that Craig was not the stereotypical bloodthirsty Army enlisted man and that he would disapprove of more senseless deaths in his name.

"For the last two years," Amber wrote, "Craig drove to his job at the Pentagon with a 'Visualize world peace' bumper sticker on his car. This was not empty rhetoric or contradictory to him, but part of his dream. He believed his role in the Army could further the cause of peace throughout the world."

Which is why, Barry and Ryan maintain, his brother would be appalled by the vengeful response many Americans and many in the Bush administration had after the terrorist attacks.

EXPLOITING TRAGEDY

"People were holding up the concept of revenge as something good," Ryan says. "I'd see politicians and pundits talking on TV, and whenever anyone would bring up that there's another way to deal with terrorism other than bombing entire countries, the pundits would always say, righteously, 'Tell that to the victims' families.'

"I felt like I was being exploited, sitting there at the one-month memorial ceremony, and it turned out not to be a memorial. It felt more like a war rally, with the president and the secretary of state saying we're going to extend the war to other countries. To me, that meant killing more innocent people. That seemed like a dishonor to my brother."

Barry and Ryan say they spent the first few weeks after the attack in shock and feeling helpless. Rabid pro-war public sentiment spurred them to action, though, in a round-about manner. Barry had read an article that Potorti had written for an alternative media Web site and then e-mailed Amber's Chicago Tribune op-ed piece to him.

Potorti then invited the Amundsons and Campbell to a November march for nonviolence from Washington, D.C., to New York City. That march galvanized the brothers and Amber and Kelly.

"When we got to New York with our banners, the people on the street were very open to our message," Kelly says. "In the beginning, we felt like we were crazy in thinking bombing Afghanistan was not the answer. But we found other family members who shared the 'not in our name' feeling.

"I started giving speeches, and found that we weren't crazy. Everyone was not 100 percent behind the war. I remember speaking in front of 3,000 people on a cold, cloudy day in Oakland in support of (Rep.) Barbara Lee's lone dissenting vote in Congress, and thinking, our message is resonating."

Not with everyone, though. Peaceful Tomorrows has received its share of criticism in the past year, hate mail that accused this pacificist organization of being traitors.

"Some people think we want to sing 'Kumbaya' with Osama bin Laden," Potorti says. "But we're really the opposite. We're just people all around the country who are nonpartisan but want to get the point across that nonviolence can be the answer. I think of us as 'sleeper peace cells.' I'm North Carolina. Rita Lasar's in New York. Ryan in the Midwest and Kelly and Barry in California. We're out to do good."

The Oakland "peace cell" is a modest one-bedroom apartment just off one of Oakland's busiest thoroughfares. Barry handles Web site queries on the couch with his laptop tilted precariously on his knee. Kelly handles calls and interview requests pacing the room on her cell phone and setting up her speaking engagements, such as tonight's at the Oakland Islamic Cultural Center.

All the while, videos of Craig's teenage home movies flicker on the TV screen. Barry makes sure to stop occasionally and look at the action on the screen.

"All these thoughts come back to me," Barry says. "Why didn't I spend more time with him? Why'd we live so far apart?"

He pauses, runs his hand over his face, continues.

"Right before Sept. 11, we spent a week with Craig, Amber and the kids on the (Mississippi) River in Dubuque," Barry says. "I wasn't going to go. But a couple of days before that, I decided, what the hell, and bought a plane ticket. I'm glad we had that time together. There was so much more we were going to do together."

email Sam McManis at smcmanis@sfchronicle.com

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/08/LV82343.DTL

9/14/02
5:34:08 PM

DAILY GRIST

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

INDUSTRY, AGENCY SAY NUKE PLANTS ARE SAFE FROM TERRORISM

One year after the tragedies of Sept. 11, how safe is the U.S. from terrorist strikes against its water supply and nuclear power facilities? Quite safe, according to industry and government studies commissioned in the wake of last year's attacks. The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, found that a Boeing 757 would not be able to penetrate the 4-foot-thick concrete walls and steel bars protecting nuclear reactors or the even thicker walls of nuclear-waste storage facilities. Moreover, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that even a radioactive leak probably would not produce damage "as catastrophic as one might imagine." Meanwhile, the nation's water-treatment plants, reservoirs, and dams now boast a wide range of new safety measures, from round-the-clock security guards to surveillance cameras to more frequent water testing. Although experts said that physically poisoning the nation's water supply was next to impossible, they acknowledged that even a minor attack could cause the public to lose faith in water purity.

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Elizabeth Shogren, 11 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=456>

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Vicki Kemper, 11 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=457>

HAZE REACHES RECORD LEVEL IN HONG KONG

While a metaphorical cloud shrouds New York City today, an all-too-real one is suffocating the city of Hong Kong, where pollution levels have set record highs this week, obscuring skyscrapers and prompting officials to warn people to stay indoors. Earlier this week, smog levels reached a record 185 on an air pollution index where any reading over 100 is considered dangerously high. Hong Kong's leader, Tung Chee-hwa, has made environmental cleanup a priority, to some success; for example, 90 percent of the city's 18,000 taxis switched from diesel to cleaner fuels in the last two years. However, the dirty air persists, and it is breeding some resentment in the former British colony because much of the pollution comes from the 18,000 factories in Guangdong, a neighboring province in China, where environmental regulation is lax at best. "No matter how good we are, they still have to solve the other half of the problem," said Ng Cho-nam, a university professor and president of Hong Kong's Conservancy Association.

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Margaret Wong, 11 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=459>

straight to the source: New York Times, Keith Bradsher, 10 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=461>

U.N. CREATES WATCHDOG EFFORT IN LIEU OF FUTURE SUMMITS

In what seemed like a tacit acknowledgment of the failure of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which ended last week, the United Nations has announced that it will not plan any more summits on the environment and development until governments have taken serious steps toward meeting the goals for progress established at Johannesburg and earlier summits. In place of the high-cost, high-profile meetings, the U.N. will create an unprecedented watchdog operation to campaign for change and report on how well governments are meeting their goals. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Mark Brown, who is currently in charge of the U.N. Development Programme, to coordinate the new initiative, which will issue annual reports on the progress of individual nations. Praising the change, Clare Short, the U.K.'s International Development Secretary, said, "We do not need more big multilateral agenda-setting conferences, we need a real period of intensive implementation."

straight to the source: London Independent, Geoffrey Lean, 08 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=458>

READ ALL ABOUT IT

How about getting away from it all with a good magazine article? Check out the Nation, where two writers make the case that water should be a fundamental human right, not a commodity. Or read about the Huck Finn-esque life of Chad Pregracke, who lives on a boat nine months out of the year and dedicates himself to pulling trash out of the Mississippi River -- up to 200,000 pounds of it per year. Or eavesdrop on a chat between a Salon staffer and Robert Costanza, one of the founders of ecological economics. All that and more in the Best of the Rest, our monthly tally of what we're reading, and what you ought to, only on the Grist Magazine website.

only in Grist: Wild reads from the Nation, New York Times Magazine, Outside -- in our Best of the Rest section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/best/best091102.asp?source=daily>

SCIENTISTS DISCUSS HOW TO REDUCE MERCURY USE AROUND GLOBE

Scientists from around the world are meeting this week in Geneva, Switzerland, at a conference sponsored by the U.N. Environment Programme, to discuss ways to cut back on global mercury use. For decades, the toxic substance has been used in lamps, batteries, electrical equipment, thermometers, dental fillings, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and even beauty products. Gulp! Mercury can cause permanent damage to the brain, nervous system, and kidneys. When disposed of in landfills, the metal can slowly seep into groundwater or evaporate into the air, where it can travel for thousands of miles, accumulating in cold regions such as Arctic lakes. Last week, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to ban the sale of mercury fever thermometers and to spend $20 million on a mercury thermometer collection and exchange project.

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 10 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=460>

9/14/02
5:19:03 PM

Homeland Security Department

Another Production of the Real Shadow Government

By John Stanton

09 September 2001

The frightful Department of Homeland Security currently promoted by the Bush Regime, its disciples and recent converts, has its genesis in defense and security study "think tanks" in Washington, DC. These groups wield enormous influence on local, state and national policy and arguably constitute the real shadow government of the United States.

Eliminate the US Congress, Presidency and Supreme Court, and the three branches of government could just as well be the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security and the Center for Security Policy. Add the Institute for Defense Analysis as a place for the "nonprofit" government to hold "classified" meetings and most Americans would probably not notice any substantial difference.

These defense and security nonprofits -far removed from any public accountability- serve as a carving knife used by the most callous of interests in and out of government to slice away at the public good. Whether it's to pocket some hard cash for missile defense, get a piece of the Homeland Security action, fix a troublesome regulation that penalizes government contractors for providing poor working conditions, rid the world of that pesky rule that cuts into executive compensation, or promote an outdated weapons system, the nonprofits stand ready to undertake these actions. This is not only because it makes "good business sense" but because their operatives take a patriotic view of the "bottom line".

Defense and security nonprofit organizations house former elite US civilian and military officials -always a short step away from return to government service and available for consulting fees- many whose worldview closely approximates those of the character General Jack Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's famed classic Dr. Strangelove. Obsessed about the "purity" of America's vital essence, Ripper launches an unauthorized nuclear attack on the "godless commies" in the USSR and seeks to rid the world of the "commie bastards" and, in the process of the retaliation that's sure to follow, cleanse the United States of its "impurities" and reboot the country the white and right way.

Such a mentality is likely to dominate the impending 170,000 employee internal security apparatus known as the US Homeland Security Department. Union and whistleblower averse, all US citizens, all certified "grade A" loyal by the loyalty police, all "pure in essence", mostly white, mostly jingoistic, all ready to report "adverse" information on their fellow employees and citizens to the appropriate taskmaster.

Sweet Charity

Clues as to who will run America's Gestapo agency and their thought processes can be gleaned from the operations and staff of organizations such as Anser's Homeland Security group, the Institute for Defense Analysis, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Center for Security Policy. These "Institutes", "Centers" or "Foundations" operate under an Internal Revenue Service 501 c (3) designation which means they are "charitable, non-profit, non-partisan and educational". It also means they carry the .ORG tag. IRS regulations state clearly that "a § 501(c)(3) organization may not engage in carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities [...] and must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests [...] or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. But the reality is that these shadowy organizations are powerful interest groups who are ultimately funded by taxpayer dollars awarded in the form of government contracts, grants and sponsorships.

Some of them like the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) hold Secret or above facility clearances, which means that they are authorized by the US government to hold US government classified meetings. According to IDA's website, "The work often requires privileged access to sensitive information, including highly classified and industry proprietary data not normally available to non-government organizations." How very convenient and very much out of the public eye.

Funded by US government agencies such as the Department of Defense, federal employees (often through membership and meeting fees), and corporate donors who live off of federal largesse, the nonprofits are adept at pushing their member's or meeting attendee's interests in the halls of Congress and within Federal agencies. Many Americans would perhaps be surprised to learn that the bulk of what is presented via the media as novel presidential and congressional "thinking" for policy, budgets, proposals, speeches, and legislation all derive from the analysis and proposals of nonprofit think tanks. Nowhere is that more evident than in the defense and security nonprofit arena.

A personal visit by a senior nonprofit official -normally a retired US military officer or former high ranking civilian official- to "educate" the uneducated active duty general, admiral, undersecretary or congressman are little more than lobbying efforts on behalf of the private and self interests that the nonprofit represents. And the vanguard of the defense and security nonprofits have a virtual Who's Who of heavyweight retired US military and former high ranking civilians on their governing and advisory Boards, who can ratchet up the political and budgetary pressure on a defense program manager, senator or congress member.

One of the more insidious and accepted practices involving defense and security nonprofits is the use of these organizations' retired military and civilian staff by active US government officials in the advancement of their own internal government programs and agendas, often enlisting nonprofits in public education campaigns. Frank "missile defense" Gaffney's Center for Security Policy is a case in point. That group also serves the nefarious interests of conservative militants in the US government like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Indeed, Richard Perle is still listed as an active member of the Center's National Security Advisory Council as is missile defense maven and elected official US Congressman Kurt Weldon.

Through its many advisors and Board members, the Center, like all defense and security nonprofits, hase links to the key players in and out of the US government, the defense and security industry, and at other like-minded nonprofits. IDA's president and CEO is everyone's favorite Defense Board chairman, retired USAF General Larry Welch. On IDA's Board of Trustees is Robert Prestel, former deputy director of the US National Security Agency, along with the president and CEO of the Army Association of the United States, a former US Secretary of the Air Force, and a former US Deputy Defense Secretary, among others.

ANSER's Institute for Homeland Security's Board of Advisors includes John Hamre, former US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, who just happens to be the President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Also on ANSER's Board is the current chairman of the US Army Science Board and a retired US Navy Admiral. With the director of ANSER's Institute a former USAF officer, all US armed service branches can be effectively lobbied for business by "one of their own kind who served".

Way back in December of 2000, CSIS was one of the first out of the starting gate to propose the creation of a Department of Homeland Security in its Homeland Defense: A Strategic Approach. The 2002 Homeland Security Department proposal sent to the US Congress by the current regime is based almost entirely on CSIS's proposals. Why so much influence from this particular 501 c (3) that has a paltry operating budget of US $17.5 million? CSIS boasts on its Board and Advisory Board former US Defense Secretaries William Cohen and Harold Brown, former Senator Sam Nunn, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, retired USAF General Brent Scowcroft, and former DCI James Woolsey, among other US military and civilian "retirees". Also on the CSIS staff are six Military Fellows representing the US Coast Guard, Marines, Air Force, Army and Navy.

You'll Sleep Better at Night

The grunts who churn out reports and are the advance teams in these powerful nonprofits are made up of those who never quite made it up the military chain of command or never got the hot political appointment. These intellectual and power broker wannabes are culled from the mid-ranks of government, military, industry and academia. Attend a high level briefing with these folks and, for the most part, survey-shows they are white, aging, paranoid, and believe that the 1950's was the greatest decade in memory gleefully ignoring the wretchedness of those years. They deplore the browning of America, despise the Pakistani running the local 7-11 or McDonald's, bemoan the presence of Chinese and Indian students at US universities, and worry when African Americans or Latinos move into the neighborhood. They still opine on welfare mothers and how Unions have destroyed American economic competitiveness. They are quick to remind the listener that America rebuilt Europe and Japan, but claim "that's different" when posed with the question, "Why not Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba…?" In short, they are just a few brain cells removed from being whole-hearted supporters of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations.

As reported by Counterpunch, Tom Ridge, apparently one of the folks fitting the description above, and current Homeland Security Czar (with an unsettling resemblance to Fox's Simpson cartoon character Chief Wiggam) recently telegraphed what Homeland Security's more sinister functions may become. One of them is Union busting. Ridge made a telephone call to the International Longshoremen Workers Union warning them that any large-scale strike contemplated against Pacific Maritime will be viewed as a threat to national security. A veiled threat of police action and subsequent arrest if there ever was one. Finally, Counterpunch reported that a Phoenix Project (an assassination program in Vietnam) operative, Major General Bruce Lawlor (USA), will play a key role in US Homeland Security prevention and protection.

And so it's just these types of folks who will be recruited for and make up the US Department of Homeland Security and its affiliates at the state and local levels. The prospect of a national internal security agency staffed by such people should be the stuff a national debate. But with the US disinformation campaign on Iraq in full-gear and 911's anniversary sure to stifle needed debate, you can bet your last George Washington that one of the big ticket lines in Bush II's next State-of-the-Union address will be, "America is safer thanks to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security..."

http://newsinsider.cjb.net

9/14/02
5:09:44 PM

New for 9/11 on TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

See our OP AD on the op-ed page of the 9/11 New York Times, or read it on line:

TOWARD A MORE PERFECT UNION

Learning From 9/11

An Essay by Sam Smith

"The 9/11 attackers, and the tens of millions around the world who share some measure of their anger, have only seen our money and our fist -- not the decency, democracy, and dream that made America strong in the first place."

http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opad.cfm/ID/6355

AND DON'T MISS THESE SPECIAL FEATURES:

A LIBERAL PATRIOT

Steven Rosenfeld's exclusive interview with singer/songwriter STEVE EARLE

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6262

THE PATH TO SECURITY, AT HOME AND ABROAD

The second of two special 9/11 essays by HOWARD ZINN

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6277

THE IMPLACABLE OTHER

by BARBARA EHRENREICH

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6367

~~ The BEST Of Our Readers' 9/11 Essays ~~

Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review (www.ProRev.com), was one of hundreds of people who submitted an essay in response to our call for essays reflecting on 9/11. His was so good, we made it the text of our 9/11 OP AD. We've also published a selection of the TP.c staff's favorite submissions, including:

A PRAYER FOR 9/11 by Howard and Mimi Fast

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6349

WHY I WORRY, by Jamie Connors, a 16-year-old Brooklyn high school student.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6350

WORKING TOGETHER, WITHOUT SUPERPOWERS by Barbara Francis

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6344

FACING HISTORY: THE 'NOW PEOPLE' AND THE PAST by Bragan Thomas

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6353

DELINQUENT COLOSSUS by Derrick Ashong

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6260

THE PRE-9/11 TIME WARP by David Kusnet

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6340

...and...

A MORE PERFECT UNION: Letters From Mr. Hand's Writing Students at San Benito High School in San Benito, Texas

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6365

9/14/02
5:00:25 PM

Bush Is Intent On Painting Allies And Enemies In The Middle East As Evil

by Robert Fisk

Just as Americans are recovering from the harrowing television re-runs of the 11 September attacks, their President is going to launch the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since the British and French parceled out the Arab lands after the 1914-18 war. When he addresses the United Nations on Thursday, George Bush will be threatening not only Iraq – which had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington – but Syria, Iran and, by extension, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The Syrian Accountability Act, which accuses Damascus of supporting "terrorism", will come into force as President Bush is speaking and will follow only days after the State Department branded the Lebanese Hizbollah as the "A-team of terrorism", more dangerous even than Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Like Iraq, the Hizbollah had nothing to do with the 11 September attacks – indeed, they were among the first to condemn them – but the White House now seems set on painting allies and enemies alike in the Middle East as a focus of evil.

Only The Nation among all of America's newspapers and magazines has dared to point out that a large number of former Israeli lobbyists are now working within the American administration and the Bush plans for the Middle East – which could cause a massive political upheaval in the Arab world – fit perfectly into Israel's own dreams for the region. The magazine listed Vice-President Dick Cheney – the arch-hawk in the US administration – and John Bolton, now under-secretary of state for Arms Control, with Douglas Feith, the third most senior executive at the Pentagon, as members of the advisory board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) before joining the Bush government. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, is still an adviser on the institute, as is the former CIA director James Woolsey.

Michael Ledeen, described by The Nation as "one of the most influential 'Jinsans' in Washington" has been calling for "total war" against "terror" – with "regime change" for Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Mr Perle advises the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld – who refers to the West Bank and Gaza as "the so-called occupied territories" – and arranged the anti-Saudi "kernel of evil" briefing by Laurent Murawiec that so outraged the Saudi royal family last month. The Saudi regime may itself be in great danger as the princes of the House of Saud attempt to seize more power for themselves in advance of the departure of the dying King Fahd.

Jinsa's website says it exists to "inform the American Defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". Next month, Michael Rubin of the right-wing and pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute – who referred to the outgoing UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson as an abettor of "terrorism" – joins the US Defense Department as an Iran-Iraq "expert".

According to The Nation, Irving Moskovitz, the California bingo magnate who has funded settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, is a donor as well as a director of Jinsa.

President Bush, of course, will not be talking about the influence of these pro-Israeli lobbyists when he presents his vision of the Middle East at the United Nations on Thursday.

Nor will he give the slightest indication that the region is, in the words of its own kings and dictators, a powder keg of resentment and anger. The tectonic plates of the Arab world are now grinding with increasing violence. Into this political earthquake zone, Mr Bush now seems intent on leading his country, with his loyal British ally.

Most of today's Arab nations were fashioned out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France in the aftermath of the First World War – and Palestinians still blame Britain today for supporting the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Both European nations stationed tens of thousands of troops across the region, suppressing Arab revolts in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon – itself created by the French at the request of its Christian Maronite community. The whole colonial framework led to the loss of tens of thousands of lives before both the British and French retreated from the Middle East.

Now President Bush seems set on following the colonial powers into the region for another military and political adventure – ostensibly to spread "democracy" among those nations it most despises (Iraq, Palestine and Iran) but in fact more likely to increase American control of an increasingly anti-Western Arab world.

The Arabs themselves warn that this will lead to massive instability and widespread violence. The Israelis – and their allies in the US administration – are hell bent on the whole shebang.

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

9/14/02
4:55:46 PM

SciTech Daily Review

http://SciTechDaily.com

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,55043,00.html

A new US study could be another nail in the coffin of would-be human cloners, with its finding that cloning to create new animals will almost always create an abnormal creature

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992779

Seismic data shows that a 1700 metre bubble of carbon dioxide has been successfully trapped beneath the floor of the North Sea

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_170.html

The life cycle of comets may be more complex than thought, with large comets routinely splitting up far from the sun and forming into families of smaller comets, such as the tiny sungrazers

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/09/04/wise/index.html

Harvard professor Steven Wise argues in Drawing the Line that science itself proves that such animals as parrots, apes and elephants should be considered persons with legal rights

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/health/psychology/10NORM.html

It is because human beings are so good at adapting to change, and updating their world view as readily as they hyperlink from web page to web page, that it sometimes looks as if -- even in the wake of 9/11 -- we have not really changed at all (registration required)

9/14/02
4:53:55 PM

The one-year anniversary of 9/11 is upon us, and anyone who reads a newspaper or turns on a television this week will be bombarded with 9/11-related coverage from every conceivable angle. One of the themes we hear constantly in the mainstream media is that the world has changed forever and there is little we can do about it. At AlterNet we choose not to accept the essential hopelessness of that message. As playwright Tony Kushner wrote recently in the New York Times, "Our despair over our own powerlessness is simply a lie we are telling ourselves."

For Sept. 11, we offer you an overview by three of AlterNet's senior editors reflecting on the fact that the many things that have changed are not what we expected. There is also an article by Tom Hayden from the book, "It's a Free Country: Personal Freedom in America after September 11" (RDV Books), edited by Danny Goldberg, Victor Goldberg and Robert Greenwald. This important new book (also reviewed below by John Wilson) challenges the idea, widely publicized in the mainstream media, that domestic liberties were mostly unaffected by terrorism.

All of this writing (and there is much more on AlterNet's 9/11: One Year Later page) contains reminders of what we believe is still true and important -- that even amid the political confusion of post-9/11 America, all of us still have the power to make positive changes in our world.

Changes Wrought By 9/11: Not What You Expected Don Hazen, Tai Moses, Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet What were you afraid of on Sept. 11, 2001? What frightens you today, one year later? Chances are, the two answers are quite different.

It's Empire Versus Democracy

Tom Hayden, AlterNet

Conservatives are seeking to take advantage of America's understandable fears to push a right-wing agenda that would not otherwise be palatable, playing patriot games with the nation's future.

It's Still a Free Country

John K. Wilson, AlterNet

A new book of essays, speeches and personal testimonials urges Americans to defend the Bill of Rights from attack by the Bush Administration.

The Return of Irony

Daniel Kurtzman, AlterNet

The decline of poitical satire in the aftermath of Sept. 11 has proved to be short-lived. Bush, Ashcroft, and terrorism are now fair game on the late-night talk show circuit.

If you wish to read more about 9/11 and its aftermath,

please visit After 9/11.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=25

9/14/02
4:51:28 PM

The Nation

One year later, we mark not only the terrible loss of life suffered but the tragic failure of American leadership since then. The anniversary of September 11 should be a time of renewed, and genuine, patriotism as well as of grieving. But it should also be an occasion to reflect on where we've traveled in the past year and what changes in course we need to make.

Read new articles from The Nation's special September 11 anniversary issue now:

Enemy Aliens and American Freedoms by David Cole

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=cole

The End of Empire by William Greider

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=greider

Changing History by Eric Foner

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=foner

Whose Security? by Charlotte Bunch

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=bunch

The Left and 9/11 by Adam Shatz

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=shatz

The Art of 9/11 by Arthur Danto

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=danto

Standing up for Dissent by John Nichols

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=nichols

Letter from Ground Zero: The Path to Point B by Jonathan Schell

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=schell

Impaired Intelligence by David Corn

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=corn

A Green Ground Zero by Amanda Griscom & Will Dana

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=griscom

9/14/02
4:23:10 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

BP executive vows continued Alaska commitment - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17704/story.htm

Hyundai misstated horsepower on 1.3 mln vehicles - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17706/story.htm

Inject CO2 emissions into earth's crust - scientist - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17718/story.htm

Basking sharks don't hibernate - scientist - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17717/story.htm

EU water directive could revolutionise farming - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17707/story.htm

Britain appoints new committee to boost recycling - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17722/story.htm

El Nino to compound Papua New Guinea crop woes - PAPUA NEW GUINEA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17711/story.htm

Worker welfare profitable for Panama coffee farmers - PANAMA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17716/story.htm

"Free Willy" star falls ill, needs exercise - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17710/story.htm

Japan minister denies TEPCO to restart reactor - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17702/story.htm

German court blocks bottle, can recyling law - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17721/story.htm

EU's Byrne says keen to end moratorium on GM crops - DENMARK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17720/story.htm

China to list dam company, raise over $360 mln - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17709/story.htm

Codelco smelter to operate on gas from June 2003 - CHILE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17705/story.htm

Brazil to publish rules for GM test crops in September - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17719/story.htm

EU suggests eliminating car registration fees - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17708/story.htm

Australia struggles to launch ethanol industry - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17703/story.htm

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:

UK: New Mini Bull Licks Animal Breeder in Sweden http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17715

CHINA: Smog Blankets Tung Chung Airport Town in Hong Kong http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17712

THAILAND: All Elephant Orchestra Performs in Lampang http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17713

YUGOSLAVIA: A Day-Old Baby Hipoppotamus Hides Behind His Mother in the Belgrade Zoo http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17714

9/14/02
4:21:59 PM

Public Citizen Blasts Fraudulent Chamber of Commerce Ads Attacking the Legal System

Sept. 10, 2002

Ad Buy Worth Up to $15 Million Appears Designed to Help Chamber-Backed Candidates in Elections and Divert Voters' Attention from Corporate Fraud

WASHINGTON, D.C. - TV and newspaper ads being run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that attack the legal system are fraudulent, and appear designed to provide fodder for Chamber-supported candidates in competitive races and divert the attention of voters away from an unprecedented wave of corporate fraud, Public Citizen said today. The ad buy could cost as much as $15 million this fall, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Since late August, the Chamber has been running a television ad in Alabama, Michigan, New Mexico, South Carolina and Texas that claims Americans pay a "lawsuit abuse tax" equal to 2 percent of the price of any goods they buy. In a print ad that began running Sept. 6, the Chamber asserts that class action lawyers have a "simple formula for splitting settlements" that leaves consumers with next to nothing in compensation.

"The claims made in the Chamber's ads are about as accurate as WorldCom's accounting statement," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "They are as blatant as the lies told by so many corporations now under investigation for covering up illegal transactions. The real 'abuse tax' is the huge loss foisted on the public by Corporate America through an unprecedented wave of corporate fraud and abuse."

To illustrate what it has labeled the "corporate fraud and abuse tax," Public Citizen also released today an analysis of the stock loss experienced by 20 major corporations since government investigations of them became public or the companies admitted financial mismanagement through restatements or announcements of internal probes. Shareholder losses for those companies amounted to $236 billion, most of which occurred in the past year.

Public Citizen's critique of the Chamber's two ads follows. The ads, along with Public Citizen's critiques of them and the analysis of corporate fraud and abuse taxes, are available at http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/chamber/articles.cfm?ID=8244.

"Lawsuit Abuse Tax" Television Ad The ad claims that a "Lawsuit Abuse Tax" caused by "phony lawsuits" costs the average family of four $1,900 a year in higher prices for consumer goods. The ad claims "phony lawsuits" add $500 to the cost of a car, $3.12 to a week's worth of groceries and 70 cents to a pair of blue jeans. These misleading calculations are based on an assumption that 2 percent of the price of any good is due to "phony lawsuits." According to the Chamber's Web site, the 2 percent figure is based on a recent White House Council of Economic Advisors study that "calculates" the intermediate cost of excessive litigation to be $136 billion a year. The Chamber's ad, which essentially suggests that all lawsuits are phony, is fraudulent because it is based on two absurd "assumptions":

§ The Council labels $40 billion of the $136 billion of injury costs as non-economic damages and says they are excessive because they are "random." In fact, these damages - compensation for pain and suffering, disfigurement, loss of fertility and more - are very real. By deeming them "excessive," the Council doesn't count more than half the compensation awarded by the tort system. Studies by Duke University, Ohio State University and McGeorge School of Law researchers have found that these damage awards are not random but are correlated with the severity of injuries.

§ The Council's second assumption is that the transaction costs of the civil justice system - attorney fees and administrative costs - should be at the same level as those of the workers' compensation system. As a no-fault system, workers' compensation determines payments by a schedule, so a certain amount of money, for example, will be awarded for a particular back injury. The workers' compensation system is a payment schedule, not an assessment of responsibility that addresses complex questions about product safety or corporate fraud and malfeasance, and sets minimum standards for consumer protection.

Class Action Print Ad The ad suggests that in class action settlements, plaintiffs' lawyers make out like bandits while their clients get a coupon worth next to nothing. Public Citizen has challenged several dozen class action settlements, more than any other organization to ensure that consumers get a fair shake when defense and plaintiffs attorneys settle class actions. Unfortunately, the Chamber's ad is another example of false advertising and is part of a campaign designed to make it harder for consumers to prevail in class actions:

§ The Chamber ad suggests that it is wrong for attorneys' fees to exceed the monetary benefit that a class action award provides to any individual consumer. In fact, judges are required to fix reasonable attorneys' fees and do so by basing the fee on the entire sum of benefits provided to all class members, not the small amount that each class member receives as compensation for losses.

§ The Chamber ad suggests that it is common for consumers to have to "pay money out of their own pockets" to cover class counsel's fees. In fact, there is only one such case on record; in almost every class action, consumers receive refunds for overcharges, unauthorized fees and other scams.

§ The Chamber ad trumpets the "Bill of Rights" provisions of H.R. 2341, legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives requiring "judicial scrutiny of coupon settlements." The Chamber does not mention that a stronger version of the same provision is already due to take effect in 2003. Further, this legislation, which is opposed by leading national consumer groups, would give businesses a major advantage over consumers in class actions cases; the result will be that more corporate fraud and other wrongdoing will go unpunished.

"The Chamber appears to have two goals in mind with this ad campaign," said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. "It is providing a huge media buy in key state elections that will create a climate favorable to pro-business candidates who want to weaken the tort system, and it attempts to divert public attention away from corporate fraud and abuse that can be prevented with a strong tort system."

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

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

9/14/02
4:20:42 PM

DAILY GRIST

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

I'D LIKE MY C, UNDER THE SEA

A six-year experiment in burying carbon dioxide under the ocean has been highly successful, according to the scientists behind the project. Since 1996, CO2 emitted during methane gas exploration in the North Sea has been pumped back into the ground, where it has been trapped in a giant bubble almost a third of a mile under the floor of the ocean. The CO2 would otherwise have been released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. The storage technique, known as carbon sequestration, has been proposed as a way to allow humans to continue to burn fossil fuels without contributing to global warming. In the North Sea, the Norwegian company Statoil has so far used sequestration to store 5 million tons of CO2 underground. Andrew Chadwick of the British Geological Survey said of the technique, "We believe it is safe; it is certainly technically feasible and really has very little environmental downside."

straight to the source: BBC News, Jonathan Amos, 10 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=451>

DON'T GAG ME WITH A HEAVY METAL SPOON

Despite taking an oath of secrecy regarding their jobs, employees at a nuclear weapons plant in Iowa will be allowed to talk to doctors and scientists about hazardous chemicals to which they may have been exposed, the Pentagon determined in a report issued yesterday. The oaths have posed problems for thousands of current or former employees of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant seeking medical care or federal benefits, or attempting to take part in health studies. From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, the plant assembled and test-fired nuclear weapons components; it currently manufactures conventional weapons. Workers there may have been exposed to silica, beryllium, solvents, explosives, epoxies, and heavy metals. With the easing of the rules, workers will be able to name the substances with which they worked, but not discuss how each substance was used. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) welcomed the change but called the Pentagon report "woefully short on information about possible radioactive and toxic exposures at the plant."

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, Todd Dvorak, 09 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=452>

PAPER TIGER

Confusion over the definition of old growth is spurring a new campaign by ForestEthics against major paper retailers. In the past, the environmental organization has taken on lumber retailers such as Home Depot; now, it's turning its attention to Staples, accusing the company of misleading customers into thinking it doesn't sell paper products made from old-growth trees. ForestEthics says Staples sells products made from three old-growth regions (the Canadian boreal forest, the interior of British Columbia, and Indonesia). It says the company's narrow definition of old growth -- trees in forests that are at least 200 years old -- doesn't take into account diverse conditions on the ground, such as those in the boreal forest, where trees generally die naturally before reaching that age. The U.S. Forest Service has found at least 114 definitions of old growth, based on variables ranging from the age of trees in a forest to the thickness of the canopy to the amount of dead wood on the ground.

straight to the source: Wall Street Journal, Christopher J. Chipello and Joseph Pereira, 09 Sep 2002 (access ain't free) <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=453>

IT'S MY WAY OR NO HIGHWAY?

The head of the U.S. EPA's New England office has accused New Hampshire of failing to prepare for the environmental impact of the rapid population boom that is expected to follow the widening of Interstate 93, the main commuter highway connecting the state to Boston, Mass. New Hampshire plans to spend $18 million to ease the environmental impacts of the highway project, but Robert Varney said that's far too little to address a likely population boom in more than 20 New Hampshire communities that would tax existing services and threaten open spaces, drinking water supplies, and wildlife. Varney called for a total of $52 million to be allocated to environmental protections and he threatened delays in the highway project if the environmental concerns weren't adequately addressed. The state is counting on federal highway dollars to cover some 80 percent of the cost of the $350 million project -- meaning the EPA has significant say in the highway's future.

straight to the source: Concord Monitor, Jim Graham, 10 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=454>

THE MINNOW WOULD BE LOST

The fate of the silvery minnow remains up in the air after a federal judge postponed a decision yesterday in a controversial water-rights case, saying he wanted to review information about the endangered species' habitat. For those of you who haven't been following the story, a coalition of environmental groups has asked the judge to order the city of Albuquerque to allow water to be released into the Rio Grande to keep the river running and protect the minnow. Some stretches of the Rio Grande are within days of running dry unless the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation receives the okay to spill millions of gallons of water into the river. The catch is that Albuquerque owns the water, and Mayor Martin Chavez, who has described the battle as pitting minnows against people, is loathe to grant permission to release it. The judge's final decision could have a lasting effect on the city's future by defining how much control city hall has over its water claims. Chavez has said that he would appeal any order to release the water.

straight to the source: Albuquerque Tribune, Kate Nash, 10 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=455>

9/14/02
4:13:00 PM

OCTOBER 26

NATIONAL MARCH on WASHINGTON DC

with a joint action in San Francisco

to STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ BEFORE IT STARTS!

*** To ENDORSE the Call to Action, go to

http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/o26/o26endorse.html#endo

The Bush administration is rushing towards war. The time to act is now. The people of the United States can stop this madness.

World public opinion and almost every government opposes Bush's planned war of aggression. But it will take a mass peoples' movement--in the streets, workplaces, communities, campuses and high schools--to stop the coming war.

On Saturday, October 26, 2002 -- the first anniversary of the signing of the so-called Patriot Act -- anti-war, civil rights, labor, student and other forces are joining together to launch a massive international mobilization in opposition to a new war against the people of Iraq. Mass marches and rallies will be held in Washington DC and San Francisco in the U.S., and in many other countries.

As the Bush administration violates international law it has been systematically engaged in a campaign of division and repression in the United States including a wholesale assault on the Bill of Rights, institutionalization of racial profiling, and aggregation of near dictatorial powers to the Executive branch.

In articulating the so-called doctrine of preemptive war, the Bush administration is preparing to violate all existing international law and the UN charter which forbids countries to carry out war except in the case of self-defense. Preemption is merely a slogan to justify a foreign policy of armed aggression and military adventure.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and company are planning to send tens of thousands of young GIs to kill and be killed in another war for Big Oil. Simultaneously, the Bush Administration is diverting billions of dollars to feed military conquest and away from jobs, education, healthcare, childcare and housing.

The so-called debate that is opening now to public view from within the political establishment presents a necessity for all anti-war forces to become a major factor in generating an authentic opposition to U.S. war plans in the Middle East. The October 26 National March in Washington DC and joint action in San Francisco come just one week before midterm Congressional elections.

There won't be a real national debate on a planned invasion of Iraq until the people are in the streets. We can't leave it to the military establishment to decide when and how they will go to war and to define the debate. We must tell Bush and his corporate and Big Oil patrons that we will not allow this to happen.

This war can be stopped. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and company can be stopped. But the essential element must be the mobilization of a massive new anti-war movement in the streets. We call for civilians and soldiers alike to exercise their political right to speak out against an illegal war. On October 26, there will be a National March in Washington DC, a West Coast march in San Francisco, and protests around the world.

ONLY THE PEOPLE CAN STOP THE WAR! JOIN US ON OCTOBER 26, 2002!

*** To ENDORSE the Call to Action, go to

http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/o26/o26endorse.html#endo

9/14/02
4:06:12 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

WFP says may substitute wheat for maize in Zambia - ZAMBIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17698/story.htm

Kiev city to issue up to $350 mln Eurobonds in 2003 - UKRAINE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17700/story.htm

Nuclear plants first option for Sept 11 - newspaper - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17686/story.htm

Reporters find cracks in UK national security - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17687/story.htm

Britain's pro and anti fox hunters start talking - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17695/story.htm

Exotic Antarctic species face climate wipeout - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17696/story.htm

Experts mull global pact to cut mercury use - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17699/story.htm

Modern-day Noah's Ark aims to revive Angolan parks - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17701/story.htm

Singapore battles rise in dengue fever cases - SINGAPORE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17691/story.htm

Forest-fire smog choking Moscow disrupts flights - RUSSIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17688/story.htm

Prague's flood-ravaged riverside zoo reopens - CZECH REPUBLIC http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17689/story.htm

China to list dam company, raise over $360 mln - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17690/story.htm

Huge seabed methane find off Canada's west coast - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17697/story.htm

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:

BELGIUM: Belgium's Lombaert and Baptist Swim in the Polluted Senne River in Brussels http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17694

ZIMBABWE: A Zimbabwean Woman Carries Food Aid on Her Head http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17692

RUSSIA: Russian Women Carry Protective Masks in Moscow http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17693

9/14/02
4:04:08 PM

The Chicken Hawk Factor

by Jim Lobe, AlterNet, September 9, 2002

"There's more combat experience on the 7th floor of the State Department than in the entire Office of the Secretary of Defense," quipped the high-ranking State Department official to a room filled with senior military officers last month. The statement "generated riotous applause," according to an eyewitness quoted in the Nelson Report, a private newsletter subscribed to by foreign-policy heavyweights and embassies in Washington.

The incident revealed the growing importance of the "Chicken Hawk" factor in the increasingly rancorous debate over the Bush administration's push toward war on Iraq and beyond. At the moment, the military brass is leading the opposition. It includes both the folks who will have to fight this war and those who have retired from the service. The list of former generals includes Secretary of State and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell and his deputy, U.S. Naval Academy grad and Vietnam veteran Richard Armitage; as well as veterans of the Gulf War, including most famously Bush Sr.'s national security adviser, ret. Gen. Brent Scowcroft; the Gulf War commander, ret. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf; and his logistics chief and later successor at Central Command, ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni.

"It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), one of the most outspoken skeptics of the war with Baghdad. "They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off," the Vietnam veteran added. Hagel is not alone. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a highly decorated fellow Vietnam veteran who turned against the war, is also openly skeptical.

At the moment, the vast majority of the men pushing for war in Washington are what The New Hampshire Gazette defines as "Chicken Hawks": "public persons -- generally male -- who (1) tend to advocate military solutions to political problems, and who have personally (2) declined to take advantage of significant opportunity to serve in uniform during wartime."

That "significant opportunity" for most of Bush's war party faced was, of course, the Vietnam War. Dubya famously avoided the draft by getting a posting with the Texas National Guard, the kind of dodge that Powell referred to in his memoirs as being reserved for "the sons of the powerful." Cheney, however, avoided the uniform altogether, mumbling to one reporter that he "had other priorities in the Sixties than military service." Rumsfeld, the other leading Cabinet hawk, flew jets for the Navy between the Korean and Vietnam wars but never saw combat.

In fact, the only cabinet member with combat experience is Powell.

The sub-cabinet level also suffers from a distinct deficit in war-time experience. Cheney's hawkish and powerful chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, scooted through the sixties at Yale University and Columbia Law School, while Rumsfeld's top deputies, Paul Wolfowitz and Peter Rodman, completed graduate degrees before entering the national-security bureaucracy. The number three at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the administration's most avid champion of the Iraq war and its staunchest supporter of Israel's right-wing government, turned 18 only after the draft ended and, like Libby, went to law school.

Other major administration hawks, such as Elliott Abrams -- of Iran-Contra fame and now a member of the National Security Council in charge of democratizing the Middle East -- and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Strategy John Bolton also avoided military service during the height of the Vietnam War, reportedly for medical reasons. They, too, were law school-bound.

As for the ''axis of incitement'' -- those beating the war drums loudest outside the administration -- members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) also appear to have done what they could to avoid the uniform during the Vietnam War. The chairman of Rumfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) and one of the most visible advocates of military action to oust Saddam, Richard Perle, spent Vietnam at the University of Chicago (along with Wolfowitz) before joining the staff of Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who at the time was among the last remaining Democrats to support the Vietnam war.

"Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad," Hagel quipped recently, earning him an outraged rebuke by the editors at the Wall Street Journal who called the crack "particularly shabby." Another highly visible super-hawk and Perle protégé, CSP founder-director Frank Gaffney, also avoided military service during Vietnam.

Here's a startling fact: only four of the 32 prominent right-wingers who authored the now-famous Sept. 20 PNAC letter to Bush urging him to extend the war on terrorism to Iraq -- as well as Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority -- have any military experience. And three of those four were in the reserves like Bush. Among the signatories who have become fixtures on TV talk shows and op-ed pages arguing why the U.S. must invade Iraq, stand by Sharon, or "remake the face of the Arab world" are: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, his sidekick Robert Kagan, the Canadian-bred columnist Charles Krauthammer, Christian Right leader Gary Bauer, moralist William Bennett, former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, former New Republic editor Martin Peretz, and former UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, alongwith Perle and Gaffney.

Other armchair hawks include Michael Ledeen -- yet another omnipresent Iran-contra alum who says that the word "stability" gives him the "heebie-jeebies" -- who spent Vietnam curled up comfortably at a university library carrel reading Machiavelli. Rumsfeld intimate and DPB member Kenneth Adelman, who claims that a military campaign against Baghdad would be a "cakewalk," also avoided service.

This glaring disparity between experience and rhetoric has not been lost on the military brass. "It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see it another," noted Zinni, who as chief of the U.S. Central Command in the late 1990s was responsible for U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region. The main concern of ex-generals like Zinni and Schwarzkopf is that an invasion will burden the military with an impossible and perhaps interminable political task. "Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years?" asked former Navy Secretary and Vietnam veteran James Webb in a Washington Post column last week.

But the Chicken Hawks have not been shy about counterattacking Zinni and Co., arguing, like Clemenceau, that "war is too important to be left to the generals." The New Republic editor Peter Beinert claimed in a column that "over and over during the nineties, the generals with firsthand battlefield experience guessed wrong -- and the civilians without it guessed right -- about what would happen when the United States went to war." According to Beinert, military leaders have "repeatedly overestimated the enemy" since Vietnam.

The attitude of rightwing hawks was best summarized last week in the Washington Post by Eliot Cohen, one of the four signers of the PNAC letter who actually served in the Army reserves, albeit in the war-free 1980s. He wrote: "Being a veteran is no guarantee of a strategic wisdom," and as a consequence, veterans "should receive no special consideration for their views."

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14070

9/14/02
3:56:21 PM

AlterNet Headlines

http://www.alternet.org

TEN REASONS WHY MANY GULF WAR VETERANS OPPOSE RE-INVADING IRAQ

Anonymous, AlterNet

The opinions of combat vets should be heard before troops deploy for battle -- not after they have returned wounded, ill or in body bags.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14067

THE CHICKEN HAWK FACTOR

Jim Lobe, AlterNet

The army of media pundits, cabinet members, and military experts arrayed in favor of an attack on Iraq have one startling fact in common. Not one of them has a shred of wartime experience.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14070

THE BRUTAL WAR ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Sarah Phelan, AlterNet

As part of the escalating drug war, D.E.A agents target one of the most successful medical marijuana programs in the nation.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14059

**For more info on the DEA's war on medical pot, read "The DEA in Chains: Bound by a Patient in a Chair, the Feds Call Local Cops for Help" on our DrugReporter page:

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=17

GM WHEAT PORTENDS DISASTER FOR GREAT PLAINS

Kari Lydersen, AlterNet

Much of the world is certain that it doesn't want GM foods -- very certain. And this fact could only have devastating economic implications for American farmers.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13951

OFF THE BEATEN 9/11 PATH

Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet

The events of 9/11 should be commemorated not with patriotism or mass despair, but with a call for peace and compassion. And activists across the country plan to do exactly that.

*In 9/11: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=25

WANTON WOMEN WANT FAIR SHARE

Liz Langley, Orlando Weekly

Women may be more selective; they may not catcall men on the street, but females have extremely healthy, horny, voracious appetites for skin, just like men do.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14042

SAVING IRAQ FOR 2004

Doug Ireland, In These Times

The Bush administration may not attack Baghdad now, but reserve the Saddam card for the next presidential elections.

*In War on Iraq: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=40

CUBA AFTER CASTRO?

Rachel Neumann, AlterNet

It is possible that Cuba after Castro's death will find itself saddled with a government that mouths the rhetoric of the revolution, but destroys the institutions that make Cuba so remarkable.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14066

9/14/02
3:34:51 PM

Public Citizen

Sept. 9. 2002

Jerry Falwell's Second Attempt to Shut Down Parody Web Site Is Misguided

Dismiss Falwell's Lawsuit Against Internet Critic, Public Citizen Tells Virginia Court

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A lawsuit Jerry Falwell filed in Virginia against an Internet critic should be dismissed because it was filed in the wrong state and has no merit, Public Citizen told a court today. It is Falwell's second legal attempt to shut down the critic's Web site, which parodies Falwell and his statements about the responsibility of gays for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, among other things.

The site, at www.jerryfalwell.com and www.jerryfallwell.com, pokes fun at Falwell's advocacy of Biblical literalism and his penchant for giving advice. Another page purports to discover a biblical code showing that Falwell is a false prophet.

After the site went up last year, Falwell's attorney sent the site's creator, Illinois resident Gary Cohn, a letter demanding that Cohn turn over the domain names to Falwell. Cohn refused. Falwell then filed a complaint against Cohn with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), alleging trademark violations, even though Falwell had never registered his name as a trademark.

The WIPO rejected Falwell's claims, so on June 20, Falwell sued Cohn in the U.S. District Court's Western District of Virginia. He alleged trademark violations and libel.

In a motion filed with the court today, Public Citizen, which along with the ACLU of Virginia is representing Cohn, asked the court to dismiss the case for a variety of reasons.

The primary reason is that the court lacks jurisdiction, and hearing the case in Virginia would have serious First Amendment implications for Internet users everywhere.

Cohn lives in Illinois, is not licensed to do business in Virginia, doesn't have an office or employees there, and owns no property in Virginia. Cohn's message in no way targets Virginia residents. Registration of domain names with a Virginia company also is insufficient to establish jurisdiction, and anyway, the names have since been moved, Public Citizen argued.

"The only reason Falwell filed suit in Virginia is because he lives there," said Paul Alan Levy, the attorney with Public Citizen who is representing Cohn. "Yet Falwell is hauling Cohn to a court hundreds of miles from Cohn's home. If the court were to hear this case, it would set a dangerous precedent. People who type their thoughts about public figures on a computer would think twice if they knew they would have to defend themselves at any spot on the globe where the figure happened to be. That would seriously hamper people's First Amendment rights."

If Falwell were to file suit anywhere, it should be Illinois, Levy said. Still, the suit would fail on other grounds.

Cohn is not violating trademark law because his Web site sells nothing, advertises no products or services, and makes no money, Levy told the court. Also, Falwell has not registered his name as a trademark.

Finally, Falwell's libel claim stemming from the statement that Falwell is a false prophet has no merit because it is an opinion, not a statement of fact, and therefore can't give rise to a libel suit. Also, it would be impossible to prove whether Falwell is a false prophet, Levy argued.

Public Citizen is representing Cohn because it has a history of championing First Amendment rights on the Internet. For more information about Public Citizen's work on Internet free speech issues, go to http://www.citizen.org/litigation/briefs/IntFreeSpch/index.cfm For a copy of the brief filed today, go to http://www.citizen.org/documents/Falwell%20Dismissal%20Memo.pdf.

Rebecca Glenberg of the ACLU of Virginia is also representing Cohn in the case.

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

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

9/14/02
3:33:27 PM

DAILY GRIST

<http://www.gristmagazine.com>

NOT BREATHING EASY

As the one-year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon nears, some people are trying to assess the impact of the tragedy on the environment. In New York Harbor, biologists are studying the effects on aquatic life of the smoke and building fragments that drifted into the Hudson River. The debris had high levels of dioxins, PCBs, and metals. Meanwhile, New York City residents are still concerned about the fallout from what was, among other things, the worst environmental disaster in the history of the city. Most people say the city's air quality is back to normal, or "at least normal for New York," as Louise Leavitt of the American Lung Association state chapter put it. But downtown residents still worry about the lingering ash and dust, some of which is asbestos-tainted. In June, a poll by an independent health research group found that lower Manhattan residents were more concerned about air quality than about another terrorist attack.

straight to the source: Washington Post, Cheryl Lyn Dybas, 09 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=444>

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, Francesca Lyman, 09 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=445>

JUST SAY NANO?

Nanotechnology -- the rapidly evolving science of manipulating materials at the molecular level -- holds the promise of tiny computers, super-strong bridges, ultra-light airplanes, and cures for cancer. But will it be an environmental boon or bane? Some fear that nanotechnology could create contaminants whose tiny size would make them nearly impossible to cleanse from the bloodstream or groundwater, for example; one environmental organization, ETC Group, is asking the government to halt nanotechnology research until environmental and health concerns can be researched and addressed. But others believe that nanotechnology could be the key to solving many environmental problems. The National Science Foundation's National Nanotechnology Initiative has been researching the technology's potential to aid the environment through such applications as filtering systems for water, gas pipelines, and smokestacks that could remove even miniscule impurities. The tiny particles could also be used as sensors to monitor air and drinking water for toxics, and absorbent particles could be used to clean up tainted water or soil.

straight to the source: Seattle Times, Associated Press, Jim Krane, 09 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=446>

straight to the source: CNN.com, Associated Press, 08 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=447>

SIGN OF THE THAMES

New water-quality targets being established by the European Union could radically change the face of farming in Europe, forcing farmers to scale back or even abandon their practices in some traditionally agricultural areas. The Water Framework Directive will require all rivers, lakes, and canals to be restored to "good ecological quality" within 15 years -- and the measure of "good" will be far stricter than current standards. Complying with the directive will require wide-ranging changes in land use, from substantial reductions in the number of sheep and cattle that can be kept to restrictions on the size and location of crop fields. Simon Harrison of Ireland's University College, Cork, put it simply: "If you want to have nice rivers, there are going to be some changes in agricultural practices. This is a Europe-wide problem." Maybe so, but it's especially acute in Great Britain, where 95 percent of freshwater was polluted by farming sources in the 1990s.

straight to the source: BBC News, Jonathan Amos, 09 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=448>

SAYONARA, SONORA

Environmental organizations have petitioned the Bush administration to increase protection for wildlife in its proposed management plan for California's Sonoran Desert, saying the plan favors commerce and recreation at the expense of conservation. The enviros say the proposal violates a host of federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Wilderness Act, by cutting protection for the habitat of the imperiled desert tortoise and allowing motor vehicles into fragile areas, among other offenses. If U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and President Bush reject the petition, the groups say they will sue in federal court. The 5.5 million-acre Sonoran Desert has seen rapid species declines in recent years, largely because highways, development, and agricultural and recreational uses have destroyed important habitat. Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has spent years nudging the Interior Department to better protect the desert, called the proposed plan "worse than the status quo."

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Scott Gold, 07 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=449>

ANOTHER NILE IN THE COFFIN

West Nile virus has been making headlines all summer, but the human toll of the disease is far smaller than its impact on bird species. Since West Nile was first spotted in a crow three years ago, at least 111 species have been hit, including the bald eagle and the endangered Mississippi sandhill crane. The spread of the virus is particularly alarming in its rapidity; last year, scientists spotted the affliction in only about a dozen species. This year, hundreds of birds of prey have died in the Upper Midwest, with red-tailed hawks and great horned owls the hardest hit. Wildlife biologists and conservationists are particularly concerned about endangered species, whose tiny populations often cannot survive even a few extra deaths, let alone a major die-off. An already-approved horse vaccine is being tested on birds, but in the meantime, new species continue to turn up with West Nile. "We don't know of any birds that can't be affected by the virus," said Kathryn Converse, a wildlife disease specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center.

straight to the source: MSNBC.com, Associated Press, Allison Schlesinger, 09 Sept. 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=450>

only in Grist: West of Eden -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ha/ha010801.stm?source=daily>

9/14/02
3:30:25 PM

TomPaine.com

http://www.TomPaine.com

BLIND, MUTE, DEAF AND DUMB

American Media Around The Globe

by Michael Ryan

"Only 282 people are working as full time foreign correspondents for American media.... In the 1980s, you probably could have found that many waiting in line for lunch at Fofi's restaurant in Berlin."

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6329

ALL WAR TALK, ALL THE TIME

America's Leaders Fail To Offer Public Alternatives To War

by Laura Flanders

As Americans pause to remember 9/11, our political and media leaders talk about new threats, but not how America can lower the propensity for conflict in the world.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6352

MAKING THE CASE FOR WAR

Can We Follow Bush Down A Path Of Mayhem And Death?

by Richard Blow

"Now more than ever, Bush's lack of gravitas and his foreign policy inexperience are crippling his leadership."

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6343

ART AND CONTEMPLATION

San Francisco's MOMA Will Be Open And Free On 9/11

by Neal Benezra

"The deep and complex powers of art may be of help as we all come to terms with this most traumatic anniversary."

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6341

PUBLIC OPINION WATCH

August 26 - August 30

A Weekly Compendium And Commentary On Recent Polling by Ruy Teixeira, The Century Foundation (www.TCF.org) Faltering Economy, Anxious Workers... Sure We Really Need Those Ground Troops?

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6333

9/14/02
3:19:50 PM

Planet Ark World Environment News

WFP urges more food aid for hungry Zimbabweans - ZIMBABWE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17670/story.htm

Bush administration defends forest thinning plan - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17676/story.htm

US agency seeks to keep energy plant info secret - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17675/story.htm

Maryland sees end to snakehead fish saga - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17674/story.htm

US Senate votes to ban mercury fever thermometers - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17673/story.htm

Chicago spraying mosquitos to combat West Nile - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17685/story.htm

USDA provides $323 mln for conservation programs - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17667/story.htm

Rich soil good for trapping carbon dioxide - study - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17668/story.htm

NY to replace aging Poletti power plant in 2008 - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17669/story.htm

Group seeks $100 mln for Exxon Valdez Spill-WSJ - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17658/story.htm

Britain's hedgehogs face thorny future - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17682/story.htm

Papers lament "Summit of Lost Opportunity" - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17665/story.htm

Moscow cannot blame fires just on weather - WWF - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17671/story.htm

Sinking South Korea nuclear plant is safe - officials - SOUTH KOREA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17666/story.htm

Summit highlights gravity of the planet's problems - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17664/story.htm

Earth Summit produced 290,000 tonnes carbon dioxide - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17659/story.htm

ANALYSIS - Milling a temporary solution to Africa GM debate - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17683/story.htm

Greens urge public pressure as summit disappoints - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17684/story.htm

"Free Willy" star turns up in whale-hunting Norway - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17681/story.htm

Japan officials probe TEPCO on reactor cover-up - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17663/story.htm

INTERVIEW - German shadow minister wants farmers treated equally - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17662/story.htm

Powell walks elephant path in African forest - GABON http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17677/story.htm

Hong Kong animal therapy group to honour 8 dogs - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17679/story.htm

Thick smog shrouds Hong Kong, health warning issued - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17672/story.htm

Greenpeace protests Earth Summit atop Rio's Christ - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17661/story.htm

Green fuel rules increase refinery emissions - Total - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17660/story.htm

INTERVIEW - UN worried about nuclear "dirty bomb" material - AUSTRIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17680/story.htm

Australia braces for another ferocious fire season - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17678/story.htm

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:

BRAZIL: Greenpeace Activists Demonstrate Atop the Statue of Christ in Rio http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17657

THAILAND: A Thai Shopowner Clears His Store of Rising Floodwaters in Taphan Hin http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17653

THAILAND: A Thai Boy Stands in His Crib Above a Rising Waterline in Ban Wan Tong http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17654

CHINA: Residents Cover their Mouths as Thick Smog Blankets Hong Kong http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17655

MEXICO: Greenpeace Actvist Dressed up as Uncle Sam During Anti Bush Protest in Mexico http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17656

9/14/02
3:17:29 PM

The Brutal War On Medical Marijuana

by Sarah Phelan, AlterNet, September 6, 2002

The war on drugs is making a comeback -- with a vengeance. Six days short of the Sept.11 anniversary, D.E.A. agents put federal tax dollars to work by raiding the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (better known as WAMM), a Santa Cruz County, Calif.-based cooperative and one of the most successful medicinal marijuana programs in the nation.

At 7 a.m., Sept. 5, a dozen camouflage-clad agents showed up at the Davenport home of Valerie and Michael Corral, who founded WAMM a decade ago. Pointing their weapons, the agents told wheelchair-bound WAMM member Suzanne Pfeil to stand up. "I can't stand up. I told them I was sorry," said Pfeil, who suffers from post-polio syndrome.

DEA agents then arrested a pajama-clad Valerie Corral, along with her husband Michael.

According to DEA spokesman Richard Meyer, the Corrals were arrested and taken into custody in San Jose on federal charges of intent to distribute marijuana, but by mid-afternoon they had been released, with the U.S. Attorney's office declining to file charges.

Their release ended a three-hour standoff between 30 WAMM members and supporters and the Drug Enforcement Agency agents. Bearing placards announcing "Warning: Federal Crime in Process" and "Marijuana is Medicine," outraged WAMMers blockaded the dirt road that leads to the Corrals property in the hills near Davenport.

Destroying WAMM's 2002 crop took the DEA under an hour, as clocked by a WAMM security camera that captured chainsaw-wielding agents mowing down 130 pungently aromatic plants, which moments before stood 6-8 ft tall and only weeks away from being harvested.

But leaving the property proved more complex. When these same agents realized they were hostage to an imminent confrontation, they called the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's office, which has worked closely with the Corrals to make sure the WAMM operation remains within state law.

Summoned to the scene around 2 p.m., a reluctant-looking Sgt. Terri Moore cut through a chain padlock and arranged for the safe passage of the agents, who left in a cavalcade of SUVs and U-Haul trucks once Valerie Corral told WAMM member and security chief Daniel Rodriguez to let them through.

Still, the battle wasn't over yet.

"Shame on You!" shouted WAMM members as the agents drove past, expressions masked by tinted windows

"The whole thing is an outrageous joke, an act of violence under guise of the law, theft at the federal level, war against the people of California, who voted to have this medicine, which they are stealing, " said Joe Wouk, as the agents drove away.

WAMM was born out of founder Valerie Corral's efforts to alleviate her own epilepsy seizures, which began soon after she suffered a head injury in a car accident three decades ago. In 1974, Coral discovered marijuana was far more effective than pharmaceuticals, and for the next 18 years she and her husband cultivated a few plants each year to supply themselves and their friends.

In 1992, they were arrested twice for cultivation -- and both times they cited their right to grow marijuana for medical use as a defense. Valerie Corral was instrumental in drafting California's Proposition 215, whose 1996 passage allowed patients and their caregivers to grow pot for medicinal purposes.

Prop. 215's passage also led to the birth of various "pot clubs," which charged their members for services and products, often for as much or more than the going street value. But WAMM remains a collective in which members volunteer time in exchange for marijuana and hospice-style services.

As one WAMM-member put it, "WAMM is a club people are literally dying to get into. Many of us have AIDS and cancer. 40 members passed to the other side this year."

Since the passage of Proposition 215, many pot clubs have been shut down, including several in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thursday's raid was the latest round in an escalating tug of war between local and federal authorities.

In addition to California, 7 other states -- Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington -- allow the cultivation of medical marijuana. But U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft maintains that Proposition 215 and other such measures violate federal drug law.

After the raid, members of the cooperative and media drove up to the farm that sits on a sun-soaked southerly-facing ridge. But though the farm has an ocean view, the vista was marred by the ravaged scene that greeted them.

Framed by a "Love Grows Here" sign, the once flourishing garden had been reduced to a mess of stumps and tangled wire, on which the occasional leaf hung rag-like -- a sight that spurred some into action and others to tears.

"This was such a beautiful place. What can you say, but fuck? I remember watering this plant," said Sheri Paris, as she salvaged some crushed leaves. "I sincerely believe some of our members are going to be suicidal. They won't be able to get the medicine they need to deal with cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, and the unbearable muscle seizures that quadriplegics suffer."

Meanwhile a sobbing Diana Dodson wanted to know why the DEA is terrorizing sick people. "We've lost 40 members this year and that number will increase because of this raid," said Dodson, who has AIDS.

Dale Gieringer, who is California coordinator of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, noted that since Sept. 11, 25 people have been busted for medical marijuana in California, but only one for terrorism.

Danny Rodriguez said his partner, who also does WAMM security, was handcuffed and held for an hour after he followed the D.E.A. agents to the farm at the start of the early morning raid. "It kills me to think Americans are doing this to other Americans, " said Rodriguez, who also has AIDS.

"(D)ead members are buried here. They have desecrated a sacred spot in many ways," said Deb Silverknight, a retired nurse and self-described black Cherokee priestess.

Sitting in a chair amid the carnage, Ralph Trueblood said, "Maybe this will be the turning point in the federal war on marijuana. Let's all hope and pray this is, because the feds have gone too far. We are all emotional, crying, laughing, in disbelief. For nine years, our members have been able to get their medicine. Now that's interrupted. I believe there will be a great outpouring of public sympathy."

Also grieving in the garden was Harry Boyle, 24, and his caregiver and fiancee, Courtney Connolly. Connolly says Boyle's experience has changed her perspective on marijuana. "I used to be anti all drugs and I don't smoke at all, but I see how much it helps him and all the people here. They can sleep, eat, function, and be in a good mood," she said.

Boyle, who has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, says smoking helps him cope with headaches and the stress of chemotherapy. "I was unable to even keep down the anti-nausea pills," says Boyle, who dropped from 200 lb. to 160 lb. before he joined WAMM.

While Jean Hanamoto described the scene as a tragedy, her husband George, who is one of the chief gardeners, tried to look at the bright side. "Maybe this will be a shot in the arm for volunteerism," he said. "Nothing pulls people together like getting their shit messed with!"

And the arrival of the freshly liberated Corrals helped turn the mood in the garden from a wake to a celebration. With wind chimes tinkling in the background, Valerie Corral, still dressed in her pajamas, stood in the middle of the plot, holding hands with husband Michael and other collective members. She vowed that WAMM will become stronger than ever before.

"It feels as though this garden has been desecrated, there's not a story about this garden that does not intersect with our lives. But we have something remarkable here, which they can never take away," Corral told the group, as marijuana smoke drifted in the air.

"What we are doing is so powerful, so true, nothing the Feds can do to us can change that truth," she said. "You have to stand up against injustice in all its forms."

For more info, contact WAMM at http://www.WAMM.org

Sarah Phelan is the News Editor at Metro Santa Cruz.

http://www.metroactive.com/cruz

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14059

9/14/02
2:48:17 PM

THE LATEST HORMONE SCIENCE, PT. 2

http://www.rachel.org .

In this series we are exploring whether mainstream scientists take seriously the idea that some industrial chemicals can interfere with hormones (the "endocrine system") in living things and thus cause health problems. The NEW YORK TIMES says most scientists don't. See RACHEL'S #750.

Hormones are naturally-occurring chemicals that circulate at very low levels in the blood stream of all vertebrate animals including reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds and mammals.[1] (Vertebrates are animals with a backbone.) In all vertebrate species, hormones act as chemical messengers and as switches, turning on and off bodily systems that control growth, development, learning and behavior. Hormones start affecting every animal shortly after it begins life as a fertilized egg. Hormones control growth and development prior to birth or hatching, and they continue to influence behavior throughout life. Hormones determine when bears will hibernate, when salmon will return to their spawning grounds, and when women will menstruate. Hormones profoundly affect the nervous system, the reproductive system, and the immune system. Naturally-occurring hormones are also implicated in some forms of cancer, such as female breast cancer which is widely believed to be linked to a woman's lifetime exposure to estradiol (estrogen), the main female sex hormone.

The question is, do some hormonally-active industrial chemicals interfere with naturally-occurring hormones and give rise to disease (certain cancers or autoimmune disorders such as diabetes, for example), or hinder growth, development, behavior, intelligence, learning, or immunity? Three years ago, in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences studied this question and concluded that the answer is a qualified Yes:

Here are some quotations from the Academy's 1999 report:

"Adverse reproductive and developmental effects have been observed in human populations, wildlife, and laboratory animals as a consequence of exposure to HAAs [hormonally active agents]."[2,pg.3]

"Studies with laboratory animals have shown that prenatal exposure to some HAAs, such as methoxychlor [a pesticide], TCDD [dioxin], and octylphenol and bisphenol A can reduce sperm production."[2,pg.131]

"Taken together, the results of animal and human studies indicate that prenatal exposure to PCBs can affect neurologic development."[2,pg.175] [PCBs are highly-toxic, persistent industrial chemicals released into the environment for 40 years by Monsanto and now found in food, water and soil world-wide.]

"In the Michigan/Maternal Infant Cohort Study, Fein et al. (1984) evaluated the birth size and gestational age of 242 infants and found that maternal consumption of fish and concentrations of PCBs in cord serum [in blood in the umbilical cord] were correlated with lowered birth weight, shortened gestation [time in the womb], and smaller head circumference. Lower weight was also observed in children from this cohort at 4 yr [years] in a dose-dependent fashion (Jacobson et al. 1990). Children with cord serum PCB levels of 5.0 ng/mL [nanograms per milliliter] or more weighed 1.8 kg [4 pounds] less on average than the lowest exposed children. Prenatal exposure was also associated with deficits in neurologic development in followup studies of these children at up to 11 yr [years]."[2,pg.125]

"It has been well documented that HAHs [halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons] such as TCDD [dioxin], polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), and PCBs, affect immune response, and they appear to affect all functional arms of the immune system (innate immunity and host resistance, cell-mediated immunity, and humoral immunity)."[2,pg.178]

"There have only been a few studies of the effects of HAAs [hormonally active agents] in humans, but the results of laboratory and wildlife studies suggest that HAAs have the potential to affect human immune functions."[2,pg.194]

With this background, let's review the last two years' worth of studies appearing in ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES (EHP), a peer-reviewed journal published by the federal National Institutes of Health. This will tell us whether scientists have recently rejected or abandoned the idea that industrial chemicals can interfere with hormones.

The first thing that struck me as I read through the past 24 monthly issues of EHP is that there is much more human data now than there was 5 years ago. Most studies still involve laboratory animals or wildlife, but humans figure prominently in many recent findings. Here is a sampling:

** Women exposed to dioxin by living near the scene of an industrial accident in Seveso, Italy in 1976 are now showing an excess of breast cancer, even though they are still relatively young (average age 40.8 years). Scientists within U.S. Environmental protection Agency (EPA) have been referring to dioxin as an "environmental hormone" since 1992. (See RACHEL'S #269.) [EHP Vol. 110, No. 7 (July 2002), pgs. 625-628.]

** Forest pesticide applicators who spray the popular herbicide known as 2,4-D have altered levels of male sex hormone in their blood. [EHP Vol. 109, No. 5 [May 2001], pgs. 495-500.] Thus 2,4-D joins the growing list of common chemicals known to disrupt hormones. 2,4-D is the herbicide used more than any other on lawns to kill dandelions and crab grass. It is sold under many names, including my personal favorite, Hormotox. It is also known as Demise, Weed-B-Gone, Weedone, Lawn-Keep, Raid Weed Killer, Plantgard, and Ded-Weed, among other trademarked names. Earlier studies showed that pet dogs die of cancer at twice the normal rate if they live in a family that uses 2,4-D on its lawn. (See RACHEL'S #250.)

A recent study shows that children's exposure to 2,4-D inside homes increases 10-fold after lawns are treated with 2,4-D. The family dog and humans' shoes are the main vehicles transporting 2,4-D into homes, exposing children living there. [EHP Vol. 109, No. 11 (November 2001), pgs. 1185-1191.]

** A study of 100 adolescents who grew up near waste incinerators or a metal smelter shows developmental delays in sexual maturity, compared to a control group living in an uncontaminated rural area. Adolescents in Flanders (Belgium) living in moderately polluted urban neighborhoods have "relatively low" levels of PCBs and dioxin-like polychlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons (PCAHs) in their blood. Even these low levels correlated with delayed sexual maturation in both girls and boys, the study concludes. In 1997 the Flemish government had reported a higher percentage of conceptions requiring medical assistance near incinerators, compared to the rest of Flanders.

The authors conclude, "Through endocrine disruption, environmental exposure to PCAHs may interfere with sexual maturation and in the long-run adversely affect human reproduction." [EHP Vol. 110, No. 8 (August 2002), pgs. 771-776.]

** Premature breast development (known as thelarche, pronounced thee-larkey) is the growth of breasts in girls younger than 8 with no other signs of puberty. Puerto Rico has the highest incidence of thelarche ever reported. The problem there has been studied for years, to no avail. Now a study of 41 girls in Puerto Rico with thelarche and 35 girls without thelarche has found that 68% of the thelarche girls had high levels of several phthalates (pronounced tha-lates) in their blood. Only one of the non-thelarche girls had measureable levels of one phthalate in her blood. The phthalates found in the thelarche group are known to have estrogenic and anti-androgenic effects. (Anti-androgenic means "interferes with male hormone." Humans of both genders always have a mix of male and female hormones in their blood stream, the balance between them being important.) [EHP Vol. 108, No. 9 (September 2000), pgs. 895-900.]

Phthalates are common industrial chemicals used in building materials, food packaging and food wrap, toys and other children's products, medical devices, garden hose, shoes, shoe soles, automobile undercoating, wires and cables, carpet backing, carpet tile, vinyl tile, pool liners, artificial leather, canvas tarps, notebook covers, tool handles, dishwasher baskets, flea collars, insect repellents, skin emollients, hair sprays, nail polish, and perfumes, among other uses.

In October, 2000, a study reported in EHP measured the metabolic byproducts of 7 phthalates in the urine of adults and concluded that exposure to phthalates "is both higher and more common than previously suspected." The highest levels (1 to 16 parts per million in urine) were phthalates known as MEP, MBP, and MBzP and they occurred at the highest levels in women of child-bearing age. MBP and MBzP have previously been shown to cause reproductive and developmental toxicity in animals. [EHP Vol, 108, No. 10 (October 2000), pgs. 979-982.]

** A study of 63 female Air Force personnel with exposure to jet fuel (JP-8) and solvents showed that the most exposed women had the lowest levels of four reproductive hormones in their urine. The hormones were studied because they indicate likelihood of success or failure in conception. Thus the components of jet fuel, and/or solvents, are likely hormone disruptors in human females. [EHP Vol. 110, No. 8 (August, 2002), pgs. 805-811.]

** Two new studies indicate that Monsanto's herbicide, Roundup, is a hormone-disruptor and is associated with birth defects in humans.

Farm families that applied pesticides to their crops in Minnesota were studied to see if their elevated exposure to pesticides caused birth defects in their children. The study found that two kinds of pesticides -- fungicides and the herbicide Roundup -- were linked to statistically significant increases in birth defects. Roundup was linked to a 3-fold increase in neurodevelopmental (attention deficit) disorders. [EHP Supplement 3, Vol. 110 (June 2002), pgs. 441-449.]

A recent test tube study reveals that Roundup can severely reduce the ability of mouse cells to produce hormones. Roundup interferes with a fundamental protein called StAR (steroidogenic acute regulatory protein). The StAR protein is key to the production of testosterone in men (thus controlling male characteristics, including sperm production) but also the production of adrenal hormone (essential for brain development), carbohydrate metabolism (leading to loss or gain of weight), and immune system function. The authors point out that "a disruption of the StAR protein may underlie many of the toxic effects of environmental pollutants." [EHP Vol. 108, No. 8 (August 2000), pgs. 769-776.]

Monsanto, the St. Louis chemical giant and creator of Roundup as well as PCBs, is now a leader in genetically engineered crops. Monsanto sells "Roundup ready" seeds for corn, soybeans, and cotton; wheat and lawn grasses will be next. These are seeds engineered to withstand a thorough dousing with Roundup, which kills weeds without killing the Roundup-ready crops. To make Monsanto's "Roundup ready" seeds legal, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had to triple the amount of Roundup residues that it allows on crops. For years, Roundup has been Monsanto's most profitable product, and genetic engineering has now allowed the firm to sell much more of it. See RACHEL'S #637, #639, #660, #686, #726.

For example, a 1999 study of soybean farming in the U.S. midwest found that farmers planting Roundup Ready soybeans used 2 to 5 times as many pounds of herbicide per acre as farmers using conventional systems, and ten times as much herbicide as farmers using Integrated Weed Management systems, which are intended to reduce the need for chemical herbicides.[3,pg.2]

More chemical dangers probably lie ahead as new products of genetic engineering come to market. According to the NEW YORK TIMES, Scotts Company is collaborating with Monsanto to develop Roundup Ready grass for lawns.[4] Children and pregnant women, beware.

[To be continued.]

9/14/02
2:39:21 PM

AlterNet Headlines

http://www.alternet.org

*AFTER 9/11

One year after 9/11, everyone with an agenda to advance has taken up the Sept. 11 attacks as an explanation, a rationale, a reason for their point of view and way of thinking. On AlterNet's new After 9/11 page, you'll find a compelling collection of essays, opinions and resources designed to help you make sense of the confusion and put the event and its aftermath into perspective.

http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=25

FUEL FOR THE ANTI-BUSH FIRE

John Passacantando, AlterNet

It's not just evironmentalists who are angry at Bush, but firemen, cops, soccer moms, surfers, cabbies, anarchists and even Republicans. You have to go back to the dark days of Richard Nixon to find such widespread fury toward a U.S. leader.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14048

TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS: ROCK AND PSYCHEDELICS IN THE 1960s

Nick Bromell, University of Chicago Press

In this excerpt from Nick Bromell's book, a chance meeting between Bob Dylan and the Beatles changes the course of music history forever.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14044

ACID ROCK: A FLASHBACK

Jon Wiener, The Nation

Nick Bromell's book, Tomorrow Never Knows, is a glorious cultural history of '60s rock & roll that captures the "primal scene" of listening to rock music.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14046

PSYCHEDELICS AND ZEN: TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL

Don Hazen, AlterNet

A landmark new anthology explores the confluence of Zen and psychedelics but leaves one question unanswered: what do we tell the kids?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14033

CONNECTING THE ENERGY DOTS TO AFGHANISTAN

Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet

While the media has most of us looking at Afghanistan as a war-torn haven of terrorists, energy companies see the country as a treasure trove of undeveloped resources.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14047

FREEDOM FROM TELEMARKETERS

Judith Gorman, AlterNet

Telemarketers have promised to stay off the phones on Sept. 11. Here are some ways to keep them from calling you the other 364 days of the year.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14029

THIRSTY FOR JUSTICE

Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, AlterNet

If the World Bank has its way, the public water systems of several regions, including Ghana, would be taken away from the control of the people, and placed into their own profit schemes.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14041

PRISONERS OVER PUPILS

Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet

A new report says that from 1985 to 2000, state spending on corrections was nearly double that of higher education. Worse, more African American men are now in prison than in college.

*In Rights and Liberties: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=33

9/14/02
2:33:45 PM

The Troubling New Face Of America

by Jimmy Carter, September 5, 2002

Fundamental changes are taking place in the historical policies of the United States with regard to human rights, our role in the community of nations and the Middle East peace process -- largely without definitive debates (except, at times, within the administration). Some new approaches have understandably evolved from quick and well-advised reactions by President Bush to the tragedy of Sept. 11, but others seem to be developing from a core group of conservatives who are trying to realize long-pent-up ambitions under the cover of the proclaimed war against terrorism.

Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as "enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt. Several hundred captured Taliban soldiers remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay under the same circumstances, with the defense secretary declaring that they would not be released even if they were someday tried and found to be innocent. These actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents.

While the president has reserved judgment, the American people are inundated almost daily with claims from the vice president and other top officials that we face a devastating threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and with pledges to remove Saddam Hussein from office, with or without support from any allies. As has been emphasized vigorously by foreign allies and by responsible leaders of former administrations and incumbent officeholders, there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad. In the face of intense monitoring and overwhelming American military superiority, any belligerent move by Hussein against a neighbor, even the smallest nuclear test (necessary before weapons construction), a tangible threat to use a weapon of mass destruction, or sharing this technology with terrorist organizations would be suicidal. But it is quite possible that such weapons would be used against Israel or our forces in response to an American attack.

We cannot ignore the development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but a unilateral war with Iraq is not the answer. There is an urgent need for U.N. action to force unrestricted inspections in Iraq. But perhaps deliberately so, this has become less likely as we alienate our necessary allies. Apparently disagreeing with the president and secretary of state, in fact, the vice president has now discounted this goal as a desirable option.

We have thrown down counterproductive gauntlets to the rest of the world, disavowing U.S. commitments to laboriously negotiated international accords.

Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us. These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism.

Tragically, our government is abandoning any sponsorship of substantive negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Our apparent policy is to support almost every Israeli action in the occupied territories and to condemn and isolate the Palestinians as blanket targets of our war on terrorism, while Israeli settlements expand and Palestinian enclaves shrink.

There still seems to be a struggle within the administration over defining a comprehensible Middle East policy. The president's clear commitments to honor key U.N. resolutions and to support the establishment of a Palestinian state have been substantially negated by statements of the defense secretary that in his lifetime "there will be some sort of an entity that will be established" and his reference to the "so-called occupation." This indicates a radical departure from policies of every administration since 1967, always based on the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories and a genuine peace between Israelis and their neighbors.

Belligerent and divisive voices now seem to be dominant in Washington, but they do not yet reflect final decisions of the president, Congress or the courts. It is crucial that the historical and well-founded American commitments prevail: to peace, justice, human rights, the environment and international cooperation.

Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta.

http://www.CarterCenter.org

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38441-2002Sep4.html