9/23/02
1:39:27 PM
What The UN Should Have Heard
by Ian Kleinfeld, YellowTimes.org, September 21, 2002
Ladies and Gentlemen of the International Community:
I speak to you today of a grave threat to the international order and peace. There is a nation among us that is an immediate danger to us all, requiring immediate action by all peace-loving countries that believe in the rule of law.
We are dealing with a nation that routinely thwarts the will of the international community; it has both possession of and continues to seek further weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons despite international laws and treaties prohibiting it.
This country has shown itself to be a belligerent force, invading sovereign nations it does not approve of with impunity and in violation of international laws and consensus. It uses its military solely to further its power over oil.
It has shown complete disregard for the safety of the international community by overthrowing legitimate governments, supporting and arming dictators, and murdering civilians by the millions.
Thousands of dissidents have disappeared in its jails without legal recourse, in contradiction to the words and spirit of its own Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It destroys its own natural resources and contributes to massive environmental destruction worldwide, while using its military force to squelch opposition to its policies.
This country has a long history of brutality and disrespect of civil rights and international law. The list of UN resolutions that it has ignored or sabotaged is nearly endless. It uses its power in the UN to aid its allies and punish its ideological adversaries with no regard for what is right, true, ethical, or in the best interests of the greater good. Even now it threatens to act with unilateral violence if the UN fails to take action it wants.
A government like this has no place in the international community.
It is for all these reasons that I call on you today to foment regime change in the United States by any means necessary. In the years to come, your actions will go down in history as a courageous people acting the interest of the world to ensure peace.
If you fail to act, the consequences are enormous, and will lead to an ever-increasing cycle of violence, and the end of peace on this planet as we know it, making the 3037 who died on September 11th appear a small tragedy in comparison.
Act now, act decisively, and act effectively.
Ian Kleinfeld is an activist, writer, and actor living in San Francisco, California, and is the webmaster for: http://www.DemocracyMeansYou.com
He is also working to get a state initiative on the ballot to prevent the yearly annual buget crisis in California.
There is more information on that at: http://www.CaliforniaBudget.org
Ian Kleinfeld encourages your comments: mailto:ian@democracymeansyou.com
YellowTimes.org is an international publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction must identify the original source:
9/21/02
7:21:57 PM
Untested administration hawks clamor for war
by James Bamford for USA TODAY
Beware of war hawks who never served in the military.
That, in essence, was the message of retired four-star Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni, a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and the White House point man on the Middle East crisis. Zinni is one of a growing number of uniformed officers, in and out of the Pentagon, urging caution on the issue of a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
In an address recently in Florida, he warned his audience to watch out for the administration's civilian superhawks, most of whom avoided military service as best they could. "If you ask me my opinion," said Zinni, referring to Iraq, "Gen. (Brent) Scowcroft, Gen. (Colin) Powell, Gen. (Norman) Schwarzkopf and Gen. Zinni maybe all see this the same way. It might be interesting to wonder why all of the generals see it the same way, and all those (who) never fired a shot in anger (and) are really hellbent to go to war see it a different way.
"That's usually the way it is in history," he said.
Another veteran, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who served in combat in Vietnam and now sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt. "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," he said. "They come at it from an intellectual perspective vs. having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off."
The problem is not new. More than 100 years ago, another battle-scarred soldier, Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, observed: "It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation."
Last month, Vice President Cheney emerged briefly to give several two-gun talks before veterans groups in which he spoke of "regime change" and a "liberated Iraq."
"We must take the battle to the enemy," he said of the war on terrorism. Cheney went on to praise the virtue of military service. "The single most important asset we have," he said, "is the man or woman who steps forward and puts on the uniform of this great nation."
But during the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War, Cheney decided against wearing that uniform. Instead, he used multiple deferments to avoid military service altogether. "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service," he once said.
Cheney is far from alone. For instance, neither Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Defense secretary, nor Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, has served in uniform, yet they are now two of the most bellicose champions of launching a bloody war in the Middle East.
What frightens many is the arrogance, naïveté and cavalier attitude toward war. "The Army guys don't know anything," Perle told The Nation's David Corn earlier this year. With "40,000 troops," he said, the United States could easily take over Iraq. "We don't need anyone else." But by most other estimates, a minimum of 200,000 to 250,000 troops would be needed, plus the support of many allies.
Even among Republicans, the warfare between the veterans and non-vets can be intense. "Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad," Hagel, who came home from Vietnam with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, told The New York Times.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Vietnam combat veteran and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has often expressed anger about the class gap between those who fought in Vietnam and those who did not.
"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units," he wrote in his 1995 autobiography, My American Journey. "Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."
Non-combatants, however, litter the top ranks of the Republican hierarchy. President Bush served peacefully in the Texas National Guard. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spent his time in a Princeton classroom as others in his age group were fighting and dying on Korean battlefields (he later joined the peacetime Navy). Another major player in the administration's war strategy, Douglas Feith, the Defense undersecretary for policy, has no experience in the military. Nor does Cheney's influential chief of staff, Lewis Libby.
The top congressional Republican leaders — Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Majority Leader Dick Armey and House Majority Whip Tom Delay — never saw military service, either; only one, Armey, has shown hesitation about invading Iraq. In contrast, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., a World War II combat veteran, has expressed skepticism about hasty U.S. action, as have some prominent Democrats — House Minority Whip David Bonior, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former vice president Al Gore — who were in the military during the Vietnam War.
No administration's senior ranks, of course, have to be packed with military veterans in order to make good military decisions. But what is remarkable about this administration is that so many of those who are now shouting the loudest and pushing the hardest for this generation's war are the same people who avoided combat, or often even a uniform, in Vietnam, their generation's war.
Military veterans from any era tend to have more appreciation for the greater difficulty of getting out of a military action than getting in — a topic administration war hawks haven't said much about when it comes to Iraq.
Indeed, the Bush administration's non-veteran hawks should review the origins of the Vietnam quagmire. Along the way, they might come across a quote from still another general, this one William Westmoreland, who once directed the war in Vietnam.
"The military don't start wars," he said ruefully. "Politicians start wars."
James Bamford is author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-09-16-oplede_x.htm
9/21/02
7:18:17 PM
A Look At The 'Powerful Jewish Lobby'
by Mark Weber
For decades Israel has violated well established precepts of international law and defied numerous United Nations resolutions in its occupation of conquered lands, in extra-judicial killings and in its repeated acts of military aggression.
Most of the world regards Israel's policies, and especially its oppression of Palestinians, as outrageous and criminal. This international consensus is reflected, for example, in numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel, which have been approved with overwhelming majorities.
"The whole world," United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recently said, "is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian territories]. I don't think the whole world ... can be wrong."[note 1]
Only in the United States do politicians and the media still fervently support Israel and its policies. For decades the U.S. has provided Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid.
Why is the U.S. the only remaining bastion of support for Israel?
Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, has candidly identified the reason: "The Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic," he said. "People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful."[note 2]
Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only about three percent of the U.S. population, they wield immense power and influence -- vastly more than any other ethnic or religious group.
As Jewish author and political science professor Benjamin Ginsberg has pointed out:[note 3]
"Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation's largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, The New York Times ... The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked ...
"Jews are only three percent of the nation's population and comprise eleven percent of what this study defines as the nation's elite. However, Jews constitute more than 25 percent of the elite journalists and publishers, more than 17 percent of the leaders of important voluntary and public interest organizations, and more than 15 percent of the top ranking civil servants."
Stephen Steinlight, former Director of National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, similarly notes the "disproportionate political power" of Jews, which is "pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America." He goes on to explain that "Jewish economic influence and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in the news industry."[note 4]
Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene:[note 5]
"During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals ... 20 percent of professors at the leading universities ... 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington ... 59 percent of the directors, writers and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers and producers in two or more primetime television series."
The influence of American Jewry in Washington, notes the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, is "far disproportionate to the size of the community, Jewish leaders and U.S. officials acknowledge. But so is the amount of money they contribute to [election] campaigns." One member of the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations "estimated Jews alone had contributed 50 percent of the funds for [President Bill] Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign."[note 6]
"It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture," acknowledges Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic. "Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names."[note 7]
One person who has carefully studied this subject is Jonathan J. Goldberg, now Editor of the influential Jewish community weekly Forward. In his 1996 book, Jewish Power, he wrote:[note 8]
"In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation ...
"Hollywood at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives at the major studios are Jews. Writers, producers and to a lesser degree directors are disproportionately Jewish -- one recent study showed the figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films.
"The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America's most lucrative and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic candidates."
Reflecting their role in the American media, Jews are routinely portrayed as high-minded, altruistic, trustworthy, compassionate and deserving of sympathy and support. While millions of Americans readily accept such stereotyped imagery, not everyone is impressed. "I am very angry with some of the Jews," complained actor Marlon Brando during a 1996 interview. "They know perfectly well what their responsibilities are ... Hollywood is run by Jews. It's owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering."[note 9]
A Well-Entrenched Factor
The intimidating power of the "Jewish lobby" is not a new phenomenon, but has long been an important factor in American life.
In 1941, Charles Lindbergh spoke about the danger of Jewish power in the media and government. The shy 39-year-old -- known around the world for his epic 1927 New York to Paris flight, the first solo trans-Atlantic crossing -- was addressing 7,000 people in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, about the dangers of U.S. involvement in the war then raging in Europe. The three most important groups pressing America into war, he explained, were the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt Administration.
Of the Jews, he said: "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." Lindbergh went on:
"... For reasons which are understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, [they] wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction."
In 1978, Jewish American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal wrote in his detailed study, The Zionist Connection:[note 10]
"How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?... It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power ... In the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment and art circles."
As a result of the Jewish grip on the media, wrote Lilienthal, news coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in American television, newspapers and magazines is relentlessly sympathetic to Israel. This is manifest, for example, in the misleading portrayal of Palestinian "terrorism." As Lilienthal put it: "One-sided reportage on terrorism, in which cause is never related to effect, was assured because the most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control."
One-Sided 'Holocaust' History
The Jewish hold on cultural and academic life has had a profound impact on how Americans look at the past. Nowhere is the well entrenched Judeocentric view of history more obvious than in the "Holocaust" media campaign, which focuses on the fate of Jews in Europe during World War II.
Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has remarked:[note 11]
"Whether presented authentically or inauthentically, in accordance with the historical facts or in contradiction to them, with empathy and understanding or as monumental kitsch, the Holocaust has become a ruling symbol of our culture ... Hardly a month goes by without a new TV production, a new film, a new drama, new books, prose or poetry, dealing with the subject, and the flood is increasing rather than abating."
Non-Jewish suffering simply does not merit comparable attention. Overshadowed in the focus on Jewish victimization are, for example, the tens of millions of victims of America's World War II ally, Stalinist Russia, along with the tens of millions of victims of China's Maoist regime, as well as the 12 to 14 million Germans, victims of the flight and expulsion of 1944-1949, of whom some two million lost their lives.
The well-financed Holocaust media and "educational" campaign is crucially important to the interests of Israel. Paula Hyman, a professor of modern Jewish history at Yale University, has observed: "With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon themselves. The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli government policy."[note 12]
Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar who has taught political science at City University of New York (Hunter College), says in his book, The Holocaust Industry, that "invoking The Holocaust" is "a ploy to delegitimize all criticism of Jews."[note 13] "By conferring total blamelessness on Jews, the Holocaust dogma immunizes Israel and American Jewry from legitimate censure ... Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies." He writes of the brazen "shakedown" of Germany, Switzerland and other countries by Israel and organized Jewry "to extort billions of dollars." "The Holocaust," Finkelstein predicts, "may yet turn out to be the 'greatest robbery in the history of mankind'."
Jews in Israel feel free to act brutally against Arabs, writes Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, "believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own."[note 14]
Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has spoken with blunt exasperation about the Jewish-Israeli hold on the United States:[note 15]
"I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."
Today the danger is greater than ever. Israel and Jewish organizations, in collaboration with this country's pro-Zionist "amen corner," are prodding the United States -- the world's foremost military and economic power -- into new wars against Israel's enemies. As the French Ambassador in London recently acknowledged, Israel -- which he called "that shitty little country" -- is a threat to world peace. "Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?," he said.[note 16]
To sum up: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in U.S. support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict.
As long as the "very powerful" Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the U.S. political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East and the Israeli threat to peace.
Source: http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/jewishlobby.html
9/21/02
7:08:23 PM
"We stand looking out upon the new horizon of the 21st Century. It is still daybreak, the sun is about to come up like thunder... there is no better time to review age old challenges with new thinking that peace is not only the absence of violence, but the presence of a higher evolution of human awareness with respect, trust and integrity toward humankind. Our founding fathers recognized that peace was one of the highest duties of the newly organized free and independent states. But too often, we have overlooked the long-term solution of peace for instant gratification of war. This continued downward spiral of violence must stop to ensure that future generations will live in peace and harmony."
Congressman Dennis Kucinich
9/21/02
7:07:15 PM
International Action Center
39 W. 14th Street #206 New York, NY 10011
September 20, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tony Murphy (212)633-6646
RAMSEY CLARK SENDS LETTER TO UN SAYING:
DO NOT NOT SUPPORT A CRIMINAL ATTACK ON IRAQ
The following letter by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has been sent to all members of the UN Security Council, with copies to the UN General Assembly. Clark is the spokesperson for the October 26 National March on Washington to Stop the War on Iraq.
September 20, 2002
Secretary General Kofi Annan United Nations New York, NY
Dear Secretary General Annan,
George Bush will invade Iraq unless restrained by the United Nations. Other international organizations -- including the European Union, the African Union, the OAS, the Arab League, stalwart nations courageous enough to speak out against superpower aggression, international peace movements, political leadership, and public opinion within the United States -- must do their part for peace. If the United Nations, above all, fails to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq, it will forfeit its honor, integrity and raison d’etre.
A military attack on Iraq is obviously criminal; completely inconsistent with urgent needs of the Peoples of the United Nations; unjustifiable on any legal or moral ground; irrational in light of the known facts; out of proportion to other existing threats of war and violence; and a dangerous adventure risking continuing conflict throughout the region and far beyond for years to come. The most careful analysis must be made as to why the world is subjected to such threats of violence by its only superpower, which could so safely and importantly lead us on the road to peace, and how the UN can avoid the human tragedy of yet another major assault on Iraq and the powerful stimulus for retaliatory terrorism it would create.
1. President George Bush Came to Office Determined to Attack Iraq and Change its Government.
George Bush is moving apace to make his war unstoppable and soon. Having stated last Friday that he did not believe Iraq would accept UN inspectors, he responded to Iraq’s prompt, unconditional acceptance by calling any reliance on it a “false hope” and promising to attack Iraq alone if the UN does not act. He is obsessed with the desire to wage war against Iraq and install his surrogates to govern Iraq by force.
Days after the most bellicose address ever made before the United Nations --an unprecedented assault on the Charter of the United Nations, the rule of law and the quest for peace -- the U.S. announced it was changing its stated targets in Iraq over the past eleven years, from retaliation for threats and attacks on U.S. aircraft which were illegally invading Iraq’s airspace on a daily basis. How serious could those threats and attacks have been if no U.S. aircraft was ever hit? Yet hundreds of people were killed in Iraq by U.S. rockets and bombs, and not just in the so called “no fly zone,” but in Baghdad itself. Now the U.S. proclaims its intentions to destroy major military facilities in Iraq in preparation for its invasion, a clear promise of aggression now.
Every day there are threats and more propaganda is unleashed to overcome resistance to George Bush’s rush to war. The acceleration will continue until the tanks roll, unless nonviolent persuasion prevails.
2. George Bush Is Leading the United States and Taking the UN and All Nations Toward a Lawless World of Endless Wars.
George Bush in his “War on Terrorism” has asserted his right to attack any country, organization, or people first, without warning in his sole discretion. He and members of his administration have proclaimed the old restraints that law sought to impose on aggression by governments and repression of their people, no longer consistent with national security.
Terrorism is such a danger, they say, that necessity compels the U.S. to strike first to destroy the potential for terrorist acts from abroad and to make arbitrary arrests, detentions, interrogations, controls and treatment of people abroad and within the U.S. Law has become the enemy of public safety. “Necessity is the argument of tyrants.” “Necessity never makes a good bargain.”
Heinrich Himmler, who instructed the Nazi Gestapo “Shoot first, ask questions later, and I will protect you,” is vindicated by George Bush. Like the Germany described by Jorge Luis Borges in Deutsches Requiem, George Bush has now “proffered (the world) violence and faith in the sword,” as Nazi Germany did. And as Borges wrote, it did not matter to faith in the sword that Germany was defeated. “What matters is that violence ... now rules.” Two generations of Germans have rejected that faith. Their perseverance in the pursuit of peace will earn the respect of succeeding generations everywhere.
The Peoples of the United Nations are threatened with the end of international law and protection for human rights by George Bush’s war on terrorism and determination to invade Iraq.
Since George Bush proclaimed his “war on terrorism,” other countries have claimed the right to strike first. India and Pakistan brought the earth and their own people closer to nuclear conflict than at any time since October 1962 as a direct consequence of claims by the U.S. of the unrestricted right to pursue and kill terrorists, or attack nations protecting them, based on a unilateral decision without consulting the United Nations, a trial, or revealing any clear factual basis for claiming its targets are terrorists and confined to them.
There is already a near epidemic of nations proclaiming the right to attack other nations or intensify violations of human rights of their own people on the basis of George Bush’s assertions of power in the war against terrorism. Mary Robinson, in her quietly courageous statements as her term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ended, has spoken of the “ripple effect” U.S. claims of right to strike first and suspend fundamental human rights protection is having.
On September 11, 2002, Colombia, whose new administration is strongly supported by the U.S., “claimed new authority to arrest suspects without warrants and declare zones under military control,” including “[N]ew powers, which also make it easier to wiretap phones and limit foreigners’ access to conflict zones... allow security agents to enter your house or office without a warrant at any time of day because they think you’re suspicious.” These additional threats to human rights follow post–September 11 “emergency” plans to set up a network of a million informants in a nation of forty million. See, New York Times, September 12, 2002, p. A7.
3. The United States, Not Iraq, Is the Greatest Single Threat to the Independence and Purpose of the United Nations.
President Bush’s claim that Iraq is a threat justifying war is false. Eighty percent of Iraq’s military capacity was destroyed in 1991 according to the Pentagon. Ninety percent of materials and equipment required to manufacture weapons of mass destruction was destroyed by UN inspectors during more than eight years of inspections. Iraq was powerful, compared to most of its neighbors, in 1990. Today it is weak. One infant out of four born live in Iraq weighs less than 2 kilos, promising short lives, illness and impaired development. In 1989, fewer than one in twenty infants born live weighed less than two kilos. Any threat to peace Iraq might become is remote, far less than that of many other nations and groups and cannot justify a violent assault. An attack on Iraq will make attacks in retaliation against the U.S. and governments which support its actions far more probable for years to come.
George Bush proclaims Iraq a threat to the authority of the United Nations while U.S.-coerced UN sanctions continue to cause the death rate of the Iraqi people to increase. Deaths caused by sanctions have been at genocidal levels for twelve years. Iraq can only plead helplessly for an end to this crime against its people. The UN role in the sanctions against Iraq compromise and stain the UN’s integrity and honor. This makes it all the more important for the UN now to resist this war.
Inspections were used as an excuse to continue sanctions for eight years while thousands of Iraqi children and elderly died each month. Iraq is the victim of criminal sanctions that should have been lifted in 1991. For every person killed by terrorist acts in the U.S. on 9/11, five hundred people have died in Iraq from sanctions.
It is the U.S. that threatens not merely the authority of the United Nations, but its independence, integrity and hope for effectiveness. The U.S. pays UN dues if, when and in the amount it chooses. It coerces votes of members. It coerces choices of personnel on the Secretariat. It rejoined UNESCO to gain temporary favor after 18 years of opposition to its very purposes. It places spies in UN inspection teams.
The U.S. has renounced treaties controlling nuclear weapons and their prolifer ation, voted against the protocol enabling enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention, rejected the treaty banning land mines, endeavored to prevent its creation and since to cripple the International Criminal Court, and frustrated the Convention on the Child and the prohibition against using children in war. The U.S. has opposed virtually every other international effort to control and limit war, protect the environment, reduce poverty and protect health.
George Bush cites two invasions of other countries by Iraq during the last 22 years. He ignores the many scores of U.S. invasions and assaults on other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas during the last 220 years, and the permanent seizure of lands from Native Americans and other nations — lands like Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Puerto Rico, among others, seized by force and threat.
In the same last 22 years the U.S. has invaded, or assaulted Grenada, Nicaragua, Libya, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and others directly, while supporting assaults and invasions elsewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
It is healthy to remember that the U.S. invaded and occupied little Grenada in 1983 after a year of threats, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying its small mental hospital, where many patients died. In a surprise attack on the sleeping and defenseless cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986, the U.S. killed hundreds of civilians and damaged four foreign embassies. It launched 21 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in August 1998, destroying the source of half the medicines available to the people of Sudan. For years it has armed forces in Uganda and southern Sudan fighting the government of Sudan. The U.S. has bombed Iraq on hundreds of occasions since the Gulf War, including this week, killing hundreds of people without a casualty or damage to an attacking plane.
4. Why Has George Bush Decided The U.S. Must Attack Iraq Now?
There is no rational basis to believe Iraq is a threat to the United States, or any other country. The reason to attack Iraq must be found elsewhere.
As governor of Texas, George Bush presided over scores of executions, more than any governor in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 (after a hiatus from 1967). He revealed the same zeal he has shown for “regime change” for Iraq when he oversaw the executions of minors, women, retarded persons and aliens whose rights under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of notification of their arrest to a foreign mission of their nationality were violated. The Supreme Court of the U.S. held that executions of a mentally retarded person constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution. George Bush addresses the United Nations with these same values and willfulness.
His motives may include to save a failing Presidency which has converted a healthy economy and treasury surplus into multi-trillion dollar losses; to fulfill the dream, which will become a nightmare, of a new world order to serve special interests in the U.S.; to settle a family grudge against Iraq; to weaken the Arab nation, one people at a time; to strike a Muslim nation to weaken Islam; to protect Israel, or make its position more dominant in the region; to secure control of Iraq’s oil to enrich U.S. interests, further dominate oil in the region and control oil prices. Aggression against Iraq for any of these purposes is criminal and a violation of a great many international conventions and laws including the General Assembly Resolution on the Definition of Aggression of December 14, 1974.
Prior regime changes by the U.S. brought to power among a long list of tyrants, such leaders as the Shah of Iran, Mobutu in the Congo, Pinochet in Chile, all replacing democratically elected heads of government.
5. A Rational Policy Intended to Reduce the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in The Middle East Must Include Israel.
A UN or U.S. policy of selecting enemies of the U.S. for attack is criminal and can only heighten hatred, division, terrorism and lead to war.
The U.S. gives Israel far more aid per capita than the total per capita income of sub Sahara Africans from all sources. U.S.-coerced sanctions have reduced per capita income for the people of Iraq by 75% since 1989. Per capita income in Israel over the past decade has been approximately 12 times the per capita income of Palestinians.
Israel increased its decades-long attacks on the Palestinian people, using George Bush’s proclamation of war on terrorism as an excuse, to indiscriminately destroy cities and towns in the West Bank and Gaza and seize more land in violation of international law and repeated Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.
Israel has a stockpile of hundreds of nuclear warheads derived from the United States, sophisticated rockets capable of accurate delivery at distances of several thousand kilometers, and contracts with the U.S. for joint development of more sophisticated rocketry and other arms with the U.S.
Possession of weapons of mass destruction by a single nation in a region with a history of hostility promotes a race for proliferation and war. The UN must act to reduce and eliminate all weapons of mass destruction, not submit to demands to punish areas of evil and enemies of the superpower that possesses the majority of all such weapons and capacity for their delivery.
Israel has violated and ignored more UN Resolutions for forty years than any other nation. It has done so with impunity.
The violation of Security Council resolutions cannot be the basis for a UN-approved assault on any nation, or people, in a time of peace, or the absence of a threat of imminent attack, but comparable efforts to enforce Security Council resolutions must be made against all nations who violate them.
6. The Choice Is War Or Peace.
The UN and the U.S. must seek peace, not war. An attack on Iraq may open a Pandora’s box that will condemn the world to decades of spreading violence. Peace is not only possible; it is essential, considering the heights to which science and technology have raised the human art of planetary and self-destruction.
If George Bush is permitted to attack Iraq with or without the approval of the UN, he will become Public Enemy Number One -- and the UN itself worse than useless, an accomplice in the wars it was created to end. The peoples of the world then will have to find some way to begin again if they hope to end the scourge of war.
This is a defining moment for the United Nations. Will it stand strong, independent and true to its Charter, international law and the reasons for its being -- or will it submit to the coercion of a superpower leading us toward a lawless world and condone war against the cradle of civilization?
Do not let this happen.
Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
9/21/02
7:05:45 PM
America's Saddam
by Jack Wheeler Freedom Research Foundation, September 19, 2002
In light of Janet Reno's concession of defeat in Florida's primary elections, and as an addendum to Chris Ruddy and Carl Limbacher's current best seller, "Catastrophe," America needs to remember the horrific evil perpetrated by then-Attorney General Reno in the first months of the Clinton presidency.
In March of 1993, I was the keynote speaker at a conference of business and civic leaders held in Indianapolis. One of those attending was a federal judge named Joe (it's best not to mention his last name). He seemed a nice, decent fellow who not once hinted that (as I had been informed by the organizer of the conference) he was on the short list of candidates to be the new director of the FBI. The current FBI director, William Sessions, had announced his attention to resign as soon as the recently inaugurated Bill Clinton found a replacement.
Joe and I sat together at lunch and the conversation was pleasant – until someone at the table brought up Waco.
The ATF had assaulted the Davidian church complex a month earlier and the standoff was ensuing, with the final holocaust a month away. When I asked Joe what he thought of what was going on at Waco, his entire demeanor and body language changed, his face turned purple with rage, and he announced: "I'll tell you what the FBI should do. Those people [the Davidians] killed federal agents. We should go in there and kill every last one of them."
Someone responded, "There are children in there, Joe." Joe brushed the comment aside with a wave of his hand. "You don't understand. No one can get away with killing federal agents. They all deserve to be killed in return."
Joe was passed over in favor of Louis Freeh, but he exemplified the mindset not just of the FBI but also of so many in law enforcement in general. As anyone who has made the mistake of arguing with a police officer giving them a traffic ticket understands, the most heinous crime anyone can commit, more evil and depraved than child molestation, is Contempt of Cop.
You know the joke: A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. Smart-mouth a cop and you're asking for a world of grief. Fight back and defend yourself from police action, no matter what the action is, and your life is in danger.
This is what happened at Waco. The Davidians tried to defend themselves from an armed ATF raid, set up as a pure publicity stunt to better argue for increased funding. That the raid had a flimsy pretext and was botched was irrelevant to the federal law enforcement community, however. No matter how and why, federal agents were killed and revenge had to be taken. The FBI man in charge of the siege and final death raid of April 19, Richard Rogers, thought exactly like Joe.
It is important to grasp that what happened in Waco was no accident, that the Davidians were killed on purpose in an act of revenge by the American government. And it is important to know just how they were killed, that the method of their killing was as grisly and evil as anything perpetrated by Saddam Hussein.
On the morning of April 19, 1993, the FBI smashed holes into the Davidian church complex and began pumping in a chemical warfare agent known as CS (o-chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile). It is a solid in the form of white crystals. The FBI dissolved the CS powder in an organic solvent so they could liquid spray it into the buildings.
A lot of attention has been paid to the horror of CS, but not much on the solvent. It's called methylene chloride, MC. Ever bought paint remover and noticed the label warning to use it "only in a well-ventilated area"? That's because it contains MC.
The effects of MC are exactly the same as those of chloroform if you use twice as much of it. When a person breathes MC (or chloroform at half the concentration) vapor he or she first becomes irritable. Second, they lose their coordination and judgment, while their vision becomes blurred. Third, they become paranoid and hyper-excitable. Fourth, they experience auditory and visual hallucinations. Fifth, they lapse into muscular paralysis and unconsciousness.
It is this fifth stage that caused surgeons to use chloroform as the first anesthetic in the 19th century. But doctors switched to ether because of uncontrollable behavior of the patients going through the first four stages – and because of a last sixth stage. If you use only about two times as much chloroform as it takes to render someone unconscious, the patient suffers respiratory paralysis, stops breathing, and dies. It is the same with MC.
The FBI cut off the electricity to the Davidians and knew all they had for light were kerosene lamps. Yet they sprayed into their buildings hundreds of pounds of methylene chloride, which makes people stumble around like they're drunk, with no coordination, with blurry vision, hallucinating and excitable: a guarantee that kerosene lamps would be knocked over and fires started.
In the presence of fire, MC vapor decomposes into hydrogen chloride, which has the same effect on any moisture-laden area of the body as sulfur mustard gas used in World War I: excruciating searing pain in the eyes, the mucous lining of the nose, and the lungs.
Remember that the FBI used MC as a solvent to dissolve CS crystals. It turns out that when CS is burned, it produces hydrogen cyanide, the same gas used to execute prisoners on Death Row.
During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein discovered the most lethal chemical warfare agent was a combination of sulfur mustard gas with hydrogen cyanide, which he used in artillery shells to slaughter thousands of Iranians. It was in effect this same combination that the FBI used to slaughter 87 men, women and children in Waco.
The question is: Who authorized the CS/MC combination? CS is not normally dissolved into a solution. Who knew about MC and could order it to be a solvent for CS? Sit down, folks, and hold on tight: Janet Reno has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry from Cornell University. Cornell has a very good chemistry department. MC is used as an organic solvent for many experiments. There is no question Reno would be very familiar with it, and was informed of its dangers by her professors. Janet Reno is America's Saddam Hussein.
Congressman Bob Barr, R-Ga., has a coroner's photograph taken of one of the Davidian victims entitled "Doe #57." It is of a little girl around 5 or 6 years old, her charred body burned beyond recognition and twisted in the ghastly rictus contortion typical of subjection to hydrogen cyanide.
There are few more monstrous crimes against humanity than torturing children to death in screaming pain, poison-gassing them to death on purpose. That the perpetrator of this crime wasn't tried and executed for mass homicide, but was instead lionized by the media, served out her term of office, and came close to being elected as the Democrat nominee for the governor of Florida says something very dark about human nature.
The slaughter of American citizens by their government at Waco was dismissed by many Americans, because the people killed were "just cultists" – like Germans who excused Nazi pogroms because the people killed were "just Jews." As America comes to grips with the danger and evil of Saddam Hussein and gets ready to extinguish it, America also needs to come to grips with the evil it condoned at Waco.
America condoned a vast amount of depravity during the Clinton years. Yet the depravity of Waco was the worst of all. Unless expunged through public revulsion of Janet Reno, it will remain an ineradicable stain on America's soul.
9/21/02
7:01:40 PM
FAIR
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
ACTION ALERT: PBS Fails to Hold Rumsfeld Accountable
September 20, 2002
Asking tough questions of those in power is one of a journalist's most important jobs-- especially when a country may be going to war. But PBS's Jim Lehrer failed to challenge Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a September 18 interview on the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer"-- even when Rumsfeld made factually inaccurate assertions.
For instance, Rumsfeld repeatedly referred to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors being expelled from Iraq, saying, "We have seen the situation with Iraq where they have violated some 16 U.N. resolutions and finally threw the inspectors out." Rumsfeld went on to say that "we have gone through... four years where they threw the inspectors out and there's been no one there."
In December 1998, the U.N. inspectors were not thrown out; they were pulled out by UNSCOM chief Richard Butler prior to a U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq. As Madeleine Albright told Lehrer at the time (12/17/98), Butler "made an independent decision that UNSCOM could no longer work."
Rumsfeld also made a dubious assertion about Iraq's plans for "invading Saudi Arabia, which they were ready to do." This was presumably a reference to the Pentagon's claim in September 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, that Iraq was massing hundreds of thousands of troops along the Saudi border in preparation to take over that country as well. But the St. Petersburg Times (1/6/91) published satellite imagery from the region that appeared to disprove the Pentagon claim, since no massive Iraqi build-up was visible in the satellite photos.
After the war, a U.S. "senior commander" admitted to Newsday (3/1/91) that reports of a major Iraqi troop mobilization were exaggerated, saying, "There was a great disinformation campaign surrounding this war." Despite the serious doubts about the veracity of Rumsfeld's charge, Lehrer allowed it to stand without comment.
A recent segment on CNN demonstrates precisely how journalists can clarify misleading statements from government officials. On September 18, CNN reporter Richard Roth explained the confusion about the UNSCOM inspectors this way:
"On our air, Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense... said look, it was Iraq, he said, that booted out, kicked out those weapons inspectors. That's not exactly accurate. It was the U.N. and the weapons inspections agency that withdrew them, under pressure from the U.S., because they had barely gotten out with their bags when U.S. military strikes occurred."
It's always important for journalists to correct misstatements of fact, but when an official is offering misinformation as a justification for war, that journalistic duty becomes an imperative.
ACTION: Please contact the PBS NewsHour and encourage them to correct the inaccurate statements made by Donald Rumsfeld. You might also suggest that NewsHour media correspondent Terrence Smith take a look at how the NewsHour and other broadcast outlets handle official inaccuracies.
CONTACT:
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.
9/21/02
7:00:32 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
EL SMOG
Mexico City declared its first pollution alert in almost three years yesterday, when ozone levels in the famously smoggy city reached about 250 percent of acceptable levels. The alert resulted in some 350,000 cars being ordered off the city streets. That's a lot, but it's far fewer than the nearly half of the city's estimated 3 million vehicles that were forced off the streets by such alerts before many residents upgraded to newer, cleaner models, which are permitted on the roads even during pollution emergencies. Despite its reputation for terrible air quality, the Mexican capital has made some strides, and many scientists now believe it has cleaner air than several other major metropolitan regions, especially in Asia. But environmentalists say the air pollution is still a serious problem, and are urging the city to stiffen its standards for smog alerts.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, 19 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=497>
ACTING UP
The Bush administration announced yesterday that it plans to consider new rules for enforcing the Clean Water Act. Some conservative lawmakers have been pressuring the administration to revise the enforcement rules since January 2001, when the Supreme Court imposed new limits on the scope of the act. Some interpreted that court ruling to suggest that the federal government should leave more water pollution control up to the states, but environmentalists fear that doing so would leave hundreds of thousands of miles of isolated streams, tributaries, and wetlands without critical protection, and they see the move as another effort by the White House to gut environmental regulations. For its part, the administration contends that it is merely trying to clarify the act's jurisdiction.
straight to the source: Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 20 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=493>
DEAF CHARGES
In better news for environmentalists, a federal judge has rejected an effort by the White House and the U.S. Navy to exempt underwater military testing and other deep-sea activities from environmental review. Judge Christina Snyder ruled yesterday that the National Environmental Policy Act applies to such activities even if they are conducted beyond U.S. territorial water (but within 200 miles of U.S. shores). At issue was a Navy sonar system using bursts of sound so loud they could cause temporary or permanent loss of hearing in marine mammals, abandonment of habitat, and disruption of mating, feeding, nursing, and migration, according to some scientists. The ruling was cheered by environmentalists, who had feared that a victory by the Bush administration could also have exempted from review such activities as ocean dumping and commercial fishing.
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Gary Polakovic, 20 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=494>
BOWL GAME
In an effort to reconcile the problems posed by a growing population and shrinking water supplies, city councilors are contemplating a plan that would retrofit existing buildings with water-saving toilets. The Public Utilities Committee has recommended that the full council adopt a plan whereby builders would retrofit toilets to earn credits toward new building permits. To earn a new building permit, builders would have to retrofit eight to 12 toilets in existing structures. The plan ties together two different water-conservation visions: reining in the water-hungry construction industry, and reducing water demand by improving efficiency in plumbing.
straight to the source: Santa Fe New Mexican, Tom Sharpe, 20 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=495>
FEELING GASSY
Negotiators for the U.S. House and Senate have reached an agreement on new fuel-economy rules that would expand rather than decrease the country's oil consumption. Under the agreement, automakers would continue to receive credits through the model year 2008 for manufacturing vehicles that can run on both ethanol and gasoline. These credits are used to offset the production of SUVs and other low-gas-mileage vehicles. Environmentalist criticize the credits as a giveaway, because those who drive the flexible-fuel vehicles seldom make use of the ethanol option. A recent government report found that extending the credit program through 2008 would increase petroleum consumption by at least 9 billion gallons. The House-Senate agreement also calls for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to rewrite fuel-economy standards to reduce the fuel consumption of light trucks by at least 5 billion gallons of gasoline by the 2012 model year. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored an earlier, failed proposal to substantially tighten fuel-efficiency standards, said, "It's shocking to me we couldn't do better when we're on the brink of war with Iraq and we know how much oil comes from the most volatile parts of the world."
straight to the source: New York Times, Danny Hakim, 20 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=496>
9/21/02
6:58:21 PM
SciTech Daily Review
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1337165
An ancient piece of Greek clockwork shows the deep roots of modern technology
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992823
The latest measurement of the faint afterglow of the Big Bang has revealed for the first time that the relic microwaves are polarised. The discovery should help probe the birth of the Universe
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020909/020909-5.html
Gene therapy that converts a patient's lungs into a living, breathing medicine factory could one day eliminate regular drug doses for diabetics and haemophiliacs
http://abc.net.au/news/scitech/2002/09/item20020919191637_1.htm
China has agreed to make its latest research on mapping the rice genome freely available, in a move expected to enhance the food security and livelihoods of millions of rice farmers around the world
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/09/19/offbeat.smiley.reut/index.html
:-) turns 20. Twenty years ago Scott Fahlman gave the internet an unusual gift: the ability to smile
http://www.ojr.org/ojc/commentary/1031344046.php
As companies offering free services are trying to push users towards paid e-mail, people are discovering that Web mail is becoming less user-friendly
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/healthmindandbody/story/0,6000,784082,00.html
Burnout is ruining the lives of huge numbers of people, many of them still in their twenties. Yet a new theory suggests that a breakdown could turn out to be a breakthrough
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/08/28/ward/index.html
Not a drop to drink: Forget oil -- Diane Raines Ward, an expert on the world's water supply, talks about the vital substance we will hoard, ration and probably go to war for in the near future
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7360/396
On the subject of the euthanasia controversy, it can seem as if we've heard all the arguments before. But a closer look at the history of euthanasia reveals chapters we generally prefer to ignore (registration required)
9/21/02
6:57:18 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Southern African nations seek GMO advisory body - BOTSWANA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17850/story.htm
El Nino seen disrupting rains in Brazil crop zones - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17852/story.htm
New EU aid fund targets billion euro disasters - EU http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17842/story.htm
INTERVIEW - Willy may never be free says whale group -NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17854/story.htm
British Energy bailout illegal - Greenpeace - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17846/story.htm
FEATURE - Pension funds push Big Business to go green - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17840/story.htm
INTERVIEW - Norton wants energy bill veto if no ANWR drilling - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17841/story.htm
GM aims to cut PGM use by 17 percent by 2006 - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17843/story.htm
NewBiz - Organic innovator tackles corn pests - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17844/story.htm
Dog, squirrel deaths prompt new West Nile worries - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17839/story.htm
Whole Foods retail chain won't sell biotech fish - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17847/story.htm
FEATURE - West Nile virus takes toll on US birds - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17848/story.htm
White House seeks US oil drilling to counter OPEC - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17849/story.htm
USDA to unveil $700 Mln drought aid today - reports - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17851/story.htm
Earth to warm even if greenhouse gas cut - US study - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17853/story.htm
UPDATE - US lawmakers agree to trim vehicle gasoline use - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17845/story.htm
9/21/02
6:56:00 PM
Public Citizen issued the following two press releases, Sept. 19 House-Senate Energy Conferees Take Step Backward on Fuel Economy; Provisions Increase Net Fuel Use
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a crucial vote today, House and Senate conferees adopted a retrograde fuel economy plan that actually increases the country's net consumption of gasoline by four billion gallons through 2012. The negotiations were part of the conference to reconcile massive energy bills passed earlier by both chambers.
"The congressional negotiators walked away from an opportunity to reduce our dependence of Middle East oil, cut pollution and put money back into consumers' pockets, and succumbed to intense pressure from automobile industry lobbyists and the White House to pass a compromise riddled with half-measures and loopholes," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. "This entire energy bill is nothing but a massive handout to corporate America at a time when the public is suffering through a sour economy caused in large part by corporate crime and excess, much of it in the energy business."
Conferees adopted a House provision projected to improve fuel economy for light trucks by about one mile per gallon - saving about five billion gallons of fuel. But those savings were more than offset by another measure that gives automobile manufacturers credits for producing "dual-fuel" vehicles. Combined, the two provisions increase consumption by four billion gallons.
On a positive note, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) succeeded in rallying Democrats to thwart a last-minute lobbying push by the White House to adopt new regulatory hurdles to improving fuel economy that would have given industry new avenues to delay and challenge rules in court.
"This was a malicious ploy to throw a new monkeywrench into the already overburdened rulemaking process and give the auto industry, which is closely aligned with the White House, the opportunity to paralyze regulators," Claybrook said.
Measures adopted by the conferees today include:
· A House provision requiring the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to enact fuel economy standards for light trucks (including SUVs), for model years 2006 through 2012, that ensure a fuel savings of about five billion gallons. The 2006 date for action is two years later than called for in the original House bill.
· Extension of a monstrous loophole for so-called "dual-fuel" vehicles, which can run on either gasoline or ethanol. The catch is that because ethanol is available at only 121 of 176,000 service stations nationwide, even in dual-fuel vehicles drivers use gasoline rather than ethanol. This provision actually increases fuel use by nine billion gallons, because automakers get credit for fuel savings that never occur, lowering the corporate fuel economy they must achieve. Although a National Academy of Sciences study found that lawmakers should fix this problem, the conferees voted to extend this boondoggle until 2012.
· Language calling for another fuel economy study by the National Academy of Sciences, a waste of taxpayer money and a delaying tactic.
Claybrook faulted Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) for trying to add back in some regulatory hurdles to make it harder for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to set stronger fuel economy standards.
"Sen. Murkowski trotted out the discredited industry canard that greater fuel economy means compromising safety and leads to the loss of jobs," Claybrook said. "But study after study shows that increasing fuel economy creates jobs. And he is flatly wrong on the safety issue. Because this bill addresses only fuel economy improvements for light trucks, taking some of the heft out of those vehicles would be a blessing for other motorists who would face a reduced risk of getting crushed by these lumbering behemoths."
xoxox
Public Citizen is a national consumer advocacy organization with 150,000 members. Ms. Claybrook is a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Water Companies' Reputations, Business Practices Going Down the Drain
Sewerage and Water Board Should Reject All Bids, Focus on Improving Public System
NEW ORLEANS - The international water conglomerates trying to persuade New Orleans to privatize the city's water and wastewater system aren't fit to provide such a vital public service, a new Public Citizen report explains.
Two for the Road: An Update on the Companies Vying for Control of New Orleans' Water examines recent developments connected to the two corporate finalists being considered by the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board: USFilter, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, and United Water, a subsidiary of Suez.
At a press conference today, an international coalition encouraged the New Orleans' city water board to reject all three bids, due to be voted on in the coming days.
"Water will soon be one of New Orleans' greatest assets as much of the country faces shortages and droughts," said Edward Melendez, principal of the Urban Conservancy. "We support democratically controlled management of the city's water system, both for the well being of citizens and the economic development of our community. Urban Conservancy urges citizens to reject all bids for privatization of water services in the city and to demand close scrutiny of any process to reengineer our city's water services."
"New Orleans is faced with a tough decision," said Aaron Viles, Gulf States Field Organizer for the United States Public Interest Research Group. "But the thing to remember is there are no corporate white knights riding in to save us from ourselves."
One of the companies is mired in dizzying financial uncertainties, while both have recent histories of operational bungling and putting profits ahead of public interest. Among developments detailed in the report:
· Despite assertions by company officials to the contrary, USFilter remains hopelessly entangled with Vivendi Universal, its debt-choked, mission-puzzled corporate parent. While USFilter executives have attempted to distance their company from Vivendi as it scrambles for deals, Vivendi has proclaimed that it has no intention of reducing its control in the water side of the corporation's far-flung interests. USFilter could find itself cannibalized, squeezed and drained as the corporate parent tries to eke every last drop out of the corporate "cash cow" to bankroll whatever whimsical strategy Vivendi Universal finally lands on.
· United Water's performance in Atlanta, where the company's long-term contract was once touted as the model for municipal water privatization, has been so dismal that the company has been put on 90-day notice that the contract may be terminated. Atlanta officials have identified myriad problems with United Water's operation of the city's water system, including billing the city for work that was never done, dramatic staff reductions and an unacceptable increase in backlogged maintenance requests.
· Houston considered privatization but determined it would be in the public's interest to instead re-engineer the publicly owned system. However, Houston did privatize operation of a water treatment plant, contracting with United Water. After its contract was not renewed, United Water decided to sue the city for $900,000. Houston has countersued for $2 million, claiming United Water failed to maintain the plant and that necessary repairs will cost $2 million.
"Vivendi is a debt-smothered giant desperately trying to stave off financial ruin, and is clueless about what it wants to be when it grows up," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Suez never misses an opportunity to slash a workforce, break a promise and show that it cares more about getting money from you than getting water to you."
A third bid before the Sewerage and Water Board, presented by the public water system, promises more savings than either private bid. But none of the three bids offers truly significant savings. Moreover, all three bids were submitted under a flawed process that fails to account for the total future responsibilities and expenses of operating the system safely and efficiently.
Experiences in other cities show that the most money could be saved by continuing to identify opportunities for efficiencies under public ownership, and implementing those opportunities through a focused re-engineering program-not a de facto, inadequate restructuring of the water and sewer system's administration as would happen if the employees' bid is accepted.
Public Citizen urges the board to reject all the bids and instead allow employees to comprehensively re-engineer the system to address all future challenges, based on the fundamental mission of providing the people of New Orleans safe, reliable, affordable and publicly controlled water and sewer service.
"There's a looming world water crisis that private companies are taking advantage of," said Tony Clarke, executive director of the Polaris Institute. "In all likelihood, the water companies are interested in New Orleans because they want access to the mighty Mississippi River for bulk water sales in the future."
A copy of Public Citizen's report is available at
http://www.citizen.org/documents/two%20for%20the%20road.pdf.
Dr. Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, delivered testimony before an FDA advisory committee on safety issues relating to acetaminophen. That testimony is available on the Web at http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7202
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.
For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org
9/21/02
6:53:47 PM
Greenpeace's Positive Energy
September 14 - 20, 2002
Time for Greenpeace's CLEAN ENERGY NOW! campaign's weekly good news update!!!
Inside this edition:
- UC Go Solar!
- The Florida Candidates Challenge
- Bonnie Raitt Helps San Diego Go Solar
UC Go Solar!
With the start of the 2002-2003 school year, students and the Greenpeace Clean Energy Now! campaign are working to bring green buildings to all ten University of California campuses. Our goal is to get the Board of Regents to adopt a system-wide standard requiring all new and renovated buildings to use 50 percent clean energy and meet the green LEED standards, which are guidelines developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. We are asking the Board of Regents to meet the silver LEED standard or higher.
If you are a UC student, watch out for the Rolling Sunlight, Greenpeace's solar truck, which will be touring all UC campuses next week. The Sunlight will be powering concerts featuring local bands and making solar smoothies!
Take action right now by sending a fax to UC President, Richard Atkinson, and urge him to support clean energy now!
http://www.cleanenergynow.org/bin/takeaction.fpl?action_id=147
The Florida Candidates Challenge
Greenpeace and other state and local groups are working in Florida to change the state's reliance on dirty fossil fuels to a reliance on one of the state's most plentiful resources: the sun. The 2002 elections this November provide a unique opportunity to force candidates to decide if they will protect Florida's people and resources. Currently Florida uses less solar power than New York! Candidates have a responsibility to ensure the "Sunshine State" lives up to its name.
To learn more about the challenge, go to:
http://www.cleanenergynow.org/fl/elections.html
Read a recently published Editorial about Clean Energy Now! in Florida:
http://www.sunsentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/search/sfl-edittdenergysep15.story
Bonnie Raitt Helps San Diego Go Solar
Bonnie Raitt wants San Diego to fight global warming and air pollution by investing in large-scale solar energy projects.
She's donated special benefit tickets for her concert with Lyle Lovett at the San Diego State University Open Air Amphitheatre on September 21, 2002. The tickets will benefit the Vote Solar Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping cities implement large-scale solar programs. And if you are lucky, you may also hang with Bonnie at a private reception following the show!
To purchase tickets, please call (800)728-6223.
9/21/02
6:52:07 PM
TomPaine.com
TONY SOPRANO GETS HISTORICAL:
Was Columbus A Hero Or A Slave Trader?
An Interview With Historian Howard Zinn
by Sharon Basco
"Tony would welcome the idea that the Europeans came here and they conquered this land. After all, Tony is a conquerer himself. He takes things by force. The United States takes things by force.... Tony Soprano has a lot in common with the political leaders of the United States."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6415
ASKING BUT NOT TELLING
Bush's Persistent Fundraising Breaks Clinton Record
by Jill Rachel Jacobs
"The current president has broken Clinton's campaign cash-grabbing record, but hardly anybody seems to have noticed, commented or cared."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6401
IS IT NOT TRUE?
Questions On Iraq From A GOP Congressman
by Rep. Ron Paul
Some questions that GOP Representative Ron Paul would like answered by those who are urging us to start this war.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6404
EYEWITNESS IN BAGHDAD
An Interview With Norman Solomon
by Steven Rosenfeld
On the ground in Baghdad, Norman Solomon describes the emotions and tensions in meetings with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly Sa'doun Hammadi.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6403
PUBLIC OPINION WATCH:
September 9 - September 13
A Weekly Compendium And Commentary On Recent Polling
by Ruy Teixeira
Is The Public Ready To Go To War With Iraq? ... Why Do Professionals Vote Democratic ... and more!
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6406
9/21/02
6:50:23 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
THE DARK SIDE
In most major metropolitan areas, you can count the stars visible in the night sky on your fingers. Now, the phenomenon is spreading; due to urban sprawl, bright artificial lights are drowning out the darkness in more and more of the world. That's bad news for astronomers, public energy budgets -- and many plant and animal species. Since the 1970s, scientists have been studying the effect of light on organisms' biological clocks and nocturnal behavior patterns. They have found that in urban areas, night migrating birds orbit bright lights until they drop with exhaustion or collide with buildings or other birds; that bright lights discourage female sea turtles from laying eggs; that the nighttime travel habits of mountain lions are disrupted by light pollution; and that small invertebrates that normally rise at night to feed on surface algae in lakes and ponds become less active as light levels increase, possibly leading to more algae blooms and lower water quality. In response, nine U.S. states have adopted "dark sky" provisions and 11 more are considering similar measures.
straight to the source: Christian Science Monitor, Peter N. Spotts, 19 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=488>
AMERICAN BEAUTY
In last month's "Ask Umbra" column, green advice guru Umbra Fisk fielded a question from a Florida firefighter looking to swap the Sunshine State in favor of the perfect eco-friendly new home. Umbra turned the question over to her readers, and the letters came pouring in. From Nahcotta, Wash. to Dalton, N.Y., Gristies sang the praises of small towns from sea to shining sea. Get a sampling of perfect places to live, plus Umbra's advice on how to kill your lawn, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: There's no place like home -- sage advice on eco-friendly communities and how to kill your lawn, in Ask Umbra <http://www.gristmagazine.com/ask/ask091902.asp>
SPEED LIMIT
President Bush issued an executive order yesterday directing federal agencies to speed environmental reviews of important transportation projects, arguing that highways, airports, and other such projects are critical to the nation's economy and need to be freed of red tape. Environmentalists immediately denounced the move, calling it part of a systemic effort to restrict public debate and undermine environmental protections, including the 32-year-old National Environmental Policy Act. That act requires federal agencies to study and disclose the environmental impact of their actions and to involve the public in their decision-making processes. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta claims the permit system has increased the time it takes to build an airport to an average of 10 years and a new highway to an average of 13 years, but Fred Krupp, executive director of Environmental Defense, disputed claims that any projects had been significantly delayed by environmental impact studies.
straight to the source: New York Times, Christopher Marquis, 19 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=489>
LOCKE AND KEY
Meanwhile, in the other Washington, Gov. Gary Locke (D) signed an executive order yesterday calling for sustainable environmental practices in all state agencies. The order includes a directive that the state's $1.1 billion annual purchasing power be spent on environmentally friendly products and conservation. Washington already has some exemplary sustainability policies in place, including programs to reduce energy use in capitol buildings and another to encourage green construction projects that use eco-friendly materials, improve workplace air quality, increase efficiency, and reduce utility costs. But, Locke said, "There is more that we can do to close the gap between production and consumption." Under his executive order, state agencies will be required to work with an advisory committee and the Office of Financial Management to develop sustainability goals and implementation plans.
straight to the source: Olympian, John Dodge, 19 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=492>
do good: Take action to do a home energy audit <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#audit>
SEA, SEA, MY PLAYMATE
More than 200 small grocers, restaurants, and seafood distributors in 40 U.S. states have announced that they will not buy, sell, or serve genetically altered fish. Among those joining the biotech boycott are such celebrity chefs as Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Michael Schenk at Oceana in New York City. Whole Foods Market, the world's largest natural foods retailer, also signed on, but big seafood-restaurant chains such as Long John Silver and Red Lobster declined to join the boycott. The campaign, launched yesterday by the Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, and Clean Water Action, is largely a preemptive strike, since there are currently no genetically engineered fish on the market. But one company, Aqua Bounty Farms in Waltham, Mass., has applied for FDA approval of bioengineered salmon. Environmentalists fear escaped GM fish could interbreed with wild species and taint their genetic makeup, prey on native species, or take over their food supplies and habitat.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Jane Kay, 19 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=490>
straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Randy Fabi, 19 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=491>
do good: Take action to stop genetically engineered fish <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/rivers.asp?source=daily#gefish>
9/21/02
6:42:07 PM
9/11 Report Says Agencies Received Credible Clues
Hill Panel To Release Findings Today
by Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer, September 18, 2002; Page A12
The U.S. intelligence community received a surprising number of credible reports of a likely terrorist attack prior to Sept. 11, including some threats to domestic targets, according to a congressional report to be unveiled today.
The preliminary findings of the staff of the Senate-House intelligence panel investigating the Sept. 11 strikes also show that some intelligence analysts had focused on the possibility that terrorists might use "airplanes as weapons" in the attacks, a congressional official said yesterday.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in mid-May that prior to the attacks, analysts did not seriously consider the use of planes as bombs and therefore were surprised by the method of attack on Sept. 11. "All this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking," Rice said at a May briefing on what President Bush knew before the attacks.
The 30-page unclassified report also will "raise serious questions" about whether the U.S. government shared enough information with the public about what it knew to be a grave threat from Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network, the official said.
After reading and analyzing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents from the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other government agencies, "you start thinking: Did anyone really explain to the public how serious this stuff was? . . . Did the American people really realize the strength of the threat out there?"
The committee report, the first official examination of how much intelligence agencies knew about the terror threat to the United States prior to Sept. 11, contains no single piece of information that could have been used to thwart the strikes that killed 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the official said.
But while the committee staff found no information that revealed the exact date, time and place of the attack, the official said there were numerous credible reports of possible domestic attacks and suggested that some may have been played down because the intelligence agencies were too focused on threats to U.S. interests overseas.
"There was reporting on [the possibility of] domestic attacks, even though a lot of people were focused overseas," the official said.
The official said that even in the summer of 2001, when intelligence officials were describing a dangerous spike in threats against the United States, the seriousness of the threat from bin Laden may not have been uniformly recognized.
"At least some part of our intelligence community recognized what [was] out there," the official said. But "there are issues about information sharing with the intelligence community and between the intelligence community and the rest of the federal government."
The official noted that it is not the intelligence community's responsibility to warn the public about threats. Asked if White House officials, who would make the call on a public warning, were cooperating with the panel, the official deferred. "We've had discussions and requests," the official said. "They've answered some questions and some, maybe not."
On Aug. 6, 2001, President Bush received a daily intelligence briefing that covered bin Laden's use of hijacking as a method of terror. Following disclosure of the briefing in the media this spring, Rice held a news conference in which she made it clear that the intelligence community had not seriously focused on the possibility that alQaeda would think to use planes as flying bombs.
"I will say that, again, hijacking before 9/11 and hijacking after 9/11 do mean two very, very different things," she said.The House and Senate formed a joint intelligence panel shortly after Sept. 11 to assess the performance of the $35 billion intelligence community and to recommend ways to repair and improve it.
The panel got off to a rocky start. Members could not agree on its scope and its first staff director was forced to resign. It delayed public hearings; the first one, in fact, is set for today.
A second public hearing is still in question. The panel is having a difficult time convincing intelligence officials to appear in open session while the U.S. war on terrorism continues.
"There are people who don't want to do public hearings on this at all," the official said.
Today's meeting will not delve into the extensive information the panel has collected on the hijackers and to what extent U.S. intelligence agencies were monitoring any of them. That will be the subject of a future hearing.
The panel has met 10 times in closed sessions. The staff has culled through 400,000 documents from the various intelligence agencies and found roughly 70,000 pages it considered relevant to the investigation.
A working group at the CIA was set up to streamline the normal declassification process.
While hundreds of documents have been declassified, the official said there continue to be active disagreements between the panel staff and intelligence agencies over declassifying more.
Many members of Congress, concerned that the panel would not meet its October deadline, have called for an independent and more thorough probe into what many of them have called the largest intelligence failure since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31207-2002Sep17.html
9/21/02
5:24:24 PM
SciTech Daily Review
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992796
Off-the-shelf equipment found in any college science department can be used to transmit electric signals at least four times the speed of light
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/16sep_rightstuff.htm
Imagine a "holistic spaceship" that tells you when it feels bad, travels faster and weighs less than ordinary spacecraft, and has been engineered down to the last molecule. This is the challenge facing designers of the next generation spacecraft
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55145,00.html
Malicious hackers are no longer limited to looking at private data -- now they can also see their victims, by transforming some video-conferencing systems into video-surveillance units
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/healthmindandbody/0,6121,792111,00.html
Steven Pinker's invective against Marxists, feminists and all those who think they can change human minds in The Blank Slate is entertaining, says Robin McKie -- but is it justified?
http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id={5CDECF4A-D5AD-468C-A644-87A090384474
A scholarly German priest perpetrated one of the world's great hoaxes in an effort to debunk Nazi imperialist propaganda, claims a Norwegian scholar. The hoax? The Vinland Map
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1136-2002Aug9.html
It's getting harder and harder to tell what science is or isn't -- or rather, to find and heed people who might be able to tell us
9/21/02
5:20:59 PM
Dear EmailNation Subscriber,
Read new Nation weblogs today:
CAPITAL GAMES by David Corn
De-Saddamization, Not Disarmament: Bush Presses On
"No sensible person wants to go to war if war can be avoided," Colin Powell says. Next time he is at the White House, he should take a good look around.
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=103
THE ONLINE BEAT by John Nichols
US Congressman Rahall Speaks in Iraq
Official Washington was caught by surprise when Rep. Nick Rahall spoke to the Iraqi Assembly in Baghdad this past Sunday "as a member of Congress concerned with peace."
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=103
And see The Nation's antiwar page with activist ideas, articles, links and other resources:
http://www.thenation.com/directory/view.mhtml?t=040307
Finally, please remember that you can email any article on The Nation website to friends, family and foes using the Email-To-A-Friend feature found by clicking on the "email" link in the box adjoining each published article.
Best Regards, Peter Rothberg Associate Publisher, The Nation
P.S. If you like what you read on The Nation website and you're not currently a subscriber to the magazine, please consider taking advantage of our special offer--only $35.97 for 47 weekly issues in print. It's the only way to be able to read ALL of what appears in The Nation week after week.
This special offer available at:
https://ssl.thenation.com/usa.mhtml
P.P.S. Check out the NationBooks site at:
9/21/02
5:18:23 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Alaska's Cook Inlet oil pipelines leaky - report - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17814/story.htm
Americans get free pass to US forests, monuments - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17832/story.htm
INTERVIEW - Norton wants energy bill veto if no ANWR drilling - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17831/story.htm
Whole Foods retail chain won't sell biotech fish - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17833/story.htm
FEATURE - Garbage rule change hits New York scavengers - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17830/story.htm
Green group says UK not checking GM crops properly - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17816/story.htm
ExxonMobil puts all five Chad oil rigs to work - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17817/story.htm
Britain launches study into greenhouse gas storage - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17818/story.htm
UK should not rescue B.Energy-green group - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17819/story.htm
INTERVIEW - UK must protect nuke industry, save BEnergy - expert - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17821/story.htm
Plants fighting back against African desert areas - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17813/story.htm
UK nuclear waste completes trip from Japan - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17827/story.htm
South Africa hopes to pump oil spill wreck dry - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17828/story.htm
Iran to build more nuke power plants - atomic chief - IRAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17820/story.htm
German party in U-turn on atomic, green power - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17822/story.htm
FACTBOX - German political parties' main electoral pledges - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17824/story.htm
Canada spotted owls endangered, green groups warn - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17815/story.htm
Brazil genomists see GMOs protecting world forests - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17826/story.htm
Brazil seeks to woo back ethanol car drivers - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17823/story.htm
Dousing fails to relieve drought-hit Australia - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17829/story.htm
Shy Koalas to be lured with taped mating calls - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17825/story.htm
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:
AUSTRALIA: Satellite Images of Hole in Ozone Layer Above Antarctica http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17838
CHINA: Allen Cheung Wears a Mask to Protect from Air Pollution in Hong Kong
http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17834
UK: Armed Police Guard the Dock Side Where a Cylinder Containing Nuclear Waste was Unloaded From the Pacific Pintail in Barrow http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17835
SOUTH AFRICA: The Grounded Freighter Jolly Rubino awaits Assistance as Environmental Fears Grow http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17836
RUSSIA: Russian Police Guards Red Square in the Smog in Moscow http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17837
9/21/02
5:13:04 PM
All the news unfit to print: Top 10 censored stories
Project Censored's annual list always serves as a fascinating chronicle of recent political history. Their broad definition of censorship reflects the fact that these stories often emerge only to disappear and lurk below the surface, often for months or years, before being noticed by our less than fearless corporate media.
Here are their picks for 2001:
1. Corporate Takeover of the Airwaves
2. General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) For-Profit Model Threatens to Gobble Up World's Water
3. U.S. Policy Funds Human Rights Abuses in Colombia
4. Bush Administration Ordered FBI Off Bin Laden Trail
5. U.S. Destruction of Iraqi Water Supply
6. Renewed Threat of Nuclear Warfare
7. Public Schools Become Guinea Pigs for HMO Model
8. NAFTA Impoverishes Small Family Farmers
9. Housing Crisis in the U.S.
10. CIA Spooks Destabilize Macedonia
Get the details on these under-reported stories at:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14016
And for a daily news source that goes beyond the mainstream:
9/21/02
5:08:48 PM
Contrasting Casualties In The Middle East
* Number of Israelis killed by Palestinians from Sept. 29, 2000 to August 19, 2002: 619
* Number of Israeli children killed: 72
* Israelis killed outside the green line in the Occupied Territories: 328
* Members of the Israeli security forces among them: 118
xoxox
* Number of Palestinians killed by Israelis from Sept. 29, 2000 to August 19, 2002: 1,658
* Killed by Israeli security forces: 1,576
* Killed by Israeli settlers: 21
* Died at check points: 61
* Number of Palestinian children (under 18) killed: 294
* Chance that an Israeli assassination of terrorist suspects will result in the death of an innocent bystander: 48% (44 bystanders killed in 91 assassinations)
Source: A Jewish Voice For Peace
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
9/21/02
5:06:19 PM
Public Citizen issued the following press release, Sept. 18, 2002
House-Senate Conferees Poised to Repeal Law Protecting Consumers, Investors from Enron-style Accounting and Market Manipulation
Corporations Seeking Repeal Accused of Trading Scams in California
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Some of the major corporations pushing Congress to repeal the consumer-protection law known as the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) are the same ones that are being investigated for gouging ratepayers and manipulating the California energy market through schemes involving sham energy trading and the withholding of electricity, according to a Public Citizen report released today.
House and Senate conferees, who are trying to reconcile differences in energy legislation passed by both chambers, are expected to begin taking up the electricity provisions of the competing bills as early as Thursday. While most public debate has centered on the massive subsidies to energy companies in the bill, the Senate bill also repeals PUHCA, an obscure, Depression-era law that is supposed to ensure that electric, natural gas and water utilities invest profits in providing reliable service rather than fueling the Enron-style acquisition of assets unrelated to their core energy business.
"Members of Congress declare themselves to be tough on corporate crime when the camera is rolling, but behind closed doors they are trying to make it even easier for rapacious energy companies to rip off the public and investors," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "The energy giants that are being investigated for rigging the California energy market are the same ones that are lobbying behind the scenes to get rid of the Public Utility Holding Company Act. Rather than protecting ratepayers and shareholders, Congress is preparing to strip away any vestige of accountability and transparency there is left."
The energy industry poured $44 million into lobbying Congress on PUHCA and other issues in 2001 alone, and has contributed more than $16 million to federal candidates since 1999, according to the report. This total includes lobbying by individual companies and their various anti-regulation trade associations, such as the Edison Electric Institute and the Coalition to Repeal PUHCA Now!.
Enacted in 1935, PUHCA has historically prohibited holding companies from investing ratepayers' money in assets that will not directly contribute to low bills and reliable service, such as out-of-region power plants or non-electricity industries like water or telecommunications. However, the 1992 Energy Policy Act allowed holding companies to invest ratepayer money in foreign power projects. This permitted the development of offshore subsidiaries and sham transactions that eventually led to the downfall of sprawling corporate structures. The law has been further weakened by exemptions and lack of adequate enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Abolishing PUHCA would largely remove government oversight from companies such as American Electric Power, Duke Energy, CMS Energy, Southern Company/ Mirant and Xcel. As some of the leading energy providers in today's deregulated markets, these corporations claim they can be trusted in the absence of supervision. But it was exactly that - the lack of government supervision - that allowed Enron to build its far-flung empire, manipulate markets and use accounting gimmickry to conceal debt and inflate income. Had there been a regulated system to ensure corporate responsibility and transparent accounting practices, it is likely that California's recent energy crisis and the accounting fraud that followed would have been impossible.
In the report, Public Citizen examines the record of five companies seeking PUHCA repeal: American Electric Power, Duke Energy, CMS Energy, Southern Company/ Mirant and Xcel - all of which are under investigation for fraudulent trading and/or accounting practices and accused by state and federal investigators of gouging billions of dollars from California consumers during the artificially created energy "crisis" of 2000 and 2001.
"The repeal of PUHCA would have devastating consequences for consumers and investors by leading to more Enron-style meltdowns, further industry consolidation and the creation of complex corporate structures that reduced transparency and accountability," said Tyson Slocum, research director for Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "We need to demand that these energy companies be good corporate citizens, but it's clear they will not do it without strict standards of accountability. Government oversight is an indispensable measure needed to maintain an affordable and reliable energy market. Congress should be strengthening PUHCA, not ditching it."
Public Citizen's report shows:
· On Jan. 18, 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the SEC failed to prove that the June 15, 2000, merger of American Electric Power with Central & South West met the requirements of PUHCA and sent the case back to the SEC for further review. Specifically, the court told the SEC to revisit its conclusion that the merger met PUHCA requirements that utilities be "physically interconnected" and confined to a "single area or region."
· In early June 2002, the SEC ordered Duke Energy to release information on its trading practices, and in July the energy trader admitted that it had misled investors and federal officials about its trading operations. In July, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a subpoena to Duke, and the company has been under investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) since May. In addition, Duke is under investigation by the Justice Department's Houston office as part of a grand jury investigation into allegedly fraudulent trading practices. The federal grand jury subpoenaed Duke on July 12.
· The SEC, CFTC, FERC and the Justice Department have all been formally investigating CMS Energy since May 2002, making CMS Energy the most investigated energy trader next to Enron. Shortly after the investigative offensive, long-time CMS Energy Chairman and CEO William McCormick resigned. That was followed by the firing of the company's auditor, Arthur Andersen. At the time of the accounting firm's dismissal, Arthur Andersen noted that its approval of the company's books could no longer be relied upon, which should not come as a surprise since 71 percent of the $5.6 million CMS Energy paid Arthur Anderson was for non-audit consulting services.
The full report can be viewed online at
http://www.citizen.org/documents/cmeep15.pdf.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.
For more information, please visit http;//www.citizen.org
9/21/02
5:05:08 PM
Cow Theory Of Government
DEMOCRAT
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. Barbara Streisand sings for you.
SOCIALIST
You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
REPUBLICAN
You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?
COMMUNIST
You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM - AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
DEMOCRACY - AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.
BUREAUCRACY - AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch. Life is good.
JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking one.
NEW YORK CORPORATION
You have fifteen million cows. You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some fat cow from Arkansas
Source: http://www.rense.com/general29/cow.htm
9/21/02
5:03:27 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
FEE: "FIE," FOES FUME
Is it a tax or is it not a tax? That's the question in London, where diplomats are up in arms over a proposed daily fee on cars driving into the city center, in order to discourage congestion and clean up the city's air. They say the fee most certainly is a tax, and that therefore embassies should be exempt from it under the 1961 Vienna Convention, which bars governments from levying taxes against such institutions. But Ken Livingstone, the famously contentious mayor of London, says it's not a tax -- a claim the U.S. is threatening to respond to by levying its own "non-tax" against British diplomats. Meanwhile, though, the diplomats are trying to solve the problem in the way they know best -- diplomatically. George Kirya, the high commissioner of Uganda and the dean of the London diplomatic corps, is planning to approach the Livingstone government to plead the diplomats' case, especially for poor countries, for whom the nearly $8 tax could be a financial burden.
straight to the source: New York Times, Sarah Lyall, 18 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=484>
JEREMY SPOKE IN CLASS AGAIN
In his new book "The Hydrogen Economy," author Jeremy Rifkin argues that energy-use habits determine the rise and fall of civilizations. Contemporary civilization depends on the steady supply of relatively inexpensive energy, most of which comes from fossil fuels. And most of that comes from the Middle East, where societal and political differences from the U.S. make for a precarious and potentially unstable relationship. For the sake of civilization as we know it, Rifkin writes, we should make the transition to a hydrogen economy, where power will be generated by fuel cells and delivered by locally owned, decentralized providers -- a "democratized energy web." That vision could be great for civilization and the environment -- but can Rifkin get us there? Get reviewer Elizabeth Grossman's opinion, only on the Grist Magazine website.
only in Grist: H-bomb -- a review of the hydrogen economy, in our Books Unbound section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/books091802.asp?source=daily>
DON'T SEND US THE BILL
The Canadian government prorogued its parliamentary session this week, effectively killing a proposed Species At Risk bill. The bill would have banned the harassment, harming, or killing of endangered species on federal land, as well as destruction of critical habitat. The move represented the third time the Parliament has tried and failed to pass legislation to protect endangered species. Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark accused the Liberal government of ending the parliamentary session to hide deep divisions in its own ranks, including over the species bill. Fellow Progressive Conservative Parliament Member John Herron said, "This government has not passed a single piece of environmental legislation of their own initiative in a decade."
straight to the source: Toronto Globe and Mail, Allison Dunfield, 17 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=485>
SIGH. GONE.
Vietnam is home to one of the world's most biologically diverse ecosystems -- but the country's natural environment has deteriorated rapidly over the last decade, according to a report released today by the World Bank. The report, "Vietnam Environment Monitor 2002," found that of the nation's endemic species, 28 percent of mammals, 10 percent of birds, and 21 percent of reptiles and amphibians are currently endangered, mainly due to hunting and habitat loss. World Bank environmental specialist Patchamuthu Illangovan acknowledged that it would be "a huge challenge" to counter the "drastic decline in environmental quality" -- especially since only 0.85 percent of the national budget is earmarked for environmental protection.
straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, 18 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=486>
do good: Take action to stop a dam on the Vietnamese-Lao border <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/rivers.asp?source=daily#vietnam>
MY EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
Last week, California Gov. Gray Davis (D) took on washing machines, signing legislation requiring them to be water-efficient by 2007; now the state's South Coast Air Quality Management District has taken aim at a related target -- dry cleaners. The district, which is responsible for cleaning up the air breathed by about half of all Californians, wants to phase out perchloroethylene, or perc, the most common solvent used by dry cleaners. It says perc, which is the number two cancer risk in the Los Angeles area after diesel exhaust, pollutes the air, water, and soil. The move to ban it is the nation's first, although some cities, such as New York and San Francisco, regulate the solvent heavily. The management district faces heavy opposition from the industry, which says perc substitutes are more expensive, more labor intensive, and not as effective.
straight to the source: San Jose Mercury News, Associated Press, 17 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=487>
9/21/02
5:01:27 PM
EMS Update - Sept. 18, 2002
Annual "Car Free Days" Celebrate People, Bikes and the Environment This September, alternative transportation activists, pedestrian advocates and bicycle enthusiasts around the globe are celebrating "World Car Free Days," an annual two-week event billed by its promoters as "two weeks of actions and events calling for an end to the hundred-year reign of the automobile."
Demonstrations and celebrations are planned in many U.S. cities -- in most cases during Sept. 20-27 -- including critical mass bike rides in which hundreds of bicyclists will slow car traffic by riding in unison down major city streets. Street parties may also be coming to a city near you. If the past is any indication, photo opportunities will abound.
For resources about Car Free Days, including key dates in the United States and abroad, as well as tips on finding out what's happening in your city, go to
http://www.ems.org/transportation/car_free_days.html
In the same section of our website, you'll also find links to other alternative transportation story ideas, including briefs about rapid bus transit and car sharing programs.
9/21/02
4:58:56 PM
Congressional Inquiry Finds Clues Leading To September 11th Attacks
But No Smoking Gun
by Ken Guggenheim AP Writer, September 17, 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional investigators say intelligence agencies had evidence that terrorists might use airplanes to attack targets in the United States, but have found nothing that directly predicted the Sept. 11 attacks, a congressional source said Tuesday. "We haven't found anything where some part of the government had the information about the where, when and how this attack was going to take place," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The findings will be part of a report presented Wednesday at the first public hearing of the joint inquiry by the House and Senate intelligence committees. That panel was set up to examine intelligence failures leading up to the attacks last September.
The report will not say outright whether intelligence agencies had enough information to have prevented the attack, said the source. But this person said the report does raise questions about whether the American public was given enough information to understand the likelihood of such an attack.
The report Wednesday will look at what intelligence agencies knew about the likelihood of an attack against U.S. targets in 2001 and about the use of airplanes. A future report will examine what the agencies knew about the 19 hijackers before the attacks.
"This is the beginning. This is not the whole picture," the source said.
Congressional staff members began looking at the attacks early this year. Staff have reviewed some 400,000 documents, about 60,000 to 70,000 of which were considered relevant to the investigation. They have also talked to almost 500 people.
The two committees have held closed-door hearings since early June 4. Open hearings, originally planned for late June, have repeatedly been delayed, largely because of questions about what sensitive documents could be released.
The staff report will be presented by director Eleanor Hill after Wednesday's hearing opens with the appearances of the spouses of two victims of the attacks.
It will address what information U.S. agencies had before Sept. 11 about the likelihood of a domestic attack by international terrorists and about the likelihood of using aircraft as weapons. The report will include details of threats received by the United States, including a surge of reports that peaked in June 2001, then began to fall off.
No public hearings have been scheduled beyond Wednesday. The source said the committees have had difficulty getting the Bush administration to provide witnesses for the public sessions.
Members of the committees have said the administration's lack of cooperation has hindered the inquiry and may prevented it from conducting a thorough review by the time its mandate ends in February. Some have called for a separate, independent investigation, which has been opposed by the administration.
Source: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA03LG286D.html
9/21/02
4:56:09 PM
Think the Days of the Draft are Gone? Think Again
By William Rivers Pitt
September 11, 2002
2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam. 304,000 of them were wounded in action, and over 75,000 of those were disabled by their injuries. As of Memorial Day 1996, there were 58,202 names listing the dead on the long, black monument in Washington, D.C. Approximately 1,300 men are still listed as missing in action.
There are many reasons why people today believe a return of the draft is an absurd notion, and the names on that wall stand tall among them. The insanity loosed within this nation when the draft was violently resisted stands as another firebreak against a politician who would call for its reinstatement. Finally, most Americans believe that our armed forces are utterly invincible and fully capable of performing any task we require beyond our borders. We stomped the Iraqi army, then the largest mechanized military force in the Middle East, like a roach back in 1991. After 9/11, we rampaged through Afghanistan.
Perceptions of this nature are dangerous, for they depart in the extreme from reality. Though we have succeeded in shattering the Taliban and dispersing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the threat posed by the latter terrorist organization remains quite real. The cultural and tribal rifts in that region will require a massive American military presence there for years. The recent car-bomb attack against Afghan president Karzai demonstrates that, though we may have won all the battles over there, we are far from obtaining victory.
The situation in Afghanistan will be a significant tax on our military resources, unless we walk away as we did once the Soviets disengaged in 1989, which would guarantee once again the rise of fundamentalist chaos there. We have reaped that whirlwind once already, and will hold this tiger by the tail until further notice. The fact that we have significant interest in the natural resources of that region only cements the permanence of our presence there.
Our military presence in the Middle East is already significant, and has begun to steadily increase since George W. Bush began to beat the war drum against Iraq. A great many officers ensconced in the Pentagon strongly believe our military will become far too stretched in a repeat engagement with Saddam Hussein's forces. Few will say openly that they fear defeat, and in fact the odds of losing a war in Iraq are extremely low, but the pressure placed upon our military resources will be extreme. The potential for explosive upheaval in the Middle East should we make war on Iraq further exacerbates this. Between Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States military is reaching mission capacity.
Still, the idea that forced military conscription of Americans could come again is a foolish one, right? Consider the following scenario. Consider it with particular care if you have loved ones of battle age.
In July of 2002, the Defense Policy Board - a powerful group at the ear of the Bush administration which is chaired by former Reagan Defense Department official Richard Perle - listened with great interest to a briefing delivered by emissaries from a Rand Corporation think tank. The thrust of the briefing was that Iraq should be considered only the beginning of a protracted campaign to bring "regime change" throughout the Middle East. The final Powerpoint slide of this presentation described "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot, (and) Egypt as the prize."
Though the administration publicly distanced itself from this briefing once it was exposed on the pages of the Washington Post, going so far as to have Bush abase himself before visiting Saudi royalty, the substance of that talk surely resonated within the men calling the shots in D.C. Richard Perle is a famously hawkish neo-conservative who springs from the same think-tank environment as those who gave the briefing. The same goes for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz. These three men, along with the like-minded Vice President Cheney, are fully in control of both American foreign policy and the War on Terror. A plan for region-wide regime change in the Middle East suits them right down to the ground.
Noted MIT professor Noam Chomsky, writing earlier this week in the Guardian, described the invitation for more terrorism on American shores should we attack Iraq. "No one," wrote Chomsky, "including Donald Rumsfeld, can realistically guess the possible costs and consequences. Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions." The inference is clear: Any war in that region will spawn a new and terrible wave of attacks against this country. Any war in that region is exactly what the terrorists are hoping for. Fresh recruits, soaked in rage, will flood into their open arms.
The unfolding scenario becomes all too clear. If Bush is pressed into a conflict with Iraq by the hawkish, neo-conservative platoon of Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney, America will once again suffer a catastrophic terrorist attack. The result will be the complete militarization of America, complete with martial law and the suspension of all basic civil rights. Bush administration officials have already admitted as much when asked in the last year what the result of another attack would be. In the aftermath, the Bush administration will assuredly push for that region-wide regime change in the Middle East, but will be unable to do so without forced conscriptions, because the military is currently stretched too thin. Thus, the draft.
Farfetched? Hardly. In fact, there is presently in Congress a bill pending that would require military conscription. H.R. 3598, entitled "Universal Military and Training Act of 2001," was introduced into the House of Representatives on December 20th, 2001 by Republican Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan. It calls for the drafting of all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 22 for military service. Even those who would declare themselves conscientious objectors would be drafted and given military training, whereupon they would be peeled off to another Federal agency to serve out their term.
At present, H.R. 3598 languishes in the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, which is attached to the House Committee on Armed Services, because it has not enjoyed enough support in Congress. Should the very real scenario described above unfold, and specifically if this nation is attacked again, H.R. 3598 could well enjoy an incredible surge in popularity.
There is a high-stakes game of poker being played within the administration right now. The hawks are holding aces and betting them. Around them on the card table, the chips are piled high. Your sons, your brothers, your friends are in that pile. So are you, if you are of age. After September 11th, the only thing likely to happen is that which was previously inconceivable. Could war in Iraq bring terrorism back to our country? Could it lead to a regional conflagration in the Middle East? Could it lead to another draft?
I wouldn't bet against it.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.12A.wrp.draft.htm
9/21/02
4:54:44 PM
Originally from http://villagevoice.com/issues/0237/ridgeway.php
Bush Pulls a Grieving Nation Into War
I Hear America Sinking
By James Ridgeway
September 11 - 17, 2002
Behind the memorial candles and commercial remembrances lies one of the most astute marketing campaigns in American political history. This week, as the nation marks the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the Bush administration will twist voters' outpouring of raw emotion and patriotic fervor into a launching pad for the inevitable invasion of Iraq.
In a September 12 speech to the United Nations, President Bush will further showcase his arguments for knocking off Saddam Hussein. Behind the scenes, his advisers have been torquing the arms of European leaders, who rightly have withheld approval. The White House is making a very bold gamble, one that has most of the world scared to death.
Last week the U.S. stepped up its air attacks, sending 100 warplanes to bomb Iraq, which has been under intermittent siege since the end of Desert Storm in 1991. The Pentagon has continued to move ships, planes, and troops into the region. As for any congressional debate, it's as much for display as the deliberations of the UN, orchestrated to end in a non-binding resolution backing Bush.
CLIP
Energy: The U.S. imports well over half its oil, with most of it coming from the Middle East. Iraq in particular sells half its oil exports to the U.S. Iraq provides about 10 percent of all American imports. As our intake of foreign fuel has grown, so has the demand for it, epitomized by gas-guzzling SUVs. To get more oil, we are trying to turn from the Middle East to the Russians and their pipelines into the Caspian basin. Even so, we are totally socked into the Middle East for the near future.
Economy: Even without threats from overseas, the economy remains dead in the water, with no new jobs, only a slight increase in wages, and unemployment near 6 percent. At the onset of the Bush presidency, we were looking at a budget surplus of $405 billion. Halfway through his term, the surplus had become a $157 billion deficit. Foreign investors are pulling back. The S&P 500 has fallen 37 percent from its peak in early 2000. As mutual funds tank, 401(k) pensions have disappeared.
Corporations: The functions of government have steadily been taken over by corporate robber barons. Over the last decade, we have re-created the business structures and atmosphere of J.P. Morgan. Each administration since Reagan's has cut away at regulation. The market, not the government, is left to sort out the mess.
NOTE FROM JEAN: On this aspect, I really recommend to your attention: General Electric's Jack Welch and the corporate plundering of America (Sept 17) at
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/wlch-s17.shtml
Personal Freedom: Civil liberties have been steadily reduced under the rubric of the war on terror. About 1200 people were taken into custody after 9-11, some 752 of them on immigration charges. Many of these people never had a hearing and never had a charge lodged against them. Some were subjected to secret trials. Eighty-five percent were deported. Some two dozen men are still being held as material witnesses, indefinitely, and in complete secrecy. If a prisoner were lucky enough to speak to an attorney, the government could routinely wiretap those conversations. For any reason at all the government can now designate people as "enemy combatants" and hold them in solitary, without the right to counsel.
Meanwhile the government has gained new powers. The FBI can demand your library records and school transcripts. Agents can meander through e-mail accounts at will. As always, the feds infiltrate public meetings; the mere taking of a pamphlet has led to arrest and months in prison.
Leadership: Foreigners don't know what to make of America. To an outsider, Bush looks like a puppet run by VP Dick Cheney, who last weekend single-handedly created a new foreign policy concept, the doctrine of the "preemptive strike," to rationalize an attack on Saddam Hussein. But what happens if China were to take up the preemptive strike doctrine and attack us?
And then there are always Bush's cuckoo utterances. "The world must understand . . . that its credibility is at stake," he said after a recent Cabinet Room meeting with 18 Democratic and Republican congressional leaders. Notwithstanding their guitar-playing cocker spaniel chief, Brits polled lately held Bush as the third greatest threat to peace, trailing only Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
American Ideals: These sorts of cracks in American society might be remedied by opening up debate and changing direction. Instead, politics has devolved into a nonstop talk show, paving the way for Bush to prosecute a war for oil in the name of God.
Muslims act as a "fifth column in this country," says William Lind in Why Islam Is a Threat to America and the West. Ann Coulter, the cold-blooded conservative columnist, has said of Muslims, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." The former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Reverend Jerry Vines, also minced no words. For him, Muhammad was "a demon-obsessed pedophile."
The Reverend Franklin Graham, son of the Reverend Billy Graham and an evangelist preacher in his own right, said: "The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."
The problem for America is that evil and wicked are exactly what the world thinks of us.
9/21/02
4:53:08 PM
The Economic Costs of an Unjust War (September 16, 2002)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14108
>From massive budget deficits to skyrocketing oil prices, the proposed attack on Iraq will have a devastating effect on the lagging U.S. economy.
Costs of Imperial Adventurism (September 17, 2002)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14124
The Iraqis may have agreed to weapon inspections, but the campaign for "regime change" in Baghdad continues. And most other nations will go along -- for a price.
Bush Hectors U.N. Into Submission (September 16)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14121
Bush's speech has allies jumping on board the military juggernaut bearing down on Iraq. The president's fake conversion to multilateralism seems to have worked a little too well.
A Double-Faced Tirade On Iraq (September 16)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14106
Bush's much-anticipated UN address was a brazen act of hypocrisy that failed to present any credible evidence for an attack on Iraq.
How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them (September 16)
http://www.sundayherald.com/27572
Recent reports in the U.S. Senate reveal that the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992.
Scott Ritter Derides the Case against Iraq (September 16)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/14 /MN81272.DTL
Life-long Republican and former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq rips apart Bush's argument for attacking Saddam.
A Case Built on Blindness, Hypocrisy and Lies (September 16)
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0915-01.htm
George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are wilfully ignoring the realities of the Middle East. The result can only be catastrophic.
The Anniversary of a Neo-Imperial Moment (September 12)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14099
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.
The Cost of War (September 12)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14097
As the debate over war on Iraq rages on, the facts on who it affects --economically as well as socially -- are being overlooked.
Saving Iraq For 2004 (September 9)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14025
The Bush administration may not attack Baghdad now, but reserve the Saddam card for the next presidential elections.
What War Looks Like (September 9)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14023
The debate over the war on Iraq is over geopolitics and strategy, not the truly important issue: human life. (...) 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). (...) 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? CLIP
All these stories, plus discussions, action alerts and recommended sites, can be found on our War On Iraq page:
http://www.alternet.org/issues/index.html?IssueAreaID=40
9/21/02
4:51:16 PM
The biggest difference between the Russians and Americans was that Russians recognized that "the Party Line" was propaganda from the ruling elite, and Americans who receive "the Mainstream Press" fail to recognize it as "propaganda from the ruling elite" and mistake it for "reality."
- Bill Moyer
"I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war. Never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked, later on, whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war, it is not Right that matters but Victory. Have no pity. Adopt a brutal attitude... Right is on the side of the strongest."
- Adolph Hitler, 09/22/39
"What is needed most is an awakening in American minds that their various governments must abandon this stupid idea that they can play politics with other peoples' lives and start seeing others as equal human beings who have similar fears and desires. Power in the hands of the current Bush clan is extremely dangerous and it must be revealed for what it is: greed for control of oil and advancement of crazy religious ideologies."
- This is an excerpt from the Letter of the Week taken from
http://www.yellowtimes.org/letterofweek.php
Is Bush's War Illegal? (Sept 17)
http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle0917.html
Fortunes of War Await Bush's Circle After Attacks on Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.17B.fourtune.war.htm
Iraq's letter to UN: Full text
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2263455.stm
World reaction to Iraqi offer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2263027.stm
US bribes and threatens "allies" over Iraq - A MUST READ!
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/iraq-s17.shtml
"It's Empire Versus Democracy"
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14082
"The Wall Street Journal gave the secret away in an October 2001 editorial declaring that September 11 created a unique political opportunity to advance the whole Republican-conservative platform. Worse, the real conservative agenda is to create an American empire, not simply rout out the al-Qaida organization. No sooner had the September 11 attacks occurred than the Wall Street Journal's editorial writer, Max Boot, published "The Case for American Empire" in the conservative organ, the Weekly Standard. Boot endorsed a return to nineteenth century British imperialism, this time under American hegemony. "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets" (see NYT, Mar. 31, 2002). The orchestrated call for empire was "out of the closet," according to conservative columnist Charles Krauthamer."
NEWSWEEK: How the U.S. Helped Create Saddam Hussein
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.18A.neswk.us.iraq.htm
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Address on Iraq (on Israel as well)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.14C.annan.iraq.htm
9/21/02
4:48:36 PM
THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, September 18, 2002
sponsored by PR WATCH http://www.prwatch.org
The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to further information about current public relations campaigns. It is emailed free each Wednesday to subscribers. Feel free to forward this message to others.
THIS WEEK'S NEWS
1. Coughing Up the Truth
2. How Corporations Got a License to Lie
3. Why Aren't US Journalists Reporting from Iraq?
4. Greens Accused of Helping Africans Starve
5. Social Security = "Reverse Reparations"?
6. September 11 and the Internet
7. Novels for Hire
8. Saudis Play the Victims
9. Halliburton Hires Crisis PR Firm
10. Al-Qaeda Stronger Than Ever
1. COUGHING UP THE TRUTH
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22212-2002Sep15
A week after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director Christie Whitman issued a news release claiming that air pollution caused by the collapse of the World Trade Towers was no big deal. "I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breath and their water is safe to drink," she said. Several leading outlets went along with these assurances, even repeating industry mouthpiece Steven Milloy's absurd claim that more asbestos at the WTC would have saved lives. Now the truth is emerging, etched in the lungs of the rescue workers who dug through the wreckage. "A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, medical studies are showing that hundreds of World Trade Center rescue workers are still struggling with respiratory problems," reports the Washington Post. "For firefighters, one of the better documented groups, illnesses have necessitated lengthy medical leaves. ... About half of the 358 firefighters who developed the 'World Trade Center cough' remain on medical leave or light duty, according to a study of 10,116 firefighters published in the New England Journal of Medicine's Sept. 12 issue. ... [N]early 500 firefighters may have to retire by year's end because of their failing health."
SOURCE: Washington Post, September 16, 2002
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2002.html#1032148801
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1032148801
2. HOW CORPORATIONS GOT A LICENSE TO LIE
If you're wondering how corporate America was able to bamboozle so many people into throwing their life savings away on worthless investments, part of the answer lies in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA), which was lobbied into law by the National Investor Relations Institute. The PSLRA created a legal "safe harbor" for companies that issue "forward-looking statements" about predicted future earnings, protecting them from litigation even if they made fundamentally unrealistic earnings predictions. Opponents of the legislation called it "a license to lie." Corporations also pulled out the stops to defeat California's Proposition 211, which would have made it easier to sue corporations that issue misleading financial statements. Tina Harris, whose PR firm is appropriately named "Gold Rush Communications," boasts that she "generated hundreds of newspaper articles and radio and television interviews" to defeat Prop 211 on behalf of a now-defunct industry front group called Taxpayers Against Frivolous Lawsuits. Attorney William Lerach, who specializes in suing corporations on behalf of investors, has written a couple of essays explaining how Wall Street, the big accounting firms, and corporate America lobbied Congress to undermine the quality of financial reporting.
Web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2002.html#1032148800
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1032148800
3. WHY AREN'T US JOURNALISTS REPORTING FROM IRAQ?
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6363
American journalists have totally fallen down on the job when it comes to reporting from Baghdad, writes Nina Burleigh, who was one of the first American journalists to enter Iraq after the Gulf War. That allows the White House to make increasingly hyperbolic -- and false -- claims about the Iraqi threat to America. "This notion that the Iraqi leader is in cahoots with Osama will be easy to feed the American people. To the American people, one bad Arab is the same as the next, and Osama equals Saddam," Burleigh writes. In reality, though, "Anyone who spends a little time in Baghdad knows there is one thing the dwindling, beaten-down middle class of that country fears more than the hideous regime of Saddam Hussein: an Islamic uprising. ... As much as they hate their dictator, Iraqis hate the Islamists even more. As a Sunni Muslim, so does Saddam. As in the 1980s, this creepy strongman is standing between Iraqis and the jihad." The Bush administration is so determined to prevent facts like this from getting in its way that its plan to use military force in Iraq "was set last fall without a formal decision-making meeting or the intelligence assessment that customarily precedes such a momentous decision," reports the Washington Post. "An intelligence official says that's because the White House doesn't want to detail the uncertainties that persist about Iraq's arsenal and Saddam's intentions." And with journalists asleep at the switch, no one else will detail those uncertainties either.
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2002.html#1031940345
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031940345
4. GREENS ACCUSED OF HELPING AFRICANS STARVE
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020830-2441442.htm
U.S. AID Administrator Andrew Natsios has accused environmentalists "of endangering the lives of millions of famine-threatened Africans by encouraging their governments to reject genetically modified U.S. food aid." Natsios said environmentalists "are using big-time, very well-organized propaganda the likes of which I have never seen before," and called it "revolting and despicable to see them do so when the lives of Africans are at stake." For a more balanced discussion of the issue, the GE Food Alert Campaign Center has posted a CNN interview that featured Natsios alongside representatives of Zambia, the World Bank and Friends of the Earth.
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2002.html#1031849538
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031849538
5. SOCIAL SECURITY = "REVERSE REPARATIONS"?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0202.html#0912021005pm
The Republican Party in Kansas City is backpedalling after running an advertisement on black radio stations attacking Social Security as a form of "reverse reparations" to blacks. "You've heard about reparations, you know, where whites compensate blacks for enslaving us," says the ad. "Well guess what we've got now. Reverse reparations ... So the next time some Democrat says he won't touch Social Security, ask why he thinks blacks owe reparations to whites." Joshua Micah Marshall comments, "In cases of low-rent sleaze like these it's hard to know whether to fix on to the dishonesty, the crassness, the ugly caricature of gullible blacks the ad is intended to appeal to, or just the pitiful dorks themselves who hatched the idea."
SOURCE: Talking Points Memo, September 12, 2002
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031803200
6. SEPTEMBER 11 AND THE INTERNET
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=69
The Pew Internet Project has published a report examining how September 11 affected public attitudes and use of the Internet. Perhaps the most disturbing change has been that more Americans support greater government secrecy, along with monitoring of people's email and online activities. On the other hand, the terrorist attack has also encouraged the rise of do-it-yourself journalism, as "many non-news sites were turned into conduits for information, commentary, and action related to 9/11 events. ... In the days after the attacks, the Web provided a broad catalog of facts and fancy related to 9/11, ranging from eyewitness accounts from New York, Washington, and across the nation, to government reports, to analysis from experts and amateurs. With the eyes of the world focused on a small number of related events, many stepped into the role of amateur journalist, seeking out sources and sometimes assembling these ideas for others."
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2002.html#1031762266
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031762266
7. NOVELS FOR HIRE
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=329314
Two advertising executives turned novelists have launched a new company that plans to pay established authors to write specially commissioned fictional books on demand for government departments and businesses seeking to convey "difficult ideas" to the public. "Already there are takers," reports the Independent of England. "The Foreign Policy Centre, an independent think tank whose chief patron is Tony Blair, has spent £15,000 on an online novella called Need to Know about an anti-globalisation campaigner who abandons direct action in favour of protesting via the internet."
SOURCE: The Independent (UK), September 11, 2002
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031716800
8. SAUDIS PLAY THE VICTIMS
http://www.odwyerpr.com/0905osama.htm
The prominent Patton Boggs PR firm is distributing a document on Capitol Hill on behalf of its client, Saudi Arabia. The document portrays the Saudis as partners in the "war on terror" and victims themselves of terrorism. According to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, "The Embassy's 'Background FAQ' deals with 'hot button' issues such as 'Saudi Support for Osama bin Laden,' 'Alleged Saudi Funding for Terrorism,' 'Saudi Freezing of Assets,' 'Saudi Education System and Anti-Americanism,' 'Saudi Arabia and Suicide Bombers,' and 'Stability in Saudi Arabia.'"
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, September 10, 2002
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2002.html#1031630400
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031630400
9. HALLIBURTON HIRES CRISIS PR FIRM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54559-2002Sep8.html
Halliburton Corp., Vice President Dick Cheney's troubled former company, has hired spin doctor Michael Sitrick, whose firm was most recently hired by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to manage its pedophile-priests scandal. "Halliburton, being sued by shareholders for alleged fraud, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and might face a financial meltdown if it can't negotiate a global settlement over asbestos litigation," notes the Washington Post.
SOURCE: Washington Post, September 9, 2002
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2002.html#1031544002
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031544002
10. AL-QAEDA STRONGER THAN EVER
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid020905_1_n.shtml
A year has passed since the U.S. launched its war on terrorism. "Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that most of the initial 'war aims' have not been achieved," reports Jane's Intelligence Digest, a leading publisher of military and security analyses. "In fact, in the view of many within the Western intelligence community, Al-Qaeda is probably stronger now than it was before 11 September. The reasons for this are complex, but key factors include the enormous growth in grassroots support for the group throughout much of the Islamic world. ... At a time when Washington is seen as Israel's key ally, it has been very easy for Al-Qaeda to present itself as the Islamic world's means of striking back against unequal forces. The West underestimates the attraction of Al-Qaeda's propaganda message to many Muslims at its peril. Another key political mistake has been to focus on secondary distractions, such as the eaxis of evil', while soft-peddling on the principal sponsors of Al-Qaeda: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The unpalatable truth is that these two eallies' of the West have played an undeniable role in the growth of Bin Laden's group into an international terrorist network."
SOURCE: Jane's Intelligence Digest, September 5, 2002
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1031198401
9/21/02
4:44:00 PM
SciTech Daily Review
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992805
A robotic probe sent to explore beyond a mysterious stone seal inside the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, has unlocked one mystery only to reveal another
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,790431,00.html Sheep remember faces. Pigs could have a theory of mind. And when it comes to bird brains, chickens aren't necessarily at the bottom of the class either, according to animal researchers
http://www.firstscience.com/site/articles/perception.asp
Long-term partner or quick fling? The shape of a man's face may decide the question
http://www.fonz.org/zoogoer/zg2002/4/PrimateThink.htm
What primates think: The primate brain is a marvel of evolution, and one we find particularly interesting as we try to understand our own intelligence and that of other animals
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/kramer/1030493269.php
Adventures in wireless access: No plugs. No wires. An epiphany -- well, at least a small halogen light bulb -- that true wireless could be the key to unlocking the value in so many Internet efforts. And then the crushing reminder that this is not even close to reality
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/04/woe_to_ev1/index.html
General Motors wants to take its pioneering electric automobiles off the road. But the geeks who drive them won't let go of the steering wheel
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb081402.shtml
Cluster bomb: The results of an $8 million study won't stop people from blaming the Long Island cancer cluster on synthetic chemicals, says Ronald Bailey. But sometimes a coincidence really is a coincidence
9/21/02
4:43:08 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Hydro-Quebec seeks to build 800 MW gas-fired plant - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17804/story.htm
Nuclear freighters dock safely in UK after protest - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17802/story.htm
Hundreds of Thais narrowly escape mudslide - THAILAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17801/story.htm
US urged to leave landmines out of Iraq arsenal - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17800/story.htm
South Africa prepares to refloat oil-spill wreck - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17803/story.htm
South Africa says Earth Summit worth the money - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17806/story.htm
"Free Willy" star set to spend winter in Norway - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17805/story.htm
FEATURE - Rare NZ parrots throw off cat-food names - NEW ZEALAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17796/story.htm
TEPCO says acted improperly in 16 reactor data cases - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17798/story.htm
Umweltkontor buys New Mine Energy via share issue - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17799/story.htm
US wants action on dirty bomb threat - AUSTRIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17807/story.htm
Antarctic ozone hole could close by 2050 - scientist - AUSTRALIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17797/story.htm
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:
UK: Anti-Nuclear Protestors and Police Escort Bnfl Ship Pacific Pintail into Walney Channel at Barrow http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17812
SOUTH AFRICA: Environmental Authorities Load Sand to Protect the St Lucia Estuary from Potential Oil Spills http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17808
INDONESIA: An Indonesian Boy Looks For Drinking Water in Wonogiri http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17810
FRANCE: Jose Bove Arrives in Court For Trial Over Destroyed Gmo Oilseed Plants
http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17811
9/21/02
4:39:49 PM
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
September 14, 2002 Congressional Black Caucus Reception
This is an important week for all of us, although it is a particularly important week for me. This week we had three very successful Braintrusts: Afro-Latinos and their rising tide of political empowerment all over Latin America; Hip Hop Power and the importance of Hip Hop as a communications medium in the absence of a real communications industry other than Radio One now, inside our community, owned by our community spreading the good news about our community; And finally, COINTELPRO II: The Murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. where we learned that there really are linkages between the murders of JFK, MLK, and RFK. And that the COINTELPRO process was to neutralize the black leader—in the words of the CIA—assassinate, and then replace that leader with someone whose skin color was black, but whose loyalty was to their plan and not us.
Yesterday, Judge Joe Brown told us unequivocally that the so-called murder rifle was NOT the weapon that killed Dr. King. So, I think we did some very important work in these three braintrusts, connecting, communicating, and educating. And at least for the next two years, I will not be at the CBC Weekend as a Member of the House of Representatives. As everybody probably knows by now, I didn’t cross the finish line first this time. Despite the fact that I easily won the Democratic vote, 40,000 Republicans maliciously crossed over and overtook the Democratic Primary. And because AIPAC had telegraphed in newspaper articles that they were going to target both Earl Hilliard and me, the Democratic Party was paralyzed. Therefore, if Alabama represents the heart of the civil rights movement and Georgia represents its brain, the black body politic has sustained a mortal blow. What does this portend for the future of independent black leadership in this country, particularly given what we learned really happened during the COINTELPRO period, and what will happen soon now that the USA Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and the Funding for the War on Terrorism Act have significantly changed the legal landscape?
The Operation TIPS program of John Ashcroft, by the way, is nothing new in the annals of the FBI, but executive authority always seemed to be there to override such ambitions. That’s not the case now. And so, I’m proud of the votes I cast against those bills and I’m proud of the legislation I’ve authored that really does seek to move our country forward. For instance, the legislation to override the President’s executive Order denying our troops their rightfully earned overtime pay. George Bush has asked our young men and women to make the ultimate sacrifice, but he doesn’t want to pay them for it. And the legislation I authored to stop the use of weapons with depleted uranium which seems to be causing health effects and abnormal births and even deaths among the troops of our allies and maybe even our own. I’m proud of the bill to stop the importation of coltan into the United States, the source of so much pain and suffering in eastern Congo because it’s a key ingredient in our computers, palm pilots, Sony Play-stations, that people are willing to kill to get their hands on it.
I’m proud that we extended the benefits for our veterans who are suffering from Agent Orange because those benefits were about to expire and I authored the legislation that was passed into law to help them. But I’m most proud of my work to hold this Administration accountable to the American people. And after I’ve asked the tough questions, here’s what we now know: That President Bush was warned that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and crash them into buildings in the US; That in the weeks prior to September 11, 24-hour fighter cover was placed over the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas; That in the weeks prior to September 11, Attorney General Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft and instead flew Government aircraft; That the US received numerous high level warnings from a wide range of foreign intelligence services warning of impending hijackings and terrorist attacks; That a number of FBI agents were pleading with their superiors to conduct intensive investigations into the suspicious activities of various men in US flight schools; That in the days prior to September 11, highly suspicious stock market activity in aviation and insurance stocks took place indicating that certain well-placed people had advance knowledge of the attacks. And now this week we learn that the FBI had an informant living with two of the actual 9-11 hijackers. All of this has become public knowledge since I asked the simple question: What did the Bush Administration know and when did it know it?
Now against this backdrop of so many unanswered questions, President Bush wants us to pledge our blind support to him. First, for his war on terrorism and now for his war in Iraq. How can we, in good conscience, prepare to send our young men and women back to Iraq to fight yet another war, when we have tens of thousands of our service men and women poisoned and still suffering from the first war? And what of those veterans who are sleeping on our streets? Within five minutes of where we are today, you can walk there, and see them, and talk to them—Vietnam Veterans, Gulf War veterans, veterans of our wars.
George Bush can count me out of his war-making plans. Throughout my career, we have proudly brought blacks and whites, Asians, and Latinos together. I’m proud that everywhere around me the human rainbow has been represented. And I know that as we continue to speak out on behalf of the poor and the marginalized in this country, my supporters across the spectrum, and across America will be right there with me. And that as we continue to speak out on behalf of those who are sick and tired of greed being more important than human needs, my supporters will be right there.
And finally, as I ponder the future of America where voices of dissent are snuffed out by selfishness and intolerance, I’m reminded of the words of Bobby Kennedy, who we learned yesterday, was considering Martin Luther King, Jr. as his Vice Presidential running mate. Bobby Kennedy, truly a great man who selflessly lived and died for his country, shaped an entire generation with his thoughts, his words, and his deeds. And it was Bobby Kennedy who reminded us that: "The task of leadership, the first task of concerned people, is not to condemn or castigate, or deplore: it is to search out the reason for disillusionment and alienation, the rationale of protest and dissent—perhaps, indeed, to learn from it. And we may find, that we learn most of all from those political and social dissenters whose differences with us are most grave: for among the young, as among adults, the sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country."
9/21/02
4:30:34 PM
Public Citizen issued the following three press releases today:
1) No Malpractice Crisis Here: Doctor Errors Greatly Exceed Lawsuits, Study Shows
2) Groups Urge Senate Action on Nuclear Security
3) Report Highlights Benefits of Public Ownership of Waterworks
Sept. 17, 2002
No Malpractice Crisis Here: Doctor Errors Greatly Exceed Lawsuits, Study Shows
Six Percent of Florida Doctors Responsible for Half of Malpractice; State Medical Board Does Poor Job of Disciplining Repeat Offenders
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Assertions that Florida is facing a "malpractice litigation crisis" are wrong; in fact, many more medical errors are committed than give rise to lawsuits, and just a small percentage of doctors are responsible for half of the malpractice awards in Florida, according to a report released today by Public Citizen, a national consumer advocacy organization.
Bad business decisions by insurers also are key to rising medical malpractice insurance liability rates, the report said. Public Citizen used Florida hospital injury data and the National Practitioner Data Bank to debunk claims by the president of the American Medical Association (AMA), Florida doctors and business lobbyists that the number of medical malpractice lawsuits is excessive, and that cutting back consumer rights to use the courts could correct the problem.
"Florida already has some of the most Draconian medical malpractice restrictions of any state in the nation," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. "Yet the American Medical Association and the Florida Medical Association want to limit people's rights to be compensated for horrible medical injuries even further. Meanwhile, they offer false allegations and half-truths to divert attention from the real issue, which is poor medical care."
Among the report's findings:
· The number of medical injuries reported by hospitals - where two-thirds of medical negligence occurs - exceeds by six to one the number of medical malpractice claims. From 1996 through 1999, Florida hospitals reported 19,885 adverse incidents but only 3,177 medical malpractice claims, according to Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration. Adverse incidents are defined by Florida state statute as "events over which health care personnel could exercise control" that result in death or injury. This means that for every six adverse incidents in the hospital, only one malpractice claim is filed - hardly a crisis.
· Stunningly, only 6 percent of Florida doctors are responsible for half the malpractice and its costs. According to the National Practitioner Data Bank, 2,674 of the state's 44,747 physicians have paid two or more malpractice awards to patients, making them responsible for 51 percent of all payments.
· The Florida Board of Medicine, which is supposed to police the profession, is dangerously lenient with doctors. There are 24 doctors who have paid 10 or more medical malpractice judgments. Of those, only 12 have ever been disciplined by the Florida medical board. In fact, only 36 percent of Florida's disciplinary actions in 2001 were serious - that is requiring license revocation, suspension, surrender or probation. When compared to the rest of the country, only two states were worse in that regard, Wisconsin and North Carolina.
· Rate increases for many other types of insurance also are up in Florida. This is largely the result of insurance industry economics - major stock market losses mean insurers cannot continue to offer artificially low rates in the hopes of attracting more customers. In Florida in 2002, health insurance increased 20 to 28 percent while homeowners insurance increased more than 15 percent. Florida's Department of Insurance has approved 2001-2002 rate increases for medical malpractice insurers ranging from 6 to 40 percent, with the average being 26 percent.
Public Citizen presented the report at a press conference with Floridians for Patient Protection, which discussed how the insurance industry is trying to shut the courthouse doors on victims of medical negligence and showed the devastating effects medical malpractice has on Florida's families, communities and economy.
"There is no medical malpractice insurance crisis," Claybrook said. "Rather, there is excessive doctor malpractice and an insurance industry profits crisis."
According to the Institute of Medicine, medical errors are a leading cause of death in the United States. At least 44,000 and perhaps as many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors. Deaths due to preventable adverse events exceed the deaths attributable to motor vehicle crashes (43,458), breast cancer (42,297) or AIDS (16,516). Further, medical errors are estimated to cost the economy between $17 billion and $29 billion. Medical malpractice costs represented just over one half of 1 percent of health care costs during the 1990s.
Claybrook recommended that: 1) all final board disciplinary actions with information about medical malpractice payouts, hospital disciplinary actions and federal disciplinary actions be made public; 2) medical professionals provide full disclosure to patients and families about errors; 3) doctors be rated on performance for malpractice premiums; 4) doctors with numerous claims be subject to higher malpractice premiums; and 5) the number of classifications of doctor specialties for insurance rating purposes be reduced because the risk pools for some are too small and thus overly influenced by a few losses; 6) the National Practitioner Data Bank be opened to the public; and 7) secret settlements of lawsuits involving medical malpractice be eliminated.
The report is available on the Web at
http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/medmal/articles.cfm?ID=8282.
Joan Claybrook's statement is on the Web at
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1213.
xoxox
Sept. 17, 2002
Groups Urge Senate Action on Nuclear Security
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congress should enact legislation to address security concerns at nuclear power plants, national environmental and public interest groups said today. Eleven groups circulated a letter to U.S. senators urging immediate action.
"One full year after the tragedies of last September, Congress has not enacted any legislation to mandate improvements in security at commercial nuclear facilities. This appalling situation leaves the public vulnerable," the groups wrote. "We strenuously urge the Senate to address these pressing nuclear security concerns before adjournment."
The letter was endorsed by Friends of the Earth, GRACE Public Fund, Greenpeace, Nuclear Control Institute, Nuclear Information & Resource Service, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen, Safe Energy Communication Council, STAR Foundation, Union of Concerned Scientists and Women's Action for New Directions.
Nuclear plant owners have known of their vulnerabilities to terrorist attack, and recent news articles have reported that Al Qaeda specifically discussed bombing nuclear facilities. Not only are nuclear power plants not designed to withstand the type of attack experienced on Sept. 11, 2001, but nearly half of the facilities tested under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Operational Safeguards Response Evaluations (OSRE) program between 1991 and 2001 had serious vulnerabilities identified. A report released last week by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) found that since Sept. 11, security forces at nuclear power plants are undermanned, underequipped and undertrained.
Although the U.S. House of Representatives included nuclear security provisions when it reauthorized the Price-Anderson Act last year, and although the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously approved the Nuclear Security Act in July, energy conferees last week rejected proposals to include security provisions to the nuclear title of the energy bill (H.R. 4). The Homeland Security Act, currently being debated by the Senate, is similarly silent on security at nuclear power plants.
"Given the current focus on national security, how can lawmakers ignore the unacceptable risks posed by nuclear power plants?" asked Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "Congress must not allow another year to lapse without taking action on this urgent matter."
xoxox
BLUEGRASS FLOW
PUBLIC CITIZEN
Sept. 17, 2002
Report Highlights Benefits of Public Ownership of Waterworks
Communities Better Served Through Municipal Control; Receive Lower Rates, Better Service
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Public ownership of water systems provides more stability, better economic development, more reliable service and lower rates than private ownership, according to a report released today by Public Citizen and Bluegrass FLOW, a citizens group based in Lexington. Both groups warned that privatization, despite its promise of efficiency and improved management, often fails to deliver stable rates and good customer service to the city in which it serves.
Six case studies of cities that have either purchased waterworks from a private company or are currently pursuing a buyout are documented in the report. From Lexington and Huber Heights, Ohio, to Peoria, Ill., strong evidence suggests that water utilities should be kept in the public trust and not treated as a commodity by private investors.
Bluegrass FLOW is taking action to persuade the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government to regain control of the city's water system. The group maintains that a municipal buyout of the privately owned company, Kentucky-American, would stabilize rates and provide more reliable service.
"Now is the time for Lexington to put power back into the hands of the people who live and work in this community, the people whose only vested interest is making this city a better place to live," said Edward T. (Ned) Breathitt, former governor of Kentucky and a member of Bluegrass FLOW. "What we don't need here is an international corporate giant that siphons profits off our water and invests that money into a new overseas venture instead of our city."
In Peoria, the City Council voted in October 1998 to buy back Peoria's water system from Illinois-American Water Company, a subsidiary of American Water Works, the largest water company in the United States. According to Raftelis Financial Consulting, a management consulting firm that specializes in water and wastewater finance, Peoria had the highest water rates in the country in 1998. This revelation prompted action by the city to regain its waterworks.
"All across the country, we're seeing a demand for corporate accountability from citizens who are fed up with being on the losing end of the profit margin when it comes to their basic utilities," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "When people see their rates increase repeatedly, they aren't going to be happy, especially when they don't see any of their money being re-invested into their own communities."
Public utilities serve 85 percent of the U.S. population, including most major cities. A vast majority of these systems are operated by municipal employees. In the early 1990s, when corporations realized that water could be profitable, a wave of mergers and acquisitions swept the nation. The 15 percent of communities that had historically been served by small private companies were now being subjected to the whims of large, international corporations. French-owned Vivendi Universal, Suez and the German energy conglomerate RWE AG became the three largest water companies in the world. As local governments dealt with aging water infrastructures, the water giants were eager to offer solutions through privatization.
In Lexington's case, the city was prompted to take action to pursue a buyout when RWE AG purchased American Water Works, the parent company of Kentucky-American, which is currently running Lexington's waterworks. Many residents in Lexington objected to the idea of an international company running their local water system.
"The citizens of Lexington should be financially responsible only for their water system's operations and improvement costs, not overseas expansion efforts or CEO bonuses," said Hauter. "Lexington cannot afford to miss this unique opportunity to reclaim control of its water rates and economic development."
Communities generally face an uphill battle when pursuing a buyout of private utilities. However, the effort is rewarded by many benefits that public ownership brings. Consider:
· In 2000, Indianapolis officials decided to buy the local waterworks after their owner NiSource announced it would sell them to another company. The city feared dramatic rate hikes, which the new owner was expected to implement to recoup its investment. Indianapolis wanted to ensure that operating decisions and customer service and repair functions would remain in Indiana and that rates would remain reasonable. Following several months of dispute, the company agreed to an April 2001 city purchase. Under the terms of the deal, $17 million will be spent to resolve the odor and taste problems inherited from the private operations and another $7 million will be invested in the infrastructure.
· In 1991, Washington Court House in Ohio moved to buy the local waterworks from the Ohio subsidiary of American Water Works because the company continuously raised rates and failed to meet the local development objectives. The city initially pursued the buyout via eminent domain, but after a two-year legal battle, the company settled. Following the buyout, Washington Court House achieved $500,000 in annual surpluses in just two years. As a result, the city gave a three-year, 10 percent rate discount and performed $9 million worth of capital improvements without raising rates.
· In 2001, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns Counties in Florida saw their water rates cut by an average of 25 percent after the Jacksonville Electric Authority, a municipal body, bought those counties' water systems from United Water, a private company, whose earlier rate hikes met significant local opposition. The buyout also brought water service to a development where residents were prevented from moving in for a year because the developer could not reach an agreement with United Water.
To view the report online, please visit:
http://www.citizen.org/documents/ACF9FB.pdf
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C..
For more information, please visit http://www.citizen.org
9/21/02
4:27:34 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
THE FRESH PRINCE OF BAD AIR
Just two weeks after their births, infants in the Los Angeles area have been exposed to more pollution than the U.S. government considers acceptable over a lifetime, according to a report released this week by the Washington, D.C.-based National Environmental Trust. The report, which looked at pollution levels in the L.A. region, the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley, the Sacramento Valley, and San Diego, found that children in California are at a greater risk than adults of getting cancer from airborne contaminants. Each year, 102,000 tons of toxic emissions are released in the Golden State; in the L.A. area, according to the report, the emissions cause an estimated 720 cancer cases per million people annually -- a risk almost 1,000 times greater than the federal government's acceptable limit of one case per million people.
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Gary Polakovic, 16 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=482>
do good: Take action to preserve the Clean Air Act <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/air.asp?source=daily#grandfather>
BORDERLINE INSANE
Two new power plants being built just south of the U.S. border will generate billions of watts of electricity for Californians, a handful of jobs for Mexicans, and plenty of pollution for everyone. The plants, which are the first to be built in Mexico specifically to provide power to the U.S., mark a new era in the relationship between the two nations. Some hail the development as a perfect example of the merits of free trade, while others excoriate it as a prime case of neo-colonialism, calling the plants "energy maquiladoras," in a reference to the assembly-line factories where Mexicans labor at low wages for multinational corporations. The plants capitalize on Mexico's weaker environmental law enforcement, its less-than-transparent government, and its desire for foreign capital. President Bush and the U.S. Energy Department issued special permits for the plants, one of which does not meet California pollution standards and would not be licensed in the U.S.
straight to the source: New York Times, Tim Weiner, 17 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=479>
NATURAL BORN WEED KILLERS
The cocktail of chemicals found in the most common herbicides used in home lawn care in the U.S. could reduce fertility and cause miscarriages, according to a study published today in Environmental Health Perspectives. The study does not name the brand of weed-killer tested, but the active ingredient -- a mix of three phenoxy herbicides (2,4-D, dicamba, and mecoprop) -- is used by 29 million Americans to kill dandelions and other undesired plants. Safety trials have been conducted on the herbicides singly, but never in combination. However, independent studies of crop workers in Europe and Kansas have found a possible correlation between one of the herbicides, 2,4-D, and elevated rates of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and birth defects. The current study found that laboratory mice given drinking water containing extremely low doses of the chemical cocktail -- seven times lower than the maximum allowable concentrations in the U.S. -- experienced a 20 percent increase in failed pregnancies.
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Emily Green, 17 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=480>
JERSEY, SURE!
In a slap in the face to former New Jersey governor and current U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, New Jersey plans to scrap an air-pollution-control program her administration had touted as a model for the nation. The Open Market Emissions Trading Program allows companies to pollute above permitted levels if they buy credits from other companies that have successfully reduced their emissions; some 39 companies have made use of it to meet emissions standards. Now, state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell is pulling the plug, saying the program has hurt state efforts to reduce air pollution. "The program has failed," Campbell wrote in a letter to the U.S. EPA. That blunt assessment didn't deter Whitman from singing its praises as late as yesterday, nor from continuing to push a national emissions trading plan.
straight to the source: New Jersey Star-Ledger, Anthony S. Twyman, 17 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=483>
only in Grist: Dear Christie ... 10 Reasons to stay the course -- in a confidential memo, President Bush tells EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman what's on his mind -- satire in our opinions section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/imho/imho040901.stm?source=daily>
only in Grist: The case for Christie Whitman to resign for her own good -- and other gems from assorted magazines in our Best of the Rest section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/best/best080902.asp?source=daily#resign>
STUFFED SACS
Unhappy with some of the findings of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy, the Bush administration has begun to stack the deck in its favor, eliminating some committees entirely and reshuffling membership in others. Fifteen of the 18 members of a committee assessing the effects of environmental chemicals on human health have been told they will be replaced, in several instances by people tied to the industries that manufacture the chemicals. (One new member, a California scientist, helped defend Pacific Gas and Electric Company against Erin Brockovich.) Two other committees -- one recommending increased oversight of the lucrative genetic testing industry and the other rethinking federal protections for human research subjects -- have been eliminated. The changes mark the beginning of the restructuring of a system of more than 250 committees that funnel advice to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
straight to the source: Washington Post, Rick Weiss, 17 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=481>
9/21/02
4:24:38 PM
Three-Minute Discrepancy In Tape
Cockpit voice recording ends before Flight 93's official time of impact
By William Bunch, bunchw@phillynews.com
THE FINAL three minutes of hijacked United Flight 93 are still a mystery more than a year after it crashed in western Pennsylvania - even to grieving relatives who sought comfort in listening to its cockpit tapes in April.
A Daily News investigation has found a roughly three-minute gap between the time the tape goes silent - according to government-prepared transcripts - and the time that top scientists have pinpointed for the crash.
Several leading seismologists agree that Flight 93 crashed last Sept. 11 at 10:06:05 a.m., give or take a couple of seconds. Family members allowed to hear the cockpit voice recorder in Princeton, N.J., last spring were told it stopped just after 10:03.
The FBI and other agencies refused repeated requests to explain the discrepancy.
The cockpit voice recorder a roughly 30-minute tape loop, is supposed to record the sounds inside the cockpit right up until the moment of impact and usually does.
Aviation experts said there could be several explanations for the gap.
They said it could mean that the FBI and other government agencies either failed to properly synchronize the times, or there were other problems in the retrieving or handling of the tape from the so-called "black box" recovered from the wreckage at Shanksville, Pa.
Or, experts speculated, it could mean there was a major on-board electrical failure on the plane three minutes before Flight 93 crashed, causing the recorder to quit working.
What's not told
The broader significance is that the three-minute gap points to how little is really known about how and why Flight 93 crashed - even as the saga of the doomed jetliner and cell-phone calls from some of the 40 passengers and crew continue to captivate the nation.
"That's part of the whole war aspect - we don't want to tell about what we did and didn't do," said Vernon Grose, a former National Transportation Safety Board member who says he still has questions about the Flight 93 crash. He said he doubts there will ever be "a nice, open public hearing with eyewitnesses telling what they saw."
However, in recent weeks, two books about Flight 93 have topped the best-seller lists, while President Bush and other top government officials continue to invoke the story - based largely on the cell-phone calls - of fighting between the passengers and the hijackers as a "Let's roll" rallying cry to continue the war against global terrorism.
But the FBI has clamped a tight lid of secrecy on the flight data recorder - which could best show how Flight 93 actually crashed - and on the cockpit voice recorder.
"We have no comment at all on the tape issue," said Sam Dibbley, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office in northern Virginia that presented the tape to families.
An FBI spokesman, Steven Berry, said the bureau continues to officially list the time of the Flight 93 crash as 10:03 a.m. The NTSB referred all questions to the FBI.
But the relatives of Flight 93 passengers who heard the cockpit tape April 18 at a Princeton hotel said government officials laid out a timetable for the crash in a briefing and in a transcript that accompanied the recording. Relatives later reported they heard sounds of an on-board struggle beginning at 9:58 a.m., but there was a final "rushing sound" at 10:03, and the tape fell silent.
What can be heard
"There is no sound of the impact," said Kenneth Nacke, whose brother, Lou Nacke Jr., is one of the passengers believed to have fought with the hijackers. Nacke confirmed that the government said the tape ended at 10:03 a.m.
He added: "The quality of the sound is really poor."
Vaughn Hoglan, the uncle of passenger Mark Bingham, said by phone from California that near the end there are shouts of "pull up, pull up," but the end of the tape "is inferred - there's no impact."
New York Times reporter Jere Longman, who spoke with relatives of all but one of the 40 Flight 93 victims, writes in the epilogue to bestseller "Among the Heroes" that "at about three minutes after ten, the tape went silent."
Lisa Beamer, the wife of passenger Todd Beamer, who heard the tape while working on her No. 1 best-seller "Let's Roll," also gives 10:03 as the end of the flight.
Seismologists - experts in the earth's vibrations - have almost exactly pinpointed the time of the crash of Flight 93 at 10:06:05.
"The seismic signals are consistent with impact at 10:06:05," plus or minus two seconds, said Terry Wallace, who heads the Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory and is considered the leading expert on the seismology of man-made events. "I don't know where the 10:03 time comes from."
Likewise, a written study commissioned by the Department of Defense - carried out by seismologists from Columbia University and the Maryland Geological Survey - also determined impact was at 10:06:05.
Normally, such a large discrepancy might be cleared up when the National Transportation Safety Board releases a written transcript of the voice recorder - edited for sounds of suffering or profanity - right before holding public hearings on an air disaster. But because the Flight 93 crash was part of a criminal act, no NTSB hearings are expected.
The Justice Department has also insisted that the cockpit tape can't be released because it will be played to the jury at the trial of admitted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, now set for January.
Although Moussaoui is often referred to in the media as "the 20th hijacker," there's been no evidence that he was slated to be on board Flight 93 or the three other planes hijacked on Sept. 11. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers sought last week to block the use of the recording.
What could've happened
Last fall, as the saga of the Flight 93 passenger uprising became widely known, several relatives of the crash victims made an unusual request: They wanted to hear the actual tape. The FBI initially issued a cold refusal.
"While we empathize with the grieving families, we do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way," FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood said last December. But under continuing pressure, the bureau changed its mind and agreed to the unusual April gathering at a Princeton Marriott hotel.
None of the family members interviewed for this story recalls any explanation of a discrepancy between the times on the tape recording and the actual crash at 10:06.
They were, according to the relatives and published accounts, given a talk by one of Moussaoui's prosecutors, who speculated that the passengers may have used a food cart to break into the cockpit.
But with government officials refusing to be interviewed, leading aviation experts interviewed for this story could only speculate about the tape discrepancy.
Possibilities they suggested:
• The FBI could have bungled this part of the investigation by failing to synchronize the time stamp of clocks onboard Flight 93 - which could have been set wrong - with air traffic control tapes and other tones that make it possible to determine the exact, correct times. Such a mistake would mean that the tape really did run until the impact, but that all the times given to the relatives on the transcript were off by three minutes.
Investigators typically nail down the correct times very early in a probe, experts said. Todd Curtis, who runs the Web site AirSafe.com, said the three-minute gap "does not make sense."
"From what I have heard about the flight's CVR [cockpit voice recorder], there was at least one transmission from the cockpit to air traffic control that would have been captured by the ATC tapes," Curtis said. "Those tapes should also have some kind of time reference."
• At 10:03, the hijackers - or possibly passengers and crew who were fighting to regain control of the plane - flipped a circuit breaker or switch that cut off power to the cockpit voice recorder.
Experts said this would explain why the tape ends abruptly, but they had no idea why the terrorists would do such a thing, especially so far along into their hijacking. And they noted that the location of cockpit circuit breakers makes it unlikely it was struck accidentally during a struggle.
"That would be a much tougher task than turning off the transponder," said R. John Hansman, an aviation professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You would have to know exactly which circuit breaker to pull."
• There was a major on-board electrical failure before the crash - although it's not clear what could have triggered this. It has happened before. On Swissair Flight 111, which crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia in September 1998, the cockpit fire that caused the crash also killed power to the plane's two black boxes six full minutes before the crash.
New evidence that came out last week may support the electrical-failure theory. A federal air traffic controller from Cleveland, Stacey Taylor, told "Dateline NBC" that Flight 93's transponder, initially shut off by the hijackers, came back on briefly only to give out - at 10:03 a.m.
• There was some unknown problem either in retrieving the cockpit tape from the black box, or in its handling by government officials and contractors since last September, or in the presentation that was given in Princeton.
No one has stepped forward with any evidence of that.
But the three-minute gap is certain to fuel ongoing debates on the Internet over how Flight 93 really crashed, and whether the plane could have been shot down by military jet fighters that were sent aloft as the Sept. 11 hijackings unfolded. The government insists there was no shootdown.
Numerous witnesses in the Shanksville area have told the Daily News and other publications since last September that a mysterious, low-flying unmarked white jet, military in nature, circled the area at the time of the crash. The FBI has claimed this was a business jet that had been asked by air-traffic controllers to inspect the Flight 93 crater.
The debate has also been driven by the wide debris field from Flight 93 - including papers found eight miles away - and by conflicting accounts over whether a 911 caller reported an explosion and white smoke on board.
Grose, the former NTSB member, said he doubts the entire story of Flight 93 will ever be told.
"I don't think so," he said. "It's like David Crockett at the Alamo. We need heroes."
Source: http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/4084323.htm
9/21/02
4:20:43 PM
Investigation of the WTC Incident
The National Institute of Standards & Technology (USA) has just commenced an Official Investigation of the WTC Incident on 11th September 2001. The Investigation will last 2 years.
Although there isn't much to see at the moment, you should bookmark the following internet address for future reference -
Here, you will eventually find some answers.
The remit of the Investigation is to examine the performance of WTC 1, WTC 2 & WTC 7 ; I hope it will be extended later to include WTC 3.
Uncertainty with regard to the precise numbers of people killed or injured, and the number who escaped, is one of the system failures we ourselves will be looking at over the next year.
NIST and the World Trade Center
The collapse of New York City’s World Trade Center structures following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was the worst building disaster in recorded history, killing some 2,800 people. More than 350 fire and emergency responders were among those killed, the largest loss of life for this group in a single incident.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been involved since October 2001 in the effort to understand what led to the structural failure and subsequent progressive collapse of the World Trade Center buildings and use the lessons learned to better protect people and property in the future, enhance the safety of fire and emergency responders, and restore public confidence in the safety of tall buildings nationwide.
(Note: Some reports on this page are presented in .pdf. To read these files, you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader free.)
Key News and Updates
NIST Seeks Outside Experts to Serve on WTC Investigation Team Webcast of Press Briefing Detailing NIST WTC Investigation Commerce's NIST Details Federal Investigation of World Trade Center Collapse NIST's Investigation of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center Disaster—FAQs Remarks by Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr. at NIST WTC News Briefing Remarks by Dr. Shyam Sunder at NIST WTC News Briefing NIST Plan for the National Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster Highlights of Revisions to WTC Investigation Plan Based on Public Comments Photo Gallery Links to Video B-roll and Computer-Simulated Animations for WTC Investigation NIST Building Fire and Structural Failure Investigations How to Provide Photos or Other Information on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Buildings
Contact Information
General Public and Technical Professionals:
NIST World Trade Center Investigation Team
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8610
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8610
Email: wtc@nist.gov
News Media:
Michael E. Newman
NIST Public and Business Affairs
(301) 975-3025
Email: michael.newman@nist.gov
9/21/02
4:19:14 PM
SciTech Daily Review
http://www.fonz.org/zoogoer/zg2002/4/PrimateThink.htm
What primates think: The primate brain is a marvel of evolution, and one we find particularly interesting as we try to understand our own intelligence and that of other animals
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/13sep_sidekicks.htm
Silicon sidekicks: Exploring our solar system will require a new breed of intelligent robots
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020909/020909-8.html
How many fed-up fans does it take to start a Mexican wave? The answer is part of a mathematical model of crowd behaviour that could help control rowdy hooligans
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/healthmindandbody/0,6121,791115,00.html
Slim hope: Anorexia, as Kate Chisholm explains in Hungry Hell, has been with us for centuries. So why don't we understand it better?
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2002/sep/research1_020916.html
Uprooting the Tree of Life: A proposed theory has researchers debating life's origins -- again (registration required)
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1313818
The agony and the Ecstasy: Addiction researcher Jon Cole's unorthodox views about the long-term effects of MDMA are brewing up a storm
9/21/02
4:17:57 PM
TomPaine.com
See our OP AD on the op-ed page of the New York Times, or read it on line:
http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opad.cfm/ID/6394
AMERICAN HISTORIANS SPEAK OUT
'Consulting' Congress On Iraq Is Not Enough
by Joyce Appleby and Ellen Carol DuBois
The Constitution is clear, say thousands of historians in a petition presented on Capitol Hill today, Congress must debate and vote on whether to DECLARE WAR on Iraq.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6392
THE HISTORIANS' PETITION TO CONGRESS
by Joyce Appleby and Ellen Carol DuBois
Almost 1,300 historians agree: "Only a debate by Americans' elected representatives can engage the public in a serious consideration of the costs, risks, and wisdom" of war with Iraq.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6393
UNILATERAL PREVENTATIVE WAR: ILLEGITIMATE AND IMMORAL
by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
"The policy of containment plus deterrence won the Cold War. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyone thanked heaven that the preventive-war loonies had never got into power in any major country. Today, alas, they appear to be in power in the United States."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6391
AMERICA'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
An Interview With Dr. Helen Caldicott, Founder of Physicians For Social Responsibility
by Steven Rosenfeld
Co-winner of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Caldicott talks about George W. Bush's military-industrial administration.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6379
DEATH ROW OFF THE WEB
Arizona Censors Communications By Death Row Inmates
by Bill Berkowitz
"It isn't glorifying anyone to allow them a voice before they are executed -- to allow them to send us reports of abuses going on in the prison, legal issues in their cases, even writings and poetry detailing life in a cage waiting to be killed."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6324
SECURITY FOR U.S. WATER SYSTEMS
Before 9/11, Few Small Systems Had Workable Emergency Plans
by Ann Murray
"Water and wastewater systems were found to be vulnerable to physical damage, computer hacking, chemical spills and radiological contamination."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6378
AND FROM OUR CHECK IT OUT! SECTION:
WORTH LESS TOMORROW THAN TODAY?
You may never have heard of OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but this little-publicized arm of the White House has a broad impact on how our environmental, health and safety regulations get implemented.
John Graham, the head of OIRA, has been working busily over the past year to reject or modify regulations designed to protect workers and our environment -- all despite the fact that OIRA has no statutory authority at all to shape regulation. Instead, OIRA's power comes purely from executive order.
How has Graham managed to effectively kill 17 health, safety and environmental standards -- more than were killed in the entire Clinton administration -- despite his meager one-year tenure? He's monetized life, that's all.
In a memo sent to his entire agency early in his term, Graham indicated that all regulations should be subject to a monetized cost-benefit analysis, and that future lives saved by health, safety and environmental regulations are worth less than lives saved today.
CHECK IT OUT! http://www.tompaine.com/check_it_out/
9/21/02
4:15:36 PM
Naughty Saddam! You Took All Bushwhackers Toys Away!
by Stephanie Donald
Saddam Hussein's evil knows no bounds. He's left George Bush whacking his head on the desk in the Oval Office wondering how he's going to pull a war out of his hat after Iraq has unconditionally agreed to allow United Nations Weapons Inspectors to return to their country in the hopes of proving to the world that they have nothing to hide.
Of course, this has another effect on the United States. Even if Iraq attempts to go back on the weapons inspectors later, they have effectively disarmed the conservatives in their attempt to hide domestic issues behind another facade of war. With no war to hide behind, the nation will face the real issues of a failed economy, loss of civil rights and the ever increasing power being handed to corporations to control our lives, our environment and our personal economic stability.
Bush-whacker is now faced with a real issue; What happens when he has no war to bolster his popularity in the American polls? He's wasted a $472 trillion budget surplus and put us back into deficit spending once again. He's lied through his teeth about correcting the environment and bringing a halt to global warming, as attested to by the report by the EPA that they received White House permission to omit the atmospheric report on greenhouse gas emissions by American industry. It was a blatant attempt to shield the people of the United States from the bad news that we're running out of time to fix the environment and the Bush Administration doesn't care enough to be honest about it.
Poverty, child neglect by the system, economic collapse, runaway insurance fraud by the insurance companies, oppressive police states all over the nation, loss of freedom of choice, failing relations with all other nations of the world save Bush's lapdog, Tony Blair.
As a matter of fact, just try and come up with one positive point to Bush's Presidency in the 19 months since he stole the office. He's certainly heading toward a real trifecta; plague, famine and pestilence. And still, the people of the US continue to ignore a dangerous situation developing from their beloved wartime Prez, Bush. Even Bush's father is beginning to reject his son's plotted trajectory into oblivion.
Everywhere one goes nowadays all they encounter are people talking badly about Bush and how he's messed up this nation, perhaps beyond repair save tearing it apart and starting over. So where are these people that the polls say support Bush?
Let anyone, except the fanatical freepers, please come forward and give us just one good thing that Bush is responsible for?
9/21/02
4:11:41 PM
America's Case For War Is Built On Blindness, Hypocrisy And Lies
George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are wilfully ignoring the realities of the Middle East. The result can only be catastrophic
by Robert Fisk
Years ago, in a snug underground restaurant in downtown Tehran, drinking duq – an Iranian beverage of mint and yogurt– Saddam Hussein's former head of nuclear research told me what happened when he made a personal appeal for the release of a friend from prison. "I was taken directly from my Baghdad office to the director of state security," he said. "I was thrown down the stairs to an underground cell and then stripped and trussed up on a wheel attached to the ceiling. Then the director came to see me.
" 'You will tell us all about your friends – everything,' he said. 'In your field of research, you are an expert, the best. In my field of research, I am the best man.' That's when the whipping and the electrodes began."
All this happened, of course, when Saddam Hussein was still our friend, when we were encouraging him to go on killing Iranians in his 1980-88 war against Tehran, when the US government – under President Bush Sr– was giving Iraq preferential agricultural assistance funding. Not long before, Saddam's pilots had fired a missile into an American warship called the Stark and almost sunk it. Pilot error, claimed Saddam – the American vessel had been mistaken for an Iranian oil tanker – and the US government cheerfully forgave the Iraqi dictator.
Those were the days. But sitting in the United Nations General Assembly last week, watching President Bush Jr tell us with all his Texan passion about the beatings and the whippings and the rapes in Iraq, you would have thought they'd just been discovered. For sheer brazen historical hypocrisy, it would have been difficult to beat that part of the President's speech. Saddam, it appears, turned into a bad guy when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. Before that, he was just a loyal ally of the United States, a "strong man" – as the news agency boys like to call our dictators – rather than a tyrant.
But the real lie in the President's speech – that which has dominated American political discourse since the crimes against humanity on 11 September last year – was the virtual absence of any attempt to explain the real reasons why the United States has found itself under attack.
In his mendacious article in this newspaper last week, President Bush's Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, also attempted to mask this reality. The 11 September assault, he announced, was an attack on people "who believe in freedom, who practice tolerance and who defend the inalienable rights of man". He made, as usual, absolutely no reference to the Middle East, to America's woeful, biased policies in that region, to its ruthless support for Arab dictators who do its bidding – for Saddam Hussein, for example, at a time when the head of Iraqi nuclear research was undergoing his Calvary – nor to America's military presence in the holiest of Muslim lands, nor to its unconditional support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza.
Oddly, a very faint ghost of this reality did creep into the start of the President's UN address last week. It was contained in two sentences whose importance was totally ignored by the American press – and whose true meaning might have been lost on Mr Bush himself, given that he did not write his speech – but it was revealing nonetheless. "Our common security," he said, "is challenged by regional conflicts – ethnic and religious strife that is ancient but not inevitable. In the Middle East, there can be no peace for either side without freedom for both sides." Then he repeated his old line about the need for "an independent and democratic Palestine".
This was perhaps as close as we've got, so far, to an official admission that this whole terrible crisis is about the Middle East. If this is a simple war for civilization against "evil" – the line that Mr Bush was so cruelly peddling again to the survivors of 11 September and the victims' relatives last week – then what are these "regional challenges"? Why did Palestine insinuate its way into the text of President Bush's UN speech? Needless to say, this strange, uncomfortable little truth was of no interest to the New York and Washington media, whose wilful refusal to investigate the real political causes of this whole catastrophe has led to a news coverage that is as bizarre as it is schizophrenic.
Before dawn on 11 September last week, I watched six American television channels and saw the twin towers fall to the ground 18 times. The few references to the suicide killers who committed the crime made not a single mention of the fact that they were Arabs. Last week, The Washington Post and The New York Times went to agonizing lengths to separate their Middle East coverage from the 11 September commemorations, as if they might be committing some form of sacrilege or be acting in bad taste if they did not. "The challenge for the administration is to offer a coherent and persuasive explanation of how the Iraq danger is connected to the 9/11 attacks" is about as far as The Washington Post got in smelling a rat, and that only dropped into the seventh paragraph of an eight-paragraph editorial.
All references to Palestine or illegal Jewish settlements or Israeli occupation of Arab land were simply erased from the public conscience last week. When Hannan Ashrawi, that most humane of Palestinian women, tried to speak at Colorado university on 11 September, Jewish groups organized a massive demonstration against her. US television simply did not acknowledge the Palestinian tragedy. It is a tribute to our own reporting that at least John Pilger's trenchant program– Palestine is Still the Issue – is being shown on ITV tomorrow night, although at the disgracefully late time of 11.05pm.
But maybe all this no longer matters. When Mr Rumsfeld can claim so outrageously – as he did when asked for proof of Iraq's nuclear potential – that the "absence of evidence doesn't mean the evidence of absence", we might as well end all moral debate. When Mr Rumsfeld refers to the "so-called occupied West Bank", he reveals himself to be a very disreputable man. When he advances the policy of a pre-emptive "act" of war – as he did in The Independent on Sunday last week – he forgets Israel's "pre-emptive" 1982 invasion of Lebanon which cost 17,500 Arab lives and 22 years of occupation, and ended in retreat and military defeat for Israel.
Strange things are going on in the Middle East right now. Arab military intelligence reports the shifting of massive US arms shipments around the region – not just to Qatar and Kuwait, but to the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. American and Israeli military planners and intelligence analysts are said to have met twice in Tel Aviv to discuss the potential outcome of the next Middle East war. The destruction of Saddam and the break-up of Saudi Arabia – a likely scenario if Iraq crumbles – have long been two Israeli dreams. As the United States discovered during its fruitful period of neutrality between 1939 and 1941, war primes the pumps of the economy. Is that what is going on today – the preparation of a war to refloat the US economy?
My Israeli colleague Amira Haas once defined to me our job as journalists: "to monitor the centers of power". Never has it been so important for us to do just that. For if we fail, we will become the mouthpiece of power. So a few thoughts for the coming weeks: remember the days when Saddam was America's friend; remember that Arabs committed the crimes against humanity of 11 September last year and that they came from a place called the Middle East, a place of injustice and occupation and torture; remember "Palestine"; remember that, a year ago, no one spoke of Iraq, only of al-Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden. And, I suppose, remember that "evil" is a good crowd-puller but a mighty hard enemy to shoot down with a missile.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/
9/21/02
4:09:41 PM
AlterNet Headlines
**The Drug War as Racial Profiling**
Slowly America is beginning to understand that the war on drugs, like many of our government policies, is a proxy for the entrenched problem of racism. Every element of the drug war -- from who gets arrested, fills the prisons, loses the right to vote, gets targeted for buy-and-bust raids or gets stopped while driving -- screams out racial profiling. The result has been a massive disruption of families and a damaging loss of political power for communities of color.
Sure, there are absurd, high-profile busts of mostly white people, like the recent members of a medical cannabis community in Santa Cruz, Calif. who were pounced upon by the DEA. But the statistics tell the tale of a massive exercise in drug bias. This intolerable situation needs to change.
For the next month, AlterNet will focus on issues and actions related to "Breaking the Chains: People of Color and the War on Drugs," a groundbreaking gathering in Los Angeles on Sept. 26-28, sponsored by the Drug Policy
Alliance: http://www.breakingthechains.info/
For an overview of the issues at stake, read Making War on the War on Drugs, an interview with Deborah Small by Lakshmi Chaudhry:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14117
You can also visit AlterNet's Race and the Drug War site to read dozens of articles and find links to key Web sites focused on this issue:
http://www.alternet.org/issues/index.html?IssueAreaID=37
BUSH HECTORS U.N. INTO SUBMISSION
Ian Williams, AlterNet
Bush's speech has allies jumping on board the military juggernaut bearing down on Iraq. The president's fake conversion to multilateralism seems to have worked a little too well.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14121
IRAQ TO ACCEPT INSPECTIONS
Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC.com
Iraq has agreed to accept weapons inspections without conditions under mounting pressure from U.N.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14123
A CRACK HOUSE DIVIDED
Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
The youthful indiscretions of the rich -- and of Bush family members -- are routinely treated with a slap on the wrist and a ticket to rehab while poor kids are shipped off to prison.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14103
Is Peace a Fair Trade Issue?
Can peace activists and globalization critics make common cause? Journalist Naomi Klein connects the dots between corporate rule and the terror war on Tuesday's Working Assets Radio with Laura Flanders. Listen online from 10-11amPT/1-2pmET, or call in: 866-798-TALK.
http://www.workingassetsradio.com
IS THE BUFFALO, NY TERRORIST CELL FOR REAL?
Michael I. Niman, AlterNet
The FBI has not yet presented any evidence, argument or charges that would indicate the Lackawanna men comprised an "al-Qaeda terrorist cell," as alleged by the Justice Department and countless newspaper headlines.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14119
FARMERS FIGHT CHECKOFF RIP-OFF
Kari Lydersen, AlterNet
The mandatory fees cattle ranchers pay to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association are being used to serve the interests of multinational companies and large factory farming operations. Now family farmers say they are being forced to fund their own demise.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13950
LATIN GRAMMYS HIDE THE BIG, UNCOOL TRUTH
Gustavo Arellano, Pacific News Service
When the third annual Latin Grammys are broadcast Wednesday, America will get what it expects -- superstars like Marc Anthony and Gloria Estefan. Absent will be the regional Mexican music that made up nearly half of all Latin record sales in the U.S. last year.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14118
THE DEATH OF ARROGANCE
Judith Gorman, AlterNet
For a generation insulated from the reality of terrorist attacks, the falling of the twin towers represents much more than a loss of innocence.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14101
WHY TRUST GEORGE W. BUSH?
David Corn, AlterNet
Can the Bush administration be expected to tell the truth about a war that is supposedly up for debate?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14102
THE PULP FICTION ADDICTION
Catherine Walsh, Vue Weekly How an innocent young woman got seduced by a gang of sexy novels from the wrong side of the tracks.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14092
9/21/02
4:05:00 PM
White House Drags Its Feet On Testifying At 9/11 Panel
by James Risen, The New York Times, September 12, 2002
The Bush administration is balking at a request from Congress that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld testify in public before the Congressional committee investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, government officials said today.
The administration's resistance has frustrated lawmakers by making it difficult for the joint Senate and House committee to schedule public hearings, even as it races against a deadline to complete its work by the end of the current session of Congress.
The dispute apparently centers on the administration's reluctance to have the two secretaries answer questions about whether they have been satisfied with the quality of the intelligence they have received about terrorism since they took office, government officials said. Their views could help the committee gauge whether American intelligence agencies are meeting the needs of policy makers.
American intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been heavily criticized for failing to predict or prevent the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In particular, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency have each been stung by public disclosures of potential missed signals to the plot.
In an interview with The New York Times this week, Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama and a member on the joint committee investigating the attacks, said that the "failures in the intelligence are so widespread, so deep, that we owe the American people a searching job."
But Senator Shelby also warned that the committee was running out of time to finish its job, and indicated that he believes Bush administration officials have delayed cooperating fully, knowing it has a deadline to meet.
"We were told that there would be cooperation in this investigation, and I question that," he said. He added that he believes that the joint panel may run out of time, and that an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks may be needed to fill in the gaps.
The joint committee has been plagued by a series of miscues and delays since its inception. Its first staff director was forced to resign before the committee even began work, and the committee leadership later called for the F.B.I. to investigate a leak of classified information to the news media. That has led to a dispute over whether committee members should be forced to submit to polygraph examinations.
The committee has been inundated with hundreds of thousands of pages of documents from the C.I.A., F.B.I. and other agencies, making it difficult for the staff to sort through the material as it seeks to document how the government dealt with the clues about Al Qaeda's intentions prior to Sept. 11.
So far, the committee has still not held any public hearings, although it held its 10th closed-door hearing today, and heard from officials from the C.I.A.
But if Secretary Powell and Secretary Rumsfeld did testify about their views on terrorism-related intelligence, it is unlikely that they would heap scorn on the C.I.A. and F.B.I. in public.
Before accepting President Bush's offer to become defense secretary, Mr. Rumsfeld considered taking the helm at the C.I.A. Since returning to the Pentagon after a 25-year absence, he has displayed an unusually strong interest in intelligence, and has been seeking to enhance his office's authority over the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies that are part of the military.
Secretary Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has extensive experience in dealing with intelligence, particularly in the Persian Gulf war. In public, Mr. Powell has actually defended the intelligence agencies against the criticism it has received since Sept. 11.
In an interview with NBC News broadcast Wednesday, for example, Mr. Powell said that it is unfair to pillory American intelligence for failing to place spies inside Al Qaeda.
"To say we failed because we weren't able to get inside of this terrorist organization, I think, is not the right characterization," Mr. Powell said. "Our intelligence people did a heck of a job last year. We knew something was going on. We had warnings in the course of the summer. We tried to chase those warnings, and we tried to track them down. We weren't successful, but I wouldn't say that it was because our intelligence system failed. There are people out there who were determined to make sure we didn't know what was going on. They hid it very well."
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/politics/13INTE.html
9/21/02
4:01:14 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
LA babies get lifetime's toxic air in 2 weeks - study - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17792/story.htm
Protesters hunt nuclear fuel shipment in Irish Sea - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17781/story.htm
Nuclear shipment nears British coast amid protests - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17788/story.htm
Ship ablaze off England, cargo "may be hazardous" - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17790/story.htm
US farmers attack "myths" surrounding GM crops - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17791/story.htm
UN says African food crisis threatens 14 million - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17782/story.htm
South African oil-spill ship could ravage prized coast - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17783/story.htm
South Africa aims to refloat oil-spill wreck -- SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17785/story.htm
Japan zoo fetes old animals on day for the aged - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17780/story.htm
Death toll in mudslide in Guatemala village rises - GUATEMALA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17793/story.htm
Germany to review river developments after floods - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17787/story.htm
Bove goes back to court for trashing French crops - FRANCE http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17786/story.htm
FEATURES - Eco-friendly stoves solve age old Eritrean problem - ERITREA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17784/story.htm
Brazil's Petrobras cleans up oil spill after fire - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17789/story.htm
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURE:
UK: Police Launch Guards the Walney Channel at Barrow - in-Furness in Cumbria
http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17794
9/21/02
4:00:18 PM
DAILY GRIST
<http://www.gristmagazine.com>
WARM GLOBALLY, DON'T WARN LOCALLY
For the first time since 1995, the U.S. EPA's annual report on air pollution trends, released earlier this month, has no section on global warming. The EPA, which deleted the chapter with White House approval, said the decision was made because the agency had released two other reports on global warming earlier year and because this particular report was meant to discuss only pollutants, like lead or sulfur dioxide, that directly threaten people or ecosystems. Global warming is still mentioned twice in the report, once in a passing reference, and another time in a paragraph that points readers to the deleted section on climate. (Presumably, at least the second instance was a mistake.) Industry representatives and some conservatives praised the move to strike the section, agreeing that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, should not be considered a pollutant; environmentalists, unsurprisingly, were frustrated by the decision.
straight to the source New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin, 15 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=472>
only in Grist: Pret-a-poor taste -- climate change is, like, inevitable, dude -- animation by Mark Fiore in our Soapbox section <http://www.gristmagazine.com/soapbox/fiore061002.asp?source=daily>
do good: Take action to tell Bush to tackle global warming <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/climate.asp?source=daily#kyoto>
LONDON FLOG
Meanwhile, a very different report from the old country: Flooding caused by global warming could threaten $340 billion worth of homes and businesses in the U.K., according to the government's Energy Saving Trust. The report says that one out of every 13 homes in the country would be hit hard by rising seas and increased rainfall, while three-fifths of the country's best farmland could be rendered unusable. Just as ominous, the report says, London's place "as an international center for trade and commerce" could be at risk and some 750,000 residents in the capital city could be out of a home.
straight to the source: London Independent, Geoffrey Lean, 15 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=473>
GROUND DOWN
Hoping to fend off the utter collapse of several groundfish populations, U.S. regulators voted on Friday to ban bottom-fishing next year on most of the continental shelf in the Pacific. The vote, by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, was geared especially toward protecting populations of nine types of rockfish -- often sold in markets as red snapper -- that have been overfished in recent years. The U.S. Department of Commerce must back the council's proposal for it to go into effect Jan. 1. Environmentalists said the rules were a long time coming and may not be tough enough, while many in the fishing industry said they now feared for their jobs. Steven Kupillas of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission said, "The potential impacts for every fishing industry up and down the coast are pretty severe. It's like we are cutting off our arm to save our life."
straight to the source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Associated Press, Gillian Flaccus, 14 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=474>
straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Rone Tempest, 14 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=475>
do good: Take action to eat the right fish <http://www.gristmagazine.com/dogood/food.asp?source=daily#fish>
FARGONE
Even though it lacks big cities and doesn't have the smokestacks of say, an Ohio or a Texas, North Dakota is the only state in the country where the air in federal preserves is more polluted than the Clean Air Act allows. So says the U.S. EPA, which will decide soon whether to force North Dakota to undertake a cleanup that could cost industrial facilities hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the act, sulfur dioxide pollution can only increase a miniscule amount in a given federal preserve beyond that preserve's 1970s levels. The EPA says levels have exceeded the allowable amount in western North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge. Many federal preserves outside of North Dakota have higher pollution levels overall, but other states have kept the levels from rising since the 1970s. North Dakota, for its part, says the EPA has got its math wrong.
straight to the source: USA Today, Traci Watson, 15 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=476>
SNOW NEWS IS MIXED NEWS
Beating a court-ordered deadline by only a few hours, the Bush administration imposed new air-pollution regulations last Friday that will limit emissions from snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) for the first time. When the rules are in full force after 2012, they will eliminate more than 2 million tons of pollution per year, the equivalent to taking 32 million cars (that's 15 percent of today's automobile fleet) off the road, according to the U.S. EPA. The regulations require makers of snowmobiles, ATVs, and dirt bikes to reduce hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide pollution by about 30 percent by 2006 and 50 percent by 2012. Enviros aren't cheering, however, because the final rules are less strict than those proposed by the administration a year ago. Russell Long of the Bluewater Network in San Francisco says the regulations don't take adequate advantage of existing technology, such as systems that could reduce pollution from snowmobiles by 98 percent.
straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 13 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=477>
straight to the source: New York Times, Douglas Jehl, 14 Sep 2002 <http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=478>
9/21/02
3:58:25 PM
Public Citizen Files Motion to Intervene in Lexington Water Case Public Ownership Would Better Serve Lexington Community, Groups Say
Sept. 16, 2002
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Public Citizen, a national consumer advocacy organization, today filed a motion to intervene in proceedings by the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) on the future of Lexington's water system. If granted, the motion would allow Public Citizen to speak before the PSC in a case prompted by the acquisition of the company that currently operates Lexington's water system by a giant German energy conglomerate.
The motion is the latest move in an ongoing battle by citizen groups, including Bluegrass FLOW, to persuade the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government to gain control of the city's water system. Both public interest groups advocate that a municipal buyout of the privately owned company, Kentucky-American, would stabilize rates and provide more reliable service. The county is considering pursuing a buyout.
"Cities across America are reclaiming their water systems because they are fed up with broken promises from corporations who report to their shareholders instead of to their customers," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "When you treat water as a common resource for all, as it should be, public ownership makes sense. The citizens of Lexington will benefit from owning their water system, and we support their efforts."
The county's decision to investigate a public buyout stems from concerns that began in 2001 when American Water Works Company, the largest U.S. water company and the parent of Kentucky-American, agreed to be purchased by RWE AG, a German energy conglomerate. Uncomfortable with a multinational corporation owning their local waterworks, citizens began to ask if profits made in Lexington would be re-invested into their community or if the revenues would be used for the German company's overseas expansion efforts. RWE has also acquired Thames Water, a large private water company in England. Under the conditions of the acquisition, executives of American Water Works would report to Thames officials in England.
The PSC is reviewing the deal because it oversees utilities. The PSC review is what prompted the county to consider a buyout. "Lexington has a rare opportunity to reclaim control of its water service and build its future on its own terms, not those dictated from the distant headquarters of a giant German energy company," said Hauter. "Who wouldn't vote for lower rates, better service and economic development in their own city?"
While Kentucky-American has argued that the city would have to significantly increase water rates to pay for the purchase, proponents assert that the county government can finance the purchase by issuing tax-exempt revenue bonds to be paid solely from water revenues and therefore could afford the buyout without raising prices.
If you would like to be removed from the Water For All-list, send an email to npetrie@citizen.org with the words "unsubscribe water" in the subject.
To learn more about international and domestic aspects of the campaign to stop the world's water from corporate takeover, visit our website at
Questions about the Water For All list can be directed to npetrie@citizen.org
9/21/02
3:56:44 PM
ACTION CAN STOP THE WAR
First Believe That You Can Prevent Hostilities, And Then Do Something About It. It May Just Work
by Gary Younge
Progressive politics demands a mixture of optimism and realism. Without the optimism you would never believe a better world could ever be built. Without the realism you would never be able to engage with the world as it actually is, in order to build it. Allow too much imbalance between the two and you either undervalue your potential to imagine what might be or undermine your ability to improve what already exists.
Keeping the two in equilibrium over the past 20 years - my entire politically conscious lifetime - has meant lowering standards to maintain a sense of perspective. Unsustained by the prospect of victory, optimism becomes little more than wishful thinking and realism curdles into defeatism. "The greatest tool in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed," argued the late South African black consciousness activist, Steve Biko.
In the 1980s, Mrs Thatcher told us there was "no alternative", and though we fought anyway, deep down some of us actually believed it. A culture of protest emerged that has been informed more by duty in the face of the inevitable - "We should oppose this even though we know it is going to happen" - than determination in the pursuit of the possible - "We must stop this before it happens". Losing has become a habit, being in a minority has become a mindset.
As the military matériel stacks up in the Gulf, poised to bomb Iraqis into shreds, we need a rapid and radical change in thinking. Unlike the last Gulf war, the Kosovo war or the ongoing war in Afghanistan - in fact unlike any war in recent times - those who oppose Britain's participation in the western bombing of a poor country are part of a large majority. Between 52% and 72% of the public in Britain oppose Britain's involvement in the bombing of Iraq. This is a war that we can stop before it starts. Opposition to it is popular. We must work out how to make sure it both persists and prevails.
The case against the bombing has been made by others on these pages, including Roy Hattersley today. Given the volatile situation in the Middle East and the certain power vacuum left by Saddam's ousting, even the ramifications of a successful mission could be catastrophic. Answers to the key questions - why him? why now? and what next? - are either unavailable or unconvincing.
You do not have to be particularly progressive to agree with or understand this. Far from it. Both the pacifist and the military strategist can see the barbarous folly of going to war. The array of people who are against action without the backing of the United Nations - from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Bill Morris and from Storming Norman Schwarzkopf to Nelson Mandela - itself tells a story. On just about every front - moral, legal, military, economic, human, strategic - bombing Baghdad would be an utter disaster.
To sense the breadth of opposition we need look no further than Germany where, according to pollsters, Gerhard Schröder's anti-war stance has done more than anything else to reverse the flagging fortunes of his campaign to remain chancellor. His rightwing challenger, Edmund Stoiber, has resorted to what has been one of Europe's most popular policies of late - bashing foreigners. "Four hundred million people are threatening to come our way," he told crowds in Wiesbaden on Thursday. "We must prepare ourselves."
However, with as many as 80% of Germans against the war, according to the head of one polling institute, Schröder has decided there are more votes to be gained to his left than to his right. "Germany has no reason to allow itself to be lectured by others," he told cheering crowds at a rally in the University of Munster last week. "On the existential questions that decide general politics the decisions are made in Berlin - in Berlin and nowhere else."
Having trailed for most of the campaign, Schröder is now in front. The forward march of the right in Europe, it seems, will be obstructed not by pandering to popular prejudice over immigration - à la David Blunkett - but by confronting American military hegemony. Germany's particular history gives it a deeper pacifist current than the rest of Europe. None the less, the strength of public opinion in Britain and America has made a difference. US president George Bush may have strode to the podium of the UN with the arrogance of an emperor and the ignorance of a knave last week, but he would not even have bothered if he didn't think he had to. Similarly, Blair would not have recalled parliament for next week or brought forward the publication of his dossier if he did not feel pressured.
None of these steps, however, suggests that either of these leaders is seriously considering peace. The extent of their concession to electorates who feel no threat from Iraq and have no desire to see innocent Iraqis killed, is that they are moving towards war more gingerly. They do so in the hope that the closer we come to the edge of conflict the more likely we will be to buckle under the weight of the inevitable.
So the fact that the polls are with us at present is heartening, but little more than that. Now we must make them count - transforming passive discontent into active opposition. We could begin by widening the debate to encompass the domestic agenda. During last year's election campaign we were told the government's priority would be the delivery of improved public services and we were lectured on the importance of prudence in the management of public finances. What is prudent about spending up to £4bn on a war few people want? Why should we have to wait for teachers, trains, hip replacements and heart valves because Bush won't wait for a diplomatic solution and Blair won't stand up to him?
There will, of course, be meetings, petitions and marches - like the one in London on September 28. But this week, ahead of the recall of parliament, there must also be letters, phone calls, emails and text messages to MPs, local newspapers and radio stations. Wars do not stop themselves. They are prevented by the mobilization of large numbers of people, each of whom does what they can. If the bombs drop then, yet again, they will be in our name and paid for by our taxes.
In recent times "Stop the War" has been a useful and commendable slogan - three words that fitted on a placard and rallied the faithful. This time it is a distinct possibility. The difference between wanting it to happen and making it happen may well be believing that it can happen. And then doing something about it.
g.younge@guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,792821,00.html
9/21/02
3:51:23 PM
Organic Farmer faces Boehlert in Congress Race
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020916050407367.html
TCGP minutes 8/28/02
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020912081043758.html
Stanley Aronowitz for NY Governor
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020911061938857.html
Pete Meyers runs for Sheriff
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020910044746590.html
Steven Greenfield runs for Congress
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/200209090501053.html
Ithaca Progressive Festival
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20020906054812323.html
9/21/02
3:49:27 PM
AND THIS IS OUR PRESIDENT.
This poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. The quotes have been arranged for aesthetic presentation by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson. Too good not to share, especially during National MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush
I think we all agree, the past is over. This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked Is our children learning? Will the highways of the Internet become more few? How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me. I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity. I know that the human being and the fish can coexist. Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family! Knock down the tollbooth! Vulcanize society! Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!
9/21/02
3:47:02 PM
SciTech Daily Review
http://www.80211-planet.com/columns/article/0,4000,1781_1454991,00.html
Look Ma -- no wires! An innovative, pedal powered, wireless network is being set up to provide Internet access to off-grid villages in Laos
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/16/1032054714456.html
It's springtime DownUnder, and scientists and glider pilots are gathering to ride the Morning Glory
http://health.yahoo.com/search/miavita?lb=s&p=id%3A17838
Can one pill make you smaller? Say, the one called Exercise in a Bottle? Or maybe Fat Trapper? Sorry, Alice -- only in Wonderland
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992797
A mysterious new obstacle has emerged for Chinese internet surfers attempting to use the Google search engine -- entering politically sensitive search phrases crashes their internet connection
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/08/22/waller/index.html
Ordinary people, extraordinary evil: What kind of person can attack, mutilate and kill a total stranger or even a neighbor? James Waller talks about the dark potential in all of us
9/21/02
3:45:03 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
EPA readies first off-road vehicle emissions rules - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17773/story.htm
US summer of 2002 is hottest since 1930s Dust Bowl - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17757/story.htm
Landmine campaigners criticize India, Pakistan - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17769/story.htm
South Korea presses North on nuclear inspections - UNITED NATIONS http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17767/story.htm
Climate change threatens London's future - report - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17761/story.htm
Nuclear needs exemption from climate levy-scientist - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17754/story.htm
Global treaty mooted to counter mercury dangers - SWITZERLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17763/story.htm
Spain approves 10-year energy plan - SPAIN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17768/story.htm
Toxic cargo ship threatens South Africa wildlife site - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17756/story.htm
South Africa battles to keep oil slick from wetlands - SOUTH AFRICA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17760/story.htm
Japan seeks C02-reduction deal with Russia - report - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17758/story.htm
TEPCO sees LNG demand rise due to reactor closure - JAPAN http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17772/story.htm
FEATURE - A squeaky clean future for the car? - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17770/story.htm
Cuba to adhere to nuclear non-proliferation treaty - CUBA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17766/story.htm
Global warming could cut Chinese harvests - paper - CHINA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17764/story.htm
Watchdog says Great Lakes cleanup going too slow - CANADA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17765/story.htm
Brazil meat exporter to ban transgenic exports - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17774/story.htm
Brazil arrests Americans for selling Amazon land - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17762/story.htm
Spain's Iberdrola plans big Brazil wind-power park - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17759/story.htm
EU firms champion green electricity plan - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17771/story.htm
EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants - BELGIUM http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17755/story.htm
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS PICTURES:
TURKEY: A Male Lion Looks out of His Cage in an Istanbul Zoo http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17779
URUGUAY: Rescued Penguins in Surf at Punta Del Este http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17775
MEXICO: Woman Holds Child in Flooded Street in Mexico City Suburb http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17776
TURKEY: Surikatas Look out of their New Home after their Arrival from the Netherlands in an Istanbul Zoo http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17777
RUSSIA: His Royal Highness Prince Michael Looks at Russian Children Performing in Moscow http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm/newsid/17778
9/21/02
3:41:50 PM
New 'T-ray' Space Camera Also Sees Through Clothes, Walls
by Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer
A new British science program aims to produce cameras for use in space that are so sensitive they will see through fog, smoke and even walls and clothing.
The technology will detect an obscure yet ubiquitous form of radiation known as terahertz waves, also called T-rays. Similar cameras are also expected to have applications in airport security and medicine.
One camera, already built by a company called QinetiQ and working in so-called millimetric waves, has demonstrated the ability to eerily peer through clothes and reveal a concealed weapon -- as well as much of a person's body. The image shows far more detail than an infrared camera, which detects heat.
Terahertz radiation is similar to but more revealing than what the QinetiQ camera detects. Scientists say T-rays are emitted by pretty much everything. They come from "the human hand, an envelope, someone with clothes on or a comet," says Geoff McBride, who works on Star Tiger, the British project. It is supported by the European Space Agency.
In a telephone interview, McBride told SPACE.com that a space-based T-ray imager could be deployed in two years if funding is made available. The first objective might be to study Earth's atmosphere, he said.
Similar but less sensitive systems are currently used on satellites to measure sea surface temperatures.
"Unlike light, terahertz waves are able to propagate through cloud and smoke, providing a powerful advantage for certain remote-sensing measurements," according to Star Tiger officials. "From a practical aspect they are also able to pass through windows, paper, clothing and in certain instances even walls."
Eventually, a T-ray imager could be deployed to investigate a comet's tail, McBride said.
Unheralded frequency
Low frequency versions of terahertz waves are known as millimeter waves, and they behave much like radio waves, Star Tiger engineers say. At higher frequencies, the terahertz waves straddle the border between radio and optical emissions.
The technology, for which there is surprisingly little literature, is sometimes referred to as quasi-optics.
T-ray cameras might one day be used to peer under the skin and detect cancer, scientists say. They could also have security and communications applications.
A February article on the Web site of the journal Nature said terahertz cameras could be "the next big wave" in imaging technology for everything from cells to stars.
Scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York claim T-rays will be harnessed to speed computer memory and sharpen flat-panel displays, as well as provide a new imaging technology that could prove valuable for airport security.
"It is quite possible that plastic explosives look very different under terahertz light and could be distinguished from the molecular structure of suitcases, clothing, and common household materials or equipment," says Rensselaer engineer Xi-Cheng Zhang.
The Star Tiger project, meanwhile, would bring leading researchers together in a laboratory where all the equipment and support exist to develop the necessary technology, according to a statement from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom.
One goal of the program is to prove that complicated problems can be solved in this way. "This is complemented by the removal of normal everyday distractions to allow the team to concentrate fully on the technical problems," according to the statement.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/t-ray_camera_020613.html
9/21/02
3:37:31 PM
Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President
by Neil Mackay
A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.
This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.
The PNAC report also:
l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';
l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'
Source: http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
9/21/02
3:34:51 PM
Cocaine found on Jeb Bush's daughter, police say
Orlando Sentinel, September 10, 2002
A worker who found the suspected cocaine on Noelle Bush tore up a sworn statement she had written at the suggestion of one of her bosses, police said.
ORLANDO, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush's 25-year-old daughter was found with cocaine at an Orlando drug-rehabilitation center, police reported on Tuesday.
Bush was not arrested because police could not obtain sworn statements signed by the center's staff. A worker who found the suspected cocaine on Noelle Bush tore up a sworn statement she had written at the suggestion of one of her bosses, police said.
Sgt. Orlando Rolon, a police spokesman, said the investigation by the department's drug-enforcement bureau is continuing.
Officers were dispatched to the drug-treatment center after a resident there reported that "the governor's daughter was caught, by treatment center staff, with drugs," according to the police report.
Police were called to the Center for Drug Free Living at about 8:45 p.m. Monday where workers gave them a substance that later tested positive for cocaine, Rolon said.
Center staffers said they talked with Bush after receiving several complaints from residents about her, the report stated. Employee Julia Elias searched Noelle Bush and "found a small white rock-like like substance in Bush's shoe." Elias ripped a sworn statement that officers later collected as evidence.
The governor, asked about his daughter before going into a Florida Cabinet meeting in Tallahassee, said he wouldn't discuss her with the media.
"This is a private issue as it relates to my daughter and myself and my wife," he said. "The road to recovery is a rocky one for a lot of people that have this kind of problem. I don't have any details about what happened. I just found out."
Police hadn't interviewed Noelle Bush as of Tuesday morning.
Possession of any amount of cocaine is a felony, said police.
Bush was sent to the facility after a Jan. 29 drug arrest. Police say she pulled up to a drive-in window at a Walgreens in Tallahassee to collect a prescription for Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication. She'd posed as a doctor when she'd ordered the prescription.
Then, in July, Bush was found to be in contempt of court because a worker at the treatment center found her carrying prescription pills. A judge sent her to jail for three days.
In a Tuesday release, the governor said:
"My family loves Noelle very much and continues to pray for her continued progress. We again ask the public and media to respect our privacy during this difficult time for our family."
http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0910JebBushDaughter10-ON.html
9/21/02
3:32:35 PM
U.S. Delegation Lands in Iraq, Criticizing Moves Toward War, Pressing for Inspectors' Return
by Sameer N. Yacoub
BAGHDAD, Iraq - It would be immoral for America to attack Iraq without provocation, a former U.S. senator said here Saturday.
James Abourezk, who used to represent South Dakota in the senate, was speaking to reporters after he, Democratic West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall and two other Americans met with Iraqi Health Minister Omed Medhat Mubarak.
The four-person delegation arrived overnight in Iraq, saying it intended to push for peace as well as the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.
It is the first time in several years that a sitting U.S. legislator has visited Iraq, which has been under U.N. sanctions since it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
"We are on a humanitarian mission ... not only to convince the Iraqi people that the American people are concerned with their suffering, but also to show that the American people, their vast majority, are peace-waging individuals," Rahall told reporters after flying in from Syria.
President Bush told the U.N. General Assembly this week that the Iraqi government must grant access to U.N. weapons inspectors or face confrontation. Ratcheting up the pressure Friday, Bush said he was "talking days and weeks" for a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution that would demand Iraq admit inspectors or face the consequences.
Iraq has barred inspectors, who are charged with verifying the elimination of its weapons of mass destruction, since 1998.
After the meeting with the health minister, Abourezk criticized moves toward an attack on Iraq and said the United States was motivated by Israel.
"If America launched an attack on somebody without any provocation and declaration of war, then it will lose its moral standards," Abourezk said.
"Bush, pushed by Israel, is trying to build a case against Iraq without evidence," he said.
Israel has accused Iraq of sponsoring terror by financing the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and trying to smuggle weapons into the Palestinian areas.
Before the meeting with the health minister, Rahall said that if he were to meet Iraqi officials, "it is my desire to stress upon the Iraqi government and its president that they must accept unconditional access to their country by U.N. weapons inspectors."
Rahall said the return of inspectors would be a step toward peace, but he declined to say if it would put an end to Bush's desire to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"I cannot speak on behalf of President Bush. I am not here as a secretary of state or a weapons inspector. I am here as individual member of congress who has questions that I would like to get answers to," Rahall said.
The delegation visited al-Mansour Children's Hospital in Baghdad, where Rahall met leukemia patients and gave toys to the children.
The delegation's trip is sponsored by the Institute for Public Accuracy, a Washington-based group of analysts.
The other delegates are Norman Solomon, the institute's executive director, and James Jennings, the president of Conscience International — an Atlanta-based aid and rights group.
Source: http://www.AP.org
9/21/02
3:30:06 PM
UK Homes Face Huge New Threat From Floods
by Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, September 15, 2002
Homes and businesses worth £222bn in Britain are threatened by devastating flooding as global warming takes hold, a new official report concludes. It breaks new ground by recommending people will eventually have to give up their cars to avoid catastrophe.
The report which will be published by the Government's Energy Savings Trust later this week says some five million people living in 1.8 million homes – one in every 13 in the country – risk being inundated by rising seas and increased rainfall in the starkest official assessment yet of the human cost of climate change in Britain.
It adds that over three-fifths of the country's best farmland will also be threatened with flooding. In all, it concludes, buildings and land worth £222bn are under threat.
The report – which was given privately to ministers on Thursday evening – follows months of intense flooding in Britain and across Europe.
Early last week flash floods struck across the country from Inverness – which was cut off, with parts of the city under 5ft of water – to the Isle of Wight, and hitting Bognor Regis, Swanage, Glasgow and parts of Fife and Ayrshire in between. Last month, parts of London were also submerged, shutting down rail and Tube services, while central Europe suffered its worst ever floods – showing, as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder told the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, "that climate change is no longer a sceptical forecast but a bitter reality".
The report – the trust's submission to the Department of Trade and Industry, which is preparing a White Paper on Britain's future energy policy – says that the flooding will get worse with global warming, which it describes as "the greatest threat facing the world community".
Drawing together evidence from a range of government sources, it concludes that 180,000 businesses, and 10 times as many homes, are "at risk" from sea level rise and storms. And so are 3.5 million acres of farmland, "including 61 per cent of the total of grade-one land in England and Wales".
About half of the £222bn of property threatened is in the "Thames region around London" it says. The homes of 750,000 Londoners are at risk, and the capital's future "as an international centre for trade and commerce" is threatened.
Over 150 sq km of the area are already beneath the level of high tides, and parts of Thamesmead are some 12ft below them, the report adds. The Thames Barrier was designed on the basis that it would not have to be closed more than 10 times a year. But in the year 2000-2001 it had to be shut 24 times, nearly as often as the total for its entire history until then.
And, the report adds, Government plans to develop the Thames Gateway with new housing would make things even worse – adding another million people to those at risk.
The report calls on the Government greatly to increase energy saving measures, saying that Britain's "energy efficiency lags well behind that in some of our European neighbours". It produces detailed figures to show that this offers enormous potential for cutting the emissions of carbon dioxide that cause global warming, at relatively little cost.
Most controversially, it goes further than any previous official report, in urging the Government to adopt policies to persuade people to give up their cars. It says that much can be done to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by improving the efficiency of cars and introducing cleaner fuels. But it concludes: "A long-term policy aimed at slowing down and ultimately reducing car ownership, as well as use, will be necessary to have any real impact on transport emissions".
Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=333306