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The Debate on Humanitarian Intervention

03.31.04 (9:50 am) [edit]

[b]The Debate on Humanitarian Intervention [/b]

Military intervention in other societies for humanitarian reasons has become a western moral and political preoccupation as a result of the war in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda. The failure of any western country to do much about either has haunted us.

Since the invasion of Iraq, the humanitarian justification has retroactively been made the justification for American policy there and offered as the basis for policy in the future. Humanitarian intervention is to be turned into a positive (even preemptive) program for doing good internationally.

From an effort simply to halt an evil, it becomes a program for creating new realities. The importance of the difference between the two modes of action seems badly underestimated.

Getting rid of Saddam Hussein, or Slobodan Milosevic, or any other despot, is a practical problem. It can be done with finite resources and at a certain cost, if you are prepared to pay the cost.

In Bosnia and Rwanda, the United States and Europe were not, at least until they were forced to act. Since then, there has been intense debate about humanitarian intervention, politically interested or otherwise, and about the role of peacekeepers for whom there is no peace to keep, and armed peacemaking - as in Kosovo, where it is not working very well, or Somalia, where the peacemakers were ejected, or in Iraq now, where American ex-warmakers, become peacemakers, confront nationalist and sectarian resistance they don't know how to deal with.

The Iraq invasion was originally rationalized as disarming a despotic and aggressive regime, allegedly in possession of mass destruction weapons. When the weapons weren't found, Washington and London said it was a humanitarian intervention. They said that Saddam Hussein's had been a pitiless despotism that deserved to be destroyed, and its overturn retroactively justified the war.

Americans and others now say that America "cannot be allowed to fail" in Iraq. The Financial Times recently said that Washington and the West Europeans must reconstruct their damaged alliance and first bring about a "just solution in Israel-Palestine." This may be good advice, but it also is irrelevant advice.

As in the case of Washington policy paralysis with respect to Israel and Palestine, failure in Iraq may be built into the situation. The Financial Times says the United States and Europe must "ensure Iraqis become free to choose their own future." This logically means that Iraq must be free to choose a future without American bases, or without a U.S. political and economic presence, or even choose to an Islamist government. Iraq's freedom thus might easily prove incompatible with Washington's definition of American national interest.

Making democracy is creation, an excursion into a future of unlimited and for that reason uncontrollable possibilities. To "make" Iraq free - or the Greater Middle East free, for that matter - means an effort to control human behavior. It rests on the progressive illusion that the people in these places want, or will want, the same things Americans or Europeans want.

This is not true. You have only to look at the Israelis and the Palestinians. They already belong to the "benevolent empire" of the world's sole superpower, and look at what has happened to them. Neither wants what the other wants, nor what America wants, and they have been killing one another since 1948 (and before) to demonstrate it.

American failure is a perfectly possible outcome in Iraq - as in Afghanistan - just as failure was the outcome in Somalia, Vietnam and Cambodia. Given the political forces and circumstances in each of those places, failure was the inevitable outcome.

[b]William Pfaff's latest book is "Fear, Anger and Failure: A Chronicle of the Bush Administration's War on Terror, from the Attacks of September 11, 2001 to Defeat in Baghdad in 2003." [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Bush Downgraded Bin Laden as a Threat in 2001 - Report Corroborates Clarke

03.31.04 (9:47 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Downgraded Bin Laden as a Threat in 2001

[u]Report Corroborates Richard Clarke’s Testimony[/u][/b]

WASHINGTON - March 26 - On April 30, 2001, CNN reported that when the new Bush Administration released the government’s annual terrorism report, it made a serious change: “There was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden,” as there had been in previous years.

When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, “a senior Bush State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden.”

The report directly contradicts the White House’s continuing assertion that fighting terrorism was its “top priority” before September 11th.

The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11, despite repeated warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent, is consistent with other Administration behavior. Specifically, the Associated Press reported in 2002 that “President Bush’s national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions.”

Meanwhile, Newsweek reported that internal government documents show that, before 9/11, the Bush Administration moved to “de-emphasize” counterterrorism. When “FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents” to deal with the problem, “they got shot down” by the White House, the magazine said.

For full citations and links to the cited documents, visit: www.misleader.org.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: MoveOn.org
Jessica Smith or Trevor FitzGibbon (202) 822-5200 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

House Budget Slashes Investments in Children, Does Harm to Children Now and Later

03.31.04 (9:44 am) [edit]

[b]House Budget Slashes Investments in Children, Does Harm to Children Now and Later[/b]

WASHINGTON - March 26 - The Children's Defense Fund today responded to the budget resolution just passed by the House of Representatives by pointing out how it hurts children now and in the future.

By granting tax cuts for the wealthy - piling more red ink on top of the current deficit which is the largest in the history of the nation - while cutting programs for children and low-income Americans, this budget is a reckless attack on the most vulnerable Americans. The budget cuts funding for nearly all domestic programs by $120 billion, including nutrition, housing assistance, and juvenile justice. It also threatens to increase the number of uninsured children with a potential cut of $2.2 billion to Medicaid. It includes no additional child care funding when the need is growing, and it under funds education.

CDF called the House passed version of the budget a clear set back for children. "Discretionary spending programs, especially those that help low-income families and children will be slashed over the next five years." said Jim Jones, Vice President of Programs and Policy. "Tax cuts tilted to the wealthy are extended. Under this budget, by 2009 spending on almost all discretionary domestic programs would fall to their lowest level as a share of the economy since 1963, and our children will still inherit a huge national debt. This budget hurts children now and it hurts children in the future."

The Senate version of the budget, though severely flawed because of cuts to critical children's programs, does not cut Medicaid and puts a road-block in the way of any additional tax cuts for the wealthy. The House-Senate Conference Committee has a unique opportunity to do the right thing now by agreeing on a budget that is not only fiscally responsible, but is compassionate in the way it treats children.

"We should be investing in children, not investing in millionaires," Jones said.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Children's Defense Fund
John Norton (202) 662-3609 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Rapid Growth of "Dead Zones" in Oceans Threatens Planet

03.31.04 (9:41 am) [edit]

[b]Rapid Growth of "Dead Zones" in Oceans Threatens Planet [/b]

JEJU, South Korea - The spread of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in the oceans, a graveyard for fish and plant life, is emerging as a threat to the health of the planet, experts say.

For hundreds of millions of people who depend on seas and oceans for their livelihoods, and for many more who rely on a diet of fish and seafood to survive, the problem is acute.

Some of the oxygen-deprived zones are relatively small, less than one square kilometer (0.4 square miles) in size. Others are vast, measuring more than 70,000 square kilometers.

Pollution, particularly the overuse of nitrogen in fertilizers, is responsible for the spread of dead zones, environment ministers and experts from more than 100 countries were told.

The number of known oxygen-starved areas has doubled since 1990 to nearly 150, according to the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), holding is annual conference here.

"What is clear is that unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem, it is likely to escalate rapidly," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said.

"Hundreds of millions of people depend on the marine environment for food, for their livelihoods and for their cultural fulfillment."

The world at present gets 17 percent of its animal protein from fish, UN figures show.

That supply is now endangered on at least two fronts: overfishing that has depleted stocks in recent decades and now the challenge of widening dead zones.

The issue was identified as a key emerging problem in the Global Environment Year Book 2003, a health report on the planet released at the start of the UNEP's three-day conference that concludes Wednesday.

The spread of low-level oxygen zones in seas and oceans, identified as early as in the 1960s, is closely related to the overuse of fertilizers in agriculture, whose main ingredient is nitrogen.

On land, nitrogen boosts plant growth. But when it washes into the sea in rivers and rainwater overrun, it triggers an explosive bloom of algae.

When these tiny plants growing on the ocean surface sink to the bottom and decompose, they use up all the oxygen and suffocate other marine life.

Fossil fuel waste from motor vehicles and power plants increases nitrogen content in oceans.

With oxygen depletion, fish, oysters and other marine life eventually die out along with important habitats such as sea grass beds.

Relatively large zones are found in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay off the US East Coast, the Baltic and Black seas, and parts of the Adriatic.

Others have appeared off South America, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand. Some zones are permanent, while other occur annually or intermittently.

Most of the 160 million tons of nitrogen used as fertilizer annually ends up in the sea.

UNEP said efforts should focus on cutting back on overuse of nitrogen to bring the seas back to life.

With a joint accord, European states within the Rhine River basin successfully cut the amount of nitrogen entering the North Sea by 37 percent between 1985 and 2000, it said.

The UNEP advocates planting of more forests and grasslands to soak up excess nitrogen and better sewage treatment.

Its conference is the first ever held in Asia with more than 100 ministers and high-level officials attending from 155 countries.

[i][b]Agence France Presse[/b][/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Anti-American News Silenced in Iraq

03.31.04 (9:37 am) [edit]

[b]Anti-American News Silenced in Iraq [/b]

Military commanders sent the wrong message in Iraq on Sunday by shutting down an anti-U.S. newspaper that allegedly published lies that could endanger U.S. forces. The closure angered thousands of Iraqis, prompting protests in the streets and the burning of the U.S. flag. Claiming that occupiers have abridged freedom of speech and the new constitution, Iraqis are angered at the hypocrisy.

Newspapers that incite violence or propagate falsehoods about American dealings in Iraq present a clear threat and mustn't be ignored. But the occupying forces must act in accordance with the democratic principles that they hope to transmit. Iraqis will never accept our endorsement and promotion of democratic values if we ourselves fail to abide by them.

[b]Respect process [/b]

Real democracies abide by a fair process to achieve goals rather than mandates from on high. In a democracy, the ends don't justify the means. Instead, governing processes provide clear boundaries that prevent arbitrary government. In this case, the omitted step was to combat the alleged lies with the truth through an open process.

The outcry indicates that, despite decades of dictatorship, some Iraqis can spot an example of preaching democracy without practicing it. One taxi driver said: ''This is a contradiction to the new constitution. Where is the freedom of the press?'' This is a quintessentially American and democratic reaction: a citizen claiming his rights and citing the Constitution.

[b]Creative solutions [/b]

Despite the intent to protect our soldiers, the closing of the newspaper creates far more angst than it quells. It shows a lack of foresight by the occupying coalition because the policy intended to protect soldiers has actually created more dangers.

Instead of U.S. troops locking down the newspaper operations with a letter from administrator L. Paul Bremer, U.S. administrators could have sent Iraqi police with a letter from the Iraqi governing council. Instead of simply shutting it down, they could have asked the governing council to quickly outline an ad hoc trial process and bring charges of libel or incitement against the paper. In these ways, Iraqis gain a sense of ownership of their new nation and processes.

Moreover, if the pen really is mightier than the sword, they could have responded by printing a response (and evidence) in competing papers to combat the lies. A persuasive account of the truth would present an alternative to the lies by responding to or exposing their flaws. In Iraq, as in America, the best way to defeat irrational opinions isn't through suppression, but by allowing the truth to speak for itself. The worst way to promote democracy is through dictatorial means.

[b]Miami Herald[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Air America Kicks-Off!:-- Liberal Voices Get New Home on Radio Dial!

03.31.04 (9:34 am) [edit]

[b]Liberal Voices Get New Home on Radio Dial [/b]

Lady Olivia was on the phone from Washington.

[b]Listen via the Internet
(Starting March 31 at Noon ET)
Air America Radio [/b] http://airamericaradio.com/

And Sam Seder, a nighttime host on Air America Radio, the fledgling liberal talk-radio network, had a question about the clientele of his guest, who identified herself as a dominatrix.

"More Republicans or more Democrats?" Mr. Seder asked.

"Seventy-30," Lady Olivia said.

Mr. Seder's broad grin suggested that that was precisely the answer he had hoped for. Sitting in a windowless studio 41 floors above Midtown Manhattan during a rehearsal on Thursday for the program, "The Majority Report," he shuffled through a sheaf of testimonials downloaded from Lady Olivia's Web site, operated under a different name. He soon inquired about the identities of those Republicans, displaying a particular interest in learning more about "Jon from Washington," who had written, "I enjoyed the corporal punishment more than I thought I would."

"Does his last name," Mr. Seder asked, "rhyme with Chriscroft?"

The exchange yielded no information about the attorney general of the United States. (Lady Olivia's response was little more than a coy laugh.) But it did provide some clues to how Air America, which makes its debut at noon today on five stations with Al Franken, the comedian and political satirist, at the microphone, intends to challenge the hegemony of conservatives on commercial talk radio.

"It needs to be entertaining, it needs to be compelling, it needs to be laugh-out-loud funny," said Jon Sinton, a veteran of radio who is a founder of Air America, a subsidiary of Progress Media. "It needs to foster water-cooler conversation. You need people to go to work and say, `Did you hear what Franken said yesterday?' "

"When people begin to say that," he added, "we will have arrived."

Beyond the satiric, sometimes sophomoric humor displayed during the dress rehearsal for "The Majority Report," which Mr. Seder shares with the comedian Janeane Garofalo, Air America plans to offer a mixture of issue-oriented interviews (with conservatives, as well as liberals), commentary, listener phone calls and news reports, delivered straight, at regular intervals.

But this liberal radio network faces numerous obstacles in capturing a substantial audience, in particular finding a critical mass of stations that will broadcast its voices. The network has already fallen behind in its initial goal, announced last year, of owning five stations by the time it went on the air. As of today it owns none.

Instead Air America has bought programming time on stations with moderately strong signals, but previously low ratings: WLIB-AM in New York, WNTD-AM in Chicago, KBLA-AM in Los Angeles, KCAA-AM in Riverside and San Bernadino, Calif., and KPOJ-AM in Portland, Ore. A San Francisco station is expected to be announced in early April.

By contrast Rush Limbaugh, whom Air America has identified as a chief competitor, is heard on more than 600 stations, including WABC in New York. Sean Hannity, another conservative talk-show host, has a similar reach.

Air America, which has raised more than $20 million, has grand plans for buying stations, or at least all of the broadcast time on stations, in more than a dozen cities by year's end. Many are in Ohio, Florida and other states considered battlegrounds in the presidential election. But since the media ownership rules were eased in the mid-1990's, much of the broadcast spectrum is owned by a handful of companies. Few stations are for sale, and few station owners will give over all of their broadcast day to untested programming.

Then there is the question in radio and conservative circles whether liberals can be entertaining enough for talk radio.

"Sometimes they just sound so grim," said Neal Boortz, a libertarian whose Atlanta-based program is syndicated to more than 180 stations. "My god, the foreboding."

Mr. Sinton said Air America needed to be wary of that tendency.

"The problem with really wonkish policy discussion is that it does not attract or hold a mass audience," he said.

As a result the network's 17-hour weekday lineup has as much if not more in common with "Saturday Night Live" than with National Public Radio. For example, its midmorning show, which begins tomorrow at 9, will have as its hosts Lizz Winstead, a comedian and a creator of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and Chuck D, the frontman for the rap group Public Enemy.

They will be followed at noon by Mr. Franken, the "Saturday Night Live" alumnus who has evolved into a satirist, and whose co-host is Katherine Lanpher from Minnesota Public Radio. Martin Kaplan, a communications professor at the University of Southern California, will be the host of a one-hour show about the news media in the early evening.

He will be followed, from 8 to 11 p.m., by Ms. Garofalo, whose main experience in radio was playing the role of a talk-show host for pet owners in the 1996 film "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," and by Mr. Seder, who has worked as a comedian, screenwriter and filmmaker.

There were times on Thursday during the three-hour run-through, which was recorded with the expectation of using portions of it on actual shows, that Ms. Garofalo, 39, and Mr. Seder, 37, sounded — surprisingly — not unlike their right-leaning competition.

In an interview with Craig Crawford, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly, the two hosts spent several minutes clobbering the news media, a favorite target of Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Hannity.

"It seems the journalists have really put themselves in the center of the story in a partisan political way," Ms. Garofalo said, speaking of what she called a new form of participatory journalism. Moments later Mr. Seder observed, "Really, most reporters are whores."

And yet the content of most of the program sounded nothing like the fare provided by Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Hannity. Those two popular hosts can usually be counted on to defend President Bush — Mr. Hannity's Web site declares that he is "fed up with all the Bush-bashing" — and whose favorite punching bags include the president's presumed Democratic rival, Senator John Kerry. ("Kerry injured changing positions," Mr. Limbaugh's Web site declared.)

Among others, Ms. Garofalo and Mr. Seder poked fun at Mr. Bush's former spokesman Ari Fleischer ("Is he not shoveling coal in hell now?" Mr. Seder asked); Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser and political strategist (said by Ms. Garofalo to be pursuing "the elusive 18-25 Klan demo"); and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. Seder said he felt sure that he could see Mr. Cheney's hand moving Mr. Bush's mouth on "Meet the Press" earlier this year.)

Ms. Garofalo said that "The Majority Report," its name inspired by a reference to Al Gore's presidential victory in the popular vote in the 2000 election, would also feature substantive interviews. Among the invited guests, she said, are Ben Cohen (the activist founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream), Dr. Joyce Riley (an advocate of Persian Gulf war veterans) and Howard Dean. (Ms. Garofalo was in the audience on the night of the Iowa caucus, before he gave what she described as his "so-called `I have a scream' speech.")

"It's not like we're here to say we're going to be as nasty as right-wingers," Ms. Garofalo said in an interview. "On the left, traditionally, you've got a nicer type of person. You've got a person who is more willing to engage in conversations that have context and nuance, who tend to have more educable minds."

Whether all of these elements can be brought together to make great radio remains an open question. Kipper McGee, the program director of WDBO-AM (580) in Orlando, Fla., which is owned by Cox Communications and carries Mr. Hannity's syndicated program, said that Air America could count on listeners from all bands of the political spectrum, at least early on.

"The old adage, `Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,' sometimes it's true with the remote control or the radio tuner," said Mr. McGee, who has worked in radio for three decades. "In the final analysis, though, whether they survive depends on how good the shows are."

[i][b]By Jacques Steinberg, N.Y. Times[/b][/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Future of Wilderness Weighed Before Supreme Court: Bush Admin Seeks Immunity from Public Challenge

03.31.04 (9:29 am) [edit]

[b]Future of Wilderness Weighed Before Supreme Court: Bush Admin Seeks Immunity from Public Challenge to Land Management Decisions[/b]

WASHINGTON - March 29 - Attorneys general from 14 states, every living former head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and its General Counsel, a coalition of 38 law professors, a veterans' advocacy group, and numerous conservation groups asked the nation's highest court today to retain a central check and balance that protects America's environment. The groups asked the court to reject a Bush administration effort to usurp the right of average American's to bring environmental enforcement cases to protect America's natural resources.

The case before the court centers on undeveloped public lands in the west. The federal government is required by law to maintain the wild character of these lands. When off-road vehicle drivers damaged the lands with their vehicles, the federal government refused to take protective action until citizen groups initiated legal enforcement action. Although the government admitted that it was breaking the law by not adequately protecting these pristine and wild areas, it has offered a radical new legal theory in the Supreme Court under which the public would be helpless to enforce this and other legal duties.

Photos of the damage, submitted as evidence to the court, are available online: http://www.earthjustice.org/n... (High-resolution, print-quality images available for download).

"The Bush administration is trying to convince the court that they should be granted permission to operate above the law," said Earthjustice attorney Jim Angell. "They are calling for a significant power shift away from the people in this country and our tradition of checks and balances."

Potential wilderness areas in Utah and other western states are currently suffering unchecked and long-term damage from free- wheeling off-road vehicles. The federal Bureau of Land Management has failed to protect these areas, while also failing to implement legal requirements to designate and properly mark areas where off-road vehicles are free to recreate.

Angell explained, "We are facing an administration that has shown no interest whatsoever in protecting America's wildlands. Instead, it has worked nonstop to eliminate or weaken the environmental safeguards that protect these lands from exploitation by off-road vehicle users and the degradation caused by the administration's friends in the oil and gas industry."

The conservation groups defending America's wilderness before the Supreme Court include the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, The Wilderness Society, the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Wildlands CPR, the Utah Council of Trout Unlimited, American Lands Alliance, and Redrock Forests. The groups are represented by attorneys from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Earthjustice, and the Washington, DC, office of the law firm Jenner & Block.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Earthjustice
John McManus 510-550-6707
Jim Angell 720-272-1179
Steve Bloch 801-971-4198
Paul Smith 202-639-6060 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Crazy Bush's War of Fanatics

03.30.04 (6:08 am) [edit]

[b]War of the Fanatics [/b]

In 1973 when I was 18 years old, I watched the Watergate Hearings. Thirteen years later, I listened to the Iran-Contra Hearings. Almost in spite of themselves, these hearings resulted in truth telling. I hoped this would be the case with the public hearings of the 9/11 commission.

Instead of hearing truth, however, I was astonished by the questions asked by the commissioners. Again and again, they demanded to know why the various administrations hadn't killed "him" earlier? Why hadn't they bombed "them" immediately? Why hadn't the United States retaliated with "aggressive military efforts" sooner?

Those being questioned seemed perplexed, too. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said it was fairly useless to bomb tents. "They can put tents right back up." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said, "...the decision to commit men and women, who are also sons and daughters, to combat is an extraordinarily important one and not to be done to just feel good." Former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger pointed out that our first judgment as to who was at fault was often wrong. "Oklahoma City," he said, "was foreign terrorism for quite some time until we found out that it wasn't foreign terrorism."

Richard Clarke, a 30-year veteran of four White Houses where he worked on security issues, testified on the second day of public hearings. The White House had launched an aggressive "anti-Clarke" publicity campaign after the release of Clarke's book. It seemed as though every White House official was out and about talking trash about Richard Clarke. They had done the same thing to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill when his book was published. They threatened him with prosecution for revealing state secrets. (He was later cleared of these charges). This threat seemed to cow O'Neill, and he backed off, mumbling that his words had been distorted in a "red meat frenzy." Clarke hasn't backed down, at least not yet. The White House wants his previous testimony declassified, however, so they can check for inaccuracies with an eye toward prosecuting him for perjury.

All this spurred me to read Clarke's book. In the beginning he detailed what happened on September 11, and the principals came off looking rather well. Then he went backwards in time, tracing the U.S. counterterrorism program and the emergence of al Qaeda. Before 9/11, Clarke tried unsuccessfully to focus the Bush administration on al Qaeda. Members of the administration kept bringing up Iraq as a sponsor of terrorism. The day after 9/11, Bush asked Clarke to see if Iraq was linked to the attack even though it was generally known within the various agencies that state sponsored terrorism from Iraq had basically ended by 1993.

The Bush administration attacked Iraq anyway. "Nothing America could have done would have provided al Qaeda...a better recruitment device than our unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country," Clarke wrote.

Clarke said three things should have happened after 9/11. First, the President should have made real efforts to "eliminate our vulnerabilities to terrorism at home." Second, he should have launched a global effort to "counter the ideology of al Qaeda...to win support to common American and Islamic values." Third, he should have worked with key countries to find the terrorists, "dry up the money...strengthen open governments."Bush didn't do any of these things.

At one point in the book, Clarke mentioned that Cheney was an ideologue. Much of the current administration is made up of ideologues--only that word isn't strong enough. They are fanatics. To people who don't share their ideology, their actions often seem illogical. For instance, Bush created a department of homeland security but didn't fund it. Clarke writes, "Ideologically, the Bush administration is opposed to increasing domestic spending...hiring more civil servants, or regulating the private sector."

As I read about Bin Laden and al Qaeda in Clarke's book, I began seeing uncomfortable parallels between the Bush administration and Bin Laden and al Qaeda. Although they have different ideologies and different ways of expressing their ideologies, they are both fanatical in their belief that they are right, they are guided by the divine, and those who disagree with them are the enemy.

Al Qaeda and Bin Laden are extremist Muslims, Clarke says, intent on overthrowing moderate Muslim states and going after non-Muslim states. They have developed over the years by setting up sleeper cells throughout the world and indoctrinating their followers with their religious and political beliefs--which are one and the same. They believe in reestablishing a way of life that no longer exists, where their extremist views about religion, government, and women are the law of the land. If someone does not believe as they believe, the non-believer becomes the enemy. They are secretive and fanatical. They believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife for their devotion. They believe they have found the right way, the holy way, and this belief justifies any of their actions.

The right-wing fundamentalists in this country have worked for decades to bring their followers into power. In small groups all over the country, they preached their religious and politic beliefs--which are one and the same. They believe in reestablishing a way of life that no longer exists, where their extremist views about religion, government, and women are the law of the land. One of their own is now president. He and the members of his administration are secretive and fanatical in their beliefs. If someone disagrees with them, that person becomes the enemy. They believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife for their devotion, and many of them are waiting to be taken away during the Rapture. They believe they have found the right way, the holy way, and this justifies any of their actions.

I am not saying the Bush Administration wants to kill people, but thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of American soldiers have died in a war this administration was determined to wage despite unprecedented worldwide opposition. By being secretive, insular, unilateral, the Bush administration must seem fanatical to the citizens of other countries. By using the Patriot Act to deprive U.S. citizens of their rights, the members of the administration seem like fanatics to their own citizens. Because of the actions of these fanatics--al Qaeda and the Bush administration--the rest of the world is now in peril.

As I watched the 9/11 hearings, I thought of the people all over the world listening and seeing these commissioners demand to know why we as a country hadn't killed, assassinated, or bombed someone somewhere sooner. I felt like I was watching that old fifties movie, [i]Invasion of the Body Snatchers[/i], where people kept getting replaced by pod people. Had the commissioners gotten replaced by war monger pods? Richard Clarke says the United States is known as the "Mad Bomber"in Muslim countries. Are the commissioners part of the fanatics?

Could it be that our entire country, not only the Bush Administration, have become fanatics? Ideologues? If someone or some country doesn't agree with us, are they now our enemy? Is using force our only solution to any problem? That doesn't seem like the American way, at least not the fabled America I was led to believe in as a child.

I'm all grown up now, and it seems as though fanatics are running things. Perhaps it is time for the rest of the world to stand up and say, 'Enough,' and disarm the fanatics.

[i][b]Kim Antieau latest novel, Coyote Cowgirl, is coming out in trade paperback in April. Her weblog is at: http://www.furiousspinner.com... Her website is at: http://www.kimantieau.com [/b][/i] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Supreme Court Should Clarify That Bush Can't Ignore Environmental Laws

03.30.04 (6:06 am) [edit]

[b]Pristine Wilderness, in Court[/b]

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today on one of the most important federal land cases to come before it in years. The legal issue is whether the courts can require a recalcitrant federal agency to enforce a specific Congressional mandate — in this case, a mandate to protect America's wilderness. The larger issue is whether wilderness will be managed in ways that ensure its survival for future generations.

The case involves thousands of acres in Utah set aside as "wilderness study areas" by the Bureau of Land Management. Under law, such areas are to be protected against "impairment" from commercial or recreational activity until Congress decides whether to designate them as permanently protected wilderness.

Over the years, the area has become so infested with off-road vehicles that in 1999, environmental groups, led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, filed suit, claiming that the bureau had failed to protect the land from impairment as required by the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act. The suit was based partly on long-established citizens' rights to ask the courts to ensure that federal agencies obey the law.

The government's response was strikingly disingenuous. It argued that the suit infringed upon its discretionary powers, and that as long as the bureau was working on the problem, the courts could not intervene. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rightly dismissed this argument as an attempt to carve out a "no-man's land" where the government could behave as it wished, immune from judicial review.

Much is at stake beyond Utah. Only 50 million of the 1.9 billion acres in the lower 48 states have been set aside as wilderness; an additional 17 million acres or so nationwide are study areas, awaiting a final decision by Congress. In the meantime, the law requires bureau protection. The court should make clear that the executive branch cannot go around invoking some imagined discretionary authority to ignore laws it doesn't like.

[b]N.Y. TIMES[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

The UnGreening of America: Bush is Harming Our Environment

03.30.04 (5:59 am) [edit]

[b]The UnGreening of America website on [/b] http://www.motherjones.com/ne...

The Bush administration has been remarkably adept at keeping its environmental assault out of the public eye -- in large part because that campaign has been built around seemingly small, behind-the-scenes changes to obscure environmental rules and regulations.

-- Jaideep Singh

Remember When Banks had a Heart?

03.30.04 (5:55 am) [edit]

[b]Remember When Banks had a Heart?[/b]

A George Mason University professor named John Petersen wrote a column for Governing Magazine this month that underscores what we've been saying on these pages for years about the clever ways many of our corporations have found to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Indeed, Petersen points out, years ago when he was a young economist he became aware that commercial banks had a particularly unique opportunity to legally avoid paying any federal corporate income taxes whatsoever.

"I asked a senior banker why his bank continued to pay what could have been so easily avoided. His answer had to do with the notion of one's 'fair share' and an obligation the bank had to its shareholders to avoid being seen as taking undue advantage of tax loopholes," he wrote.

Alas, that's no longer the case.

"Now, the received wisdom is that corporations and businesses owe it to their stockholders to minimize taxes by whatever means they can," he added. "Rather than avoiding censure for not doing their share in supporting government, tax minimization and tax avoidance have become part of a corporate profit center."

Here in Wisconsin, as reporter Mike Ivey detailed in an award-winning series last year, most of the big banks get around paying state taxes by assigning their profit centers to a state like Nevada, for example, where there is no income tax, and keeping their loss leaders here.

In those old days that Petersen was talking about, revelations like that would have caused outrage among public officials, and legislators would have rushed to do something about it.

No more, though. Nearly a full year later, the practice continues, and there's no serious attempt to do anything about it. The corporate argument that in a perfect world businesses shouldn't pay taxes at all has been swallowed by the majority of lawmakers. And, consequently, individual income taxpayers pick up more and more of the total tax load.

But, as Petersen commented in the same Governing article, "If there is an individual income tax, there needs to be one on corporate income as well, simply to avoid vast accumulations of wealth occurring outside of the tax system."

He added that accumulation of wealth becomes even more likely with the pending demise of the estate tax at all levels.

"As my banker friend pointed out years ago, some ways of minimizing taxes might benefit a privileged few, but prove unacceptable to a majority that are not so materially blessed," he concluded.

[b]By Dave Zweifel, Madison Capital Times[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Shifts from bin Laden Hunt Evoke Questions

03.30.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

[b]Shifts from bin Laden Hunt Evoke Questions [/b]

In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures.

The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan. When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered.

Those were just two of the tradeoffs required because of what the Pentagon and CIA acknowledge is a shortage of key personnel to fight the war on terrorism. The question of how much those shifts prevented progress against al-Qaeda and other terrorists is putting the Bush administration on the defensive.

Even before the invasion, the wisdom of shifting resources from the bin Laden hunt to the war in Iraq was raised privately by top military officials and publicly by Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and others. Now it's being hotly debated again following an election-year critique of the Bush administration by its former counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke.

''If we catch him (bin Laden) this summer, which I expect, it's two years too late,'' Clarke said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. ''Because during those two years when forces were diverted to Iraq . . . al-Qaeda has metamorphosized into a hydra-headed organization with cells that are operating autonomously, like the cells that operated in Madrid recently.''

The Bush administration says the hunt for bin Laden continued throughout the war in Iraq. Officials say it's wrong to speculate that he would have been captured, or other terrorist attacks prevented, if the Iraq war hadn't happened. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking on ABC's This Week, called the example of the Special Forces switch ''simplistic.''

But the Pentagon tacitly acknowledged a problem last year, after the Iraq invasion. It created a new organization, Task Force 121, to better oversee commando operations in the region and ensure a faster response when terrorists can be struck.

Now gaps in capability are being closed as the administration puts record amounts of money into military and spy agencies. More spy aircraft such as the Predator drone are arriving. More troops are getting Arabic training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. CIA Director George Tenet said this month that the agency is filling shortfalls, especially among translators.

Still, the question lingers: Did opening a second front hurt the main effort to defeat terrorism?

Bob Andrews, former head of a Pentagon office that oversaw special operations, says that removing Saddam Hussein was a good idea but ''a distraction.'' The war in Iraq, Andrews notes, entailed the largest deployment of special operations forces -- about 10,000 -- since the Vietnam War. That's about 25% of all U.S. commandos.

It also siphoned spy aircraft and light infantry soldiers. Iraq proved such a drain, one former Pentagon official notes, that there were no AWACS radar jets to track drug-trafficking aircraft in South America.

W. Patrick Lang, a former Army intelligence officer and authority on the Middle East, says Saddam was not an immediate threat. ''This has been a real diversion from the longer struggle against jihadists,'' especially in the intelligence field, he says.

Stan Florer, a retired Army colonel and former Green Beret, agrees that Iraq diverted enormous military and intelligence assets. But he argues that long-standing disputes with Saddam needed to be addressed: ''This was tearing at us all the time. It was a bleeding wound with Saddam calling the shots in the Middle East.''

[b]By Dave Moniz and Steven Komarow, USA Today[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Divinity Professor Goes to Federal Prison to Protest the SOA

03.30.04 (5:47 am) [edit]

[b]Divinity Professor Goes to Federal Prison to Protest the SOA[/b]

The Nashville Chapter of the School of Americas Watch will stage a public march protesting the School of Americas and the incarceration of Rev. Don Beisswenger on the 4th of April.

Rev. Beisswenger, who is a retired professor of Divinity at Vanderbilt University, was sentenced to the maximum punishment of six months in federal prison and a fine of $1,000 for the charge of federal trespass. Rev. Beisswenger, 73, crossed over onto federal lands at Ft. Benning, Georgia, during a protest against the School of Americas last November. According to Beisswenger, the trespass was intended as an act of civil disobedience.

"I am acting out of care of a nation which still has a potential to be a life-giving force in the world," said Beisswenger to Judge Faircloth during his sentencing hearing. Rev. Beisswenger is required to report to Manchester Federal Correctional Institution on the 6th of April.

The protest event will commence at 3pm with a march from St. Ann's Episcopal Church on Woodlawn Avenue at 5th street to the courthouse and then to the Nashville federal building, where, at 4pm, speakers will address the subject of the School of Americas and Rev. Beisswenger's incarceration.

Gene TeSelle, a volunteer with SOA Watch Nashville and a member of Rev. Beisswenger's support group said, "This march is almost two miles, and we're describing it as 'going the second mile with Don Beisswenger and the many victims of the School of the Americas.'"

In its more than 50 years of operation, the School of Americas, or SOA, has trained more than 60,000 Latin American troops in psychological operations, interrogation, sniper-style assassinations, commando assaults and other brutal martial activities. The graduates of the school then return to Latin America and use these skills to target their fellow countrymen, including labor organizers, religious workers, students, professors, and those who stand up for the rights of the impoverished. While the total number of people killed by graduates of the SOA, often dubbed the "School of Assassins" is not clear, the graduates are blamed for the torture and/or murder of more than 1,000 men, women and children.

SOA Watch is a Washington, D.C.-based national watchdog organization dedicated to closing the WHISC institute through nonviolent means.

"The human rights abuses and drug trafficking carried out by these graduates are a stark contrast to the US's stated commitment to democracy and human rights in the region," said Jeanne Rewa, an organizer for the event and volunteer for the Nashville Chapter of SOA Watch.

The School of the Americas has recently been renamed to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation", or WHISC, but the compound continues to serve the same purpose: to provide warfare training for Latin American soldiers.

The activities of the WHISC institute were the subject of some conjecture until September of 1996, when the training manuals of the school were declassified from their original "secret" classification. What the training manuals documented was appalling to many, outlining explicit brutal warfare and torture methodology.

Benjamin Kite, an SOA Watch Nashville volunteer and coordinator for the event, commented, "It's bad enough that we find we must engage in warfare as a nation, but to train foreign troops at taxpayers' expense to murder and subjugate Latin Americans- that is simply wicked and unjust."

[b]CONTACT[/b]: School of Americas Watch
Chris Lugo (615) 593-0304
Benjamin Kite (615) 329-2368 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Bush Adviser: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel

03.30.04 (5:44 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser [/b]

IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 -- the 9/11 commission -- in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.

Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.

The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.

Zelikow made his statements about ”the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.

He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.

”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.

”And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.

The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.

The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the ”war on terrorism” it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.

Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of three to four billion dollars.

Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role.

Known in intelligence circles as ”Piffy-ab”, the board is supposed to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.

The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as ”code word” that is higher than top secret.

The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office.

Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned numerous phone calls and email messages from IPS for this story.

Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration.

Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president's transition team in January 2001.

In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.

Richard A. Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's predecessor President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings, said Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.

Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.

Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official -- Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the ”Muslim Middle East”.

Aside from his position at the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.

In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of ”scarce hard currency” to harness ”communications against electromagnetic pulse”, a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.

That was ”a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange -- they (Iraqi officials) were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis”, according to Zelikow.

He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the United States, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.

”Play out those scenarios,” he told his audience, ”and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it”.

”Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, 'gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel'? Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant.”

To date, the possibility of the United States attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration.

Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.

”Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component,” said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. ”But this is a very good piece of evidence of that.”

Others say the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq.

”They (the administration) made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it,” said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.

But he downplayed the Israel link. ”In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat,” he said.

Still, Brown says Zelikow's words carried weight.

”Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than Wolfowitz, or Rice or Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made,” Brown said.

[b]By Emad Mekay, InterPress Services [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/h...

New Bush Censorship Ruling Harms Enlightened, Rational American Values

03.29.04 (7:06 am) [edit]

[b]Keeping Intellectual Borders Open[/b]

Last September, the Office of Foreign Assets Control — part of the Treasury Department — made a surprising ruling. Publishers could publish works by authors living in certain countries, including Iran, Libya, Sudan and Cuba, but they couldn't edit them. Those countries are subject to American economic sanctions, and the office decided that to consult with an author about a manuscript was against the rules. This was a novel interpretation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which explicitly exempts informational materials from economic embargoes. Naturally, the ruling had publishers and authors up in arms.

The Treasury Department needs to remove this inappropriate restriction and do so promptly. Its practical effects do nothing to penalize the governments of sanctioned countries and everything to harm the very people who are most interested in a free and open exchange of literary and scientific ideas. This ruling is part of an unwelcome pattern since 9/11. In the name of security the administration has too often reacted in ways that diminish America's role as a central exchange in the marketplace of ideas. Visas for foreign scientists, graduate students and artists have been unnecessarily restricted. The movement of American scientists has been restricted too.

There are many weapons in the war against terrorism. One of the most powerful is the enlightened, rational values that America has come to stand for. Ideas pose no risk to us until we begin to try to control them.

[b]N.Y. TIMES[/b], http://nytimes.com/2004/03/29...

New Bush Censorship Ruling Harms Enlightened, Rational American Values

03.29.04 (7:04 am) [edit]

Condosleezy Rice: A Law-Breaker Unto Herself?

03.29.04 (7:01 am) [edit]

[b]Rice keeps door closed to the public[/b]

Richard Ben-Veniste of the 9/11 committee was pretty exciting as prosecutor in the Watergate case. Now, during a hearing in Washington on Wednesday, he suddenly asked only one question of a witness and then turned to another commission member and said, "You can have all my time if I can have yours with Condoleezza Rice." Swinging a sash weight in a light-hearted warm-up. He is interested in a couple of discrepancies.

Condoleezza Rice sure heard that. She made a private appearance in front of the 9/11 commission, but won't make a public appearance under oath. Watch how far away she stays from Ben-Veniste. She says she preserves the confidentiality of the White House. Yet she goes on any television. Tonight she is scheduled for the "60 Minutes" show. There is no precedent stopping presidential advisers from testifying in front of a committee. Just in recent times, you had Zbigniew Brzezinski, Sanford Berger, John Podesta and Charles Ruff appear.

And right now you are entitled to think that by refusing to appear under oath, Rice has something to hide.

Already, she has us mixed up by saying in a private meeting that she never heard anybody mention that planes could be used as missiles. Then she asked to change that story and said that intelligence might have or did mention this two years before. Good and vague. For somebody in New York, this deepens the suspicion that because this was about New York, where they don't visit or even campaign, not with our population, the Bush people could care less about us.

Rice says that if everybody is nice, she might make another private appearance before the committee. Keep the door closed. She likes a set pattern for her appearances, a television interview with no crowd in which she speaks and smiles and the announcer says thank you. She is not made for a back and forth on a public stage with somebody like Ben-Veniste. She is a symbol of why people are starting not to believe the White House.

This all started on the streets of Manhattan in June 2003 with an outline of a book proposal by Richard B. Clarke, who had been a national security adviser for Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. Clarke said that in the months before the World Trade Center attack Bush had ignored the idea of any immediate threat from the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden. Bush was obsessed with Iraq, which had nothing to do with the World Trade Center attack.

Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, bought the rights for $600,000. Clarke wrote three drafts over the summer and into the fall. Then a fourth draft, finished in November, was readable.

The White House took months for a security clearance. In January 2004, they asked for some changes. Then on Feb. 4, 2004, the book was given clearance.

The publisher worked as fast as possible to get the first printing of 300,000 out.

The book is out a day and there are furious attacks from the White House. They said the book was timed for the election. If they had read it faster it would have been gone by now. How could they be so upset? All Clarke said was that Bush and his administration missed the World Trade Center attack.

Clarke said that Bush went into Iraq to get Saddam Hussein. And he kept saying that was the man who tried to kill Bush's dad. They ignored Afghanistan, where bin Laden was, giving bin Laden the chance to settle into some rock garden and do his voice-overs. And our 20-year-olds get killed in Iraq, where there they have no reason to be.

The attacks on Clarke went on. On Friday, Frist of Tennessee, the Senate Republican majority leader, said he wanted to get Clarke for perjury at a congressional committee hearing.

He described Clarke as a "former State Department civil servant." He used the word lie at least six times. Like Clarke or not, he has a record of serving his government at its highest levels and most dangerous moments. Frist has turned his medical profession into that of a cheap shill. But if he cries perjury, then there should be a trial of Clarke for perjury. He'll show. Frist might not like it.

A transcript reader said yesterday, "Everything Clarke said is in the transcript and the book and the testimony he gave at the 9/11 hearing on Wednesday. It looks like the guy is right. That's why they're screaming."

Clarke writes and testifies that when he told Condoleezza Rice how dangerous al-Qaida was, she answered that his office staff was too large. She said that Clarke's position should be downgraded. He would have meetings with deputies and nobody higher. And months went by and nothing was done about bin Laden.

Sitting with his book and listening to him at the hearing in Washington on Wednesday, I could hear stories I heard about Rice in the past. Condoleezza Rice always is introduced as a former provost of Stanford University. You can't get anything to sound much better. Provost! She must be in charge of science you can't even imagine. Ancient literature. Anything ancient. If it is impossible to understand, she knows it.

It turns that as provost she was in charge of assigning lecture halls. If they were for decent right wing visiting lecturers, they were given good halls. A liberal had to speak with one foot in the bay. A Stanford scientist brought out Paul Glimscher from NYU to lecture. Rice found him to be a dastardly New York liberal and they couldn't get a place for three days.

She is now in the White House squalling that Clarke is a liar. If she knows anything about history, she might recognize Clarke as the new Whitaker Chambers. You could look it up.

[b]By Jimmy Breslin, Newsday.com[/b], http://www.newsday.com/news/c...,0,2994047.column

Bush and His Christian Taliban

03.29.04 (6:57 am) [edit]

[b]The Christian Taliban[/b]

During the Taliban rule of Afghanistan the world got a good look at what happens when religious zealots gain control of a government. Television images of women being beaten forced to wear burkas and banned from schools and the workplace helped build strong public support for the President's decision to invade Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.

But even as President George W. Bush denounced the brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul, he was quietly laying the foundations for his own fundamentalist regime at home. For the first time far right Christian fundamentalists had one of their own in the White House and the opportunity to begin rolling back decades of health and family planning programs they saw as un-Christian, if not downright sinful.

Since 2001 dozens of far-right Christian fundamentalists have been quietly installed in key positions within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration and on commissions and advisory committees where they have made serious progress. Three years later this administration has established one of the most rigid sexual health agendas in the Western world.

It began immediately. One of George W. Bush's first acts as president was to issue an executive memorandum reinstating a global abortion "gag rule." The rule was first implemented under Ronald Reagan but revoked during the two Clinton administrations. The rule prohibited federally funded family planning providers from even discussing abortion with their clients.

Bush's order reflected the views of those at farthest reaches of the Christian right, zealots who saw any means by which women controlled reproduction as unbiblical:

"I would like to outlaw contraception...contraception is disgusting – people using each other for pleasure." -Joseph Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League

"I don't think Christians should use birth control. You consummate your marriage as often as you like – and if you have babies, you have babies." Randall Terry, Operation Rescue

Over the next twelve months the administration moved quickly to install similarly-minded Christian fundamentalists to positions of authority and influence over all matters relating to reproductive and sexual health.

[b]Dr. Alma Golden[/b]: appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Population Affairs. A Texas pediatrician, she is a longtime proponent of abstinence as the only acceptable means of birth control. Dr. Golden declared that henceforth the department would stress "abstinence-only" as the solution to unwanted pregnancies, not just for teens, but unmarried adults as well.

[b]Tom Coburn[/b]: Former Republican congressman and anti-condom crusader. Appointed co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. While in congress Coburn tried to force condom manufacturers to label condoms as "ineffective" against the spread of sexually transmitted infections. "I will challenge the national focus on condom use to prevent the spread of HIV," Coburn said upon his appointment.

[b]Dr. Joseph McIlhaney, Jr[/b].: Appointed to Coburn on the HIV and AIDS advisory council. McIlhaney has a long and well-documented history of disseminating misleading data on condom failure rates. He was appointed in spite of the fact that in 1995 Governor George W. Bush's own Texas Commissioner of Health openly denounced McIhaney's anti-condom propaganda and his professional credibility.

[b]Dr. W. David Hager[/b]: Appointed to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Dr. Hager served as spokesperson for the Christian Medical Association. He authored the book, As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, and co-authored a book that recommended scripture readings and prayers to relieve the symptoms of PMS. Dr. Hager opposes prescribing contraceptives to unmarried women and spearheaded a petition drive by the Christian Medical Association to revoke the FDA's approval of mifepristone, the so-called "morning after pill."

[b]Dr. Joseph B. Stanford[/b]: Also appointed to the Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Dr. Stanford is on record for his belief that the only acceptable form of contraception, besides abstinence, is the all-natural "rhythm method." Dr. Stanford refuses to prescribe contraceptives, stating that "(modern) medicine is permeated with attitudes toward sexuality and fertility that are incompatible with Christian values of the sanctity of life, marriage, and procreation, attitudes that both reflect and perpetuate the recreational approach to sexuality found in our secular culture."

[b]Susan A. Crockett[/b]: The third Christian fundamentalist appointed to the same FDA committee. Crockett served as a board member of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She co-authored, "Using Hormone Contraceptives is a Decision Involving Science, Scripture, and Conscience" in the book, [i]The Reproductive Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies and the Family[/i]. The book was edited by Dr. Hager.

When the hot issue of stem-cell research came up, President Bush dismissed two members of his Council on Bioethics who had each strongly supported the use of embryonic stem cells in research. They were replaced by three new members who, as the pro-life Family Research Council reported, "fall more in line with the President's pro-life views."

Information became a prime target of the Christian Taliban. President Bush says he respects "good science," when making public policy. But, the crux of the matter apparently hinges on the definition of "good," especially when it comes to family-planning issues. When good science clashes with Biblical fundamentalist beliefs in this administration, science loses every time.

Early in 2001 Bush's Christian Taliban began scrubbing federal information sources of offending materials. The censorship campaign prompted Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) to send a letter to o HHS Secretary Thompson demanding an explanation for the removal of information from HHS Web of scientific findings by the National Cancer Institute that, contrary to anti-choice propaganda, abortions do not increase the risk of breast cancer. Thompson never responded but the "cleansing" continued.

-[i]Scientific data on condom use, long available on government health Web sites, was removed and replaced by sermons on abstinence and alarmist propaganda that exaggerated the risks of condom use.

-The phrase "reproductive health" was expunged and replaced with the vague terms "related clinical preventive health services" and "related preventive health services."

-Links to non-governmental family planning resources were deleted.

-Web sites at the Centers of Disease Control and National Institute of Health were cleared of scientific studies and materials relating to abortion and condom use.

-At the CDC results from a peer-reviewed study showing that education about condom use did not result in increased sexual activity or sex at younger age, were deleted from the Web site.

-The NIH's Web site was cleaned of FAQ's on condom effectiveness and a sexuality education curriculum called "Programs that Work."[/i]

Good science was disappearing from government publications and Web sites at such a pace that the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report in early 2004 documenting and condemning the Bush administration.

[i]There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented... There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being." (Union of Concerned Scientists, report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking. 2004.)[/i]

So, even as the Bush administration denounced and battled Islamic religious zealotry abroad it was and is nurturing a fundamentalist Christian version here at home, much to the delight of radical right-wing Christians.

"Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible is not neutral about what kind of government we should have," states Dr. Mark Allen Ludwig, author of[i] True Christian Government[/i].

"God gave governments responsibility only for infrastructure and defense," according to an article by Rev. Bob Enyart, pastor of Denver Bible Church. "If government limited itself to its two just functions, thereby getting out of education, health care, farming, etc., it could better defend America. ... Christians who carefully study the Bible are best qualified to teach the world how it should be governed."

One of the oldest and best-established forces in the Christian Taliban attack on secular government has been the Christian Coalition. Recently the group threw its full weight behind the President's push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The Christian Coalition has been conducting a "Let's Take America Back" national petition drive over the last several months, which now also includes support for the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment. The Christian Coalition mission statement states:

[i]We are driven by the belief that people of faith have a right and a responsibility to be involved in the world around them. That involvement includes community, social and political action. Whether on a stump, in print, over the airways the Christian Coalition is dedicated to equipping and educating God's people with the resources and information to battle against anti-family legislation[/i].

What is remarkable is that this was accomplished without significant public outcry. The reason is that America's Christian Taliban are more public relations savvy than their Islamic counterparts. No American women are being forced to cover up, beaten for appearing in public wearing make up, or barred from the workplace. The changes being made are more subtle and less visibly shocking. They are incremental, technical, administrative – but far-reaching.

They have also gotten away with it because we Americans like to consider ourselves tolerant and respectful of religious beliefs. Openly criticizing someone's religious beliefs ranks right up there with racism and bigotry – a fact the Christian Right has used to stifle opposition to its agenda.

Mainstream Christians share secularists' concern over workings of Bush's Christian Taliban. Speaking at the National Press Club last year, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice President Rev. Carlton W. Veazey condemned the "back-door attempts by the Bush Administration to radically alter policies and practices concerning abortion, family planning, and sexuality education to conform to extreme views."

So, it may be time admit that our tolerance of Christian fundamentalists is turning us into a nation of chumps. By claiming it is they who are being persecuted, the Christian Taliban have cowed mainstream Christians and secularists into silence, even as they impose their own faith-based governance upon us.

We need to reconnect with a fundamental ingredient of America's strength: the separation of church and state. That wall of separation has for over two centuries spared Americans ftom the kind of religious strife witnessed in Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan.

Mixing religious dogma and public policy always creates an explosive compound – and it always blows.

[b]By Stephen Pizzo, AlterNet[/b] - http://www.alternet.org/story...

The Christian Taliban

03.29.04 (6:55 am) [edit]

Air Force Allowed Boeing to Rewrite Terms of Tanker Contract, Documents Show

03.29.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

[b]Air Force Allowed Boeing to Rewrite Terms of Tanker Contract, Documents Show [/b]

The Air Force gave the Boeing Co. five months to rewrite the official specifications for 100 aerial refueling tankers so that the company's 767 aircraft would win a $23.5 billion deal, according to e-mails and documents obtained by Knight Ridder.

In the process, Boeing eliminated 19 of the 26 capabilities the Air Force originally wanted, and the Air Force acquiesced in order to keep the price down.

The Air Force then gave Boeing competitor Airbus 12 days to bid on the project and awarded the contract to Boeing even though Airbus met more than 20 of the original 26 specifications and offered a price that was $10 billion less than Boeing's.

The Boeing tanker deal has been under investigation since it became public two and a half years ago and has been suspended pending the outcome of the probes.

But the e-mails and other documents show just how intent the Air Force was on steering the deal to Boeing, even though Airbus' tankers were more capable and cost less.

In one document, Bob Gower, Boeing's vice president for tankers, noted that one objective in rewriting the specifications was to "prevent an AoA from being conducted." "AoA" stands for "analysis of alternatives" or, in essence, a look at serious competitors.

Among the original Air Force requirements Boeing eliminated was that the new tanker be equipped to refuel all the military services' aircraft, refuel multiple aircraft simultaneously, and carry passengers, wounded troops and cargo. Boeing also eliminated an Air Force requirement that the new tankers be at least as effective and efficient as the 40-year-old KC-135 tankers they would replace.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., demanded the Boeing documents in his role as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Senate investigators made the Boeing documents available to Knight Ridder.

Air Force Undersecretary for Acquisitions Marvin Sambur defended the Boeing deal. "This was not a competitive bid process," he said. "The Air Force was ordered by Congress to work with Boeing on the new tanker program."

Sambur was referring to a line item inserted into the appropriations bill in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, which said the Air Force should lease 100 767s from Boeing to be used as tankers.

The bill passed the Senate over the objections of McCain and other senators. After the bill became law, McCain, in a committee hearing where Air Force Secretary James Roche was testifying, criticized Roche for an uncompetitive deal, and Roche agreed to conduct a competitive bidding.

The Air Force then put out a request for information to Boeing and Airbus, but by then Boeing and the Air Force had made arrangements that ensured Boeing would win.

Sambur also confirmed that the first 100 Boeing planes would be able to refuel only one plane at a time and would be able to refuel only Air Force planes.

The Boeing deal provides for a refueling capability for Navy, Marine and Special Operations aircraft "in the second spiral of development," Sambur said. Retrofitting the first 100 planes to do so would be at additional cost to the Air Force, he said.

But Doug Kennett, a Boeing spokesman in Washington, said that the first 100 tankers would be able to refuel Navy, Marine and allied aircraft one at a time.

He also said the Air Force turned Airbus down on failure to meet several specifications. The Airbus aircraft was larger than what the Air Force wanted and at the time Airbus did not have the specific type of refueling boom required by the Air Force, Kennett said.

Other sources said Boeing would have to redesign the wings of the 767 to add the ability to refuel more than one plane at a time. That cost also would be additional to the Air Force.

Politics has played a heavy role in the Boeing deal. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., whose state is home to Boeing headquarters, and Democratic Rep. Norman D. Dicks, who represents the state of Washington, where a key Boeing production plant is located, lobbied the White House on the deal.

Boeing and the Air Force also lobbied for the deal, and President Bush designated his chief of staff, Andrew Card, as the point man on the issue.

The Office of Management and Budget and other independent agencies criticized the tanker deal as too expensive and unneeded.

Card intervened and ordered them to move ahead with the Boeing deal.

White House spokesman Claire Buchan said Card sought to mediate the contract dispute without taking sides.

"There were disagreements among the Air Force, the DOD (Department of Defense) and the OMB. His role was to ensure that all sides were heard, and that the military's needs were met, and that the taxpayers got the best value for their money," she said Saturday.

Boeing e-mails indicated that Card was primarily interested in how many jobs the contract would create: Boeing claimed upwards of 28,000, but Roche, the Air Force secretary, in a letter to the White House upped the ante to 39,000 new jobs.

"This was a negotiation between the Air Force and Boeing; they weren't giving it to Airbus," said Steven Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University. "It definitely lends support to the generally accepted reflection that this was never intended to be an open competition.

"In a competitive procurement, you don't let one of the competitors write this because it gives them a competitive advantage," Schooner said.

Senate investigators have plowed through some 8,000 pages of Boeing documents that were so embarrassing and revealing that the company last year fired one of its vice presidents, Darleen Druyun. Druyun had been an Air Force acquisitions officer involved in negotiations on the tanker deal. Boeing also fired its chief financial officer, who had hired Druyun. Boeing chairman and chief executive Phil Condit also left the company in an attempt to help Boeing put the scandal behind it and get the deal back on track.

McCain - who's led a two-year fight against what he considers both a bad deal for the government and an unnecessary deal for the Air Force - pointed out in a letter to Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz earlier this month that the Air Force in 2001 developed a draft Operational Requirements Document (ORD) with 26 specifications for the new tanker aircraft, then gave the document to Boeing.

The Air Force's minimum requirements were subsequently reduced to only seven - and Boeing tailored the specifications to the airplane the company had on hand. The first 100 planes can only be used to refuel Air Force fighters and bombers.

The rewritten document was so thoroughly tailored to Boeing's wish list that when it was briefed to the Pentagon's Joint Requirements Board in July 2002 it was actually titled the "KC-767 ORD."

A board member's memo on the briefing said the operational requirements documents "should not be written for a specific aircraft but rather for a capability" and directed the title to be changed so as not to identify a particular aircraft.

The Air Force changed the name, but not the specifications.

Schmitz is set to release his audit report within the next week. It's the first of several investigations of the Boeing deal, including one by federal prosecutors.

A draft of the audit report, leaked earlier this month to Bloomberg News, said the Boeing contract was flawed and may need to be renegotiated because of "unsound acquisition and procurement practices." But Schmitz could find "no compelling reason" to kill the deal.

His report also questions whether the government should be leasing any of the aircraft, because the cost of leasing a Boeing 767 tanker is greater than the cost of buying one at $138.5 million each. The deal, as presently structured, would have the government lease 20 of the tankers and buy 80.

Schmitz told Knight Ridder that the audit report, once proprietary and source information is removed, will be released to the public. He added that his office has initiated an investigation "into related matters." An investigation by the inspector general involves law enforcement, while an audit looks into fiscal practices.

The Schmitz audit report is certain to generate fresh outrage on Capitol Hill, resulting in new hearings and renewed demands for the Air Force to hand over its internal documents on the Boeing deal, which it has been refusing to do for nearly a year on what one Senate investigator called "very shaky grounds."

McCain, who also sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is pressing the committee to force the Air Force to hand over its internal documents as well.

Sambur said that the decision to withhold the internal documents "is taken at a much higher level than the Air Force. It is a very serious decision. If everyone knew that their e-mails were subject to this kind of scrutiny no one would use it to debate with their colleagues and develop positions. They would watch every word they write."

An Airbus spokesman told Knight Ridder that if the aerial tanker contract was re-bid, the Airbus group would not only underbid Boeing again, but it would also agree to build the aircraft in the United States.

A federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia has been investigating allegations that Druyun simultaneously conducted negotiations on the tanker deal for the Air Force while negotiating with Boeing for a job when she retired after 33 years with the Air Force.

[b]By Joseph L. Galloway - Knight-Ridder [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush Flip-Flop on Patients’ Bill of Rights May Have Been Driven by Campaign Donors

03.29.04 (6:44 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Flip-Flop on Patients’ Bill of Rights May Have Been Driven by Campaign Donors[/b]

The prominence of health insurance industry executives among Bush campaign bundlers suggests that special interests played a part in President Bush’s flip-flop on patients’ rights to sue HMOs, Public Citizen charged today.

In a televised presidential debate on Oct. 17, 2000, candidate Bush said, "If I’m the president … people will be able to take their HMO insurance company to court," adding that while he was governor of Texas, "We’re one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage."

But on Tuesday, the Bush administration argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the same Texas law touted by candidate Bush is invalid because it is pre-empted by a federal law. This is the opposite of what then-Gov. Bush’s Texas Department of Insurance argued in a lower court in 1997.

Among Bush campaign Pioneers (bundlers of $100,000 or more in contributions) are seven former or current HMO executives: UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire; former Health Net Chairman Dr. Malik Hasan; Anthem Inc. Chairman L. Ben Lytle; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida lobbyist Michael R. Hightower; WellCare’s CEO Todd S. Farha and finance director David Hart; and AmeriGroup chairman and CEO Jeffrey L. McWaters. (A complete list of Rangers and Pioneers is available at www.WhiteHouseForSale.org.)

The Texas Health Care Liability Act, passed in 1997 when Bush was governor, was the first state law to give patients the right to sue HMOs for denying "appropriate and medically necessary" treatment. Texas chose to prevent HMOs from padding their bottom lines through abusive denials of coverage by holding HMOs to a professional medical standard of ordinary care. Nine states have since followed Texas’ lead and enacted similar legislation.

"When the Patients’ Bill of Rights was a hot campaign issue in 2000, Bush was only too happy to claim responsibility for the Texas law," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "Now that the issue is not in the news, Bush has done a flip-flop and aligned himself with his big campaign contributors from the HMO industry."

In the current Supreme Court case, the Bush administration joined the insurance industry in arguing that the Texas law is completely pre-empted by federal law. The case involves the rights of patients who suffered severe medical complications when their HMOs decided that treatments recommended by their physicians were not medically necessary.

The Bush administration argues that these claims fall exclusively under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). ERISA limits recoveries to the value of the denied insurance benefits and does not consider the injuries suffered by patients as a result of denied care, which can include death or permanent and severe disability. The unfairness of this law was a major factor provoking bipartisan congressional support for a Patients’ Bill of Rights until that legislation was derailed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, among other factors.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Public Citizen
Newsroom: 202-588-7742 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Global Warming Accelerating Out of Control?

03.29.04 (6:42 am) [edit]

[b]Global Warming Spirals Upwards [/b]

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly, raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control.

Measurements by US government scientists show that concentrations of the gas, the main cause of the climate exchange, rose by a record amount over the past 12 months. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply, marking an unprecedented triennial surge.

Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear that it could show the first signs that global warming is feeding on itself, with rising temperatures causing increases in carbon dioxide, which then go on to drive the thermometer even higher. That would be a deeply alarming development, suggesting that this self-reinforcing heating could spiral upwards beyond the reach of any attempts to combat it.

The development comes as official figures show that Britain's emissions of the gas soared by three per cent last year, twice as fast as the year before. The increase - caused by rising energy use and by burning less gas and more coal in power stations - jeopardizes the Government's target of reducing emissions by 19 per cent by 2010.

It also coincides with a new bid to break the log jam over the Kyoto treaty headed by Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, who remains close to Tony Blair.

Mr Byers is co-chairing with US Republican Senator Olympia Snowe a new taskforce, run by the Institute of Public Policy Research and US and Australian think tanks, which is charged with devising proposals that could resolve the stalemate caused by President Bush's hostility to the treaty.

The carbon dioxide measurements have been taken from the 11,400ft summit of Hawaii's Mauna Loa, whose enormous dome makes it the most substantial mountain on earth, by scientists working for the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

They have been taking the readings from the peak - effectively breathalyzing the planet - for the past 46 years. It is an ideal site for the exercise, 2,000 miles from the nearest land and protected by freak climatic conditions from pollution from Hawaii, more than two miles below.

The latest measurements, taken a week ago, showed that carbon dioxide had reached about 379 parts per million (ppm), up from about 376ppm the year before, from 373ppm in 2002 and about 371ppm in 2001. These represent three of the four biggest increases on record (the other was in 1998), creating an unprecedented sequence. They add up to a 64 per cent rise over the average rate of growth over the past decade, of 1.8ppm a year.

The US scientists have yet to analyze the figures and stress that they could be just a remarkable blip. Professor Ralph Keeling - whose father Charles Keeling first set up the measurements from Mauna Loa - said:"We are moving into a warmer world".

[b]By Geoffrey Lean, Independent U.K[/b]., http://www.commondreams.org/h...

The Faith-Based Presidency

03.27.04 (8:13 am) [edit]

[b]The Faith-Based Presidency [/b]

George W. Bush has made rationality an antonym of Republican. His is the first faith-based presidency. Above the entrance to the Bush West Wing should be St. Paul's definition of faith—"the evidence of things unseen."

So much of President Bush has to be taken on faith. His integrity, for example. You have to trust the evidence of things unseen to believe him, for the visible evidence indicates a disposition toward deceit. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the cost of his prescription-drug bill, the effect of his tax cuts on the deficit, the number of lines of stem cells available to scientists after his restrictions on research. You name it—from who hung the Mission Accomplished banner up behind him for his "victory" strut on the USS Abraham Lincoln to his claims that on September 11 he, not the Air Force Chief of Staff, was the one to order the military to highest alert—he's lied about it.

Alternatively, Bush could be seen as what Al Sharpton called "an unconscious liar." He asks us to accept his feelings about something as evidence of the something. In this view, he's not deceitful; he's innocent of the procedures of rationality—he can't think.

Or his troubles with truth arise because he bases his thoughts on authority not reality. Bush offered an example of his dependent mind on the night of his election. When Al Gore called to retract the concession he'd offered to Bush before the race tightened in Florida, Bush told him, My brother Jeb says I won fair and square. Gore came back that Bush's "little brother" was not an oracle. He was to George. So Bush is not a liar; he says whatever his authority figures, "Dick" or "Rummy" or "Condi," tell him he should say. In a recent edition, The Wall Street Journal had a long backgrounder on what Bush did on September 11, showing how, under Cheney's control, the stream of his government flowed around the President as if nobody expected leadership from George.

A magnetic north of untruth, he's a stranger to the art of rational persuasion, as conservatives lamented following his recent Meet the Press interview. Aside from his mendacious or willfully misinformed "we now know" speech on stem-cell research, Bush has given few signs that he can, or cares to, persuade by reasoning. According to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's memoir, Bush rarely spoke at Cabinet meetings. He didn't need to. "I'm the commander—see, I don't need to explain—I do not need to explain why I say things," he told Bob Woodward. "That's the interesting thing about being president." It's the defining thing about him.

He doesn't explain his policies because he can't—and because they don't make sense. Iraq, he says, is the main battleground in the war on terror. But, as the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said last week, there was no terrorism in Iraq, aside from Saddam's state terrorism, before the U.S. occupation. The terrorism that has inflicted nearly 4,000 American casualties is the consequence of the occupation. We did not invade Iraq to put terrorism down—there was none to put down—but to disarm Sadddam's weapons of mass destruction (talk about the evidence of things unseen!) before he could hand them over to al Qaeda. (Of course, al Qaeda despised the secular dictator, but never mind.) You have to conflate cause and consequence to accept that Iraq is the main battleground in the war on terror that began on September 11. Yet, on C-Span over the weekend, the estimable David Brooks said, following the logic of Bush and Rumsfeld, it's better to fight "them" over there than "over here." Let's hope he meant Afghanistan.

On Social Security, Bush would insure its solvency ahead of the Baby Boom retirement by removing a trillion dollars from the system. That is the cost of the transition from the current pay-as-you-go system to the partially privatized one Bush wants. In the 2000 campaign he said the trillion would come from the budget surplus. Now, with a $500 billion deficit, where would it come from? Perhaps Bush is counting on a loan from "the substance of things hoped for," St. Paul's second definition of faith.

On taxes, you have to take on faith Bush's claim that making the current unsustainable tax cuts permanent will help the economy—instead of crowding out private investment and raising long-term interest rates. The Reagan-era deficits did that, forcing Bush's father to raise taxes to deal with them. But in the faith-based presidency, history, like reason, can be ignored.

You can question Bush's veracity, his grip on reality, and the rationality of his policies, but not his faith. Turning to Jesus to escape from drinking was the turning point in his life. Sincerity, unreservedly giving your heart to Jesus, is the fulcrum of life-altering faith, say people who have experienced it. Reason, skepticism, critical thought, irony, argument—all threaten this sustaining emotional purity. You owe your life to a miracle, and it will go away if doubt creeps in.

All lives have the kind of soul-trying trouble that nearly cost George W. Bush his marriage. Some people see psychiatrists; others take medication; many turn to faith. And for many of this last group, I suspect, Bush's sins against reason, his privileging of his heart over his head, make up no small part of his appeal. Religiosity—intensity of faith and frequency of church attendance—now vies with race as a partisan predictor. Just as 9 in 10 African-Americans voted for Al Gore in 2000, so nearly 9 in 10 "high-commitment evangelicals" voted for George W. Bush. Altogether, evangelicals and white Protestant fundamentalists constituted 40 percent of Bush's vote. When Pat Robertson resigned as president of the Christian Coalition, in late 2001, Gary Bauer, a spokesman for social conservatism, said he knew why: "I think he stepped down because the position has already been filled..." President Bush "is that leader right now."

Bush is neither deceitful nor dumb; he's a fundamentalist. Is that the controlling truth about him?

His salvific connection with Jesus, real enough to change his life, has roots in his biography, which might be titled "Daddy, save me from my own folly!" Again and again Daddy bailed him out of failed business ventures and may have, by the influence of his office if not directly, helped him escape indictment for insider trading in connection with one of them. Daddy got him into the National Guard, saving him, perhaps, from Vietnam; at a low point in GWB's career, Daddy's status as Vice President helped him become a partner in the Texas Rangers, so he could parlay a few hundred thousand dollars into a fortune. In short, throughout his life either his father or Jesus has saved him from the consequences of his own decisions or behavior. Thus what Bush's allies call boldness and his critics call recklessness—his willingness to risk his presidency to make a war of choice on Saddam or to let the kids pay for the fiscal train wreck created by his tax cuts and spending spree—has the momentum of his life behind it. Jesus will save George W. Bush, and here's hoping he has some saving left over for the country. We'll need it to get through a second term of George W. Bush.

- [i][b]Jack Beatty is a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly and the editor of Colossus: How the Corporation Changed America, which was named one of the top ten books of 2001 by Business Week. His previous books are The World According to Peter Drucker (1998) and The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley (1992). [/b][/i] -- http://www.theatlantic.com/un...

Industrial Money Laundry-ing

03.27.04 (8:07 am) [edit]

[b]Industrial Money Laundry-ing[/b]

On September 30, 2003, Richard T. Farmer, chairman of the Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp. – the largest industrial launderer in the country – co-hosted a $1.7 million fundraiser for President Bush.

On November 20, 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released new draft regulations that, if adopted, will weaken federal safeguards for employees who handle poison-soaked "shop" towels. The new rule would exempt industrial laundries like Cintas "from federal hazardous and solid waste requirements for shop towels contaminated with toxic chemicals."

This is no small exemption. Each year, 3.8 billion industrial shop towels, which are used to clean up toxic materials or spills in the workplace, or to wipe-down machinery, are sent to be cleaned.

The Bush Administration's proposed rollback is particularly worrisome because Cintas has been found to have repeatedly violated worker safety and environmental protection standards.

"We were never told about all the chemicals we were forced to handle, and never really warned about the toxic dangers from these chemicals. The towels were often in plastic bags dripping with solvent. Our supervisors knew all about this," says Mark Fragola, of New Haven, Conn., a former driver for Cintas Corp.

According to the EPA, the rule will also will lead to higher profits for Cintas. The EPA predicts "this proposal would... save affected facilities over $30 million per year."

For the record, Cintas and Farmer, are already doing quite well. Cintas made $249.3 million in profits in fiscal year 2003 and Farmer is ranked by Forbes as the 140th wealthiest man in America with a net worth of $1.5 billion.

Farmer is a "Ranger," meaning that he has personally raised more than $200,000 for the President's re-election campaign. In addition, Farmer was instrumental in George W. Bush's 2000 campaign. Not only was he was a "Pioneer" in 2000 (having pledged to raise $100,000), Farmer and his wife gave the second most of any family to the Republican Party in 2000.

Since the 2000 election cycle, Cintas and its employees have given almost $2.2 million to federal candidates and parties, with 100 percent of that money going to Republicans. So far this election cycle, in addition to Farmer, 15 Cintas executives have contributed to Bush, with eight of them giving the maximum $2,000 contribution.

Farmer told the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1997, "I don't expect any special treatment when I give my money. All I want is decent government."

What is "decent" government from Cintas Corp.'s point of view? It could be a government that rewrites environmental law to increase their profits, and one that gives them big government contracts. In addition to the EPA draft regulation, Cintas, as the nation's largest launderer, would likely to have been in line to receive a contract for laundry services from the Department of Veterans Affairs if the VA had proceeded with plans to privatize laundry services at facilities around the U.S. Richard T. Farmer served on Bush's Veterans Affairs transition team.

But the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 federal workers, sent a cease-and-desist letter telling the VA that contracting out the services would be in violation of federal law.

Will Cintas get its way? They have a long history of bullying and silencing their opponents. The public comment period on the EPA rules is open until April 9. Sierra Club, United Students Against Sweatshops and UNITE have joined together to oppose the EPA proposal that helps Cintas Corporation at its workers' expense. Cintas has sued UNITE for defamation, and sued a shareholder activist to silence his efforts to bring forth shareholder resolutions about Cintas' labor conditions.

Stories like this that expose the connections between the private gains of corporate America with the political gains of elected officials are all too common in the nation's capital, and in the Bush White House. Sadly, the health and safety of workers and the protection of our environment could become the casualties.

[i][b]David Donnelly is director of the Washington, DC- and Boston-based nonprofit Campaign Money Watch. This op-ed was adapted from Campaign Money Watch's weekly Special Interest Spotlight, a regular email report on the influence of special interest money in the Bush Administration[/b][/i]. - http://www.alternet.org/story...

Prenatal Politics

03.27.04 (8:03 am) [edit]

[b]Prenatal Politics [/b]

[b]Leave it to this Congress to turn protecting motherhood into a political issue[/b].

If it were not for a zealous anti-abortion leadership, the Senate could pass a bill 100-0 that punishes criminals and addresses women’s losses, without entangling it in the debate over abortion rights. Instead, we’ve seen a divisive political struggle, scheduled for the goal of maximum political theater.

Why? Because the anti-abortion movement, from President Bush on down, has insisted on using a legitimate issue—a penalty for violence that harms or ends a pregnancy—as cover for its campaign to undermine a woman’s right to choose.

On Thursday, the Senate passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (S.1019) by a vote of 61-38. On its face, this bill creates a penalty for violation of a number of criminal statutes if, in the course of commission of these crimes, an "unborn child" is injured or killed. The dangerous reality of the bill, however, is that it would elevate the legal status of the fetus to that of an adult human being. The House passed the same bill in late February and President Bush has indicated his eagerness to sign it into law.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed a substitute amendment that had the same structure and similar penalties as the bill that passed, but did not undermine [i]Roe v. Wade [/i]by recognizing an embryo or fetus as a separate legal "person." This amendment failed by a very close vote of 50-49.

There’s no disagreement on the horrific nature of violent crimes against a pregnant woman that harm or end her pregnancy, and the need for harsh penalties against those who commit such terrible acts. Most states currently have laws punishing violence committed against pregnant women that results in termination of or harm to a pregnancy. Leading organizations committed to ending violence against women testified that the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act” is not designed to protect women and does not help victims of domestic violence. Domestic violence groups urge a response to the problem that includes early intervention and prevention of violence against pregnant women.

The pro-choice movement is committed to the fundamental right of every woman to act on her choice to have a child and bring new life into this world when she chooses to—and we oppose any attempt to deny them of that right, whether by anti-abortion judges or violent criminals. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act infringes on that right.

The only difference between the bill the Senate passed and the Feinstein alternative the Senate rejected is simple—giving separate legal status to a fetus or embryo. The reason it’s there was explained by anti-abortion leader Samuel Casey. "In as many areas as we can, we want to put on the books that the embryo is a person. . . That sets the stage for a jurist to acknowledge that human beings at any stage of development deserve protection—even protection that would trump a woman’s interest in terminating a pregnancy."

In other words, anti-abortion leaders have turned consensus into contention because of a provision that does nothing to punish any criminal or protect any pregnant woman, but is part of a long-term effort to erode [i]Roe v Wade[/i].

It’s an effort that is not limited to this bill. Around the country, anti-abortion legislators have moved forward with initiatives to grant separate legal status to the fetus or embryo as early as the moment after conception. They are even getting bolder in trying to force direct legal challenges to [i]Roe[/i] in a number of states, and in two federal courts.

Clearly, with potential Supreme Court vacancies looming, opponents of abortion are doing everything possible to create the conditions in which a court that's had its anti-abortion numbers bolstered could achieve the goal of reversing that historic [i]Roe v. Wade [/i]decision. The Senate bill passed this week is part and parcel of that overarching campaign.

Pro-choice Americans who expect better of their national leaders than using tragedy as cover for promoting ideological extremism. They’ve seen through the inflammatory rhetoric to what this bill really does, and called on their senators to take a wiser course. Unfortunately, their senators did not listen.

[i][b]Kate Michelman is the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America [/b][/i]- http://www.tompaine.com/featu...

Investing In Us

03.27.04 (7:58 am) [edit]

[b]Investing In Us [/b]

[b]You hear it more and more often[/b]: If America keeps outsourcing high-tech jobs to India—computer programming, software design, advanced engineering—America will lose its high-tech lead.

We heard the same kind of alarmist xenophobia in the 1980s, but then our nemesis was Japan. The Japanese, you may remember, were going to take over American high technology, as American companies became more and more dependent on them for semi-conductor chips and miniature electronics. Well, it didn’t happen. Japan spent most of the 1990s on its back, while America surged forward. India is far behind Japan. And despite all the bellyaching about outsourcing, the flow of advanced high-tech jobs to India is a mere trickle.

We do have reason to worry about America’s high-tech lead, however. It’s not because of outsourcing. It’s because we’re not preparing enough Americans to do complex research, development and engineering. American companies are doing less and less basic research because the new knowledge that results is often available to everyone. Besides, our companies are fast becoming global networks that go wherever they can get the cheapest research and engineering—whether from India, France, Germany, Israel or anyplace else.

Federal research and development funds, meanwhile, are being diverted to the Department of Defense—and more and more of them are going to the development of new weapons systems.

At the same time, almost all of America’s large public universities are suffering severe budget cuts. Basic research, which is particularly expensive, is taking a huge hit. And since 2003, public universities have posted their steepest tuition hikes in a decade, effectively rendering college unaffordable for many aspiring scientists and engineers from low-income families.

Stop blaming India or any other country. If America is to keep its technological lead, this nation will have to make the necessary investments. The simple fact is we’re not.

[i][b]Robert B. Reich is the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University, and was the Secretary of Labor under former President Bill Clinton[/b][/i]. http://www.tompaine.com/featu...

[i]This commentary originally appeared on Marketplace®, public radio's only daily business news program, on March 23, 2004. Marketplace® is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and is heard on 322 public radio stations nationwide. More online at www.marketplace.org[/i].

Bush's Meandering Moral Compass

03.27.04 (7:55 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's Meandering Moral Compass [/b]

In the presidential election that brought George W. Bush to power, the moral character of the candidates was a significant factor with some voters. Among those who rated honesty as an important factor influencing their choice of candidate, 80% said they voted for Bush. These voters were disgusted with Bill Clinton, not only for his sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky but for lying about it. They wanted someone to bring sound ethical values to the White House and believed that Bush was the man to do it. What have the last three years told us about Bush's ethics?

The discrepancies between Bush's prewar claims about weapons of mass destruction and the postwar reality have convinced many that they know the answer to this question. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt about the intelligence on Iraq and look to other issues. Do Bush's statements and actions reflect a coherent, defensible ethic?

First, what does Bush think about the proper reach of the federal government? In his preelection memoir, "A Charge to Keep," he was eloquent about his support for states' rights, individual freedom and small government. He contrasted that with "a philosophy that seeks solutions from distant bureaucracies" and added, "I am a conservative because I believe government closest to the people governs best."

Again and again during the campaign he hammered that theme. On the "Larry King Show," in response to a question about a hypothetical state vote on gay marriage, he replied: "The states can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this states' issue."

Yet in office, Bush has done just the opposite of what he said he would do. The Patriot Act has given the federal government unprecedented powers over American citizens. Arguably, that legislation may be justified by the need to combat terrorism. But no such justification exists for Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to rule out gay marriage. Here, his stated reason for this proposal is to curb "judicial activism." And what about attempts by his attorney general to overturn Oregon's law permitting physician-assisted suicide and to fight against state decisions allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes? These changes were brought in at the ballot box, by the state's voters.

Next, take Bush's stance on taxes. Leading up to the 2000 election, he argued for a tax cut on the basis that the government was running a huge surplus, and the money should be given back to the taxpayers. Instead of government spending the money, he said, his preferred option was "to let the American people spend their own money to meet their own needs."

When the surplus evaporated and turned into a huge deficit, however, Bush did not reverse his arguments. Instead, he simply switched ground, defending a further tax cut on a completely new basis: that it would benefit the economy. But now a tax cut was not letting the American people spend their own money; it was letting this generation of Americans spend the money of future generations.

Finally, there is Bush's policy on the sanctity of human life. In August 2001, he announced that his administration would not allow federal funds to be used for research on stem cells if that funding could encourage the destruction of human embryos — even though there are more than 400,000 surplus embryos in laboratories across the country and the chances of most of them ever becoming children are close to zero.

In defending this policy, the president says he worries about "a culture that devalues life" and believes that, as president, he has "an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world." Yet under his command, the U.S. military has, by the most conservative estimates, caused the deaths of at least 4,000 civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq — the real number could easily be three times as high — and injured thousands more. Sometimes a target as insignificant as a single Taliban truck has brought American bombs down on a village, killing people sleeping in their homes.

In short, Bush is on the side of the states against "distant bureaucracies" when he is governor of Texas and on the side of Washington, D.C., when he is running the federal government. When there is a budget surplus, he is in favor of tax cuts to return the surplus to the taxpayers, and when there is a deficit, he is still in favor of tax cuts.

When he focuses on human embryos, he speaks of his obligation to foster and encourage respect for life, but when respect for human life gets in the way of his wish to strike back at those he considers enemies of the United States, he is willing to bring about the deaths of thousands of innocent human beings. These are not the actions of a person of principle.

In an interview with journalist Bob Woodward, Bush repeatedly referred to his "instincts" or "instinctive reactions" and said: "I'm not a textbook player. I'm a gut player." That may be true. The problem is that Bush's moral instincts seem to allow him to sway in whatever direction seems most convenient.

[i][b]Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. His book "The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush" (Dutton) has just been published[/b][/i]. http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Physicians for Social Responsibility Conference on Nuclear and Terrorism Issues

03.27.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

[b]Physicians for Social Responsibility Conference on Nuclear and Terrorism Issues[/b]

PHILADELPHIA - March 24 - "Global Health & Security in the 2nd Nuclear Age," a public conference organized by Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility for concerned citizens and health professionals on new nuclear and terrorism dangers since 9-11. It examines public health, psychological, social and political ramifications of the US war on terrorism and our escalating defense economy, especially how they affect ordinary Americans and what we can do to affect them. It marks the 25th anniversary of a 1979 Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) conference in Philadelphia which for the first time focused professionals on nuclear policy issues, helped define nuclear threats and preparedness as public health issues and helped set the stage for in the national nuclear freeze movement. The current conference takes place as policy experts are revising upwards their assessments of nuclear and terrorism dangers, and as a resolution in favor of the PSR "SMART (Sensible, Multilateral American Response toTerrorism) Security" platform for improving public health and safety post 9-11 is introduced into Congress. Co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities.

[b]WHO?[/b] The conference features distinguished experts, security analysts and health professionals. They include, among many others:

[b]... Sandra Bloom, MD[/b], psychiatrist, post-traumatic stress syndrome expertand author of[i] Living in a World of Terrorism & Violence[/i];

[b]... Joe Cirincione, Director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace[/b], author of[i] Non-proliferation and the Future of Arms Control and Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction[/i], former Congressional staff member on the Armed Services and Government Operations Committees, former staff director of the Military Reform Caucus under Congressmen Tom Ridge and Charles Bennett;

[b]... Jonathan Schell, Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute[/b],author of numerous books including [i]The Argument for Abolition and The Fate of the Earth[/i]

[b]... Invited members of Congress [/b]who co-sponsored the recent [i]SMART Security [/i]resolution

[b]WHEN?[/b] Saturday, April 3, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM

[b]WHERE?[/b] Meyerson Hall, Fine Arts Bldg, 210 South 34th Street, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

For the full conference agenda, see www.psrphila.org .

For more information on SMART Security and the recent Congressional resolution recommending it, see: www.psr.org/documents/psr_doc_0/p rogram_4/SMARTSecurityBro chure_Final_10_6.pdf

www.woolsey.house.gov/newsarticle.asp?RecordID=278

www.psr.org/documents/psr_doc_0/p rogram_4/SMART_resolution _PR_03_18_2004.pdf

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility
Stephen Kent, 845-758-0097 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

EPA Considering Changes to Fuel Economy Ratings - Petition by Environmental Group Spurs Agency Actio

03.27.04 (7:48 am) [edit]

[b]EPA Considering Changes to Fuel Economy Ratings - Petition by Environmental Group Spurs Agency Action[/b]

SAN FRANCISCO - March 24 - In response to a rulemaking petition submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency by the national environmental group Bluewater Network, EPA is considering altering its fuel economy labels to better represent the real-world fuel economy that motorists are getting on the road. According to Bluewater, actual fuel economy can be as much as 20 percent lower than what EPA’s labels suggest.

“It’s unlawful for corporations to mislead the public about their products. But thanks to the EPA, car owners are paying two to three hundred dollars more every year for gas than they thought they would,” said Russell Long, Executive Director of Bluewater Network. EPA fuel economy labels indicate projected annual fuel costs based upon EPA mileage figures. “We’re glad that the agency is finally addressing this problem. Accurate labels will steer motorists towards cleaner cars, save money, and reduce global warming pollution and dependence on foreign oil,” said Long.

Bluewater Network’s petition, filed in June 2002, urged EPA to revise the outdated 1985 test procedures and calculation methods it uses to arrive at its fuel economy label values so that they more accurately reflect today’s driving conditions, and to report this more accurate information to consumers and policy makers. The EPA is soliciting public comment on the accuracy of its fuel economy label values and changes in current driving patterns to help the Agency determine whether it should grant the petition and amend its regulations governing fuel economy labeling.

At the same time that it petitioned the EPA, Bluewater also released a report demonstrating that the EPA and DOT are misleading consumers and the US Congress by overestimating the average fuel economy of passenger vehicles. The report, entitled 'Fuel Economy Falsehoods: How government misrepresentation of fuel economy hinders efforts to reduce global warming and US dependence on foreign oil' calls attention to major discrepancies between how federal agencies portray fuel economy and the actual fuel economy which motorists achieve in real-world driving.

In addition, a variety of figures provided by the federal government create confusion among policymakers, the media, and the public. For example, in 2002 EPA proclaimed that the average fuel economy of model year 2001 vehicles was 23.9 miles per gallon (mpg), and DOT informed Congress that this figure stood at 24.8 mpg. EPA has also recently begun publishing another value – an adjusted average that uses obsolete correction factors. Bluewater’s report demonstrates that vehicles may actually be achieving less than 20 mpg on the road.

The report highlights that the test procedures and calculation methods EPA uses to determine fuel economy are based on surveys of traffic patterns conducted more than two decades ago. Significant increases in urban congestion, average highway driving speeds, and the percentage of driving taking place in urban areas have rendered the testing and calculation methods outdated.

“With global warming heating up, and US gasoline prices at all-time highs, the declining fuel economy of America’s passenger vehicles is a critical issue,” said Long. “The President, the Congress, and the public should be provided accurate and reliable information, not propaganda.”

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Bluewater Network
Russell Long, 415-544-0790 x18 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

CLAIM vs. FACT: Bush Statement of March 25, 2004

03.27.04 (7:45 am) [edit]

[b]CLAIM[/b]:

“Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people.''

-[i] President Bush[/i], 3/25/04 [[i]Source[/i]: http://news.bostonherald.com/... ]

[b]FACT[/b]:

On August 6, 2001, President Bush personally “received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane."

- [i]Dateline NBC[/i], 9/10/02

[b]FACT[/b]:

U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July 2001 that Islamic terrorists had considered "crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations."

- [i]LA Times[/i], 9/27/01 [[i]Source[/i]: http://www.latimes.com/news/n... ]

[b]FACT[/b]:

A 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council "warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon." The report specifically said, "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives…into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House."

- [i]CBS News[/i], 5/17/02 [[i]Source[/i]: http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... ]

Bush & Right-wing Media Want to Destroy Medicare and Social Security

03.26.04 (7:32 am) [edit]

[b]The Medicare Muddle[/b]

In advance of Tuesday's reports by the Social Security and Medicare trustees, some credulous journalists wrote stories based on tips from advocates of Social Security privatization, who claimed that the report would offer a radically downgraded vision of the system's future. False alarm: projections for Social Security are about the same as last year. Projections for Medicare, however, have worsened: last year the trustees predicted that the hospital insurance trust fund would last until 2026, and now they've moved it back to 2019.

How should we react to this news?

It has become standard practice among privatizers to talk as if there is some program called Socialsecurityandmedicare . They hope to use scary numbers about future medical costs to panic us into abandoning a retirement program that's actually in pretty good shape. But the deteriorated outlook for Medicare says nothing, one way or another, about either the sustainability of Social Security (no problem) or the desirability of private retirement accounts (a lousy idea.)

Even on Medicare, don't panic. It's not like a private health plan that will go belly up when it runs out of money; it's just a government program, albeit one supported by a dedicated tax. Nobody thinks America's highways will be doomed if the gasoline tax, which currently pays for highway maintenance, falls short of the system's needs — if politicians want to sustain the system, they will. The same is true of Medicare. Rising medical costs are a very big budget issue, but 2019 isn't a drop-dead date.

The trustees' report does, however, give one more reason to hate the prescription drug bill the administration rammed through Congress last year. If deception, intimidation, abuse of power and giveaways to drug companies aren't enough, it turns out that the bill also squanders taxpayer money on H.M.O.'s.

A little background: conservatives have never mounted an attack on Medicare as systematic as their effort to bully the public into privatizing Social Security. They do, however, often talk about Medicare "reform." What this amounts to, in practice, is a drive to replace the traditional system, in which Medicare pays doctors and hospitals directly, with a system in which Medicare subcontracts that role to private H.M.O.'s.

In 1997 Congress tried to take a big step in that direction, requiring Medicare to pay per-person fees to private health plans that accepted Medicare recipients. There was much talk about the magic of the marketplace: private plans, so the theory went, would be far more efficient than government bureaucrats, offering better health care at lower cost.

What actually happened was that private plans skimmed the cream, accepting only relatively healthy retirees. Yet Medicare paid them slightly more per retiree than it spent on traditional benefits. In other words, instead of saving money by subcontracting its role to private plans, Medicare was in effect required to pay H.M.O.'s a hefty subsidy.

The only thing that kept this "reform" from being a fiscal disaster was the fact that after an initial rush into the Medicare business, many H.M.O.'s pulled out again. It turns out that private plans are much less efficient than the government at providing health insurance because they have much higher overhead. Even with a heavy subsidy, they can't compete with traditional Medicare.

There's a lesson in this experience. Sometimes there's no magic in the free market — in fact, it can be a hindrance. Health insurance is one place where government agencies consistently do a better job than private companies. I'll have more to say about this when I write about the general issue of health care reform (soon, I promise!).

But whether because of ideology or because of H.M.O. campaign contributions, the people now running the country refuse to learn that lesson. As part of last year's prescription drug bill, they tried again, offering an even bigger subsidy to private plans.

And that turns out to be an important reason for the deterioration in Medicare's prospects: of the seven years lopped off the life of the trust fund, two are the result of increased subsidies mandated by last year's law, mainly in the form of higher payments to H.M.O.'s.

So what did we learn this week? Social Security is in decent shape. Medicare has problems, but ill-conceived "reform" has only made those problems worse. And let's rip up that awful prescription drug bill and start over.

[b]Dr. Paul Krugman, N.Y. Times[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Who is the Blame for Lost Jobs?

03.26.04 (7:29 am) [edit]

[b]Who is the Blame for Lost Jobs?[/b]

[u][b]Offshoring Is Only One Cause of High Unemployment[/b][/u]

Is your job going to Guangdong or Bangalore--and is George W. Bush to blame? While corporate outsourcing and offshoring of jobs has already become a central question in the 2004 presidential elections, the debate has so far only scratched the surface of the real reasons for the worst job growth since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

An estimated 2.8 million factory jobs have been lost since Bush took office in 2001. While the unemployment rate is officially 5.6 percent, that's only because long-term joblessness--the worst in 20 years--is so bad that people have either dropped out of the labor market or have never even entered it. Count those people, and the real jobless rate is 7.4 percent.

That's why outsourcing--factory jobs moved to China or call center operations sent to India, for example--has emerged as such a hot issue. The Bush administration's response has shown only contempt for working people. "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said Gregory Mankiw, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. "...More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing."

Tell that to the workers at the Maytag plant in Galesburg, Ill. Their factory is set to shut down while production moves to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers will be paid just $2 per hour, compared to an average hourly wage of $14.15 for the workers in Illinois.

As if Mankiw's let-them-eat-cake remarks weren't outrageous enough, it turned out that Bush's first choice to be the White House "czar" for manufacturing, Anthony Raimondo, himself outsourced 75 jobs to China. To Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, Raimondo is a "Benedict Arnold CEO"--a reference to the traitor in the Revolutionary War.

Kerry has taking a cue from Bill Clinton, who has a presidential candidate in 1992 liked to roll up his sleeves while speaking to union members and denounce George Bush Senior's lousy record on jobs. Once in office, Clinton, of course, rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through Congress--and got Kerry's vote in the Senate.

NAFTA led to the loss of 500,000 U.S. jobs between its launch in 1994 and 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. A separate study by Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that some 879,000 U.S. jobs disappeared as a result of NAFTA. While even this higher number is a tiny fraction of the total number of jobs in the U.S. economy, many of the manufacturing jobs lost were unionized and decently paid.

According to a U.S. government commission, trade is responsible for at least 15 percent to 25 percent of the growth in wage inequality. However, there's more to this story, according to the EPI's Scott. "When trying to identify the causes behind trends such as the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, the rise in income inequality, and the decline in wages in the United States, NAFTA and the growing trade deficits provide only part of the picture," he wrote.

"Other major contributors include deregulation and privatization, declining rates of unionization, sustained high levels of unemployment, and technological change." In other words, Corporate America has eliminated jobs and lowered wages even where trade isn't decisive.

That's why politicians like Kerry find that it's safer to confine the debate to trade rather than challenge the Wal-Martization of America, created by the corporate backers upon which Kerry depends. After all, his campaign Web site, JohnKerry.com, posts an adoring article touting Kerry's "healthy respect for market forces."

* * *

TODAY, THOSE "market forces" are driving increasing numbers of white-collar jobs overseas. The media is rife with stories about "offshoring" of technology, financial and call center jobs to India, where a large pool of highly educated English speakers offer a low-wage labor pool for Corporate America.

The focus on India, however, is misplaced. According to a study by McKinsey Consulting, of $20 billion in outsourcing revenue from the U.S. in 2002, Ireland accounted for $8.3 billion; India for $7.7 billion; and Canada, $3.7 billion. In fact, Canada also was one of two industrial countries--Spain was the other--to have gained manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2002, according to a recent study by Alliance Capital Management.

Overall, some 22 million factory jobs were eliminated worldwide over this period--an overall loss of 11 percent. Even China saw a 15 percent decline in factory jobs. The reason for much of this job loss is advances in productivity--especially in the U.S.

"With productivity growing at an annual rate of 3 percent to 3.5 percent rather than the expected 2 percent to 2.5 percent, the reason for the jobs shortfall becomes clear," Business Week concluded. "Companies are using information technology to cut costs--and that means that less labor is needed." Given the global gut in industries from airlines to autos to steel--the result of the boom years of the late 1990s--business is reluctant to invest and hire more workers.

If China and India are blamed for U.S. job losses, it's in part because Washington wants to use the issue to get trade concessions from those countries. And, as with trade tensions in the past, racism plays a role. The supposed threat of two billion-plus Indians and Chinese stealing "American jobs" is seen as more politically effective than, say, blaming Canada.

These dynamics can be seen in the AFL-CIO's formal complaint against China, which blames that country's suppression of labor rights for low wages that have allegedly led to the loss of 727,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. While this approach seems to highlight the conditions of Chinese workers, it nevertheless effectively allies the AFL-CIO with the Republican China-bashers in Congress.

If U.S. unions want to challenge China's labor practices, they should step up organizing at the 10 U.S. companies who are among China's top 40 exporters. And if the China-bashing is destructive, so too is relying on employers in a "buy America" campaign. For example, steel tariffs enabled companies to raise prices, but job losses and concessions have continued.

* * *

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY is the only way workers can avoid being pitted against one another in trade wars between governments. The international labor opposition to the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas show the potential for such a strategy.

If union leaders are serious about defending jobs, they have to break with the tradition of partnership with employers. For example, steelworkers could demand that the government to purchase steel for the reconstruction of run-down public schools and inner cities--or the nationalization of the steel industry.

Unions not only need to take a stand against concessions but demand that workers' higher productivity be used to support shorter hours for full pay in order to increase the number of jobs. The bosses can certainly afford it--profits as a share of national income are at an all-time high.

Rising health care costs--cited by employers as a reason to hold down hiring--can be brought under control with a national health care insurance system. Workers in factories slated for closure could take inspiration from the sit-down strikes that built the unions in the 1930s, and occupy their plants to fight for their demands. Organized labor can demand a real jobs program of public works--not the Clinton "workfare" that forces welfare recipients to take jobs for sub-minimum wages, but long-term employment

All this will be dismissed as "unrealistic" by union officials--as if pinning labor's hopes on a free-trader like Kerry is rational. It should be recalled that it was "unrealistic" to build unions during the mass unemployment of the 1930s as well. The fight for jobs will remain an issue beyond the 2004 elections. It's time to develop a realistic strategy--one that centers on fighting back.

[b]Lee Sustar is labor editor for Socialist Worker newspaper http://www.socialistworker.or... . He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net [/b]- http://www.counterpunch.com/s...

Report Confirms U.S. Under Bush Became "Propaganda State", Not A Democracy

03.26.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

[b]Fog of war still hasn't lifted[/b]

"[i]If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers[/i]." - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

`[i]There's no effort on the part of the media to begin to investigate its failures[/i].' - Danny Schechter, author

[b]The truth is, in a manner of speaking, U.S. President George W. Bush gassed his own people[/b].

He, and his administration, did it with hot air about how Iraq posed "a threat of unique urgency'' and how Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted nuclear weapons."

One year after the bombing of Baghdad, we know that the White House and the Pentagon prevaricated their way into Iraq. This while the media waved them on in a flag-flying frenzy that CBS's Dan Rather called "patriotism run amok."

"What we are talking about here — whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not — is a form of self-censorship," he told the BBC in 2002. "I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend."

And it did, at least according to University of Toronto history professor Paul Rutherford.

"For a brief time the United States ceased to be a democracy and became a propaganda state," he says. "Effectively, democracy was overwhelmed by managed discourse, by managed speech."

A report released March 8 by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland confirms that view.

"Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspective on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats, and policy options," it states, adding that the "media did not play the role of checking and balancing the exercise of power that the standard theory of democracy requires."

In his newly published book [i]Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing The War Against Iraq[/i], Rutherford demonstrates how the Bush administration manipulated public opinion. The media were the grease that helped move a nation initially against striking Iraq without U.N. approval, to one intent on invasion — wrongly convinced that Iraqis had a hand in hijacking the 9/11 planes.

It was information warfare, and it included "embedding" more than 500 journalists who travelled with the troops. Although many reporters were prevented, both by their Pentagon minders and their own editors, from depicting casualties, civilian or military, the media complied because "embedding" guaranteed gripping stories from the front.

"Embedding was a disaster," Rutherford says. "It weaponized the media, making them part of the public relations staff of the Pentagon."

But Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times is among a number of embeds who disagrees. "I wrote about a friendly-fire incident, and civilian casualties and things that were not very pleasant," he says. "I don't think I was co-opted. I was a reporter and I reported on what they did."

Still, others insist the media were outmanoeuvred in other ways."This is an administration that's very conscious of message, of being on message, of planning," asserts http://www.mediachannel.org (Media Channel's) Danny Schechter, author of [i]Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception[/i].

That media awareness resulted in the Pentagon's hiring of Victoria Clarke from Hill & Knowlton, the global public relations firm which promoted the first Persian Gulf War, and its construction of a $2 million Hollywood set in Doha, Qatar.

Time magazine would dub it all "mili-tainment" — the perfect made-for-TV war, complete with an American hero (Bush) and a nasty villain (Saddam). It boasted dramatic titles ("America At War," "Target Iraq," etc.), whooshing graphics and suspenseful theme music. Most important, it promised a clean, quick and happy-ever-after ending. "A lot of it was the repetition of the top echelon of the foreign policy team. Doing the Sunday talk shows. Flooding the TV," recalls the Institute for Public Accuracy's Norman Solomon, co-author of [i]Target Iraq: What The News Media Didn't Tell You[/i].

"It was really the cacophony of official voices saying continuously that this man is a threat and then you just fill in the blanks. Gassed his own people. Danger to the region. Nuclear weapons, chemical and biological. This is what they can do to us. These themes that were just played constantly."

And unchallenged.

As CNN's Christiane Amanpour would confess last fall, everybody followed the Pentagon's grand plan and the right-wing Fox News' playbook.

"I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News," she told CNBC. "It did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

That climate was perfect for squelching dissent.

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting ( http://www.fair.org ) shows that, during the first three weeks of the invasion, a mere 3 per cent of on-air sources "represented or expressed opposition to the war."

Those who managed the rare opportunity to question the administration's claims were vilified, as was former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, whom CNN attacked as having "drunk Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid." Why did so many network journalists, to whom most Americans turned for coverage, hold their fire?

Schechter suggests they feared retribution from media owners who were seeking favourable regulatory decisions from the Federal Communications Commission.

"Here you have a kind of quid pro quo: You, the FCC, waive the rules and we'll wave the flag," he says.

On-air people got the message as ABC dumped Bill Maher for being patriotically incorrect on his Politically Incorrect, and MSNBC cancelled Phil Donahue's anti-war prime-time talk show. Even print reporters were targeted by the might-is-right crowd.

Veteran White House columnist Helen Thomas, who had the brass to call Bush "the worst president in all of American history," was flamed by an apparently organized e-mail, fax and complaint deluge.

In some cases, reporters actively suppressed information that contradicted the White House.

No journalist is more criticized for this than the New York Times' Judith Miller, who reported, without verification from U.S. intelligence or independent sources, that Saddam's WMDs not only existed but had been located. She repeated faulty stories from Iraqi defectors, including Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader eager to return to run his native country. (He recently crowed to Britain's Daily Telegraph that his disinformation was "successful'' in getting the U.S. to topple Saddam.)

To date, neither the Times nor Miller have recanted.

Last month in the [i]New York Review of Books[/i], Miller told interviewer Michael Massing that her job "isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst" but "to tell readers of the New York Times what the government thought of Iraq's arsenal."

In other words, to take dictation.

One year later, little has changed.Last week, a 36-page report compiled by Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee listed 237 "misleading statements" made by Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice about WMDs and Saddam's supposed connections to Al Qaeda.

Most mainstream media ignored the report.

Just two weeks ago, Powell, Rice and Rumsfeld redid the Sunday morning talk-show tour they did last year, virtually unchallenged ... again.

The sole exception was [i]CBS' Face The Nation[/i], on which Rumsfeld was questioned by host Bob Schieffer and New York Times' columnist Tom Friedman. When they asked why the administration had said Iraq posed "an immediate threat," Rumsfeld claimed that nobody had ever said that, dismissing the charge as "folklore." But they nailed him, citing his own statements about Iraq posing an "immediate threat to the security of (Americans) and the stability of the world."

Sputtered Rumsfeld: "It — my view of — of the situation was that he — he had — we — we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that — that we believed and we still do not know — we will know."

It was a stunning, all too rare moment. (View it at http://www.moveon.org .)

"There's no effort on the part of the media to begin to investigate its failures," laments Schechter. "There's no `Like maybe we were wrong in our coverage. Maybe we were cheerleading too much. Maybe we were not critical enough. Maybe we were not giving the whole story.'"No, because that would mean owning up to being the White House's snake-oil sales force.

And that's not going to happen.

Which explains why the fog of war lingers still.

[b]BY ANTONIA ZERBISIAS, TORONTO STAR[/b], http://www.thestar.com/NASApp...

Report Confirms U.S. Under Bush Became "Propaganda State", Not A Democracy

03.26.04 (7:19 am) [edit]

New Bush Rollbacks Endanger Northwest Salmon Industry, Forests

03.26.04 (7:12 am) [edit]

[b]New Bush Rollbacks Endanger Northwest Salmon Industry, Forests[/b]

More stumps and fewer salmon are on the Pacific Northwest's horizon. On Tuesday, the Bush Administration announced rule changes that end the "Survey and Manage" standard that has helped protect old-growth forests for the past 10 years, as well as hundreds of rare and endangered species. The administration also weakened provisions of a rule designed to protect vulnerable streams and salmon from damage due to logging.[1]

As described in the March 5 [i]BushGreenwatch[/i], http://www.bushgreenwatch.org... the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan's "Survey and Manage" standard required the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to "look before logging" -- to survey public lands for sensitive plants, fungi and fauna native to northwest forests. The need to protect these species, which serve as indicators of forest health, has often reduced or canceled logging of old-growth forests.

Now, forest managers will decide on a case-by-case basis whether protection is important. The rule changes will affect 5.5 million acres of forests on public lands.[2]

"The Bush Administration is making it easier to cut old-growth trees for an industry that will fund its reelection campaign," said Jeremy Hall of the Oregon Natural Resources Council Action in Eugene. "The industry donated more than $1 million dollars to the President and his party and the payback is logging trucks loaded with our biggest trees."[3]

Also on Tuesday, the administration announced that individual timber sales would no longer be required to meet all the protections for stream and watershed health established by the Northwest Forest Plan's Aquatic Conservation Strategy. Instead of monitoring the effects of logging on a site-by-site basis, agency managers will instead assess entire watersheds, which can range in size from 30 to 150 square miles.[4]

Damage to streams and salmon will be impossible to judge on such a large scale until it is too late, according to Glenn Spain, Northwest Regional Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "Under the old rules you're supposed to assess the impact of a timber sale based on the particular characteristics of the site -- such as slope and stream conditions. You're supposed to know what you're doing," Spain told [i]BushGreenwatch[/i]. http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

"Under the new rules, there will be no connections made between the logging on the ground and the effect on the salmon. They don't have to know what they're doing, or mitigate impact," said Spain. "It's a don't-know, don't find-out policy that institutionalizes scientific ignorance."

"I'm a registered Republican, but I did not vote for a rollback in the fundamental protections of public resources that support sustainable industries, such as fishing," Spain added. "We have tens of thousands of family-wage jobs at risk. The fishing industry is worth one billion dollars in the Pacific Northwest, and over $150 billion nationwide. No fish, no fishermen, no fishing jobs."

###

[b]SOURCES[/b]:

[1] Earthjustice press release, Mar. 23, 2004.
[2] "Key rules are eased to boost logging," The Oregonian, Mar. 24, 2004.
[3] Earthjustice Press Release, op. cit.
[4] The Oregonian, op. cit.

[b]BushGreenWatch[/b], http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

New Bush Rollbacks Endanger Northwest Salmon Industry, Forests

03.26.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

EPA Speeds Review Of Its Web Links Policy, Due to 'Extremist' Environmental,Watchdog Nonprofits

03.26.04 (7:05 am) [edit]

[b]EPA Speeds Review Of Its Web Links Policy, Due to 'Extremist' Environmental,Watchdog Nonprofits [/b]

The Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is re-examining its policy for linking to external web sites from the agency's Toxic Release Inventory web site, http://www.epa.gov/tri/tri_pr... The result may be removal of long-standing links to respected nonprofits.

For years, [i]OMB Watch[/i], http://www.ombwatch.org/ via its Right-To-Know Network project, and Scorecard, an information service of [i]Environmental Defense[/i], http://www.edf.org/ have re-posted the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data on releases of toxic chemicals in communities across the U.S.

But in response to a letter from Representatives Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) and Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) criticizing these organizations, EPA has expedited a review of its policy.[1]

In their letter, Cubin and Gibbons call OMB Watch and Environmental Defense "extremist," and the links "inappropriate." They demand that EPA "replace these links with work by EPA scientists, if the agency believes that having on-line assessment tools available to the public is a valuable public service."[2]

The representatives also asserted that a proper disclaimer did not accompany the links, but EPA refuted this. There is a disclaimer alongside each link.[3]

EPA's reply to the representatives notes that its web site policy "includes a number of principles and rules for links, including the requirement that external links reflect a balance of views. Although this policy was scheduled to be reviewed for recertification in January 2005, the Agency will begin its review immediately in response to your concerns."[4]

Sean Moulton, senior information policy analyst at OMB Watch, lauds EPA for its restrained response to the GOP Congressmembers' letter, but is still concerned. "The easy response for EPA was to say, "We'll look into it." But on the other hand, they're not telling us they'll keep the links, either," he told [i]BushGreenwatch[/i]. http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

OMB Watch is asking EPA to make the policy review process open to the public so that interested parties can participate and comment. "It's difficult to connect this review with any particular agency appointee," says Moulton. "But it does fit in with trends under the Bush Administration to limit debate and restrict information."

"Recently EPA has repeatedly gotten embroiled in charges that it is mismanaging information," adds Moulton. "With a lack of public participation and input into this policy review, this process could get mismanaged, as well."

###

[b]TAKE ACTION[/b]:

Let EPA know you'd like the policy review to be open to the public: http://capwiz.com/ombwatch/is...

###

[b]SOURCES[/b]:

[1] OMB Watch Action Alert.
[2] Letter from Barbara Cubin and Jim Gibbons to Kimberly T. Nelson, Assistant Administrator and Chief Information Officer for Environmental Information, EPA, Jan. 20, 2004.
[3] "Cubin Blames Bad Science On 'Clinton Folks,'" Casper Star Tribune, Feb. 8, 2004.
[4] Letter from Kimberly T. Nelson, Assistant Administrator and Chief Information Officer, to The Honorable Barbara Cubin, Feb. 25, 2004.

[b]Greenwatch Today[/b], http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

Think Again: Misreporting Stem Cell Research

03.26.04 (7:00 am) [edit]

[b]Think Again: Misreporting Stem Cell Research[/b]

Last week some journalists thought they had found a juicy story, full of conflict: The military was doing an apparent end run around the Bush administration's restrictive policy on stem cell research. "The Pentagon has granted $240,000 to a Swedish team for embryonic stem-cell research linked to Parkinson's disease... despite U.S. government limits on stem-cell research," [i]reported Reuters on March 17[/i]. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US... The president may have curtailed research "in this country," noted MSNBC host Keith Olbermann in reaction to the news, but he "never mentioned Sweden." "Let's see if we got this straight," added the Dallas Morning News. "An injection of federal money triggers the restrictions on [stem cell] research at American universities... So the Pentagon finds a university in Sweden that is happy to conduct the research."

Um, no. The supposed "Sweden loophole" - a distinction between using federal funds for American university stem cell research and research abroad - is nonsense. Despite the misleading Reuters report, the Pentagon was in fact supporting research on two stem cell lines that had been [i]derived by Swedish researchers [/i] http://www.genomenewsnetwork.... before the president's August 2001 deadline and were therefore eligible for federal funding. This non-story created considerable confusion, however, and underscores key deficiencies in the way journalists have covered stem cell and cloning issues in the United States. These failings aren't trivial: They've often helped to mask serious flaws in the president's policies.

In general, reporting on biotechnology issues tends to focus on conflict and drama and to be highly fragmentary or episodic, notes [i]Matthew Nisbet[/i], http://www.jcomm.ohio-state.e... an assistant professor of journalism and communication at the Ohio State University who studies press coverage of the stem cell and cloning controversies. Journalists in the major media will often latch onto these issues suddenly and when drama can be found - "UFO cult claims cloned baby," to take a prominent example from December of 2002 - and then drop them again just as quickly. This stop-again, start-again coverage pattern both alarms the public and fails to educate. Moreover, it creates a situation in which important developments that are technical in nature get ignored, while easily graspable controversies or even pseudo-controversies (the Pentagon story, various human cloning claims) get magnified.

Here's how this helps Bush. It's abundantly clear by now that the president's stem cell research policy has been a failure. Despite Bush's[i] promise [/i] http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... of "more than 60" stem cell lines for research in August 2001, even now only 17 [i]are available for shipping to scientists[/i]. http://stemcells.nih.gov/regi... At least one prominent researcher has left the country in despair; states like California and New Jersey are moving in to fund research to make up for the lack of federal money; and universities, too, are setting up privately funded centers to nurture science that has been stifled by Bush's policy. All of this seems particularly inexcusable given revelations that Bush made his "more than 60" lines claim, which startled experts, on the basis of inadequately vetted scientific information. The president appears to have been more interested in outlining a victorious "compromise" than in setting good policy.

But despite ample evidence of this failing, Bush has never really been held accountable by the press. Consider the NIH's disclosure, earlier this month, that [i]only 23 lines [/i] http://www.house.gov/reform/m... might ever be available under Bush's policy. This was, arguably, the biotech equivalent of failing to find Saddam's WMD. Suddenly the president's proposed "compromise" - "to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line," as he put it - stood naked in all its inadequacy, its supposed scientific foundations thoroughly undermined. Sure, there had been a steady stream of criticism of Bush's policy, but now we had numbers - from NIH, no less. Yet despite a story from the reliable Rick Weiss of The Washington Post and a few other journalists, the media largely ignored the news. The 23 lines revelation "didn't get a lot of play at all," Nisbet notes.

How is this possible? Well, the number of stem cell lines is a technical issue. And the complexities of stem cell policy - involving the dispersal of stem cell lines across the globe, conflicts over intellectual property rights, problems of line contamination, debates over the relative promise of adult stem cells versus embryonic stem cells, and so forth - are science-y and off-putting. Considerable drama may have lurked beneath the surface of the "23 lines story": the news undermined one of the president's first and most prominent policy decisions and arguably contributed to his "credibility gap." But few reporters seemed prepared to wrap their minds back around the complex stem cell issue, which hasn't been covered with any real intensity since before 9/11.

Matters get even worse when stem cell research meets cloning, with which it tends to get confused in the public mind thanks to the press. "In 2002, 30 percent of the time when stem cell research is covered, it's covered in the context of the cloning issue," says Nisbet. That's troubling for the following reason. The prospect of human cloning creates strong negative connotations for the public, conjuring up the specter of armies of look-alikes marching in lock-step. These concerns - valid or otherwise - have nothing to do with the stem cell issue, but have been allowed to rub off on it. Such confusion helps the president and pro-life interests, as an issue that truly turns on whether abortion politics should block research gets overshadowed by speculative concerns about the arrival of a Brave New World.

A similar confusion has infected the related issue of research cloning, or "therapeutic cloning." Scientists hope that by deriving stem cells from cloned embryos, rather than embryos discarded from in vitro fertilization, they will be able to circumvent possible immune system rejection issues as they seek new treatments. But though there are [i]good scientific reasons [/i] http://fire.biol.wwu.edu/tren... for doubting whether cloned embryos actually have the potential to develop into normal human beings if implanted in wombs, conservatives and President Bush have consistently sought an outright criminal ban on all forms of cloning, reproductive and therapeutic alike. This strategic yoking leverages a moral fear of human cloning against scientific research that may never actually lead to that outcome. But yet again, the press's consistent failure to educate on these issues - and its tendency to create panics by covering fringe groups claiming to have produced clones - confuses the science and thus bolster's the president's policies.

Science issues aren't easy to cover, especially when they blend with politics. But inconsistent, seat-of-the pants reporting has severe consequences. There are countless parents out there whose kids have juvenile diabetes, and for whom every passing day brings them closer to the possible onset of serious complications. Many of these parents have latched onto stem cell research as the best hope for a cure. In such a situation, the last thing the press should be doing is providing a fig leaf for the president's policies.

[b]Chris Mooney (www.chriscmooney.com), a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C., is writing a book about the Republican Party and science[/b]. - http://www.americanprogress.o...

Bush is scared of Sharon: Israel's PM Sharon is running US foreign policy

03.24.04 (6:54 am) [edit]

[b]With election close, Bush will not risk putting pressure on Sharon [/b]

George Bush is said to have started his presidency with a cautionary word from the outgoing Bill Clinton: be wary of getting dragged into endless mediation between the Israelis and Palestinians, and do not on any account trust Yasser Arafat.

Mr Bush took the advice to heart, approaching the Israel-Palestinian dispute as a sceptic. After September 11 2001, his attitude hardened, and America's war on terror became the prism through which he viewed what is essentially a territorial conflict.

"The president is at war. It is the war on terror and he believes that the terror of the Palestinians has to be controlled before he invests anymore political capital in this process," said Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the independent Council on Foreign Relations.

Aside from two brief episodes - the announcement of his "road map" to peace in the Middle East in June 2002, and the Aqaba summit last June - Mr Bush has been determined to stay on the sidelines despite the escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians, and pressure from Arab allies and Britain.

With the November election approaching, he is also mindful of keeping the support of evangelical Christians, who have lined up on the Israeli side of the debate and criticised the White House for not doing enough to support the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon.

The result has left America out of step with the rest of the world. Washington alone has failed to condemn the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. President Bush yesterday insisted that Israel had the right to defend itself.

There was no move to cancel meetings with the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, who was in Washington, or to postpone a visit to the White House by Mr Sharon scheduled for April 14.

Instead, the Bush administration has clung to the view that Mr Sharon is a valued ally in the war on terror. That has worked tremendously to Israel's advantage.

So too did Mr Bush's decision last July to put his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, in charge of Middle East policy. Ms Rice relies heavily on a group of advisers led by Elliot Abrams, an ideologue known for his opposition to the Oslo peace accords.

Within the Bush administration, Ms Rice's influence, and by extension the opinion of her advisers, outranks the diplomats from the state department. That has left Washington loth to criticise Mr Sharon.

In effect, Washington sabotaged its own peacemaking initiatives, analysts say. The reluctance to put pressure on Mr Sharon doomed Mr Bush's road map, reducing it to a gesture aimed at dampening criticism from Europe and the Arab world.

"I don't think they had any real commitment, any real strategy on the road map," said William Quandt, who was involved in negotiating the peace accords between Egypt and Israel in the 1970s. "The only way you get anywhere in peacemaking on Arab and Israeli issues is when the United States weighs in quite heavily and is pushing quite hard, and they were not prepared to do that."

Other analysts insist the Bush administration was sincere, but its aspirations of bringing peace to the Middle East died in August with the first Palestinian suicide attack after the Aqaba summit. "The bombing on August 19 was a bombing that not only killed Israelis, but did a lot of damage to the process," the Middle East envoy John Wolf said last January.

Evangelical Christians made up one in four Republican voters during the 2000 elections. In what is shaping up to be a close election, Mr Bush does not want to do anything that would tempt them to stay at home.

[b]By Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian UK[/b], http://www.guardian.co.uk/isr...,2763,1176581,00.html

Bush is scared of Sharon: With election close, Bush will not risk putting pressure on Sharon

03.24.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

Old Growth Forests, Wildlife Lose Protections With Bush Admin’s Northwest Forest Plan Changes

03.24.04 (6:49 am) [edit]

[b]Old Growth Forests, Wildlife Lose Protections With Bush Administration’s Northwest Forest Plan Changes[/b]

WASHINGTON - March 23 - [u]Statement of Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director[/u]

"The Bush administration dealt a blow today to Pacific Northwest forests, wildlife, and Americans who value these ancient forests. Trashing the important Survey and Manage component of the Pacific Northwest Forest Plan removes a vital check from the process of balancing the uses of the forests and will increase old growth logging and damage vital wildlife habitat. The administration also weakened the Aquatic Conservation Strategy component of the plan which, along with Survey and Manage, represent the two key ecological pillars on which Northwest forest protections were based.

"The Northwest Forest Plan helped slow the strip-mining of our rare ancient forests, but the Bush administration is showing once again they care about the views of timber executives more than the views of the public. These changes will put salmon and other rare species at greater risk of extinction and opens thousands of acres of old-growth forests to logging.

"Over the past decade, Americans have realized that these ancient forests are worth more than board feet for the timber industry. There is a better way. We should be moving forward to protect communities from fire, and restore damaged fish and wildlife habitat. Today’s announcement will leave Northwest communities that care about salmon, clean water and recreation behind.

"Part of the Bush administration's so-called 'Healthy Forests Initiative,' was to re-open Northwest ancient forests to unsustainable logging. Today’s changes fill another chapter in the Bush administration’s book of removing the public, shortening or removing environmental impacts studies, and burying the science on forests policies. Revoking critical parts of the Northwest Forest Plan is simply a sign of the times, with the Bush administration expected to announce more radical changes in the coming weeks to undo the popular Roadless Area Conservation Rule."

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Sierra Club
Annie E. Strickler (202) 675-2384 http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Bush Medicare Report Misleads; 'Bush Administration Simply Changed the Numbers'!

03.24.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Medicare Report Misleads; 'Bush Administration Simply Changed the Numbers,' Says Co-Director of Campaign for Americas Future[/b]

WASHINGTON - March 23 - Campaign for America's Future Co-director Roger Hickey today said the Social Security and Medicare trustees released a misleading annual report based on questionable Bush Administration figures. Hickey noted that the report reflects President Bush's political agenda by showing that the fiscal state of Social Security and Medicare is much worse than last year.

The Bush administration's projection that shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare systems would be nearly $50 trillion — up from $18 trillion last year — is fiction, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Bush Administration used a new method of calculating numbers called "infinite horizon" — the cost of the programs until infinity. The Center's analysis says "projecting the state of health care and medical breakthroughs in the 24th century lies more in the realm of science fiction than hard headed policy analysis."

The Bush Administration and Republican Congressional leaders pressed for the overhaul of Medicare last year to increase corporate profits for HMOs and drug companies. The federal government's own projections are that private managed-care plans will cost taxpayers more than traditional Medicare for the foreseeable future.

[b]STATEMENT OF ROGER HICKEY[/b]

It has become almost impossible to believe what the Bush administration says about Medicare.

Top Bush administration officials lied to Congress about the billions of taxpayer dollars they gave to the HMOs in the Medicare prescription drug deal. Now their cooked books show that Medicare is going broke and needs to be turned over to HMOs.

Medicare's finances have not changed. The Bush administration simply changed the numbers.

Click here for a document outlining background information on this issue. http://ourfuture.org/docUploa...

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Campaign for America's Future
Toby Chaudhuri 202/955-5665 http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Israelis Promulgate Extrajudicial Murder and the U.S. Looks On

03.24.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

[b]Israelis Promulgate Extrajudicial Murder and the U.S. Looks On [/b]

As an American of Palestinian descent and Christian faith, I never cared much for the ultimate goal of Hamas: to establish a religious state in Palestine.

But I find myself angered and baffled at Israel's decision to assassinate Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

What is even more baffling is the U.S. response, especially since its close ally, Ariel Sharon, personally commanded this extrajudicial killing.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on NBC's Today that "it is very important that everyone step back now and try now to be calm in the region. There is always a possibility of a better day in the Middle East, and some of the things being talked about by the Israelis... might provide new opportunities."

So the good ideas will come from Israel, which just assassinated Yassin? I read that as implying that if Palestinians react, they will be held responsible for any fallout. Unbelievable.

One thing is certain about the killing of the blind and quadriplegic Yassin: A peace agreement that once seemed unlikely now seems unreachable in the near future. Sharon is not stupid; his government expects retaliation. And the Israeli Defense Force will use that retaliation as an excuse to kill more Palestinians. It is a script that has played itself out for the last 31/2 years.

Each round becomes more deadly, and each has far-reaching effects. There are now more than 700 Israeli checkpoints in the occupied territories. A barrier is being built that has imprisoned many Palestinian villages and towns. The economic siege continues, and a British report now compares the Palestinian malnourishment levels to those in Africa. Still, the Palestinians have not been deterred from demanding freedom and independence.

Extrajudicial killings circumvent more than the negotiating table, though they certainly do that. Israel sought to circumvent international law itself. It wishes to brandish the stick and hand out the carrots.

The reasons for the current uprising are many and understandable. Certainly, they should appeal to any American. Consider freedom from occupation for a start. Freedom from having their olive orchards uprooted, a source of income for many; from having their homes demolished; from Israeli military checkpoints on the road to and from all Palestinian cities, so that travelers are held up from two to six hours on comparatively short journeys. Freedom to bring up children as opposed to fighting as adults are, so that they won't be subject to the humiliation their parents know now; freedom to know the same kind of security Israelis want for themselves.

Three million Palestinians have tolerated - in the overwhelming majority of cases, peaceably - the denial of these freedoms for more than three decades. They ought to be commended for their restraint all this time. There are an occasional few young men who can no longer wait, however, with often tragic results. It's been said that there is no enemy greater than the one who has nothing to lose.

Some think Yassin's death will put a stop to the Palestinian intifadah. But the intifadah is bigger than Sheikh Yassin. It is bigger than Yasir Arafat. It is most certainly bigger than Ariel Sharon. It involves the human spirit and the desire to be free.

Rice was right to say there is always a possibility of a better day in the Middle East. When Israel ends the occupation and implements United Nations resolutions as other nations are expected to, a better tomorrow may be realized. But extrajudicial killings won't get us to that tomorrow. It's a shame the U.S. government, with its silence in the fact of its ally's unjust acts, doesn't understand that.

[b]Sherri Muzher is a media analyst in Mason, Michigan[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Old Growth Forests, Wildlife Lose Protections With Bush Admin’s Northwest Forest Plan Changes

03.24.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

25 Years After Three Mile Island, Concerns Linger

03.24.04 (6:39 am) [edit]

[b]25 Years After Three Mile Island, Concerns Linger [/b]

WASHINGTON - Twenty-five years after a near-catastrophe at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant exposed lax safety practices, owners and regulators of the nation's aging fleet of 103 reactors still face nagging questions about their ability to prevent mishaps.

These concerns, worsened by recent findings of massive corrosion at a plant in Ohio, have so far kept utilities from pursuing new nuclear plants for more than two decades despite their potential to replace aging, air-polluting coal units.

In a bid to change that trend, the Bush administration has promoted incentives to build new nuclear plants. But the outlook is uncertain because a Republican-written energy bill with some of the administration's proposals has long been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

On March 28, 1979, Walter Cronkite opened his nightly news broadcast for CBS television, calling the accident at Three Mile Island "the first step in a nuclear nightmare."

That was the first time that many Americans heard of the mishap, the most serious accident in U.S. nuclear history.

A string of mechanical failures and human errors caused the accident at the Pennsylvania plant after operators with Metropolitan Edison Co. switched off crucial equipment that could have lessened the severity of the partial meltdown.

Early that morning, pumps feeding cooling water to the plant's reactor failed, and 32,000 gallons (121,000 liters) of radioactive, superheated water spewed from a dodgy valve into the domed concrete reactor housing. Without water to cool them, more than half of the reactor's 36,000 nuclear fuel rods ruptured.

Government scientists said the 636,000 people living within 20 miles of the plant got only minor doses of radiation.

The near-catastrophe at the plant perched on an island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg effectively halted any expansion of the U.S. nuclear energy industry, which generates about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.

The resulting cancellation of dozens of planned nuclear plants forced utilities to rely on decades-old nuclear and coal-burning plants for growing electric power demands.

Meanwhile, activist groups worry that current security measures cannot prevent a terrorist attack on a U.S. nuclear plant.

[b]OHIO PLANT RAISES FRESH CONCERNS [/b]

Safety concerns continue to plague the industry.

NRC inspectors in early 2002 found massive corrosion at an Ohio nuclear plant owned by FirstEnergy Corp. . Leaking boric acid used as a coolant ate a football-sized hole in the steel outer hull protecting the Davis-Besse plant's reactor core.

No radiation was released, and the NRC allowed FirstEnergy to begin reviving the unit this month after the utility agreed to change its "safety culture."

NRC Chairman Nils Diaz said the agency "dropped the ball" by not spotting the corrosion sooner. "It was no way to do business, either on the part of operators or regulators," Diaz said.

Nuclear industry officials bristle at any connection between the Three Mile Island and Davis-Besse incidents, and point to advances in operator training and plant design.

But industry watchdogs say the aging U.S. nuclear utility fleet could be nearing the end of its trouble-free life, with incidents like Davis-Besse foreshadowing mishaps to come.

"We haven't seen a lot of near-misses in this country since (Three Mile Island)," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But the other end of the curve is what we're approaching, if we're not there already."

The Bush administration, meanwhile, wants to jump-start the industry with an energy plan aimed at building at least one new nuclear power plant in the United States by 2010.

One version of the energy bill stalled in the Senate would give tax incentives to build new plants, with a cost of $10 billion. The incentives could be stripped from the bill to appease budget concerns from the administration and others.

Utilities have relied on squeezing more megawatts from existing nuclear plants. Capacity factors went from 58 percent in 1980 to 92 percent in 2002, forestalling the need to build new plants, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The industry says the NRC carefully reviews capacity increases to ensure safety.

But with a dearth of new building, aging nuclear plants pose a risk, said Jim Riccio, an antinuclear advocate at Greenpeace.

"After Three Mile Island, the pendulum definitely swung in the direction of safety," he said. "In the last 25 years, it has swung in the other direction. They're running these plants to the verge of breakdown."

- [b]By Chris Baltimore, Reuters[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Jewish Voice for Peace Condemns Israeli Killing of Hamas Leader

03.23.04 (8:02 am) [edit]

[b]Jewish Voice for Peace Condemns Israeli Killing of Hamas Leader[/b]

SAN FRANCISCO - March 22 - Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest Jewish peace group of its kind in the United States, earlier today criticized the Israeli government for its assassination of Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Yassin, one of the founders of Hamas, was killed by an Israeli missile attack. Palestinian reaction has been strong, and leaders of Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as others have made threats of escalated violence against Israelis. Israeli opposition leader Yossi Beilin said, "Pandora's box has been opened...the question is how many Israelis will be killed." Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia called this a "crazy, dangerous and cowardly act."

"Ariel Sharon has once again put Israeli lives in peril with an act that is sure to escalate the violence in this conflict," said Mitchell Plitnick, co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace. "Sharon is well aware that this action will not hurt Hamas, an organization with a de-centralized leadership structure. On the contrary, this will strengthen them. This attack has already provoked enormous sympathy for Hamas among the Palestinian population. This puts Israelis in even more danger. These extra-judicial killings are crimes against international law. They bring no one closer to peace or security and only strengthen the forces of violence."

Jewish Voice for Peace calls for international intervention to stem the tide of violence and for negotiations for a full Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967 to begin under international direction immediately.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Jewish Voice for Peace
Mitchell Plitnick 510-465-1777 http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Company With Ties To VP Cheney's Energy Task Force Faces Criminal Indictment ...

03.23.04 (7:58 am) [edit]

[b]Company With Ties To VP Cheney's Energy Task Force Faces Criminal Indictment For Gaming California Electricity Market [/b]

Three years ago, while California’s energy crisis was spiraling out of control, Vice President Dick Cheney secretly met with half-dozen corporate executives of the country’s largest energy companies to hammer out a national energy policy for President George W. Bush.

Cheney appeared on a number of news programs in May 2001 to promote his new energy policy, which turned out to be a boon for the energy industries, but abandoned consumers and environmental groups. Naturally, during some of those interviews, Cheney was asked whether a handful of the energy companies that sold electricity in California and stood to benefit financially from the new policy were behaving like a “cartel” and manipulating prices in the state’s deregulated electricity market.

“No,” Cheney said in a May 17, 2001 interview with PBS‘ “Frontline;” a day after the final energy policy report was released. "The problem you had in California was caused by a combination of things--an unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn't really deregulate. Now they're trapped from unwise regulatory schemes, plus not having addressed the supply side of the issue. They've obviously created major problems for themselves...”

California's electricity crisis wreaked havoc on millions of people in the state between 2000 and 2001, resulted in four days of rolling blackouts and forced the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its power market in an effort to provide consumers with cheaper electricity and the opportunity to choose their own power company. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $30 billion.

For three years, California officials pleaded with federal energy regulators, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, to provide the state with some relief from soaring wholesale electricity prices and to investigate many of the energy companies that sold power to California for allegedly manipulating the market.

Former Governor Gray Davis met with Bush a couple of weeks before Cheney’s “Frontline” interview and asked for federal assistance, such as price caps, but Bush refused saying the free-market would sort out the mess.

But Cheney ‘s denials that his friends in the energy sector weren’t to blame for the power crisis are sure to come back and haunt him and could hamper President Bush’s reelection campaign. Later this month, the United States Attorney’s office in the Northern District of California is expected to issue its first criminal indictment against an energy company for manipulating wholesale energy prices in California that could boost the state‘s claims that it‘s owed billions in refunds for overcharges. The company at the center of the probe is Houston-based Reliant Resources, Inc.

Reliant said in a news release March 8 that it was notified by the US Attorney’s office about the pending indictment, which stems from allegations that the company deliberately shut down its power plants in California for a few days in June 2000, creating an artificial shortage and causing wholesale prices to skyrocket.

A spokesman for the US Attorney’s office said he could not comment on pending cases, but he confirmed that his office is also seeking criminal indictments against several current and former Reliant employees whom he would not name. A Reliant spokesman said “the actions that are the subject of the United States Attorney's investigation were not in violation of laws, tariffs or regulations in effect at the time and intends vigorously to contest any charges.”

The evidence the US Attorney‘s office will use against Reliant is a recorded transcript of a conversation between a Reliant electricity trader and a power plant operator that first emerged publicly a year ago. The conversation between the two employees seemed to settle the three-year long debate about the nature of California’s energy crisis.

"[We] started out Monday losing $3 million... So, then we decided as a group that we were going to make it back up, so we turned like about almost every power plant off. It worked. Prices went back up. Made back about $4 million, actually more than that, $5 million," the Reliant trader says in a tape-recorded conversation on June 23, 2000.

The scheme worked. It caused power prices to reach “unjust” and “unreasonable” levels in California, which, under the Federal Power Act, is illegal.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency responsible for keeping the country’s wholesale electricity and natural gas markets in check, released the transcript in February 2003 after announcing that Reliant agreed to refund California $13.8 million, without admitting guilt.

What’s interesting about the allegations against Reliant is that the company has been connected to Cheney’s energy task force, which met between January and March 2001 to work on Bush’s National Energy Policy.

Reliant, along with Entergy and TXU, two other major electricity corporations based in Texas, hired Diane Allbaugh as a lobbyist. Allbaugh is the wife of Joe Allbaugh, “the only member of Bush’s so-called iron triangle of trusted Texas cohorts to have served on the energy task force” and a director of the Federal Energy Management Agency, according to an Aug. 26, 2001 report in the Los Angeles Times.

Reliant, TXU and Entergy each paid Diane Allbaugh $20,000 for consulting work during the last three months of 2000, according to her January 2001 financial disclosure report. It’s unclear whether she lobbied the energy task force on behalf of Reliant, TXU and Entergy, which would have certainly been a conflict-on-interest, but her husband, Joe Allbaugh, “has participated in task force talks with a direct bearing on the energy companies' interests generally, such as environmental rules for power plants and electricity deregulation--a specialty of his wife's,” the Times reported.

“At least twice, Joe Allbaugh was privy to updates from (Bush) economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey (a former member of Enron’s advisory board) on California's malfunctioning market, where Reliant stands accused by the state of overcharging,” the Times reported.

According to evidence obtained by Congressman Henry Waxman, D-California, last year, the energy task force "considered and abandoned plans to address California's energy problems in its report."

Whether Joe Allbaugh or his wife Diane urged Cheney to abandon the issues related to California’s energy crisis is unknown. Neither of them would return calls for comment and so far Cheney has refused to give up the names of the energy executives and lobbyists he met with. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to take up that issue later this year.

However, it’s not the first time, Diane Allbaugh has been questioned about corporate cronyism.

In 1996, the Dallas Morning News reported that Diane Allbaugh represented clients with interests in pending Texas state deregulation of telecommunications and utilities markets, while her husband served as then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff. At the time, Bush said he was troubled "if it creates a public perception that something unfair is taking place."

She eventually withdrew from the contracts she represented at the time.

While U.S. lawmakers continue to ask what the Bush administration knew about the 9-11 attacks and when they knew it, the same can be said about the administration’s knowledge about the California energy crisis.

Did Cheney publicly deny that energy companies were manipulating the market because it would have derailed the National Energy Policy? Only a Magic Eight Ball can answer that question correctly, but there appeared to have been a coordinated effort by federal energy regulators to conceal smoking-gun evidence of market manipulation in California in May 2001 around the same time that Cheney released the final version of the National Energy Policy.

Another recorded conversation between two employees of Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Cos. showed that the two men conspired to shut down a power plant in Southern California for two weeks to boost electricity prices and create an artificial shortage in the state. The scheme is identical to the one Reliant engaged in and took place during the same time, in June 2000.

But FERC, the nation’s top energy watchdogs, kept the evidence under wraps and cut a deal with Williams in May 2001--the same month Cheney released the energy policy--agreeing to refund California $8 million it obtained through the scam, without admitting any guilt.

FERC released copies of the Williams transcripts in November 2002 after the Wall Street Journal sued the commission to obtain the full copy of its report.

It's possible that Bush, Cheney and members of the energy task force were kept in the dark about the Williams and Reliant scams, but given the administration’s track record on other matters such as 9-11, the Iraq war, the Medicare legislation, etc., it doesn’t seem likely.

- [b]Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. He spent two years covering the California energy crisis and the Enron bankruptcy. He just finished writing a book on the energy crisis, which is due out in December through Rowman & Littlefield[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Company With Ties To VP Cheney's Energy Task Force Faces Criminal Indictment ...

03.23.04 (7:57 am) [edit]

Jewish Voice for Peace Condemns Israeli Killing of Hamas Leader

03.23.04 (7:55 am) [edit]

Bush Administration Launches Misleading Hydrogen Tour

03.23.04 (7:53 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Administration Launches Misleading Hydrogen Tour

[u]Secretary Abraham To Visit Six Cities Promoting Dirty Hydrogen Program[/u][/b]

WASHINGTON - March 22 - On March 23rd, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham will kick-off a six-city tour in Lansing, MI to promote the Bush Administration's highly questionable hydrogen program. Instead of creating a new clean energy vision, the Bush Administration's plan, titled "Hydrogen Power: The Promise, The Challenge," would make hydrogen in the dirtiest way possible and continue America's dependence on polluting energy sources.

"The Bush Administration's hydrogen proposal is like a nicotine patch that increases cigarette cravings," said Dan Becker, Director of Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program. "Instead of producing hydrogen with clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, the Bush Administration wants to rely on polluting coal plants and nuclear power."

Hydrogen is created by stripping hydrogen atoms from water molecules or other materials. This process requires energy. The Bush Administration's plan would use the dirtiest energy sources, like coal and nuclear power, to create this energy. Instead of handicapping a 21st century energy technology with 19th century polluting technology, the Bush Administration should be promoting a clean energy future that produces hydrogen from renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

Announced during the 2003 State of the Union address, the Bush Administration called on the Department of Energy to invest $1.7 billion in the research and development of hydrogen technologies, including automobiles, fuel cells, and hydrogen fuel infrastructure. However, the administration's hydrogen proposal requires industries to produce only hydrogen concept vehicles and "demonstration technology." The mass production of hydrogen technologies is not mandated, and there are no detailed plans for the creation of the infrastructure, like filling stations, needed to support a hydrogen economy.

"Not only is the Bush Administration promoting hydrogen from polluting sources of energy, the Administration's plan hands corporate polluters a blank check at taxpayer's expense," said Becker. "The Bush Administration's plan fails to require automakers to bring a single hydrogen vehicle onto the market."

America needs to move forward with research and development on hydrogen technology. However, many hurdles must be overcome before hydrogen can become a viable energy solution. The Bush Administration's plan is an attempt to let polluters off the hook today, with the promises of a clean future tomorrow. Instead of giving corporate polluters a pass, the Bush Administration should require them to put existing, on-the-shelf technology to work. There is a better way. By using existing fuel-saving technology, automakers could double the fuel economy of their vehicles within ten years, curbing global warming, cutting America's oil dependence, and saving consumer's money at the gas pump. We can also produce 20 percent of our electricity with clean, renewable energy sources by 2020, creating jobs and cleaning up the environment.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Sierra Club
Brian O'Malley, 202-675-6279 http://www.commondreams.org/n...

US business group slams Bush 'deception' over Iraq war

03.23.04 (7:50 am) [edit]

[b]US business group slams Bush 'deception' over Iraq war[/b]

NEW YORK (AFP) - A US business group that monitors federal spending took out a full-page advert in The New York Times, likening President George W. Bush (news - web sites) to a corrupt chief executive officer who has forfeited public trust.

Timed to coincide with the weekend anniversary of the US-led war against Iraq (news - web sites), the advertisement -- paid for by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities -- said Bush's case for invasion "was built entirely out of falsehoods."

Highlighting the cost of the war in terms of hundreds of US casualties and tens of billions of dollars, the ad said the "state-sponsored deception" underpinning the conflict dwarfed the damage caused by the series of corporate scandals that recently rocked Wall Street.

"It's past time for finger pointing," it said.

"It's time for someone in this government to step forward and take personal responsibility for the deadly deceptions used to mislead this great nation into war.

"And that someone must be George W. Bush."

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities was formed in 1996 on concerns that federal government spending priorities were undermining national security.

The group's 500 members include the present or former CEOs of Bell Industries, Eastman Kodak and Goldman Sachs, as well as CNN founder Ted Turner.

[b]U.S. National - AFP[/b], http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

Why I Believe George Bush Is Not A Christian

03.22.04 (8:07 am) [edit]

[b]Why I Believe George Bush Is Not A Christian [/b]

George Bush is not a Christian. He professes to be a believer, but his words and actions are not those of a true Christian. Let us examine his life, his record, and his words for any evidence of his purported belief in Jesus Christ. I believe that once you do, you will see that despite his professed belief in Jesus Christ, George W. Bush does not actually believe in or follow the teaching of Jesus. Once you come to that viewpoint you will also see why genuine Christians should have nothing whatsover to do with nor support him. He is a fraud, plain and simple and I believe the evidence shows that. I am not the only one who has spoken out about Mr. Bush’s alleged faith and how the manner in which he secured the presidency reflects upon that.

I make no special claim to virtue or to godliness. I try to follow the example set by Jesus Christ as best I can. I am not perfect; not one of us is, but I believe in Jesus Christ and He is my Lord. I accept that George W. Bush is also a child of God. It is not my place or purpose here to judge him, but only to present the evidence I believe shows he is not who he claims to be. God will judge Bush’s life and my own. Only God can judge him and only he can repent for his misdeeds. He cannot, however, escape the consequences of the wrongful deeds he has done.

A central theme of those pious people among us who claim to be Christian is that they follow the Ten Commandments. This is a good thing. The Commandments basically tell us we should worship God, honor our parents, don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t covet. If he really is a Christian, then George Bush would adhere to all of those commandments, right? Well, he seems to have violated at least one of them.

George Bush did not win the presidency. He stole it, http://www.sedo-parking.com/s... a fact which will be borne out in due time. He stole it because the election in Florida was fixed for his benefit. He wanted the White House in the worst way and it looks like he got his wish. Stealing is specifically prohibited by one of the Commandments, yet this is exactly what George Bush’s campaign did in Florida.

The best evidence that Bush’s campaign stole the election in Florida is what happened on the night of November 7th. Shortly before 8pm EST, the networks projected Florida and its 25 electoral votes as going into Al Gore’s column. Those projections were based on comprehensive exit polls and extremely precise statistical models. In all the years that they have been doing this, the company that does these projections for the networks has only gotten it wrong a handful of times out of thousands of projections. The chances that they called Florida wrong are in the trillions-to-one. They got it right and it was only because of bullying and fraud that George Bush “won” the state of Florida.

During his campaign, he said repeatedly that he “trusts the people” and that he would be a “uniter, not a divider” but never explained exactly what these phrases meant. Since the election, he has demonstrated precious little trust towards the people of this country and in Florida. His operatives there repeatedly demanded that recount efforts stop and his surrogates came before the media to attack those who wanted to see the recount efforts go to completion, as the law requires.

In short, his campaign did everything it could to ensure that the true will of the people of Florida was never heard. This is not the action of a Christian. At a minimum, George Bush’s “win” in Florida is tainted by the disenfranchisement of thousands of people who mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan and/or were unable to vote for Al Gore, their clear choice. At worst, as I and others believe, his campaign stole Florida. No genuine Christian would accept a “victory” colored by such dishonorable and tainted circumstances, yet George Bush struts around like he won by a landslide.

He has named people to cabinet positions who hold beliefs that are far outside the mainstream of American society, yet he seems little perturbed that these people might be divisive rather than unifying. In short, George Bush says one thing and believes something else. This is called hypocrisy and Jesus had no use for such people and rightly condemned them for their hypocrisy (Matt. 23: 1-36). In addition to that, his campaign had planned, prior to the election, to incite a popular uprising if he had won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College, according to this [i]New York Daily News [/i] http://www.nydailynews.com/20... article from November 1st.

George Bush claims that he is a “compassionate conservative” without giving much in the way of an explanation of what that means. Time and time again in the Bible, we see Jesus speaking to and ministering to the poor, the beggars, the dispossesed, the homeless. Quite clearly Our Lord cared about these people. He cared about them and ministered to them to set an example to us. We should care about those less fortunate than us. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus clearly states what fate shall befall those who do not help the poor (Matt. 25: 41-46).

Jesus has little good to say about the rich and the well-off. He lambastes them for their riches and finery while at the same time there are people in the gutters, dying of starvation and disease. I think Jesus has little use modern American culture with its emphasis in acquiring material wealth. Bush’s tax cut plan would benefit the very rich, yet as a Christian, he is called upon to show compassion to those in our society least able to provide for themselves. No true Christian would propose or support anything that benefits the rich at the expense of the rest of us. Yet this is exactly what George Bush is planning on doing.

We are told that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim. 6:10). I believe that this passage refers not just to money, but to power. Money is equivalent to power. Those who have the gold make the rules, as the saying goes. But power is a dangerous thing, like a drug. In moderation and used wisely, it can be a force for good. Power for the sake of power is bad indeed. Yet this is what George Bush seems to want. He cares only about attaining power and exhibits dangerously little regard for using that power wisely. This is not a healthy attitude for a Christian to have. God wants us to be loving and compassionate and not to be seduced by power, yet this is exactly what seems to have happened to George Bush.

If George Bush is really a Christian, then he should believe in Jesus Christ to the absolute exclusion of all other false gods, prophets, and anything else that would stand between him and the Kingdom of God as revealed by His Son. The evidence suggests otherwise. He has a history of substance abuse and I strongly suspect that he is still abusing drugs and/or alcohol. His unwillingness to discuss that abuse frankly does not lend confidence that it has ceased. As Christians, we are told that our bodies are a temple of God and we are not to abuse them (1 Cor. 6:19). Drug and alcohol abuse is not in keeping with this restriction.

Bush claims to have sobered up and become responsible when he reached forty in 1986. However, in 1992 on a videotape made at a boisterous wedding reception, Bush can be seen drinking a dark liquid from a glass. See the clip for yourself. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/... In that clip, he ridicules people who don’t drink and his behavior in the videotape suggests intoxication. Other people have noted that his appearance and demeanor during the campaign and since the election are not those of a man who has completely sobered up or committed to sobriety.

The single greatest virtue (outside of love) that Jesus taught us is that we should be humble in all things and demonstrate humility before God. Those who do so demonstrate an attitude that is much closer to genuine Christianity than the attitude displayed by many of the professed followers of Christ. Ever since the election and his assumption of the office, George W. Bush has displayed remarkably little of either humility or humbleness. He struts around like a swaggering bully, asserting that he has a "mandate" to whatever he wants just because he sits in the White House, the people be damned. Setting aside for the moment the many questions about his legitimacy, how does this attitude square with that of Christ? Tell me, would Jesus Christ act this way?

Finally, shortly after the Electoral College met, Governor Bush went on vacation in Florida. His daughter had to have an emergency appendectomy the day he left for vacation. Instead of rushing to his daughter’s side, he laughed it off and said she’d better be up and around by the next day to clean her room. This is an incredibly callous attitude for a father to take toward his daughter’s illness and recovery. This is not the attitude of a genuine Christian. Compare that to Al Gore’s reaction to when his son was hurt in a car accident; he put everything else on the back burner to be at his son’s side. So I ask you, does George W. Bush truly have “Family Values” or is he a hypocrite?

No, George Bush is not a Christian and those of you who are Christian and are supporters of his need to take a good hard look at who you are supporting and why. He did not win the presidency, he does not deserve to be president, and his life does not reflect the life and teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He does not deserve our support, only our prayers.

[b]By Liam Wescott[/b], http://www.mosquitonet.com/~letterman/bush.htm

[b][Since the time that this article was written, Bush has lied, supported corporations over people, and waged wars killing tens of thousands of innocent human beings for riches. Just because someone invokes God's Name or repeats 'God Bless America' doesn't make them religious- Bush feigns religiosity so that people can pretend he is holier-than-thou. Bush is an evil man. Bush is not a Christian. Bush is a hypocrite.][/b]

Debating "One Nation, Under God"

03.22.04 (7:49 am) [edit]

[b]"Under God"[/b]

[i][b]On March 24, the Supreme Court will begin considering whether public schools can recite the Pledge of Allegiance, "under God" and all. The American Prospect debates the subject[/b][/i].

Here are the opening statements in our online debate: First, Barry Lynn, the executive director of[i] Americans United for Separation of Church and State[/i], speaks out. Then Michael J. Perry, who teaches law at Emory University and is the author of [i]Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy, makes a case for keeping God in the Pledge of Allegiance[/i].

[b]Barry Lynn[/b]:

The Constitution forbids government from meddling in the religious lives of the American people. Yet Congress did just that in 1954 by adding the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. A patriotic and civic ritual was thus transformed into a profession of faith.

As a Christian minister, I certainly have no problem with God. But I respect the right of my fellow Americans to take a different view. And I ardently oppose any effort by the government to undermine the constitutional freedoms that each of us enjoy.

When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals barred public schools from sponsoring recitations of the Pledge with its "under God" language, the judges were not expressing hostility to religion or to patriotism. Rather, they were honoring what our patriots have always fought for, the time-tested tradition of freedom of conscience.

As one judge on the appeals court put it, if government officials are allowed to ask children to pledge allegiance to "one nation under God," they may in principle also ask children to honor "one nation under Jesus" or "one nation under Vishnu" or "one nation under no god." Once the government is permitted to intrude into the sacred precincts of conscience, where will it stop?

Pledge defenders say they are standing up for religion. Ironically, they're doing the opposite. A truly religious person should be wary of by-rote, watered-down expressions of religiosity that are performed without feeling and emotion. Does encouraging children to mumble their way through a Pledge with a passing reference to God foster real religious faith? I doubt it. Exposing our children to pseudo-religious patriotism every school day is no substitute for the meaningful religious instruction offered voluntarily by the nation's houses of worship.

Studies show that many young children have no idea what the words to the Pledge of Allegiance even mean. Rather than engage in what is for many an empty and formulaic ritual, wouldn't we be better off returning to the pre-"under God" Pledge and focusing on teaching our children about the shared civic virtues that statement promises?

The Newdow case specifically deals with recitation of the Pledge in a public school setting. The Supreme Court has always recognized a distinction between public education and other units of government. Other arms of the state may do some things that public schools are forbidden to do. For example, the Supreme Court has held that state legislatures may hire chaplains and pay them with tax funds, but a government-funded chaplain at a public school would never survive court scrutiny. Nothing in the court's jurisprudence indicates that public schools may sponsor religious activity, even generic or watered-down religiosity.

I'd say that Americans should be suspicious of those who are trying to exploit the court's decision for their own purposes. Our politicians are rushing to embrace the Pledge and its "under God" language. While I am sure some of them are sincere in their views, many are also using this issue as any easy way to curry favor with the voters.

Some members of Congress have called for a federal law denying the courts the right to rule on issues such as the Pledge. Others are pressing for a constitutional amendment that would allow not only "under God" in the Pledge, but also majority-rules prayer in public schools and majority-rules religious displays in public buildings.

The drive for this merger of religion and government is being fueled by Religious Right groups that do not respect individual freedom. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others like them want an officially Christian nation, and they want their interpretation of the Bible to be written into law.

I recognize that the majority of Americans probably support the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge. But we must remember that in the United States, the majority does not rule when it comes to matters of faith. Here the individual conscience reigns supreme, and no government official has the authority to mix religion and state. This is not Iran, where the government imposes religion on everyone by decree.

At a time when America is fighting terrorists who seek to impose their radical religious vision of the whole world by force and violence, we must not succumb to the temptation to merge religion and government here.

Thus there is much more at stake in this discussion than two words in the Pledge.

As Justice Robert Jackson put it in a 1943 Supreme Court decision, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

I say amen to that.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

[b]Michael Perry[/b]:

There is a virtual consensus in the United States that the government should not establish religion. In other words, government may not act for the purpose of favoring any church in relation to any other church on the basis of the view that the favored church is, as a church or as a community of faith, better along one or another dimension of value -- truer, for example, or more efficacious spiritually, or more authentically American.

There is no serious controversy about this central meaning of the nonestablishment norm. There is a controversy, however, about what we should understand it to forbid in one or another context. Should we understand the nonestablishment norm such that government affirmation of any religious premise, no matter what premise it is, necessarily violates the norm?

There are many different ways in which government affirms, or has affirmed, one or more religious premises. The most prominent example is the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, as decreed by Congress in 1954. If we should understand the nonestablishment norm such that government affirmation of any religious premise necessarily violates the norm, then this clearly violates the nonestablishment norm. But is that the best understanding of what the nonestablishment norm forbids?

I am about to sketch two different understandings of what the nonestablishment norm forbids in this context. But it bears emphasis that no plausible understanding denies either of two points: First, the nonestablishment norm forbids government from affirming any religious premise whose affirmation by government would favor any particular religion. For example, government may not affirm -- explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly -- that Jesus is Lord, or that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church. Second, even if there are one or more religious premises that government may affirm, government may not coerce anyone to affirm the premise.

Now, a more restrictive understanding of the nonestablishment norm would state that government may not affirm any religious premise whatsoever. A second, less restrictive understanding says that government may affirm any religious premise whatsoever whose affirmation by government would not violate the central meaning of the norm.

The more restrictive understanding is problematic for two reasons. The first is a matter of principle: The more restrictive understanding presupposes that there is no religious premise whose affirmation by government would be acceptable. But this is false. Since 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance has echoed Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in declaring that we are "one nation under God." In affirming, with Lincoln, that ours is a nation that stands under the judgment of a righteous God, it seems clear that government is not treating any church (or any range of theologically kindred churches) as the official church of the political community; government is not bestowing legal favor or privilege on any church in relation to any other church; government is not taking any action that assumes any church is superior to any other church along one or another dimension of value; government is not privileging membership in, or a worship practice of, any church.

Now, the second reason that the more restrictive understanding is problematic: Very few citizens of the United States would take seriously a constitutional provision according to which having "under God" in the Pledge is unconstitutional. Such a provision would be widely regarded, and widely dismissed, as extreme. One might say that this is a bad reason -- at the very least, a problematic reason -- for rejecting a proper understanding of a constitutional norm. Nevertheless, it seems to me undeniable that the second reason, which is a matter of political realism, reinforces the first reason, which is a matter of principle. My strong sense is that the vast majority of American citizens, including many who are not religious believers, would agree with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that, ";Although the Constitution says that government cannot 'establish' or promote religion, the framers did not intend for God to be stripped from public life."

In a recent essay, Cornell law professor Steve Shiffrin claimed that the United States has evolved from a country that is historically Christian into a country that is "officially monotheistic." Shiffrin then states: "Proponents of a high wall between church and state, who would remove 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance, are wishing for a country that does not exist and probably never will. Our Constitution must be interpreted in the light of our evolving traditions -- like it or not. So we make compromises and today government can say 'In God we trust' on its coins but not 'In Christ we trust.'"

Shiffrin's claim -- that the United States, though much less religiously sectarian than it used to be, is "officially monotheistic" -- is interesting, provocative, and, I think, substantially correct. We could go further and embrace an understanding of the nonestablishment norm according to which the government could not affirm any religious premise that, though nonsectarian as among the monotheistic faiths, is sectarian as between the monotheistic faiths and non-monotheistic faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism. That conclusion, however, would be radically out of synch with any historical or traditional understanding of what the nonestablishment norm forbids, as well as with the sentiments and sensibilities of the overwhelming majority of the population -- so radically out of synch that any understanding of the nonestablishment norm that would require this conclusion is, if not unacceptable, at least deeply problematic. If the Supreme Court, in a science-fiction scenario, were to hold that having "under God" in the Pledge is unconstitutional, "We the People" would rush to amend the Constitution to overrule the Court.

Click here to read the debaters' responses. http://www.prospect.org/webfe...

[i][b]Barry Lynn is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Michael J. Perry teaches law at Emory University and is the author of "Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy." Jeff Dubner is an editorial intern for The American Prospect.[/b][/i] http://www.prospect.org/webfe...

Carbon dioxide buildup seen accelerating

03.22.04 (7:42 am) [edit]

[b]Carbon dioxide buildup seen accelerating[/b]

Carbon dioxide, the gas seen largely responsible for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano.

The reason for the faster buildup of the most important "greenhouse gas" will require further analysis, the US government specialists say.

"But the big picture is that CO2 is continuing to go up," said Russell Schnell, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate monitoring laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which operates the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii.

Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline, and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases.

The climatologists forecast continued temperature rises that will disrupt the climate, cause seas to rise, and lead to other unpredictable consequences -- unpredictable in part because of uncertainties in computer modeling of future climate.

Before the industrial age and extensive use of fossil fuels, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at about 280 parts per million, scientists have determined. Average readings at the 11,141-foot Mauna Loa Observatory, where carbon dioxide density peaks each northern winter, hovered around 379 parts per million on Friday, compared with about 376 a year ago.

That year-to-year increase of about 3 parts per million is higher than the average annual increase of 1.8 parts per million over the past decade, and markedly more accelerated than the 1-part-per-million annual increase recorded a half-century ago, when observations were first made here.

Asked to explain the stepped-up rate, climatologists were cautious, saying data needed to be further evaluated.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that, if unchecked, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by 2100 will range from 650 to 970 parts per million.

[b]WHY ISN'T THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CONCERNED ABOUT THIS THREAT TO OUR ENVIRONMENT INSTEAD OF THE "THREAT" OF GAY MARRIAGE?[/b]

- [b]By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press[/b], http://www.boston.com/news/na...

Bush Turns His Back on Patients While Supporting Big HMO Corporations

03.22.04 (7:38 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Turns His Back on Fight for Patients' Rights[/b]

[b]By M. Gregg Bloche, M. Gregg Bloche teaches law and health policy at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities and is at work on a book about conflict between medicine's therapeutic and public purposes[/b]. http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,0,1856066.story?coll=la-news-commen t-opinions

WASHINGTON — Four years ago, then-Gov. George W. Bush cast himself as a champion of patients' rights. Pressed by Al Gore in their final presidential debate on whether patients should be allowed to sue health plans for wrongfully withholding care, he pointed to a pioneering Texas law passed on his watch. "I brought Republicans and Democrats together … to get a patients' bill of rights," Bush said. "We are one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage."

But President Bush, it seems, has changed his mind. The Texas law he championed is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, and this week the administration will ask that the justices strike it down. More broadly, the administration will ask the court to abandon a body of recent precedents that expose the managed-care industry in many states to negligence suits for withholding of coverage and care. Legal accountability for denying coverage, it contends, could prevent the creation of "innovative health plans."

At the center of the dispute is a 30-year-old federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, enacted to safeguard workers' fringe benefits. Because the vast majority of Americans younger than 65 obtain their health insurance through the workplace, the law applies to nearly all private medical coverage.

Because ERISA nullifies state laws that conflict with it, health insurers try to use it as a shield against state laws they don't like. Above all, they dislike being sued for damages when they deny coverage. In the early 1990s, some lower courts accepted health insurers' claim that ERISA bars such suits in state courts. Because ERISA lacks an alternative tort remedy, health insurers were thereby insulated from damage suits.

But that outraged consumer groups, doctors and public officials who demanded accountability for managed care. Texas and nine other states, including California, passed "right-to-sue" laws to get around the ERISA shield. Meanwhile, federal courts, beginning in the mid-1990s, chipped away at insurers' ERISA protections.

Then, four years ago, the Supreme Court weighed in, asserting that because HMO coverage decisions involve medical judgment, ERISA doesn't shield managed care from suits filed in state courts. Because healthcare is "a subject of traditional state regulation," the court said, coverage decisions that entail medical judgment are fair game for malpractice suits. Lower courts read this statement as a directive to end managed care's immunity from suits charging wrongful denial of coverage. In the case the justices will hear this week, Aetna vs. Davila, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals relied upon the Supreme Court statement to uphold the Texas law championed by candidate Bush but now targeted by his administration.

Managed-care lawyers claim that the Supreme Court's statement four years ago applies only to clinical decisions made by physicians who both provide care and act as treatment gatekeepers for health plans. Medical judgments made by plan employees who aren't hands-on caregivers, they argue, should be immune from suits, despite their decisive effect on coverage and care.

By backing this claim in the current case before the Supreme Court, the Bush administration has given new life to insurers' quest to restore their lost immunity. Its intervention — administration lawyers filed a brief and will share time with managed-care lawyers at Tuesday's oral arguments — jeopardizes the survival of managed-care liability laws in Texas, California and elsewhere.

What's at stake in managed care's bid to regain its immunity? For one thing, there is the risk of a return to cost control on the sly, through the promise of all "medically necessary" care but the provision of less without fear of legal consequences. Legal accountability pushes health-insurance plans toward honesty about how they go about saying no to treatment requests. This, in turn, forces patients and physicians to confront hard choices between rising costs and the sacrifice of clinical benefits.

For health plans, cost control on the sly is an unhappy long-term proposition. Exposure of gaps between what plans promise and what they deliver is inevitable, as the consumer backlash against managed care in the late 1990s showed. That protest gained strength despite the industry's malpractice immunity. Press coverage, legislative hearings, political speeches and even movies and TV spotlighted (and caricatured) stingy HMO bureaucrats. Americans responded by abandoning managed care — or, more commonly, pushing their employers to do so.

Health-plan immunity from damage suits for denying coverage would fall especially hard on the least well-off. Consider two patients, one without savings, the other wealthy. Each is told by her doctor that a $75,000 breast-cancer treatment could save her life. If her HMO refuses to authorize the treatment, the well-off patient can pay for it herself, get care, then sue the HMO (under ERISA) to recover the treatment's cost. But unless the patient without savings takes extraordinary measures — say, a fund drive at work or in her community — she won't be able to afford the treatment out of pocket. She'll thus go without — and be barred from suing her HMO for the consequences.

The Bush administration's legal argument for restoring managed care's immunity would make acceptance of this unfair result explicit. HMO-coverage denials aren't medical decisions, the administration contends, because patients can pay for treatment with other funds. Most people, though, can't pay out-of-pocket for hospital care — or even for pricey outpatient therapies. Acknowledging that coverage decisions dictate treatment for all but the wealthiest forces the conclusion that coverage denials are medical judgments, for which HMOs can be held accountable under state law.

There's a case to be made against looking to medical malpractice suits when managed care yields bad results. Our tort system rewards some injured patients handsomely, in nearly random fashion, while leaving the vast majority with nothing. This makes for Russian roulette for doctors, hospitals and health insurance plans — and no assurance that injured patients will be made whole.

But if we get rid of lawsuits, we need a substitute, short of immunity, to ensure that health plans honor their coverage obligations. National debate about how to balance medical care's benefits against its costs — and how to maximize quality of care within limited health plan budgets — is urgently needed.

Researchers have developed a variety of quality-control measures, monitoring methods and other ways to achieve accountability for care and coverage decisions. Courts, regulators and buyers of medical coverage have been slow to take advantage of them. There's much that the federal government could do to encourage their use — and to make trade-offs between cost and quality more visible.

But instead, the administration is trying to shield health plans by stealth from accountability for denying coverage.

Were Bush to propose publicly that Congress immunize HMOs from suits for withholding care, there would surely be a firestorm of public anger. But his administration is on the verge of achieving the same result from the Supreme Court, almost without notice, veiled by the arcane language of the law.

Brand-Name Price Gouging

03.22.04 (7:34 am) [edit]

[b]Brand-Name Price Gouging[/b]

After a year's delay in funding, the Bush administration's five-year, $15 billion global AIDS initiative has finally been unveiled. Two weeks ago, the 99-page report of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was submitted to Congress, and U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias hit the forum circuit, discussing future strategy. As part of that strategy, 55 percent of the Plan's total funds will be earmarked for treatment, with 75 percent of that amount reserved solely for the provision of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs – the cocktail therapy that helps keep AIDS patients alive.

Lacking in the discussion, however, is mention of how current U.S. trade policies may undermine the ability of developing countries – those in urgent need of medicine – to expand their access to ARVs. According to international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, the U.S. has exercised stringent intellectual property protections in bilateral and regional trade negotiations to curtail generic competition – leaving the poverty-stricken developing countries that often have the highest number of AIDS cases in the lurch. "This is an immediate concern for us," says Rachel Cohen, US Director of Doctor's Without Borders Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. "When it comes to trade, health is always at the bottom of the agenda."

The trade pacts include the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) draft, currently under negotiation, US-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), finalized last December, and trade deals with the South African Customs Union, Thailand and Morocco. Under CAFTA, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua will be obliged to extend pharmaceutical patent terms beyond the 20 years required in World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. Proposed FTAA provisos include a five-year delay for small generic companies using test results completed by brand-name competitors, and restrictions on compulsory licensing – which allows governments to authorize themselves or a third party to produce generic medicine without the patent holder's approval.

"The consequence will be very clear," says Cohen, who finds the restrictions worrisome. Both agreements, she says, undermine the Doha Declaration on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which explicitly prioritized public health over profit. "There will be thousands of needless deaths every year because the drugs are too expensive."

Over the past few years, generic competition has ensured sustained price reduction, dramatically driving down costs from $10,000 to roughly $300 per person per year. From 2000-2002, Oxfam International conducted research on the price of brand name drugs in Uganda and discovered that prices fell by as much as 97 percent over two years. The largest decreases were for Stavudine/ D4T, which fell from $173 in May 2000 to $6 in April 2002. In Latin America, which has 1.9 million HIV cases of 42 million total worldwide, countries have relied heavily on generic drugs to save lives. For example, Brazil's free AIDS drug program has treated more than 110,000 HIV-positive people with primarily generic medicines. Mortality rates have dropped by over 60 percent.

Lack of generic competition can lead to market monopolization, which inevitably hurts developing countries. One such example is that of Merck & Co, which patented Stocrin (efavirenz, EFV), an antiretroviral recommended by the World Health Organization for treatment. ERV comes in a 600mg combination formulation, which enables patients to take one tablet a day, or 200mg capsules, taken three times. As yet, Merck has not registered the fixed dose combination in low and middle-income countries, despite promises to do so in 2002. Because virtually no generic competition for ERV exists, countries such as South Africa must pay for each individual drug – the only formulation available – hiking costs 44 percent higher, according to Doctors Without Borders. On March 3, the organization renewed its calls for Merck to stop backsliding on its pledge.

In terms of the President's 5-year strategy for AIDS relief, Ambassador Tobias has remarked that the government's policy will be to buy safe, effective drugs at the lowest possible price. "Now, if those happen to be drugs that are manufactured by generic companies, fine; if those are drugs that are manufactured by brand name companies, fine," Tobias said during a briefing at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Public Affairs. However, Tobias, former chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly, might be swayed by brand name lobbying when it comes to allocating spending.

Tobias has plans to meet with the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory bodies in the upcoming month, to discuss drug safety and efficacy standards. "I think there's a real possibility that the issue of price affordability is going to become less of an issue," he said during a Q&A session at an American Enterprise Institute forum February 5, later adding, "If we can get effective, safe products that are going to work, we're going to buy them."

Tobias' words are not something Asia Russell, co-coordinator for international policy at Health GAP, is willing to bank on. Health GAP is a U.S.-based activist organization focused on increasing developing counties' access to AIDS treatment. "Bilateral plans are turning into a slush fund for Big Pharma," said Russell, who spoke from Zimbabwe, where she was attending a regional AIDS conference. Russell said attendees were "extraordinarily angry" at the U.S.'s efforts at political arm-twisting in trade talks. "It's hypocrisy. The Bush Administration is exploiting the issue of the AIDS pandemic to cast a worthy glow. But it's denying countries the right to obtain what makes sense – drugs at lower cost and maximum coverage."

While Tobias has spoken broadly about intellectual property concerns, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson has openly defended the U.S.'s tough pro-IP stance. "We're going to protect intellectual property rights," Tompson said during the American Enterprise Institute forum. Tompson stated the pharmaceutical industry had a corporate responsibility to offer low prices, yet he remained adamant that he wasn't willing to "stifle the innovation of pharmaceutical companies" to create new drugs.

The industry's interest in safeguarding its tremendous investment is unmistakable. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry, including the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a coalition of six U.S. trade groups, has asked for the "highest levels of protection" under the FTAA. Repeated phone calls to the IIPA went unreturned.

The outcome of regional negotiations has already shown how powerful the U.S. has been in forcing the hand of developing countries to accept restrictive measures that curtail WTO requirements. In 2003, Guatemala modified its national intellectual property bill to consent to a standard of five years exclusivity on pharmaceutical test data, effectively blocking the entry of low cost generics.

"There's no question the government has been very reluctant for developing countries to have access to generics," says Mark Harrington, executive director of Treatment Action Group, an organization that advocates for efficient research efforts for AIDS. Harrington believes this is further exacerbated by finance and trade ministers, with little knowledge of AIDS issues, who negotiate away certain rights under pressure. "Ministers of Health and certainly sick people are not part of that decision-making process," adds Sharonann Lynch of Health GAP. "The U.S. has quadrupled the number of trade negotiators signing on to talks. It's no secret they negotiate aggressively for what they want."

Harrington believes the issue is not only one of intellectual property protection, but "a matter of where U.S. dollars are being spent," and this raises a valid point. The generic cost for six-dose combination ARV therapy at two pills a day runs about $270 per patient per year, according to a price guide published by WHO and DWB. This cost could drop much lower for certain eligible countries – to $132, a price reduction secured by the Clinton Foundation. Separate drugs sold from a brand name company, however, cost $562.

Examining market alternatives to ensure the lowest possible cost may prove the key to saving more lives – a stated goal of the Bush Administration. And with the President's commitment of $15 billion of the American public's money to address the global AIDS pandemic, where tax dollars ultimately go remains a fundamental issue. "If you pay brand name prices you'll keep one person alive," says Cohen. "But if you use bio-equivalent, quality medicine produced by generic manufactures that meet international standards set by the WTO, you will keep three people alive at current prices."

- [b]Dara Colwell is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn[/b]., http://www.alternet.org/story...

Bush Administration Ignores Public Health Issues: Clean Water Fact

03.22.04 (7:31 am) [edit]

[b]Clean water fact[/b]

If concern for public health doesn't sufficiently inspire Bush to ensure that the 'Clean Water Act' is an act that cleans water, perhaps losing votes will. GOP pollster Frank Luntz warned the Bush administration in a memo last month: 'Young and old, Democrat AND Republican, the demand for clean water is universal...I'll be blunt...this issue is NOT going to go away. The environment is an area in which Americans expect progress to be made, and when they do not see progress being made, they get frustrated.'

If Luntz is right and clean water becomes a voting issue Bush could be in trouble. Noting that the 'Clean Water Act' is anything but, is more than just cute wordplay. Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earth Justice, points out in a [i]BushGreenWatch alert[/i]: http://www.bushgreenwatch.org... 'From more toxic pollution, to sewage discharges, to mountaintop removal mining, this administration is the worst for clean water since the Clean Water Act was passed 30 years ago.'

On the table are still more proposals to weaken regulations on the nation's waters by both the EPA and the Interior Department.

So if, '83% of those polled supported the idea of a trust fund for clean water infrastructure or, as the Luntz memo asserts 'the public is willing to pay for it,' then why wouldn't Bush go ahead and do what's both the responsible and politically expedient thing?

Perhaps it's because coal mining companies, whose mountaintop strip mining buries streams as it generates large profits, donated over $7 million http://www.opensecrets.org/in... to the Republican party since 2000 — more than the combined total donated to both parties during the previous 10 years.

[u][b]Sign a petition to urge Bush to protect drinking water[/b][/u]: http://www.thepetitionsite.co...[partnerID]=1&sign[member ID]=699891150&sign[partne r_userID]=699891150

US Wood Importers Pillage Virgin Indonesian Rainforests

03.22.04 (7:27 am) [edit]

[b]US Wood Importers Pillage Virgin Indonesian Rainforests

[i]RAN Calls For Moratorium To Help End Massacre - Yale Research Confirms Environmental Impact of Crime and Corruption[/i][/b]

SAN FRANCISCO - March 19 - Rainforest Action Network sent letters to 163 U.S. tropical wood importers and members of the International Wood Products Association calling for an immediate corporate embargo on forest-based products from Indonesia’s ravaged rainforests. The letter follows Science magazine’s publication of new research from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies confirming ‘expansive and accelerating deforestation’ of the country’s ‘protected areas’ and calling for ‘immediate transnational management’ to end the massacre.

In the March 18, 2004 letter, Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune reiterated Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri’s plea for an international moratorium to help stop illegal logging. It affirmed widespread acknowledgement that reduced-impact logging and stump-to-store bar coding schemes have failed, quoting the Indonesian Minister of Forests’ admission that “it has become clear that Indonesia will not overcome illegal logging without stemming the foreign demand for Indonesian logs and forestry products.” Mr. Brune challenges U.S. companies to join Centex Homes, International Paper and Lanoga Corporation and suspend purchasing from the region until legal supplies are verifiable. A copy of the letter is available at www.ran.org/indonesiamoratorium.

The February 13, 2004 issue of Science magazine exposes the environmental destruction caused by decades of corruption and crime. Satellite and field-based analyses conclusively show that since 1985 over 50 percent of protected lowland forests have been destroyed. Despite a declining resource base caused by decimated forests, Indonesian loggers and mills have maintained excessive production capacities. Over the past two decades, the volume of timber exports from Borneo has exceeded all wood exports from tropical Africa and South America combined. Most legal Indonesian concessions have been depleted of their harvestable timber and abandoned by loggers who have illegally expanded their uncontrolled clearcuts into protected areas. Except for the remote Betung Kerihun National Park–also currently being logged–large, intact protected lowlands no longer exist in Kalimantan. The team of international scientists concluded that “stemming the flow of illegal wood from Borneo requires international efforts” and that a failure to institute solutions will lead to “irreversible ecological degradation.”

“Indonesia is ground zero for illegal logging,” said Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforest Action Network. “Corrupt logging companies are pillaging Indonesia’s virgin rainforests and turning Borneo into a barren wasteland. American corporations that are trading in illegal Indonesian timber are as guilty as the criminals who supply them.”

According to an October 27, 2003 BusinessWeek editorial titled “Indonesia’s Chainsaw Massacre,” the country’s rainforests are “disappearing at a rate equivalent to the area of 300 soccer fields every hour” to offer “Western consumers cheap lumber.” Rainforest Action Network’s 2003 report, “Importing Destruction,” documents the connections of U.S. companies to the international market for Indonesian tropical plywood.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Rainforest Action Network
Paul West (415) 398-4404 x319 http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Lead contamination of water supply in US capital

03.22.04 (7:23 am) [edit]

[b]Lead contamination of water supply in US capital[/b]

Tens of thousands of residents of Washington, DC, have been drinking water with lead levels as much as 40 times the maximum set under US health standards, officials of the city’s Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) have admitted.

The contamination is the worst ever seen in a major urban water system, federal water quality officials told a congressional hearing earlier this month. Benjamin H. Grumbles, the acting EPA assistant administrator for water, said that higher lead levels had been found only in toxic waste dumps covered by the federal Superfund cleanup program.

More than 600 children in the District of Columbia have been given blood tests since in the last few weeks. They had an average blood lead level 47 percent higher than the national average, 2.8 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, compared to the 1.9 micrograms. Thirteen of these children had blood lead levels over 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood, the official EPA threshold of concern. No level of lead exposure is considered safe, especially for children under six.

Since the first published report on lead contamination January 31, a spectacle of indifference, malfeasance and cover-up has come to light, with both District of Columbia and federal government officials implicated in a scandal which may have done irreparable harm to the city’s population.

Lead is a powerful toxic substance with particularly devastating effects on young children and fetuses. It causes behavioral and learning problems and reduced IQ in children exposed to it—most of them through ingesting paint chips in old dwellings with lead-based paint.

According to the DC Health Department, nearly 2,000 city residents have been tested at screening sites, with 13 children under six and three adults found to have elevated lead levels. None of the 86 pregnant or nursing women tested so far had excessive lead in their blood. But those tested constitute only a tiny fraction of the population that has been drinking the lead-contaminated water for the past two years.

Both WASA and EPA officials were aware of extremely high levels of lead in the city’s water system more than 18 months ago, but they deliberately concealed the toxic danger while assuring the public that the city’s water supply was safe.

The contamination of the water supply is apparently the byproduct of the actions of the Army Corps of Engineers, owner the Washington Aqueduct, the main conduit for the water supply of WASA’s service area, which includes the District of Columbia and neighboring Arlington and Falls Church, Virginia.

As early as 1997, according to an account published in the Washington Post, an EPA consultant warned that the Washington Aqueduct had to adopt one of two possible methods to mitigate lead contamination. It was necessary either to sharply reduce the water’s pH level, the measure of its acidity, or to reduce the pH by a lesser amount while introducing a chemical additive called orthophosphate. Otherwise the corrosive effect of water running through the city’s plumbing, much of it consisting of aging lead piping, would leach lead into the drinking water supply.

For a combination of budgetary and technical reasons, these warnings were ignored, and the Corps of Engineers adopted a policy of reducing pH by a small amount but without adding orthophosphate, because that would require costly sewage treatment at the other end of the water cycle. The EPA approved this non-solution in a letter dated May 2002.

By then, WASA’s water quality manager Seema S. Bhat had learned of significant lead contamination in the water supply and was warning her superiors. Bhat was eventually fired in March 2003 for going over the heads of city officials and informing the EPA about the lead problem. Bhat has filed suit for improper termination and won a preliminary ruling from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration last year ordering her reinstatement.

Bhat emailed her boss, Kofi A. Boateng, on July 30, 2002, to inform him about the lead contamination—then reaching 75 parts per billion, five times the level considered safe by the EPA. Boateng did not open the email for two weeks, and then denounced Bhat for going to the EPA and recommended that she be fired.

There was further correspondence between WASA and the federal agency, between various branches of the District government, and inside the EPA itself for the next year and a half, without any action being taken either to remedy the problem or notify the public. WASA and EPA officials continued to oppose adding phosphates to the water supply because of the additional cost of sewage treatment

WASA was required under federal rules to notify consumers of the lead contamination level and carry out a public education campaign. The agency satisfied the form but not the substance of this obligation, in a particularly cynical manner. Last year it sent customers a glossy annual report headlined, “Your Drinking Water is Safe,” with disclaimers buried inside, in small print, noting that samples taken at numerous homes had found excessive levels of toxins such as lead.

In October 2003 the crisis came to a head when new WASA studies were submitted to the EPA showing that 4,000 of the 6,000 homes tested had unacceptable levels of lead contamination, as high as 300 parts per billion. Both agencies still kept quiet until the first reports appeared in the Post on January 31, 2004.

The last six weeks have seen a scramble to escape responsibility and accountability for the scandal. Officials of WASA, the EPA and the Corp of Engineers have pointed fingers at each other, while releasing contradictory and frequently misleading information about what precautions District residents should take.

WASA initially claimed that only the 23,000 District homes with lead-lined service lines—the lines connecting the home to the water main—were at risk. Many other homes in the city, however, have lead pipes, solder or leaded brass faucets which can also contribute to lead leaching. For another 37,000 homes, WASA does not know the metallic composition of the service lines, frequently buried underground.

When testing was extended last month to newer homes with copper service lines, nearly 10 percent had dangerous lead levels in their water. High lead levels were also found in Arlington, across the river from Washington, DC, a relatively affluent area with more modern water infrastructure.

The city health department issued a health advisory in February urging young children, pregnant women and nursing mothers not to drink unfiltered tap water in the 23,000 homes with lead service lines. Two weeks ago, WASA began distributing free water filters to residents of those homes, and on March 16 Mayor Anthony Williams ordered the agency to mail a filter to every one of the 23,000 homes.

The filters last only two months and must be replaced, an expense which many of the city’s poorer residents will be reluctant to incur. Moreover, they are not effective in stopped lead contamination levels as high as 710 parts per billion—a staggering 47 times the legal level—found in some homes recently tested.

The lead contamination scandal has two important political dimensions. It reveals the complete indifference of federal officials to the health of the people of the District of Columbia, largely black and working class. And it exposes the fraud of the Bush administration’s “homeland security” campaign. While seeking to whip up hysteria over alleged threats to the nation’s capital from terrorists armed with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, the administration ignores the real threat to public health and safety posed by the crumbling infrastructure of American society.

- [b]By Patrick Martin, WSWS[/b], http://www.wsws.org/articles/...

"The Consequences of Bush's War" by Patrick J. Buchanan

03.22.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

[b]The Consequences of Bush's War [/b]

A year has elapsed since President Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Iraq. Since that March day, 2003, it has become clear as crystal: Operation Iraqi Freedom was an unnecessary war.

Saddam had had no role in 9-11 or the anthrax attack, no plans to attack us or to invade his neighbors. He was contained by US power and his own weakness. American planes had flown 40,000 sorties in 10 years over Iraq without losing a single aircraft to hostile fire. And Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.

It was a war of choice, "Mr. Bush's War," as the War of 1812 was "Mr. Madison's War," the Mexican War was "Jimmy Polk's War" and World War I was "Mr. Wilson's War." Neoconservatives who schemed for a decade to have us invade, occupy and vassalize Iraq say we liberated the country from tyranny, blew a hole in the phalanx of hostile Islamic states and are building a democracy that will be an inspiration to the Middle East.

Better still, we are positioned to use our power against Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia in the war against Islamo-fascism that is the great cause of our generation.

John Pilger quotes Richard Perle in the Mirror two years ago: "[i]This is total war ... if we just let our vision of the world go forth[/i]."

Whether the war was necessary or not, neocons says, it was a just and wise war. Better that we fight now when we can readily prevail than wait for Saddam or his sons to acquire atomic weapons. Even if Saddam's weapons programs had not matured, we could not take the chance, says President Bush. I did the right thing. I take full responsibility. Deal with it.

Whether one agrees with Bush and Cheney, they are unapologetic. They stand by the war. But what is the argument for John Kerry?

Had he been a principled antiwar candidate, we would have a great debate over how best to cope with the soaring anti-Americanism that is the spawning pool of terror. But we have no debate.

For there is no party in Washington that speaks for those of us who believe America should stay out of these religious and tribal wars from Morocco to Malaysia where no vital US interest is at risk. There is only one vital interest in this region -- oil, and Iran and the Arabs must sell it to survive, no matter the regime in power.

We will have no debate because John Kerry voted to give Bush a blank check to take us to war. Under attack by Howard Dean, he then pirouetted and voted to deny Bush the funds to consolidate America's victory. Now he says he was misled. A profile in opportunism.

Kerry calls to mind FDR's story told about the chameleon. When they put it down on a brown rug, it turned brown. When they put it down on a green rug, it turned green. But when they put it down on a Scotch plaid, the chameleon died.

And so the big questions will go unaddressed.

Can the United States afford the cost in blood and treasure of a Bush policy of preventive war, when the occupation of one Arab country of 23 million has tied down half our armed forces and cost $200 billion?

Can we maintain our imperial presence in 120 countries with an Army of half a million men? Should we double the size of our Army to maintain our commitments, or cut back on our commitments to defend other nations' frontiers and fight other nations' wars?

Is the vast presence of US forces in the Islamic world a deterrent to terrorism, or an incitation to terror? Where hatred of America is pandemic, is disengagement a wiser policy than intervention? Has the war and occupation of Iraq reduced terror or given jihadists a rallying cause? The Spanish might have some thoughts on this.

With Iran and North Korea closer to a nuclear capacity than Saddam ever was, was it wise to tear up alliances and tie down our military ousting a dictator who, no matter how odious, was no threat?

Given our budget deficits, the overextension of our military, our isolation from allies and the opposition of Congress, is the Bush policy of preventive war already a dead letter?

Finally, why do scores of millions of Arab and Islamic peoples hate us and wish to see us humiliated in Iraq? At one time, we were the most admired nation on earth. Is any of this our fault, unpatriotic as that question may seem?

- [b]By Patrick J. Buchanan[/b], http://antiwar.com/pat/?artic...

Deficit Delusions As Republicans Squander Their Fiscal Discipline Image

03.22.04 (7:18 am) [edit]

[b]Deficit delusions[/b]

CONGRESSIONAL Republicans are about to squander the last of their traditional reputation as the party of fiscal discipline. Facing record deficits, fanciful cost estimates for the recently enacted Medicare drug bill, and a restive conservative base, the House Budget Committee voted last week to adopt restrictive rules for any new government spending. But the committee specifically exempted tax cuts from the requirement that new spending be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget. "New spending does not help maximize economic growth and tax cuts do," explained a Republican committee member, Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Well, not exactly. New spending on education and job training is a crucial investment in the productivity of America's workers. New spending on the National Institutes of Health stimulates biotech and other emerging industries. New spending on public works projects such as the Central Artery in Boston creates thousands of jobs and will be an engine of economic growth across the region for years to come.

Meanwhile, it is unclear that the Bush tax cuts -- with the possible exception of the $300-per-person instant infusion adopted in 2001 -- have done much to promote economic growth. The massive breaks for the wealthy have had several years to work their trickle-down magic, yet job growth is still anemic enough that the Bush team has readjusted its job creation projections downward several times. Just 21,000 new jobs were created in February, according to the US Labor Department, while more than 2 million have been lost since 2001.

The Bush team's cures for a sluggish economy range from A to B -- tax cuts and more tax cuts. Now the president wants to make them permanent. Doing that would balloon the deficit by $1 trillion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, told Congress last month that exempting tax cuts from the "pay as you go rule" would set back the cause of fiscal discipline.

The Republicans can claim that the swerve from record surpluses at the end of the Clinton administration to record deficits today has been caused by profligate domestic spending, but most economists agree that tax cuts are driving the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax cuts represent 58 percent of all spending enacted since 2001.

The US Senate has passed a more even-handed attempt to reduce deficits, requiring that major spending -- including tax cuts -- be adopted only by a two-thirds vote. We have serious qualms about requiring "super majorities" to pass budget measures. But at least the Senate understands that money spent on tax cuts is just as green -- and creates deficits just as red -- as money spent on social programs.

- [b]The Boston Globe[/b], http://www.boston.com/news/gl...

Pure? Coke's Attempt to Sell Tap Water Backfires in Cancer Scare

03.21.04 (6:54 am) [edit]

[b]Pure? Coke's Attempt to Sell Tap Water Backfires in Cancer Scare [/b]

Dasani, the tap water bottled by Coca-Cola and marketed as specially pure with a huge publicity campaign, was withdrawn from the market yesterday after impurities were found to have been introduced in the production process.

The water, which was launched two weeks ago, labeled prominently as "pure" and referred to by Coke executives as "as pure as bottled water gets", was found to have illegally high levels of bromate, a chemical which the Food Standards Agency said could lead to an increased risk of cancer.

The company said that the bromate had been formed during the production process for bottling the water at its plant in Sidcup, south-east London. Last night it was withdrawing all 500,000 bottles of Dasani - sales of which had been expected to reach £35m in its first year - which had arrived on high-street shelves.

The fiasco meant the collapse of Coke's attempt, with a £7m high-profile publicity campaign, to break into Britain's burgeoning bottled water market, which is worth more than £1bn a year and growing by 20 per cent annually.

Executives at the Coca-Cola (Great Britain) headquarters in Hammersmith, west London, were horrified by the PR catastrophe. "Obviously, we are very upset about it," said one.

Increasing health concerns over sweet fizzy drinks - last year Diet Coke sales outstripped those of traditional Coke for the first time - were behind the company's decision to branch out further from its traditional market. Targeted mainly at young people, Dasani was said to undergo a complex purification process and then have carefully selected minerals added to it.

The brand hit trouble straight away when it emerged that the source for Dasani was the Thames Water mains supply to Coke's plant in Sidcup, which has passed more than 99.9 per cent of quality checks, making it already one of the purest drinking waters in the world.

While half a liter of Thames tap water costs 0.03p, half a liter of it bottled as Dasani was costing 95p, a mark-up of more than 3,000 times, or a profit of more than 300,000 per cent.

The company was widely compared to Del Boy Trotter in the Only Fools and Horses comedy series, who attempted to sell gullible customers bottled tap water from what he called "the Peckham Spring". Then the Food Standards Agency announced an investigation into whether or not Dasani could be specifically labeled as "pure".

Yesterday the bad publicity peaked when the company announced that its own checks had found bromate in Dasani samples above permitted UK levels of 10 micrograms per liter, and was withdrawing all stocks from sale.

"This is a sensible measure by the company as bromate is a chemical that could cause an increased cancer risk as a result of long-term exposure, although there is no immediate risk to public health," the Food Standards Agency said yesterday. "However, the agency understands that some people may choose not to drink any Dasani they bought before its withdrawal, given the levels of bromate it contains."

A spokeswoman for Coke insisted yesterday that the withdrawal was entirely a precautionary measure.

She said: "In very, very large quantities it can affect your health but we have been advised by the FSA that the levels of bromate that have been detected in Dasani do not pose an immediate health risk.

"We have not been ordered to withdraw the product, it was our decision because it did not meet regulations. Our consumers rightly expect that our products meet only the highest possible standards for quality as well as all UK regulations."

The bromate was produced as a result of adding calcium to the water - a legal requirement - after it had been purified, the spokeswoman said. "To deliver the required calcium, we add back calcium chloride into the product.

"Because of the high level of bromide contained in the calcium chloride, a derivative of bromide, bromate, was formed at a level that exceeded British legal standards. This occurred during the ozonization process we employ in manufacturing."

With annual sales in Britain of £132m, Coke has nearly a third of the carbonated soft drinks market. The company said it was too early to say if it would try to re-enter the market for bottled water, but no jobs would be lost at its Sidcup plant.

[b]By Michael Mccarthy, Independent UK[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Response to Justice Scalia's Denial of Recusal Motion in Cheney Case

03.21.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

[b]Response to Justice Scalia's Denial of Recusal Motion in Cheney Case[/b]

[u][b]WASHINGTON - March 18 - Statement of Sierra Club[/b][/u]

Justice Scalia misses the point. There's a problem when a Justice and a litigant meet secretly at a private hunting retreat -- regardless of what happens behind closed doors. It is the appearance of secrecy and impropriety that creates the problem, and it clearly has caused a public outcry here. If Justice Scalia and Mr. Cheney had only been so forthcoming with the facts at the outset, the public might have responded differently and this might have taken a different course. Even in light of this newly disclosed information, the Sierra Club still believes that recusal would be appropriate under the applicable legal standard.

We wish that Vice President Cheney would be as forthcoming with the details of the secret Energy Task Force as Justice Scalia has now been with their vacation together.

Last month the Sierra Club formally requested the recusal of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia from its case against Vice President Cheney and the secret Energy Task Force citing the intense public attention drawn to the January duck hunting trip taken by Cheney and Scalia. The Sierra Club reluctantly concluded that recusal is necessary to "redress an appearance of impropriety and to restore public confidence in the integrity of our nation's highest court." At the time Sierra Club made its motion, Justice Scalia had declined to reveal any of the facts revealed in today's opinion, and the public was in an uproar over the appearance of impropriety.

Sierra Club is suing Vice President Cheney and the Energy Task Force under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), seeking an accounting of energy industry participation in crafting the Bush Administration's destructive energy policy, which relies on subsidies to polluting and outdated fossil fuel industries. The District Court ordered the Administration to provide information about participation from these industries, which the Bush Administration refused to do, claiming Constitutional immunity from such inquiries. The District Court rejected that contention, pointing out that the Administration was attempting to "cloak what is tantamount to an aggrandizement of Executive power with the legitimacy of precedent where none exists." The Administration appealed, asking the D.C. Circuit to make new law that would effectively shield it from any legal scrutiny. The Circuit Court denied their request. The Bush Administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 27.

[b]Copies of Sierra Club's brief is available at [/b] http://www.sierraclub.org/env... http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Alaska Wilderness League Says "Not Another Valdez - Protect the Arctic Refuge"

03.21.04 (6:51 am) [edit]

[b]Alaska Wilderness League Says "Not Another Valdez - Protect the Arctic Refuge"[/b]

WASHINGTON - March 18 - The Alaska Wilderness League released a compelling new online advertisement today, just in time for the 15th "dark anniversary" of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The humorous and hard-hitting animation looks at the devastation produced by the Exxon Valdez disaster on March 24, 1989, and draws parallels between the Valdez spill and the Bush administration's misguided plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

At the end of the animation, viewers are urged to tell their Member of Congress why protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is important to them. The animation is featured at http://www.notanothervaldez.c...

"If the oil industry messed up so bad 15 years ago, how can we trust that their new plan for Alaska - drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - would be any safer?" said Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. "It is not worth sacrificing America's last frontier for about 6 months of oil that won't flow for another 10 years."

The animation is the centerpiece of the Alaska Wilderness League's campaign to increase awareness of the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and educate people about the ongoing threats to the Arctic Refuge from oil and gas exploration and drilling. Though polls consistently show that most Americans want to protect the Refuge, certain Members of Congress and the Bush administration remain intent on exploiting it for short-term gain.

The Bush administration was recently dealt a setback in its attempt to exploit the Arctic Refuge. Their back-door scheme - a provision to include revenues from oil drilling in the Refuge in the 2005 federal budget - was stripped from both the Senate and the House versions of the budget bill. However, conservationists remain vigilant for renewed efforts to open the Refuge in the coming year.

The 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the country's largest wildlife refuge. It contains one of the last intact expanses of arctic and subarctic ecosystems, providing essential habitat to polar bears, birds, musk oxen and arctic fox. The Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge is the calving ground for the 129,000-strong Porcupine Caribou herd, upon which the Gwich'in, a 7,000-year-old native culture, depends for their subsistence.

"A disaster the magnitude of the Exxon Valdez oil spill should never happen again, least of all in such a fragile place as the Arctic Refuge," said Shogan. "Congress and the Bush Administration need to honor America's desire to keep the Refuge clean and safe, instead of bowing to their oil industry cronies."

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Alaska Wilderness League
Lexi Keogh, Brian Moore, Cindy Shogan, 202-544-5205 http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Petroleum Prices Sky High on Iraq War Anniversary

03.21.04 (6:49 am) [edit]

[b]Petroleum Prices Sky High on Iraq War Anniversary [/b]

CARACAS - A year after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, petroleum prices on the New York and London exchanges are at their highest point since the 1991 Gulf War.

Industry observers say that one of the aims of the Iraq war has been to dismantle the maneuvering capacity of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by taking control of Iraq's rich oil fields.

But the cartel nonetheless has managed to shore up international oil prices and its revenues.

When it was announced Thursday that Pakistani troops had closed in on the second in command of the radical Islamic network al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, prices slid, due to an expectation of greater security in the region, but on Friday they began climbing again.

The benchmark light U.S. crude West Texas Intermediate (WTI) gained 37 cents on the dollar per barrel on Friday, selling on the New York exchange at 38.30 dollars -- its highest level since the 1991 Gulf War.

Brent, the North Sea reference crude, rose 14 cents per 159-litre barrel, to 33.27 dollars, an increase of five percent in a week.

OPEC's basket of seven reference crudes sold this week for 32.66 dollars a barrel, 55 cents more than the previous week, reported the Energy Ministry of Venezuela, a member of the cartel alongside Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

Since 2002, OPEC has worked at maintaining the prices for its reference crudes, trying to keep them within the range of 22 to 28 dollars per barrel. The members had agreed to reduce output if the market becomes flooded and prices fall, and to increase production if demand increases and prices remain above price-band maximum for more than 20 consecutive days.

But prices have been higher than 28 dollars per barrel since December, and OPEC has refused to increase oil production. On the contrary, it has reduced output and is preparing for another cut in April.

This policy limits the reconstitution of oil reserves in the leading industrialized consumer countries, and drives up demand on the refineries, which pushes prices upwards -- something the individual consumer is seeing at the gas pump.

In mid-March, the average retail gasoline price in the United States was 1.73 dollars a gallon (3.8 liters), 30 cents more than when the invasion of Iraq began a year ago.

The members of OPEC, which covers more than one-third of the global demand of 79 million barrels of oil a day, are debating whether at their Mar. 31 meeting in Vienna they will maintain the decision taken in February: to cut back daily output by one million barrels.

The Organization predicted in its latest market report that daily global demand in this year's second quarter will fall to 77.8 million barrels, once the northern hemisphere spring gets under way, compared to the demand for 80.1 million barrels a day in the current quarter.

This panorama is heating up debate within OPEC about whether to cut back production even further, or to maintain or even increase output so that the high oil prices do not discourage industrial activity and depress demand for fossil fuels in the industrialized North.

"The current oil prices will not be a benefit to the world. We are concerned about that," said OPEC president and Indonesian energy minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro.

His Venezuelan counterpart, Rafael Ramírez, reiterated on Friday, "We are committed to maintaining the price of oil at fair levels. At the Mar. 31 meeting we will continue with that approach. If it is necessary that Venezuela supports another cut, we will do so."

He noted that today's prices translate into dollar revenues that are depreciated with respect to other currencies, which is why Caracas is looking at the possibility of reconsidering the 22-to-28-dollar price range agreed by the cartel.

Nigeria has reportedly expressed support for the Venezuelan suggestion that the maximum in the price band could be higher.

OPEC, excluding Iraq, officially produces 24.5 million barrels of crude a day. Before adopting a new cut in April it has tried to bring its members into line with their quotas, halting over-production beyond each country's agreed limit.

This overproduction is estimated to reach 1.3 million barrels a day amongst the cartel's members.

[b]By Humberto Márquez, InterPress[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

US Firms Try to Block Cheap AIDS Drugs

03.21.04 (6:47 am) [edit]

[b]US Firms Try to Block Cheap AIDS Drugs [/b]

The US, under pressure from its giant pharmaceutical companies, is trying to undermine the use in poor countries of cheap, copycat AIDS drugs, made by "pirate", generic companies but validated by the World Health Organization, campaigners claim.

US drug companies want the money promised for President George Bush's AIDS plan to be spent on their products.

The American department of health and human sciences has now convened a conference in Botswana at the end of the month that will question the WHO's approval process for generic drugs, known as "pre-qualification".

If the cheap drugs, which sell for less than £165 per patient per year, are discredited and the more expensive brand-name drugs are bought instead, the limited money available for treatment will help fewer people and reduce the WHO's hopes of getting 3 million on treatment by 2005.

"It is not quality and safety and efficacy they [the American companies] are concerned about, but the protection of patents," said Rachel Cohen of Médecins sans Frontières in the US. "The real reason this conference is being held is to come up with ways of undermining generic drugs."

Plans to put millions of people on drugs to try to stem the AIDS epidemic are based in most African countries on the purchase of cheap copies of drugs invented and under patent in the US and Europe. People with HIV need a daily cocktail of three drugs to suppress the virus in the body and stay alive and well.

Because the patents on the component drugs are held by different multinationals, only the generic companies make a basic three-in-one pill. A very simple regime, taking one pill, twice a day, is considered to be most feasible in poor countries. Scientists working for the WHO have examined and approved certain generic three-in-one pills.

About 50,000 people are already taking these generic AIDS drugs. MSF, which runs free AIDS treatment programmes in Africa, gives them to some 9,000 patients. In Zimbabwe, it treats patients for £109 to £136 a year. A program by the US Centers for Disease Control uses brand-name drugs at £325 per patient per year. In addition, the patient has to take six pills a day, instead of two.

When President Bush pledged £8bn for AIDS in his state of the union address last year, and hailed the plunge in drug prices to £165 a year, it was assumed that the US would be willing to buy generics to make the money go further. However, Randall Tobias, the former chief executive of the giant US drug company Eli Lilly and the man appointed to head the president's AIDS strategy, claims that generic drugs manufactured overseas may not be made to the consistency and quality of those manufactured in the US.

"It would be a disaster if we invested in drugs that were not consistent, don't have all the right components and we just don't know whether some of these do or do not," he told the House of Representatives' international relations committee earlier this month.

But WHO officials involved in approving the generic drugs defend their system, pointing out that the drug regulatory agencies of France, Switzerland, Canada and South Africa are among those involved in the process.

[b]By Sarah Boseley, Guardian UK[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Noam Chomsky Backs 'Bush-lite' Kerry

03.21.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

[b]Chomsky Backs 'Bush-lite' Kerry [/b]

Noam Chomsky, the political theorist and leftwing guru, yesterday gave his reluctant endorsement to the Democratic party's presidential contender, John Kerry, calling him "Bush-lite", but a "fraction" better than his rival.

Professor Chomsky - a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a renowned chronicler of American foreign policy - said there were "small differences" between Senator Kerry and the Republican president. But, in an interview on the Guardian's politics website, he added that those small differences "can translate into large outcomes".

He describes the choice facing US voters in November as "the choice between two factions of the business party". But the Bush administration was so "cruel and savage", it was important to replace it.

He said: "Kerry is sometimes described as 'Bush-lite', which is not inaccurate. But despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

He reserved his especial venom for the Bush administration's plans for the health sector: "The people around Bush are deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century no matter what the cost to the general population."

[b]By Matthew Tempest, Guardian UK[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Environmental/Public Health Groups Ask Court to Block EPA's Weakened Air Pollution Monitoring Rules

03.21.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

[b]Environmental and Public Health Groups Ask Court to Block EPA's Weakened [i]'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' [/i]Air Pollution Monitoring Rules [/b]

WASHINGTON - March 18 - Seven environmental and public health groups today filed a lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to block implementation of controversial, industry-backed rules from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that would weaken pollution monitoring standards and lead to increased emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other toxic pollutants linked to childhood diseases, heart disease and premature death.

EPA's rules would allow polluters to monitor themselves and to do so as infrequently as twice every five years, according to the lawsuit filed by the Environmental Integrity Project, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Clean Air Council, Our Children's Earth Foundation and the Northwest Environmental Defense Center. Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said: "The problem is simple: Inadequate monitoring results in higher emissions. The Clean Air Act requires monitoring sufficient to assure compliance; EPA is replacing that with a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy for air pollution." Hilton Kelley, a petitioner in the lawsuit and resident of Port Arthur, TX., said: "My house is a few blocks from several large refineries and chemical plants. When something goes wrong, I see them flaring, I smell the pollution, my eyes start watering and my throat burns. I'm sure they're emitting illegal pollution, but without regular monitoring, I can't prove it and can't get the state or EPA to do anything about it."

"EPA has repeatedly acknowledged that, without adequate monitoring, pollution limits aren't worth the paper they are written on," said David McIntosh, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "EPA's new rule shows dangerous disregard for whether or not the industry is complying with air pollution laws."

EPA's new rule, announced on January 22, 2004, eliminates the requirement that air permits for large air emission sources require monitoring sufficient to allow the public and regulators to determine whether or not the sources are complying with the law. Instead, EPA will allow sources of pollution to use outdated monitoring EPA has repeatedly acknowledged is inadequate to determine compliance.

The EPA decision to allow this inadequate monitoring was made despite the fact that numerous scientific studies over the past year have confirmed the links between air pollution and deaths, asthma and other lung diseases, strokes and heart attacks.

Physicians for Social Responsibility President and CEO Robert K. Musil, Ph.D M.P.H., said: "There is no doubt that air pollution adversely affects people's health. We're facing an epidemic of childhood asthma. EPA's decision to hide its head in the sand and pretend that industry will just comply with the law voluntarily will only make the problem worse." The new rule requiring less monitoring will mean there is less information on which to base health and environmental decisions and less likelihood of identifying illegal polluters. EPA's rulemaking proceeded without the opportunity for public notice and comment, which are required by law, and reflects yet another closed door deal with industry.

"This rule is a complete reversal of longstanding EPA policy recognizing the importance of monitoring and requiring that air permits include adequate monitoring," said Joseph Otis Minott, executive director of the Clean Air Council. "The fact that EPA did this as a backroom deal with industry and evaded the normal public participation process is appalling." Pat Gallagher, Sierra Club director of environmental law, said: "The EPA has taken a position that is completely at odds with the longstanding advice of its own experts. This is yet another example of the Bush Administration ignoring sound science and doing favors for its industry friends at the expense of public health."

EPA agreed to adopt its new rule weakening monitoring requirements in order to settle a lawsuit brought by power plant and auto manufacturing associations challenging EPA's monitoring rules. An almost identical suit by many of these same industry associations was thrown out of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last year. Yet instead of fighting this suit, EPA simply agreed to change its interpretation of the rules as desired by industry, gutting the monitoring requirements.

Over 50 health and environmental groups and six states -- New York, Illinois, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania -- went on record in opposition to the EPA "settlement." The states noted that EPA's interpretation "would make oversight and enforcement by states, the EPA, and citizens extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible." Tiffany Schauer, executive director of Our Children's Earth in San Francisco, CA., said: "We've used the citizen participation provisions of Title V to improve requirements, including monitoring, in numerous Title V permits. EPA is now caving to industry and eliminating our ability to insist on adequate monitoring in federal air permits in order to protect our communities."

The monitoring requirements at issue in the lawsuit over the EPA rule are included in Title V of the federal Clean Air Act. Title V requires permits that include monitoring "sufficient to assure compliance with the permit terms and conditions." Title V permits list all of the air pollution limits that apply to a particular large industrial source and add monitoring and reporting as necessary to allow the public and regulators to track the source's compliance with those requirements. The permits are intended to supplement any preexisting monitoring so that, for each air pollution limit or standard, there is monitoring that is sufficient to assure compliance. Traditionally, EPA has interpreted this requirement to mean monitoring must be frequent enough and reliable enough to detect any noncompliance. The full text of the lawsuit filed by the seven groups and related background documents are available online at http://www.environmentalinteg...

ABOUT THE GROUPS corporation established to advocate for more effective enforcement of environmental laws. EIP was founded by Eric Schaeffer, who was director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Regulatory Enforcement until 2002, when he resigned after publicly expressing his frustration with efforts of the Bush Administration to weaken enforcement of the Clean Air Act and other laws.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national nonprofit environmental organization with more than 500,000 members. Since 1970, NRDC's lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have been working to protect the world's natural resources and improve the quality of the human environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Founded in 1892, the Sierra Club is America's oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. Inspired by nature, the Sierra Club works to protect communities and the planet and boasts more than 700,000 members and chapters in all 50 states.

Physicians for Social Responsibility is a leading public policy organization with 24,000 members representing the medical and public health professions and concerned citizens, working together for nuclear and global security, a healthy environment, and an end to the epidemic of gun violence.

Our Children's Earth Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the public from the harmful effects of air pollution. Through a combined strategy of litigation, education and advocacy, it empowers individuals, families and local communities to participate in decisions that impact air quality.

The Northwest Environmental Defense Center is an independent, non-profit organization working to protect the environment and natural resources of the Pacific Northwest. NEDC provides legal support to individuals and grassroots organizations with environmental concerns, and engages in litigation independently or in conjunction with other environmental groups. NEDC also provides valuable hands-on experience for students seeking to enhance their education in environmental law.

Clean Air Council is a member-supported, non-profit environmental organization founded in 1967 and dedicated to protecting everyone's right to breathe clean air. From its offices in Pennsylvania and Delaware, the Council works through public education, community advocacy, and government oversightto ensure enforcement of environmental laws.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Environmental Integrity Project
Newsroom: 202-296-8800 http://www.commondreams.org/n...

CO2 Hits Record Levels, Researchers Find

03.21.04 (6:40 am) [edit]

[b]CO2 Hits Record Levels, Researchers Find [/b]

MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii - Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano.

The reason for the faster buildup of the most important "greenhouse gas" will require further analysis, the U.S. government experts say.

"But the big picture is that CO2 is continuing to go up," said Russell Schnell, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate monitoring laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which operates the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii.

Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases.

The climatologists forecast continued temperature rises that will disrupt the climate, cause seas to rise and lead to other unpredictable consequences — unpredictable in part because of uncertainties in computer modeling of future climate.

Before the industrial age and extensive use of fossil fuels, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at about 280 parts per million, scientists have determined.

Average readings at the 11,141-foot Mauna Loa Observatory, where carbon dioxide density peaks each northern winter, hovered around 379 parts per million on Friday, compared with about 376 a year ago.

That year-to-year increase of about 3 parts per million is considerably higher than the average annual increase of 1.8 parts per million over the past decade, and markedly more accelerated than the 1-part-per-million annual increase recorded a half-century ago, when observations were first made here.

Asked to explain the stepped-up rate, climatologists were cautious, saying data needed to be further evaluated. But Asia immediately sprang to mind.

"China is taking off economically and burning a lot of fuel. India, too," said Pieter Tans, a prominent carbon-cycle expert at NOAA's Boulder lab.

Another leading climatologist, Ralph Keeling, whose father, Charles D. Keeling, developed methods for measuring carbon dioxide, noted that the rate "does fluctuate up and down a bit," and said it was too early to reach conclusions. But he added: "People are worried about `feedbacks.' We are moving into a warmer world."

He explained that warming itself releases carbon dioxide from the ocean and soil. By raising the gas's level in the atmosphere, that in turn could increase warming, in a "positive feedback," said Keeling, of San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that, if unchecked, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by 2100 will range from 650 to 970 parts per million. As a result, the panel estimates, average global temperature would probably rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.7 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1990 and 2100.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol would oblige ratifying countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions according to set schedules, to minimize potential global warming. The pact has not taken effect, however.

The United States, the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, signed the agreement but did not ratify it, and the Bush administration has since withdrawn U.S. support, calling instead for voluntary emission reductions by U.S. industry and more scientific research into climate change.

[b]By Charles J Hanley, Associated Press[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

03.20.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

[b]Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

Step 1: [u]Look in the Mirror[/u][/b]

Following the March 11, 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid, Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC TV’s “This Week” that he hoped Europeans, recognizing that no one is immune, would dedicate themselves to “going after” terrorist organizations with military force, intelligence, and law enforcement. He said that all of us have to get together to defeat organizations determined to kill and destroy innocent people. He urged Spain not to step back from the war on terrorism.

I think a crucial step forward in coming to grips with terrorism requires that we ask ourselves why individuals, some of them young, rational people with their whole lives ahead of them, would hate the US and its allies so much that they would commit acts of massive destruction and end their own lives as well.

Shortly after US troops began occupying Iraq in April, 2003, a large contingent of western media people arrived in Baghdad. One young journalist said a more seasoned correspondent had told her to talk with me when she was ready to do a humanitarian story. One of the first stories she pursued was about a baby who’d been born in one of Saddam Hussein’s prisons. I suggested she might also explore stories about the hundreds of thousands of children who died because of economic sanctions. “Oh,” she said, “That was Saddam Hussein’s fault.” I mentioned that UN documents directly attributed the deaths of over 500,000 children under age 5 to the effects of economic sanctions. Her response was immediate: “Well, except now everyone knows that the UN was in bed with Saddam Hussein.”

US think tanks helped brief US journalists before they headed over to the war zone. Perhaps the complex US/UN relations during thirteen years of economic sanctions couldn’t have fit into convenient briefings. With deadlines to meet, electrical outages to cope with, and editors seeking stories about Saddam’s cruelties, who could expect this young, energetic reporter to delve into old analysis of yesteryear’s news?

But if US people are ever going to understand what would motivate people to end their lives in the course of committing gruesomely destructive acts, we’ll have to “step back” from what the mainstream media dishes out to us, and strive for empathy, --try to understand why terrorists believe it’s imperative to resist US domination. One way to develop empathy would be to revisit the history of Iraq under economic sanctions and military bombardment.

The logic of this history, on the part of the US leadership, seems to have been: “We had to starve you so that we could stop bombing you, and then we had to bomb you so that we could stop starving you.”

The entire façade of bureaucratic delays that made up the UN’s efforts in Iraq in the last years of the sanctions was absurd. Did any of the UN workers who struggled to provide minute documentation that Iraq wasn’t building bombs out of parts for water treatment plants, for example, really believe that the US cared about their work? After 5 years of “oil for food,” it was clear that the U.S. was simply interested in finding excuses to maintain sanctions. Despite repeated denials, and incredibly detailed levels of “monitoring” and documentation, by UN officials across every agency working in Iraq, the US continued to pretend that the Iraqi government could have solved the problems by distributing hoarded medicines and was solely responsible because it refused to use the money and medicine it had available. The truth was that no amount of medicine could have saved the lives of children, then, and still won’t be adequately effective, because Iraq’s infrastructure is so badly debilitated that even now infant mortality at the neonatal clinic in the Yarmuk Hospital in Baghdad is twice that of last year. And at Baghdad's Central Teaching Hospital for Children, where gallons of raw sewage wash across the floors, the hospital’s doctors say "the hospital drinking water is contaminated" and “80 percent of patients leave with infections they did not have when they arrived.”(NYT "“Chaos and War Leave Iraq’s Hospitals in Ruins" Jeffrey Gettleman, February 14 2004)

Many of the accounts about ways that Saddam Hussein’s regime engaged in smuggling and arranged “kickbacks” under the oil-for-food program were widely reported while Saddam Hussein’s regime was still in power. We should be scandalized by that regime’s choice to live luxuriously when they could have helped save the lives of innocent children. And we should be equally scandalized that the US used the UN to wage economic warfare against Iraq knowing full well that the sanctions would brutally and lethally punish innocent people, including children, who had no control over their government.

In Baghdad, a few days before the Shock and Awe war began, a woman whom I’ve known for seven years whispered “Believe me, Kathy, we want this war. All the people, they are tired of this life where we work so hard and still cannot feed our children.” A March 9, 2004 letter from her explains how betrayed and battered she now feels. “Today, we faced a horrible day. My partner, the engineer, was attacked by shooting. He was wounded by three shots and is in the hospital. We are not sure if he will live. This is Iraq today. This is what we pay for Mr. Bush and his freedom. We can’t move from place to place without shooting and bombing. We are like hostages in our own land. There is no safety, no jobs, no good water, no electricity. Everything is bad here. We are hopeless. We can’t protect our children.”

I wonder if people who flock to see Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” understand that the brutality Jesus suffered was the punishment for those convicted of insurrection against military occupation. Military occupation then and now is not much different. Imagine anyone in Iraq, Israel or Palestine, whether civilian or military, occupier or occupied, who survives a bombing, --their limbs shattered, organs ripped open, flesh torn. Imagine arms aching for loved ones who’ll never return. Or imagine someone armless and yearning, like the woman whom Faith Fippinger wrote of who had given birth to a baby just before a US bomb tore off her arms during the Shock and Awe campaign. Other women helped the armless woman nurse the infant by crouching behind her and holding the baby to her breast.

I recently read about a woman who carried her sister-in-law’s newborn baby to a hospital where she had been advised that an incubator would be available. When she arrived, she learned another woman had arrived before her and the incubator was taken. A nurse tried to console the distraught woman, but her companion, the mother’s sister, was willing to try an alternative. Using a manual ventilator, she followed a nurse’s instructions: “…squeeze and let go, squeeze and let go, as long as she could. Shortly before dawn, after standing by the baby and working the respirator for eight hours, Mehdi’s arms gave out…” (Washington Post “Iraqi Hospitals on Life Support” March 5, 2004). The baby died of respiratory failure.

I don’t know anyone in Iraq who wasn’t relieved to see Saddam Hussein deposed. I’d like to be heartened by those who say they advocated warfare against Iraq because they wanted to save Iraqis from an abusive despot. But, I can’t help but wish that this profound care for Iraqi people could have been activated during the long years when Iraqis endured the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history.

Why do some people in the Islamic world hate us so much? It’s a quick discussion. We take over and dominate other people’s societies. We set up client states in their regions and rely on these client states to house US bases and, as in the case with Israel, to punish neighboring states if they don’t submit to US aims. We foster double standards, condemning invasion and occupation when it suits us, (e.g., the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) and yet undertaking or supporting murderous sanctions, invasions and occupations, while claiming to support and enhance democratic states. The role of the US and its client state, Israel, as occupiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine evokes rage and retaliation. Hideous and violent terrorist attacks will continue as long as we insist on taking other people’s precious and irreplaceable resources for cut rate prices. We should either begin paying fair prices, or find new ways to live in which we’re not so dependent on these resources.

How could we live differently, with less consumption and waste? Let me answer for myself. I consume far more than my fair share of jet fuel, electrical energy, and water each year. It’s time to start rationing myself. The old adage, “Live simply so that others can simply live” comes to mind.

I’ll have a refresher course in simple living during the late spring and summer of this year when I’ll be an inmate in a US federal prison for four months. The prison-industrial complex is a cruel extension of US war-making against the poor in our country, but I hope this prison sentence, for nonviolent trespass on US military installations, will serve me as an incubation period, a time of adjustment while living with less, and a time to hatch new ideas about how to live more simply after I leave the prison. I hope all of us will find ways to slow down, find more leisure time, and in our times of rest reflect very seriously on Secretary of State Colin Powell’s encouragement that we “get together to defeat organizations determined to kill and destroy innocent people.” I hope we can get together to nonviolently defeat US militarism, at home and abroad.

[i][b]Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vitw.org) is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness. She and dozens of activists who participated in civil disobedience at Fort Benning, GA and at the ELF nuclear weapon facility in northern WI have recently been sentenced to prison. For more information, visit www.vitw.org, www.soaw.org or www.nukewatch.org[/b][/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Burning Churches, Ruined Homes and Ethnic Hatred. Are the Balkans Set to Explode Again?

03.20.04 (7:25 am) [edit]

[b]Burning Churches, Ruined Homes and Ethnic Hatred. Are the Balkans Set to Explode Again?[/b]

NATO rushed 1,000 extra troops to Kosovo last night - 750 of them British - and Germany announced it will send 600 additional troops amid fears that the Balkans were again sliding towards a conflagration that could suck in neighboring countries.

With at least 23 dead in two days of ethnic rioting that have pitted the two million Albanians against the small Serb minority, and with dozens of churches and houses reduced to smoking ruins, Western efforts to impose peace appeared about to unravel.

Last night Albanians were again fighting their Serb neighbors in Lipljan, in eastern Kosovo, and the worst violence to afflict the province since the Serb pull-out in 1999 seemed set to continue into a third day.

But in a new and more worrying development, Albanian rioters were also attacking Finnish peace-keepers patrolling the small Serbian enclave, hurling stones and Molotov cocktails at the men they until recently thought of as their protectors.

The large-scale deployment of international peace-keepers quelled rioting in the northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica, scene of the worst violence on Wednesday, when Serbs and Albanians traded gunfire across the river Ibar, claiming at least six lives. But yesterday, fresh arson attacks on other isolated Serb enclaves raised the nightmare scenario of Western peace-keepers being stretched beyond their capacity, trying to dampen down brush fires in dozens of areas at once.

Plumes of smoke rising from the small town of Obilic, six miles from Pristina, revealed a glimpse of the problems facing peace-keepers. No roadblocks stopped our car - from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting - as we drove towards Obilic and entered the Serb enclave. There we encountered a 100-strong gang of sullen, trainer-clad youths, bolstered by ragged gangs of children, all busily stoning homes, lighting fires and looting goods.

Most of the houses were empty, the terrified Serbs having fled hours before in anticipation of the wave of hatred that was about to break over their small community. But the crowd had surrounded one house that was still occupied. There was an atmosphere of sinister jubilation as the jeering crowd reluctantly parted to allow US peace-keepers to enter and escort a terrified man from the smoke-filled interior to a tank in which he was driven away.

The grim scene in Obilic was a portrait in miniature of the violence that has racked Kosovo for two days, as Albanians turned simultaneously on several Serb enclaves, in what may have started as a spontaneous protest but which has assumed the hallmarks of an organized campaign. As the extra S-For troops were rushed from Bosnia to beef up Kosovo's visibly disorientated 17,000 peace-keepers, there were signs that their arrival might calm the fury of the Albanian gangs.

The lawlessness engulfing Kosovo has given an opportunity for shadowy extremists to renew the score-settling that has plagued the territory for centuries. What might have started off as an isolated burst of anger in Mitrovica over the still unexplained drowning of two Albanian children now appears to be something more planned. "We have had similar attacks to these in Kosovo before," said a UN spokesman, Derek Chappell. "But the fact that these attacks took place at the same time all over Kosovo does make me think they were orchestrated by the same extreme groups."

Lt-Colonel James Moran, a K-For spokesman, was more explicit. "There was a lot more organization today than we saw yesterday," he said. "People had organized buses to take protesters to different areas. We turned several around." Whoever was behind that agenda has certainly succeeded in nullifying the UN's attempts to build bridges between Serbs and Albanians over the past four years.

The scale of the rage shown by the crowds caught local Albanian politicians and commentators off guard as well. They were just as unprepared as the UN. "In 24 hours Kosovo was transferred from normality to a state close to anarchy," said Veton Surroi, a veteran liberal activist and editor of the newspaper Koha Ditore.

But few of the mainstream politicians went much further than issuing vague appeals for calm - which the rioters simply ignored. Even the remonstrations of Albanians in the streets had no effect on the rioters. "Don't worry, we are not going to burn your house," one group of thugs in Obilic shouted at an elderly Albanian man who denounced what they were up to.

The bitterness has built up over months. Increasingly fearful that the international community will force Kosovo to remain in Serbia, the rhetoric of Albanian leaders over eight months has taken on an increasingly strident anti-UN tone.

The question is now what, if anything, can be done to restore even the bare bones of trust on either side. Little can be expected from Serbia, now entering a presidential election in which the ultra-nationalist Radical Party candidate is the odds-on favorite to win. Nor are even the moderate Albanian leaders in Kosovo certain of what will come next. "A policy died yesterday in Kosovo and it took human lives in the most tragic way," said Mr Surroi.

The funerals - both Serb and Albanian - have not even begun, but what is certain is that at numerous gravesides, calls for revenge will again be heard.

[i][b]By Jeta Xharra in Obilic and Marcus Tanner, Independent UK[/b][/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Early Signs of Climate Devastation Already Visible

03.20.04 (7:23 am) [edit]

[b]Early Signs of Climate Devastation Already Visible[/b]

PARIS - UN chief Kofi Annan warned that the first signs of disastrous climate change may already be visible as he lobbied for the Kyoto Protocol, the global warming pact hamstrung by US opposition and Russian reticence.

Annan made the warning in a message to mark the 10th anniversary of the coming into force of Kyoto's parent treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"Some of (the) effects (of climate change) are by now inevitable and, indeed, we may already be seeing -- in the increased incidence of drought, floods and extreme weather events that many regions are experiencing -- some of the devastation that lies ahead," he said.

Kyoto's "lack of entry into force remains a major hurdle to effective action," the UN secretary general said.

"I call again on those countries that have not yet ratified the Protocol to do so, and show that they are truly committed to shouldering their global responsibilities."

The UNFCCC was the key agreement to emerge from the 1992 Rio Summit, giving birth to a raft of treaties and initiatives aimed at tackling the planet's environmental ills.

The Kyoto Protocol was signed as a framework agreement in 1997 under which rich industrialised countries would curb emissions of "greenhouse" gases -- carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels that scientists say is dangerously affecting Earth's fragile climate system.

It took four years to negotiate the Protocol's highly detailed rulebook, but by that time, the United States had quit the process, under a controversial decision by President George W. Bush.

He questioned the scientific evidence for global warming and said Kyoto was both too costly for the US economy, and unfair because the detailed pollution cuts only applied to developed countries.

The US pullout has deprived Kyoto of support from its biggest carbon polluter and left it perilously short of failing to muster enough support to take effect.

Under the Protocol's rules, ratification by Russia is now essential for the deal to become an international treaty. But Russia has been dragging its feet about ratification, notably holding out for further concessions from the European Union (EU), Kyoto's champion.

([i][b]AFP[/b][/i]), http://www.commondreams.org/h...

The Case to Re-regulate the Gasoline Market

03.20.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

[b]The Case to Re-regulate the Gasoline Market [/b]

If the recent sticker shock at the gasoline pump feels familiar, that's because it is the same old story that led California's electricity market to become the embarrassment of the nation.

Earlier this month, California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer convened a panel in Los Angeles of industry experts who have blamed the run-up on OPEC crude oil prices, environmentally sensitive fuel and free-market pressures. But the problem is as simple as California's electricity crisis turned out to be: A few giant energy corporations have manipulated supply to keep profits high.

During the blackouts, electricity barons such as Enron's Ken Lay blamed the crisis on overuse and market restraints, but state investigations later found the real problem was that unregulated electricity plants were strategically shut down to reduce supply and make prices skyrocket.

Similarly, California's special gasoline formulation -- as required by the federal government under Clean Air Act rules -- has been made to appear rare by the small number of refiners who make the special mix and have gradually closed refining plants.

The recent 20-cent-per-gallon increase in California -- compared with just a 5-cent increase nationally -- may be the result of cheating rather than competing by seven refiners that control more than 99 percent of the state's gasoline supply. The tip-off is that the increased costs to motorists are turning out to be pure profit for Big Oil, not reflective of real production costs.

The California Energy Commission estimated recently that the 41-cent average increase in retail gasoline prices in January and February would reflect a 40 percent rise in refinery profit margins. This keeps with the pattern of huge quarterly profits for California refiners after every price surge during the last three years. By strategically cutting the number of state refineries almost by half since deregulation of gasoline prices in 1981, even while the state's population has exploded, the refiners have created conditions under which price spikes occur regularly. Inventories are kept low so that when there is a problem at a refinery -- such as a fire -- the market anticipates a shortage and sends the speculative price of gasoline sky high. Refiners make a killing because it doesn't cost them any more to produce the gasoline, but for which they can charge more.

Internal industry memos recently released by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., show how big West Coast refiners drive out independent refiners to erase competition. The 1996 memorandums from Mobil referred to the successful strategies to keep smaller refiner Powerine from reopening its California refinery. One was promoting tough California regulations that Mobil believed Powerine couldn't comply with. A plan that could be used in the event Powerine did open the refinery was " . . . buying all their [available fuel] and marketing it ourselves" to ensure that the lower-priced fuel didn't get to market. In the memo, Mobil acknowledged that the strategy of buying competitors' gas to keep it off the market had been used in the previous year, resulting in significantly increased prices.

A major problem Californians now face is that Shell recently announced it would close its Bakersfield refinery this year. The Bakersfield plant provides 2 percent of California's total gasoline supply and 6 percent of its diesel needs.

Reflecting the state of the oil industry, Shell reportedly did not even seek a buyer for the refinery. Wall Street refers to such a closure as "refinery heaven" because it would result in higher prices at Shell's remaining refineries and encourage greater price increases that would benefit every refinery in the market. Instead of refineries competing with one another by creating more supply, they all work together to restrict supply so that they all wildly profit.

Three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline will be coming if Shell's refinery closes. That's why the state attorney general and the Legislature must insist that Shell's 70-year-old Bakersfield refinery be kept open. A phone call from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could allay an even bigger run-up at the pump. If the political pressure is not successful, Lockyer should be prepared to bring suit to stop Shell.

In California's car culture, gasoline is a necessity of life, and it is becoming increasingly unaffordable. There is ample cause to re-regulate gasoline. In the long term, perhaps only such a move will break the hold of California refiners.

Until our political leaders start talking tough about greater public control over the flow of gasoline, however, the in-state refining oligopoly will continue to extract even greater prices.

[i][b]Jamie Court is author of "Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your Personal Freedom and What You Can Do About It" (J.P. Tarcher, 2003). Tim Hamilton is a petroleum industry consultant[/b][/i]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

National parks told to cut services quietly - More underhanded Bush tactics

03.20.04 (7:18 am) [edit]

[b]National parks told to cut services quietly[/b]

[i][b]Internal memo follows report claiming underfunding[/b][/i]

WASHINGTON - National park superintendents are being told to cut back on services — possibly even closing smaller, historic sites a couple days a week or shutter visitor centers on federal holidays — without letting on they are making cuts.

The disclosure came as a parks advocacy group issued a report claiming that America’s national parks are being underfunded by as much as $600 million a year, forcing severe cuts that threaten resources and undermine visitors’ enjoyment.

The message to superintendents was disclosed by an association of retired National Park Service employees. The group released a memo e-mailed last month to park superintendents in the Northeast from the Park Service’s Boston office.

[b]Memo urges PR strategy[/b]

Among the memo’s suggestions for responding to tight budgets this year are to possibly shutter visitor centers on federal holidays or during winter months, close parks Sundays and Mondays, and eliminate all guided ranger tours and lifeguards at some beaches.

The memo also advises workers to warn officials if controversy arises over any changes they make.

“If you think that some of your specific plans will cause a public or political controversy, Marie and I need to know which ones are likely to end up in the media or result in a congressional inquiry,” says the memo sent Feb. 20 by Chrysandra Walter, the Park Service’s deputy director for the Northeast region.

Walter was referring to Marie Rust, the Park Service’s director for the Northeast region, who is based in Philadelphia. Walter also wrote that she was relaying instructions from Randy Jones, the Park Service’s deputy director.

“Randy felt that the issuance of a press release was the most problematic,” she wrote.

“He suggested that if you feel you must inform the public ... not to directly indicate that ’this is a cut’ in comparison to last year’s operation,” she continued. “We all agreed to use the terminology of ’service level adjustment’ due to fiscal constraints as a means of describing what actions we are taking.”

[b]'Chill over the National Park Service'[/b]

Former park superintendent Denny Huffman, representing a group of retired Park Service employees, and Jeff McFarland, director of a professional association of park rangers, said the memo illustrates a broader attempt to sugarcoat facts while stifling people.

“Make no mistake about it. There is a chill over the National Park Service today,” Huffman said at a news conference. The NPS memo and news conference material are online at www.hastingsgroup.com/npsretirees.html.

National Park Service spokesman Dave Barna didn’t dispute the memo’s authenticity or that it reflected an agency-wide trend. He said the agency’s aim was to avoid a public relations fiasco, and cuts would be done judiciously; for example, the only parks to close on holidays or weekends would be small, historic sites.

“All we’re saying is, ’Let us know in advance so we know about this.' We don’t feel it’s necessary to have 380 parks out there whining about their budgets,” he said.

The Park Service’s budget has steadily increased during the Bush, Clinton and previous administrations, Barna said, but had to absorb $50 million in firefighting costs and $150 million in repair costs from Hurricane Isabel last year.

Homeland security also is expensive — each change in the color-coded threat level from yellow to orange costs the Park Service $1 million a month, he said. That pays for 200 law enforcement rangers from the West to guard monuments and memorials in the East, he said.

This year’s Park Service budget is $2.56 billion, including $1.6 billion for operations. The rest is for building projects, acquiring land, historic preservation and maintenance.

[b]'Endangered Rangers' report[/b]

On Tuesday, the National Parks Conservation Association issued a report, titled "Endangered Rangers," estimating that the parks are getting just two-thirds of the funding they need, leading to staffing shortages and the deterioration of park facilities.

As a result, it said, American Indian artifacts are being stolen from Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico; black bears are being poached in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia; and museum collections are piled in offices at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana or in a basement at Acadia National Park in Maine.

It also hinders law enforcement, detracts from ranger-guided programs and is forcing some parks to close visitors centers or clean bathrooms less often, the group said.

Don Murphy, deputy director of the National Park Service, said the Bush administration has been focusing its efforts on catching up on park maintenance that has been put off for years. At the same time, it has been spending money to protect national icons, such as the Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument, and prevent illegal immigration through parks along the nation’s borders.

“There certainly is a need. No organization has all of the money at a particular time that it needs,” he said. “You know what the budget is like. It’s tough and we have to go in and fight for every penny and the public and our own employees need to know we recognize there is a need out there operationally.”

The service has been seeking to dedicate money to parks that have seen dwindling funding in an effort to “make these parks whole again,” but without funding increases, it will start impacting visitors, Murphy said.

NPCA recommended a number of short-term possibilities to alleviate problems, including seeking donations from private companies, partnering with volunteer groups, and allowing parks to keep more of the fees they collect at entry gates.

But in the long-term, the group said Congress will have to close the funding gap and to cover the $50 million in annual expenses that result from heightened homeland security demands.

The report is online at www.npca.org.

[b]MSNBC, The Associated Press[/b], http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4...

Despite Bush's Lies, His Deficits Will Cause Tax Hikes

03.19.04 (8:53 am) [edit]

[b]With Bush in charge, taxes may still rise

[u]A soaring federal deficit, some economists say, will put fiscal pressure on the next president - Bush or Kerry[/u].[/b]

Taxes are headed up.

That provocative prediction is likely to pan out, some economists argue, whether American voters reelect George W. Bush or choose John Kerry in this fall's presidential contest.

You certainly won't hear it from Mr. Bush on the campaign trail. And it's possible that Republican tax-cutting fervor could hold sway for some time, given enough electoral support.

But there's a new budget reality that even some conservative economists can't ignore. A massive and growing federal budget deficit now looks increasingly hard to tame without raising more government revenue. That's another word for tax hike.

"It's inevitable," says Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis in Washington.

Norman Behravesh agrees. The chief economist of Global Insight, a consulting firm in Waltham, Mass., holds that, notwithstanding election-year rhetoric, the next president will have to raise taxes to deal with the deficit.

Higher taxes, of course, go against the political soul of Bush and many other Republicans. But their hand may be forced, some experts say, if rising deficits fuel worries about inflation. That could scare the bond market and foreign investors into demanding higher interest rates. (Foreign investors now buy a large percentage of federal debt.)

So far, rising deficits haven't pushed long-term interest rates up.

But already, there are signs that Congress is taking a harder look at ways to scale back deficits. In the Senate, Democrats joined moderate Republicans last week in creating some hurdles for making Bush's tax cuts permanent, and pared back 2005 spending from Bush requests.

The House, now considering Bush's budget, is more closely aligned with the president for making tax cuts permanent.

The president has "not done a good job" in restraining spending, says Beryl Sprinkel, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Reagan. "I'm disappointed."

Mr. Sprinkel says spending restraint, not tax hikes, would be better for the economy than tax hikes. "I don't want to stall the economy, or make it more difficult to grow," he says. But he admits he doesn't know whether Congress will actually overcome the objections of special interest groups to restrain spending.

Indeed, even as Congress has been struggling in recent days to hold back spending, some of its action has added to deficits. That hints at one reason why some analysts figure a tax hike lies ahead - perhaps as much as $200 billion to $300 billion, reckons Mr.Bartlett.

Though such a hike would be politically difficult, it may be easier than real budget cuts that could bite into spending on Medicare or other entitlement programs, education, veterans benefits, etc. That would be especially the case if the bond market displays alarm at the deficit.

If bond investors demand higher interest rates, it would burden millions of families with higher costs on their mortgages, car loans, and credit-card debts. Businesses would pay more for bank loans as the need for financing of government debt tended to "crowd out" their investments.

"The biggest surprise to me is how sanguine the bond market is in relation to the those huge deficit numbers," says Mr. Behravesh. President Bush talks about cutting nondefense discretionary spending, but Behravesh says "there's not enough there to make a dent."

Mr. Kerry, the Democrats' probable nominee, advocates raising taxes on those making $200,000 or more. But his plan will also not reduce the deficit much.

In a political year, neither candidate is likely to call for a broad tax hike. But Federal receipts as a percent of gross domestic product, the nation's output of goods and services, have fallen from 21 percent in 2000 to below 16 percent this year. That is out of line with their historical average of between 17 and 19 percent.

Federal spending now amounts to about 20 percent of GDP. Behravesh assumes that spending restraint bring that down to 19 percent over the next 10 years. Tax hikes, he reckons, can boost revenues to 18 percent. Such moves would shrink but not eliminate the deficit.

Behravesh maintains that the electorate will not punish a victorious president for raising taxes, just as it didn't penalize President Reagan for doing so after his 1981 tax cuts. A hike could still leave Bush's record as an overall tax cutter intact.

Some see corporations, which have seen decades of tax cuts, as a probable target of any tax hikes. Another possibility would be to leave the Alternative Minimum Tax in place on the well-to-do. This would be seen as a "stealth tax hike" on many individuals. Congress also may not make all the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Some conservatives say tax hikes won't be needed, pointing to low current interest rates.

And Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan doesn't show as much concern about the twin deficits as in the past, arguing that the financial system has become "far more ... efficient, and hence resilient."

[b]By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor [/b] - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004...

Mr. Scalia's Corrupt "Objectivity"!!! Scalia Supports Cheney's Energy Crimes!!!

03.19.04 (8:49 am) [edit]

[b]Mr. Scalia's Objectivity [/b]

JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA explained yesterday in a 21-page memorandum why he believes there is no problem in his going duck hunting with Vice President Cheney and then ruling on the vice president's case. The opinion is replete with legal argument, facts and rhetoric -- everything but common sense. Mr. Scalia believes that he knows better than anyone else how this episode ought to look to the public. No reasonable person apprised of the facts, he argues, would question his impartiality in considering a lawsuit over Mr. Cheney's energy task force; that being the legal standard, there's no reason for him to step aside. What of the flood of editorial pages -- this one included -- that called on him to recuse himself for the appearance problem the trip creates? He will not, he says, do so in reaction to "a blast of largely inaccurate and uninformed opinion."

Mr. Scalia's account adds useful context, some of which ameliorates the appearance problem a bit. The trip was planned before the energy task force case came before the court, and Mr. Scalia has hunted for several years at the Louisiana camp of Wallace Carline, the businessman who was his host for this trip. Yet some of the facts Mr. Scalia recounts heighten the problem: The justice himself, it turns out, was responsible for Mr. Cheney's invitation to this year's hunt. And Mr. Scalia's claim that flying to Louisiana on the vice president's jet was just an example of the "social courtesies" officials provide one another doesn't wash. Such social contacts and friendship would, he concedes, require recusal were Mr. Cheney being sued in his individual capacity. Here, however, Mr. Cheney is being sued in his official role, and social contacts between officials and justices have never triggered recusal in such instances. To do so now, Mr. Scalia argues, would set a dangerous precedent.

Yet this is not, Mr. Scalia's claims notwithstanding, a typical official-capacity case. It involves a major political issue with which Mr. Cheney is personally connected. And were it decided in Mr. Cheney's favor by a 5 to 4 vote, with one justice in the majority having recently shot ducks with the vice president, many Americans would undoubtedly question the fairness of the adjudication.

One example of Mr. Scalia's inability to see this issue dispassionately is his insistence that this page was "misleading" when it described Mr. Carline as an "energy industry executive." Mr. Carline, the justice writes, is not "an 'energy industry executive' in the sense that summons up boardrooms of Exxon Mobil or Con Edison." What is he then? "He runs his own company that provides services and equipment rental to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico."

Supreme Court rules, which leave decisions about recusals up to the justice involved, inevitably make for awkward choices. Mr. Scalia deserves credit for a detailed, public explanation of his choice, an explanation that he was under no obligation to provide. But we'd guess that many reasonable people will remain, like we are, unpersuaded.

Scalia should be impeached.

Cheney's Halliburton Made $73 Million from Saddam Hussein

03.19.04 (8:41 am) [edit]

[b]Halliburton Made $73 Million from Saddam[/b]

[u][b]Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions[/b][/u]

[i]That pack of scoundrels
Tumbling through the gate
Emerges as the order of the state[/i]. - Stanley Kunitz, [i]The System[/i]

At first the reader recoiled in horror. Then, realizing that it was different in law but not in effect from what Halliburton had been doing some years earlier, the reader was reassured. The only question that then remained was why the Russians' actions were even newsworthy.

On March 5, 2002, it was reported that a group of Russian engineers had helped out Saddam Hussein prior to his downfall. Among other things, they provided technical assistance for prohibited Iraq weapons projects in the years that preceded the U.S. led invasion in violation of U.N. sanctions. Halliburton mimicked the Russians without, however, violating the U.N. sanctions. It, too, took it upon itself to help out Saddam Hussein during the years preceding his downfall. Mr. Hussein was probably equally grateful to the Russians and to Halliburton. He didn't much care about whether the help was legal or illegal or whether it violated U.N. sanctions or not. He just welcomed the help. The Russians and Halliburton were equally pleased to oblige since they both made money as a result of their respective efforts.

Russian engineers, it was disclosed, were in Baghdad as recently as 2001 and were helping that country in its attempt to produce long-range ballistic missiles. Some of those working on the project were believed to have formerly worked for one of Russia's aerospace design centers. It is now believed that the missile program was continued by Iraq until shortly before the most recent war. A spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington denied having knowledge of the engineers' involvement and said it had been given no evidence of Russian government involvement by the U.S. government.

The Bush administration has had little to say about the recent disclosure since Mr. Bush does not want to upset his good friend, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. He has had nothing to say about the assorted disclosures about Halliburton, both before the war and after its conclusion because he want to upset his good friend Dick Cheney.

Years before Mr. Cheney became vice-president, he worked for another George Bush as secretary of defense. In that capacity he helped devise a comprehensive economic embargo the purpose of which was to isolate Saddam Hussein's government. He probably thought an economic embargo would eventually bring down the Hussein government. It didn't happen on his watch. Instead, when he left that post he became chairman and chief executive officer of Halliburton, a company that like the Russian engineers, was helping Saddam Hussein. Mr. Cheney quickly forgot his goal of putting in place an economic embargo and instead started personally profiting from trading with Iraq. Under his stewardship Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries which entered a joint venture agreement with Ingersoll-Rand Co. Two subsidiaries of those companies sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad using French affiliates. What Halliburton did was completely legal because it did it through joint ventures and subsidiaries and within the orbit of the "oil for food" program run by the United Nations.

United Nations records disclose that the subsidiaries of Halliburton and its joint venturer earned more than $73 million through their dealings with Iraq. In a report by the Washington Post report it was disclosed that two former senior executives of the subsidiaries said there was no company policy against doing business with Iraq and they heard no objections from any Halliburton executive, including Mr. Cheney, to doing business with the country. When running for vice-president and when interviewed on ABC's "This Week" on July 30, 2000, Mr. Cheney contradicted the two executives. He said: "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal. We've not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanction were imposed . . . ." Three weeks later he contradicted himself and supported the two executives he'd contradicted earlier saying: "We inherited two joint ventures with Ingersoll-Rand that were selling some parts into Iraq, but we divested ourselves of those interests." He neglected to point out that the divestiture did not occur until more than a year later during which time the companies signed close to $30 million in contracts. Mr. Cheney never bothered to explain why he got it wrong the first time.

By not criticizing the Russians' for helping Saddam Hussein and by not criticizing Halliburton for doing the same thing, Mr. Bush has shown himself to be remarkably even handed. It's comforting to his critics to learn that he has at least one trait that's admirable. Would there were more.

[b]Christopher Brauchli is a Boulder, Colorado lawyer. His column appears weekly in the Daily Camera. He can be reached at: brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu[/b] - http://www.counterpunch.com/b...

A president, or Gomer Pyle?

03.19.04 (8:35 am) [edit]

[b]A president, or Gomer Pyle?[/b]

Is he the president?

Or an AWOL model from a G.I. Joe fashion show?

George W. Bush can't seem to decide.

You'd figure that Bush would think twice before playing "soldier dress-up" for another military media event. Let's face facts here: It really didn't go too well the last time.

Who can forget that famous "Mission Accomplished" swoop-down on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln? That goofy day, the freshly made-over president stepped out of the cockpit in a full Top Gun aviator's suit. He even had a helmet under his arm.

Talk about premature self-congratulation! Soon enough, the well-dressed PR stunt turned into a well-dressed PR debacle. Bush and Karl Rove have been trying to live that one down ever since.

And now look.

Here was Bush again yesterday, commemorating America's first year (of five? 10? 20?) occupying Iraq. Instead of a cramped aircraft carrier, the White House advance team arranged an even grander photogenic backdrop — Fort Campbell, Ky., home of the Army's 101st Airborne Division and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

These are people who've been doing real fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan — and losing real lives.

But just before the big guy stepped into the fort's open amphitheater to address the flag-waving troops, he tossed off the dark suit jacket he'd worn on the plane from Washington — and slipped into an olive-green flight jacket.

Tom Cruise, eat your heart out!

It's "Top Gun II"!

The jacket had the 101st's screaming-eagle insignia emblazoned on the left sleeve. Out front was a snappy set of flight wings and the embroidered words, "George W. Bush, Commander in Chief."

Who knew Fort Campbell had a wardrobe room?

It's all kind of strange when you think about it, this presidential military costume drama. No one believes the president is really a secret soldier. Why does he insist on dressing like one?

And why just military events?

Bush doesn't climb into minister's robes when he's invited to address a church group. He doesn't show up on an aluminum walker at the AARP.

So what's with all the soldier garb when he stands before a crowd in uniform?

Oh, you know what. His advisers believe that, to gullible voters at least, the clothes do make the man, that these particular clothes make the president look macho. He keeps describing himself as a "war-time president," doesn't he? So why not dress like one?

But it's an odd political logic. And it may well backfire again.

It can't be smart, in Bush's case, to keep reminding voters about this president's own dicey traipse through military life.

The president's Democratic opponent, John Kerry, heroically commanded troops in Vietnam. Bush spent his war years in the Texas Air National Guard, avoiding Vietnam service, buzzing the beaches of Galveston Bay.

He was buzzing those beaches, anyway, until he abruptly quit flying one day, moved to Alabama and went to work in the congressional campaign of a family friend. That may be nothing to be ashamed of. But is it really the kind of thing you'd want to highlight in the middle of a tough campaign?

Then, there are the lessons of history.

History teaches — and not just Bush's history — that presidents ought to tread warily into the dress-up game. Politically motivated fashion shows have a way of going tragically awry.

Michael Dukakis is the gold standard for embarrassment here. His ill-fated tank ride in the 1988 campaign — shrunken beneath a combat helmet, waving to the cameras as the tank rode by — was supposed to project manliness and leadership. It projected dorkiness instead.

Richard Nixon's advisers figured they'd make their man appear cool and natural — more Kennedyesque — by inviting photographers to snap him walking on a California beach.

But the images of Nixon strolling across the sand in a suit, tie and hard leather shoes didn't say either cool or natural. They said "cadaver with five o'clock shadow on beach."

It's a possibility Bush and Rove should be mindful of.

They may be thinking Tom Cruise.

They'd better not deliver Gomer Pyle.

[i][b]Ellis Henican, Newsday.com[/b][/i], http://www.newsday.com/news/c...,0,4225389.column?coll=ny-news-colum nists

Bush's Broken Campaign Promise Crippling National Parks

03.19.04 (8:29 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's Broken Campaign Promise Crippling National Parks [/b]

President Bush pledged to "restore and renew" America's national parks during the 2000 election campaign. However, America's national parks now face major staffing cutbacks in both permanent and seasonal staff, according to a new report by the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). http://www.npca.org/

Without sufficient operating budget increases, and allocations from the Department of Homeland Security, the National Park Service will be unable to catch up an enormous maintenance backlog, protect park resources, or even provide some of the basic educational services Americans expect during their park visits.

"Endangered Rangers: A Study of the Severe Staffing Shortages Crippling America's National Parks," details chronic under-funding of the national parks, which has continued under the Bush administration despite the president's campaign promise. The report documents a service-wide budget shortfall of over $600 million annually, leading to cuts in seasonal park staffing that affect not only the public's ability to use and enjoy the parks, but the conservation, scientific and preservation work intrinsic to the Park Service mandate.[1]

NPCA reports that park rangers are increasingly called upon for security duties, such as protection of dams, borders, and national icons such as the Statue of Liberty, with no additional funding forthcoming. These new responsibilities remove both resource protection rangers, such as naturalists and anthropologists, and law enforcement rangers from the national parks, leaving them understaffed and underprotected.[2] Although the administration has proposed additional funding for some parks, including Glacier in Montana and Organ Pipe Cactus in Arizona, overall the parks need an additional $50 million to offset homeland security requirements.[3]

"According to the Park Service's 2003 Annual Report, 'the [Park Service] construction appropriation as well as operational funding will continue to be impacted by the need to improve national security...The National Park Service was forced to use almost $8 million in fee receipts for the increased security requirements demanded by three Code Orange periods in FY 2003.'"[4] Fee receipts are generally small amounts paid by park visitors for entrance fees, camping, and use of other facilities in some parks.

In case studies of some of the nation's most popular parks, the NPCA reports that:

Acadia National Park in Maine, a 47,500 acre park sheltering over 1,000 species of plants and wildlife, including threatened and endangered species, and over 5,000 years of human history, faces a 53% budget shortfall. Acadia is understaffed by some 100 full-time positions, including an anticipated shortage of 20-30 seasonal rangers. Shortfalls in patrol staffing have resulted in damage from illegal snowmobile and allterrain vehicle use, illegal trail cutting, and poaching.[5]

Rangers from New Mexico's Bandelier National Monument were sent last fall to protect the Statue of Liberty. The monument's 2,500 backcountry archeological sites -- one of the highest concentrations of prehistoric sites per acre in the world -- were left vulnerable to looters, until local friends of the park raised money to hire a member of the Student Conservation Corps to attend the sites, do trail work and perform search and rescues as needed.[6]

Great Smoky Mountains National Park will not be able to hire a single seasonal ranger this year. The park will need to seek donations to fund these positions instead. The 521,490-acre area, spanning the Tennessee-North Carolina border, is both an International Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage site thanks to its "irreplaceable ecological values."[7]

"President Bush and some of his predecessors made strong commitments to the American people about protecting our national parks," says NPCA President Thomas Kiernan. "By neglecting their duty to adequately fund our national parks, Congress and the administration are squandering the nation's legacy."[8]

###

[b]TAKE ACTION[/b]

Get talking points and tips from NPCA on writing an effective letter to the editor to educate your community about this issue. http://www.npca.org/take_acti...

###

[b]SOURCES:[/b]
[1] National Parks Conservation Association Press Release.
[2] "Endangered Rangers: A Study of the Severe Staffing Shortages Crippling America's National Parks," NPCA.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] NPCA Press Release, op. cit.

[b]Bush Greenwatch[/b], http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

Arab Journalists Walk Out of Colin Powell's Press Conference

03.19.04 (8:26 am) [edit]

[b]Arab Journalists Walk Out of Colin Powell's Press Conference [/b]

BAGHDAD - Iraqi journalists walked out of a Baghdad news conference by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday in protest at the lack of security and the killing of two Iraqi journalists by U.S. troops.

Arab journalists walk out of the hall during the press conference of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday March 19, 2004. Arab journalists walked out of a news conference held by Powell in a protest against the shooting deaths of two Iraqi reporters, allegedly by U.S. troops. A reporter for Arab satellite television station Al-Arabiya died from his wounds Friday after U.S. soldiers shot him hours earlier along with a cameraman, who died at the scene, the station said. The death brought to five the number of journalists killed in Iraq in less than 24 hours. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)

Powell urged U.S. allies to stay the course in Iraq after Spain vowed to pull out troops and South Korea refused to take on a combat role.

"This is not the time to say 'let's stop what we are doing and pull back'," he told the news conference.

"This is the time to...deal with this threat to the civilized world and not run and hide and think that it won't come and get us -- it will."

About 30 Iraqi journalists quit the hall in anger at Thursday's shooting of two colleagues who worked for the Dubai-based satellite television channel Al Arabiya.

"We declare our condemnation of the incident which led to the killing of the two journalists...at the hands of the American forces," declared Najim al-Rubaie of Iraq's Distor daily as Powell and Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer looked on.

Al Arabiya employees say U.S. soldiers fired on a car carrying an Arabiya crew on Thursday evening after another car ran through a checkpoint. Cameraman Ali Abdelaziz was killed and correspondent Ali al-Khatib died in hospital on Friday morning.

"[b]HORRIBLE DICTATORSHIP[/b]"

After the walkout, Powell said he respected the right of the journalists to express their feelings, adding they could not have done so under Iraq's former Baathist government.

He said he regretted the deaths of the journalists, but was sure troops would not have killed them on purpose.

Powell, on a surprise visit to Baghdad, hailed the war in Iraq after a year of bloodshed, saying it had rid the country of a "horrible dictatorial regime."

Earlier he told hundreds of U.S. soldiers and civilians, now frequent targets for attack, that Iraq and its neighbors need no longer fear Saddam Hussein's chemical arsenal -- even though U.S. experts have found no such weapons in a year-long hunt.

"We don't have to worry about that any more on this March day, this one year commemoration of the beginning of the war," declared Powell, who flew in from Kuwait and later left.

Across town, about 7,000 Sunnis and Shi'ites marched against the occupation after Friday prayers in two main mosques. "No to America, no to Saddam," they chanted in a show of unity.

The U.S. military has lost 392 troops in action since the United States and Britain launched the war to rid Iraq of the so far elusive banned weapons they said Saddam possessed.

Powell said "difficult days" lay ahead for Iraq, where at least 10 people were killed in the latest violence on Thursday.

"We have to shift as the enemy shifts. They have moved from harder targets to softer targets. We'll have to adapt our tactics likewise," he said, adding that Iraqi forces would take on an increasing role in fighting the insurgency.

A London-based Arabic newspaper said al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for a Baghdad hotel attack on Wednesday that killed at least seven civilians.

The postwar violence, coupled with last week's devastating bombings in Madrid, has jangled the nerves of several U.S. allies providing military support in Iraq.

[b]WAVERING ALLIES[/b]

Powell, seeking to stiffen their spines, said the engagement in Iraq was part of the struggle against global terrorism.

South Korea said on Friday it had refused a U.S. request for help in offensive operations and would not deploy troops in the northern city of Kirkuk because of deteriorating security there.

The unexpected decision seemed sure to delay the planned April deployment of more than 3,000 South Korean troops to augment 600 already in Iraq helping with reconstruction.

Spain's new leader pledged last week to pull troops out of Iraq after an election upset that followed the train bombings which killed 202 people in Madrid. A videotape purportedly from al Qaeda said the attack was to punish Spain for its Iraq role.

A senior coalition military official praised the work Spanish troops had done but said their withdrawal would be militarily "manageable."

He voiced confidence that other nations in the coalition would stay. "We're not going to see some sort of domino effect with the Spaniards."

Poland, another key U.S. ally in Iraq, vowed not to withdraw troops from the country.

Powell acknowledged there was no agreement yet on the shape of a sovereign government due to assume power on July 1, saying he hoped a U.N. envoy would arrive soon to join talks about various options with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday he would send a U.N. political team to Iraq soon to advise on a transitional government and elections early next year. (Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi and Luke Baker)

[b]By Arshad Mohammed, Reuters[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant Shutdown – One Day After Restart – Shows Flaws in Regulatory System

03.18.04 (7:49 am) [edit]

[b]Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant Shutdown – One Day After Restart – Shows Flaws in Regulatory System[/b]

WASHINGTON - March 17 - Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program

Barely 24 hours after the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company restarted the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, it is being shut down again due to the failure of two types of valves, one of which could allow radioactive steam to be released into the air. Two of these valves at Davis-Besse were found to be inoperable as the reactor was being restarted.

While it is appropriate that the plant is being shut down after this discovery, it is troubling that these problems were not identified previously by either FirstEnergy engineers or U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) plant inspectors, especially since the valves were likely malfunctioning before the plant’s February 2002 shutdown (otherwise, they wouldn’t have malfunctioned so quickly) and apparently were not adequately tested during pre-startup exercises of the plant late last year and early this year. Worse, a list of problems that the NRC had with Davis-Besse – a list that had not been fully addressed at the time that the NRC approved the restart of the plant – did not even include the malfunction of the valves that caused this recent shutdown.

FirstEnergy, in downplaying this event, claims it expected to "find some issues along the way." It is important to note the original cause for shutdown two years ago, the massive corrosion and deterioration of the reactor’s vessel head, was itself a problem found "along the way" as the plant was being refueled and inspected for other problems. According to NRC officials, Davis-Besse has the disturbing distinction of being the site for the second and third worst American nuclear incidents after the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979. (The corrosion was the second; coolant problems in 1985 led to the third.)

It appears that Davis-Besse is, at best, a mediocre plant that still poses dangers to the surrounding region. This continuing saga highlights what happens when regulators act as promoters of the industry they are supposed to oversee. It is apparent that the NRC is captured by the nuclear industry – Davis-Besse is a glaring example of this inherent conflict. What other dangers await discovery at the nation’s 102 other nuclear reactors – reactors that have not been the focus of increased industry and regulatory scrutiny for the past two years, as Davis-Besse has? It is astounding that even though Davis-Besse was under a magnifier, officials still missed problems. Again, we call for the NRC to keep Davis-Besse shut down and to penalize FirstEnergy appropriately by revoking its license to operate it.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Public Citizen
Newsroom: 202-588-7742 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

'Jobless Recovery' Caused by Outsourcing, Trade Pacts

03.18.04 (7:32 am) [edit]

[b]'Jobless Recovery' Caused by Outsourcing, Trade Pacts[/b]

WASHINGTON - March 17 - Leaders of the Green Party of the United States held both Democrats and Republicans responsible for the increasing pattern of job outsourcing, blaming the enactment of international trade pacts and authorities such as NAFTA and the WTO and other policies that favor corporate elites rather than working people.

The resulting globalization of corporate power over the past decade has severely damaged labor rights, as well as other human rights, democracy, and the environment, throughout the world, said Greens.

"Outsourcing jobs across U.S. borders to the lowest bidder has reduced the ability of the global economy to consume what it produces, which, in the long run has resulted in lower prices, lower wages, unemployment, and less consumption," said Reed Dunlea, New York Green who recently visited sweatshops in Mexico along the Texas Border as part of a delegation with the New York State Labor Religion Coalition http://hm.indymedia.org/featu... "The ideology of globalization coincides with the agenda of Republicans and mainstream Democrats: transfer more and more public services and resources to corporate ownership; weakening of working people's rights and the power of unions."

"We haven't seen the kind of economic disasters suffered by Argentina and Mexico, but U.S. citizens are increasingly seeing their jobs disappear, especially high-wage, high-skill jobs," added Dunlea. "The Bush Administration boasts of an economic recovery, but the only people celebrating are the corporate benefactors of both of the established political parties. Over two million American jobs have disappeared since Mr. Bush moved into the White House."

Greens note that the supposed recovery should have created about eight million new private-sector jobs. But according to Stephen S. Roach of Morgan Stanley, employment is even 2.4 million jobs lower than the level predicted by the economy's performance during the 1991-92 recession.

"Outsourcing has disproportionately affected people depending on race, with African Americans and Latinos suffering the highest rates of unemployment -- 12.9 and 9.6%, respectively," said Nathalie Paravacini, cochair of Harris County (Texas) Green Party, citing a New York Times article on New York City rates published on February 28.

Greens support a number of decisive measures to reverse the current economic direction: public works projects to create living-wage jobs; community-based economic policies, with an emphasis on local democratic control; dismantling the power that corporations have over our democracy, especially over trade policy; maintenance of public control over resources; strengthening labor rights and protections, including repeal of Taft-Hartley restrictions on union organizing at home and support for workers' rights and democractic unions around the world.

"We need to globalize democracy, not corporate power," said Holly Hart, Iowa Green and co-chair of the national party's Platform Committee. "But we'll only get global democracy when we have a noncorporate political force active at local, national, and global levels."

[b]CONTACT[/b]: The Green Party of the United States
Nancy Allen 207-326-4576,
Scott McLarty 202-518-5624

A CEO's Story: Send Jobs to China and India and Campaign Cash to Bush

03.18.04 (7:24 am) [edit]

[b]A CEO's Story: Send Jobs to China and India and Campaign Cash to Bush [/b]

WASHINGTON - March 17 - In mid-November 2003, Invacare Corporation's CEO A. Malachi ("Mal") Mixon III (pictured) announced that his company, which makes wheelchairs and other medical equipment, was shutting down its Elyria, OH facility and opening up a plant in China. According to news reports (despite company assurances to the contrary), 300 of the 500 workers - those classified as "temporary" - at the plant would lose their jobs.[1]

The same day, the company announced it was opening a call-center in India to "'test' how it will economically operate,"[2] a move that threatened the continued employment of 120 workers at its similar customer service facility in Elyria.

The local daily newspaper,[i] The Morning Journal[/i], asked in an editorial, "And how long can the 200 remaining 'regular' workers, and others, expect it to be until the low-wage Chinese also offer to make some of Invacare's more complex products?"[3]

The CEO had already answered the question: On November 14, the [i]Plain Dealer [/i]reported that Mixon and his advisors had estimated that "half of Invacare's manufacturing could be in China in five years."[4]

Mixon made the announcements at an analysts' meeting in Cleveland, not with workers at the Elyria plant.

[b]At the Same Time, Mixon Was Busy Raising Money for Bush[/b]

Less than two weeks after the announcement of the new Chinese venture, Mixon was the chairman of a special interest fundraising event that brought in $750,000 for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign. Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to Cleveland to speak at the event.[5]

Mixon has raised at least $200,000 for Bush's campaign, earning him elite status as a "Ranger."

[b]Bush Doesn't Get It[/b]

The fact that there are far too many stories like this one eludes President Bush who, during a speech at another plant in Ohio in April 2003, claimed that his tax breaks mean "more money for investments, more money for growth and more money for jobs."[6] The Bush Administration projected a net job growth in Ohio of 70,500 jobs from June 2003 to January 2004. Instead, 11,800 jobs have been lost in Ohio over that time period.[7]

Perhaps he is spending too much of his time catering to the needs of those who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign, like Invacare CEO Mal Mixon.

So far, the tax breaks have meant "more money" for wealthy CEOs. Mixon made $2.2 million in 2002.[8] That clearly places him in the wealthiest one percent of Americans who received a disproportionate of the benefits of the Bush tax plan. Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that the average tax savings for the wealthiest one percent of Americans is $662,569 over ten years.[9]

[b]Ohio: Bush's Personal ATM[/b]

This Special Interest Spotlight is the second in a series of short reports on President Bush's fundraising in Ohio. The state has become one of the President's most reliable sources of campaign contributions.

Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. currently has disclosed having 11 'Rangers' (those who raise $200,000) and 15 'Pioneers' (those who raise $100,000) from Ohio. Compare that to other comparably sized battleground states - Michigan has just five Rangers and 12 Pioneers, and Pennsylvania has only five Rangers and four Pioneers[10] - and you see Ohio's prominence. Bush's campaign has already held five major fundraisers in Ohio, raising approximately $5.25 million at these events alone.[11]

Surprisingly, Cincinnati's 45243 zip-code ranks second only to New York City 's 10021 as the most lucrative fundraising zip-code for Bush, surpassing wealthy communities in Houston, Dallas and even Beverly Hills.[12]

[b]NOTES[/b]:

[1] Mike Sakal, "Invacare will move work to China plant," The Morning Journal, November 15, 2003. [2] Ibid. [3] "News headlines read like American Dream story run in reverse," The Morning Journal, November 18, 2003. [4] Roger Mezger, "Invacare to shift work to China to save money," Plain Dealer, November 14, 2003. [5] Associated Press, "Cheney to raise money in Cleveland," Marion Star, November 25, 2003. [6] "Remarks by the President to Timken Company Employees, Canton, Ohio," April 24, 2003, White House official website. [7] JobWatch.org website [8] Mike Sakal, "Raises for CEOs don't skip a beat," The Morning Journal, June 8, 2003. [9] Citizens for Tax Justice website. [10] WhiteHouseForSale.org website. [11] Ibid. [12] Center for Responsive Politics website.

[u][b]About the Special Interest Spotlight[/b][/u] http://www.campaignmoney.org/...

[i][b]The Special Interest Spotlight is a regular report on money in politics. It is published by Campaign Money Watch, a nonprofit campaign finance reform group that holds candidates accountable for the special favors they do for their contributors and for opposing comprehensive reform[/b][/i]., http://www.commondreams.org/n...

A CEO's Story: Send Jobs to China and India and Campaign Cash to Bush

03.18.04 (7:23 am) [edit]

Free Market Debunked

03.17.04 (6:28 am) [edit]

[b]Free Market Debunked[/b]

Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and wouldn't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the solar system in the 12th century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications – from phone to fax to internet – over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s – a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.

Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money and serves the public interest.

Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The "middle class" is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of "free and open markets," or of "free trade." The "middle class" is not a normal result of "free markets." Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small "middle" mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called "serfs."

The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws.

When government sets the rules of the game of business in such a way that working people must receive a living wage, labor has the power to organize into unions just as capital can organize into corporations, and domestic industries are protected from overseas competition, a middle class will emerge. When government gives up these functions, the middle class vanishes and we return to the Dickens-era "normal" form of totally free market conservative economics where the rich get richer while the working poor are kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety so the cost of their labor will always be cheap.

When conservatives rail in the media of the dangers of "returning to Smoot Hawley, which created the Great Depression," all they do is reveal their ignorance of economics and history. The Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation, which increased taxes on some imported goods by a third to two-thirds to protect American industries, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, well into the Great Depression. In the following two years, international trade dropped from 6 percent of GNP to roughly 2 percent of GNP (between 1930 and 1932), but most of that was the result of the depression going worldwide, not Smoot-Hawley. The main result of Smoot-Hawley was that American businesses now had strong financial incentives to do business with other American companies, rather than bring in products made with cheaper foreign labor: Americans started trading with other Americans.

Smoot-Hawley "protectionist" legislation did not cause the Great Depression, and while it may have had a slight short-term negative effect on the economy ("1.4 percent at most" according to many historians) its long-term effect was to bring American jobs back to America.

The fact that the "marketplace" was an artifact of government activity was well known to our Founders. As Thomas Jefferson said in an 1803 letter to David Williams, "The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its members among the occupations... But when, by a blind concourse, particular occupations are ruinously overcharged and others left in want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards restoring the equilibrium."

And the "national authorities," in Jefferson's mind, should be the Congress, as he wrote in a series of answers to the French politician de Meusnier in 1786: "The commerce of the States cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress."

Of course, there were conservatives (like Hamilton and Adams) in Jefferson's time, too, who took exception, thinking that the trickle-down theory that had dominated feudal Europe for ten centuries was a stable and healthy form of governance. Jefferson took exception, in an 1809 letter to members of his Democratic Republican Party (now called the Democratic Party): "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.

Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)

Thomas Jefferson pointed out, in an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford, "Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association." He also pointed out in that letter that some people – and businesses – would prefer that government not play referee to the game of business, not fix rules that protect labor or provide for the protection of the commons and the public good.

We must, Jefferson wrote to Crawford, "...say to all [such] individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens [like corporations], on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."

Most of the Founders advocated – and all ultimately passed – tariffs to protect domestic industries and workers. Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln actively stood up for the right for labor to organize, intervening in several strikes to stop corporations and local governments from using hired goon squads to beat and murder strikers.

But conservative economics – the return of ancient feudalism – rose up after Lincoln's death and reigned through the Gilded Age, creating both great wealth and a huge population of what today we call the "working poor." American reaction to these disparities gave birth to the Populist, Progressive, and modern Labor movements. Two generations later, Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of Herbert Hoover's conservative-economics-pr oduced Great Depression and bequeathed us with more than a half-century of prosperity.

But now the conservatives are back in the driver's seat, and heading us back toward feudalism and serfdom (and possibly another Great Depression).

Only a return to liberal economic policies – a return to We The People again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business – will reverse this dangerous trend. We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs. The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class.

If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive – and grow – we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.

[i][b]Thom Hartmann is an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is 'We The People: A Call To Take Back America[/b][/i].', http://www.alternet.org/story...

Free Market Debunked

03.17.04 (6:27 am) [edit]

Spy Tactics Endanger Political Dissent

03.17.04 (6:24 am) [edit]

[b]Spy Tactics Endanger Political Dissent [/b]

As we approach the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and the coming spring nationwide demonstrations, not to mention the coming Republican convention in New York City, there is growing apprehension among civil libertarians and ordinary Americans that the FBI is once again dredging up its infamous J. Edgar Hoover legacy of spying on political dissenters who are exercising their constitutional rights.

Last October the FBI notified local police agencies to keep close tabs on people and groups opposed to the war and occupation of Iraq. Since it is obvious that the Bush administration loves playing the 9/11 card for political purposes, it is no surprise that efforts are being made to squelch as much domestic dissension as it can.

We've been through this wave of repression before in the 20th century with calamitous results, when government snoopers developed a vast spying apparatus during the '20s, McCarthyite '50s, and the '60s, '70s and '80s against nonviolent dissenters who dared challenge the wisdom of U.S. foreign policies. And though the FBI (and others in the government) deny they are hindering free speech or assembly - declaring that they are only concerned with deterring potential criminals and terrorists - their October memorandum nevertheless asked some 17,000 local and state police agencies to keep a very close eye on anti-war demonstrations and report allegedly suspicious activity to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The risk now is that the "war against terrorism" has given policing agents on all levels greater latitude to play ideological sentry. In Chicago, for example, the Sun-Times reported in February that undercover cops have been spying on different groups, including the American Friends Service Committee. Political espionage has occurred in Denver, Colorado Springs, Austin, Fresno, Atlanta and probably many other places.

In New York City in February 2003, tens of thousands of anti-war marchers were forced into holding pens, assaulted with pepper sprays and many of the arrested compelled by the police to reveal their political leanings and histories of earlier protests. And in Hernando County, Fla., peaceful anti-war pickets carrying signs were put under surveillance and their personal lives investigated, which led the St. Petersburg Times to properly characterize the police response as "intolerance for political dissent."

Take Jeanne Pahls, a fourth- grade teacher in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the founders of a local anti-war group, Stop the War Machine. In March 2003, before the invasion, members of the group organized a demonstration. When they noticed a white pickup cab being used to videotape the affair, she complained to the police and was told by a detective that it belonged to its criminal investigations unit.

After the war actually began, hundreds of Albuquerque marchers went out on the streets and refused to disperse, claiming the right to conduct peaceful protests. Police wearing gas masks, Kevlar helmets, and carrying automatic weapons fired tear gas and pepper balls at marchers bearing signs reading "Peace Not War" and "We're Nonviolent, How About You?" Now, she says, she and others worry their planning sessions may be infiltrated with police spies and their actions perceived as illegal.

And yet, Stop the War Machine and other local groups have planned a large and peaceful demonstration for Saturday, a year after the war began, and expect a large turnout. Pahls says proudly and properly, "We have a right and a duty to speak up. It's a matter of conscience."

Perhaps the most serious challenge thus far to political freedom occurred recently in Des Moines, Iowa, when federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to the student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild at Drake University, demanding its members' names. Students and the guild had conducted a meeting on university grounds late in 2003 dubbed, "Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard home!"

In addition, a court order prevented the university from speaking publicly about the subpoena it too received. The prosecutor's office explained later that its only concern was with trespassing, though why this required a grand jury investigation defies reason.

The line between freedom and security can be terribly thin. But when Americans are intimidated into genuflecting before official policies they loathe rather than be allowed the freedom to express "an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion," as the late deeply respected American jurist Learned Hand once put it, then we are in very, very deep trouble.

[i][b]Murray Polner, an Army veteran, wrote "No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran" and co-authored, with Jim O’Grady, "Disarmed & Dangerous," a biography of Daniel and Philip Berrigan[/b][/i]., http://www.commondreams.org/v...

The Bushes' New World Disorder

03.17.04 (6:22 am) [edit]

[b]The Bushes' New World Disorder [/b]

"IT MUST BE considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things." This warning is from Niccolo Machiavelli, yet it has never had sharper resonance.

More than a decade ago, after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush explicitly sought to initiate, as he put it to Congress, a "new world order." He made that momentous declaration on Sept. 11, 1990. Eleven years later, the suddenly mystical date of 9/11 motivated his son to finish what the father began. A year ago this week, Bush the younger launched a war against the man who tried to kill his dad, initiating the opposite of order.

The situation hardly needs rehearsing. In Iraq, many thousands are dead, including 564 Americans. Civil war threatens. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is choked by drug-running warlords. Islamic jihadists have been empowered. The nuclear profiteering of Pakistan has been exposed but not necessarily stopped. Al Qaeda's elusiveness has reinforced its mythic malevolence. The Atlantic Alliance is in ruins. The United States has never been more isolated. A pattern of deception has destroyed its credibility abroad and at home. Disorder spreads from Washington to Israel to Haiti to Spain. Whether the concern is subduing resistance fighters far away or making Americans feel safer, the Pentagon's unprecedented military dominance, the costs of which stifle the US economy, is shown to be essentially impotent.

In America, the new order of things is defined mainly by the sour taste of moral hangover, how the emotional intensity of the 9/11 trauma -- anguished but pure -- dissolved into a feeling of being trapped in a cage of our own making. As the carnage in Madrid makes clear, the threats in the world are real and dangerous to handle, but one US initiative after another has escalated rather than diffused such threats. Instead of replacing chaos with new order, our nation's responses inflict new wounds that increase the chaos. We strike at those whom we perceive as aiming to do us harm but without actually defending ourselves. And most unsettling of all, in our attempt to get the bad people to stop threatening us, we have begun to imitate them.

The most important revelation of the Iraq war has been of the Bush administration's blatant contempt for fact. Whether defined as "lying" or not, the clear manipulation of intelligence ahead of last year's invasion has been completely exposed. The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" has been transformed. Where once it evoked the grave danger of a repeat of the 9/11 trauma, now it evokes an apparently calculated American fear. The government laid out explicit evidence defining a threat that required the launching of preventive war, and the US media trumpeted that evidence without hesitation. The result, since there were no weapons of mass destruction, as the government and a pliant press had ample reason to know, was an institutionalized deceit maintained to this day. At the United Nations, the United States misled the world. In speech after speech, President Bush misled Congress and the nation. And note that the word "misled" means both to have falsified and to have failed in leadership. To mislead, as the tautological George Bush might put it, is to mislead.

The repetition of falsehoods tied to the war on terrorism and the war against Iraq has eroded the American capacity, if not to tell the difference between what is true and what is a lie, then to think the difference matters much. The administration distorted fact ahead of the invasion, when the American people could not refute what had not happened yet. And the administration distorts fact now, when the American people do not remember clearly what we were told a year ago. That Bush retains the confidence of a sizable proportion of the electorate suggests that Americans don't particularly worry anymore about truth as a guiding principle of their government.

In that lies the irony. The Bush dynasty has in fact initiated a new order of things. The United States of America has become its own opposite, a nation of triumphant freedom that claims the right to restrain the freedom of others; a nation of a structured balance of power that destroys the balance of power abroad; a nation of creative enterprise that exports a smothering banality; and above all, a nation of forcefully direct expression that disrespects the truth. Whatever happens from this week forward in Iraq, the main outcome of the war for the United States is clear. We have defeated ourselves.

- [b]James Carroll, Boston Globe[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Mercury Emissions Rule Geared to Benefit Industry, Staffers Say

03.17.04 (6:19 am) [edit]

[b]Mercury Emissions Rule Geared to Benefit Industry, Staffers Say[/b]

[i][b]Buffeted by complaints, EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt calls for additional analysis.

By Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller[/b][/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

WASHINGTON — Political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency bypassed agency professional staff and a federal advisory panel last year to craft a rule on mercury emissions preferred by the industry and the White House, several longtime EPA officials say.

The EPA staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies called for under a standing executive order. At the same time, the proposal to regulate mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants was written using key language provided by utility lobbyists.

The Bush administration has said that the proposed rule would cut mercury emissions by 70% in the next 15 years, and is tied to the president's "Clear Skies" initiative. Critics say it would delay reductions in mercury levels for decades at a risk to public health, while saving the power and coal industries billions of dollars.

Studies designed to address such questions are the ones that were not conducted.

EPA veterans say they cannot recall another instance when the agency's technical experts were cut out of developing a major regulatory proposal.

The administration chose a process "that would support the conclusion they wanted to reach," said John A. Paul, a Republican environmental regulator from Ohio who co-chaired the EPA-appointed advisory panel.

He said its 21 months of work on mercury was ignored.

"There is a politicization of the work of the agency that I have not seen before," said Bruce C. Buckheit, who served in major federal environmental posts for two decades. He retired in December as director of the EPA's Air Enforcement Division, partly because he felt enforcement was stymied. "A political agenda is driving the agency's output, rather than analysis and science," he said.

Russell E. Train, a Republican who headed the EPA during the Nixon and Ford administrations, said: "I think it is outrageous. The agency has strayed from its mission in the past three years."

Buffeted by complaints about the mercury proposal from both within and outside the agency, EPA Administrator Michael O. Leavitt in recent days has called for additional analysis. EPA staffers say they have been asked to suggest possible comparative studies for the agency to run, much like the analysis that, they say, they were ordered not to conduct last year.

"The process is not complete nor is the analysis," Leavitt said in an interview Monday. "I want it done well and I want it done right. And I want it done in a way that will maximize the level of reductions" based on the available technology.

Leavitt noted that while the EPA expressed a clear preference for a more flexible, market-driven plan, its proposed mercury rule also includes an alternative approach using a traditional regulatory system requiring all plants to install pollution controls.

Leavitt portrayed the new period of inquiry as part of the "normal process" of rule-making, noting that the agency had so far filed only a provisional rule. But veteran regulators say it is unusual to propose a rule first and do extensive comparative studies later — unless new information emerges.

Leavitt said he could not speak to what happened at the agency before he arrived in November, but that he has had "no pressure to do anything other than the right thing from the White House."

Christie Whitman was the EPA administrator when the career employees say they were told not to conduct the analysis. She left the agency in June, six months before the proposed rule was announced.

"I did not know that we were cutting a process short or shortchanging the analysis," Whitman said in an interview Monday. Had she heard such allegations, she said, she would have intervened.

Five current career employees — all speaking on condition they not be named for fear of job retribution — and several former officials provided a behind-the-scenes account of the EPA's decision-making in the mercury case.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

A cascade of studies in recent years has cast mercury as an escalating health danger, although its threat to the human nervous system has been known since at least the 19th century. That is when hat makers in England literally went mad from exposure to a mercury compound used in processing felt — hence the expression "mad as a hatter."

Today, the use of mercury in U.S. manufacturing is tightly restricted. But there has been no strict limit on mercury released into the atmosphere from the nation's 1,100 coal-fired power plants, the largest single source of mercury in the U.S.

Mercury occurs naturally in the environment, in fossil fuels like coal, and is released into the atmosphere when those fuels are burned. When mercury particles and gases drop into water, some turn into a more toxic form known as methyl mercury, which then enters the aquatic food chain. People are exposed to mercury chiefly by eating fish.

In 2000, a National Research Council study commissioned by Congress estimated that each year about 60,000 children born in the United States could have neurological problems because they were exposed to mercury before birth. Exposure could lead to developmental problems.

In the past few months, there has been a flurry of other disturbing reports, most focusing on the threat to the fetus from mothers eating fish with elevated levels of mercury. In December, the Food and Drug Administration warned all women of child-bearing age to limit their intake of tuna and other fish because of concern about mercury.

Coal and utility executives don't dispute the dangers of mercury, but they question how much of the threat comes from power plants. And they warn that overly aggressive regulation of the nation's coal-fired plants could damage those industries and the economy and endanger already stretched supplies of electricity.

In its final days, the Clinton administration determined mercury to be a toxic substance and thus subject to strict regulation under the Clean Air Act. The administration's decision required that the EPA propose standards for utility plant emissions by the end of 2003.

As part of this process, the EPA selected a 21-member federal advisory panel in 2001 to make recommendations to the agency.

Mercury was on the agenda at a staff meeting last spring at EPA headquarters presided over by Jeffrey R. Holmstead, a lawyer who represented industry interests on air pollution issues before Bush appointed him to run the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. Several of the staff members said they had expected to discuss plans to carry out comparative studies of proposals to reduce mercury emissions. The studies had been requested by the federal advisory panel.

The studies were designed to examine the effects of mercury regulation on energy markets, electricity prices and public health. This analysis, generated through EPA computer models, typically becomes the basis upon which agency officials — and outsiders — weigh alternatives.

But William Wehrum, a senior advisor to Holmstead who also represented industry clients before joining the Bush administration, told the dozen or so staffers that comparative studies would be postponed indefinitely.

"I was floored," said one participant, who has served several administrations. "We pointed out that the studies were required … that the data runs were promised to a federal advisory committee."

Holmstead did not respond to expressions of concern, participants said. "There was an awkward silence," one recalled.

After the meeting, two staffers said, Holmstead informed them that the studies would not be conducted partly because of "White House concern."

Holmstead and Wehrum declined repeated requests for comment. On Monday, Leavitt expressed full confidence in them.

Paul, the co-chairman of the advisory committee, which was made up of regulators, environmentalists and industry representatives, says his panel was promised the comparative data last March, but its next meeting was canceled by the EPA and the group never met again.

"We were cut off without any warning or explanation," said Paul, director of the Ohio Regional Air Pollution Control Agency in Dayton, who says he voted for Bush in 2000.

Lisa Heinzerling, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in regulatory law and has studied the mercury proposal, said the "EPA's analytical work on mercury was extraordinarily thin."

Even as career staffers and some members of the EPA's advisory panel felt that their contributions to the mercury proposal were being restricted, utility industry lobbyists were given extraordinarily direct input.

When the Bush administration took office in 2001, slowing mercury regulation was a priority for the coal and power industries. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the coal industry dispatched lobbyists to meet with staff of Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force on mercury and other pollution issues.

Since 1999, coal and electricity companies and executives have donated $40 million to Republican candidates and committees, including $1.3 million directly to Bush campaigns, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The administration has responded to key industry priorities: It ended U.S. participation in the Kyoto process to reduce global warming and relaxed regulations that required the power industry to install pollution controls when renovating its plants.

The administration's proposed mercury rule, published in the Federal Register in December, contains numerous paragraphs of verbatim language supplied by two separate industry advocates.

Several complete paragraphs were lifted from three memos provided by Latham & Watkins, a national law firm whose clients include large coal-fired utility plants.

Both Holmstead and Wehrum are former Latham & Watkins attorneys.

More seriously, according to critics, the proposal also includes exact language provided by West Associates, a research and advocacy group representing 20 power and transmission companies in California and other Western states.

The West language suggests a standard for determining likely mercury emissions at power plants.

That standard — largely incorporated by the EPA — is enormously beneficial to the industry, according to S. William Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators organization, which represents state and local regulators in Washington.

Leavitt said use of lobbyists' memos in this fashion is not consistent with "normal agency procedure" and that he would prefer that wholesale use of any group's language be disclosed.

Under the proposal, the government would set a national annual cap on emissions but then permit individual companies to choose whether to reduce their own emissions or buy "credits" from other companies that do.

This is designed to provide an incentive to cut emissions nationwide, without limiting them at each individual facility. This approach was widely hailed in the 1990s for reducing power plant emissions that produced acid rain, but critics say it would be ill advised for a toxin such as mercury.

Some scientists believe mercury, which is heavier than acid-rain-producing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, will remain close to the point of emission, creating "hot spots" of potentially high levels of mercury contamination near power plants. Power plants in communities with high levels of mercury could opt to buy credits rather than spend the money to make reductions.

The EPA's own Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, which includes academic, industry and environmental professionals, wrote on Jan. 26 that "the cap and trade program, as proposed, may not address existing hot spots and may create new local hot spots for mercury."

Overall, the committee said the Bush proposal "does not go as far as is feasible to reduce mercury emissions from power plants, and thereby does not sufficiently protect our nation's children."

Today, coal-fired power plants pump out about 48 tons of mercury annually. The Clinton administration order under the Clean Air Act would have mandated reducing the amount produced by coal-fired power plants by as much as 90%, to about 5 tons annually by 2008.

The Bush Clear Skies plan, as modified on Capitol Hill, calls for a national cap of 34 tons in 2010, a level that wouldn't require any extra spending by the industry because it would be automatically reached if utilities added scrubbers and other equipment to comply with the Clear Skies rules regulating nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions.

Opponents of the Bush plan contend that setting a lower cap in the near future would encourage innovation by assuring a market for the new equipment. But officials of the coal-fired utility industry argue that forcing rapid adoption of that technology would be so expensive that it would lead electric generators to shift from coal to natural gas.

"The result would be increased electricity prices and higher costs for home heating, food and a host of consumer and industrial products," said Scott Segal, director of a coal utility trade association.

Segal and the coal utility companies that make up the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council back the administration's market-based approach as the most effective way to reduce emissions of mercury and other pollutants without harming the economy.

Meantime, longtime EPA employees say the administration exaggerated data on the effectiveness of its proposed rule, whi