I have great news for you from our Stop Cruise Pollution campaign!

It's official: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines has heard your calls for them to clean up their sewage-treatment act. And they are doing something about it.

To put it simply -- WE WON!

In a letter to Oceana (PDF format) http://ga0.org/ct/Y115Yjd17Bpr/ Royal Caribbean Chairman and CEO Richard Fain has committed the company to do the following:

* Install advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) systems on every ship in their fleet -- just as Oceana has been calling on Royal Caribbean to do -- as their ships come in for their scheduled drydocking, which means their whole fleet will have them by 2008.
* Select AWT systems whose treated discharges meet the stringent standards of the state of Alaska -- the same standards which Oceana has been calling on Royal Caribbean to meet.
* Have a third party monitor the performance of the AWT systems, and make the results of that monitoring public.

It is very gratifying to see Royal Caribbean make this decision. As you know, we have been urging them for almost a year now to start down this road, so it's great to see them beginning the journey.

And you have been instrumental in making that happen. Almost 90,000 people have signed our cruise pollution pledge, vowing not to cruise with Royal Caribbean until they committed to stop dumping inadequately treated sewage. In communities across North America -- in Miami, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Vancouver, and many more -- you turned out to show your support.

http://www.stopcruisepollution.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=page&pageID=974

Now, your voices have been heard. Royal Caribbean has started to clean up its act. It's an exciting day for us all, and a turning point for the oceans!

WHAT COMES NEXT

In recognition of Royal Caribbean's commitment, we're suspending our campaign against them. However, Royal Caribbean is just one company. Cruise pollution is still a major threat to our oceans, which is why we're supporting the Clean Cruise Ships Act of 2004 -- a bill currently before Congress that would go a long way towards stopping the problem of cruise pollution across the entire industry.

You acted, and you got Royal Caribbean's attention. Now we're asking you to do the same for Congress. Ask your Members of Congress to co-sponsor the Clean Cruise Ships Act of 2004 -- they need to hear from you how important this is!

* TAKE ACTION: Ask your Members of Congress to co-sponsor the Clean Cruise Ships Act of 2004
http://ga0.org/campaign/cleancruiseact/7iwdixzhjem7wn

Want to share the good news? You can use our Tell-A-Friend feature to invite your friends to join the community that made this victory possible:

* TELL A FRIEND: Pass on the good news!
http://ga0.org/wavemaker/join-forward.html?domain=wavemaker&r=gd15Yjd1pB8p

And we're also opening a thread over on our community site, The Oceana Network, for you to discuss this news with your fellow activists:

* GET CONNECTED: Discuss the Royal Caribbean decision on The Oceana Network http://ga0.org/ct/Rp15Yjd17Bp4/

This is a major step forward for everyone who cares about the future of the oceans, and it couldn't have happened without you. Thanks for your continuing commitment, and congratulations!

For the oceans,

Andy Sharpless
CEO
Oceana

Tell your friends about this important victory, and the need to support the Clean Cruise Act!
Tell-a-friend! http://ga0.org/join-forward.html?domain=wavemaker&r=gd15Yjd1pB8p

Leading Fortune 500 Companies, Coke, Pepsi, Walmart, Kraft General Foods, etc. filed against for knowingly poisoning the public with aspartame

SACRAMENTO, CA (PRWEB) April 26, 2004--ASPARTAME LAWSUITS ACCUSE MANY COMPANIES OF POISONING THE PUBLIC. Defendants in the lawsuits include Coca-cola, PepsiCo, Bayer Corp., the Dannon Company, William Wrigley Jr. Company, Walmart, ConAgra Foods, Wyeth, Inc., The NutraSweet Company, and Altria Corp. (parent company of Kraft Foods and Philip Morris).

Lawsuits were filed in three separate California courts against twelve companies who either produce or use the artificial sweetener aspartame as a sugar substitute in their products. The suits were filed in Shasta, Sonoma and Butte County, California.

The suits allege that the food companies committed fraud and breach of warranty by marketing products to the public such as diet Coke, diet Pepsi, sugar free gum, Flintstone's vitamins, yogurt and children's aspirin with the full knowledge that aspartame, the sweetener in them, is neurotoxic.

Aspartame is a drug masquerading as an additive. It interacts with other drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical hyper-sensitization agent. As far back as 1970, Dr. John Olney founded the field of neuroscience called excitotoxicity when he did studies on aspartic acid, which makes up 40% of aspartame, and found it caused lesions in the brains of mice. He made world news on the aspartame/brain tumor connection in l996. Dr. Ralph Walton, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine has written of the behavioral and psychiatric problems triggered by aspartame-caused depletion of serotonin.

Aspartame causes headache, memory loss, seizures, vision loss, coma and cancer. It worsens or mimics the symptoms of such diseases and conditions as fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, ADD, diabetes, Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue and depression.

Aspartame liberates free methyl alcohol. The resulting chronic methanol poisoning affects the dopamine system of the brain causing addiction. Methanol, or wood alcohol, constitutes one-third of the aspartame molecule and is classified as a severe metabolic poison and narcotic.

Recent news is full of reports of world-class athletes and other healthy consumers of aspartame suddenly dropping dead. Sudden death can occur from aspartame use because it damages the cardiac conduction system.

Dr. Woodrow Monte in the peer reviewed journal, Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health, wrote: "When diet sodas and soft drinks, sweetened with aspartame, are used to replace fluid loss during exercise and physical exertion in hot climates, the intake of methanol can exceed 250 mg/day or 32 times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended limit of consumption for this cumulative poison."

The effects of aspartame are documented by the FDA's own data. In 1995 the agency was forced, under the Freedom Of Information Act, to release a list of ninety-two aspartame symptoms reported by thousands of victims. This is only the tip of the iceberg. H. J. Roberts, MD, published the medical text "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic" -- 1,000 pages of symptoms and diseases triggered by this neurotoxin including the sordid history of its approval.

Since its discovery in 1965, controversy has raged over the health risks associated with the sugar substitute. From laboratory testing of the chemical on rats, researchers have discovered that the drug induces brain tumors. On Sept 30, l980 the Board of Inquiry of the FDA concurred and denied the petition for approval. In l981, the newly appointed FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, ignored the negative ruling and approved aspartame for dry goods. As recorded in the Congressional Record of 1985, then CEO of Searle Laboratories Donald Rumsfeld said that he would call in his markers to get aspartame approved. Rumsfeld was on President Reagan's transition team and a day after taking office appointed Hayes. No FDA Commissioner in the previous sixteen years had allowed Aspartame on the market.

In 1983, aspartame was approved for use in carbonated beverages. Today it is found in over 5000 foods, drinks and medicines.

Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD, author of "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills" ( http://www.russellblaylockmd.com ) wrote about the relationship between aspartame and macular degeneration, diabetic blindness and glaucoma (all known to result from excitotoxin accumulation in the retina).

All of these neurodegenerative diseases are worsened by aspartame. In addition, we now have evidence that excitotoxins play a major role in exacerbation of MS and other demyelinating disorders including trigeminal neuraliga. Blaylock says that new studies show excitotoxins trigger significant elevation of free radicals in the lining (endothelial cells) of arteries, which means that aspartame will increase the incidence of heart attacks and strokes (atherosclerosis).

In original studies, aspartame has triggered brain, mammary, uterine, ovarian, testicular, thyroid and pancreatic tumors.

Plaintiffs have asked for an injunction to stop companies from producing, manufacturing, processing, selling or using aspartame.

Plaintiffs in all three cases are seeking a jury trial.

If you would like to schedule someone from the National Justice League for an interview, please call or fax us at 208-246-1171.

Roberta Bellon, Public Relations

NATIONAL JUSTICE LEAGUE
http://www.nationaljusticeleague.com
2205 Hilltop Dr. Ste. 2022
Redding, Ca 96002
Phone: 208-246-1171
California: 530-248-3483
Cell Phone: 208-890-0034
E-mail: info@nationaljusticeleague.com

FOR INFORMATION ON ASPARTAME:
http://www.dorway.com
http://www.wnho.net

You can also contact Dr. Betty Martini, Founder, Mission Possible Intl, 9270 River Club Parkway, Duluth, Georgia 30097 USA 770-242-2599

This release is issued by courtesy of:WORLD NATURAL HEALTH ORGANIZATION (for further information on this Breaking News and History of Aspartame)
http://www.wnho.net/history_of_aspartame.htm

Contact Information
Betty Martini

MISSION POSSIBLE INTERNATIONAL
http://www.wnho.net, http://www.dorway.com

World Natural Health Organization


Informant: ECOTERRA Intl.

AFP
May 2, 2004

http://www.terradaily.com/2004/040502030651.y5wzzm8d.html

KRASNOYARSK, Russia - Illegal logging and controversial business plans have ecologists raising the alarm in Siberia's scenic Krasnoyarsk region, Russia's prime forestry area and vital to a country struggling under massive air pollution.

"From Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, the taiga stretches without limit. Does it have an end? When you are on the top of a mountain, you see mountains all around... And all is covered by a dense forest. It gives you shivers," Anton Chekhov wrote in the 1890s.

But the famed writer's days are past, and now the sight is different -- criminal logging and arson gnaw at the sea of trees.

"In Russia, up to 30 percent of tree logging is illegal. Depending on the region, the wood then goes to Scandinavian countries or China," said Yevgeny Shvarts of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

"They do it quickly, a team of five or six people take a big truck, cut a large area and send the wood to China. It makes a good profit," lamented Galina Kuzmina, deputy head of Krasnoyarsk's forest protection center.

In addition, 2,000 fires last year alone -- most of them due to arson -- and the Siberian bombyx parasite has devastated entire swaths of the region's forest, she said.

But the government's new forestry code, which is still being drafted and allows the regions to privatise forest zones, is what troubles Russian ecologists most.

The Russian forest is currently almost entirely managed by the "leskhozes," local forestry administrations, which hand out licences to the lumberjacks and their firms.

"After the privatisation experience of the 1990s, public opinion will not stand for privatisation of forests," Shvarts fumed.

Environmentalists also fear that the new code would bar millions of Russians from the forests, who make their living by collecting cedar kernels, mushrooms and berries.

"They say here that Russal," the giant Krasnoyarsk-based aluminum producer, "is ready to buy up the region's entire forest," Kuznina said.

The government in turn hopes to encourage the creation of wood refining factories and paper and cellulose plants.

Russia, 70 percent of whose massive territory is covered by forests, nets 4.5 billion dollars (3.8 billion euros) annually from wood exports, but could profit more if it could refine wood at home rather than ship the raw material to be treated abroad.

The region's governor Alexander Khloponin has ambitious plans to chop down 49 million cubic meters (1715 million cubic feet) of wood annually where only five million cubic meters are now harvested.

"This would require important forestry territories and big investors who would build roads and replant forests as needed, like they do in Finland," he noted.

The governor hopes to attract enough capital to set up a cellulose factory, which would profit from the region's low energy prices.

However, he said he thought privatisation plans were too hasty, arguing that the industry could pass into the private sector only after the state set up efficient control systems -- which could take up to 15 years.


Informant: NHNE

Der Rat verlangte gestern eine dritte Abstimmung im EU-Parlament über die Frage, ob europäisches Recht einfach so gebrochen werden kann. Sehr schön und geradewegs erz/demokratisch. Wie oft soll noch abgestimmt werden?

quintessenz-list Digest, Vol 14, Issue 3


Neuer Schlagabtausch im EU-Parlament
Parlament mit klarer Mehrheit gegen erneuten Antrag auf Unterzeichnung des Passagierdaten-Abkommens mit den USA | Rat droht, EU-Parlament zu übergehen | Entscheidung des EuGH soll nicht abgewartet werden

Das Europaparlament hat einen weiteren Vorstoß des Rats, das Abkommen zur Weitergabe von Passagierdaten an die USA, erneut abzustimmen, am Dienstag mit 343 zu 301 Stimmen bei 18 Enthaltungen abgelehnt.

Mit Verweis auf die Geschäftsordnung lehnte das Parlament es ab, sich erneut mit derselben Angelegenheit zu befassen, über die es bereits zwei Abstimmungen mit mehrheitlicher Ablehnung gegeben hatte.

"Die Mehrheit des Parlaments hat gezeigt, dass wir uns vom Rat nicht wie Marionetten behandeln lassen und so lange abstimmen, bis das Ergebnis genehm ist" sagte die Abgeordnete Mercedes Echerer nach der Abstimmung zur futurezone.

Man werde nicht mehr hinnehmen, dass lange erkämpfte, europäische Bürgerrechte wie Datenschutz auf dem Altar der transatlantischen Beziehungen geopfert würden.

Mehr mit Links
http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=230005