INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: Where are the Missing Women?

Susanne Link

UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (IPS) - Indigenous women from around the world go missing every day with only little notice and concern shown by the United Nations, governments and media, said a group of their peers Thursday...

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=23750


Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) president, Kukdookaa Terri Brown, said yesterday that the unsolved murders of at least 10 Edmonton (Canada) area aboriginal women is partially the result of systemic racism among police."They are responsible for the deaths when they do not provide a safe environment for all... people are dying as a result of their inaction," said Brown, "They have not been policing properly. They have not protected our people properly. They do not investigate properly, and we're saying, do your jobs and we are going to do ours." Brown's allegations follow news earlier this month that police in Edmonton may have been aware of a serial killer stalking aboriginal women.

Earlier this year, NWAC started an important campaign to recognize the approximately 500 missing or murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. The Sisters in Spirit Campaign was launched on March 22, 2004 with events throughout the country. NWAC is seeking $10 million in federal cash to research Canada's missing and murdered aboriginal women.

"The problem is when young aboriginal marginalized women go missing there's little attention paid to it by police," said Brown. Amnesty International says it will be issuing a report on missing aboriginal women in Canada sometime this fall. "We're aware of what we see as a pattern of vulnerability experienced by native women in Canada" said its spokesperson Cheryl Hotaiss. Racism and sexism "flavor" the police handling of missing or murdered aboriginal women cases, but no one seems to have a handle on how big the problem is, the head of Amnesty International Canada said recently. As researchers prepare to write their findings after six months touring the country talking to victims' families, police, and aboriginal leaders, Amnesty secretary general Alex Neve says they are dealing with a human rights issue that requires immediate attention from politicians, police and justice officials. "It has become very clear right across the country the degree to which sexism and racism . . . are very much what is putting aboriginal women at risk," Neve told a news conference. "It puts them at risk of being targeted for attack and violence in the first place and the racism and discrimination further kicks in a double hit because it very much flavors the degree to which the police and justice systems take the case seriously."

Beverly Jacobs, a Mohawk lawyer and lead researcher for the Amnesty report, said she has met with several victims' families. Many shared similar stories of feeling disappointed with or being shut out of the way their case was handled. "What they're wanting the most is answers," said Jacobs. "They're wanting at least some kind of recognition that something's being done."

The sad fact is that indigenous women from around the world go missing every day with only little notice and concern shown by the United Nations, governments and media. Indigenous women are often victims of violence because they are marginalized in every nation, said NWAC's Kukdookaa Brown. Brown and other women have been trying to pressure the UN into taking action.

The biggest obstacle to dealing with the issue of missing indigenous women in Asia is that governments do not want to recognize the violence, said Sumshot Khular, president of India-based Community Action and Research for Development. "The government doesn't want to highlight the issue", she said, "and the police don't help to find the women". Building awareness about the abuse of indigenous women in Asia is difficult because the men who dominate the local media are not interested in the issue and because governments do not want to publish the issue for fear of creating a negative image of their country, says Khular.

In southern Sudan, indigenous girls as young as seven years of age are targeted for rape, said Susan Oduho, an activist from the African nation. Although the international community is now focused on human rights and humanitarian issues in the country's western Darfur region, "southern Sudan should be more highlighted", Oduho added.

Brown says indigenous women are typically mistreated wherever they live, so the issue is not isolated to any one area or region. "Hate, crime and racial violence against (the women) affect all aspects of indigenous society", she laments. Sources: IPS, Calgary Sun, CNW, CNews, Canoe, First Perspective


Informant: reg

http://www.outfoxed.org/?520=


This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know. Real Video.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7798.htm

Reporters:

WSJ ran the below story, re: MoveOn.org and Common Cause's petition filed with the FTC against FOX News' slogan "Fair & Balanced." Also, attached, please find the new MoveOn.org print ad that runs in today's New York Times: "The Communists had PRAVDA. Republicans have FOX.":
http://www.outfoxed.org/images/nyt_ad_pravda.pdf

Don't hesitate to call with any follow-up questions.
Best,

Jessica Smith & Trevor FitzGibbon, 202-822-5200

Danish bus accident with 63 children (16-20 years old) on board in Germany near Euskirchen on the 18th of July returning from Spain. Two are death.

Could have been prevented!

Quite awake and no one else to blame – nevertheless the busdriver lost control over his bus. For those of us who have informed themselves about the danger of the so beloved product of the mobile industry, the cellphones, automatically the question arose, how many of the young people on the bus had their cellphones switched on, were just making a phone call or sending a SMS. For example, in hospitals and on airplanes it is forbidden to have cellphones switched on because of possible failure of any technical equipment. Not too long ago, investigation revealed that a call with a cellphone on the plane caused the crash of Robert Kennedy’s airplane. The pulsating microwaves, however, are not only causing technical breakdowns, but are also disturbing the information to be received or sent by our brain leading, for example, to the receipt of false informations, delayed reactions or just brief blackouts. Many readers may now have doubts because the warnings by international scientists are in contradiction with official statments and interests.

In this accident only two children died – but not considering this fact it will lead to many more accidents.

Marianne Kirst

Comments from Dr Miguel Muntané

SUMMARY:

1. "His handset was strapped to his chest, where the tumour was found."

* "complained to his superiors that the handset, which emits pulsing radio frequencies, was making him ill."

"I have a major concern that the system isn't safe. We have spoken to other officers and they are aware of it and are terrified of it."

2. First industrial inversion:
£2.9 billion by the end of 2005.

3. Later health investigation:
£5 million health study: including a detailed study of 150 officers and a 15-year monitoring programme involving 100,000 users.

REMEMBER:

* Later health inversion 5 million / Industrial inversion 2.9 billion = 0.17% and with 15 years "delay tactic"

CONCLUSION:

Delay Tactic 15 years

"All the handsets comply with the guidelines and there's no evidence to suggest there are any health concerns."

NO EVIDENCE IN GUIDELINES = ISN'T SAFE

“The permit limit for microwave radiation has not been determined by doctors and biologists, based on trials on animals and humans, but by technicians and solely from the amount of radiation it takes to warm up a bag of sugar water with 1 degree Celsius.”

Twisting Science: Reflections on Radiological War:

Charles Sheehan-Miles on 'Depleted' Uranium: "The science is being twisted around to serve the Pentagon's needs."...

http://www.traprockpeace.org/charles_sheehan-miles.html


From Information Clearing House

A political Web site written by a Democratic operative drew attention yesterday to the fact that President Bush's uncle, Jonathan J. Bush, is a top executive at Riggs Bank, which this week agreed to pay a record $25 million in civil fines for violations of law intended to thwart money laundering...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28396-2004May14.html


From Information Clearing House

Halliburton, in trouble over alleged over-charging for Iraq contracts, is being probed for its deals in Iran...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3908753.stm


From Information Clearing House

More disturbing news from Iraq: Now United Nations auditors are complaining the Bush administration is holding back information concerning more than $1 billion in reconstruction contracts awarded to several well-connected American firms without competitive bidding...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6521.htm

Combat is not a video game; it is real and it can be traumatic. Does the US Army understand this?...

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=806


From Information Clearing House

Early estimates from screening at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington of injured troops returning from Iraq deemed at high risk for traumatic brain injury suggest that, whatever their other wounds, as many as two-thirds also had brain injuries...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/182691_iraqbrain19.html


From Information Clearing House

Many families of US service members killed in Iraq say the pain of having lost a loved one does not grow easier to deal with as time passes. Some say it only worsens. More and more, the families of men and women killed in Iraq are speaking publicly against the war...

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=705&printmode=true


From Information Clearing House

The press must also be held to account for falsehoods we reproduced before the invasion...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1264968,00.html


From Information Clearing House

Judges Being Secretly Trained To Resist Arguments Based on Constitution

The Anti-Government Movement Handbook is a training manual for judges and court staff against pro se litigants, published in 1999 by the National Center for the State Courts (NCSC) in Williamsburg, Virginia.

To download go to: http://www.avoiceforchildren.com/documents/handbook/

From Elizabeth Wallace
(excerpt)

Judges Being Secretly Trained

Wednesday, June 02 2004 @ 02:12 PM CDT

Contributed by: SuiJuris

Judges Being Secretly Trained To Resist Arguments Based on
Constitution

Fearful of growing backlash from the public against arbitrary, prejudiced, and even malicious judgments that are protected by judicial immunity, judges have banded together under government sponsorship to devise means of defending themselves from aggrieved and increasingly militant pro se litigants.

Continuing Education Credit Prejudices Judges by June Wisniewski

The Anti-Government Movement Handbook is a training manual for judges and court staff against pro se litigants, published in 1999 by the National Center for the State Courts (NCSC) in Williamsburg, Virginia. This book, along with Dealing With Common Law Courts: A Model Curriculum for Judges and Court Staff, published in 1997 by NCSC, was developed from an Institute for Course Management (ICM) course on dealing with common law courts, held in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 5-7, 1997.

The curriculum and manuals for this course were prepared with a grant from the State Justice Institute: Award No. SJI-96-02B-B-159, "The Rise of Common Law Courts in the United States: An Examination of the Movement, the Potential Impact on the Judiciary, and How the States Could Respond." The State Justice Institute (SJI) is a non-profit, 501C(3) corporation that was started in 1986 and funded by Congress to develop courses and training manuals for state courts and judicial training organizations.

This course and training manuals were developed by a group of 27 judges, court clerks, court administrators, and prosecutors in Arizona who examined the history and procedures of the Common Law Court Movement (CLC) and created the training curriculum and responses that courts, judges, and court administrators can use when dealing with common law courts in their own jurisdictions. My contact at the conference said that one of its goals was to identify ways the courts can make preemptive strikes against the CLC movement.

Some of the keynote speakers who helped produce the CLC course in Arizona were Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of Columbus, Ohio, T.C. Brown of Columbus, Ohio (a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer), and Jonathan Mozzochi, Executive Director of the Coalition for Human Dignity in Seattle, Washington. Mozzochi, who distributed Guns and Gavels, a publication of the Coalition, was listed as "a nationally recognized expert on militias and hate group activity." The Coalition is like a west coast version of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

I originally found out about this course by watching a videotaped session of the 1996 combined conference of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), held in Nashville, Tennessee in the summer of 1996 and called "Impact of the Common Law Court Movement on the Courts." More than 50 state Supreme Court justices and state court administrators attended the Tennessee conference. The CLC session was taped with a grant from SJI. Keynote speakers were Michael Reynolds, senior intelligence analyst for the SPLC, and James Reynolds, chief of the Terrorism and Violent Crime Section, U.S. Department of Justice.

The panel discussion included Susan Hansen, senior reporter with American Lawyer, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer (past president of CCJ), Utah Supreme Court Justice Michael Zimmerman, and Judges Jeffrey Langton and Gregory Mohr from Montana. The taped session was more than three hours long. At the end of the session, one of the speakers mentioned that there was funding for additional CLC conferences. I immediately called ICM, located at NCSC in Virginia, and asked about the additional CLC conferences. My contact told me that a Scottsdale conference was going to take place in about three days. Since those two conferences, there have been additional conferences sponsored by SJI with other organizations.

SJI sponsored a conference with the American Judicature Society in Scottsdale, Arizona in November, 1999 that was closed to the public and the press. There will also be an ICM course in Orlando, Florida on February 5-7, 2001 called "Increasing Access to Justice for Pro Se Litigants," with that organization's perception of what "access" means.

"Constitutionalists in Court" was held in the St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota area in the summer of 2000 by the National Judicial College (NJC) of Reno, Nevada, and the same course was held again November 13-14, 2000, also at NJC in Reno. This course discusses the history of protest movements affecting the judiciary, identifies typical challenges and ways to handle them, anticipates courtroom security needs, and plans solutions and strategies.

NJC, together with the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), conducted a survey, developed material for their courses from SJI materials and grants, and published a brief report called "Right-Wing Extremist Challenges to the Authority and Jurisdiction of the Court" in 1998. This course and report contains a preemptive plan against pro se litigants and others who may disagree with the court, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Native American protest groups, religious organizations, and anyone else who may take issue with a court decision.

The information from NJC is so controversial that NJC has banned its course and conference materials from the public, but their library and the SJI repository is open to the public.

I originally started researching judicial training organizations in 1996 after I was denied an inheritance by the New Jersey court system when my parents died and was also denied entrance to a conference and course materials at NJC in May, 1996, called "The National Conference on the Media and the Courts: Working Together to Serve the American People."

The media conference was closed to the public. Only one New Jersey judge, Martin Kravarick, attended that conference. Judge Kravarick was elected president of the American Judges Association (AJA), a judge's organization under NCSC. AJA publishes a quarterly journal called Court Review, available in your local law library, by subscription, or through interlibrary loan.

I first found out about the judicial movement against pro se litigants and the CLC movement by reading Kravarick's "President's Message" in the Fall, 1996 issue of Court Review. I called Judge Kravarick for more information on what the CLC movement was all about, and he gave me some additional contact information. I called Mike Reynolds of SPLC, and he told me there were four conference proceedings and that the conference was taped. I waited over three months to get a copy of the tape, "Impact of the Common Law Movement on the Courts." That tape is available through interlibrary loan from NCSC along with the training manuals mentioned above.

Each state has an SJI repository for all publications put out by the organizations they have funded. For example, the repository in Nevada is at NJC in Reno. In New Jersey, the SJI repository is at the New Jersey State Library in Trenton. You can check out these training manuals with a New Jersey library card. You can also find out where your SJI repository is by looking it up on the Internet at
http://www.statejustice.org/ by calling SJI at 703-684-6100, or by writing to the State Justice Institute, 1650 King street, Alexandria, VA 22314.

SJI is funded by Congress with your tax dollars. If you don't like the courses and materials they are funding, you can write to your senator or congressman, or directly to SJI and ask them to stop funding these materials. SJI gets very few letters from the public, and I'm sure they would love to hear from you. When you get to their Web site, read and download the newsletters. Most of their new grants are in their newsletters.

The National Center for State Courts is an umbrella organization for several judges' organizations such as the National College of Probate judges (NCPJ), AJA, CCJ, COSCA, ICM and others. I have been a member of NCPJ since 1996 and have attended four judges' conferences. The most controversial and harmful material against the public is coming from NJC and NCSC materials, two agencies that compete with each other for SJI and federal government funding.

In the training manuals mentioned above, there are two sections in each book where the writers advise judges and court personnel such as court clerks and guards on how to handle pro se litigants using a step-by-step process. The writers of these manuals reveal a court that is biased and has a dangerous point of view about justice and equal access in the court system.

Copyright C 2001 June Wisniewski

The Author: June Wisniewski is a legal researcher and journalist in
Reno, Nevada, who can be reached renojune@judicialterrorism.com

She has written a number of articles on judicial subjects and is author of the book, The Coffin Chasers: An Aggrieved Litigant's Journey Through the Corrupt World of Probate. This article appeared in the January 5, 2001 issue of the Idaho Observer and is reprinted here with knowledge of the author. Its subject matter is the basis of another book, Unequal Justice: The Inside Story of the National Judicial College.

J. R. I.
http://www.court.to/

http://www.suijuris.net/main/suijuris/article.php?story=2004060214124768&mode=print

Informant: V

Let the Constitution Speak!

Gegen Öl-Bohrinsel: Walfang-Kommission will Westpazifische Grauwale schützen

20.07.04

Die Internationale Walfangkommission (IWC) verabschiedete am Dienstag auf ihrer Jahrestagung in Italien einstimmig eine Resolution zum Schutz der letzten hundert Westpazifischen Grauwale, berichtet der WWF. Darin forderten die IWC-Staaten Eilmaßnahmen zum Schutz der grauen Riesen. Weiterhin setzten sie sich für eine umfassende Untersuchung der unter Federführung von Shell geplanten Ausbeutung der Ölvorkommen vor der russischen Insel Sachalin ein. Der Bau einer Öl-Bohrinsel und einer Unterwasser-Pipeline gefährde den Bestand der Tiere, so ein Bericht der Wissenschaftlichen Kommission der IWC. Die Resolution war von Deutschland, Großbritannien, Belgien und Südafrika eingebracht worden...

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php4?Nr=8952

Schwer verständlich: Arbeitslosengeld-II-Formulare verstoßen gegen Datenschutz

20.07.04

Aus Sicht des Datenschutzes sind die Antragsformulare zum neuen Arbeitslosengeld II (ALG II) teilweise unzulässig. Der Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz, Peter Schaar, äußerte am Dienstag in Bonn erhebliche Bedenken gegen die seit Montag von der Bundesagentur für Arbeit (BA) versendeten Formulare. Insbesondere das Zusatzblatt 2, in dem es um die Einkommenserklärung und die Verdienstbescheinigung geht, sei "mit dem Sozialgeheimnis nicht vereinbar", betonte Schaar. Während Bundeswirtschaftsminister Wolfgang Clement (SPD) die Formulare als "hervorragend" und "weniger bürokratisch als alles, was Sozialhilfeempfänger bisher ausfüllen mussten" verteidigt, befürchtet der Sozialverband Deutschland (SoVD), dass viele Arbeitslose im Januar kein Arbeitslosengeld II bekommen werden, weil sie mit dem Ausfüllen der Antragsformulare überfordert seien...

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php4?Nr=8948

Joe Lieberman and John Kyl

July 20, 2004

Tuesday 10:52 AM

We cannot overstate how dangerous this development is at this moment in the struggle for democracy in America. Joe Lieberman and John Kyl, the epitome of AIPAC and conservative Congressional power, have revived the Committee on the Present Danger. As the foreign threat flipside of McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, the CPD kindled fear and preyed upon the ignorance of everyday Americans to push through aggressive defense spending programs.

Now they are at it again. Unlike last time, when America was in a struggle for survival, this time, America is the imperial power. Our security is determined by how we order the world, and right now our economic and military policies are impoverishing and oppressing billions of people. But if history is any guide, Lieberman and Kyl will argue that the threat comes from people who detest our freedoms. Poppycock.

The reality is, we are attacked and hated because of our unjust policies. This is the present danger. Our economic engine is addicted to oil, members of Congress are addicted to AIPAC and defense industry money, and right now that system is falling apart. If there is a danger, it is to the power base of these cynical elite...

Read the Washington Post Opinion by Lieberman and Kyl:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63067-2004Jul19.html


Source:
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=mep7p8n6.4l8gm9n6.tpcrq8n6.tiniiyn6.80374&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tompaine.com%2Faction%2F%23001041

...But this election is not primarily about Kerry. One last lesson from U.S. presidential history: When an incumbent runs for re-election, the vote is more a referendum on him than a judgment on his challenger. Do voters want to give this president another four years or not? Bush is running against himself in November, and thanks to Iraq, that's a losing proposition. As with McCarthy, the dawn was slow in coming, but the American middle is finally waking up.

And George W. Bush is going down.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/a_bush_referendum.php

Nightline Daily E-Mail

July 19, 2004

TONIGHT'S FOCUS: A battle is brewing in the West. At stake is land that is stunningly beautiful and ecologically sensitive, land that has been compared to the Serengeti for its spectacular array of wildlife, but also to Saudi Arabia because of the enormous amount of natural gas beneath it. Stepped up leasing of land for oil and gas development by the Bush Administration has brought a bonanza of profits to Rocky Mountain states like Wyoming. But the energy boom has also brought together some unusual alliances who vehemently oppose development.

The Bush Administration has expedited permits for leasing land to oil and gas developers along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains -- in Wyoming, Montana, eastern Utah, western Colorado and northern New Mexico. This area -- most of which is owned by the federal government -- is rich in natural gas, and new technology has made harvesting that gas possible. Growing demand for a clean, domesticallly produced energy source has pushed up prices, setting off a drilling bonanza.

That's been good for some, but as Nightline discovered, it's also intensely angered ranchers, sportsmen and environmentalists who worry about the effects on the wildlife and their way of life. Nightline looks at the intensive natural gas development surrounding the tiny town of Pinedale, Wyoming, nestled in the Upper Green
River Valley. The Valley is also a major migration corridor for mule deer and pronghorn antelope, who pass through on their long migration from the Grand Tetons to the high desert. The region is famous for its hunting and fishing bounty, and is home to a growing
recreational and tourist industry as well as traditional livestock ranching.

The Bureau of Land Management, part of the Department of Interior, is responsible for mediating the multiple uses of this public land. Critics charge that under the Bush Administration, energy development, in the form of thousands of new wells, has been expedited at the expense of environmental considerations. Drilling brings commerce, but with it networks of roads and truck traffic to serve the gasfields. Ranchers, hunters and fishermen have joined with environmentalists to try to slow down the pace of drilling.

Judy Muller will examine the controversy tonight and Chris Bury will talk with Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton.

We hope you'll join us.

Jay LaMonica and the Nightline Staff
Nightline Offices
ABC News Washington Bureau


Informant: Earth First!

Here at the ACLU we aren't renowned for our sense of humor, but I think you'll appreciate this hilarious depiction of a pizza order gone terribly wrong. Click here to see what we mean:
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/index.html?orgid=EA071904&MX=1414&H=1

There are some ACLU staffers who don’t think messing with their late-night pizza orders is a laughing matter, but one thing we all take seriously is our work to stop the steady erosion of your right to privacy.

The fact is that new technologies and new government policies are eroding our personal privacy and creating a 24-hour total surveillance society.

You and I must take action if we want to stop this massive erosion of our personal privacy.

Chances are, you don’t think twice about the electronic trail you leave with each credit card purchase. But you should know that under provisions of the USA Patriot Act, government agents now have the power to access those records without your knowledge. Astonishingly, if he deemed it necessary, Attorney General Ashcroft could get authorization from a secret court to place wiretaps on your phones without probable cause. He can demand records of your reading habits from bookstores and libraries; he can even make and keep a copy of the key to your house.

You and I must take action if we want to stop this massive erosion of our personal privacy. Educating others about what is at stake is the first step and starts by each of us talking to our friends and family about the facts. That's why I'm asking you to do two things:

1. View the video. When you are done, share it with your friends:
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/index.html?orgid=EA071904&MX=1414&H=1

2. Send an e-mail to your member of Congress and demand that privacy violating programs are de-funded:
http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?orgid=EA071904&ID=16021&c=39&MX=1414&H=1

We can't win without your support and activism. Thank you for being a part of the ACLU.


Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 19, 2004

Chip implants won't help crime wracked country, could make things worse

"Promoting implanted RFID devices as a security measure is downright 'loco,'" says Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering). "Advertising you've got a chip in your arm that opens important doors is an invitation to kidnapping and mutilation."

That's Albrecht's response to the announcement by Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha that he and 160 other Mexican officials were implanted with Verichip RFID devices. Reportedly, the chips allow the implanted employees to access secure areas of the Attorney General's headquarters.

Albrecht surmises that Macedo de la Concha made the ill advised revelation in the wake of citizen protests against corruption in the crime wracked country. "Selling the idea of RFID chipping as the solution to rampant crime may be politically expedient, but it's dangerous misinformation. He could encourage the Mexican people to seek the implants thinking RFID is their ticket to security. RFID implants may offer the illusion of safety from kidnappers, but in reality, they put their users at peril."

While there are promises of future implantable RFID devices that could be globally trackable even in remote areas, the read range of the VeriChip devices currently marketed is only a few inches, Albrecht explains. While that small read range could be critical to someone desperate to access a secure area, it would do little to locate a kidnap victim hidden miles away from reader devices.

Ironically, rather than protecting their wearers from kidnapping, implantable security devices may actually turn their wearers into tempting targets for Mexico's notorious kidnapping gangs, especially as the chips migrate to serve as payment devices, says Albrecht. "What could be more inviting to kidnappers than a chip that offers access to secure areas or someone's bank account? If criminals want to get ahold of a chip, they will naturally try to nab a person wearing one."

The potentially gruesome implications of being probed for an implanted chip are obvious, said Albrecht. She points out that at least one Mexican kidnapping gang, a group nicknamed "el chip" for its interest in RFID implants, is focused on the technology. According to recent reports, its members have stripped kidnapping victims and demanded to be told where they have chips implanted in their bodies.

Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) is a grass-roots consumer group fighting retail surveillance schemes since 1999, and item-level RFID tagging since 2002. With thousands of members in all 50 U.S. states and over 30 countries worldwide, CASPIAN seeks to educate consumers about marketing strategies that invade their privacy and to encourage privacy-conscious shopping habits across the retail spectrum.

For more information, see

http://www.spychips.com and http://www.nocards.org

See our campaigns at:

http://www.BoycottGillette.com
http://www.BoycottBenetton.org

We encourage you to duplicate and distribute this message to others.

Ross Adey was very concerned about the harmful effects of taser guns. Now, three years later, the early reports show how right he was. I recently read that local law enforcement use these guns at least once every 2 days now. A man in Texas was arrested for using them to discipline his two daughters. What if this technology falls into the "wrong hands?"

Libby Kelley


As Police Use of Tasers Rises, Questions Over Safety Increase
By ALEX BERENSON

Published: July 18, 2004

AZARETH, Pa. — As the sun set on June 24, something snapped in Kris J. Lieberman, an unemployed landscaper who lived a few miles from this quiet town. For 45 minutes, he crawled deliriously around a pasture here, moaning and pounding his head against the weedy ground.

Eventually the police arrived, carrying a Taser M26, an electric gun increasingly popular with law enforcement officers nationwide. The gun fires electrified barbs up to 21 feet, hitting suspects with a disabling charge.

The officers told Mr. Lieberman, 32, to calm down. He lunged at them instead. They fired their Taser twice. He fought briefly, collapsed and died.

Mr. Lieberman joined a growing number of people, now at least 50, including 6 in June alone, who have died since 2001 after being shocked. Taser International, which makes several versions of the guns, says its weapons are not lethal, even for people with heart conditions or pacemakers. The deaths resulted from drug overdoses or other factors and would have occurred anyway, the company says.

But Taser has scant evidence for that claim. The company's primary safety studies on the M26, which is far more powerful than other stun guns, consist of tests on a single pig in 1996 and on five dogs in 1999. Company-paid researchers, not independent scientists, conducted the studies, which were never published in a peer-reviewed journal. Taser has no full-time medical director and has never created computer models to simulate the effect of its shocks, which are difficult to test in human clinical trials for ethical reasons.

What is more, aside from a continuing Defense Department study, the results of which have not been released, no federal or state agencies have studied the safety, or effectiveness, of Tasers, which fall between two federal agencies and are essentially unregulated. Nor has any federal agency studied the deaths to determine what caused them. In at least two cases, local medical examiners have said Tasers were partly responsible. In many cases, autopsies are continuing or reports are unavailable.

The few independent studies that have examined the Taser have found that the weapon's safety is unproven at best. The most comprehensive report, by the British government in 2002, concluded "the high-power Tasers cannot be classed, in the vernacular, as `safe.' " Britain has not approved Tasers for general police use.

A 1989 Canadian study found that stun guns induced heart attacks in pigs with pacemakers. A 1999 study by the Department of Justice on an electrical weapon much weaker than the Taser found that it might cause cardiac arrest in people with heart conditions. In reviewing other electrical devices, the Food and Drug Administration has found that a charge half as large as that of the M26 can be dangerous to the heart.

While Taser says that the M26 is not dangerous, it now devotes most of its marketing efforts to the X26, a less powerful weapon it introduced last year. Both weapons are selling briskly. About 100,000 officers nationally now have Tasers, 20 times the number in 2000, and most carry the M26. Taser, whose guns are legal for civilian use in most states, hopes to expand its potential market with a new consumer version of the X26 later this summer.

For Taser, which owns the weapon's trademark and is the only company now making the guns, the growth has been a bonanza. Its stock has soared. Its executives and directors, including a former New York police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, have taken advantage, selling $60 million in shares since November.

Patrick Smith, Taser's chief executive, said the guns are safe. "We tell people that this has never caused a death, and in my heart and soul I believe that's true," Mr. Smith said.

Taser did not need to disclose the British results to American police departments, he said. "The Brits are extremely conservative," he said. "To me, this is sort of boilerplate, the fine print." In addition to Taser's animal trials, thousands of police volunteers have received shocks without harm, Mr. Smith said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/national/18TASER.html?8br

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


Informant: Don Maisch

by Nick Britten and Nic Fleming

Filed: 20/07/2004

The family of a police officer who died of cancer have questioned whether the force's controversial new radio system caused the disease.

Pc Neil Dring, 38, died 10 months after being diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. His family said he was a keen sportsman who had always enjoyed excellent health.

However, he began complaining of severe headaches shortly after the Government's £2.9 billion Tetra system was introduced.

Pc Dring, who left a wife and two young children, complained to his superiors that the handset, which emits pulsing radio frequencies, was making him ill.

He told his family that he was "convinced" it caused his cancer.

A second officer, who is 40 and works for the same, force has also been diagnosed with the same cancer and is being treated.

Pc Dring's brother, Ian, said: "Neil was convinced it was the radio that was to blame for the cancer. He had raised the issue with a sergeant and a superintendent and we feel it is our duty to follow this through for his sake.

"No one seems to be sure how safe this Tetra system is. It beggars belief that the system was not tested thoroughly before it was rolled out.

"Neil was only 38, didn't smoke and was a keen triathlete. The thing that really hit me was that another officer in the same force has contracted the same cancer in the same place, just beneath where he wore his handset."

The Home Office is equipping the 53 forces in England, Scotland and Wales with the Tetra system - Terrestrial Trunked Radio - at a cost of £2.9 billion by the end of 2005. About 2,500 of the required 3,500 transmitters have been erected and 65,000 officers are using the system in 39 forces.

But the system has provoked strong protests, with claims that the radio signals cause headaches, sickness, disturbed sleep and skin rashes.

About 173 officers in Lancashire complained of health effects they attributed to using the system in questionnaires compiled by the Police Federation.

The Home Office last year announced a £5 million health study including a detailed study of 150 officers and a 15-year monitoring programme involving 100,000 users.

Sir William Stewart, the former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said in a report on mobile phone health concerns that frequencies around 16Hz - close to Tetra's 17.6Hz - should be avoided because previous research suggested they could cause potentially harmful changes in cell biology. However, Prof Colin Blakemore, of Oxford University, has dismissed the health concerns around Tetra.

And a report by the National Radiological Protection Board concluded: "Although areas of uncertainty remain about the biological effects of low level RF radiation . . . current evidence suggests that it is unlikely that the special features of the signals from Tetra mobile terminals and repeaters pose a hazard to health."

Mr Dring, whose brother served with the Leicestershire force as a police motorcyclist, is due to meet members of the force and the police federation next week.

"Neil had no preconditions for this sort of cancer and was outside the age group associated with it," he said. "For the whole of his shift his handset was strapped to his chest, where the tumour was found.

"I have a major concern that the system isn't safe. We have spoken to other officers and they are aware of it and are terrified of it."

Stan Sexton, the health and safety adviser for Leicestershire police, said he was "99 per cent certain" that Pc Dring's death had nothing to do with Tetra.

He said the other officer who had contracted cancer was of senior rank and rarely used Tetra.

Steve Edwards, the chairman of Lancashire Police Federation, said: "There is a lot of concern from officers about the system and we need to find out one way or the other whether it presents a risk to health."

A spokesman for O2 airwave, which operates Tetra, said: "We would like to express our sympathy and regret to Pc Dring's family but we would reinforce that the airwave is there as a public safety measure.

"All the handsets comply with the guidelines and there's no evidence to suggest there are any health concerns."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/20/ntetra20.xml

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004

Informant: Don Maisch

Why Iraq: The Global Ambitions Behind the U.S. War on Iraq

by Larry Everest

Revolutionary Worker #1242, May 30, 2004, posted at http://rwor.org/

They said the war was for Weapons of Mass Destruction. But there were none.

They said the war was about terrorism--but no ties to al-Qaida were ever found.

They said the war was to end mass graves--but Bush's troops sent hundreds of Iraqi people in Fallujah to mass graves.

They said the war was to bring "freedom and democracy" to Iraq--but all it brought was a brutal occupation--house to house searches, shutting down newspapers, postponing and controlling elections, jailing people for expressing opposition.

They said the war was to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein--but now they are elevating former Baathist generals to be new warlords in areas of resistance.

And they said the war was about ending "torture chambers and rape cells"--but now we all know that U.S. military intelligence and CIA took over the regime's prisons to carry out torture and rape.

So can we now all, finally, talk about the real causes of this long-planned war?

-"Can we now finally talk.?" Revolutionary Worker, #1241, May 23, 2004

http://www.livejournal.com/community/fromtheleft/105937.html


Informant: Di

Some have said they welcome major corporate investment in the natural food market, as vindication of the value of natural foods. We should be concerned, however, that control of the natural foods industry by fewer companies will result in multinational corporate control of organic acreage and marketing, forcing out smaller regional/family suppliers, reducing competition, leading to weakened organic standards (sewage sludge, irradiation, GMOs).

http://www.ithacanews.org/greenstarstock.html#multi

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

The Organic Foods Movement—Led by Heinz Corporation or We, the
People?

The Time to Choose is Now!

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0531-11.htm

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

Independent Organic Brands: "To the best of my knowledge, these examples are not owned by a parent company traded on stock market."

http://www.ithacanews.org/goodfood.html

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

Shopping is Voting…..Cartoon:

http://www.lightlink.com/hours/ithacahours/archive/9906.html

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

'Organic' Outcry Heeded. The Bush Administration withdraws changes allowing more pesticides: The Bush administration abruptly reversed itself Wednesday and withdrew four changes in organic food standards that critics had said threatened to undermine public trust in the word "organic."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/27/MNGBT6SHM71.DTL

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

Biofuels….BEWARE!

June 30, 2004: The biomass fuels industry is exploding in the wake of war in Iraq, a country touting the second largest oil reserve on the planet. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has initiated a slowing of oil production and the Pentagon warns us about the eminent dangers of global warming and greenhouse gasses. Fuel prices continue to rise while fuel consumption steadily increases.
http://www.newfarm.org/features/0604/biofuels/index.shtml

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

The Next Big Thing...Move aside, tree huggers. More and more hardheaded entrepreneurs are tapping into the growing green market.

It's 2040, and America's corporate titans have convened for a conference boondoggle to compare net worth and catch up on the latest gossip. A mellow Bill Gates presides over it all with the kindly mien of an elderly uncle. But tech is not the star of the show. No, that guy chugging a brew was one of the first entrepreneurs to invest in fuel cells, the very ones that are used in every American car and that now constitute a multibillion-dollar industry. The lanky woman dancing on the deck, which is made of recycled plastic bags, is a much-feared solar baron. The burly guy with the bulging biceps? He's made a fortune in real estate, building environmentally certified houses and condominiums. And the rude guest sniffing the food runs a chain of organic supermarkets that has Wal-Mart seriously concerned. The big economic winners of the past few decades, it turns out, have been those who decided that green is good--and a good way to get rich.

http://ecomall.com/greenshopping/1reportfortune.htm (not an
endorsement.....)

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

"Please Pass the Salt".....Streaming Video

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/cnbc.htm

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

D.F., mom, educator, peace activist, Orange, CA, U.S.A.


Informant: ps4erth

by Kim Zetter

Wired

July 19, 2004

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64237,00.html

While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings.

But outragedmoderates.org <http://www.outragedmoderates.org/> isn't offering copyright music and videos for download. The site, launched two weeks ago, has aggregated more than 600 government and court documents to make them available for download through the Kazaa http://www.kazaa.com/us/index.htm , LimeWire
http://www.limewire.com/english/content/home.shtml and Soulseek http://www.slsknet.org/ P2P networks in the interest of making government more transparent and accountable.

The documents include such items as recent torture memos related to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a Senate Intelligence Committee report on what the government knew before it invaded Iraq and a document showing how the Bush administration suppressed information about the full cost of its Medicare plan until after Congress passed the plan. There is also a copy of a no-bid contract obtained by a Halliburton subsidiary for work in Iraq and congressional testimony from former employees of the subsidiary showing how their company engaged in wasteful and costly conduct in Iraq (such as abandoning an $85,000 Mercedes truck after its tires went flat).

Thad Anderson, a second-year student at St. John's School of Law in Queens, New York, said he was driven to launch the site by what he says is the current administration's disregard for fundamental democratic structures and its increasing practice of withholding information from the public. He wanted to give people access to crucial data about what elected officials were doing.

"I really think this is a crucial point, during my lifetime, for people to really look at what's going on with the government and make it be more accountable for what it's doing," he said. "The president and vice president have used executive privilege to withhold documents that almost every president for the last 30 or 40 years has released."

Anderson didn't intend to make a statement by using P2P networks, but his use of the networks to deliver the data counters the usual government and entertainment industry arguments that P2P networks have no value, apart from stealing copyright works, and therefore should be outlawed.

In this case, the P2P networks are promoting public knowledge and doing so in a way that makes it easy for people to obtain all related documents swiftly with a single mouseclick.

Although all of the documents on Anderson's site are available elsewhere, they are buried deep in government and court sites or scattered among the sites of various government watchdog groups and media outlets. It took Anderson about four hours and 2,000 mouseclicks to download more than 13,000 documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force from the National Resources Defense Council's website http://www.nrdc.org/ and from
Judicial Watch http://www.judicialwatch.org/ . But a visitor to Anderson's site can download a folder containing all of these documents in a few minutes with a couple of mouseclicks.

The documents, obtained from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, suggest that the task force, convened in 2001, met secretly and may have colluded with energy companies and lobbyists to craft the nation's energy policy. The documents include a map of Iraqi oil fields, pipelines and refineries, and a document called "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" dated March 2001, before the attacks on the World Trade Center. They also include a now-infamous e-mail, known as the "If You Were King" memo, written by an Energy Department employee to a lobbyist asking what, if the lobbyist were king, he would like to see included in the nation's energy policy.

Some of the documents are informative for what they don't say. A 1.5-page e-mail between two Department of Energy employees features only the greeting to "Margot" and a final sentence reading, "Let me know if you have any further questions." The rest of the e-mail was blanked out by the department before it was forced to release the document in the lawsuit.

"This would be a crucial document the public would want to know about. But the entire document and other documents were redacted so heavily there was really no point in the Energy Department releasing it," Anderson said.

Anderson said that seeing the documents themselves, rather than reading about them through the filter of a news article, has a greater impact.

"It's a very direct and primary source when you read (these documents) without any spin," he said. "Unlike a Michael Moore film, there is no dramatic music being played. You're sitting there looking at it on your computer, and it's a great way for people to make up their own minds about things."

Steven V. Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy
http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html at the Federation of American Scientists, says the site answers a growing demand from the public to examine original source documents. He calls it the Smoking Gun
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/ effect, referring to the popular website that provides original documents on celebrity misconduct.

"People have a taste for unmediated source documents," Aftergood said. "There is something attractive about being able to see original documents and not just be told by a newscaster or reporter what the documents say. What Smoking Gun is doing for celebrity misconduct, these guys are doing for public policy. I would say that the more Americans who develop a taste for government documents, the richer our democracy will be."

Aftergood says that although it's possible to get many documents, like congressional debates, through the Government Printing Office
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/ , sites like http://outragedmoderates.org and The Memory Hole http://www.thememoryhole.org/ help single out the most important documents from thousands of pages of material and put them in context so that readers can know, for example, if one document they are reading contradicts another document that came out a year earlier.

"What these sites do is to provide some editorial selection, to say that out of this undifferentiated universe of government information, here are some interesting things. That's a useful function," Aftergood said.

Aftergood finds the use of P2P to deliver the documents a good move and calls it part of the evolutionary cycle of online technology, in which tools and services that are controversial -- such as pornography -- lead the way in getting people to adapt to new technologies. Pornography, for example, had a role in pushing broadband into more homes.

"These questionable uses help win acceptance for new technology, and then others follow in their footsteps. If (outragedmoderates) provides an after-the-fact (legitimization) for P2P, that's great," Aftergood said.

Although Anderson is a Democrat, his site supports no particular political stance. It doesn't need to, he says, because the principles behind it find support among people of all political beliefs.

"There's a lot of people of both parties and independent parties who are saying that the things Bush has done on a number of issues is going beyond what mainstream Americans are willing to go along with," Anderson said.

Anderson said his goal is to help people obtain the information they need to speak up about what the government is doing wrong. He's encouraged that more and more people are doing so.

"Compared to a year ago when any criticism of the government was viewed with skepticism and accusations that you were being unpatriotic or unsupportive, I think it's great that people are starting to step out and say this is what our country is about. Being able to criticize our government is what makes us different from a dictatorship in the Middle East."


Informant: NHNE

by Associated Press

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

ALBANY, New York — Modern technology could alter a pristine Adirondack landscape that's captivated artists for more than a century.

Nextel Partners is proposing a 114-foot tower to provide cellular phone service for its customers along the eastern part of Lake George, including an area known as the Million Dollar Beach. The tower would be painted brown, with fake branches attached to camouflage it as a white pine, even though it would be 30 feet taller than any surrounding tree.

"We think this will be very unobtrusive," said Michael Rapp of Nextel, based in Kirkland, Washington. "The mountain continues to climb up and it will blend into that background."

But critics are dubbing the faux tree "Frankenpine." The tower would soar from a forested peninsula known as Pilot Knob in the town of Fort Ann up Buck Mountain, a subject painted by Georgia O'Keefe and others in works hanging in galleries from Manhattan to Washington, D.C.

"Placing a steel and plastic cell tower above the tops of every tree in the forest on Pilot Knob would be like painting a beard and mustache on the Mona Lisa," said Brian Houseal of The Adirondack Council, an environmental group. "The landscape around Pilot Knob is an American icon."

Hearings are being held on the matter, and authorities won't vote on it before September.

Those who favor keeping the Adirondacks free of modern intrusions scored an unrelated victory on July 9 when the state Adirondack Park Agency banned the use of all-terrain vehicles on trails in sensitive wild forest areas in the western park. The action bans ATVs on 26 roads covering 44 miles in the Aldridge Pond wild forest area; 31 roads covering 44 miles in the Black River wild forest; and 68 roads covering 66 miles in the Independence River wild forest area.

The ruling leaves no public area for ATVs in the 6-million-acre park, which is made up of public and private land. ATVs will still be allowed in the area for disabled riders, owners on their own property, and some hunters with state permits.

Conservationists say high-powered ATVs have caused ruts and erosion and destroyed trails. Riders say banning the vehicles will hurt the local economy.

Source: Associated Press

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-20/s_26011.asp
http://www.elfis.net/phorum/read.php?f=2&i=95&t=95%5C%22%22);

Meldung von MBI/ Markus Schmidt

Handys vor Gericht

Strahlendes Telefon könnte Unfall mitverursacht haben

DÜSSELDORF dpa Im Prozess um die blutige Amokfahrt in Düsseldorf vor gut einem Jahr soll nun der mögliche Einfluss von Handy-Strahlen auf das Geschehen untersucht werden. Der nach der Fahrt beschlagnahmte Wagen des Angeklagten werde dazu erneut unter die Lupe genommen, kündigte ein Sprecher des Düsseldorfer Landgerichts gestern an. Ein Sachverständiger soll auf Betreiben der Verteidigung klären, ob Handy-Strahlen einen Einfluss auf den Automatik-Wagen gehabt haben können. Der Prozess werde dadurch vermutlich länger dauern als zunächst angenommen.

Zudem wollen die Verteidiger des wegen achtfachen Mordversuchs angeklagten Gastwirts auch untersuchen lassen, ob ein epileptischer Anfall Ursache der Zickzack-Fahrt über die Terrassen zweier voll besetzter Straßencafés gewesen sein könnte.

Bei der blutigen Amokfahrt am 21. Juni vergangenen Jahres waren 14 Menschen verletzt worden, als der 64-jährige Gastwirt mit seinem 200 PS starken Sportwagen in die Cafés seiner Konkurrenz gerast war.

taz Ruhr Nr. 7408 vom 14.7.2004, Seite 4, 36 Zeilen (Agentur)

http://www.taz.de/pt/2004/07/14/a0030.nf/text

Keine Einsicht, keine Abhilfe

Leserbrief

Hellwach, kein Fremdverschulden - und doch verliert ein Busfahrer die Kontrolle über sein Fahrzeug. Wer sich mit der Thematik Mobilfunk auseinander gesetzt hat, fragt sich unwillkürlich, wie viele Jugendliche hatten im Bus ihre Handys eingeschaltet, haben telefoniert oder SMS versandt. Zum Beispiel in Krankenhäusern, Flugzeugen ist die Handynutzung verboten, weil die Technik durch die gepulste Mikrowellenstrahlung gestört wird bzw. wie erst neulich zu lesen war, im Fall Kennedy zum Absturz des Flugzeuges geführt haben soll. Nicht nur die Technik reagiert auf gepulste Mikrowellenstrahlung empfindlich, sondern auch der Mensch selbst. Falschinformationen erreichen das menschliche Gehirn, verzögern sein Handeln oder er erfährt einen Sekunden-Blackout. Jetzt kommen sicher wieder die vielen Gegenargumente... wissenschaftlich nicht erwiesen! Leider werden die Toten aber dadurch nicht wieder lebendig; die Nichteinsicht wird zu weiteren schweren Unfällen führen.

Marianne Kirst

http://tinyurl.com/4zj7g


Informant: sombre_romance

Dr. L. R. Gillam of the Southeastern Christian & Charity Rehabilitation Association in Houston Texas is holding a protest march regarding the Patriot Act in Houston, Texas on July 30th 2004.

Informant: Carolyn Price

http://tinyurl.com/4cpda

The routine hooding of Iraqi prisoners was sanctioned by British army commanders despite repeated warnings that the practice broke human rights laws...

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=542142


From Information Clearing House

David Kay, handpicked by the CIA to find Saddam Hussein's arsenal, said Mr Blair and President George Bush should have known that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction...

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=542412


From Information Clearing House

If Bush Has Plans For Another Preemptive War, He Should Forget It

The president's comment also stands as further evidence of the administration's dishonest -- and continuing -- propaganda program aimed at merging the war on terrorism with the war on Iraq...

http://www.thelouisvillechannel.com/helenthomas/3539227/detail.html


From Information Clearing House

In language similar to the prewar resolution on Iraq, a recent House of Reprentatives resolution authorised the use of "all appropriate means" to deter, dissuade and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weaponry - words often used to approve pre-emptive military force...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6516.htm

CIA: We have no evidence that there is some sort of official connection between Iran and 9/11," he said...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6515.htm

Walschützer besorgt: Japan will 3000 Zwergwale jährlich töten

19.07.04

Seit Montag morgen tagt im italienischen Sorrent die Internationale Walfang Kommission (IWC). Walschützer befürchten, dass sich dort eine Mehrheit für die Wiederaufnahme des Wahlfangs ergeben könnte. Der WWF kritisierte, nur 14 der 25 EU-Staaten seien bisher der IWC beigetreten. Es fehlten Griechenland, Luxemburg und neun Beitrittsländer. Kürzlich war Ungarn beigetreten. Auf Seiten der Walfang-Befürworter sind Mauretanien, Tuvalu und Surinam hinzugekommen - mutmaßlich nicht unbeeinflusst durch Entwicklungshilfe-Gelder der Walfang-Nation Japan. Die Münchner Artenschutzorganisation Pro Wildlife forderte, auch Kleinwale und Delfine müssten geschützt werden. Sie seien nach den derzeitigen Abkommen "nahezu vogelfrei"...

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php4?Nr=8936

Keine Jobs, nur Armut: Gewerkschaften warnen vor Verarmung vieler Familien durch Hartz IV

19.07.04

Die beiden größten deutschen Gewerkschaften ver.di und IG Metall warnen angesichts der bevorstehenden Einführung des Arbeitslosengelds II eindringlich vor der Verarmung vieler Familien in Deutschland. "Hunderttausende, vor allem Frauen, werden mit dieser Reform gar keine sozialen Unterstützungsleistungen mehr bekommen und in die Armut abrutschen", sagte die Vizechefin der Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft ver.di, Margret Mönig-Raane, der "Berliner Zeitung". Ähnlich äußerte sich IG-Metall-Vorstandsmitglied Kirsten Rölke am Sonntag in Frankfurt am Main...

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php4?Nr=8934

Krebsrisiko zehnmal höher: Plutonium viel gefährlicher als bisher angenommen

19.07.04

Plutonium dürfte sehr viel gefährlicher sein als bisher angenommen: Das aus einer Belastung innerhalb des Körpers resultierende Krebsrisiko könnte zehn Mal höher sein als von internationalen Richtlinien angenommen. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine Studie des Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters (CERRIE) für für die britische Regierung. Die Wissenschaftler vertreten laut einhellig die Auffassung, dass die von Plutonium abgegebene niedrige Strahlendosis mehr Schaden anrichten kann als bisher angenommen...

Die ganze Nachricht im Internet:
http://www.ngo-online.de/ganze_nachricht.php4?Nr=8938

by Daithí Ó hAnluain

02:00 AM Jul. 19, 2004 PT

First it was "gray goo," the threat of self-replicating machines populating the planet. Now an environmental think tank is raising the specter of "green goo," where biology is used to create new materials and new artificial life forms.

In its report, published on July 8, the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, or ETC, said that the risks from green goo demand the most urgent foresight and caution. "With nanobiotech, researchers have the power to create completely new organisms that have never existed on Earth," said the ETC release accompanying its report.

t's a new one for some players. "I haven't heard of this concern anywhere else, I mean anywhere else," said Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the potential benefits and anticipating potential risks of nanotechnology. "I think it's because people are already aware of the issues of biotech. I'm not sure there's an additional issue here."

But even without an apocalyptic vision, many are wary of the threats posed by nanotechnology -- the commercial side to the science of the small. Swiss Re, the world's second largest re-insurance firm -- an insurance company for insurance companies -- warned in a May report that the unknown risks of toxicity or pollution associated with nanoparticles are unacceptable...

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,64235,00.html


Informant: Anna Webb

Edward Hammond, der Leiter der deutsch-amerikanischen Wissenschaftlerorganisation Sunshine Projekt, über die Zensurdrohungen des US-Marine-Corps gegen sein Büro...

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/on/17905/1.html

Whale Sonar Deaths Bring Threat of Navy Lawsuit
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/273146/

Just Three Days Until Whale Vote
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277989/

Carbon Dioxide Emissions May Harm Ocean Life
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/273169/

British Columbia to sell coal-rich land near Glacier National Park
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/273176/

How a century of destruction has laid bare the world's rainforests
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277688/

Tell Forest Service to Stay Out of Tongass Roadless Areas
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277724/

Battle for Ludlow heats up
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277778/

Is killing endangered animals the best way to protect them?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277755/

Surrender in the Forests
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/279018/
Protect the Public
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278083/

Collusion and Corruption in GM Policy
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277703/

What Would Abraham Lincoln Say About Canceling a Presidential Election?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272929/

An appeal for peacemakers
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278696/

Senior Iraq Cleric Calls for Holy War against U.S. Forces
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277910/

This is the Fight of Our Lives
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278461/

BUSH MISLEADS ON PRISON ABUSE SCANDAL
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272933/

NEW CLAIMS OF SERIOUS ABUSES AT ABU GHRAIB SURFACE
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277683/

More U.S. Torture Reported in Iraq
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277750/

Screaming Silence: When Words Don't Count
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277692/

A Deluge of Bad Advice and Statistics
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277694/

There is now no doubt that Blair misled the Commons
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272967/

Britain's worst intelligence failure
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272970/

Butler Report on WMD was watered down to protect Blair

Butler shows BBC was right - Dyke
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277720/

'These people are treating us like idiots'
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277901/http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278482/

The Damning Evidence
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277897/

'Homeland Security' Beyond U.S. Borders
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272983/

A Brief Analysis of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, Also Known as Patriot Act II
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277764/

Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals with Hussein
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278908/

Spymasters or spinmeisters?
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/279013/

Time's up in blame game
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272977/

Republican governor criticizes own party
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272982/

Neo-conservative Withdraws Bush Support
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272985/

Democracy in the Balance
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/272975/

Against Electronic "Virtual Voting"
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277748/

BUSH ADMINISTRATION "GUIDELINES" FOR POSTPONING OR CANCELING THE NOVEMBER PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277997/

Important Facts About 9-11
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277999/

Republicans After Fahrenheit 9/11
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278076/

DNA Fingerprinting Trend Threatens Genetic Privacy
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277766/

Creation and current practices of the Federal Reserve and of the US Banking system
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277739/

US accused of audit ploy
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277900/

The Price of Imperial Folly
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277902/

The Creature from Jekyll Island
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277909/

US military's violations of the Geneva Conventions
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278900/

More Patriot Act Games
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278655/

Sailing Toward a Storm in China
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/277742/

Regime change in Iran now in Bush’s sights
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278682/

Europe or the US? Britain must choose
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278684/

The era of strategic deception
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278687/

Bush's Foreign Fantasy
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278691/

A godsend for the warmongers
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278890/

War on Journalism
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278995/

There was never an honest debate in cabinet
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278976/

Attorney General warned Blair on legality of war
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/279006/

Blair graves claim 'untrue'
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278906/

'How can Blair live with Iraq deaths?'
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278689/

Like Jeeves, this Butler's first language is Euphemism
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278707/

Cautious Whitehall keeps the secret state alive
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/279004/

Bush quietly meets with Amish
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278693/

The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/279003/

Freedom to read
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278882/

Radiation in Iraq equals 250,000 Nagasaki bombs
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278708/

Terrorism and the Election: Trial Balloons and Spin
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278712/

Iraqi clerics: US occupiers must leave
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278713/

Conservative Republicans express concern over Iraq war
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/278713/

Published: July 18, 2004

READERS' OPINIONS

The Bush administration has taken apart so many environmental regulations that one more rollback should not surprise us. Even so, it boggles the mind that the White House should choose an election year to dismantle one of the most important and popular land preservation initiatives of the last 30 years — a Clinton administration rule that placed 58.5 million acres of the national forests off limits to new road building and development.

There are no compelling reasons to repudiate that rule and no obvious beneficiaries besides a few disgruntled Western governors and the timber, oil and gas interests that have long regarded the national forests as profit centers. It's not even a case of election-year pandering to Western voters; indeed, early returns suggest that most Westerners below the rank of governor do not like the Bush proposal at all. Especially aggrieved is the so-called hook and bullet crowd — anglers and hunters who, though overwhelmingly Republican, have become increasingly disenchanted with the administration's timid and in some cases careless policies on wetlands, mercury pollution and oil and gas exploration on sensitive public lands.

One explanation is that the timber industry's allies in the Agriculture Department, where the proposal was hatched, sensed they were running short of time to complete their demolition job on the forest protections they inherited from the previous administration. Over the last three years, the department has weakened carefully devised agreements aimed at preserving old growth trees in the Tongass National Forest, in the Pacific Northwest and in the Sierra Nevada. It has persuaded Congress to adopt a fire-prevention strategy aimed at least as much at helping the timber industry as it is at saving communities from devastation. And it has proposed revisions in forest management policies that would short-circuit environmental reviews, weaken safeguards for endangered species and limit public participation in land-use decisions.

For broad impact, though, nothing quite matches the decision to scuttle the roadless rule. Nearly three years in the making, that rule essentially gave blanket protection to some of the last truly wild places in America, critical watersheds for fish and wildlife and important sources of drinking water for metropolitan areas in the West. The Bush administration offers instead a less protective and more uncertain system under which state and local officials would become the moving force in deciding whether to log or conserve forest lands. This represents a big swing in the ideological pendulum, essentially returning control of an important part of national forest policy to the very people from whom Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, both Republicans, wrested it when they established the Forest Service a century ago.

Killing the roadless rule is also indefensible on fiscal grounds. There are already 365,000 miles of roads in the roughly 90 million acres of national forests that are and will remain open to commercial development. Many of these roads are in poor shape, crying out for maintenance. It makes no economic sense to build more.

The administration promises that prohibitions on roads and logging will be continued on a much smaller number of roadless acres already protected under forest plans that predated the Clinton rule — a "just trust us" attitude that inspires universal suspicion among conservationists. White House officials argued further that the rule's one-size-fits-all policy ignored local needs, and that two unfavorable court decisions had left them little choice but to junk the Clinton program and propose a new one.

This is disingenuous. It is true that district judges in Idaho and Wyoming had invalidated the rule. But the administration offered only a perfunctory defense in Idaho and not much more in Wyoming. More to the point, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the Idaho decision, and there was a good chance the 10th Circuit would overturn the Wyoming decision. Indeed, the real motive for the rollback may have been to get the new rule out before the legal landscape shifted completely in favor of the old rule — or before somebody less attentive to the needs of the timber industry moved into the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/opinion/18SUN1.html


Informant: bigraccoon

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2920850


Informant: Our bill of rights

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=542151&host=3&dir=62


Informant: Dian Davies

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/12/nsec12.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/13/ixnewstop.html


Informant: Sylviane

http://www.4religious-right.info/


Informant: Friends

OutFoxed : Ruppert Murdock's War on Journalism:

View trailer -

http://http.dvlabs.com/carolina/Outfxd2/Trailer_A(Med).mov

Want to get involved in reclaiming media and democracy?
See how you can help - go to" http://mediamatters.org/


Informant: Heidi Chesney

The author of this article, Clare Short, was international development secretary, 1997-2003, when she resigned from the Blair Government.

Clare Short: There was never an honest debate in cabinet

Most ministers saw little intelligence and knew only what they read in the press

19 July 2004

The Prime Minister and those who speak for him keep telling us that the Butler report found that the prime minister acted in "good faith'' over Iraq. The report does not say this but Lord Butler said it at his press conference.

It's worth asking what good faith means. I think it means that a person was convinced that what they were doing was right. It does not mean they were right or wise or accurate in their claims. We might also ask, is it possible to lie in good faith?

When he made his statement on the Butler report to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister reiterated the twin arguments he now uses to justify his Iraq policy. The first being that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. The second that, after 11 September, there was a greatly increased danger that WMDs and terrorism would come together and he therefore had to act.

I believe the Prime Minister holds both these views in good faith. But, on both, he is wrong. The people of Iraq are overwhelmingly glad that Saddam Hussein has gone but, by big majorities, say their lives are now worse. It is also widely acknowledged at al-Qa'ida is much strengthened, the Middle East angrier and more unstable and as many as 7,000 Iraqi soldiers, 13,000 civilians and 1,000 coalition troops have so far lost their lives.

The claim that the war stopped WMD and terrorism coming together is more extraordinary. There were of course no WMDs used in the events of 11 September 2001. There is evidence that Osama bin Laden has shown an interest in obtaining chemical, biological and nuclear expertise. The Butler report summarises the evidence and concludes that there is no evidence that he has capability. But it also points out that the Joint Intelligence Committee made it clear that, although there had been contacts between al-Qa'ida and the Iraqi regime, there was no evidence of co-operation. Thus, the Prime Minister may have believed in good faith that he was preventing WMDs and terrorism coming together but such a belief has no basis in reality.

The report looks into the use of intelligence by the Attorney General to decide that there was legal authority for war. It concludes that there was no reliance on intelligence and that what Lord Goldsmith did was "require the Prime Minister, in the absence of a further United Nations Security Council resolution, to be satisfied that there were strong factual grounds for concluding that Iraq had failed to take the final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations ... and that it was possible to demonstrate hard evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation with the requirements of UN Security Council resolution 1441''.

After negotiations on a further Security Council resolution broke down, the Attorney General wrote to the PM seeking confirmation that it was unequivocally the Prime Minister's view that Iraq was in breach of resolution 1441. The Prime Minister, without consulting the Cabinet, confirmed that this was his view shortly after Dr Blix had destroyed more than 70 ballistic missiles and reported improved co-operation from the Iraqi regime.

The Prime Minister also misled his Cabinet, Parliament and country in his claim that the French said they would veto any second resolution. In fact, Dr Blix had asked for more time and we now know that President Chirac and other Security Council members had made it clear that, if Dr Blix failed, it would be necessary to authorise war. Presumably, Lord Butler would argue that the Prime Minister engaged in this deception in good faith.

When Lord Butler asked who was responsible, he said it was a collective failure. Yet the report draws attention to the Prime Minister's very informal style of decision-making. It tells us there were papers written to inform cabinet discussion that were not circulated, therefore cabinet members were unable to take advice or reflect on issues in advance. However, we are told that the Cabinet discussed Iraq on 24 occasions. But most members of the Cabinet saw little intelligence, read no papers and knew only what they read in the press.

Mr Blair raised Iraq after the summer recess of 2002 at every cabinet meeting. He would start by saying a few words, inviting Jack Straw or Geoff Hoon to speak and then intervening repeatedly to inform the Cabinet of developments. Their advice was never sought. They were kept informed and most were willing to go along with the Prime Minister but there was no collective decision which was thrashed out in honest debate and to which the Cabinet then adhered.

In fact, since 1997, there has not been cabinet government in Britain. Power is centralised around the Prime Minister's informal entourage and patronage is used ruthlessly to keep people in line. The Prime Minister does not hold himself responsible to Cabinet or Parliament but to the media, which is why Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson have been so powerful.

Under the Blair regime, much more than under Margaret Thatcher, British constitutional arrangements are crumbling. The votes of one in four of the people in the 2001 election produced a majority of 64 per cent in the Commons. This means almost anything can be rammed through the Commons and the only resistance comes from the House of Lords. Power has been sucked into No 10 and policy is driven by headline-grabbing announcements. It means that checks and balances have broken down, and that leads to ill-considered policy - most tragically in Tony Blair's policy towards Iraq.

18 July 2004 19:36


Informant: Dian Davies

This article is a reprint from November 2000 (via Truthout).

http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/02.01E.Cheney.Hussein.p.htm


Informant: Dian Davies

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118905


Informant: Dian Davies

Point-by-point guide to our military's violations of the Geneva Conventions:

http://www.unknownnews.net/040521a-ss.html


Informant: Friends

by Gary Leupp

CounterPunch

07/18/04

Rev. Jerry Falwell calls the Prophet Muhammed a 'terrorist.' Rev. Franklin Graham calls Islam 'a wicked, evil religion' and says its God is not the Christians' God. These reverends' followers are very useful supporters of the war on the human mind that is the 'war on terrorism,' the focus of which shifted so swiftly from al-Qaeda to Iraq (alike in little save their Muslimness), and could shift to Syria or Iran or Pakistan suddenly tomorrow. When you mix the anti-Islam pronouncements with Bush policy decisions and millenarian faith, you have an explosive combination...

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07172004.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

by Jim Duensing

The Libertarian Enterprise

07/18/04

18 Republicans, 191 Democrats, and the only Independent in Congress voted to protect our library and book store records from the prying eyes of federal agents .... The Freedom to Read Amendment failed by a vote of 210 - 210. The Republican leadership held the 15 minute vote open for an additional 23 minutes, until they could twist enough arms to vote in favor of secret federal spying on reading habits. ... This amendment did not even attack the key elements of the Patriot Act. It only sought to roll back one of the most unpopular provisions of the Patriot Act, Section 215. Yet, the pro-government extremist control freaks in Washington can't even throw the American people a bone and remove secret searches of library and bookstore records. They value their power above all else. And, they are willing to defend it against our freedom...

http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/tle280-20040718-04.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp