MY POV

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin

How Bush really feels about you.

The Mars Society

Satire has never served a better purpose. Go see.
Before they cart us off to the camps.

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
34th President of the USA
a Republican, in a letter written to his brother on November 8, 1954

"...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."

Benito Mussolini

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln
November 12, 1864

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man."

Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

James Madison
(1751-1836)
4th President of the United States

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."

Heinrich Heine
Almansor, 1823

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall

"Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the critics who could save them from errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury to be indulged in the best of times, but rather an obligation of free people, particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular."

Robert Scheer

"FASCISM: a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."

American Heritage Dictionary

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it
because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King

"My life is my message."

Gandhi

Posted: 31 May 2005

A message from NARAL.

The pro-choice bracelet is back!
Bracelets have officially become the activist ribbon of the new millennium: "Live Strong" in yellow, "Never Surrender" in purple, and now "Choice" in white! A pro-choice activist in California was motivated by her post-election frustration to sell bracelets of her own creation and donate the proceeds to support our work here at the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation. You can order your own online - click here to get them now while supplies last!

Choice in the News

THE GOOD: "Duty to Dispense" bill introduced in California... In response to the disturbing trend of pharmacies refusing to fill women's birth control prescriptions, NARAL Pro-Choice California and State Senator Deborah Ortiz have combined forces to pass the "Duty to Dispense" bill. This bill would protect women - and all Californians - from wrongfully being denied access to the important medications they need. Click here for the full story.

THE BAD: Survey says up to 71% of Missouri pharmacies don't even carry morning-after pill... A report by the NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri Foundation has found that up to 71 percent of Missouri pharmacies do not stock or even order the morning-after pill (also known as emergency contraception or EC). "If we are serious about decreasing the number of unintended pregnancies in Missouri, we must be serious about increasing access to emergency contraception," NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri Executive Director Carolyn Sullivan said. In the report, the group says widespread access to EC could prevent half of Missouri's nearly 40,000 annual unintended pregnancies. Read more here.

THE UGLY: Hager brags he helped block access to the morning-after pill... We shouldn't have been too surprised, but earlier this month, The Nation and The Washington Post reported that David Hager, the notorious anti-choice appointee to the FDA, actually bragged in a speech about his role in making sure the FDA did not approve Plan B, the morning-after pill, for over-the-counter access. His unbiased colleagues overwhelmingly supported making Plan B available without a prescription. Get the full story here.

From Grist on-line magazine

Wisconsin power-plant expansion could have long-term eco-consequences

The fate of a Wisconsin coal-fired power plant could augur poorly for the environment, say its opponents. At issue is what does and doesn't count as a "new" power-generating facility: Under the Clean Water Act, new facilities are subject to strict regulations on cleaning technology; an addition to an existing facility, however, is subject to looser rules. The Oak Creek power plant south of Milwaukee wants to double its capacity with a pair of new generators -- old-school pulverized-coal units rather than newer, cleaner gasification units -- which it contends is an expansion and thus subject to the looser rules. So far Wisconsin authorities and the U.S. EPA have agreed. Opponents are steamed. "For them to argue this is an existing facility just boggles the mind," said a rep for an area manufacturer. New language inserted in the preamble to the Clean Water Act by the Bush administration seems to allow for this interpretation, though, and Oak Creek is "the poster child of the worst that can happen" as a result, says attorney Reed Super.

straight to the source: The Washington Post, Peter Slevin, 29 May 2005

Exxon says it won't dabble in clean energy -- too many darn subsidies

With oil prices soaring, Exxon is perfectly happy pumping and refining the black stuff, thanks. Despite persistent pressure from shareholder groups and activists, the company says it has no plans to invest in clean energies like solar and wind. You see, solar and wind are still a small sliver of the energy pie and they -- gasp! -- rely on federal subsidies. "It's an uneconomic niche and our business is not built around the expectation of a bunch of subsidies to make a profit," said Exxon's Scott Nauman, struggling to keep a straight face. "We want a business that is robust on its own merits." Of course, some greens point out that the oil industry gets billions in direct subsidies and tax breaks, and also benefits from externalizing the costs of its pollution onto the public, from massive public investment in roads and highways to carry oil-guzzling vehicles, from massive federal subsidies to agribusinesses that use petroleum-based fertilizers, and from a lax regulatory environment that allows automakers to delay improving fuel economy. Ah, those daffy greens.

straight to the source: ABC News, Reuters, 30 May 2005

From The Center for American Progress

HOMELAND SECURITY - PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE: The Bush administration recently announced plans to conduct a "high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism," planning to focus less on al Qaeda and more on "a broader 'strategy against violent extremism.'" However, key critics of the plan point out that "the policy review comes only after months of delay and lost opportunities while the administration left key counterterrorism jobs unfilled and argued internally over how best to confront the rapid spread of the pro-al Qaeda global Islamic jihad."

EDUCATION - RENEWED SUPPORT FOR EDUCATION: The Center for American Progress's Robert Gordon has some advice for progressives looking to weigh in on education in America: Think Big. In his recent article in the New Republic, Gordon says for far too long Democrats have allowed the education discussion to focus only on money. Progressives, he says, should not be content to merely attack No Child Left Behind; instead, there are serious questions to be answered surrounding culture and institutions. It's time, he charges, to "speak hard truths about our schools and support essential changes." His suggestions: big expansions for high-quality early education, renewed support for public school choice, greater accountability to a national standard and strengthening the quality of teachers.

ENVIRO - GIVING NATURE OVER TO THE ENERGY INDUSTRY: In the recently passed emergency military spending bill, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) inserted an amendment that will "give energy companies the right to explore for oil and gas inside a sprawling national park" for the first time. Already signed by President Bush, the bill "allows drilling for natural gas under the Gulf Islands National Seashore - a thin necklace of barrier islands that drapes the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico."

Bush Breaks Nation's Promise to Veterans

Appearing yesterday at the Arlington National Cemetery to honor generations of sacrifices by American servicemen and women, President Bush said, "At our national cemetery, we take comfort from knowing that the men and women who are serving freedom's cause understand their purpose and its price." Yet the reality has been that the administration that most recently has sent those men and women to fight for freedom's cause has failed for live up to government's age-old promise to "care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan."

BUSH'S 2006 VA BUDGET HITS VETERANS HARD: President Bush's 2006 budget proposal included legislation that would raise veterans' premiums more than 100 percent on prescription drugs and add an annual $250 enrollment fee for veterans who want care for conditions not directly caused by military service and who generally earn more than $25,000 a year. The administration has recommended these same proposals in each of the past few years, only to have them beaten back by Congress each time. The user fee would increase costs for nearly 2 million veterans nationwide.

WAR VETERANS EXCLUDED FROM COST OF WAR ON TERROR: Conservatives in Congress rebuffed an effort to include $2 billion in emergency money for veterans' health care in the recently passed $82 billion Iraq war supplemental. The president's request increased the VA budget a mere 2.7 percent (including the increased co-pays and enrollment fees), hardly sufficient to deal with an expected influx of Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans in the coming years. Nearly 28,000 soldiers who served in Iraq and were discharged have already sought care at a VA facility. Of the nearly 245,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service, 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. VA Secretary Jim Nicholson has said the budget circumstances are not "dire," yet Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Larry Craig (R-ID) was forced to increase the 2006 budget request by $1 billion. Dave Autry, a spokesman for the Disabled American Veterans, said, "Vets are owed a debt and the government has said they are eligible for health care. The government needs to pay for it. It's a continuing cost of our national defense."

BUSH WANTS TO SHUT DOWN VETERANS HOSPITAL IN HIS OWN BACKYARD: Veterans in Bush's backyard, near his ranch in Crawford, Texas, are protesting his administration's decision to close a VA hospital in their town. "It would be, in my opinion, a tragic mistake to shut down our hospital, especially during a time of war when tomorrow's veterans are in harm's way today," said U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Waco). In May 2004, then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi announced he would be closing three veterans hospitals nationwide and partially closing eight others. For his work, Principi was rewarded with an appointment to the chairmanship of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission.

VETERANS GROUPS SLAM BUSH BUDGET: More than 300,000 veterans' claims are pending before the VA, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and the number of claims pending for more than six months rose from 47,000 in 2003 to 75,000 at the end of March 2005. The deteriorating condition of VA health care has elicited plenty of criticism. The American Legion called Bush's budget "the wrong message at the wrong time to the wrong constituency." The Vietnam Veterans of America said the budget did a "disservice to those of us who donned the uniform to defend the rights, principles, and freedoms that we hold dear." And the Veterans of Foreign Wars decried Bush's decision as "especially shameful during a time of war."

Posted: 29 May 2005

This is so excellent, I felt compelled to reproduce the entire thing. The author's true name is Andrew Sullivan

Subject: Stemming the Flows of Compassion & Hypocrisy…
From: Demosthenes2
Date: May 25 2005 7:30AM

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. -
-Eric Hoffer

Yesterday, in the wake of the compromise cut by the Senate moderates and the Minority leader that curiously cut out majority leader Frist, the House passed legislation to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush, for his part, has threatened to veto any such legislation should it pass, though he may find himself to be the next Dr. Frist (both in terms of competency and marginalization) should he do so as a majority (57%) of Republicans support embryonic stem cell research and achieving override may be easier than anticipated.

This is an issue that I have both some experience in and a vested interest in, so I'm going to address this from several perspectives because the administration makes it a point of pride to display its disdain for both science and metaphysics more complex than a first grade Sunday school primer.

As it happens, I have adopted one of those frozen embryos in a fertility clinic that this debate whirls around. My son—my six month old baby boy—is the blessing of embryonic adoption and that has without question transformed my life. It is troubling to hear so many talk about the disposition of these embryos when so few actually have any exposure to the process. So, having actually done more than talk about those frozen entities and done something about it, I'd like to take the opportunity to inform those who insist on meddling in the very private matters of those of us involved in these processes.

Tom DeLay stated that we those who vote in favor of this measure: "vote to fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living distinct human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation." Apparently DeLay shares Bush's disdain for science and metaphysics. Therefore a few points for both officials are in order.

First, 'conception', 'life' and 'living distinct beings' are not the same thing as 'fertilization', no matter how much it serves one's purposes to make it so. Fertilization and the creation of blastocysts is an unremarkable event that takes place daily. If that embryo doesn't implant, there is no conception, no life, no pregnancy. Every day millions of women have 'embryos' floating around in their uteri, flush them during menses and nobody bats an eye. These embryos that have not implanted and sunk a vein and begun the process of advancement are not, even by the most conservative of standards, life. Nobody posits funerals or mourns for the millions of these that are, with no awareness, flushed every day. Give a woman as many pregnancy tests with an embryo inside her that has not implanted as many times as you like—there will be no positive result, pee on as many EPT sticks as you like, no plus sign. This is why after an IVF transfer (the two week wait) people so anxiously wait—they are hoping—desperately—that they have CONCEIVED. It hasn't happened yet.

That embryo may or may not implant and create a conception, a pregnancy, but one thing is for certain—those women who get their period without ever knowing there was a fertilized egg that failed to implant are not flushing 'living distinct human beings.' There is the potential for a conception—nothing more. So, ladies—suck it up and deal—Bush and DeLay need you to stop menstruating post haste—just cross your legs and get thee to a an OB-GYN every 28 days. You see, we need to blood test you and ultrasound the hell out of your uterus in case you absent mindedly were about to flush a 'living distinct human being', because we're all about a 'culture of life'—just not yours. You're an incubator. We need to stem the flow of blood in this culture of death, and apparently that means your menstrual flow.

Secondly, these frozen embryos are so incredibly valuable to the administration that they cannot be used for embryonic stem cell research… because they need to be… THROWN OUT! What they fail to understand is that the disposition of these embryos, like banked chord blood or donated blood or tissue donation, lies with the donor. When you participate in an IVF cycle you sing a form that determines what happens to any leftover fertilized eggs. The choices are cryogenic preservation for: adoption, stem cell research, later transfer to the originating parent, medical research or destruction. DeLay, Bush and his cohorts are saving nothing. It's not as though these embryos in cryogenic willed for research are know suddenly going to be adopted or implanted. They won't—our 'culture of life' perversely demands that they be thrown into the garbage—that's how precious they are, and that's how much we value them. We must destroy life, according to the administration, to AVOID preserving life! Go back and re-read that sentence.

I love my son, profoundly, deeply, more than I ever though possible, but my son became my son when he grew in that womb and survived the transfer. There were four embryos transferred that day—and nobody mourned those other three that simply flowed out naturally, no more my son than the other hoped for pregnancies that were unsuccessful as we hoped each month and waited and prayed that this month the test would be positive.

The key to understanding this intellectual schizophrenia the administration subscribes to is understanding that the point is not to save those embryos—if that were the concern, they'd be scrambling to adopt them like I did—no, this is about the agenda of throwing a bone to their ill informed and zealous base.

The problem is they do a grave disservice to that base, to you, to embryonic adoptive parents like me, to the ill, to EVERYONE in confusing prophylactic measures (the prevention of implantation) with abortificents. It's not the case, and no amount of obfuscation will make it so.

The obfuscation and misdirection is important because it reveals both the real agenda here the actual consequences of these actions and the hypocrisy of the Bush standard: 'No destruction of life to save life.' Indeed. The problem is we're not doing that. We're preserving tissue rather than destroying it so we can throw it out as if the administration has some perverse new garbage disposal regulation (and that would be the first evidence of environmental concern form them!), and designating the sick and elderly as unworthy of not only our efforts but unworthy of even taking the time to make these distinctions.

The administration's actions give lie to their words. It is mind boggling to watch an administration that talks about a 'culture of life' or not 'destroying life to save life' and then blithely proceeds to slaughter tens of thousands to 'save lives and bring democracy' or that has no qualms about executing everyone from the incompetent to juveniles not for vengeance or for deterrence, but to destroy lives to save lives. It is astonishing to watch an administration that would willingly come meddle in your lives to dictate to when your life begins and ends in your hospital bed, in your bedroom, in your doctors office, and at the pharmacy but it is despicable to watch them continue in this vein so ill informed, with actions so ill considered and so triumphal in their ignorance.

That ringing in your ears is the cognitive dissonance from listening to the administration and the noise they make as they come to tell you what you will do, and why—in your bedroom… in the hospital… with your doctor, with your very life—and they'll define that for you, thanks very much. Because they'll preserve what they want and destroy what they want for different reasons and in different ways because they can't be bothered to make the distinctions—and they like it that way. And apparently, so do we.

So while we're stemming flows, of blood, of ignorance, of death, and abandoning any pretense of 'compassionate conservatism' how about stemming the flow of hypocrisy?

The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery; at first it deceives, at last it betrays --Francis Bacon…

Posted: 27 May 2005

A message from NARAL.

The Senate may have reached a compromise to disarm the nuclear option, but don't think that means this anti-choice Congress is willing to compromise its far-right agenda.

This time, not only did our opponents take aim at our courts, they even turned their backs on women in the military.

By a vote of 56-43 the Senate confirmed Priscilla Owen, an anti-choice judicial activist from Texas, to a lifetime position on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

House Republican leaders refused to allow debate or votes on two amendments that would have provided compassionate health care to military women who’ve been raped. The first would have ensured that the morning-after pill, ordinary birth control pills that can prevent pregnancy after sex or assault, is made available to servicewomen at every military base. The second amendment would have allowed women to use their military health insurance for abortion care in cases of rape or incest. Given that sexual assaults against servicewomen rose 25 percent in 2004, it's appalling that anti-choice lawmakers refused to allow these amendments to even come to a vote.

Military women were also yet again denied the right to access abortion care at military facilities overseas when the House defeated an amendment to repeal a ban that forbids servicewomen and female military dependents from using their own money to pay for an abortion at overseas military hospitals.

Please express your outrage to your representative who voted against military women's access to abortion care. Click here to take action and learn more today.

From Grist on-line magazine

Studies link common chemicals to reproductive harm

Stronger evidence that a class of ubiquitous chemicals called phthalates -- found in a wide variety of plastics, nail polishes, fragrances, and other products -- are linked to adverse effects on the human reproductive system was made public Thursday. A study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found a strong correlation between the level of phthalates in the urine of 85 pregnant mothers studied and abnormal genital development in their infant sons, in particular (because we know you want the particulars) smaller penises and scrotums and a higher frequency of incompletely descended testicles. Says lead author Shanna Swan, "These changes are seen at phthalate levels below those found in one-quarter of the female population of the United States." A separate study released this week found that lab animals exposed to levels of the chemical bisphenol A many times below the U.S. EPA's "safe dose" during pregnancy had babies with impaired mammary glands, associated with a higher risk of breast cancer in humans.

straight to the source: San Francisco Chronicle, Jane Kay, 27 May 2005

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Marla Cone, 27 May 2005

straight to the source: Scientific American, Sarah Graham, 27 May 2005

From The Center for American Progress

MILITARY – BUSH ADMINISTRATION SELLING MORE ARMS TO UNDEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES: The New York Times reports on a study by the World Policy Institute that revealed "[t]he sale of military weapons to other countries, including many that were once barred from making such purchases, has increased sharply since the attacks on Sept. 11." In order to improve its relationship with new allies, the United States has sold weapons to countries that in the past could not receive American products because of their poor human rights records. In 2003, more than half of the top 25 recipients of weapons sales were countries the State Department has defined as undemocratic. In his remarks at his swearing-in, new U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman said trade can "deepen the roots of democracy." Unfortunately, as the Bush administration’s actions are showing, trade can also deepen the roots of undemocratic regimes.

HEALTH – U.S. UNPREPARED FOR FLU EPIDEMIC: The United States has no licensed vaccine to prevent avian flu, nor does it have enough drugs to treat the sick if there is an epidemic, according to Reuters. Health experts testifying before Congress yesterday said the Department of Health and Human Services does not have a plan for dealing with the epidemic. "Although many levels of government are paying increased attention to the problem, the United States remains woefully unprepared for an influenza pandemic that could kill millions of Americans," said Dr. Andrew Pavia, chairman of the Infectious Disease Society of America's Pandemic Influenza Task Force. Recall, last year, the Bush administration was also so unprepared for the flu season that President Bush was forced to call on young Americans not to get a flu shot and even said he was not getting one for himself.

ADMINISTRATION – BOLTON NOMINATION DELAYED BECAUSE WHITE HOUSE FAILS TO PRODUCE KEY DOCUMENTS: Instead of providing all the information it could to support its nominee on the Senate floor yesterday, the White House chose instead to withhold key information relating to John Bolton’s nomination as U.N. ambassador, forcing a delay of the final vote. The White House failed to produce information relating to Bolton’s handling of National Security Agency intercepts and documents relations to Bolton’s testimony on Syria’s weapons of mass destruction program. Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) said, "We are willing to vote 10 minutes after we get back in session, if in fact they provide the information." In an indication the White House will maintain its obstruction, Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "They have the information they need."

ETHICS – DELAY’S SECRET CORPORATE CASH FUNNELLING CATCHES UP TO HIM: Reuters reports, "Ethics questions swirling around U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay mounted on Thursday when a Texas judge ruled that a committee formed by the powerful Republican had violated state law by failing to disclose $600,000 in mostly corporate donations." Hailing the victory as a win for good, clean government, an attorney leading the charges against DeLay said, "It sends a very clear message to corporations and lobbyists and other folks that this sort of secretive, underhanded activity is against the law and not allowed in Texas."

ETHICS – SANTORUM’S CAMPAIGN DONATIONS RAISE RED FLAG: "Two days before Sen. Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the National Weather Service, his political action committee received a $2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc.," according to the AP. The bill would restrict the AccuWeather service, which provides weather data to a variety of media outlets, from competing for certain services provided by the private sector and may even prevent the public distribution of certain weather data. Speaking to the allegations, Santorum said, "I don't think there's any coincidence between the [campaign contribution and the introduction of the bill].… It's just that I happened to have a fundraiser in the town he was in."

Posted: 26 May 2005

This is an atrocity and a clear violation of the Bill of Rights upon which all our freedoms as citizens depends.

Judge: Parents can't teach pagan beliefs
Father appeals order in divorce decree that prevents couple from exposing son to Wicca.

Challenging the court: Thomas E. Jones Jr. says a judge's order tramples on his and his ex-wife's constitutional right to share their religious beliefs with their son. -- Frank Espich / The Star
By Kevin Corcoran
kevin.corcoran@indystar.com

An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.

Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.

Bradford refused to remove the provision after the 9-year-old boy's outraged parents, Thomas E. Jones Jr. and his ex-wife, Tammie U. Bristol, protested last fall.

Through a court spokeswoman, Bradford said Wednesday he could not discuss the pending legal dispute.

The parents' Wiccan beliefs came to Bradford's attention in a confidential report prepared by the Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which provides recommendations to the court on child custody and visitation rights. Jones' son attends a local Catholic school.

"There is a discrepancy between Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones' lifestyle and the belief system adhered to by the parochial school. . . . Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon (the boy) as he ages," the bureau said in its report.

But Jones, 37, Indianapolis, disputes the bureau's findings, saying he attended Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis as a non-Christian.

Jones has brought the case before the Indiana Court of Appeals, with help from the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. They filed their request for the appeals court to strike the one-paragraph clause in January.

"This was done without either of us requesting it and at the judge's whim," said Jones, who has organized Pagan Pride Day events in Indianapolis. "It is upsetting to our son that he cannot celebrate holidays with us, including Yule, which is winter solstice, and Ostara, which is the spring equinox."

The ICLU and Jones assert the judge's order tramples on the parents' constitutional right to expose their son to a religion of their choice. Both say the court failed to explain how exposing the boy to Wicca's beliefs and practices would harm him.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line magazine

Green campaigners target corporations as way to effect change

Environmental activists in the U.S., weary of battling with the largely unsympathetic Bush administration, have increasingly been targeting their efforts at other world power brokers -- transnational corporations. Their success to date has been fueled by a sort of guerilla advertising -- innocuously dubbed "market campaigns" -- in which activists creatively associate a company's brand with the harm they're doing to the environment. PR-conscious corporations, ever striving to be well-liked by both consumers and shareholders, often cave to the pressure, finding, like computer-maker Dell did after agreeing to offer a recycling service, that environmental benevolence isn't economic suicide after all. "What got us really going was that we found we can meet our business needs, we can meet our customers' needs, and we can do what the stakeholders are asking of us, all at the same time," said Dell spokesperson Bryant Hilton. Other successful campaigns have targeted Citibank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase.

straight to the source: Scripps Howard News Service, Joan Lowy, 25 May 2005

From The Organic Consumers Association

EXPLOSIVE MONSANTO DOCUMENTS REVEAL SERIOUS HAZARDS OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CORN
A May 22 headline news story in the London Independent has rocked Monsanto and the biotech industry and fueled the controversy over the safety of genetically engineered food. The story reveals that internal Monsanto documents, reviewed by EU scientists, show serious health damage to laboratory animals fed Monsanto's new genetically engineered "rootworm-resistant" corn. Rats who consumed the mutant corn developed smaller kidneys and exhibited blood abnormalities. Scientists say these are "red flags" for immune system damage and/or cancer tumor promotion. Although the EU will now likely ban Monsanto's new GMO corn, this same rootworm-resistant corn is already being grown and consumed on a major scale in the United States. Monsanto has denied that the corn can harm humans, but nonetheless refuses to turn over its data to the media, claiming that the lab studies are "Confidential Business Information."

Learn more and take action: http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.htm

From The Center for American Progress

CONGRESS – BUSH ADMINISTRATION BLASTED FOR SECRECY: Roll Calls reports that the Homeland Security and energy and water appropriations measures "passed by the Republican-controlled House include language scolding the Bush administration for its lack of responsiveness to repeated Congressional requests for information – an unusual sign of tension within the typically united Republican ranks." The House complaints are "unusual and a sign of the level of discontent on Congress' behalf toward the bureaucratic build-up in several agencies," in particular the DHS. Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security Hal Rogers (R-KY) said, "It hurts me to cut or withhold funds for an agency that desperately needs the money, but I don’t know what else we can do."

MILITARY – VETERANS SUE RUMSFELD FOR MEDICAL CARE: The chief financial officer of the U.S. Armed Forces Retirement Home referred to it as "streamlined health care services," but a class-action lawsuit filed yesterday on behalf of the more than 1,000 veteran residents alleges that "drastic budget cuts by the Defense Department have resulted in substandard medical care." According to the suit, over the past two years residents lost the ability to "get prescriptions and regular doctor checkups at the home" because of cuts made by the new DOD-installed management. With "their health in danger," the plaintiffs were "left … with no choice but to sue Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the home’s chief operating officer, Timothy Cox."

ADMINISTRATION – BUSH, CONSERVATIVES CONSOLIDATING POWER: The Washington Post witnesses a theme in how President Bush and congressional leaders are going about business these days. "The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle ... and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda." The next item on the agenda: "[T]he White House and Congress are setting their sights on how to make the judiciary more deferential to the conservative cause." The day after the election, Bush said, "I believe there will be goodwill, now that this election is over, to work together.… And it is with that spirit that I go into this coming session." Apparently, that statement was simply another way of reiterating "you are either with us or against us."

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS – PRO-DEMOCRACY DEMONSTRATORS BEATEN IN EGYPT: Pro-democracy demonstrators were beaten in Cairo yesterday. They had come out to protest yesterday's referendum on election "reforms" that actually bar most opposition politicians from running. The beatings were mostly carried out by pro-government thugs, although the Washington Post noted, "[j]ournalists and witnesses at the scene of several incidents, including this correspondent, saw riot police create corridors for stick-wielding men to freely charge the demonstrators. Women were particular targets." Asked about the riots, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "I've not seen the reports that you're talking about."

ADMINISTRATION – POLL FINDS MOST AMERICANS THINK BUSH DOESN'T SHARE THEIR PRIORITIES: A CBS poll reveals, "Six in 10 Americans don't think the President shares their priorities for the country." After a few months of Terri Schiavo grandstanding, proposing Social Security benefit cuts for most Americans, pushing for the end of the Senate's check over judicial nominations, nominating a U.N. ambassador who doesn't believe there is such a thing as the United Nations, opposing embryonic stem cell research, and standing in strong support of Tom DeLay, more Americans now recognize that Bush is not speaking to the issues they care about.

THE NO-FLY LIST SYSTEM THAT DOESN'T WORK: According to Department of Homeland Security officials, the "government's no-fly list has shortcomings that could allow suspected terrorists and people with ties to terrorism to board U.S.-bound airplanes from overseas." Though airline officials are given a no-fly list against which to check their passenger manifest, the list does not contain "all names of suspected terrorists because some names require a security clearance to see them." Not until after the plane takes off are U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials able to screen the passenger list against the complete no-fly list. By the time the process is completed, "a plane is often midway over the Atlantic before the agency realizes it has a match on board." In the two most recent cases of Customs officials stepping in and ordering flights to land, the "apparent passenger 'hit' was false, but U.S. officials could not determine that until the passenger was removed and interviewed – a process that costs carriers hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel, crew time and schedule changes."

JUDICIARY
Frist's Bait and Switch

Shortly after the announcement of a compromise on judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) indicated he would respect the agreement. On the floor of the Senate, Frist said, "we all ... have a role to play in ensuring its cherished nature remains intact. And, indeed, as demonstrated by tonight’s agreement and by the ultimate implementation of that agreement, we have done just that." In public yesterday, he urged quick votes on the three nominees the group of 14 senators pledged not to filibuster. Privately, however, he was pursuing a much different strategy. As part of the compromise, negotiators agreed that two judicial nominees - William G. Myers and Henry Saad - "will be filibustered or withdrawn." Nevertheless, according to a report in Congress Daily PM, Frist "will file for cloture on President Bush’s nomination of William Myers to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later this week." The move is designed to test "the resolve of 14 Republican and Democratic senators" who signed the deal.

GRAHAM AND DEWINE TRY TO REWRITE THE DEAL, PART I: As Frist tries to destroy the deal, others are attempting to rewrite it. Yesterday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the signatories of the compromise, said, "If there's a filibuster for a Supreme Court nominee in the future, where one of the seven Democrats who signed the letter participates [in the filibuster], all bets are off." The Hill reports that Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) joined Graham in "threatening to vote for the [nuclear] option should Democrats attempt to block nominees in circumstances that the two lawmakers would not consider 'extraordinary.'" But that's not what they agreed to on Monday. According to the text of the memorandum of understanding, Graham and DeWine agreed not to vote for the nuclear option during the 109th Congress, "in light of the spirit and continuing commitments made in this agreement." The senators have committed to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee only in "extreme circumstance," not as defined by Lindsey Graham and Mike DeWine, but as defined by their "own discretion and judgment." As long everyone excises their discretion in good faith, Graham and DeWine would violate the agreement if he voted for the nuclear option during the 109th Congress.

GRAHAM TRIES TO REWRITE THE DEAL, PART II: Sen. Graham is starting to distort the terms of the deal on Monday night. Appearing on Hardball, Graham said, "the deal is that five nominees who have been filibustered will get an up-or-down vote and some will be confirmed and some won't." Actually, the deal only provides that three nominees who have been filibustered will get a vote. But who's counting?

IT'S THE CONSULTATION, STUPID: The future of the agreement lies not in Congress, but in the White House. The deal encourages the president "to consult with members of the Senate, both Democratic and Republican, prior to submitting a judicial nomination to the Senate for consideration." If the president follows through with that suggestion "he will be less likely to nominate judges on the far political right," making their bipartisan confirmation more likely. Nevertheless, the Washington Post reports, "for all the appeals for bipartisan harmony, Bush is unlikely to nominate a consensus justice." A senior administration told the Post that Bush is "not going to shy away" from a fight. The story didn’t mention if the anonymous official still considered Bush to be "a uniter not a divider."

Posted: 23 May 2005

Be grateful there are still people of conscience in this country.

Librarian's brush with FBI shapes her view of the USA Patriot Act
By Joan Airoldi

It was a moment that librarians had been dreading.

On June 8, 2004, an FBI agent stopped at the Deming branch of the Whatcom County Library System in northwest Washington and requested a list of the people who had borrowed a biography of Osama bin Laden. We said no.

We did not take this step lightly. First, our attorney called the local FBI office and asked why the information was important. She was told that one of our patrons had sent the FBI the book after discovering these words written in the margin: "If the things I'm doing is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal. Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded by God."

We told the FBI that it would have to follow legal channels before our board of trustees would address releasing the names of the borrowers. We also informed the FBI that, through a Google search, our attorney had discovered that the words in the margin were almost identical to a statement by bin Laden in a 1998 interview.

Undeterred, the FBI served a subpoena on the library a week later demanding a list of everyone who had borrowed the book since November 2001.

Our trustees faced a difficult decision. It is our job to protect the right of people to obtain the books and other materials they need to form and express ideas. If the government can easily obtain records of the books that our patrons are borrowing, they will not feel free to request the books they want. Who would check out a biography of bin Laden knowing that this might attract the attention of the FBI?

It is for this reason that libraries across the country have taken a strong stand against government intrusion. In the 1980s, it was revealed that the FBI had engaged in a secret "library awareness" program to track the books borrowed by patrons who had emigrated from communist countries. Determined to prevent such activities in the future, librarians helped pass laws in 48 states that bar the surrender of customer information except in compliance with a subpoena.

For our trustees, this sense of responsibility to protect libraries as institutions where people are free to explore any idea ran up against their desire to help their government fight terrorism. But they were resolute and voted unanimously to go to court to quash the FBI subpoena. Fifteen days later, the FBI withdrew its request.

But there is a shadow over our happy ending. Our experience taught us how easily the FBI could have discovered the names of the borrowers, how readily this could happen in any library in the USA. It also drove home for us the dangers that the USA Patriot Act poses to reader privacy.

Since the passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001, the FBI has the power to go to a secret court to request library and bookstore records considered relevant to a national security investigation. It does not have to show that the people whose records are sought are suspected of any crime or explain why they are being investigated. In addition, librarians and booksellers are forbidden to reveal that they have received an order to surrender customer data.

Our government has always possessed the power to obtain library records, but that power has been subject to safeguards. The Patriot Act eliminated those safeguards and made it impossible for people to ask a judge to rule whether the government needs the information it is after. In the current debate over extending or amending the Patriot Act, one of the key questions is whether a library or any other institution can seek an independent review of an order. Even the attorney general conceded in a recent oversight hearing that this is a problem with the law as written.

Fortunately for our patrons, we were able to mount a successful challenge to what seems to have been a fishing expedition. If it had returned with an order from a secret court under the Patriot Act, the FBI might now know which residents in our part of Washington State had simply tried to learn more about bin Laden.

With a Patriot Act order in hand, I would have been forbidden to disclose even the fact that I had received it and would not have been able to tell this story.

Joan Airoldi, a librarian, is director of the library district in Whatcom County, Wash.

Posted: 22 May 2005

From Working Assets.

Tell Congress to Keep Partisan Pressure off PBS

A recent New York Times expose brought to light efforts by Kenneth Tomlinson, the new head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and a good friend of Karl Rove, to tilt PBS programming to the far right. Tomlinson has even told CPB and PBS officials that "they should make sure their programming better reflected the Republican mandate."

Click here to take action!

Despite increased attention to the conservative attack on public broadcasting, the CPB has now cut funding for Bill Moyers' popular NOW program in order to hire conservative pundits from the Wall Street Journal. And what's more, the CPB is now taking on NPR by investigating the radio network's award-winning Middle East coverage in search of "bias."

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- the governing body that sets policy for public television and radio - was created to shield public broadcasting from political pressure. Click here to defend PBS from Karl Rove's ideological attack and tell your representatives in Congress to defend public broadcasting from partisan pressure.

From Grist on-line magazine

House blocks attempt to lift ban on coastal drilling; more to come

An attempt to weaken the U.S. moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling -- established by Congress in 1982 and renewed every year since -- was blocked yesterday in the House by a 262-157 vote. However, drilling opponents view it as just the first and easiest battle in what is likely to be an extended war. An upcoming bipartisan Senate measure may be more difficult to thwart: It would offer individual states potentially billions of dollars in oil and gas leasing revenues as incentive to lift the ban. "It's an effort to pick off one state at a time," said Mark Ferrulo of the Florida Public Interest Research Group. The push to get at the oil and gas along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Gulf of Mexico is driven in part by economics -- cash-strapped states are desperate for new sources of revenue -- and in part by the trendy but bogus argument that increasing domestic oil and gas production would lower gas prices and make America independent of foreign oil.

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, Richard Simon, 20 May 2005

straight to the source: Planet Ark, Reuters, Tom Doggett, 20 May 2005

Space is getting awfully dirty

Litter encircles our planet, in the form of thousands -- or even millions -- of bits of space debris: abandoned satellites and rockets, chunks blown apart by collisions, radioactive fuel, and that one blue sock you lost. "It's sort of a classic environmental problem, not unlike air pollution or water pollution," says NASA's Nicholas L. Johnson. "If you wait until you start seeing negative consequences, then the environment is pretty far gone already, and cleaning it up can be very, very difficult." Indeed, despite amusing talk about using giant Nerf-style balls and litter-zapping lasers to tidy up space, "we do not yet have the technology to economically make any substantial improvements," says Johnson. Some objects reenter orbit and are vaporized by heat; the occasional object makes it to the earth's surface, like a 551-pound propellant tank that landed in Texas in 1997. But mostly, the stuff just accumulates, periodically bashing into working satellites or space stations.

straight to the source: The Baltimore Sun, Frank D. Roylance, 20 May 2005

From Grist on-line magazine

Navy Judge Finds War Protest Reasonable
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Report

Friday 13 May 2005

"I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal."
-- Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant, presiding at Pablo Paredes' court-martial

In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge gave Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail time for refusing orders to board the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000 sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship's movement by design, but dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although Pablo faced one year in the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months' restriction and three months of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.

"This is a huge victory," said Jeremy Warren, Pablo's lawyer. "A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good conscience to board a ship bound for Iraq, and receive no time in jail," Warren added. Although Pablo is delighted he will not to go jail, he still regrets that he was convicted of a crime. He told the judge at sentencing: "I am guilty of believing this war is illegal. I am guilty of believing war in all forms is immoral and useless, and I am guilty of believing that as a service member I have a duty to refuse to participate in this War because it is illegal."

READ THE REST.

Here's a shout-out for my friend, Micah. Please support his battle against propaganda.

We're writing to let you know that our second book is finally available. If You're Not a Terrorist... Then Stop Asking Questions! is the hilarious follow-up to our hit debut, You Back The Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want!

The book creates a stellar send-up of the Administration's War at Home, combining full-color World War-era propaganda posters with Bush-era critical political commentary to deliver a scabrous take on the State of our Union. Taking aim at corporate corruption, the Bush White House, Orwellian legislation, embedded reporters, the 2004 presidential elections and super-patriotism, this is a must for art collectors and rabble-rousers both!

Available in larger format than the previous book, on better paper, and also available in hardcover, If You're Not a Terrorist... is available now for $17.99 in paperback and $23.99 in deluxe hardcover.

At the moment, the only ways to get the book is directly from the publisher, Xlibris (a division of Random House), or to order it from your nearest bookstore (tell them to check the Books In Print computer).

http://www.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=26203
Paperback ISBN#: 1-4134-9276-2
Hardback ISBN#: 1-4134-6637-0

If you enjoyed the first book, or even just surfing the Propaganda Remix Project, we're hoping you'll help support our work by ordering the second book.

Thanks!
The Propaganda Remix Project

From The Center for American Progress

RELIGION – FACULTY AND STUDENTS AT CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY WRITE LETTERS TO OPPOSE BUSH'S VISIT: On Saturday, President Bush is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at the religious Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The college's self-described purpose is to "engage in vigorous liberal arts education that promotes lifelong Christian service." In advance of his visit, one-third of the faculty members have signed a letter of protest that will appear in a half-page ad in the Grand Rapids Press on Saturday. "As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the letter says. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq." More than 800 students, faculty and alumni also have signed a letter protesting Bush's visit that will appear Friday as a full-page ad in the Grand Rapids paper, saying, "In our view, the policies and actions of your administration, both domestically and internationally over the past four years, violate many deeply held principles of Calvin College."

BUDGET – BIPARTISAN AGREEMENT ON IMPENDING FISCAL DOOM: "There were no cameras, not a single microphone, and no evidence of a lawmaker or Bush administration official in the room," the Washington Post reports. "But what the three spoke about will have greater consequences than the current fuss over filibusters and Tom DeLay's travel." On Tuesday, the top budget experts from the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the left-leaning Brookings Institution sat down with Comptroller General David M. Walker to raise a red alert about impending "deficits of the scale we've never seen in this country or any major in industrialized country [sic]." With "startling unanimity" and "interchangeable" fiscal forecasts, the experts warned that, without titanic shifts in tax and spending levels, the United States "will fall victim to the huge debt and soaring interest rates that collapsed Argentina's economy and caused riots in its streets a few years ago."

ENVIRO – YOUR ICED TEA SHOULD'T BE THAT BROWN: "It doesn't take a medical degree to know that drinking poop is bad for us," writes Jeffrey Griffiths, a member of the EPA's National Drinking Water Advisory Council, in the Boston Globe. That hasn't stopped the Bush administration from proposing a new policy that "would allow sewage treatment plants to discharge inadequately treated human waste into lakes, rivers, streams, and coastal waters," which ends up in our tap water. Sure, pathogens from human waste can harm people in even small doses – particularly children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems. But the administration thinks that by weakening sewage restrictions, it can save a few bucks and "further defer or avoid maintenance, or improvements, to their sewer and rainfall collection systems." There's no way we're drinking to that.

PATRIOT ACT – SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN SEEKS TO EXPAND THE POWERS TO INVADE PRIVACY: Ignoring the concerns of 383 communities in 43 states that have passed resolutions to scale back the Patriot Act, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is "working on a bill that would renew the Patriot Act and expand government powers in the name of fighting terrorism, letting the FBI subpoena records without permission from a judge or grand jury." So when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said last month that he was "open to suggestions for clarifying and strengthening the Act," that must have meant he was open to ideas to give the Bush administration even more power than it previously had to invade the privacy of U.S. citizens.

TORTURE – ARMY REPORT SHOWS EXTENSIVE ABUSE: A 2,000-page confidential file on the Army's criminal investigation into two detainee deaths in Afghanistan has presented a "narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib," the New York Times reports (see their moving interactive feature on the report here). The file "depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse," often "driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both." Detainees are regularly shackled or tied from the ceilings by their wrists and beaten "with virtual impunity." Frequently, harsher methods are used – the report describes how one detainee is forced to "pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning." And accountability is rare. Though the leaked report suggests "there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses," only seven have been charged.

VETERANS – UNDERSTAFFED VA SELLS DISABLED VETERANS SHORT: "Staffing shortages and an outdated system for assessing claims are among the reasons for wide differences in disability payments for veterans," writes the AP. A report by the Department of Veterans Affairs found that 65 percent of claim assessors who were surveyed said they did not have enough staff to "ensure timely and quality service."

DELAY – MORE ACCOUNTING GIMMICKS FROM TOM DELAY: As if Tom DeLay weren't in enough trouble already, "[a]n interim federal audit of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's principal fund-raising committee has found that the group engaged in some inappropriate accounting of receipts and expenditures, prompting it to revise all campaign reports for 2001 and 2002." DeLay's aides refused to disclose what they did wrong in its filings to prompt the revisions, and judging from ARMPAC's previous record, there's probably a good reason why. "The committee's revised filings, published Wednesday by the FEC, omitted $15,523 in contributions it had previously listed and included $51,755 in expenditures it did not previously report.… For the first time, the revised filings also listed as short-term debts some items listed as expenditures."

IRAN – WHITE HOUSE RELYING ON ABUSIVE 'CULT' FOR INTEL: "A controversial exile movement cited by President George W. Bush as a source of information on Iran's nuclear ambitions is condemned for psychologically and physically abusing its own members in a new report by Human Rights Watch," Newsweek reports. The exile group, known as Mujahedine Khalq (MEK), has "a history of cultlike practices" that include forced involvement in "extended self-criticism sessions," violent abuse, and months-long assignments in solitary confinement. That hasn't stopped the White House or several members of Congress from relying on the group for advice and intelligence. On March 16, Bush even claimed that Iran's hidden nuclear program had been discovered not thanks to international inspections but "because a dissident group [MEK] pointed it out to the world."

DAILY GRILL
"Senator Byrd's inappropriate remarks comparing his Republican colleagues with Nazis are inexcusable. These comments lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate. He should retract his statement and ask for pardon."
– Sen. Rick Santorum, 3/3/05

VERSUS

"I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942. 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city. It's mine.'"
– Sen. Rick Santorum, 5/20/05

Posted: 12 May 2005

A thought-provoking entry from Bruce Schneier's blog:

May. 12th, 2005 09:49 am Should Terrorism be Reported in the News?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/05/should_terroris_1.html

In the New York Times, columnist John Tierney argues that the media is performing a public disservice by writing about all the suicide bombings in Iraq. This only serves to scare people, he claims, and serves the terrorists' ends.

Some liberal bloggers have jumped on this op-ed as furthering the administration's attempts to hide the horrors of the Iraqi war from the American people, but I think the argument is more subtle than that. Before you can figure out why Tierney is wrong, you need to understand that he has a point.

Terrorism is a crime against the mind. The real target of a terrorist is morale, and press coverage helps him achieve his goal. I wrote in Beyond Fear (pages 242-3):

Morale is the most significant terrorist target. By refusing to be scared, by refusing to overreact, and by refusing to publicize terrorist attacks endlessly in the media, we limit the effectiveness of terrorist attacks. Through the long spate of IRA bombings in England and Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, the press understood that the terrorists wanted the British government to overreact, and praised their restraint. The U.S. press demonstrated no such understanding in the months after 9/11 and made it easier for the U.S. government to overreact.

Consider this thought experiment. If the press did not report the 9/11 attacks, if most people in the U.S. didn't know about them, then the attacks wouldn't have been such a defining moment in our national politics. If we lived 100 years ago, and people only read newspaper articles and saw still photographs of the attacks, then people wouldn't have had such an emotional reaction. If we lived 200 years ago and all we had to go on was the written word and oral accounts, the emotional reaction would be even less. Modern news coverage amplifies the terrorists' actions by endlessly replaying them, with real video and sound, burning them into the psyche of every viewer.

Just as the media's attention to 9/11 scared people into accepting government overreactions like the PATRIOT Act, the media's attention to the suicide bombings in Iraq are convincing people that Iraq is more dangerous than it is.

Tiernan writes:

I'm not advocating official censorship, but there's no reason the news media can't reconsider their own fondness for covering suicide bombings. A little restraint would give the public a more realistic view of the world's dangers.

Just as New Yorkers came to be guided by crime statistics instead of the mayhem on the evening news, people might begin to believe the statistics showing that their odds of being killed by a terrorist are minuscule in Iraq or anywhere else.

I pretty much said the same thing, albeit more generally, in Beyond Fear (page 29):

Modern mass media, specifically movies and TV news, has degraded our sense of natural risk. We learn about risks, or we think we are learning, not by directly experiencing the world around us and by seeing what happens to others, but increasingly by getting our view of things through the distorted lens of the media. Our experience is distilled for us, and it’s a skewed sample that plays havoc with our perceptions. Kids try stunts they’ve seen performed by professional stuntmen on TV, never recognizing the precautions the pros take. The five o’clock news doesn’t truly reflect the world we live in -- only a very few small and special parts of it.

Slices of life with immediate visual impact get magnified; those with no visual component, or that can’t be immediately and viscerally comprehended, get downplayed. Rarities and anomalies, like terrorism, are endlessly discussed and debated, while common risks like heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes, and suicide are minimized.

The global reach of today’s news further exacerbates this problem. If a child is kidnapped in Salt Lake City during the summer, mothers all over the country suddenly worry about the risk to their children. If there are a few shark attacks in Florida -- and a graphic movie -- suddenly every swimmer is worried. (More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.)

One of the things I routinely tell people is that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. By definition, "news" means that it hardly ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it's probably not worth worrying about. When something is no longer reported -- automobile deaths, domestic violence -- when it's so common that it's not news, then you should start worrying.

Tierney is arguing his position as someone who thinks that the Bush administration is doing a good job fighting terrorism, and that the media's reporting of suicide bombings in Iraq are sapping Americans' will to fight. I am looking at the same issue from the other side, as someone who thinks the media's reporting of terrorist attacks and threats has increased public support for the Bush administration's draconian counterterrorism laws and dangerous and damaging foreign and domestic policies. If the media didn't report all of the administrations's alerts and warnings and arrests, we would have a much more sensible counterterrorism policy in America and we would all be much safer.

So why is the argument wrong? It's wrong because the danger of not reporting terrorist attacks is greater than the risk of continuing to report them. Freedom of the press is a security measure. The only tool we have to keep government honest is public disclosure. Once we start hiding pieces of reality from the public -- either through legal censorship or self-imposed "restraint" -- we end up with a government that acts based on secrets. We end up with some sort of system that decides what the public should or should not know.

Here's one example. Last year I argued that the constant stream of terrorist alerts were a mechanism to keep Americans scared. This week, the media reported that the Bush administration repeatedly raised the terror threat level on flimsy evidence, against the recommendation of former DHS secretary Tom Ridge. If the media follows this story, we will learn -- too late for the 2004 election, but not too late for the future -- more about the Bush administration's terrorist propaganda machine.

Freedom of the press -- the unfettered publishing of all the bad news -- isn't without dangers. But anything else is even more dangerous. That's why Tierney is wrong.

And honestly, if anyone thinks they can get an accurate picture of anyplace on the planet by reading news reports, they're sadly mistaken.

From The Center for American Progress

HEALTH CARE – THE DOCTOR WILL PREACH TO YOU NOW: Last December, the Food and Drug Administration made the extraordinarily rare decision to disregard the expert advice of its advisory panel and reject over-the-counter sale of Plan B, an emergency contraceptive. Key members of the advisory committee accused the agency of a "political" decision that "ignored scientific evidence and yielded to pressure from social conservatives." Meet Dr. W. David Hager, a "highly controversial figure" who preaches that "Christians such as himself were at 'war' with people who would take faith and values out of medical care." A videotape of a "previously unreported public sermon" delivered by Hager shows the "outspoken evangelical doctor on the panel [acknowledging] … that he was asked to write a memo to the FDA commission soon after the panel voted 23 to 4 in favor of [Plan B]." Furthermore, the "minority report" memo is believed to have "played a central role in the rejection of that recommendation." In fact, the same flawed reasoning – a dearth of information on how the availability of Plan B would affect young girls – that Hager cited in the memo exactly matches the reasoning the FDA cited for its rejection of over-the-counter sales of Plan B. Hager has been inconsistent as to whether the request to write the memo came from "outside the agency" or "an FDA staff member."

HEALTH CARE – WHEN PHARMACISTS DENY CARE: The issue of pharmacists endangering patients' health and denying their rights by refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraceptives has gained nationwide attention. Now, the state of Wisconsin is "investigating a claim by a Milwaukee mother of six who said she had to resort to an abortion after a former Walgreen pharmacist refused to fill her prescription for emergency contraceptive, and then berated her as a murderer." Walgreen's policy "allows pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription for moral reasons … but it prohibits them from discussing their reasons with the customer and requires them to notify a manager, who will make arrangements for the prescription to be filled elsewhere." The attorney for the woman, who for now is going by the name Jane Doe, stated, "The pharmacist crossed the line. It's one thing to conscientiously object. But you cannot intend to inflict emotional harm on a woman when she is making a very important and often very emotional decision in her life."

TAXES
Podesta Advises Bush on Reform

Yesterday, Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform had a public meeting to hear suggestions about how to improve the system. Reform is badly needed after the last four years; President Bush's tax schemes have made the system more complex, shifted more of the burden to the middle class and exploded the federal deficit. Among the presenters yesterday was American Progress President John Podesta, who presented our comprehensive plan for progressive tax reform. (Hey, Byron York, are you paying attention?) Podesta explained that, including payroll taxes, a cook at a high-school cafeteria making $25,000 a year effectively pays 30 percent of his or her income in federal taxes. A two-earner family making $85,000 a year effectively pays 40 percent in taxes. Meanwhile, a millionaire pays just 15 percent on his or her investment income. The American Progress plan is fiscally responsible reform that simplifies the system, restores fairness and increases economic opportunity.

FAIRNESS – TAX ALL INCOME THE SAME: Under the Bush administration's tax policies, middle-class Americans are shouldering more of the burden. The American Progress plan corrects that by simplifying the rate structure and taxing each source of income at the same rate – whether it is dividends from investments or wages.

SIMPLICITY – REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TAX BRACKETS: President Bush has added over 10,000 pages to the federal tax code. The American Progress plan would make the system far simpler. The number of tax brackets would be reduced from six to just three – 15 percent (for income up to $25K), 25 percent (for income between $25K and $120K) and 39.6 percent (for income over 120K). The plan would also eliminate the need for the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) – a special rate initially created to ensure that the very rich pay some taxes. Without reform, the AMT would impact 36 million Americans by 2010.

INTEGRITY – CLOSE LOOPHOLES: The American Progress plan would close loopholes in the corporate income tax code, including the "Bermuda" loophole that allows U.S. firms to avoid paying taxes by moving their operations overseas.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY – REDUCE THE DEFICIT: The federal government is on pace to rack up another $1.4 trillion in debt over the next ten years. The American Progress plan is fiscally responsible, reducing the revenue shortfall by $478 billion compared to the administration's budget. At the same time, the American Progress plan would include a tax cut for the 70 percent of Americans who earn up to $200,000, providing an average cut of over $600.

OPPORTUNITY – INCENTIVES FOR ALL AMERICANS TO SAVE: The American Progress plan would create new opportunities for tens of millions of Americans to save and create wealth. The current deduction system is upside-down – providing a greater incentive to save if you have a higher income (and pay a higher marginal tax rate). The plan would create a new across-the-board 25 percent refundable tax credit for retirement savings. This would provide the same incentives for every American – whether an investment banker or a secretary – to save, including the 33 million Americans who don't earn enough to have income tax liability.

Posted: 11 May 2005

If a high school student can do it...

Cortez sophmore builds model hydrogen car

By Kelsey Warner
Cortez Journal, Colorado

CORTEZ - While Micah Hinton aspires to be a heavy metal drummer, his real talent may be for engineering.

The sophomore at Southwest Open School in Cortez demonstrated this recently when he built a model car powered by hydrogen and placed it on display in a gallery at the school.

Hinton first suggested the idea while studying renewable energy in a class combining science and math taught by Colin Biard.

The notion baffled the teacher. "I never knew they existed," Biard said.

Hinton's car - about the size of a football - runs on distilled water. A solar panel provides energy to begin the reaction that splits hydrogen from water. The car is so efficient it can even motor and create hydrogen at the same time.

"When it's running, it's making water," Biard said. "When it's stopping, it's turning it back into hydrogen."

As a result, the fuel source is never depleted, and the car never needs a fill-up.

"It lasts forever," said Hinton, 15. "It will run off pure hydrogen."

Of course, he said, a life-sized version could look a bit different.

"On a commercial level, you're actually combusting hydrogen," Hinton said, so a solar panel would not be necessary.

During the six-week project, Hinton learned basic electrolysis and a little physics.

"It's interesting to me that you can use water as fuel," he said.

His teacher offered an additional review.

"This is an amazing gizmo," Biard said. "Micah had a lot of fun doing it."

I still stronly suspect that the Ohio presidential vote was rigged.

Black Box Voting Update: New Consumer Reports (May 4-10, 2005)

(You have permission to publish this in whole or in part, as long as you link back to http://www.blackboxvoting.org. Please distribute to your lists. All Black Box Voting reports use ORIGINAL research, backed up with credible documents and/or videotape.)

1. SOMETHING’S COOKING IN COOK COUNTY -- $45 million deal for new voting machines flying under the radar in Cook County (Chicago) ­ Black Box Voting has learned that a decision is expected this month for a joint RFP issued a year ago by Cook County and the Chicago Board of Elections. One of the leading contenders for the contract is Diebold Election Systems. The imminence of this contract award stunned even die-hard voting activists in the Chicago area, who are mobilizing now … more: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5559.html

2. MONEY TRAIL REPORT #1 -- Large payments from Diebold are fueling influence-peddling in Ohio and Cook County/Chicago. Black Box Voting has learned that the payments are going through a small corporation called ACG Group LLC, formed by two Democrats and a Republican. The Republican, Pasquale Gallina, was once business partners with two convicted felons, and has been involved in a number of ethics controversies. One of the Democrats, former Ohio Secretary of State Anthony Celebrezze, passed away shortly after forming ACG Group. The other Democrat is a prominent Hispanic voting rights leader, Dr. Juan Andrade, Jr., founder of the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute. Andrade admitted to Black Box Voting in a videotaped interview that he has been taking payments from Diebold, but said he wasn’t sure if it should be characterized as "lobbying."

Andrade acknowledged that Diebold is making payments directly to him and also that monies are flowing from Diebold through the ACG Group. According to Andrade, these payments are then paid out to others. When asked what the payments to others are buying, Black Box Voting was told that the Diebold funds pay "subcontractors." When asked what the subcontractors do, Andrade said that they do "largely public persuasion." However, nothing about this appears to be very public, and the amounts paid to Andrade, uncovered by Black Box Voting through documents obtained from a source inside Diebold, amount to an unusually high amount, at $20,000 per month. More: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5595.html

MONEY TRAIL REPORT SERIES: Watch www.blackboxvoting.org for new money trail reports throughout the month of May. Upcoming stories: OHIO players ... Hired Guns and Revolvers … Anatomy of a Bribe …

3. BIG MEETING BREWING IN SACRAMENTO MAY 19: Activists are urged to come to Sacramento to request statewide decertification of Diebold. At a meeting at the Secretary of State Building at 10:00 a.m. May 19, Diebold Election Systems will attempt to certify a number of new products. Black Box Voting will present evidence of new violations of California law, and is urging a moratorium on new spending and decertification of Diebold in the state of California. More: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5557.html

4. DISABILITY COMPLIANCE TRIGGERS NEW REMOTE ACCESS RISKS: Black Box Voting has been conducting tests for remote access through telephone lines, in real elections offices, with permission of local officials, using the actual software used in the Nov. 2002 general election. Black Box Voting has identified a problem with security which occurs if a single Diebold touch-screen is added to optical-scan (paper based) locations. The remote access configuration used with the touch-screen can act as the single "bad apple" enabling easier access into the rest of the voting system. More: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5512.html

5. LOS ANGELES VOTING SYSTEM OWNED BY MALAYSIAN GAMBLING COMPANY: Black Box Voting has been looking into the situation in Los Angeles, where an unusual voting system is used, the InkaVote. That system is owned by International Lottery and Totalizator Systems (ILTS). A politically-connected Malaysian gambling outfit owns ILTS. According to SEC filings, Berjaya Lottery Management -- a gaming subsidiary of Berjaya Group Berhad with ties to former prime minister Mahathid, located in Malaysia -- owns 71% of the voting stock in ILTS, the company that makes InkaVote. More: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/4624.html

* * * *

NEW INFORMATION POSTED SEVERAL TIMES A DAY at http://www.blackboxvoting.org ­ Comprehensive updates from mainstream news sources, new documents in the archive, video clips from investigations, new consumer reports

From Grist on-line magazine

Court rules that Cheney may keep task-force deliberations secret

In a major political and legal victory for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court has ruled that Vice President Dick Cheney is not obliged to release records on his secretive 2001 energy task-force meetings, effectively ending the long-running legal challenge brought by the Sierra Club and open-government advocate Judicial Watch. The court originally ruled that Cheney had to cough up the documents, but the administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which sent the case back to the appeals court with the stern suggestion that it reconsider. It did. The ruling relates to the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act, which says government committees must seek advice in the open. Breaking with past rulings, the court narrowly defined what constitutes committee membership (having a vote or a veto) and essentially accepted at face value the word of senior administration officials that energy executives were not committee members thus defined. Said Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton, "Today's decision means that now the public may never know the truth about how these policies were formulated."

straight to the source: Los Angeles Times, David G. Savage, 11 May 2005

USDA pays freelance writer to tout Farm Bill's green cred

In an effort to manufacture some green credibility, an Agriculture Department agency hired a freelance "journalist" to produce five articles on the conservation benefits of its Farm Bill programs. Paid at least $7,500 for his work, freelancer Dave Smith was instructed to push his stories to hunting and fishing magazines. The contract between Smith and the Natural Resources Conservation Service -- a government agency that works with landowners on issues related to wildlife habitat, water conservation, and soil erosion -- was uncovered by The Washington Post via a Freedom of Information Act request. It's just the latest deal to come to light whereby the Bush administration has paid so-called journalists to tout its policies in the press. Smith, dude, Armstrong Williams cleared $241K! Looks like you got punk'd.

straight to the source: The Washington Post, Christopher Lee, 11 May 2005

From OrganicConsumers.org

USDA COVER-UP OF MAD COW CASES
The USDA has refused to respond to allegations that it has been covering up cases of Mad Cow disease in the U.S. for well over a decade. Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian, says he was told by USDA officials as far back as 1991 that if his testing laboratory ever found evidence of Mad Cow disease, he was to tell no one. He and other scientists say they know of cases where cows tested positive for the disease in laboratories but were ruled negative by the USDA. Mad cow is a concern to public health because humans can contract a fatal brain illness known as variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease from eating beef products contaminated with the mad cow pathogen. TAKE ACTION! Sign the Mad Cow petition: http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm

From FAIR

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2511

MEDIA ADVISORY:
Smoking Gun Memo?
Iraq Bombshell Goes Mostly Unreported in US Media

May 10, 2005

Journalists typically condemn attempts to force their colleagues to disclose anonymous sources, saying that subpoenaing reporters will discourage efforts to expose government wrongdoing. But such warnings seem like mere self-congratulation when clear evidence of wrongdoing emerges, with no anonymous sources required-- and major news outlets virtually ignore it.

A leaked document that appeared in a British newspaper offered clear new evidence that U.S. intelligence was shaped to support the drive for war. Though the information rocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign when it was revealed, it has received little attention in the U.S. press.

The document, first revealed by the London Times (5/1/05), was the minutes of a July 23, 2002 meeting in Blair's office with the prime minister's close advisors. The meeting was held to discuss Bush administration policy on Iraq, and the likelihood that Britain would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the minutes state.

The minutes also recount a visit to Washington by Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence service MI6: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

That last sentence is striking, to say the least, suggesting that the policy of invading Iraq was determining what the Bush administration was presenting as "facts" derived from intelligence. But it has provoked little media follow-up in the United States. The most widely circulated story in the mainstream press came from the Knight Ridder wire service (5/6/05), which quoted an anonymous U.S. official saying the memo was ''an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during Dearlove's meetings in Washington.

Few other outlets have pursued the leaked memo's key charge that the "facts were being fixed around the policy." The New York Times (5/2/05) offered a passing mention, and the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette (5/5/05) wrote an editorial about the memo and the Iraq War. A columnist for the Cox News Service (5/8/05) also mentioned the memo, as did Molly Ivins (WorkingForChange.com, 5/10/05). Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler (5/8/05) noted that Post readers had complained about the lack of reporting on the memo, but offered no explanation for why the paper virtually ignored the story.

In a brief segment on hot topics in the blogosphere (5/6/05), CNN correspondent Jackie Schechner reported that the memo was receiving attention on various websites, where bloggers were "wondering why it's not getting more coverage in the U.S. media." But acknowledging the lack of coverage hasn't prompted much CNN coverage; the network mentioned the memo in two earlier stories regarding its impact on Blair's political campaign (5/1/05, 5/2/05), and on May 7, a short CNN item reported that 90 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to the White House about the memo-- but neglected to mention the possible manipulation of intelligence that was mentioned in the memo and the Democrats' letter.

Salon columnist Joe Conason posed this question about the story:

"Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?"

As far as the media are concerned, the answer to Conason's second question would seem to be yes. A May 8 New York Times news article asserted that "critics who accused the Bush administration of improperly using political influence to shape intelligence assessments have, for the most part, failed to make the charge stick." It's hard for charges to stick when major media are determined to ignore the evidence behind them.

From The Center for American Progress

ETHICS – ABRAMOFF GETS WHAT HE PAYS FOR WITH DELAY: Shady lobbyist Jack Abramoff represented the Northern Mariana Islands in the 1990s to aid them in their quest to avoid U.S. labor laws. To this end, Abramoff flew dozens of lawmakers and their aides for luxurious vacations to the balmy islands, including one 1997-98 New Year's trip for DeLay and his wife. It was on this trip that DeLay called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." That friendship had its perks: The National Journal now reports that, in 1998, DeLay helped kill a "congressional fact-finding trip that was being planned as part of an investigation of sweatshop conditions in the garment industry in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands." Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) was leading a fact-finding investigation into worker abuse in the islands' garment industry when DeLay's office threatened the lawmaker with loss of his subcommittee chairmanship if he continued the investigation. A former aide recalls, "We were under very strict orders not to deal with the Marianas … Hoekstra made it very clear that he was told to lay off the Marianas." Another former aide charged Hoekstra returned to his office one day in mid-1998 after a meeting in the majority whip's office, the congressman was "pissed off," complaining to some of his staff, "They shut us down."

RELIGION – EXCOMMUNCATION IN NORTH CAROLINA: East Waynesville Baptist Church may never be the same again after the church's pastor effectively tried to excommunicate members of the congregation over their political beliefs. According to several corroborated accounts, Reverend Chan Chandler instructed the congregation that "if they voted for John Kerry or were Democrats, they were against the church. They had a choice to 'repent' their sin or leave." Now these church members are being asked to return, but the damage has already been done: "Things will never be the same here until he leaves. This all started over politics and our right to vote for whoever we wanted to." Of the ousted members who chose to return to services, some felt it necessary to even bring their attorneys along. Through his own lawyer, Reverend Chandler asserts that, "No one has ever been voted from the membership of this church due to an individual's support or lack of support for a political party or candidate." However, Chandler is a controversial figure in the community "who has received strong criticism from local clergy."

DAILY OUTRAGE
If Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) has his way, Americans are going to lose access to free weather data that was collected with their own tax dollars. Why? Private, for-pay weather providers based in his state are tired of the competition, so Santorum has introduced a bill to "severely limit the public and law enforcement's access to the National Weather Service."

IRAQ – ADD $82 BILLION TO THE TAB, AND KEEP IT OPEN: The bill for the war in Iraq continues to skyrocket. Yesterday, "the Senate gave final passage … to an $82 billion emergency war-spending bill, sending President Bush a measure that will push the cost of the Iraq invasion well past $200 billion." According to Army officials, "more money will be needed as early as October." According to the Congressional Research Service by 2010, costs for the war "are likely to exceed half a trillion dollars." The bill includes "$1.28 billion to construct and operate a U.S. embassy in Baghdad." To put that in perspective, it's about as much as the Freedom Tower that will be built on ground zero, which will be the tallest building in the world.

MEDIA – MORE 'JOURNALISTS' ON ADMINISTRATION PAYROLL: Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher were just the beginning. Documents obtained by USA Today reveal the Agriculture Department paid freelance writer Dave Smith $9,375 in 2003 to "write articles for hunting and fishing magazines describing the benefits of NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) programs." None of the articles "identified Smith as having been paid by the government."

ENVIRO – PENTAGON LAUNCHES ATTACK ON NATURE: The Pentagon is on its fourth try at getting Congress to "loosen major environmental laws to allow military training exercises around the country to proceed unimpeded." Pentagon officials are claiming that the changes are "essential to preserve the quality of training and to avoid lawsuits over possible violations of [environmental] statutes." In congressional testimony from last year, however, a senior Pentagon official was unable to provide any "examples of complaints involving existing environmental laws." Furthermore, the Defense Department is already "widely regarded as one of the nation's leading polluters, producing vast amounts of chemicals from ordnance that leach into groundwater, as well as air pollution from military vehicles. The Environmental Protection Agency lists more than 130 Superfund sites on military bases." A spokesperson with the Natural Resources Defense Council noted that, "Congress would never consider letting the nation's biggest corporate polluter off the hook. Why, then, would Congress grant immunity to America's, and the world's, largest polluter?"

Posted: 7 May 2005

One about censorship.

Row After Columnist's Article On Stolen 2004 Election
Mainstream Journo Penning Election Reform Column Has Article Rejected for First Time in Career
5-7-5

What began innocently enough with a watershed article several weeks ago by Tribune Media Service's Robert Koehler on the need for Election Reform and an investigation into the results of Election 2004, has now erupted into a full-fledged firestorm resulting Wednesday afternoon in the unprecedented rejection of Koehler's latest column by the higher-ups at TMS where Koehler is both a columnist and editor!

Tribune Media Services is the syndication arm of the Tribune Company which, in turn, is the parent company to the Chicago Tribune.

Koehler's original ground-breaking column from April -- the first by an American Mainstream Media journalist that we know of to out-and-out charge that the 2004 Election was stolen -- was written a few days after Koehler attended the National Election Reform Conference last month in Nashville. The piece was headlined "The Silent Scream of Numbers: The 2004 election was stolen - will someone please tell the media?"

He followed it up the next week with another stunner headlined "Democracy's Abu Ghraib - If they can disable an election, what's coming next?"

While both pieces were distributed via TMS to syndicate member newspapers, only a handful chose to run either of those two columns.

Most notably, however, despite Chicago Tribune itself having chosen to run neither column, their "Public Editor", Don Wycliffe, found it appropriate to write a column in the Trib's pages wherein he rebutted Koehler's original piece. Wycliff's rebuttal, as reported here previously, attempted to discredit Koehler's column, Koehler himself, and those of us who might give a damn about democracy and the responsibility that the people (and yes, that would include the media) have to remain vigilant in order to sustain it.

Wycliff's column, citing the "moral example" of Richard Nixon (yes, not kidding) as the figure whom American's ought to follow in regards to potentially stolen elections, has erupted in a torrent of email directed towards the misguided and/or misinformed Wycliff and in support of Koehler.

Koehler once again hits a home-run with this week's column in response to Wycliff's. Or at least he would have had the Masters of Tribune Media Services not killed the article for the first time in Koehler's career!...

Here's the spiked column, received from Koehler via email, not yet posted on his website, Common Wonders

For release 5/5/05

CITIZENS IN THE RAIN

By Robert C. Koehler
Tribune Media Services

"Where there is a free press the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed." - Lord Macaulay (one of many stirring quotes on the sacred role of the Fourth Estate adorning the lobby of the Chicago Tribune)

My fantasy of the mainstream media actually doing their job, and living up to the words they carve in marble to describe their own importance, is an 80-point (Terri Schiavo- or even Pope John Paul II-sized) headline running across the top of tomorrow's paper: ELECTION RESULTS IN DOUBT.

That would stop a few hearts. But the nation's major newspapers, even as they struggle with declining readership, have no intention of being quite that relevant to their readers - no intention, it appears, even to begin the process of looking into the hornets' nest of vote fraud allegations abuzz in meticulously researched reports on electronic voting (see uscountvotes.org) or the voluminous Conyers Report on what happened in Ohio on Nov. 2 (see truthout.org/Conyersreport.pdf).

Isn't our democracy at stake? Doesn't that matter?

"If John Kerry and the Ohio Democratic Party and all the other folks who had the most to gain from the election were making this challenge, I would get interested. But when the people with the most at stake don't step up, I'm suspicious."

So Don Wycliff, the Chicago Tribune's public editor, wrote to me in an e-mail exchange a few days ago, explaining why he, if not the Tribune itself, had no intention of investigating the issue with any seriousness.

It followed a strange breach in the Tribune's deathly silence on the irregularities of the 2000 and 2004 elections, which came about after readers began bombarding the Tribune with mail suggesting they run a column I had written, "The Silent Scream of Numbers," addressing these irregularities and reporting on a national election-reform conference in Nashville last month.

My column didn't run, but Wycliff wrote a column, "When Winning Isn't Everything," dismissing their concerns and telling them to ponder the moral leadership of Richard Nixon, who patriotically swallowed his close defeat in 1960 without complaint. In others words, shut up and get over it.

Wycliff was speaking only for himself, not "the media," but because his column was one of the few pieces to appear in a major publication even acknowledging that a huge number of Americans are distraught at mounting evidence of large-scale disenfranchisement in 2004 (and no guarantee that 2006 and 2008 will be any different), his words, by default, have special resonance. They stand in for the prejudices of the media as a whole.

Of all my objections to what he wrote, his contention that Kerry has the most at stake in all this is the most dispiriting, and most reflects the wrongheaded, "horse race" coverage of elections the media have shoved down our throats for as long as I can remember.

In his column, Wycliff even used a sports analogy, pointing out that "it's not the pregame prognostication and expert opinions that count, but the numbers on the scoreboard after the contest has actually been played." The Bush team won; the Kerry team lost. And the voters must be the equivalent of sports fans then, either jubilant or disappointed when the game is over, but couch potatoes either way, not participants.

Anyone else just a little bit offended? As one of the hundred or so readers who responded to the column (and cc'd me) put it, "Winning isn't everything, but fair elections are everything."

Nearly a week after Wycliff's column ran, the Tribune has printed only one letter in response to it - and this letter was about Nixon. It didn't have a word to say about the 2004 election. So much for my naïve optimism that an actual debate would ensue on the pages of the Trib.

Once again I quote exit-poll analyst Jonathan Simon: "When the autopsy of our democracy is performed, it is my belief that media silence will be given as the primary cause of death."

The stakes are getting higher and higher. Could it be we can't have election reform without media reform? The "respectable press" refuses to confer the least legitimacy on the citizens who are questioning this election and demanding accountability in the voting process.

How do we make them care? How do we make them look for themselves? How do we make them stand outside with us in the rain, waiting to cast our ballot for democracy?

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

Here's a large amount of information on how dangerous MSG is in creating obesity and food addiction. As with the tobacco industry hiding the truth about nicotine, the food additive industry has spent decades hiding the truth about MSG.

By John Erb
5-2-5

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo, and spent years working for the government.

He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America. In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies.

No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and humans?) to become obese; they even have a title for the race of fat rodents they create: "MSG-Treated Rats."

I was shocked too. I went to my kitchen, checking the cupboards and the fridge. MSG was in everything! The Campbell's soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavored potato chips, Top Ramen, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen prepared meals, Kraft salad dressings, especially the 'healthy low fat' ones. The items that didn't have MSG had something called Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate. It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our children everyday are filled with this stuff. They hide MSG under many different names in order to fool those who catch on.

But it didn't stop there. When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items had MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore they didn't use MSG. But when we ask for the ingredient list which they grudgingly provided, sure enough MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere. Burger King, McDonalds, Wendy's, Taco Bell, every restaurant, even the sit down ones like TGIF, Chilis', Applebees and Denny's use MSG in abundance. Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing and gravy. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin, their secret spice was MSG!

So why is MSG in so may of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative or a vitamin? Not according to my friend John. In the book he wrote, an expose of the food additive industry called The Slow Poisoning of America,

http://www.spofamerica.com/

he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the human body. Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby group supporting MSG at:

http://www.msgfacts.com/facts/msgfact12.html

explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more.

A study of elderly people showed that people eat more of the foods that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobby group says eating more benefits the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us?

'Betcha can't eat just one', takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned! And we wonder why the nation is overweight?

The MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added. Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance!

Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the prepackaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday.

The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it's safe to eat in any amount. How can they claim it is safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies with titles like these?

= = = = =

The monosodium glutamate (MSG) obese rat as a model for the study of exercise in obesity. Gobatto CA, Mello MA, Souza CT, Ribeiro IA. Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2002

= = = = =

Adrenalectomy abolishes the food-induced hypothalamic serotonin release in both normal and monosodium glutamate-obese rats. Guimaraes RB, Telles MM, Coelho VB, Mori RC, Nascimento CM, Ribeiro Brain Res Bull. August 2002

= = = = =

Obesity induced by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment in spontaneously hypertensive rats: an animal model of multiple risk factors. Yamamoto M, Iino K, Ichikawa K, Shinohara N, Yoshinari Fujishima Hypertens Res. March 1998

= = = = =

Hypothalamic lesion induced by injection of monosodium glutamate in suckling period and subsequent development of obesity. Tanaka K, Shimada M, Nakao K, Kusunoki Exp Neurol. October 1978

= = = = =

Yes, that last study was not a typo, it WAS written in 1978.

Both the medical research community and food "manufacturers" have known MSG's side effects for decades!

Many more studies mentioned in John Erb's book link MSG to Diabetes, Migraines and headaches, Autism, ADHD and even Alzheimer's.But what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see?

Even as you read this, George W. Bush and his corporate supporters are pushing a Bill through Congress, and it's called the:

"Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act" also known as the "Cheeseburger Bill". This sweeping law bans anyone from suing food manufacturers, sellers and distributors. Even if it comes out that they purposely added an addictive chemical to their foods.

Read about it for yourself at: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8458081 .htm

Last month the House of Representatives passed the "Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act" to protect the food and beverage industry from civil lawsuits. Under the measure, known as the "Cheeseburger Bill,"people who buy food or drinks couldn't sue the companies that made them, the stores that sold them or the restaurants that served them if they got fat from the products, so long as the products met existing laws. The Senate is expected to take up a similar bill later this year."

The Bill has already been rushed through the House of Representatives, and is due for the same rubber stamp at Senate level. It is important that Bush and his corporate supporters get it through before the media lets everyone know about MSG, the intentional Nicotine for food.

Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of the highest government health officials in Canada. While sitting in the Government office, the official told him "Sure I know how bad MSG is, I wouldn't touch the stuff!" But this top-level government official refused to tell the public what he knew.

The big media doesn't want to tell the public either, fearing legal issues with their advertisers. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry may hurt their profit margin.

So what do we do?

The food producers and restaurants have been addicting us to their products for years, and now we are paying the price for it.

Our children should not be cursed with obesity caused by an addictive food additive.

But what can I do about it?

I'm just one voice, what can I do to stop the poisoning of our children, while guys like Bush are insuring financial protection for the industry that is poisoning us.

I for one am doing something about it. I am sending this email out to everyone I know in an attempt to show you the truth that the corporate owned politicians and media won't tell you.

The best way you can help save yourself and your children from this drug-induced epidemic, is to forward this email to everyone.

With any luck, it will circle the globe before governments can pass the Bill protecting those who poisoned us.

The food industry learned a lot from the tobacco industry.

Imagine if big tobacco had a bill like this in place before someone blew the whistle on Nicotine? Blow the whistle on MSG.

If you are one of the few who can still believe that MSG is good for us, and you don't believe what John Erb has to say, see for yourself. Go to the National Library of Medicine, at http://www.pubmed.com

Type in the words "MSG Obese", and read a few of the articles for yourself.

We do not want to be rats in one giant experiment, and we do not approve of food that makes us into a nation of obese, lethargic, addicted sheep, waiting for the slaughter.

Put an end to this, and stop the Slow Poisoning of America. Let's save our children.

John Erb

From Grist on-line magazine

Bush administration replaces