December 4, 2000
Subject: Miscellaneous Subjects #47: Anti-Xenotransplantation Coalition Files Lawsuit Against FDA + The 'Conspiracy of Light' versus "Creating monsters and selling fear" + Malaysia: Campaign against plantation and pulp mill project in Sabah + Malaysia: Where is Bruno Manser? + Weyerhaeuser's president promotes plantations in Guyana + Australia: Woodchipping old growth forests for "renewable energy" + Deforestation: The Global Assault Continues + Fragmenting Forests: The Loss of Large Frontier Forests + ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT, THIS SUCKS (attack on Luna, the 1,000-year-old redwood made famous by Julia "Butterfly" Hill) + MONSANTO: WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE HONEST ABOUT MISLEADING YOU + New documents shed more light on FBI's "Carnivore" + HEALTH WARNING
Hello everyone
You will find several personal notes below.
Have a good week!
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
First, as a follow up on the failed Climate Convention...
"Climate talks collapse, and Americans just don't see the problem"
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/maindish/mckibben112700.stm
In-depth coverage of Global Warming at
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World/Global_Warming/
AND HERE IS SOMETHING YOU PROBABLY NEVER HEARD BEFORE...
Anti-Xenotransplantation Coalition Files Lawsuit Against FDA
Claims Agency is Withholding Information on Clinical Trials, Hiding Dangers
Here is a quote:
"Biotechnology companies and government health officials are promoting
xenotransplantation as a panacea for the perceived human organ and tissue
shortage despite mounting concerns about safety. The FDA, which has
approved over a dozen clinical xenotransplant trials, has admitted that the
technology could facilitate the transmission of known or as yet unrecognized
animal viruses to patients and the general public. Indeed, last October,
baboon Cytomegalovirus was detected in stored blood and tissue samples
of a baboon liver recipient who died in 1992.
When viewed within the context of emerging infectious diseases like nvCJD
("mad cow disease"), AIDS (which some scientists believe originated in
chimpanzees), a growing catalogue of new pig viruses, and recent gene
therapy fiascos in which patients died and side-effects were covered up,
the U.S.'s enthusiasm for using genetically altered pigs as organ factories
is disturbing."
More details at http://www.crt-online.org
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000
From: Mirage <mirage@PObox.com>
Subject: Creating monsters and selling fear
I just received your last GMO update. Thank you. Here's a new piece I just
finished, written from the perspective of a citizen of the USA, an often
embarrassing and uncomfortable position to be in due to the actions of the
government of this country and the death-dealing agendas it supports. If you
think it appropriate you may publish it in a newsletter.
If our government supported the health and welfare of the population it
allegedly represents we would not need to fight a constant battle to have
healthy food and medical health choice; we would not need to continually write
letters urging nothing more than the wish that sanity and common sense prevail
in those and other matters, both national and international. But our
well-researched and carefully worded letters are ignored as the government
continues to enact and implement destructive and harmful policies.
But... the 'Conspiracy of Light' IS in full gear working its magic through many
concerned lightworkers!
Blessings of a gentle New Dawn,
Mirage
Creating monsters and selling fear
The EU's plan to form its own military force consisting of recruits from EU
member nations seems to reflect a rejection of US-dominated NATO. Russia has
made a bid to join this endeavor. As the EU forms its own army, NATO and its
armed forces will dwindle, ending US bully-boy diplomacy and agendas in the name
of EU 'shared' interests. The EU nations just may have a greater degree of
cohesiveness because of the US-led NATO debacle in Yugoslavia. If for no other
reason, population limitations and individual restraints will diminish NATO for
lack of personnel, along with UN and EU competition for troops.
Cohen, Albright, et al showed their true colors in Yugoslavia, leaving behind
economic and political chaos and an ecologically desolated landscape which
negatively impacts all Europe. Concerns of European nations necessarily include
the conditions of their neighbors, which geographically are in a position
to have a great effect upon them all. Most Europeans were horrified, not only
at the extreme methods that were employed, but also at the prospect of future
'interventions' at the hands of these high-tech slash and burn artists.
The 'might is right' paradigm of this current administration's foreign policy is
a failure and has managed to alienate potential European cohorts as well as
China and Russia. South American countries are also increasingly aware of
autonomy sapping, heavy-handed American intervention and will find allies in the
disillusioned nations of Europe.
If Russia succeeds in becoming a part of the new EU army, the balance of power
will have shifted considerably, and hopefully for the better where we will see
the old global NWO plans reduced to a memory.
Meanwhile, the resources of the US and its citizens are being diverted and
drained to create a tyrannical corporate global government that has no respect
for the wishes of it US citizens, dismissing their legimate concerns with false
assurances, denial, ridicule and intimidation; yet these are concerns that all
Americans share, regardless of partisan politics. And we are beginning to see
increased overt manifestation of this in the US much more so than the W.
European nations whose citizens are more accurately and fairly represented by
coalition government representation of diverse views, therefore more politically
empowered to oppose the inhumane and profit-driven agendas of attempts of
corporate dominance. Our two-party system is a joke, mere theater, offering no
representation for other than two barely differing canned NWO/corporate backed
platforms - based upon a false dividing lines between the two with mindless
'battles' promulgated and fomented by corporate media, diverting the attention
of gullible citizens from serious issues of common concern. Yet the
unaccountable corporate bureaucrats will continue to employ their strategies to
further their agendas for absolute power and control over this country, its
resources, its population.
Our federal leadership has failed to represent the will of the people, instead
favoring the objectives of the
military/industrial/chemical/pharmaceutical/media complex, creating chaos, if
necessary, to further the goals of faceless, unaccountable NWO bureaucrats who
lurk in the shadows behind their investments - those who do their bidding. And
while our national leaders create international chaos in their misrepresentation
of the nature and will of the populace of the United States of America, 'we the
people' have no formal allies, only enemies made by our leadership and their
manipulations for global control. 'We the people 'are the commodities for the
corporate nation. We are also the conscience of this nation. We are a nation
under siege from our own 'leadership'.
~ /\/\
NOTE FROM JEAN: Here is another excerpt from the WRM Bulletin # 40 about a MOST TERRIBLE situation. Yet another corporate giant (from China this time in association with a State-owned company from Malaysia) is clearcutting a pristine and precious rainforest in Borneo to reap more profits at the expense of dwingling planetary biodiversity (both on land and in the sea since cutting the trees will expose the soil to direct erosion by rainfall, sending tons of sediments downstream that will choke coastal mangrove vegetation, thus depleting marine resources). If you want to help, contact Friends of the Earth Malaysia at meenaco@pd.jaring.my
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000
From: Teresa Perez <teresap@wrm.org.uy>
Subject: WRM Bulletin # 40
WORLD RAINFOREST MOVEMENT
Web page: http://www.wrm.org.uy
To subscribe to the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin, simple send an email at Majordomo@chasque.apc.org with the following command in the body of your email message:
subscribe wrmfriends
- Malaysia: Campaign against plantation and pulp mill project in Sabah
A plantation project that would occupy about 3% of the area of Sabah, in
northern Borneo, and provoke the clearcutting of 6% of its dwindling
primary forests is being promoted in Kalabakan by a joint-venture between
the State-owned company Innoprise Corporation Sdn Bhd, Lions Group of
Malaysia and the China Fuxing Pulp and Paper Industries of China. The
plantation and pulp and paper mill megaproject, whose cost has been
evaluated in U$S 1.1 billion, will require the felling of 240,000 hectares
of forest to be replaced by a massive monoculture plantation of black
wattle trees (Acacia mangium) --also known as dry acacia or mangium tree--
a fast growing tree native to Australia.
The project has sparked criticism because of its expected impacts and for
not having even adhered to the weak legal environmental requirements
existing in Sabah. According to the Sabah Conservation of Environment
Prescribed Activities, any forest which is cleared for the felling of
timber covering an area of 500 hectares or more or any development of
forest plantation of 500 hectares or more requires an Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA). Nevertheless 12,000 hectares of the land of the proposed
project have already been logged without a single EIA done. Innoprise
Corporation has claimed that no EIA is required since the logging
operation was approved before the State EIA requirement was enforced, and
announced the logging of another 33,000 hectares. The company completely
ignores the Federal Government's Environment Quality Act of 1974 and the
Environmental Quality Order of 1987 which oblige to perform EIA for these
kind of activities. Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) --Friends of the Earth
Malaysia-- has denounced that by allowing the logging to proceed without
an EIA, the Sabah Government is completely disregarding the environmental
impacts of the logging activities and is manipulating the law in favour of
the interests of big companies and to the detriment of forest
conservation.
It is reasonably feared that this huge plantation will provoke deletereous
impacts on the environment. The plantation area will cut the biggest
remaining block of continuous forest in the region which extends between
the Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin, both classified as Class One
Protection Areas. The area contains high biodiversity levels, including
120 mammal, 280 bird, and more than 2500 tree species. This biodiversity
rich ecosystem is in danger of being substituted by a uniform and
biodiversity poor agrosystem. Already wild animals are reported to have
been sighted more often, probably fleeing from the logged area. Since the
land of the proposed project is mostly steep, felling for plantations will
expose the soil to direct erosion by rainfall. Sediments could reach the
coastal mangrove vegetation in Cowie Bay, depleting marine resources.
Consequences are already apparent: with only 12,000 hectares logged the
Danum Valley has been recently flooded. Local microclimate will also be
affected because often once the rainforest is replaced with a plantation
it will dry and heat up. Additionally, this could create negative
conditions for the plantation itself, which would become more prone to
fires.
The effects of pulping and bleaching are also threatening. The use of
chlorine in bleaching the pulp has caused the industry to be the third
largest source of dioxin and its related compounds in the world. This
problem is further compounded by the fact that Malaysia still has no
policy on dioxin damage prevention. Carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides and
chloroform are some of the polluting gases emitted by this industry.
Furthermore about 300 chemicals, among them organic pollutants,
chlorophenicols, acidic and organichlorine compounds have been identified
in pulp and paper mill effluents.
To stop further destruction, SAM has called the State Government of Sabah
and the Federal Government to halt all further logging activities, take
action against the parties that are responsible for logging the 12,000
hectares of forest without an EIA, undertake a comprehensive EIA of the
project, seek extensive and genuine feedback from the public in relation
to the reviewing of the EIA, review as a whole given the magnitude and
scale of its expected environmental impacts. Additionally an international
campaign has been launched to oppose this project. Those interested in
participating are invited to visit our new web site (www.wrm.org.uy) under
Action Alerts - October 2000.
Article based on information from: "International alert to save Sabah
Rainforests from Pulp and Paper project in Kalabakan" by Friends of the
Earth Malaysia - Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM), October 2000.
E-mail: meenaco@pd.jaring.my
NOTE FROM JEAN: ALSO IN THIS BULLETIN - WE WERE HOPING IN THE FOCUS GROUP TO HEAR FROM BRUNO MASER WHO WAS TO ASSIST US IN PROVIDING FIRST-HAND INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT IS GOIND ON IN SARAWAK - WE JUST FOUND ABOUT THE SAD NEWS OF HIS MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE:
- Malaysia: Where is Bruno Manser?
Since May 2000 Bruno Manser is missing. This human rights activist wanted
to visit his friends, the Penan forest nomads in Sarawak, who are
surrounded by logging companies, the army and the police. It seems he
never arrived. Search parties have had no luck. Now the Swiss Diplomatic
Corps has stepped in. Manser could have been arrested, had an accident or
could have been murdered. We sincerely hope that none of those situations
occured. In the meantime, we extend our wholehearted support to Bruno's
family and friends.
Further information on Bruno Manser's situation is available in the
"Information by country" section (Malaysia) in our web site at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy
Article based on information from: Ruedi Suter. "The Swiss Diplomatic
Corps have started an official search for the rain forest protector".
E-mail: info@bmf.ch For detailed information on the situation of the
indigenous peoples in Sarawak:
http://www.bmf.ch/action/chronologie_2000_en.html
HERE IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE AS TO WHY MONOCULTURE TREE-PLANTING OF A SINGLE FOREIGN SPECIES OF TREE - OFTEN TO PROVIDE RAW MATERIAL FOR DIOXIN-GENERATING POLLUTING PULP MILLS - IS SO ENVIRONMENTALLY DESTRUCTIVE. SUCH TREE-PLANTING SCHEMES IS PROBABLY WHAT THE AMERICANS HAD IN MIND IN THE HAGUE WHEN THEY WANTED TO HAVE SUCH CARBONE SINKS APPROVED - AS LOOPHOLES ENABLING THEM TO DO NOTHING TO ACTUALLY DECREASE THEIR POLLUTION! - TO COMPENSATE FOR INCREASE IN CO2 EMISSIONS IN THE U.S.
- Weyerhaeuser's president promotes plantations in Guyana
Dr Conor Wilson Boyd -- president of Weyerhaeuser Forestlands
International, a company owning a total of 28 million acres of forest in
North America and established in 32 countries -- made a presentation during
a meeting organized by the Iwokrama International Rainforest Centre for
Rainforest Conservation and Development last October in Georgetown.
Weyerhaeuser president's presentation was largely focused on the promotion
of plantations. However, if --as Dr Boyd said-- "the business perspective
of companies should take into consideration the social and environmental
impact on communities", then it should be clear that tree plantations
should not be promoted at an industrial scale, which is precisely what
companies such as Weyerhaeuser do.
Large scale monocultures --these are the plantations currently being
implemented by companies such as this throughout the world-- have already
proven to have deletereous effects on both people and environment, among
which deforestation. Plantations do not "ease the pressure on the
indigenous forests." On the contrary, they constitute the final step of a
process of forest degradation which ends by substituting the diverse local
forests with alien tree monocultures.
The above is not only an "environmental" issue: it is a social one. Forest
and forest-dependent peoples view plantations as an even worse disaster
than logging, because plantations expropriate their whole territories
permanently. This means that they are deprived of all the resources
provided by the forest, including food, medicines, fibres, firewood,
building material, etc.
Dr Boyd also said that tree plantations provide employment, and further
stated that they provide more jobs than intensive agriculture projects.
This is in fact totally untrue. Plantations provide very few, seasonal and
low quality jobs and even those only during the plantation phase. Once the
trees are planted, employment drops dramatically until harvest. But even
at harvest, the current technology in use implies that only few workers
are needed to operate the modern harvesting machines.
The real problem that Weyerhaeuser is now facing --the same as other
logging companies-- is that they have depleted the world's forest
resources through unsustainable forest mining practices and they now
quickly need vast amounts of cheap raw material to continue in business.
In line with that, what they are now doing is moving South to find cheap
land, cheap labour, low environmental standards and fast tree growth in
order to ensure their own --not "the world's"-- provision of wood to
continue promoting unsustainable levels of consumption in the North. The
same discourse as the one presented in Guyana is being deployed by company
executives throughout the South. In the meantime, local people and the
environment continue suffering from the impacts of the "sustainable"
plantations that those companies promote for their own benefit.
Article based on information from: Andrew Richards, "Plantations seen as
vital to forest sustainability", Stabroek News, 26/10/00
AND HERE IS FINALLY AN EXAMPLE OF GOVERNMENT DOUBLE-TALK WITH REGARD TO GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION - TAKEN ALSO FROM WRM BULLETIN #40
OCEANIA
- Australia: Woodchipping old growth forests for "renewable energy"
In 1997 the Australian federal government issued a regulation for
Tasmanian forests, abolishing export woodchip quotas. Consequently North
Limited --the biggest woodchip exporter in the country-- announced plans
to raise woodchip production from Tasmanian native forests, that currently
reaches around 3,4 million tonnes annually. Tasmanian environmental NGOs
expressed their concern that this measure would open the gate for the
destruction of old-growth eucalyptus forests in the island, which
constitute part of the Australian National Heritage (see WRM Bulletin 7).
A new threat is now pending on Australian already scarce primary forests:
a government proposal included in the Renewable Energy Bill, which
promotes electricity generation by chipping old growth forests
--considered a "renewable energy source"-- with the aim of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions.
The amendments proposed by other parties represented in Parliament to use
other sources of renewable energy --such as solar and wind-- instead of
native forests were rejected by representatives of the government and the
main opposition party. The Australian Greens severely criticised the
initiative, and accused both parties to be in the hands of woodchip
companies and Senator Brown stated that the initiative was the result of
pressures from the woodchip companies, which needed new outlets as they
were facing stiff competition from South American plantations for the
Japanese paper market. This shows how perverse the pulp and paper global
market is: huge pulpwood plantations in South America result in extensive
environmental and social impacts in that region, while at the same time
they become the indirect cause for the destruction of native forests in
Australia. And all this to feed the voracious Japanese paper industry.
Given the relatively small area occupied by forests in Australia such
initiative appears to have no reasonable justification. Additionally, it
is contradictory with Australia's position in the recently celebrated COP6
at The Hague, where its delegates expressed their stong support for the
inclusion of forests in the so-called Clean Development Mechanism to
mitigate global warming. It doesn't seem to make sense to us, but it
certainly does for the chipping companies, that will greatly profit from
this "green" bill.
Article based on information from: Worldwide Forest/Biodiversity Campaign
News, "Australia Promotes Native Old-Growth Woodchipping as Renewable
Energy", 8/10/2000; e-mail: grbarry@students.wisc.edu
NOTE FROM JEAN: We have been planning for some time now in the Focus Group to propose a Meditation Focus focalizing on how to halt the global destruction of the Earth's remaining rainforests. Here is a sobering assessment of deforestation around the world.
From: http://www.igc.org/wri/trends/deforest.html
Deforestation: The Global Assault Continues
Although public awareness of the impact of global deforestation has increased in recent years, it has not slowed the rate of deforestation appreciably. A comprehensive assessment of the state of the world's forests, recently released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), indicates that total forested area continues to decline significantly. According to the FAO analysis, deforestation was concentrated in the developing world, which lost nearly 200 million hectares between 1980 and 1995. This loss was partially offset by reforestation efforts, new forest plantations, and the gradual regrowth and expansion of forested area in developed countries. The result was a net loss of some 180 million hectares between 1980 and 1995, or an average annual loss of 12 million hectares [1].
According to FAO, the rate of deforestation dropped slightly during its last survey period. Between 1990 and 1995, annual forest loss in developing countries was estimated at 13.7 million hectares. This rate compares with a rate of 15.5 million hectares annually between 1980 and 1990 [2]. (See Forest Loss is Severe in the Tropics.) This small decline is largely due to reported decreases in the deforestation rate in the Amazon in the early 1990s. Even this small decline is disputed by some forest experts, who regard FAO's calculations for 1990 to 1995 as underestimates [3]. Deforestation rates have actually increased. In addition, evidence from other sources suggests that deforestation rates in some important regions have increased since the assessment.
In the Brazilian Amazon, for example, the annual deforestation rate declined from a peak of more than 20,000 square kilometers in 1988 to just over 11,000 square kilometers in 1991. However, newly released data from the Brazilian Government show that it rebounded to more than 29,000 square kilometers in 1995 before declining to 18,100 square kilometers in 1996 [4]. (See Amazon Deforestation Rate Remains High.) Official estimates of Amazon deforestation in 1997 are not available yet, but there are indications that the deforestation rate may have risen again. Satellite data for the Amazon region show a 50-percent increase from 1996 to 1997 in the number of forest fires set by farmers to clear land for cultivation or pasture. Many of the fires are set to clear old cattle pastures or secondary forest areas, but about one third of the fires are set to clear virgin forest and thus represent one of the principal means of deforestation in the region [5].
Fire-related deforestation also rose sharply in Indonesia in 1997, as severe drought conditions helped spread fires set by plantation workers and farmers into forest areas. Preliminary estimates of the forest area destroyed run from 150,000 to 300,000 hectares [6]. Although most of the burning took place in secondary forests rather than virgin rainforest, the impact has nonetheless been high, destroying habitat for a variety of wildlife species from orangutans to tigers. The fires may increase pressure on adjacent virgin forests by increasing access to formerly remote sites [7].
The FAO analysis concludes that the leading causes of deforestation are the extension of subsistence farming (more common in Africa and Asia), and government-backed conversion of forests to other land uses such as large-scale ranching (most common in Latin America and also Asia). Poverty, joblessness, and inequitable land distribution, which force many landless peasants to invade the forest for lack of other economic means, continue to drive forest clearance for subsistence farming in many regions. Often, people move into forest areas as logging activity creates roads that open formerly inaccessible regions. As for centrally planned forest conversion schemes, these are often used to spur short-term economic development, gain better political control of remote forest regions, and expand agricultural output [8].
The state of the world's forests is not simply a matter of their extent. Increasing attention is focused upon the health, genetic diversity, and age profile of forests, collectively known as forest quality. Measures of total forest area do not reveal the degraded nature of much regrowth forest. For example, in FAO's forest assessment, logging is not counted as deforestation, since logged-over areas can, in theory, regrow to fully functioning forests. But logging often does degrade forest quality, inducing soil and nutrient losses and reducing the forest's value as habitat. Logging pressures in many of the remaining large, virgin rainforest areas continue to increase, with logging activities shifting from the largely deforested areas of Southeast Asia to the rainforests of the Amazon region, Papua New Guinea, and the Congo Basin.
Nor do deforestation numbers reflect the reduced ecological and aesthetic values of plantations that sometimes replace natural forests. Between 1980 and 1995, forest plantations in the developed countries increased from approximately 45 million to 60 million hectares to about 80 million to 100 million hectares [9]. In the developing world, the area in forest plantations doubled from about 40 million to about 81 million hectares over the same period. More than 80 percent of plantations in the developing world are found in Asia, where demand for wood-based panels and paper continues to boom.
Forest quality in the developed countries is also of concern. FAO reports that forest cover in Europe (excluding the former Soviet Union) increased by more than 4 percent between 1980 and 1994 [10], but forest conditions worsened. Trees are being damaged by fire, drought, pests, and air pollution. More than 25 percent of trees assessed in a 1995 survey of forest conditions in Europe were suffering significant defoliation. Annual European survey results show the number of completely healthy trees falling from 69 percent in 1988 to 39 percent in 1995 [11].
Overall, the convergence of population growth, rising demand for lumber and fuelwood, and the conversion of forests to agriculture (particularly in Africa) are expected to put increasing pressure on the world's forests in the next few decades. The result will likely be a considerable loss in forest area and quality, with the remaining forest fragmented into smaller isolated tracts [12]. (See Fragmenting Forests: The Loss of Large Frontier Forests.)
Continued forest loss and degradation will have serious implications at local, regional, and global levels. Exploitation and clearance of natural forests are destroying the environment and way of life for tens of thousands of indigenous people. Disappearing forest cover also represents incalculable losses in biological diversity and ecological services, including nutrient recycling, watershed management, and climate regulation.
From: http://www.igc.org/wri/trends/fragment.html
Fragmenting Forests: The Loss of Large Frontier Forests
Over the past 8,000 years, nearly one half of the forests that once covered the Earth have been converted to farms, pastures, and other uses. But the human impact on forests did not stop there. Most of the forests that are left have been heavily altered by humans, often rendered into a patchwork of smaller forested areas. According to a 1997 World Resources Institute (WRI) assessment, (see at http://www.igc.org/wri/ffi/lff-eng/), just one fifth of the Earth's original forest remains in large, relatively natural ecosystems -- what are known as frontier forests
[see at http://www.igc.org/wri/trends/004-nts.html#fragment01].
See also "Many of Earth's Forests Have Been Cleared or Degraded" at http://www.igc.org/wri/powerpoints/trends/sld042.htm
DAILY GRIST
28 Nov 2000
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE
http://www.gristmagazine.com
1.
ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT, THIS SUCKS
Someone recently used a chainsaw to slice into Luna, the
1,000-year-old redwood made famous by Julia "Butterfly" Hill. Hill
lived in the tree in Northern California for two years to protest
old-growth logging, and only came down from her perch last December
after striking a deal with Pacific Lumber Co. to spare the tree and a
buffer zone of redwoods around it. Over the Thanksgiving weekend,
environmentalists visiting the tree found that a chainsaw had cut
about one-quarter of the way through the trunk. The tree is still
standing, but it is now more vulnerable to windstorms. "I feel this
vicious attack on Luna as surely as if the chainsaw was going through
me," Hill said. Authorities are investigating the vandalism.
Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, 28 Nov 2000
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20001128/t000114152.html
San Francisco Chronicle, Glen Martin, 28 Nov 2000
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/11/28/MN117539.DTL
Pictures of the damaged tree: Earth Films
http://www.earthfilms.org/luna.html
2.
MONSANTO: WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE HONEST ABOUT MISLEADING YOU
Monsanto announced yesterday that it will restrict sales next year of
one variety of genetically modified corn and delay until 2002 the
introduction of another in order to avoid disrupting U.S. grain
exports. American corns sales to Japan and other countries have
fallen markedly this fall after the StarLink biotech corn variety,
which was not approved for human consumption, was found to have made
its way into the food stream. Monsanto also pledged yesterday to be
more open about its biotechnology endeavors and to engage in dialogue
with its critics. "We missed the fact that this technology raises
major issues for people -- issues of ethics, of choice, of trust,
even of democracy and globalization," said Monsanto President Hendrik
Verfaillie. But biotech critic Jeremy Rifkin said the company was
still missing the point. "They've got it all wrong if they think the
issue was arrogance or transparency," Rifkin said. "Genetic
engineering creates some serious potential environmental and health
problems."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bill Lambrecht, 28 Nov 2000
http://www.postnet.com/postnet/stories.nsf/ByDocID/205E1E855191E5BE862569A5003AC3E6
New York Times, 28 Nov 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/28/business/28FOOD.html?pagewanted=2
A StarLink Thanksgiving? -- a cartoon by Suzy Becker
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/ha/ha111700.stmdo good: Take action against genetically modified foods
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/food.stm
To subscribe to DAILY GRIST, send a blank email message to daily-grist-subscribe@egroups.com
From: http://indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=10211
New documents shed more light on FBI's "Carnivore"
(Fri Nov 17, 2000)
The FBI released additional documents about its controversial Carnivore technology Thursday, and critics immediately lambasted it as proof that the email-tapping program is more powerful and invasive than the government has disclosed.
CLIP
"The little information that has become public raises serious questions about the privacy implications of this technology," EPIC general counsel David Sobel said in a statement. "The American public cannot be expected to accept an Internet snooping system that is veiled in secrecy." Among the information included in the documents was a sentence stating that the PC that is used to sift through email "could reliably capture and archive all unfiltered traffic to the internal hard drive." The FBI document was dated June 5 and contained scores of deleted words and phrases.
CLIP
HEALTH WARNING
BBC REPORTS A NEW VIRUS HAS BEEN DISCOVERED RECENTLY. ONE PERSON CAN PASS IT ON TO MILLIONS, WITHOUT KNOWING. IT IS VERY CONTAGIOUS.
THE CENTRE FOR DISEASE CONTROL HAS REPORTED THIS WEEK THAT THE VIRUS SPREADS VERY RAPIDLY.
THE VERY INTERESTING NAME FOR THIS VIRUS IS .........
A SMILE
- -
o o
-
\__/
OH ! TOO LATE !
I SEE IT ON YOUR FACE ALREADY !
YOU'VE GOT THE VIRUS !
AAAARGH!
With that, the history of a thousand years came to a close, and everything was different from then on....
Oh no! Spray it, quick!
