April 13, 2001

Miscellaneous Subjects #73: 1. Skeletons in Cheney's closet + 2. Flood Bush with e-Protests: Don't destroy the Climate Treaty! + 3. Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest: 'They Die Piece by Piece' In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle Is Often a Battle Lost + 4. WHERE'S THE BEEF REPORT? + 5. THE UNWORKABLE TRINITY: TRUTH, MARKET FORCES AND THE MEDIA


Hello everyone

With every passing day, we can see ever more clearly the real face and agenda of the new U.S. administration. Since most of the day-to-day decisions are actually made by Vice President Cheney, according to the whims of the corporate interests he represents and serves, it would seem important to better know who Cheney actually is. Anyone who may still harbor illusions about the direction taken by the most powerful and most environmentally-damaging country on Earth should read "Skeletons in Cheney's closet" below. And thus participating in the Friends of the Earth "SAVE THE CLIMATE TREATY" campaign would seem like a good idea - for a starter!

Also if you are still comfortable about eating beef, I doubt you will be able to swallow easily the revelations below about the most horrific and inhumane treatment of those gentle animals in U.S. slaughterhouses - which is only the tip of the iceberg of the massive abuse of most farm animals on Earth raised in factory-farm conditions. And then did you know madam that beef meat is laced with carcinogenic dioxin, not to mention antibiotics, growth hormones and all kinds of other chemicals that inevitably end up into your bloodstream and accumulate into your fatty tissues? (See " WHERE'S THE BEEF REPORT?") And do I need to remind you about the hidden Mad Cow epidemics in America?

Fortunately, thanks to some courageous investigative journalists, more and more mainstream media are reporting about all these terrible things now surfacing to the light to be seen for what they are and eventually corrected. Yet all too often, "media debate is restricted within tightly constrained parameters that serve capital, but not democracy." -- see THE UNWORKABLE TRINITY

Fortunately also, sleeping humanity is slowly waking up and change is under way...

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000




1.

From: "Biannca Pace" <whitepeace@crystalgallery.com.au>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001

Dear Jean,

As always your reports are more than interesting. I find it inspiring to know that so many people of like mind exist and offer this information on Dick Cheney which appeared in an Australian Magazine.

SKELETONS IN CHENEY'S CLOSET:

"When Cheney accepted the Vice-Presidential nomination in August 2000, he said he would offer Americans "a stiff dose of truth". Not necessarily what one would expect from his past pattern of bobbing, weaving and dissembling. During the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the 1991 Gulf War, as Secretary of Defense Cheney ran the Pentagon with an iron fist, including unprecedented restrictions on the press. Ironically, one of the ink-stained wretches who felt Cheney's wrath was Time photojournalist Warren Bocxe. The ungrateful scribe was blindfolded and detained for 30 hours (by fellow Americans, not Iraqis) for allegedly violating Defense Department press restrictions. Working with sidekick General Colin Powell (now Bush's Secretary of State) Cheney exaggerated the accuracy of US missile strikes, covered up mistakes and in the words of one ABC TV producer "duped" the media. David Hackworth, an ex-Army Colonel who covered the war for Newsweek was blunt: "The American people did not get the truth."

Cheney's behaviour as Defense Secretary was tyrannical, so it's no surprise that his voting record in Congress was consistently hard-line. Domestically, he voted against affirmative action; against the "Head-Start" program for impoverished children; against the Clean Water Act and against sanctions on air polluters. However, he was not always Mr. No-no; he did vote in favour of easier access to handguns.

Cheney's shameful record continued in foreign-policy voting (the area of "expertise" on which Bush will supposedly draw). He voted (not just once but ten times) against economic sanctions on apartheid-era South Africa. And he was one of only two US Congress members who voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. Asked to justify his egregious voting record, Cheney adroitly side-stepped the issue. " The American people want to hear about the future, not the past," he quipped. Perhaps worse is Cheney's slimy business career. During five years as head of the Dallas-based oil-services company, Halliburton, the firm openly courted regimes that flagrantly violated human rights - including Iran, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Libya, Nigeria and even the current US bete noir, Iraq.

The most extreme case of "constructive engagement" (the euphemism US business uses to justify profiting from unrepentant, despotic regimes) was Halliburton's dealings with Burma. Washington cut diplomatic ties with Burma a decade ago and most American corporations have since pulled up sticks and left. Not Halliburton. Cheney was not about to let little things like a vicious dictatorship and massive human-rights violations stand in the way of a profitable business venture. He helped broker a deal for a major pipeline project in Burma even though, in the opinion of one US federal judge, Halliburton already knew the project was benefitting from forced labour and "numerous acts of violence" by the Burmese military. According to the Texas Observer, the Gulf War helped Cheney launch "one of the largest privatization efforts in the history of the Pentagon, steering huge military contracts to private contractors". At Halliburton he cashed in on the same contracts he set in motion. When Cheney started with the company it was doing less than $300 million in business with the Defense Department. By the end of 1999 the amount had grown to $650 million, a classic case of what some critics call "revolving-door politics".

But that's all behind Dick Cheney now - at least for another four years. Not that he'll run out of pocket money in the meantime. During his career with Halliburton Cheney "earned" $12.5 million in salary and bonuses, received stock options worth another $39 million and got a $20 million "golden handshake" when he left. Hey, Big Oil knows that it pays to have friends at the top.

Alan Bisbort

Sources: Wall Street Journal, 27 Oct 2000;
American Journalism Review, Oct 2000;
New York Times, various issues;
http://www.earthrights.org;
The Texas Observer, 6 Oct 2000.




2.

From: "Leti Guerra" <letiguerra@hotmail.com>

Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2001
From: Friends of the Earth <thankyou@foeeurope.org>
Subject: THANK YOU!

FLOOD BUSH e-PROTEST

Thanks for your support! 10,000s of e-protests to FLOOD BUSH cannot be ignored !

It's a huge success - the message is loud and clear: George W. Bush: Don't destroy the Climate Treaty!

At peak times a new protest e-mail arrives every second at the White House. More than 10,000 messages have been sent every day since the start of the action! Messages from Patagonia to Pakistan, from Texas to Tasmania and from China to Costa Rica. People from every continent and all backgrounds are joining in, including representatives of business, governments, parliaments, churches and NGOs - many adding their personal messages. 200 representatives of the European Commission are among the protesters just as much as employees of BP and Shell, using their office computers. More than 2,500 US citizens even sent a protest fax to George Bush.

By Sunday evening (April 8) over 70,000 e-mails had been sent to the White House! Newspapers in many countries wrote about this action.

Several people told us that they were not able to reach the White House. The White House server was apparently unable to deal with the high number of e-protests and therefore was unavailable several times.

THE E-PROTEST IS CONTINUING AND WE NEED YOUR HELP! Please circulate the e-protest as widely as possible by sending the message below to everyone you know (cut and paste into new E-mail)!

If you are interested in further activities of Friends of the Earth on Climate Change, including a mass-demonstration during the UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, July 21st, go to: http://www.foeeurope.org/climate

Please send comments to: protest-comment@foeeurope.org

The Climate Team @ Friends of the Earth Europe

Please note: Your e-address will not be used for anything else than to inform you about this campaign and will not be given to anybody else.

---

For more on the politics of climate change:
http://www.foeeurope.org/climate/climpolitic.htm

For more on the science of climate change:
http://www.foeeurope.org/climate/climscience.htm

---

SAVE THE CLIMATE TREATY !

FLOOD GEORGE BUSH WITH YOUR E-MAILS!

Stop President Bush from betraying the UN climate change treaty!

Last year the US blocked progress at negotiations in The Netherlands, now Texas oil-man President George W. Bush wants to destroy the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Friends of the Earth asks people around the world to electronically flood the White House with protest E-mails.

Let's give President Bush a taste of what climate change means and how much people are concerned about it.

---

Please cut and paste the message below into a new E-mail and send it to: PRESIDENT BUSH: president@whitehouse.gov Please copy (CC) to: protest@foeeurope.org (IMPORTANT!) You can also send the letter via: http://www.foeeurope.org/climate

---

Dear President Bush,

I call on you as President of the USA not to betray the Kyoto Protocol.

The United States must live up to its commitment to the UN negotiations to prevent global warming. Sabotaging the Kyoto Protocol puts the USA into a position of environmental isolationism and makes it responsible for climate catastrophe.

The US has one of the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world. People around the world already faced with the first signs of climate change, suffering from floods and hurricanes, expect your country to be in the forefront of tackling climate change.

An enormous potential of creativity, innovation and efficiency is there to be harvested once we have decided to really reduce CO2 emissions. If you fail to reverse your decision to kill the Kyoto Protocol, future generations will not forgive you.

President Bush, the science is clear and the international political will is there to tackle climate change. The US must join the world in fighting global warming!

Sincerely,

**(YOUR NAME)**

---

Background:

- A White House spokesman said: "The president has been unequivocal. He does not support the Kyoto treaty." The Swedish Environment Minister described the move as "appalling and provocative".

- Bush's campaign for presidency was backed and financed by major US oil giants, which campaigned against the international treaty to prevent global warming.

- The US promised to cut their climate changing gases by 7% over 1990 levels before 2012 at the latest, but US emissions in fact rose by more than 10% between 1990 and 2000.




3.

Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001
From: Mark Graffis <an403@detroit.freenet.org>
Subject: Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest

From: http://www.washingtonpost.com

'They Die Piece by Piece' In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle Is Often a Battle Lost

By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 10, 2001; Page A01

Second of two articles

PASCO, Wash.--It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was "second-legger," a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour.

The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren't.

"They blink. They make noises," he said softly. "The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around."

Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. "They die," said Moreno, "piece by piece."

Under a 23-year-old federal law, slaughtered cattle and hogs first must be "stunned" -- rendered insensible to pain -- with a blow to the head or an electric shock. But at overtaxed plants, the law is sometimes broken, with cruel consequences for animals as well as workers. Enforcement records, interviews, videos and worker affidavits describe repeated violations of the Humane Slaughter Act at dozens of slaughterhouses, ranging from the smallest, custom butcheries to modern, automated establishments such as the sprawling IBP Inc. plant here where Moreno works.

"In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis," said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant. "I've seen it happen. And I've talked to other veterinarians. They feel it's out of control."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the treatment of animals in meat plants, but enforcement of the law varies dramatically. While a few plants have been forced to halt production for a few hours because of alleged animal cruelty, such sanctions are rare.

For example, the government took no action against a Texas beef company that was cited 22 times in 1998 for violations that included chopping hooves off live cattle. In another case, agency supervisorsfailed to take action on multiple complaints of animal cruelty at a Florida beef plant and fired an animal health technician for reporting the problems to the Humane Society. The dismissal letter sent to the technician, Tim Walker, said his dislosure had "irreparably damaged" the agency's relations with the packing plant.

"I complained to everyone -- I said, 'Lookit, they're skinning live cows in there,' " Walker said. "Always it was the same answer: 'We know it's true. But there's nothing we can do about it.' "

In the past three years, a new meat inspection systemthat shifted responsibility to industry has made it harder to catch and report cruelty problems, some federal inspectors say. Under the new system, implemented in 1998, the agency no longer tracks the number of humane-slaughter violations its inspectors find each year.

Some inspectors are so frustrated they're asking outsiders for help: The inspectors' union last spring urged Washington state authorities to crack down on alleged animal abuse at the IBP plant in Pasco. In a statement, IBP said problems described by workers in its Washington state plant "do not accurately represent the way we operate our plants. We take the issue of proper livestock handling very seriously."

But the union complained that new government policies and faster production speeds at the plant had "significantly hampered our ability to ensure compliance." Several animal welfare groups joined in the petition.

"Privatization of meat inspection has meant a quiet death to the already meager enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act," said Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association, a group that advocates better treatment of farm animals. "USDA isn't simply relinquishing its humane-slaughter oversight to the meat industry, but is -- without the knowledge and consent of Congress -- abandoning this function altogether."

The USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service, which is responsible for meat inspection, says it has not relaxed its oversight. In January, the agency ordered a review of 100 slaughterhouses. An FSIS memo reminded its 7,600 inspectors they had an "obligation to ensure compliance" with humane-handling laws.

The review comes as pressure grows on both industry and regulators to improve conditions for the 155 million cattle, hogs, horses and sheep slaughtered each year. McDonald's and Burger King have been subject to boycotts by animal rights groups protesting mistreatment of livestock.

As a result, two years ago McDonald's began requiring suppliers to abide by the American Meat Institute's Good Management Practices for Animal Handling and Stunning. The company also began conducting annual audits of meat plants. Last week, Burger King announced it would require suppliers to follow the meat institute's standards.

"Burger King Corp. takes the issues of food safety and animal welfare very seriously, and we expect our suppliers to comply," the company said in a statement.

Industry groups acknowledge that sloppy killing has tangible consequences for consumers as well as company profits. Fear and pain cause animals to produce hormones that damage meat and cost companies tens of millions of dollars a year in discarded product, according to industry estimates.

Industry officials say they also recognize an ethical imperative to treat animals with compassion. Science is blurring the distinction between the mental processes of humans and lower animals -- discovering, for example, that even the lowly rat may dream. Americans thus are becoming more sensitive to the suffering of food animals, even as they consume increasing numbers of them.

"Handling animals humanely," said American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle, "is just the right thing to do."

Clearly, not all plants have gotten the message.

A Post computer analysis of government enforcement records found 527 violations of humane-handling regulations from 1996 to 1997, the last years for which complete records were available. The offenses range from overcrowded stockyards to incidents in which live animals were cut, skinned or scalded.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Post obtained enforcement documents from 28 plants that had high numbers of offenses or had drawn penalties for violating humane-handling laws. The Post also interviewed dozens of current and former federal meat inspectors and slaughterhouse workers. A reporter reviewed affidavits and secret video recordings made inside two plants.

Among the findings:

One Texas plant, Supreme Beef Packers in Ladonia, had 22 violations in six months. During one inspection, federal officials found nine live cattle dangling from an overhead chain. But managers at the plant, which announced last fall it was ceasing operations, resisted USDA warnings, saying its practices were no different than others in the industry. "Other plants are not subject to such extensive scrutiny of their stunning activities," the plant complained in a 1997 letter to the USDA.

Government inspectors halted production for a day at the Calhoun Packing Co. beef plant in Palestine, Tex., after inspectors saw cattle being improperly stunned. "They were still conscious and had good reflexes," B.V. Swamy, a veterinarian and senior USDA official at the plant, wrote. The shift supervisor "allowed the cattle to be hung anyway." IBP, which owned the plant at the time, contested the findings but "took steps to resolve the situation," including installing video equipment and increasing training, a spokesman said. IBP has since sold the plant.

At the Farmers Livestock Cooperative processing plant in Hawaii, inspectors documented 14 humane-slaughter violations in as many months. Records from 1997 and 1998 describe hogs that were walking and squealing after being stunned as many as four times. In a memo to USDA, the company said it fired the stunner and increased monitoring of the slaughter process.

At an Excel Corp. beef plant in Fort Morgan, Colo., production was halted for a day in 1998 after workers allegedly cut off the leg of a live cow whose limbs had become wedged in a piece of machinery. In imposing the sanction, U.S. inspectors cited a string of violations in the previous two years, including the cutting and skinning of live cattle. The company, responding to one such charge, contended that it was normal for animals to blink and arch their backs after being stunned, and such "muscular reaction" can occur up to six hours after death. "None of these reactions indicate the animal is still alive," the company wrote to USDA.

Hogs, unlike cattle, are dunked in tanks of hot water after they are stunned to soften the hides for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered into the water.

USDA documents and interviews with inspectors and plant workers attributed many of the problems to poor training, faulty or poorly maintained equipment or excessive production speeds. Those problems were identified five years ago in an industry-wide audit by Temple Grandin, an assistant professor with Colorado State University's animal sciences department and one of the nation's leading experts on slaughter practices.

In the early 1990s, Grandin developed the first objective standards for treatment of animals in slaughterhouses, which were adopted by the American Meat Institute, the industry's largest trade group. Her initial, USDA-funded survey in 1996 was one of the first attempts to grade slaughter plants.

One finding was a high failure rate among beef plants that use stunning devices known as "captive-bolt" guns. Of the plants surveyed, only 36 percent earned a rating of "acceptable" or better, meaning cattle were knocked unconscious with a single blow at least 95 percent of the time.

Grandin now conducts annual surveys as a consultant for the American Meat Institute and McDonald's Corp. She maintains that the past four years have brought dramatic improvements -- mostly because of pressure from McDonald's, which sends a team of meat industry auditors into dozens of plants each year to observe slaughter practices.

Based on the data collected by McDonald's auditors, the portion of beef plants scoring "acceptable" or better climbed to 90 percent in 1999. Some workers and inspectors are skeptical of the McDonald's numbers, and Grandin said the industry's performance dropped slightly last year after auditors stopped giving notice of some inspections.

Grandin said high production speeds can trigger problems when people and equipment are pushed beyond their capacity. From a typical kill rate of 50 cattle an hour in the early 1900s, production speeds rose dramatically in the 1980s. They now approach 400 per hour in the newest plants.

"It's like the 'I Love Lucy' episode in the chocolate factory," she said. "You can speed up a job and speed up a job, and after a while you get to a point where performance doesn't simply decline -- it crashes."

When that happens, it's not only animals that suffer. Industry trade groups acknowledge that improperly stunned animals contribute to worker injuries in an industry that already has the nation's highest rate of job-related injuries and illnesses -- about 27 percent a year. At some plants, "dead" animals have inflicted so many broken limbs and teeth that workers wear chest pads and hockey masks.

"The live cows cause a lot of injuries," said Martin Fuentes, an IBP worker whose arm was kicked and shattered by a dying cow. "The line is never stopped simply because an animal is alive."

A 'Brutal' Harvest

At IBP's Pasco complex, the making of the American hamburger starts in a noisy, blood-spattered chamber shielded from view by a stainless steel wall. Here, live cattle emerge from a narrow chute to be dispatched in a process known as "knocking" or "stunning." On most days the chamber is manned by a pair of Mexican immigrants who speak little English and earn about $9 an hour for killing up to 2,050 head per shift.

The tool of choice is the captive-bolt gun, which fires a retractable metal rod into the steer's forehead. An effective stunning requires a precision shot, which workers must deliver hundreds of times daily to balky, frightened animals that frequently weigh 1,000 pounds or more. Within 12 seconds of entering the chamber, the fallen steer is shackled to a moving chain to be bled and butchered by other workers in a fast-moving production line.

The hitch, IBP workers say, is that some "stunned" cattle wake up.

"If you put a knife into the cow, it's going to make a noise: It says, 'Moo!' " said Moreno, the former second-legger, who began working in the stockyard last year. "They move the head and the eyes and the leg like the cow wants to walk."

After a blow to the head, an unconscious animal may kick or twitch by reflex. But a videotape, made secretly by IBP workers and reviewed by veterinarians for The Post, depicts cattle that clearly are alive and conscious after being stunned.

Some cattle, dangling by a leg from the plant's overhead chain, twist and arch their backs as though trying to right themselves. Close-ups show blinking reflexes, an unmistakable sign of a conscious brain, according to guidelines approved by the American Meat Institute.

The video, parts of which were aired by Seattle television station KING last spring, shows injured cattle being trampled. In one graphic scene, workers give a steer electric shocks by jamming a battery-powered prod into its mouth.

More than 20 workers signed affidavits alleging that the violations shown on tape are commonplace and that supervisors are aware of them. The sworn statements and videos were prepared with help from the Humane Farming Association. Some workers had taken part in a 1999 strike over what they said were excessive plant production speeds.

"I've seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive," IBP veteran Fuentes, the worker who was injured while working on live cattle, said in an affidavit. "The cows can get seven minutes down the line and still be alive. I've been in the side-puller where they're still alive. All the hide is stripped out down the neck there."

IBP, the nation's top beef processor, denounced as an "appalling aberration" the problems captured on the tape. It suggested the events may have been staged by "activists trying to raise money and promote their agenda. . . .

"Like many other people, we were very upset over the hidden camera video," the company said. "We do not in any way condone some of the livestock handling that was shown."

After the video surfaced, IBP increased worker training and installed cameras in the slaughter area. The company also questioned workers and offered a reward for information leading to identification of those responsible for the video. One worker said IBP pressured him to sign a statement denying that he had seen live cattle on the line.

"I knew that what I wrote wasn't true," said the worker, who did not want to be identified for fear of losing his job. "Cows still go alive every day. When cows go alive, it's because they don't give me time to kill them."

Independent assessments of the workers' claims have been inconclusive. Washington state officials launched a probe in May that included an unannounced plant inspection. The investigators say they were detained outside the facility for an hour while their identities were checked. They saw no acts of animal cruelty once permitted inside.

Grandin, the Colorado State professor, also inspected IBP's plant, at the company's request; that inspection was announced. Although she observed no live cattle being butchered, she concluded that the plant's older-style equipment was "overloaded." Grandin reviewed parts of the workers' videotape and said there was no mistaking what she saw.

"There were fully alive beef on that rail," Grandin said.

Inconsistent Enforcement

Preventing this kind of suffering is officially a top priority for the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service. By law, a humane-slaughter violation is among a handful of offenses that can result in an immediate halt in production -- and cost a meatpacker hundreds or even thousands of dollars per idle minute.

In reality, many inspectors describe humane slaughter as a blind spot: Inspectors' regular duties rarely take them to the chambers where stunning occurs. Inconsistencies in enforcement, training and record-keeping hamper the agency's ability to identify problems.

The meat inspectors' union, in its petition last spring to Washington state's attorney general, contended that federal agents are "often prevented from carrying out" the mandate against animal cruelty. Among the obstacles inspectors face are "dramatic increases in production speeds, lack of support from supervisors in plants and district offices . . . new inspection policies which significantly reduce our enforcement authority, and little to no access to the areas of the plants where animals are killed," stated the petition by the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals.

Barbara Masters, the agency's director of slaughter operations, told meat industry executives in February she didn't know if the number of violations was up or down, though she believed most plants were complying with the law. "We encourage the district offices to monitor trends," she said. "The fact that we haven't heard anything suggests there are no trends."

But some inspectors see little evidence the agency is interested in hearing about problems. Under the new inspection system, the USDA stopped tracking the number of violations and dropped all mentions of humane slaughter from its list of rotating tasks for inspectors.

The agency says it expects its watchdogs to enforce the law anyway. Many inspectors still do, though some occasionally wonder if it's worth the trouble.

"It always ends up in argument: Instead of re-stunning the animal, you spend 20 minutes just talking about it," said Colorado meat inspector Gary Dahl, sharing his private views. "Yes, the animal will be dead in a few minutes anyway. But why not let him die with dignity?"

© 2001 The Washington Post Company




4.

DAILY GRIST
12 Apr 2001
http://www.gristmagazine.com

1.
WHERE'S THE BEEF REPORT?
The chemical, beef, and poultry industries are lobbying the U.S. EPA to stall even longer before releasing a final report showing that animal fat and dairy products containing tiny amounts of dioxin can cause cancer in humans. The agency circulated a draft report early last summer that concluded for the first time that at least one form of dioxin is a "human carcinogen," while other dioxins are "likely" carcinogens. Agency scientists remain confident of their findings and have asked EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman to release the final report this summer. But industry groups and GOPers in Congress are so opposed to the findings that the report, already more than a decade in the making, may be delayed for several more years. Meanwhile, Carol Browner, who ran the EPA under former President Clinton, took a jab at the Bush administration yesterday, saying that "the breadth and speed of some of their anti-environmental actions has been stunning."

Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 12 Apr 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7743-2001Apr11.html

Philadelphia Inquirer, Frank Davies, 12 Apr 2001
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/04/12/national/ENVIR12.htm

Take action and tell the U.S. to support a treaty banning dioxin
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/toxic.stm#dioxin




5.

THE UNWORKABLE TRINITY: TRUTH, MARKET FORCES AND THE MEDIA

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE INADEQUACIES OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, SAYS DAVID CROMWELL, ASK ITS JOURNALISTS.

At http://www.theecologist.org/mediation.html

Here is a couple excerpts of this article

That many serious, major topics - sanctions against Iraq, vigorous business lobbying to create a corporateshaped economy, the paltry political response to climate change - are rarely raised by any mainstream newspaper or broadcaster is damning. Wouldn't a truly 'free' and healthy media, for example, examine itself rigorously - its own assumptions, prejudices and omissions? No doubt many editors and journalists are aware of this but are too afraid of bucking the system. After all, who wants to have one's career blocked or lose one's job when there's a mortgage to pay? And so, media debate is restricted within tightly constrained parameters that serve capital, but not democracy.

CLIP

As Nick Cohen revealed last year in the New Statesman, many liberal commentators earn a nice salary, thank you very much indeed, by portraying themselves as the watchdogs of democracy while - in reality - they are merely snapping playfully at the heels of authority.

Disgrace into space Grossman reveals America's dominate space - This article is the cover story of the current issue of The Ecologist - see at http://www.theecologist.org/ThisIssue.html

- which has also another very interesting article "THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME... " Kirkpatrick Sale puts the case for "bioregionalism" – the localising of economics and politics – as a solution to the world's problems - whole article at: http://www.theecologist.org/likehome.html







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