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THE SECRETS OF SEPTEMBER 11
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The White House is battling to keep a report on the terror attacks secret. Does the 2004 election have anything to do with it?
Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks.
At the center of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks-including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.
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Wildfire Debate Sweeps
Through Congress
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The House Resources Committee approved a wildfire plan today that supporters say will return forest management to people who know the forests and reduce the threat of wildfires. Democrats on the
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committee blasted the bill as a timber industry giveaway and said it will do little to contain the wildfire threat, and today's discussion of "The Healthy Forests Restoration Act" illustrated the growing gap in perception and common ground between opponents in the debate over how to reduce the risk of wildfires.
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Greens: Water Privatization is Theft
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "The world's water supply is being stolen," said Ben Manski, Wisconsin Green and co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. "While attention has focused on the invasion of Iraq and the economy, officials at local, national, and international levels are quietly transferring public ownership and control of fresh water over to powerful corporations."
Greens point to evidence of the devastating economic and ecological effects of water privatization: higher prices and more frequent billing; neglected infrastructure; increased use of concrete and steel in environmentally harmful dams and pipes instead of measures to conserve water; bribery of public officials and cronyism in the awarding of contracts; wasteful salaries and bonuses for water company execs.
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Bush Public Lands Policy Under Fire
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Recent policy decisions by the Bush administration's Interior Department represent the greatest threat to America's public lands in decades, conservationists told reporters at a press briefing today. Interior
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Department Secretary Gale Norton is conducting a broad assault on the protection of wilderness under the management of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), conservationists say, and is failing to safeguard America's natural resources, wild places and biodiversity.
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ACLU Sues FBI Over "No Fly" List
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Saying that federal officials violated privacy and public information laws, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California today filed a federal lawsuit challenging secret "no fly" and other transportation watch lists. In papers filed with the court, the ACLU said that at least 339 passengers have been stopped and questioned at San Francisco International Airport
since September 2001.
"At the San Francisco airport alone, hundreds of passengers were stopped or questioned in connection with the so-called ‘no fly’ list," said Jayashri Srikantiah, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. "If that number is any indication, it is likely that thousands of individuals at airports across the country are being routinely detained and questioned because their names appear on a secret government list."
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Australia Documents Unparalleled
Species Loss
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The most comprehensive assessment to date of Australia's wildlife shows that some 3,000 whole bushland ecosystems are disappearing, taking more than 1,500 species with them. The Commonwealth Government's
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National Land and Water Resources Audit on the state of Australia's biodiversity was issued today, providing a national picture of the status and distribution of threatened species and ecological communities.
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Critics Bash Bush on Earth Day
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The Bush administration is orchestrating an unprecedented assault on the nation's environmental laws and is allowing corporate interests to plunder America's natural resources, leaders of a dozen
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major environmental organizations told reporters today at an Earth Day press conference in Washington, DC. The nation's biodiversity, wild lands, clean air, clean water and protection from harmful toxic waste are all threatened by the administration's policies, the environmentalists say, and the consequences could be severe.
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Factory Farms Grow New Roots
in Developing World
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Factory farms are expanding into developing countries and bringing these nations a wealth of environmental and public health concerns, finds a new paper by the Worldwatch Institute. And the
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environmental and health hazards of factory farms are only part of a global issue affected by increasing global meat consumption, tighter environmental standards in developing countries and international trade, according to Worldwatch Institute researcher Danielle Nierenberg.
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The Bushmeat Crisis is Emptying
Africa’s Forests
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Deep in the heart of the Congo River Basin, the tropical forest is lush and full of life. Immense Sapelli and Okoumé trees tower over the forest floor, and small antelopes called duikers plunge through the
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undergrowth while the calls of bonobos and sooty mangabeys sound from the leafy canopy. At least, that’s the way it was before the bushmeat hunters arrived.
In forests throughout Central and West Africa, virtually every type of wild animal is being hunted, frequently illegally, for use as food. But while indigenous peoples such as the Bantu pygmies have sustainably hunted this “bushmeat” for centuries, the level of hunting has skyrocketed in the past two decades. Today, species ranging from cane rats to elephants are being hunted at unprecedented levels, and recent estimates suggest a bushmeat harvest of between one and five million metric tons each year—a level that is literally emptying forests of wildlife.
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US Should Be "Embarrassed" Over Failure to Find WMDs: Ex-Spies
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The US government should be "embarrassed" over the apparent failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main justification for going to war, retired intelligence officials said Thursday.
"It's going to be very embarrassing when it turns out they have nothing to declare," said former defense intelligence analyst Eugene Betit.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (R) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers host a meeting at the Pentagon. Former intelligence agents have said the US government should be "embarrassed" by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (AFP/Luke Frazza)
Another, former CIA station chief Ray Close, said: "I'm hoping they will be embarrassed into acknowledging a role for some independent body. And who could it be but the UN?"
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Nitrogen Harming Northeast
Forests and Waters
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Nitrogen pollution is widespread in the ecosystems of the Northeastern United States and current policies will do little to change the situation, finds a new two year study coordinated by the Hubbard Brook Research
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Foundation. Excess nitrogen in the environment degrades air quality, disrupts forest growth, acidifies lakes and streams and starves coastal waters of oxygen.
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Students Invade US Senate
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A group of activists with the Ferrel Collective,including 4 University of Maryland students, brought Thursday's session of senate to an abrupt halt. The group was protesting massive military spending being passed while critical social services such as affordable housing, education, health care, and drug addiction treatment are underfunded and/or experiencing budget cuts.
¨We are concerned that corporate powers continue to control this country over the will of the people. The unjust and dangerous war in Iraq is part of an expanding corporate agenda to put profit interests over our interests as communities. Our government is not hearing us, so we have to make our voices heard. We must retake the space that is being run by dollars and greed, said Chris D.
(of the Ferrels) in handcuffs.
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Water Demands Draining U.S. Rivers
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Many of America's rivers are suffering from severe water shortages, with drought and human water consumption placing some of these waterways in acute peril, warns a new report released today by American
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Rivers. The report details 10 rivers that face immediate and severe danger, but paints a larger picture of a nation tumbling towards a possible water crisis.
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Ebola, Hunting Put Apes On
Path to Extinction
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NEW YORK, New York,, April 8, 2003 (ENS) Illegal hunting and the Ebola virus are decimating gorilla and chimpanzee populations in remote areas of Western Equatorial Africa, according to a new study from the
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Wildlife Conservation Society based at New York's Bronx Zoo. Many conservationists had believed that ape populations in these densely forested, remote regions in Gabon and the Republic of Congo were relatively stable.
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NYPD to Continue Keeping Tabs on Protester's Political Affiliation
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In a practice widely known to NYC Indymedia readers, mainstream media outlets reported today that the New York Police Department has been questioning people arrested at anti-war demonstrations about their
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prior political activity and recording the information in a database. According to today's New York Times, the NYPD will now "destroy the database, created with a debriefing form, and largely abandon the initiative" after scathing criticism from civil-rights groups.
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Republicans Want Terror Law
Made Permanent
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WASHINGTON, April 8 — Working with the Bush administration, Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said today.
The move is likely to touch off strong objections from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress who believe that the Patriot Act, as the legislation that grew out of the attacks is known, has already given the government too much power
to spy on Americans.
When it passed in October 2001, moderates and civil libertarians in Congress agreed to support it only by making many critical provisions temporary. Those provisions will expire, or "sunset," at the end of 2005 unless Congress
re-authorizes them..
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End US Military Aid To Colombia!
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MIDDLETOWN -- A leading Colombian peace activist urged a group of about 30 church members to help change U.S. policies on Colombia’s civil war and help implement peace and justice
initiatives in his country.
Ricardo Esquivia, director of Justapaz, the Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action of the Colombian Mennonite Church, told a group of church activists and members of the First Church of Christ Congregational Tuesday evening how they should take an active role in lobbying Congress for a change in U.S. policies, including pressuring the country to stop supplying such military equipment as Black Hawk helicopters, manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft of Stratford, a subsidiary of Hartford-based United
Technologies Corp.
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Iraq's Bread Basket Stands to
Be Ruined by War
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ROME, Italy, April 3, 2003 (ENS) - The war in Iraq could be devastating for the country's rural economy with consequences on farmers' capacity to produce food, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
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warned today. The winter grain harvest, set to begin in a few weeks, and the spring planting could both be affected. The UN agency has launched a $86 million appeal to help
meet the crisis.
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Bush Cronies Profit From War
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WASHINGTON, DC -- Funding for the war on Iraq, while requiring massive cuts in social spending for health, education, services, and welfare and reduction of veterans benefits, is becoming a huge windfall for favored corporations, say members
of the Green Party of the United States.
"This $100-billion war is proving a cash cow for corporations, especially those with connections
to the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon, while U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and soldiers face death and injury," said Tom Bolema, Town Councilperson (Green) of Juniper Hills, California.
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