| Monday, July 21, 2003 |  |
| Proactive Creativity | 0 comments |
| 21 Jul 2003 @ 12:21 More from the collection of Letecia and myself.    |
| Lockheed Sues Peaceful Anti-War Protesters | 3 comments |
 21 Jul 2003 @ 12:07Lockheed Sues Peaceful Anti-War Protesters Sitara Kapoor and Todd Kolze Direct Action to Stop the War July 17, 2003 ... Summary: Something is very wrong within our democracy when a multi-billion dollar corporation, Lockheed-Martin, one of our Nation's largest defense contractors, sues anti-war protestors. Civil rights advocates call it "an assault on democracy," as the company seeks to block free speech by placing a price tag on public gatherings ... "Lockheed seeks restitution from anti-war protesters in unprecedented "backdoor" SLAPP suit" Civil rights advocates call it "an assault on democracy" Press Conference: July 17, 2003, 1:00 p.m. Sunnyvale Superior Court, 605 West El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, California This Thursday, July 17 marks the beginning of a unique legal battle over the public's right to free speech: specifically, whether corporations have the right to charge protesters for added security and other costs companies incur in anticipation of a demonstration. Anti-war demonstrators over the past few months have focused their protests on corporations which they view as directly profiting from the most recent war on Iraq. One such corporation is Lockheed Martin, the largest manufacturer of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in the US, with close ties to the Bush administration. Fifty-two protesters were arrested at the demonstrations at Lockheed Martin on April 22, 2003. A pre-trial conference pertaining to these arrests will be heard on Thursday, July 17, with the trials most likely continuing into the fall. Working with the Santa Clara District Attorney, Lockheed Martin is seeking an unprecedented legal penalty through the criminal justice system: reimbursement for what the company represents as costs it incurred preparing for the demonstration. These costs amount to over $41,000, and include a claim for additional security hired for the day of the protest and legal fees Lockheed incurred after filing a failed motion to block the protest from occurring in the first place. The implications of the restitution penalty are of grave concern to both protestors and civil rights groups, who worry that this case could set a dangerous legal precedent that would deeply discourage people from exercising their First Amendment rights. The threat of restitution could effectively stifle public protest of corporations' unscrupulous or illegal actions. The public has a right to engage in protest to expose a company for manufacturing weapons so insidious they have been banned by the UN and for bilking the American taxpayer for billions of dollars. "If Lockheed Martin wants to avoid public outrage, it should stop behaving outrageously - instead of trying to stifle criticism by charging protesters for free speech," said Sitar Kapoor, a social worker who was arrested at the April 22 protest. Though Lockheed claims it spent over $15,000 in security costs, protesters assert that these costs were unnecessary, because prior to the demonstration organizers engaged in a cooperative dialogue with local law enforcement authorities to ensure a non-violent, non-destructive day of protest. Indeed, no physical damage or violence was present during the April demonstration. Defense attorney Dan Mayfield stated, "Charging a group of arrestees for the costs a company allegedly incurs in anticipation of a protest is ridiculous. What if Lockheed had hired $15,000 worth of extra security and no protesters showed up? Who would receive the bill? There is no logical basis for Lockheed Martin to claim restitution from protesters for arbitrary security costs." Organizers from Direct Action to Stop the War, with allies from civil rights organizations and the community, are having a press conference in support of the Lockheed 52 and free speech,1 pm, July 17 in front of the Sunnyvale Superior Courthouse, 605 West El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, Californa Street Theater. More > |
| Bush Cancel Elections In 2004? | 1 comment |
 21 Jul 2003 @ 12:00Unlikely, maybe a bit paranoid, improbable rather than possible but an interesting discussion none the less. BUSH TO CANCEL 2004 ELECTIONS TO STAY IN POWER...? CONSERVATIVES GOING BONKERS! ------ By Ted Rall Whether, Not Who, is the Question About the 2004 Election NEW YORK(YN)--He has canceled elections in Iraq (news - web sites). He will probably cancel them in Afghanistan (news - web sites). Will George W. Bush put the kibosh on elections in the United States next year? Frightened by Bush´s rapidly diminsihing personal power and the Democrats´ inability and/or unwillingness to stand up to him, citizens worry that he might use the "war on terrorism" as an excuse to declare a state of emergency, suspend civil liberties and jail political opponents. People who have spoken out against Bush are talking exit strategy--not Alec Baldwin style, just to make a statement, but fleeing the U.S. in order to save their skins. "Do you or your spouse have a European-born parent?" is a query making the rounds. (If you do, you can obtain dual nationality and a European Union (news - web sites) passport that would allow you to work in any EU member nation.) Those whose lineage is 100 percent American are hoping that nations like Canada and France will admit American political refugees in the event of a Bushite clampdown. To these people, whether or not the 2004 elections actually take place as scheduled is the ultimate test for American democracy. At Guantánamo Bay the United States is converting a concentration camp into a death camp where inmates will be executed without due process or legal representation. Never before in history has a U.S. president contemplated the denaturalization of native-born citizens-thus far even people executed for treason have died as Americans--but Bush has drafted legislation that would allow him to strip anyone he calls an "enemy combatant" of their citizenship and have them deported. By any objective standard he has already gone way too far, but for many it would take the cancellation or delay of the elections to confirm that we are trading in our wounded democracy for a fascist state. Lincoln considered suspending the 1864 election because of the Civil War, but ultimately tabled the idea. To date nothing has ever prevented an American presidential election from being held on time. It´s easy to come up with a scenario in which canceling the 2004 election could be made to appear reasonable. Imagine that, a few weeks before Election Day, "dirty bombs" detonate simultaneously in New York and Washington. Government, media and political institutions and personnel lie ruined in smoking rubble and ash; hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered. The economy, already teetering on the precipice, is shoved into depression. How could we conduct elections under such conditions? Republicans have already floated the don´t-change-horses-in-midstream argument. After Democratic presidential Sen. John Kerry criticized Bush recently, GOP National Committee Chairman Mark Racicot took him to task not for his specific remarks, but rather for "daring to suggest the replacement of America´s commander-in-chief at a time when America is at war." The White House website´s "frequently asked questions" section indicates that the "war" is expected to continue well beyond 2004: "There is no silver bullet, no single event or action that is going to suddenly make the threat of terrorism disappear. This broad-based and sustained effort will continue until terrorism is rooted out. The situation is similar to the Cold War, when continuous pressure from many nations caused communism to collapse from within. We will press the fight as long as it takes." The Cold War lasted 46 years; does Bush intend to remain in office that long? Our boy president has plenty of reason to worry about his election chances. A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll says that only 50 percent of Americans would vote for Bush over a generic unnamed Democrat--the lowest number since 9/11. Two-thirds say that Bush lied about or exaggerated the threat from Iraq´s WMDs, and a steady flow of body bags from Afghanistan and Iraq has made 53 percent aware that the occupations are going poorly. Pollsters report that most people trust Democrats to rescue the sinking economy--and few believe that Bush´s tax cuts will help them. Bush may be the kind of guy who sees 99 percent odds as 2 percent short of a sure thing, but I bet he´ll look at his $200 million campaign war chest and decide to let the people decide. He´ll surely want to win legitimately in 2004--albeit for the first time. Though they´re capable of Gestapo tactics, Bush´s people probably know that Americans wouldn´t stand for two putsches in four years. Still, you have to hand it to him: The fact that Democrats are terrified of ending up imprisoned by an American Reich is the ultimate tribute to Bush´s artful bullying--and sad confirmation of the impotence of his would-be, should-be opponents. (Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the underreported Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.) More > |
| Researchers Try To Clean Nuclear Sites With Microbes | 1 comment |
 21 Jul 2003 @ 11:48Mining bacteria's appetite for toxic waste: Researchers Try To Clean Nuclear Sites With Microbes Scientists are experimenting with some unusual species of bacteria that can thrive by cleaning up radioactive wastes left over from the Cold War when nuclear weapons plants across the country were running full blast. The problem exists wherever uranium has been mined, processed and made into nuclear bombs. Almost 500 billion gallons of groundwater -- enough to supply 1. 5 million homes for a year -- remain contaminated with uranium and other toxic chemicals in 36 states, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates. Another 800 million gallons of waste from uranium mines and weapons plants lie buried in landfills, trenches and unlined tanks. More than 2 billion cubic feet of contaminated sediments remain to be cleaned -- a mountain of radioactive and toxic dirt 2,000 times larger than Egypt's Great Pyramid at Giza. For many years, scientists have known about the unusual appetites of some microbes, including the ability of certain strains to consume uranium and other deadly poisons. Now researchers are starting to exploit that ability as a way to clean up nuclear sites, a process called "bioremediation." STANFORD ENGINEER'S STUDIES Among the experimenters is Craig Criddle, a Stanford University environmental engineer. He is working with several classes of microbes that he believes can turn a soluble form of uranium into an insoluble form. The uranium can precipitate out of the water like sand and be gathered like a common mineral, he believes. Next week, Criddle will pursue an experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which produced the uranium for the infamous atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, killing almost 80,000 people. The lab has another legacy. "The nitric acid and uranium oxide waste, a witch's brew, was dumped into unlined pits there for 31 years and then covered by a parking lot," Criddle said. The waste ate its way down into layers of saprolite, a claylike rock, so that more than 99 percent of it is deep in the soil, he said. The remaining uranium has contaminated groundwater, a long-term threat to human health, because the uranium is soluble and moving steadily toward nearby Bear Creek, which flows through the area. A complex community of microorganisms thrives by "breathing" oxides of sulfur, iron, aluminum and even more hazardous compounds like the uranium and other radioactive elements. As the microbes obtain their oxygen from soluble uranium oxide, for example, they transform it into a highly insoluble form called uraninite. At Oak Ridge, Criddle will be working with several bacteria, including members of a genus called Desulfovibrio, which numbers more than 30 distinct species. Heavy metals such as chromium that were used during the bomb-making era also pose a human health problem. Similar techniques mobilizing bacteria to remove chromium, a cancer-causing metal, are also being tested in the Oak Ridge experiments by a team from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, led by marine biologist Bradley Tebo. Criddle's uranium experiments involve lowering the acidity of the microbes' environment and nourishing them with ethanol to "get them all happy," as Criddle says. Doing so encourages them to go to work on the uranium by reducing oxides of the radioactive uranium and thereby rendering them insoluble. Like other researchers in bioremediation, Criddle has support from the Department of Energy. The agency's program manager, microbiologist Anna Palmisano, is a former member of the astrobiology group at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, seeking microbial analogues on Earth for possible life on other planets. "There are wonderful microbes that could be able to help us," Palmisano said. "But the radioactive elements that are moving into the water are soluble, and to get them out, they must be made insoluble." URANIUM DRIFTING TOWARD RIVER Along the Colorado River, about 200 miles west of Denver, is the small town of Rifle, whose two mines and mills produced almost 17 million tons of uranium oxide, known as "yellowcake." When the mines shut down about 30 years ago, they left almost 3 million tons of contaminated uranium tailings. Uranium dissolved in the water beneath the tailings is moving gradually toward the Colorado River. Internet maps warn of the Rifle mill site: "No well drilling or use of groundwater." After more than a decade of laboratory work, microbiologist Derek Lovley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has built a field site for testing the ability of a class of microbes, called Geobacters, to attack the uranium waste problem at the old Rifle mines. Two weeks ago, he began new and large- scale tests there. In effect, Lovley and his colleagues have discovered that the Geobacter bacteria can live or "breathe" in environments where uranium oxides dominate. They are focusing on the old Rifle mill site to see if they can reduce the uranium-polluted water to radioactivity levels well below the government's safety standards. The genes of Lovley's Geobacter species already have been sequenced by the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md., founded by famed scientist Craig Venter, who raced government scientists to sequence the entire human genome, and at the Energy Department's Joint Genome Institute, operated in Walnut Creek by the University of California. Understanding those genes, according to Lovley, could enable scientists to engineer new strains of Geobacter even more capable of transforming the water- soluble forms of uranium into insoluble forms that could be filtered from streams and underground aquifers. OTHER MICROBES IN SPOTLIGHT Still other strains of microbes are under investigation. One unique bacterium bears the intriguing name of Deinococcus radiodurans, meaning "strange berry that withstands radiation." It was discovered by Oregon radiation researchers in 1956 in a can of meat that had spoiled even after the meat was sterilized experimentally by intense radiation beams, and it is by far the most radiation-resistant organism in the world. Gene-splicers are experimenting to see if the genes of D. radiodurans can be engineered to produce a new "superbug" that could decontaminate the most intensely radioactive wastes on Earth -- wastes much more deadly than the uranium that scientists such as Criddle and Lovley are hoping to clean up. Check Paul Stamets success using mushroom organisms for oil and other toxic cleanup also his grow your own edible mushroom kits. More > |