WTO Rules Against Sea Turtles

Geneva - On March 16, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that provisions of the US Endangered Species Act protecting endangered sea turtles are a "barrier" to free trade. The US law requires that wild shrimp sold in the US be caught using "excluder devices" that allow sea turtles to escape shrimp nets. The WTO ruling could force the US to change the law or face severe economic sanctions. If the US law is gutted, sea turtles will be pushed even further towards extinction.

US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky refused to release the WTO ruling, arguing that WTO rulings must remain confidential. Such secrecy protects no one: It only serves to shield the WTO from public criticism.

What You Can Do: Call the Barshefsky's office at (202) 395-6890 and demand the release of the WTO rulings. If WTO rulings against US laws cannot be released, demand that the US withdraw from the WTO.

Stop USDA's Plot to Gut Organics

US - The USDA is attempting to destroy the organic food movement by redefining "organic" to include: genetically modified organisms;.factory farms; "fertilizers" made from toxic sludge and industrial wastes; irradiated ingredients and livestock feeds made from rendered farm animals.

The USDA's proposed standards contradict California's Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, the guidelines of the National Organics Standards Board (NOSB) and established clean-food industry practices. The proposed ruling ignores the concept of biodiversity, contains provisions that would inhibit "eco-labeling" and removes the NOSB's power to decide what is permitted and what is prohibited under the organic label.

The USDA has been flooded with such an unprecedented deluge of critical mail that it has twice extended the public comment period. Citizens now have until May 1 to let the government know that this betrayal of the clean foods movement will not be permitted.

What You Can Do: Write the USDA, AMS, Room 4007-S, AgStop 0275, PO Box 96456, Washington, DC 20090-6456, (202) 690-4632. Demand that the USDA immediately withdraw its proposed organic rules (USDA-National Organic Standards, Docket #TMD-94-00-2) and demand a Federal investigation into why these rules fly in the face of established practice. Demand that the USDA base its the standards on the NOSB recommendations and the California Organic Foods Production Act. For more information: Pure Food Campaign, (800) 253-0681, alliance@mr.net, www.geocities.com/athens/1527.

Green Pages Tree Fund Assists Former Monk

As a Buddhist monk, Prachack Pethsing prevented the clearcutting of Thailand's Dong Yai forest by "ordaining" trees and cloaking them in saffron cloth. "We cannot be truly happy if beings which surround us, such as grasses, trees and animals cannot be happy," Prachak insists.

Prachack has been harassed by logging companies and repeatedly jailed for trespassing, "forest encroachment" and disturbing the peace. Forced to leave the monkhood in 1994, Prachak has spent the last three years in court defending himself from these charges.

The Green Pages Fund is pleased to send a $200 check to Thailand for Prachak's defense. For more information, contact the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, PO Box 4650, Berkeley, CA 94704.

The Green Pages Fund welcomes donations. Anyone who sends a check for $3 or more may request a Kenaf Seed Kit (kenaf is grown to make the Journal's tree-free paper) or a sample packet of stevia, the natural sweetener profiled in our Winter issue.

People, Dugongs Oppose US Base

Okinawa - Last December, a majority of the residents of Nago, Okinawa voted against an environmentally damaging US plan to build a heliport in the sea to replace the US Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station. Three days after the non-binding vote, Nago Mayor Tetsuya Higa went on television to announce he was approving the new US base. Higa then promptly resigned. In January, disheartened Okinawans took heart when a large dugong (a relative of the manatee) took up residence in the waters chosen for the new US base. "The dugong appeared in the area as a messenger of peace for those of us who voted against the base," a heliport opponent told Japan Times.

Madame Butterfly

US - The only thing standing between a 1000 year-old redwood, and the chainsaws of a Texas speculator is a young Earth First! activist named Julia Butterfly. The redwood, named "Luna" by its defenders, has been occupied since October 3, 1997. Butterfly has lived in the tree, in a perch 180 feet off the ground, since December 11, 1997. She has survived all of the pounding El Niño storms and assaults by low-flying helicopters. Texas millionaire Charles Hurwitz wants to turn Luna into lumber to pay the debts of Maxxam, his corporate empire. (When Hurwitz's Texas savings and loan empire went bankrupt, US taxpayers paid $1.6 billion to bail him out. Environmentalists have demanded that Hurwitz turn over the entire 60,000 acres of the Headwaters Forest to the Interior Department in a "debt-for-nature" swap.) For the latest on Julia's record-setting action, contact Earth First! [(707) 445-3344].

"NAFTRICA" Won't Work

US - President Clinton's precedent-setting African sojourn has been debunked by Deborah Toler, senior research analyst with the Institute for Food and Development Policy [IFDP, 398 60th St., Oakland, CA 94618]. Toler, author of the forthcoming book, Africa: Myths and Reality, declares that Clinton's trip "is nothing more than a big game hunt by American corporations for windfall profits at Africa's expense." The "African Growth and Opportunity Act" passed by the House and now up for Senate consideration would open Africa's markets to US corporations while imposing harsh social service cuts on the citizens of sub-Saharan Africa. The IFDP has proposed an alternative four-point plan calling for: debt forgiveness; African-based solutions; a permanent African seat on the UN Security Council; and mechanisms to protect "Africa's fragile agricultural sectors from subsidized first-world competitors, including the US." For more information on "NAFTA for Africa," contact Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch [(202) 546-4996, www.citizen.org]

Global Warming Could Reverse Evolution

US - For 3.5 billion years, the Earth was dominated by so-called C3 plants - trees, shrubs, soybeans, wheat - that photosynthesize molecules containing three carbon atoms. Between 6 and 8 million years ago, Earth's vegetation changed radically. Plants producing four-carbon molecules plants - so-called C-4 plants that include many grasses, corn and sugarcane - began to appear in many areas.

As C4 plants came onto the scene, many of the planets Miocene woodlands were replaced by savannas and millions of mammals faded into evolutionary oblivion. According to the "savanna hypothesis," this plant revolution encouraged our human ancestors to leave the safety of forests and learn to forage on open grasslands.

"The planet is now a different planet," University of Utah geochemist Thure E. Cerling explained in Science News. Cerling and others now believe that changing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is linked to the transition from C3 to C4 plants.

During the era of the dinosaurs, CO2 levels were as high as 1,000 parts per million (ppm), but some eight million years ago, atmospheric CO2 levels fell below 500 ppm. The result, Science News reports, was "a massive turnover in the type of mammals populating the continents - an upheaval that set the stage for the evolution of our ancestors."

While C4 vegetation now dominates the globe, C3 grasses still thrive in colder, wetter climates. But the world could be on the brink of another plant revolution. CO2 levels before the Industrial Revolution were 280 ppm. Today CO2 levels stand at [???] ppm and rising.

"By increasing atmospheric [CO2] concentrations, humans may be changing the Earth's atmosphere to conditions not favorable to a 'C4 world,' the world in which we originally evolved," Cerling states.

Science News shares Cerling's concerns. "Without massive cuts in greenhouse gas pollution - ones that far exceed the limits adapted in Kyoto, Japan - the concentration of [CO2] is expected to climb above 500 ppm sometime in the latter half of the next century." When this happens, the world may shift back into a C3 world, "a regime [the Earth] has not seen in the last 8 million years."

New Health Risks from Electric Fallout

Germany - Exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) has been linked to increases in childhood leukemia and increased risk of breast cancer. New evidence suggests that even low-level EMF from common household appliances can affect hormone levels in humans.

Melatonin, a restorative hormone released during deep sleep, has been shown to suppress the growth of cancer cells. When toxicologist Wolfgang Löesher of the School of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover, Germany, exposed female rats to EMF, he found that the occurrence - and size - of cancerous tumors increased in direct proportion to EMF levels.

In Missouri, Midwest Research Institute physiologist Charles Graham found that women exposed to EMF experienced elevated levels of estrogen associated with increased risk of breast cancer while men exposed to EMF showed lower testosterone levels linked to prostate and testicular cancer.

Graham also found that intermittent EMF exposures disrupt healthy sleep patterns. Both Löesher and Graham report that pulses of low-level EMF can be more damaging than constant exposure to higher levels.

Whenever lights, appliances and electric motors turn on, the resulting power surges expose people to sharp blasts of EMF. Science News notes that transients are "hard to avoid because they may stem from surges elsewhere - in a neighbor's house or even power lines up the street."

Robert J. Liburdy, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, has shown that EMF radiation can have the same damaging effect on human reproductive organs as endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Unfortunately, just as research is discovering new dangers from EMF exposure, the two leading US studies of EMF risks are due to be closed down in October.

Sidebar: In 98 percent of US homes, the average background magnetic fields seldom rise above 0.5 to 0.9 milligauss (mG). But, as Science News writer Janet Raloff discovered, an improperly wired light can more than triple EMF levels. While most appliances (including computers, color TVs, irons) generate less than 20 mG, some appliances (such as vacuum cleaners and hair dryers) can generate 700 mG , which approaches the 1,000 mG US safety level set for workplace exposure.

Raloff recorded her own exposure to EMF during the course of a typical day (see chart). From midnight to dawn, Raloff continually was exposed to power surges from a poorly wired thermostat. Kitchen appliances caused the first major "spikes" of EMF, followed by transient exposures as Raloff drove her daughter to school through city streets.

Shortly after 8 a.m., Raloff boarded an electric subway system , which sent the EMF reading off the 10 mG scale. Turning on her office computer exposed Raloff to 1 to 2 mG . Using the office copier caused a 5.3 mG spike.

A staff party at a nearby restaurant exposed Raloff to between 5 and 8 mG while visits to local stores, rides on escalators and several subway trips sent Raloff's meter off the chart. The final spikes of the day came late in the evening when Raloff turned on her dishwasher and played some CDs on her stereo.

HAARP Spurs Debate in Britain

United Kingdom - Project HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) is the name of a bizarre Pentagon plan to "burn holes" in the Earth's ionosphere with an array of high-powered beams from a remote base in Alaska [See the Journal's prize-winning exposé, Fall '96 EIJ].

In Brussels, on February 5, members of the European Parliament (EP) meeting held an historic hearing on "HAARP: Pure Research, Star Wars Continuation or Environmental Disaster?" The hearing was called by EP member Tom Spencer, who chairs the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy.

Spencer became concerned after reading the book Angels Don't Play This HAARP by Dr. Nick Begich (who co-authored the Journal's 1996 expose with EIJ editor Gar Smith). Begich's book has recently been translated into German and Japanese.

Begich has warned that HAARP and other "non-lethal weapons" being developed by the Pentagon constitute "a new kind of arms race without public debate or discussion about the safety, moral and ethical implications of these new systems."

Last year, Begich presented his concerns before a meeting of Global International, a group of several hundred legislators and parliamentarians from more than 40 countries.

The public debate about the environmental risks of HAARP technology continues to grow. In the meantime, HAARP - which temporarily lost its funding in the wake of the Journal's revelations - is operating and planning to expand the power of its transmitters.

HAARP Sidebar:

New Threat: The SuperDARN

Alaska - Five acres of Cape Chiniak forest may be removed to make way for the sixth in a series of radar sites being built around north pole to monitor "space weather" in the ionosphere. The array of 50-foot-tall towers would form the latest part of the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) that already boasts sites in Canada, Finland, France, Japan, Sweden, the US and England. Four SuperDARN arrays are sited in Antarctica and additional radars are planned for Tasmania, Kerguelen Island, British Colombia and Western Siberia. The radar would be run by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. The Kodiak Mirror reports that the proposed radar would be able to "detect changes in the ionosphere when HAARP heats it up" and notes that project scientists "acknowledge [that] the military… is highly interested in space weather studies." The SuperDARN was to start operating by the end of August but local citizens have appealed the project's use permit to the Kodiak borough assembly.

US to Test "Rogue State" Nuke

US - The US has been testing a new nuclear bomb - a 12-foot-long, foot-wide, 1,200-pound "nuclear nail" designed to drive itself deep into the earth before exploding. According to the AP, the B61-11 was designed to penetrate "underground bunkers, command centers and other military targets of 'rogue' states." The bomb's penetrating power is boosted by the fact that its shell is made from extremely dense depleted uranium (DU).

Last November, reports Newsday, President Clinton signed Presidential Policy Directive 60 - a top-secret document that permits the use of tactical nuclear weapons against "rogue states." This directive, which overturns previous US policy never to launch a nuclear "first strike," is tailored to permit a nuclear attack in response to Iraq's use of chemical or biological weapons.

In December, the Pentagon's plans to test the B61-11 were delayed when the State of Nevada refused to allow the Air Force to test the weapon in a portion of the Desert National Wildlife Range near the Nellis Air Force Range. The Pentagon claimed that testing posed "No Significant Impact" but Nevada officials cited the "long-term (100 to 1,000 years and longer) environmental threats posed by DU residues." The Pentagon argued that the nearest human population center was 12 miles away at Indian Springs, but Nevada officials pointed out that "the Southern Desert Corrections Center (with an inmate population of over 1,400)" was closer to ground zero.

State officials cited the USAF's failure to account for some 30 tons of DU that previous testing had released into the soil, water and air of the testing range and concluded that "the long-term use of DU munitions on the Desert National Wildlife Range appears to be an incompatible activity."

Kicked out of Nevada, the USAF retreated to the US Army's Yukon Range at Fort Wainwright, Alaska . According to the AP, a B-2 bomber would drop a "non-explosive" version of the bomb on the tundra "to see how the bomb stands up when it burrows into frozen soil." (Since Iraq's soil lies in the Middle East, this last statement may have been designed to "send a message" to Russia.)

FBI Trains Cops to Fear Greens

US - San Francisco environmentalists were outraged when the FBI turned the Presidio National Park - the country's largest urban national park - into an "anti-terrorist" training ground on January 14. The outrage intensified when reporters revealed that the "terrorists" being targeted in the FBI's scenario were "environmentalists."

FBI Agent Robert Walsh explained the FBI's war game to the Bay Guardian as follows: "A fictitious oil spill occurs in San Francisco Bay. A misguided, very violent group using this incident to wrap themselves as environmentalists decide that the pace at which the Coast Guard and the EPA are attempting to clean up this oil spill is unsatisfactory. They… raid the EPA office and take hostages - EPA workers and Coast Guard employees. The FBI gets involved… because a Presidio park police officer gets shot and killed by the group."

Earth First! activist Alicia Littletree reminded the press that eco-activists are nonviolent and recalled that the car bomb that nearly killed Earth First! organizer Judi Bari was hidden in her car shortly after the conclusion of a 1989 FBI "bomb camp" exercise showed police how to build car bombs. The FBI's failure to track down Bari's bomber has lead some environmentalists to suspect that the FBI was involved in the assassination attempt.

Activists in Idaho are nervous following the release of a secret National Guard document, "Intelligence Assessment No. 1," which identified certain "opposing forces" that might pose a "threat" to the state. "Chief among the state groups are Aryan Nations, Snake River Alliance, gun-control advocates, militia groups and gangs." The 14-page document complained that "the ability of such opposing forces to move about freely" made it difficult for the police-state "to identify, track and monitor their activities."

The Snake River Alliance (SRA), a nonviolent group that monitors nuclear safety issues at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratories, emphasized that its "opposition" had always been peaceful and lawful: SRA does not advocate civil disobedience.

"Perhaps we should have used the generic term 'environmental activists'," National Guard spokesperson Lt. Jim Ball told The Progressive, pouring even more verbal kerosene on the fire.

As SRA pointed out, the DOE doesn't see the group as a threat. According the department's own documents, the DOE's biggest security threat stems from laid-off "ex-employees [who] may plan… an act of revenge."

The National Guard memo also targeted as possible subversives, the "large contingent of foreign students… attending school at Washington State University."

Lt. Bell declined to explain what the state had to fear from "gun-control advocates," but The Progressive provides a clue. "The Guard's own armories are missing hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition," the magazine reported. An internal National Guard investigation concluded that the weapons were probably stolen by Guard members and sold to "pawn shops, surplus stores and possibly white-supremacist groups."

Bye Bye, Baby Boys

Canada - The Canadian Medical Association Journal has noted an increase in the number of baby girls born in Canada and the US between 1970 and 1990. Over the last two decades, the number of Canadian male babies has fallen by 2.2. per 1,000 live births. The US Atlantic coastal region registered a loss of 5.6 males per 1,000 live births - 37,840 fewer males - over the same period.

Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly [PO Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403, fax: (410) 263-8944, erf@rachel.clark.net] lists a number of factors that can induce increased female births (winter months, smoking, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the pesticide DBCP) and male births (summer months, prostate cancer and war).

While sperm counts have declined steadily in the US and Europe over the past 50 years, no decline has been found in Asia and Latin America. The likely reason for the disparity: the plethora of industrial chemicals in US food and water supplies that are known to depress sperm counts and shrink testicles.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta report that the incidence of hypospadias - a birth defect of the penis linked to industrial chemicals in the food supply - doubled between 1968 and 1993. The Nationwide Birth Defects Monitoring Program notes that the most serious manifestations of hypospadias are increasing even faster. Meanwhile, cancers of the reproductive system now account for 30 percent of all cancers.

"The chemical industry is conducting a large-scale experiment on humanity," Rachel's editorializes. According to Rachel's Peter Montague, this experimentation "conducted without our informed consent" constitutes a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.