archived: 3 - 9 August, 2003 Back Next
HEALTH CARE
The Bush administration's second-ranking health official on Wednesday advocated making abstinence a key pillar of HIV prevention programs for young Americans, prompting sharp criticism from AIDS activists. ‘Encouraging young people and young adults to abstain is the only appropriate initial strategy,’ Claude Allen, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, told delegates at the end of the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta. ‘Delaying sexual debut is the first message they should hear,’ said Allen, a leading proponent of abstinence-only sex education and a former aide to conservative icon and former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms. Allen's comments prompted jeers from hundreds of activists at the conference in Atlanta and came just days after the federal government reported that the number of AIDS cases had risen in 2002 for the first time in nearly a decade. An estimated 850,000 to 950,000 Americans have the AIDS virus. AIDS killed 16,371 people across the nation last year. ‘Allowing Claude Allen, a man with such hostile viewpoints on the basic tenets of HIV prevention, to close the conference speaks volumes about the Bush administration's true agenda on these issues,’ said Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People with AIDS. – Reuters
AMERICORPS
“Repairing hiking trails in Acadia National Park. Tracking lobsters aboard fishing boats. Publishing an environmental newsletter for 5,000 teachers statewide. These conservation-related programs and numerous other activities are bracing to do without scores of volunteers funded by the federal AmeriCorps program. Congress has been unable to resolve disputes over whether to funnel $100 million to the financially troubled agency. Now the uncertainty threatens to undermine the entire program because organizers say they must know by Aug. 1 how many volunteers to recruit and hire for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Congress almost certainly cannot approve any funding until at least September - and that depends on lawmakers resolving their disputes.
"Everyone is kind of shocked and dismayed that the largest and most successful program in Maine is going to disappear," said Susan Spinell, acting director of the Maine Conservation Corps.” – Maine Today
US UNLEASHES RADIO ACTIVE NIGHTMARE
“The American use of depleted uranium munitions in both Persian Gulf wars has unleashed a toxic disaster that will eclipse the Agent Orange tragedy of the Vietnam War, a former top Army official said Monday evening.
Former Maj. Douglas Rokke, who was director of the Army's depleted uranium project, spoke to 125 people at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society. The Champaign, Ill., science professor was brought here by the Western New York Peace Center.
. . . Rokke fit the image of an animated science professor, hair tousled, adjusting his glasses and eager to impart his findings to the next generation. If what he says is true, students will soon have yet another chapter of heartbreaking history to study in the schools. If he is wrong, it will take years to disprove.
Called to active duty in 1990, Rokke said, he was assigned to develop procedures for cleaning up uranium contamination after "they decided to use depleted uranium munitions" in the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
‘They didn't tell anybody what they were doing. Why would they? Depleted uranium munitions are the ultimate weapon. Each round fired by an Abrams tank (represents) 10 pounds of solid uranium-238. The purpose of war is to kill and destroy.’
Rokke said his team in the gulf blew up vehicles and structures with these munitions and then tested the wreckage for radioactive contamination. He said they found that uranium dust is so fine that it acts like a gas, seeping through the tiny pores of protective masks.” – Information Clearing House
A LEGACY OF HATRED
“Obsessed with
capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid on a house in
the Mansur district of Baghdad yesterday into a bloodbath, opening fire on
scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to 11, including
two children, their mother and crippled father. At least one civilian car caught
fire, cremating its occupants.
The vehicle carrying the two children and their mother and father
was riddled by bullets as it approached a razor-wired checkpoint outside the
house.
Amid the fury generated among the largely middle-class residents
of Mansur - by ghastly coincidence, the killings were scarcely 40 metres from
the houses in which 16 civilians died when the Americans tried to kill Saddam
towards the end of the war in April - whatever political advantages were gained
by the killing of Saddam's sons have been squandered. A doctor at the Yarmouk
hospital, which received four of the dead, turned on me angrily last night,
shouting: ‘If an American came to my emergency room, maybe I would kill him.’” –
Information Clearing House
BLAIR KNEW TOO!
“The CIA objected to claims in the British government's September dossier on Iraq's banned weapons programme, the issue at the heart of the Kelly affair, it was revealed yesterday.
It appears that among the CIA's objections was the much-trumpeted claim that Iraqi forces could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so. That claim was strongly challenged by David Kelly, the government's senior scientific adviser, and will be one of the issues at the heart of the Hutton judicial inquiry into the circumstances leading up to his death. The inquiry opens in London tomorrow. The disclosure by the Foreign Office makes it plain the CIA's objections went far beyond the well-aired dispute over whether Iraq was seeking uranium from the west African state of Niger.” – Guardian Unlimited
“BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq. Operation Rockingham, established by the Defense Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defense in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD program and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down. The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added. 'Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasising reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.'” – Sunday Herald
CHENEY’S ENERGY TASK FORCE
“Here is the smoking gun pointing directly to Vice President Richard Cheney's secret energy company meetings held at the White House in early 2001. Some of the documents of the meetings reveal charts of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" and a "map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals" ... Congress and the press should immediately and thoroughly investigate the any linkage between the secret White House deals, the fake California energy crisis, the Enron collapse, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The question to ask is: Did the White House sell US foreign policy to the highest energy company bidder? ... “– Veterans For Common Sense
REPUBLICANS CONTINUE ENVIRONMENT ASSAULT
Three years ago, in a rare moment of harmony, a coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in Congress approved what it hoped would be a guaranteed stream of revenue for a range of environmental purposes. . . . That was then. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives cut the program almost in half, to $1.2 billion from the $2.1 billion originally authorized for the 2004 fiscal year. The major land acquisition programs suffered most of the damage, in particular the venerable Land and Water Conservation Fund, which President Bush had grandly promised during his 2000 campaign to "fully fund" at $900 million. The House, in full nose-thumbing mode, cut that figure to a measly $198 million. . . . One would at least have expected some annoyance from Mr. Bush at the contempt with which Mr. Taylor and the Republicans treated his campaign pledge on open space. So far, however, there has not been a murmur from the White House.” – New York Times
HEAD START – HEADING BACKWARDS
“Fewer than eight states are equipped to take over the federal Head Start preschool program for poor children in their states, an idea that Congress is seriously considering, early childhood education experts warn.
The U.S. House of Representatives is slated next week to take up a bill (H.R. 2210) that would allow up to eight states to run the Head Start program as part of a “demonstration” project.
Head Start, part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program, is a federal program run at the local level that provides education, health care, nutrition and parent involvement programs to nearly 1 million children and their families.
The House GOP’s original bill sparked intense opposition from child advocacy groups, which argued that cash-strapped states might use federal Head Start money for other purposes. Democratic governors in Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania also raised concerns about the GOP plan.” – Stateline
WORLD “CRISIS”
“Secretary General Kofi Annan called publicly today for a rethinking of the international institutions that were largely sidelined during the Iraq war. ‘Many of us sense that we are living through a crisis of the international system,’ he said. The war and more recent crises in Africa, he added, "force us to ask ourselves whether the institutions and methods we are accustomed to are really adequate to deal with all the stresses of the last couple of years." . . . In effect, three months after President Bush warned that the United Nations might become irrelevant, the secretary general turned a traditional midsummer news conference into a stump speech on the value of international institutions in general and the United Nations in particular. At one point, recalling the bitter dismissals of the United Nations last winter, he said, with a bare hint of satisfaction, ‘I did warn those who were bashing the U.N. that they had to be careful because they may need the U.N. soon.’” – New York Times