March 29, 2001
Special Media Compilation #3: Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future + The Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Threat to Social Programs, Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice in Canada and the Americas + A TRADING BLOCK + Comment on the Countdown to the Summit of the Americas + Three short GMO news + LABEL ME BADD + Insight: They're Spying On Us + Pesticide Poisoning in Schools + A poem actually written by George W Bush
Dear media person
As there is a worldwide outcry today against the incredibly shorth-sighted and oil-and-coal-serving decision by the Bush adminitration to pull out of the Kyoto treaty, which despite its shortcomings offers the only rampart so far against global warming, we are discovering that there is much more than such foot-dragging and rejectionism on the part of those who are doing their utmost to expand their gripping control over the entire planet. As we have seen this week in Bill Moyer's illusion-shattering PBS broadcast on the "Trade Secrets" of big chemical corporations revealing their unrelenting efforts at spin-controlling and masking the truth about their crimes against humanity and nature, they will stop at nothing to prevent the public from knowing the extent of the toxic chemical brew and now the GM biopollution to which they are subjecting us all and the Earth for the sheer sake of ever greater profits. In the recently published book "Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future" by Sheldon Rampton and John Staube (featured first below), we can learn about how they are manipulating most everyone with fake "experts" and pseudo science into believing their lies and deceptive advertizements about how beneficial their "products" supposedly are - amounting to what one reviewer of this book called a "Golden Age of Propaganda".
Another carefully p.r.ed campaign that has been going on for years is the alleged necessity of moving the world towards fulfilling the wildest dreams of corporate moguls by creating a regulatory environment more conducive to business interests and investments under the guise of free trade, an all encompassing scheme that covers--and eventually affects--most aspects of our lives. In a stunningly clear 23 page document by Maude Barlow, Chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy group, and a Director with the International Forum on Globalization, entitled "The Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Threat to Social Programs, Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice in Canada and the Americas" (see an excerpt below), the real agenda of those behind these "negociations" is fully disclosed - and it does not look pretty for the vast majority of people who would become even more disenfranchised from the pseudo-democracy we have in this era of corporate dominance.
May I invite you to explore the material compiled below and investigate for yourself - and for the immense benefit of your readers/listeners/viewers - the scope and prodigiously negative consequences of the decisions made behind closed doors for the sole benefit of a tiny minority of bottom line-obsessed tyrants and their politicial puppets.
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
(Much more at this URL above!)
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From: http://goods.perfectvision.ca/ViewMediaFile.cfm?REF=26
Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future
by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
"If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer. Read, get mad, roll up your sleeves, and fight back. Rampton and Stauber have issued a wake-up call we can't ignore."
- Bill Moyers
---
We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there's too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out.
We should stop trusting them right this second.
In their new book, Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber offer a chilling expose on the manufacturing of "independent experts." Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral "third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."
For example:
* You think that nonprofit organizations just give away their stamps of approval on products? Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $600,000 to the American Heart Association for the right to display AHA's name and logo in ads for its cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. Smith Kline Beecham paid the American Cancer Society $1 million for the right to use its logo in ads for Beecham's Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette anti-smoking ads.
* You think that you're witnessing a spontaneous public debate over a national issue? When the Justice Department began antitrust investigations of the Microsoft Corporation in 1998, Microsoft's public relations firm countered with a plan to plant pro-Microsoft articles, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces all across the nation, crafted by professional media handlers but meant to be perceived as off-the-cuff, heart-felt testimonials by "people out there."
* You think that a study out of a prestigious university is completely unbiased? In 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times column and advocated for changes in federal law to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry; that the study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International Inc.; and that Bentsen himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist.
* You think that all grassroots organizations are truly grassroots? In 1993, a group called Mothers Opposing Pollution (MOP) appeared, calling itself "the largest women's environmental group in Australia, with thousands of supporters across the country." Their cause: A campaign against plastic milk bottles. It turned out that the group's spokesperson, Alana Maloney, was in truth a woman named Janet Rundle, the business partner of a man who did P.R. for the Association of Liquidpaperboard Carton Manufacturers-the makers of paper milk cartons.
* You think that if a scientist says so, it must be true? In the early 1990s, tobacco companies secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of $156,000 to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A cancer researcher received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal. Nice work if you can get it, especially since the scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco-industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing.
Rampton and Stauber reveal many more such examples of "perception management"--all of them orchestrated to make us buy or believe whatever the "independent expert" is pushing. They also explore the underlying assumptions about human psychology--e.g., "the public must be manipulated for its own good"--that make this kind of subliminal hard-sell possible.
Destined to be hated by P.R. firms and corporations everywhere, Trust Us, We're Experts is an eye-opening account of how these entities reshape our reality, manufacture our consent, get us to part with our money, even change our lives. A whole new spin on spin, it will forever alter the way we look at news, information, and the people who serve it up to us.
WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING
"Stauber and Rampton have once again exposed the ugly underbelly of corporate America's psychological war on our citizens. Trust Us, We're Experts shows how giant corporations employ sophisticated psychiatric techniques, unscrupulous public figures, junk science, tainted studies and clever PR mercenaries in a relentless effort to market products that routinely kill, maim, deform and poison consumers and our environment."
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President, Water Keeper Alliance
"Trust Us, We're Experts is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism and a powerful vaccine against the stupefying effects of the corporate PR machine. Spread it around!"
- Barbara Ehrenreich
"If you've ever wanted to see a TV spin doctor hog-tied and dragged through the streets, Rampton and Stauber do the next best thing. This book is modern muckraking of the best variety, skewering hype and showing us how to separate real experts from snake oil salesmen and hired corporate know-it-alls."
- Jim Hightower
"Finally, a long-overdue expose of the shenanigans and subterfuge that lie behind the making of experts in America. Stauber and Rampton take us behind the scenes, inside corporate boardrooms, where marketing chiefs literally manufacture their own 'independent experts' to defend their products and practices. This groundbreaking book gives us a first look into the seamy side of corporate public relations, where academic experts of every stripe and kind are bought in various ways. An eye-opener."
- Jeremy Rifkin
"Unlike many exposes, the book is a page-turner. Once you start, you will want to read it all. While your heart may sink, your passions will be aroused. It is like a sudden awareness that sweeps illusions away. This is not a casual jeremiad, but a careful, patiently researched deconstruction of corporate behavior and their so-called ethics."
- Paul Hawken, author of Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism
"Rampton and Stauber's book explodes the cult of expertise and shows how easily the media and their readers can be misled by public relations claims masquerading as science. This book makes the best case I know for complete disclosure of the financial conflicts of interest of scientists and the corporate influence on university research."
- Sheldon Krimsky, Professor at Tufts University, author of: Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis
"Trust Us brilliantly exposes the dirtiest public relations campaigns in America for what they are--cynical attempts to undermine our democracy so some creep can sell your kid more cigarrettes, push more Microsoft software on you or melt down the North Pole with global warming pollution."
- John Passacantando, Executive Director, Greenpeace US
"This book is a must for everyone attempting to sift through the vast amount of information available in the media and on the net. It reveals how high-priced, international public relations corporations are hired to redefine facts, create confusion, and destroy reputations of accomplished scientists to protect their bottom line. The good news comes at the end of the book when the authors tell how to filter the news to remove the 'bottom-line bias' so exquisitely woven into advertisements and news items by special interests."
- Theo Colborn, Senior Program Scientist, World Wildlife Fund, co-author of Our Stolen Future
"The United States today is in the midst of the Golden Age of Propaganda. Well-heeled private interests have learned how to manipulate journalism and public discourse on fundamental public health, environmental and political issues through the sophisticated use of public relations, bogus experts and junk science. In Trust Us, We're Experts Rampton and Stauber do the extraordinary and groundbreaking job of exposing these sleazy practices and rigorously holding them up to the light of day. Well organized and wonderfully written, Trust Us, We're Experts is a real page turner. It is a true masterpiece."
- Robert W. McChesney author, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times
"After reading this book I couldn't possibly listen to an expert witness again, even one under oath, without a lot of healthy skepticism; and if given the opportunity, without asking: 'Who's paying you to say this?'"
- Mark Dowie
"This is a great book, and I think you should buy it. But since the point of the book is to think for yourself and not trust experts, perhaps you should thumb through it yourself for a little while. I think of it as a field guide to the kinds of lies you can expect from the information age."
- Bill McKibben
"Amusing . . . meticulously researched . . . Rampton and Stauber's documentation of PR campaigns proves that they are the real 'experts.' "
- Kaja Perina, Brill's Content
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface: The Smell Test
SECTION ONE: The Age of Spin
1. The Third Man
2. The Birth of Spin
3. Deciding What You'll Swallow
SECTION TWO: Risky Business
4. Dying for a Living
5. Packaging the Beast
6. Preventing Precaution
7. Attack of the Killer Potatoes
SECTION THREE: The Expertise Industry
8. The Best Science Money Can Buy
9. The Junkyard Dogs
10. Global Warming Is Good For You
EPILOGUE: Questioning Authority
APPENDIX: Suggested Resources
Related URL
http://www.prwatch.org/books/experts.html
---
Complementary reading:
"Monsanto employees and government regulatory agencies employees are the same people!" at: http://www.purefood.org/Monsanto/revolvedoor.cfm
...which goes on to show that Monsanto either has its own people everywhere in the US government and the FDA or give them a high-paying job when they are out of public office!
An example: Betty Martini <Mission-Possible-USA@Altavista.net> wrote in a recent correspondance:
"You always said Michael Taylor was being groomed for something. He is now head of Monsanto in Washington, D.C. He started the ball rolling on getting rid of the Delaney Amendment by writing the De Minimis Interpretation of the Delaney Amendment in l988. and then it was repealed. He knew that FDA toxicologist Dr. Adrian Gross had told Congress that aspartame violated the Delaney Amendment because without a shadow of a doubt it triggers brain tumors. And that was in l985. Congressional Record SID835:131 (August 1, l985). Yes, he really did Monsanto a favor and they certainly have rewarded him.
Also, Larry Thompson, a Monsanto attorney worked for King and Spalding, attorneys for Monsanto and Coke. Now he has been made Deputy under Attorney General Ashcroft. Monsanto knows that aspartame is as Dr. Bowen told the FDA many years ago when he was poisoned - "mass poisoning the consumer public in more than 70 countries of the world". Actually, about 100. They have used their checkbook well for those who have defended them. And there's Rumsfeld who called in his markers to get aspartame approved as Secretary of Defense (UPI Investigation, http://www.dorway.com).
From : http://www.canadians.org/campaigns/campaigns-tradepub-ftaa2.html
The Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Threat to Social Programs, Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice in Canada and the Americas
by Maude Barlow
Summary
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), currently being negotiated by 34 countries of the Americas, is intended by its architects to be the most far-reaching trade agreement in history. Although it is based on the model of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it goes far beyond NAFTA in its scope and power. The FTAA, as it now stands, would introduce into the Western Hemisphere all the disciplines of the proposed services agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) - the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) - with the powers of the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), to create a new trade powerhouse with sweeping new authority over every aspect of life in Canada and the Americas.
The GATS, now being negotiated in Geneva, is mandated to liberalize the global trade in services, including all public programs, and gradually phase out all government "barriers" to international competition in the services sector. The Trade Negotiations Committee of the FTAA, led by Canada in the crucial formative months when the first draft was written, is proposing a similar, even expanded, services agreement in the hemispheric pact. It is also proposing to retain, and perhaps expand, the "investor-state" provisions of NAFTA, which give corporations unprecedented rights to pursue their trade interests through legally binding trade tribunals.
Combining these two powers into one agreement will give unequalled new rights to the transnational corporations of the hemisphere to compete for and even challenge every publicly funded service of its governments, including health care, education, social security, culture and environmental protection.
As well, the proposed FTAA contains new provisions on competition policy, government procurement, market access and dispute settlement that, together with the inclusion of services and investment, could remove the ability of all the governments of the Americas to create or maintain laws, standards and regulations to protect the health, safety and well-being of their citizens and the environment they share. Moreover, the FTAA negotiators appear to have chosen to emulate the WTO rather than NAFTA in key areas of standard-setting and dispute settlement, where the WTO rules are tougher.
Essentially, what the FTAA negotiators have done, urged on by the big business community in every country, is to take the most ambitious elements of every global trade and investment agreement - existing or proposed - and put them all together in this openly ambitious hemispheric pact.
Once again, as in former trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO, this free trade agreement will contain no safeguards in the body of the text to protect workers, human rights, social security or health and environmental standards. Once again civil society and the majority of citizens who want a different kind of trade agreement have been excluded from the negotiations and will be shut out of the deliberations in Quebec City in April 2001.
However, the stakes for the peoples of the Americas have never been higher, and it appears a confrontation is inevitable.
CLIP - PLEASE go read the rest at http://www.canadians.org/campaigns/campaigns-tradepub-ftaa2.html
DAILY GRIST
27 Mar 2001
http://www.gristmagazine.com
6.
A TRADING BLOCK
Environmental and labor groups are gearing up for a new battle over trade next month in Buenos Aires and Quebec City, where countries are meeting to discuss the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The pact, which would create a 34-nation trading bloc in the Western Hemisphere, is a priority for the Bush administration. The administration and Latin American governments think the pact could lead to big bucks for all countries involved, but they oppose including environmental and labor standards in the agreement. Environmentalists and labor supporters, however, fear a race-to-the-bottom, with multinationals settling in countries that have the lowest standards or no standards at all. They are planning Seattle-like protests in Buenos Aires and Quebec City, hoping to turn out tens of thousands of demonstrators.
Los Angeles Times, Gary Polakovic, 25 Mar 2001
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environ/20010325/t000025759.html
From: SpiritNet@webtv.net
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001
Subject: Re: Countdown to the Summit of the Americas
Can you see the "forest" for all the trees? The issues (trees) that Jean so faithfully and effectively brings to our attention for action is only a beginning. We must change the SYSTEM of government in order to get to the solutions! So long as government remains in the hands of powerful moneyed interests through the "representative form" of government, there will be only escalating problems.
We must work to change the SYSTEM to one-person, one-vote, a Direct Democracy
Triaka
http://community.webtv.net/Triaka/COSMICALLYCORRECT
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001
Subject: 23rd Newsletter about GMOs and their diffusion in the world
From: "Comitato Scientifico Antivivisezionista" <csafin@iol.it>
HERE ARE 3 HAIR-RAISING EXCERPTS FROM THIS GMO NEWSLETTER. TO SUBSCRIBE TO THIS NEWSLETTER, JUST ASK THEM TO BE ADDED ON THEIR LIST. THEIR WEBSITE IS http://www.antivivisezione.it
HERE IS FIRST A QUOTE FROM AN UNKNOWN SOURCE TAKEN FROM THIS NEWSLETTER:
"The introduction into the environment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which can reproduce is a crime against humanity. Such an introduction can have unknown and unforeseeable consequences and can modify the planet’s natural genetic inheritance."
CLIP
8/3/01
Report by PSRAST (Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology) on the risks posed by the GMOs
Source: Genet
All genetically engineered crops contain DNA with a genetic element that stimulates the immune system to start a sequence of reactions leading to inflammation. Exposure to these genetic elements may lead to promotion of inflammation, arthritis and lymphoma. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that ingested DNA sequences large enough to contain whole genes have remained intact and entered the blood and tissues. Therefore, the scientists conclude, the available evidence is sufficient to support a moratorium on the massive intake of GM crops by human populations until the genetic consequences are resolved in the laboratory.
8/3/01
Greenpeace claims Kellogg's product has StarLink.
Source: Genet
In a press conference recently held, Greenpeace genetic engineering specialist Charles Margulis told reporters that tests commissioned by the group on three of Kellogg's Morningstar Farms products revealed a gene-altered soy ingredient and the StarLink genetically modified corn. While it is not illegal to use genetically engineered soy, Kellogg had previously said that they were using non-genetically engineered soy in their Morningstar Farms, Worthington, Natural Touch and Loma Linda products since April 1, 2000. Greenpeace's testing was conducted by an Iowa lab. Greenpeace scientist urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to order a nationwide recall of Kellogg's product that contains StarLink corn.
9/3/01
The NGO Friends of the Earth has sent a letter to President Bush regarding the GMOs.
Source: Friends of the Earth, Europe.
The NGO Friends of the Earth has sent a letter to President Bush demanding that the US stops exporting StarLink maize (which is not authorized even in the US for human consumption) to third countries. In fact, although StarLink was found in the U.S. food supply on September 18th, 2000, Japan reports repeated findings of StarLink as recently as February 2001. This means that the U.S. government has not been able to assure that U.S. raw grain and processed foods are free from StarLink. Furthermore, the bacterial toxin engineered into StarLink corn is known to be deadly to Monarch butterflies and other beneficial insects. The toxin has also appeared without explanation in another variety of corn seed sold in the U.S. showing the threat of cross contamination that could threaten farmers in other countries. Friends of the Earth is also trying to get at least 100 NGOs to sign the letter up.
CLIP
DAILY GRIST
27 Mar 2001
http://www.gristmagazine.com
4.
LABEL ME BADD
Three-fourths of Americans want to know if their food contains genetically engineered ingredients, according to a poll released yesterday by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents did not want such ingredients in the food supply, period. However, when they were told that the ingredients were already in many food products on grocery store shelves, nearly half of the respondents said the products must therefore be safe. Despite pressure from environmental and consumer groups, the U.S. has said it won't require labeling of genetically engineered foods. Labeling is already required in Japan, South Korea, Australia, and most of Europe.
MSNBC.com, 27 Mar 2001
http://www.msnbc.com/news/550142.asp
Houston Chronicle, Associated Press, 27 Mar 2001
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/860106
Take action against genetically engineered food
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/dogood/food.stm
From: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=390
Insight: They're Spying On Us
20-Mar-2001
Our government spied on the Soviet Union for decades, but now that the cold war is over, they’re aimingtheir sights on us.
The April 2001 issue of Popular Mechanics reveals that two powerful intelligence gathering tools the U.S.created to eavesdrop on the Soviets are now being used to monitor Americans. One system, known as Echelon, intercepts and analyzes our phone calls, faxes and e-mail, looking for “key” words.
The other system, Tempest, can secretly read the displays on personal computers, cash registers andautomatic teller machines. Whitley Strieber was personally warned by a government agent 15 years agothat the data on his computer was being read in this way.
The military was supposed to use these systems to spy on enemy defense contractors, but when the European Parliament began investigating Echelon, they discovered we had also used it to spy on two European companies. This angered them so much that they have revealed some of the details about these classified systems. Washington lawyer and former CIA director James Woolsey was authorized by the State Department to answer reporters’ questions about the charges of spying on our allies and acknowledged it was true, saying we were trying to discourage bribery.
Echelon is run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and is a multinational program that includes the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy and Turkey. The job of the NSA is to eavesdrop on the world and share its information with other member states. This involves things like intercepting radio signals and unscrambling encrypted messages. Its chief customer for this information is the CIA.
Echelon is composed of massive computers on the ground and is also based in space, since when telecommunications began to be transmitted by satellite, Echelon had to go there too. The need for ground-based listening posts that are spread throughout the world explains the need to enlist other countries in the project.
It is estimated that there is a 90 percent chance that NSA is listening when you talk to someone on the phone overseas. Echelon can identify individuals like Saddam Hussein by the sound of his voice, the moment he begins speaking on the telephone.
Echelon searches for key words in several different “dictionaries.” They U.K. version, for example, contains slang used by the Irish Republican Army.
But the incredible growth in internet traffic may be more than Echelon can handle. NSA has confirmed that its computers were shut down for three days last year, possibly due to system overloads.
The Los Angeles Times reports that a team of Southern California aerospace companies is secretly recruiting engineers for the National Reconnaissance Office to build a new generation of spy satellites under what is believed to be the largest intelligence-related contract ever. The project will require 5,000 engineers, technicians and computer programmers over the next 5 years, just for the initial design.
The supersecret project is estimated to be worth as much as 25 billion dollars over the next two decades. These new satellites will be equipped with powerful telescopes and radar and will be farther out in space and harder to detect. They will be able to fly over and photograph military compounds anywhere in the world, in darkness or through cloud cover.
The (NRO) remains one of the most secret government agencies. Even its logo, a space probe circling the globe, was a secret until 1994. “This program is so secret that most of the people who work on it won’t have a good sense of what they are doing,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Arlington Institute.
The need for the new satellites is in part driven by problems identified during the Gulf War, when military commanders complained about inadequate intelligence photos. It will also be harder to predict where these satellites will be at any given time. U.S. army intelligence officers were alarmed recently when they found a large contingent of North Korean troops lined up near the demilitarized zone with South Korea. The troops were able to move there undetected by coordinating the operation with the gaps in the orbit of a U.S. military spy satellite.
Ever since we were surprised at Pearl Harbor, we’ve known that if we can anticipate what our enemies are planning, we can prepare and perhaps even negotiate. No American citizen would want us not to develop the technology to do this. But how can we be assured that it won’t be turned on us?
The party and leaders in power during the period when the equipment is perfected that could monitor the words and actions of every American citizen would be in a position to become instant dictators. If they could monitor the flow of information within the media, we might not even realize we no longer lived in a democracy.
But it would eventually dawn on us, and then citizens would have to go underground and prepare to stage a new Revolution, all over again.
More at http://www.unknowncountry.com/mindframe/opinion/
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001
From: "Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D." <jackie@deepteaching.com>
Subject: Pesticide Poisoning in Schools
Hello,
Ever have a child, either in the K-12 grades or away at college, complain of headaches, dizziness, muscle cramps, learning disabilities, trouble concentrating, irritability, nausea, vomiting, sore throats, rashes, eye pain, blisters, breathing problems, asthma attacks, low-grade fevers, or depression? Before you assume that they have the flu or see your doctor about attention deficit disorder, check the school's pesticide policy. The probability is high that you should consider pesticide exposure as one of the possible causes, since most schools, colleges, universities, and learning centers in the U.S. (and probably the world) are spraying pesticides in classrooms, locker rooms, bathrooms, kitchens and cafeterias.
I explore this troubling issue in this week's Healing Our World commentary, "Killing the Future - Pesticide Spraying in Our Children's Schools," on the Environment News Service, hosted on the LYCOS Network. You can view it at http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2001/2001L-03-23g.html .
The sore throat a child exhibits today could manifest as cancer or reproductive dysfunction in later life.
Yet our leaders seem quite uninterested in resolving this issue...
All the best,
Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
http://www.ens.lycos.com
http://www.healingourworld.com.
A poem actually written by George W Bush
Our new president has taken some criticism for not having a poet set the tone at his inauguration. The absence of a poet, or the absence of the arts in general, speaks volumes about the president. But, as the Washington Post shared on Sunday, Dubya can be very poetic. In fact, the following is a poem composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. The quotes have been arranged for aesthetic reasons only by Post writer Richard Thompson.
Enjoy.
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush
I think we all agree,
the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of
the Internet
Become more few?
How many hands
Have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg
of opportunity.
I know that the human being
and the fish
Can coexist.
Families is where our nation
Finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on you family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize Society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!
Major league.
