-Caveat Lector- RadTimes # 45 - September, 2000 aka "Shit That Matters" An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANNOUNCEMENT: RadTimes is now on the web and in audio! See LUVeR Alternative News <www.luver.org> for details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --------------- --1 in 3 women abused, UN report shows --Women on the Verge of an Economic Breakdown --Sexually Abused Children Get Little Help --No One Is Illegal --Lawyers Allege Maker of Ritalin, Psychiatric Group 'Created' Disease (+ reader commentary) Linked stories: *13 Indicted In Biggest Lab Fraud In American History *Ontario SWAT Team To Tackle Polluters *From Marshes to Shopping Malls ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Begin stories: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 in 3 women abused, UN report shows September 20, 2000 By Elaine Carey Toronto Star Demographics Reporter At least one in three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in some way, most often by someone she knows, says a United Nations report that decries ongoing prejudice against women. Despite the tremendous gains of the 20th century, discrimination and violence against women and girls ``remain firmly rooted in cultures around the world,'' says the UN in its annual report on the State of World Population, released today. `But all of us in the development community realize that, unless we make progress in gender equality, we can't make progress in any of these (other) areas.' - Alanna Armitage UN program officer ``Girls and women the world over are denied access to education and health care,'' it says. ``Millions are subjected to abuse and violence. Women's legal rights are not protected. Their medical concerns are given less attention than men's are. They are denied opportunities in the workplace and receive less pay than men for the same work.'' While many countries have started taking steps to protect women's rights, ``actual progress has been slow,'' the report says, chronicling a host of abuses: Around the world, there are 80 million unwanted pregnancies, 20 million unsafe abortions, 500,000 maternal deaths and 333 million new sexually transmitted diseases each year. Adolescent girls are particularly at risk. Women are becoming infected with HIV at a faster rate than men and in Africa they outnumber infected men by 2 million. Older men are infecting teenage girls at a rate that is five or six times higher than the rate among teenage boys. Two million girls aged 5 to 15 are taken into the commercial sex trade every year. Sexual assault and violence take away almost one in five healthy years of life of women aged 15 to 44. In Canada, the health-related costs of violence against women are estimated at $900 million a year. Some 130 million girls and young women have undergone female genital mutilation. Women and girls worldwide ``across lines of income, class and culture are subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse.'' An estimated 4 million women and girls are bought and sold worldwide each year, either into marriage, prostitution or slavery. A total of 1,400 women a day still die in childbirth, the equivalent of four jumbo jets crashing. Canada's record of physical assault against women by a male partner is higher than in many other countries. Nationally, 29 per cent of women in an intimate relationship have been assaulted, compared to 22 per cent in the United States and 20 per cent in South Africa and 16 per cent in Cambodia. It won't be known until the report's official release how these abuse statistics were gathered. Alanna Armitage, a UN program officer who is in Ottawa, found the number of deaths during childbirth ``still so shocking, especially since we know how to prevent it.'' The report is both optimistic and pessimistic, she said. ``We have come really far in some areas, like female genital mutilation, which we couldn't even speak about 10 years ago. Now six or seven countries have outlawed it. ``But all of us in the development community realize that, unless we make progress in gender equality, we can't make progress in any of these areas,'' she said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Women on the Verge of an Economic Breakdown <http://www.simulconference.com/public/sowf/sowf/dispatches/dispatch22.html> On top of the "old poverty," globalization brings a new terrorism by Phillip Tomlinson Vandana Shiva and Devaki Jain have much in common. They spend a lot of time speaking about their problems. That's because they've made the problems of hundreds of millions of people their own. And, as they see it, that is inescapable, since a large number of those people are among the disenfranchised of India, Shiva's and Jain's native land. Addressing separate sessions, "Science, Technology and Globalization," and "Poverty Reduction and Development Cooperation", at the State of the World Forum, both women made passionate pleas for a new ethic toward addressing world poverty and the gender inequality that it fosters in an era where technology has created an unfortunate divide. "At the moment, we are faced with an information divide that arises from an unequal system in information and knowledge, an unequal capacity to use the information for development," said Shiva, director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and National Research Policy in India. "The divide is economic, ecological, political and particularly gender-based." According to estimates from World Development Indicators, inequality continues to plague women across a broad spectrum. Women work two-thirds of the world's working hours, produce half of the world's food, but earn only 10 percent of the world's income and own less than one percent of the world's property. Almost a quarter of the global population lives in extreme poverty, on less than the equivalent of one dollar per day. Seventy percent of those people are women, and Shiva and Jain are accustomed to seeing those women in India. Said Jain: "They are bearing burdens beyond imagination, highest maternal mortality, highest illiteracy, and now add that to the grotesque figures of crimes against women in the household and in the theatres of war, and you want to bow your head in shame." The Harvard University study "The Global Burden of Disease" estimates that gender violence causes more deaths and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war. Within this context, Shiva painted an alarming picture with a depressing backdrop, emphasizing that things taken for granted in the industrial world are scarce or non-existent for the billions living in poverty in the developing world. "Twenty percent lack access to safe drinking water, 40 percent lack adequate sanitation, 20 percent live in inadequate housing, 25 percent of the world's countries have less than one telephone per one hundred people, and 30 percent of the world's children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition. The idea that science is a means to curing much of the world's ills, said Shiva, is an exciting one, but she also pointed out that, in places like India, it remains a hope, not a reality. Jain concurred, saying, "While the 'old poor' continue, there is a new assault on livelihoods, a deeper sense of insecurity than before, due to the speed and hype of what is called globalization. I call this form of globalization economic terrorism." Shiva cited as one example of this "terrorism" the fact that the spraying of pesticides has deprived millions of people, most of them women, of their livelihood. "The poorest of women can maintain their goats because fodder is for free, as long as fodder exists. You start spraying around in these ecosystems, that's the theft of the livelihood of 50 percent of rural India, and I would apply that to Africa and Latin America and the rest of Asia. "New independent studies are coming out that there is now evidence of very large yield drops. The yields are actually coming down as you re-engineer crops to have traits like plants resistant to herbicides, to have traits like plants producing their own herbicides." Before globalization, said Jain, "The aim of development cooperation has to be national self-reliance and then regional self-reliance. This may look weird and in total dissonant conflict with a world that yearns for borderlessness through globalization." Shiva added that we must address gender inequalities in parallel with technological and economic gaps. "If we are going to have a world different from the one we have known in the past," said Shiva, "we must make sure that [women] have a role in making decisions, and policies [must be] launched not only to protect investment, intellectual property, and individual privacy, but also to promote the rights of women to participate in development. "We need open and well-regulated information and communications markets, but also policies that enhance women's participation in these markets. We need education policies that not only favor a skilled labor force, but also a system that encourages women's participation in this labor force. We need effective regulatory and standard-setting institutions that are just and equitable for all." Shiva sums it up in this context: "In many developing countries, there is now a nearly critical mass of educated women ready to participate and ready to act as intermediaries for raising consciousness and organizing the grassroots. Technology has changed the possibilities for communication, not simply in terms of facilitating the imparting of knowledge from one group to another but, more importantly, in terms of allowing all groups to take part in creating knowledge. This is a way of saying that, as we move into the 21st century, women will increasingly have to take on the responsibility of defining the dimensions of the good life. That is, a plentiful, but also a just and equitable life, as we become partners in a world whose parameters are determined by forces not only beyond individual control, but sometimes seemingly beyond national control." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sexually Abused Children Get Little Help By Rosario Liquicia BANGKOK, Sep 17 (IPS) - Sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of very young children is rampant in Asia, but health and social services are grossly inadequate to meet the needs of these traumatised victims, experts say. While there are existing laws to protect children against these crimes, enforcement is poor and in some cases, hampered by corruption and the complicity of police and the military. ''Sexual abuse continues to be the most hidden and unreported form of sexual violence against children and youth in Asia due to the 'taboo' nature of the subject and the societal sanction of the abusers,'' said a summary of the findings of two separate studies on sexually abused and sexually exploited children and youth in the Mekong sub-region and South Asia. The studies, conducted by the Bangkok-based Economic and Social Commission for the Asia-Pacific (ESCAP), focused on the health needs of and services available to abused and exploited children under 18 in two main areas: the Greater Mekong sub-region and South Asia. The countries in the Mekong covered by the study were Cambodia, China's Yunnan province, Laos, Burma, Vietnam and Thailand. In South Asia, the countries included Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal. ESCAP executive secretary Kim Hak-Su, at the launch of the reports here Sep 15, said they were the first comprehensive studies on the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, which remains a sensitive issue in the region. The findings, he said, illustrate the gravity of the problem, be they abuse of children within and outside the family and exploitation by traffickers that result in youngsters working in the sex industry. Kim added that the reports' findings are also a reminder for government and civil society to do more to address the problem and help victims become reintegrated into society. Despite the urgency of the problem, Kim said, few attempts are being made to provide children and adolescents with the psychological support they need to overcome the severe trauma they suffer as a result of working in the sex industry. ''We found that there were virtually no services available for young victims of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation and, where services existed, they only treated physical ailments,'' Kim added. ''Almost no regard was paid to the emotional and psychological care young victims need to help them recover and reintegrate into the community,'' he pointed out. Vitit Muntarbhorn, from the law faculty of Chulalongkorn University, describes child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation as modern-day slavery. ''Slavery is with us and it comes as the children in the region are thugged, mugged and drugged into sexual abuse and exploitation and we are ashamed of it,'' he said. The majority of sexual abuse victims covered by the studies were girls aged six to 12 years in the Mekong area, and girls aged 10-15 in South Asia. Some girls were as young as four when they first suffered sexual abuse, the findings showed. Sexual abuse -- rape and incest -- occurred predominantly at the hands of family members, relatives or acquaintances, the reports said. Sexual exploitation, which comprises prostitution, trafficking and pornography, was mostly perpetrated by nationals of the region, the findings further revealed, debunking perceptions that the crime is largely committed by foreigners. Poverty, dysfunctional families as well as lack of, or low levels of education and skills of children and parents, all contribute to the sexual exploitation of children. The involvement of police and military personnel in these illegal activities also allows such crimes to persist. In Thailand, laws criminalising child sexual abuse and exploitation exist, but the problem lies in their enforcement, says former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun. ''You can write up laws, you can enact laws but ... they do not become a real thing, or become effective until and unless there is a full and effective enforcement,'' he said during the launch of the reports. ''But in our society where corruption is rampant at every level, in the public sector or otherwise, that is a great impediment to the enforcement of those laws,'' said Anand, chairman of the national committee for the formulation of Thailand's human rights action plan. According to ESCAP, most children sampled in the surveys in Laos, Thailand and China's Yunnan province, said they entered prostitution willingly for financial incentives, but the majority of those in the other Mekong areas and in South Asia were forced into selling their bodies. In many areas of Bangladesh and Nepal, the South Asian report says, the level of poverty is so distressing that parents of young girls often sell one of their daughters in order to secure two meals a day for the rest of the family. The trafficking of children and youth for the sex industry, both within Asia and from Asia to other continents, continues to be a lucrative business and a cause for great concern, ESCAP says. Trafficking of girls from India to the Gulf states and Europe is common, the report points out, with many middle-aged men travelling to India with the purpose of ''marrying'' girls from 13 to 18 years of age. Because certificates for these marriages are easily obtained for a price, the girls are taken away and then coerced into being sex slaves or sold for a higher price. Likewise, the studies estimate that up to 400,000 children are in prostitution in India's metropolitan cities, and that about 20 percent of them are brought in annually from Nepal. In Cambodia, virgins are sold for up to 800 U.S. dollars, an amount that is three times the annual GDP (gross domestic product) per capita of the country. All the 53 girls covered by the Cambodian study were main breadwinners for their families, and 71 percent of them were the eldest children. Boys as young as five form the majority of victims of sexual exploitation in Sri Lanka, which has been fuelled by sex tourism. These are bonded children who are used in prostitution and pornography and are controlled by strong international rings that cannot be easily penetrated, the ESCAP reports say. ''The fate of the bonded child is bleak,'' the ESCAP reports conceded. "Young victims are often discarded after a season or two, doomed to a life of crime thereafter.'' Unless the victims, who are often injected with hormones and drugs, are removed from their abusive environment at an early age, effective rehabilitation would be difficult, conclude the ESCAP reports. The offenders are usually foreign paedophiles, but local ''new rich'' paedophiles have emerged in recent years, the same reports note. In Pakistan, where child sexual abuse is probably the least acknowledged and least explored form of child abuse, the commercial sexual exploitation of children is kept underground. The studies say sexually abused and exploited children suffer from severe psycho-social problems such as depression and guilt, and show signs of self-mutilation, substance abuse and tendency to carry out suicide. Often, they also have sexually-transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. In Cambodia, the ESCAP reports say as many as 61 percent of sex workers are HIV-positive. Abused children also had unwanted pregnancies and had undergone unsafe abortions, endangering the health and sometimes their lives and those of their babies. But governments have hardly offered help, and NGOs and private organisations have provided the most effective services to address the medical, educational and training needs of these traumatised children, the reports say. But their services are concentrated in urban centres and insufficient budgets and staff limit their capacity. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No One Is Illegal In the creation, life forms upon Mother Earth were never told that they could not journey to where the pursuit of needs or desire would take them. Many life forms depended upon the journey for their survival; the caribou, the buffalo, the whale, the salmon, flocks of many types of birds, even the human animal journeyed. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. Along came groups of human animals who conquered other groups of once free human animals. The conquerors set marks upon paper that defined the limits of their conquest and these marks became the borders that set all of the boundaries of their of authority. The land and all life that lived within the boundaries of their authority were subject to the dictates of the authority of the conquerors who became a ruling class over all within their rule. The rules of the rulers were set down on paper as laws which defined what was legal and what was illegal based upon what benefited the rulers. Those outside of the boundaries could only cross the borders legally if the rulers felt they would benefit from that act. Those that crossed with little or no benefit to the rulers were declared illegal. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. The rulers of the unnatural nations saw all lands of indigenous people as unconquered lands. Since, within their system of unnatural nations the rulers had, in their view, the divine right of authority, those outside of their system had only the right to be conquered and ruled. Thus the progression of the system of unnatural nations has been that of world wide conquest of unconquered lands. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. Though the ruling classes of the unnatural nations with their borders sought to control those that crossed their borders, they did not place the same limitations upon themselves. Throughout the history of the unnatural nations acts of invasion of other unnatural nations have continuously occurred which has advanced to the state of vast wars of mass death and destruction. Given the ruler's laws of borders, that they base the boundaries of their authority upon, all offensive wars should be illegal, but the laws of the rulers only are for the governed and are not meant for the governors. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. Unnatural nations formed alliances with other unnatural nations, signed military pacts and rights of exploitation which they called trade agreements. The rulers and their exploitation were given free passage across the borders of unnatural nations. Thus the repression and exploitation of the people and the pillaging of Mother Earth became multinational pursuits. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. The people who are ruled by the rulers are documented and placed under the ownership of the unnatural nations and called citizens. To be owned by an unnatural state brings the slave's duty to follow the ruler's laws, fight if needed in the ruler's army and to pay part of all that which they make in the form of taxes to the rulers. To the ruled they may only cross their master's borders with their master's permission or they are declared illegal. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. Most of the governed classes must seek out employment from the owning class, for the owning class has proclaimed resources and the production of needs as their private property. Thus the governed class also became the working class that produces the needs of society in which the owning class profits from by selling back to the producers their needs in the form of consumer products. To attempt to change this arrangement is illegal by the ruler's laws, as is crossing their borders without permission to sell one's labor for greater return. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. Throughout the world the owning class seeks to accumulate all that they can by keeping as little of produced wealth and needs as possible out of the hands of the people. To back up this arrangement the owning class uses it's hired guns, the police and military, it's laws, courts and prisons to keep those that they govern from gaining a better share. The very existence of the unnatural states and their borders is an act to keep the owners rich, the governor's governing and the people poor and oppressed. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. The people struggle to survive under this system, for survival is this first natural law of all. Sometimes because economic needs become so great, or to get out of the way of the ruler's wars, people find that they must move to new locations to seek work or safety. If that move takes them across the master's borders without permission, they become illegals, even if they are doing nothing more than following the first natural law. In the Natural World there are no borders, on one is illegal. Sometimes with family intact, other times forced to separate from families, the ones called illegals move as they can down perilous paths, hunted by agents of the unnatural states and sometimes preyed upon by those seeking vulnerable victims. Cold or hot; hungry; hiding out in the elements; longing for the home they were forced to leave behind; moved by the hope that at the end of the journey they will find something better. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. Declared illegal by those who seek to control the world; hated by those that cannot see beyond their master's deceitful social conditioning. Those declared illegal become the master's blamed ones for everything from driving wages down, to taking jobs away, crime rates and even environmental destruction. All the things that, in fact, the owner's greed produces. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. The Natural World is thrown out of balance. Those following Natural law become outlaws. Nothing makes common sense anymore. Where in the laws that govern the existence of all upon our Mother Earth is there found that a few have the legal right to govern and exploit the many? Where does it state that the majority must do without so that a tiny minority can have far more than they will ever need? Where in the Natural laws does it declare those that cross unnatural borders are illegal persons? In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal. The unnatural system of the greedy few cannot go on forever, for our Mother Earth cannot withstand that continuous abuse. The people can give to the greedy ones only so much. Mother Earth is already showing signs of breaking down; things must change. We must restore the natural balance of things, the borders must come down and those who have been declared illegal must become legal once again. For there are no borders in the Natural World, and no one is illegal. In The Spirit Of Total Resistance Arthur J. Miller ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lawyers Allege Maker of Ritalin, Psychiatric Group 'Created' Disease By RICHARD B. SCHMITT - Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL The lawyers who brought you suits over tobacco, guns and health-maintenance organizations have a new target: Ritalin. Wednesday, plaintiffs' lawyers filed two suits, alleging that the maker of Ritalin, the commonly prescribed attention-deficit treatment, conspired with a psychiatric group to "create" a disease, and later hyped the drug's benefits. The cases, filed in California and New Jersey, seek billions of dollars in damages, and are likely to be followed by suits on behalf of consumers in other states, the lawyers said. The legal action tracks a growing public debate over Ritalin. Most psychologists and psychiatrists believe that, at least in short-term use, the drug is safe and effective in treating so-called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. But a vocal minority claims that ADHD has been over-diagnosed, and that Ritalin has been over-prescribed, including among many preschool children. Critics also say the long-term side-effects of Ritalin haven't been adequately studied. This spring, the issue drew the attention of the White House, which ordered up a study of ADHD drugs prescribed for very young children. Ritalin has been distributed in the U.S. since the 1950s, originally by Ciba-Geigy Corp., which became part of Swiss-based Novartis AG, following a 1997 merger. Officials at Novartis, and another defendant, the American Psychiatric Association, said they hadn't seen the suits, although they had strongly denied any wrongdoing in connection with a similar suit over Ritalin filed earlier this year in Texas. "Ritalin has been used safely and effectively in the treatment of millions of ADHD patients for over 40 years, and is the most studied drug prescribed for the disorder," Novartis said, in a statement responding to the Texas suit. The American Psychiatric Association, in its own earlier statement on the Texas case, said the allegation that it had conspired with Novartis to create the ADHD diagnosis was "ludicrous and totally false," and said there existed "a mountain of scientific evidence to refute these meritless allegations." Scruggs Leads Lawyers In the latest suits, the lawyers are led by Pascagoula, Miss., plaintiffs' attorney Richard Scruggs, famed for helping negotiate the landmark settlements between state attorneys general and the tobacco industry in 1998, while earning his law firm an estimated $1 billion fee. Other lawyers involved include members of the "Castano" group, a network of plaintiffs' lawyers that filed suits against the tobacco industry on behalf of smokers. Since the tobacco suits, some of the lawyers have launched cases against gun manufacturers, health-maintenance organizations and drug companies, including the manufacturers of the fen-phen diet cocktail. In Ritalin's case, they are also joining forces with lawyers in the previously filed Texas suit. The Ritalin defendants "manufactured a disease," asserts Mr. Scruggs. "It has been grossly over-prescribed. It is a huge risk." Class-Action Status Sought The lawsuits, which seek class-action status, contend that Novartis and Ciba-Geigy, along with the psychiatric association, conspired to create a broad-based definition of hyperactivity disorders in the standard medical text used by doctors; that, the suits say, has had the effect of boosting sales and profits. Subsequently, Novartis and Ciba-Geigy employed false and misleading advertising, which played down the drugs' side-effects, and oversold the benefits, the suits allege. The suits also name Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or Chadd, a Landover, Md., nonprofit support group, which has received financial backing from Novartis, according to the suit. Chadd officials couldn't immediately be reached for comment. Donald Hildre, a San Diego lawyer, said the suit in California was filed under a provision of the state's business and professions code, which provides for forfeiture of profits and huge fines, in instances where companies are found to have misled the public. He added that the same law was invoked in state litigation against tobacco companies. The lead plaintiff in his suit, filed in San Diego federal court, is the son of a secretary at his law firm, who took Ritalin for five years. The New Jersey suit was filed in state court in Hackensack. ---- reader commentary-- From: Mitzi Waltz The other red herring in the "Ritalin fraud" story is the alleged prescription of Ritalin to pre-school children. Aside of a few numbskull docs out there--and they are out there--nobody is prescribing Ritalin to pre-schoolers for ADHD. What is happening is it's being prescribed to kids with autism, simply because docs have no clue what else to do. Unfortunately, Ritalin is rarely helpful and often harmful to kids with autism, a medical condition that has gone from "rare" (1 in 10000) to a "common childhood disability" -- now the rate is 1 in 500 according to official sources, but rates as high as 1:123 and 1:135 are popping up around the world in areas as far removed from each other as Granite Bay, Calif., Brick Township, NJ, and Lewis Island off Scotland. Kuwait just opened a treatment center. The situation in China is said to be reaching crisis proportions. The rate in India is skyrocketing. This is a public health tragedy -- and it is almost surely one that could have been prevented. Want a real health conspiracy story? Did you know that the rate of the most severe form of autism has gone up almost 300 percent since just 1988, according to figures from multiple states? California is one of the few that keeps records on "less severe" forms of autism as well (and "less severe" in this case does not mean "mild"). The increase was over 1900 percent. Yep, that's 1900, not 190--and these figures only measure cases coming into the state's Regional Centers, not those never identified or that stayed in the private sector. Since a genetic epidemic is not a possibility, this HAS to be either an environmental issue (very likely) or an infectious disease issue (also a possibility), or some combination of both. Right now the fingers are pointed at Thimerosol, a preservative used in vaccines, Rhogam injections, Pitocin injections, etc. Thimerosol is 50 percent ethyl mercury, an extraordinarily potent nervous-system poison. Whose bright idea was that, injecting mercury into infants before their immune systems have developed? Others have implicated the measles vaccine itself, organophosphate pesticides, and other possible culprits. I spent the weekend at a conference of alternative health practitioners and parents of kids with autism. The sheer revulsion, anger, and despair people were feeling was palpable. And there are good reasons to believe that the root causes of the autism epidemic, whatever they may be, have also contributed to the increase in other childhood brain disorders and childhood diabetes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linked stories: ******************** 13 Indicted In Biggest Lab Fraud In American History September 22, 2000 (ENS) - An environmental laboratory falsified test results at thousands of Superfund sites across the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. Thirteen former employees of the now closed lab have been indicted in what federal authorities are calling the biggest case of laboratory fraud in the nation's history. <http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-22-06.html> <http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/22/national/22ENVI.html> ******************** Ontario SWAT Team To Tackle Polluters <http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-22-10.html> September 22, 2000 (ENS) - Determined to restore public confidence in its ability to protect public health and the environment, Ontario's provincial government has introduced Canada's toughest fines and longest jail terms for repeat polluters. ******************** From Marshes to Shopping Malls <http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38864,00.html?tw=wn20000923> Developers -- such as the ones who want to build a mall in the wetlands of New Jersey known as the Hackensack Meadowlands -- are getting around the regs by purchasing and restoring wetlands elsewhere. ******************** ====================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. Krishnamurti ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe or for a sample copy or a list of back issues, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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