Test Tube Republic
PANAMA – “Test Tube Republic: Chemical Weapons Tests in Panama and US Responsibility,” a report from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, reveals that the US Army has conducted chemical weapons tests on an island off Panama since 1944. Tests on San José island exposed human subjects to mustard gas and tear gas. The Army’s “San José Project” tested range of deadly chemicals including VX, Sarin, Lewisite, cyanogen chloride and phosgene gas were delivered in grenades, mortars, air-dropped bombs and 105mm Howitzer shells. In 1945, San Jose Project scientists tried to devise ways to use captured Nazi nerve agents in a US invasion of Japan. The US government still refuses to release information on chemical weapons buried in Panama and dumped its surrounding seas. [For the complete report, send $5 to FOR, 995 Market St., No.801, San Francisco, CA 94103, (415) 495- 6334.]

Ecological Amnesty
KOREA – Following the inauguration of the new Korean government of Kim Dae Jung in March, civil groups requested the release of the nation’s political prisoners. Green Korea United specifically asked for a lifting of court orders barring 52 Korean environmentalists from engaging in political activity. One March 9, the government lifted the ban. Among those freed to resume environmental work were: five critics of the Yongkwang Nuclear Reactor (including Father Park, a Catholic priest); six opponents of the Ulchin nuclear waste site; 17 activists arrested for opposing the ocean- dumping of sewage and; 19 others who fought the construction of a coal- burning powerplant on Younghung Island.

US Air Force Costs Japan
JAPAN – In May, the Fukuoka High Court ordered Japan’s national government to pay ¥1.37 billion to 867 people affected by the noise pollution produced by the US’ Kadena Air Force base on Okinawa. The affected communities hoped that the new ruling would ban night flights from the base, but the court ruled that the Japanese government has no jurisdiction over US military flights – even if they occur over Japanese territory.

Flame Retardants Cause Brain Damage
SWEDEN – A report by Per Eriksson of Sweden’s University of Uppsala has shown that very low doses of the brominated flame retardant polybrominated diphenylether (PBDE) can permanently damage the brains of mice causing reduced learning capacity and hyperactivity. Often used on textiles and in the plastic cases of phones, TVs and computers, brominated flame retardants are known to contaminate human blood and breast milk.
El Niño? Meet El Papa!
US – July was the hottest month in Earth’s recorded history. The average global temperature hit 61.7 degrees Fahrenheit – 1.26 degrees above normal and nearly half a degree higher than the previous record set in 1997. As Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Molly Ivins observes, the media coverage attributing the punishing weather to El Niño “is half right…. But the other half of the answer, global warming, has gotten little or no attention.” In Texas, where the heat killed 120 people by mid-August, global warming is “the cause that dare not speak its name,” Ivins wrote. The Republican Party of Texas has even gone on record stating: “We oppose the theory of global warming and the Kyoto Agreement.”

Extreme Weather? You Can Bank on It
US – While a growing number of scientists and politicians are calling for immediate action to combat global warming – and the severe droughts, hurricanes and floods it brings – some enterprising firms have started selling “weather futures.” Dow Jones reports that Aquila Energy, a subsidiary of Missouri’s UtiliCorp United Inc., is offering trading instruments called “weather derivatives” that allow businesses to “hedge against the prospect of an abnormal winter.” Aquila promises to pay off for every degree above or below “normal” weather. Since the world’s weather is being driven to extremes, Aquila expects to at least break even.

Put Out the Fires
KENYA – With 1998 on its way to becoming the hottest year on record, UN Environment Program director Klaus Toepfer called on world leaders to enact emergency measures to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. “We have more than enough credible evidence to know that global climate change poses tremendous risks,” Toepfer declared. Shifting to solar and renewable energy, expanding mass transit and ending subsidies to fossil-fuel use are “win-win measures,” Toepfer said.

Car-Free Britain
UK – British screen star and Labor Transport Minister Glenda Jackson kicked off the Environmental Transport Association’s Green Transport Week on June 12 by laying a patch of green turf on a London car park. The ETA reports that more than 80 British towns joined in. Bradford-upon-Avon replaced cars with rickshaws and ponies, Gloucestershire’s car-free roads were graced with “a street theater of dancing traffic wardens” and the Oxford City Council “closed the staff car park – permanently!”

Tree-Fund Razed
MALAYSIA – A major reforestation project was supposed to have helped restore Indonesian forests consumed by global-warming-caused megafires but an International Monetary Fund investigation found that the tree- planting funds instead were diverted to finance development of Indonesia’s “national car.” According to Malaysia’s The Sun, the money went to the Timor Putra Company, a firm “controlled by Indonesian ex-President Suharto’s youngest son.”

Cars: Fit to Be Tired
HUNGARY – German anti-car activist Michael Hartmann has gained some fame for walking over any parked car that stands in his way. Now, Alyson Ewald, a US anti-nuclear activist living in Budapest, has devised a new variation of car-walking. Frustrated by having to weave around cars parked in bike lanes, Ewald invented a protest she calls “car-biking.” Ewald told Car Busters magazine how it’s done: “Pick up your bicycle in your hands and run the tires over the windscreen and bonnet of the car. It works best,” she adds, “if you can manage to ride through a puddle or some mud first.”

Sol on Wheels
JAPAN - Masaharu Fujinaka, an electronics engineering professor from Tokyo Denki University, recently drove a car from Tokyo to Shiga Prefecture – a distance of 286 miles (460 km) at an average speed of 44 mph (70 kph). What’s the big deal? Fujinaka’s record-setting vehicle was a gas auto converted to run on electricity from a nickel-hydrogen battery augmented by rooftop solar panels.

No Truck with Oil
US – Complaining that jet aircraft “aren’t worth the pollution they produce,” green activist and actor Ed Begley, Jr. recently drove a natural gas powered vehicle across the US to attend a wedding. Begley, who usually drives an electric car, boasts “I haven’t been to a (gasoline) station in eight- and-a-half years.” (Get ready to follow in Begley’s tire-treads. The Netherlands-based TNO Road Vehicle Research Institute reports that global oil reserves are expected to peak in two years and drop by 3–5 percent per year thereafter.)

The Bank of McDonald’s
GERMANY – It used to be that German shoppers had to trek to a bank to download electronic money into Hewlett-Packard’s new VeriFone “smart cards,” but now these customers can recharge their cards at any one of Germany’s 870 McDonald’s. The smart card’s embedded computer chip stores details on items purchased and places purchases were made. Like the bar-coded “loyalty cards” proliferating in US markets and stores, smart cards make it possible for companies to monitor group and individual purchasing habits. As one promoter noted, if you use a smart card to buy diapers in 1998, you’re going to start receiving junk-mail for school clothes in 2005.

Titanic Blast: Cause to Celebrate?
US – When a Titan 4A rocket blew up and destroyed the National Reconnaissance Office’s secret $1 billion Advanced Vortex spy satellite, it rained debris and toxic rocket fuel over the Atlantic. But it could have been far worse. Had this second Titan failure (2 out of 22 launches) occurred during the launch of the Cassini space probe, the toxic cloud also would have contained plutonium. Space-watcher Loring Wirbil [lwirbel@igc.org] notes that the Vortex program has shifted from military spying to “broadband interception of civilian communications” as part of the US Space Command’s “Long-Range Plan for 2020, which explicitly calls for US domination of the planet, in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The demise of this Vortex should be considered a victory for both civil liberties and anti-space-domination pacifists.” [photos: www.flatoday.com/space/explore/uselv/titan/a20]

Training Exercises
US – On April 11, 1996 a freight train traveling over poorly maintained rails left the tracks and spilled 265,000 pounds of chlorine gas and other chemicals. One person died, 352 were injured and nearby Alberton, Montana was evacuated for 17 days. On August 2 (the 20th anniversary of the evacuation of Love Canal), the Alberton Community Coalition for Environmental Health [ACCEH, (406) 728-7572] called for Congress to enact legislation requiring disclosure of hazardous rail cargo under Community Right-to-Know laws. ACCEH founder Lucinda Hodges explained that people need “access to the facts about hazardous chemicals passing through our backyards, our schools, our rivers and our pristine forests.”

Pepper-spray Painting
US – Copper- and mercury-based boat paints may soon be a thing of the past. The New Mexico-based MEDD4 company has found a way to repel hull-loving barnacles and mussels by incorporating habañero peppers (60 times hotter than the jalapeño) into marine paint. The Coast Guard has expressed interest but the chemical-based pest-control lobby remains skeptical. The product now is being tested for cancer and reproductive risks and other harmful side-effects.

Where Torture is Job One
SPAIN – According to documents filed in a Madrid court, Spanish workers who “disappeared” during the reign of Argentina’s military dictatorship were tortured in a secret detention center at the Ford Motor Company factory near Buenos Aires. The International Workers Bulletin reports that a lawsuit filed by the families of 600 missing Spanish workers has uncovered evidence that victims were “selected for detention, torture and execution in consultation with management at Ford’s Argentine subsidiary, which provided the military with facilities in Ford’s General Pacheco plant and even donated vehicles to transport prisoners to military prisons and torture centers.” The Bulletin notes that “within a year after the junta seized power, Argentine wage levels were cut in half, all union contracts were suspended, factory committees were outlawed and tens of thousands of union activists were fired.”

New Rights for (Some) Citizens
DENMARK – On June 29, environment ministers from 52 nations attended a UN-sponsored summit in Aarhus in hopes of improving citizens’ rights to clean air, water, soil and food. Representatives from 35 countries signed a legally binding document guaranteeing the public’s right to sue governments and industries for violations of environmental laws. Among the few countries that refused to sign the agreement were Russia, Turkey, Germany, Israel – and the United States.

Our Next Great National Park?
US – Henry David Thoreau once proposed that the Maine Woods wilderness be protected as a “national preserve.” Now, 150 years later, Thoreau’s dream could be realized. The Northern Forest Forum reports that nearly 1.5 million acres of Maine’s forests are now for sale for between $150 to $300 per acre. The 3.2 million-acre Maine Woods National Park and Preserve would be “a place of national significance, with deep forests, clear lakes and streams, spectacular wildlife and world-class backcountry recreation.” [Jym St. Pierre, RESTORE, 7 North Chestnut St., Augusta, ME 04330, (207) 626-5635.]

Deadly POPcycles
CANADA – More than 100 countries attended a UN-hosted gathering in Montreal in June to begin work on a global agreement to phase out 12 of industry’s deadliest persistent organic pollutants (POPs) – including PCBs, dioxins and a host of pesticides. Canada was an appropriate venue for the meeting, given the disturbing discovery that POPs concentrate more readily in the cold environment of the Arctic, where they infiltrate the food chain. A 1997 Canadian government study found that eating whale meat gave native Inuit such high doses of these poisons that it threatened the health of their unborn children.

Coming Soon: Hydrogen Buses
CANADA – The Ontario Medical Association reports that smog from Ontario’s gas- and diesel-powered vehicles kills 1,800 people a year. Canada’s Ballard Power Systems and German automaker Daimler-Benz AG may have a solution. The two companies are teaming up to mass-produce zero-pollution hydrogen-powered buses, beginning in 2004. Ballard Power has signed a deal with Iceland to produce and export the hydrogen to fuel the buses.

No Frei Launch for Endesa Dam
CHILE – The Spanish power company Endesa wants to build a $500 million, 570-megawatt dam on Chile’s Bio-Bio River but it can’t start work until all the native Pehenche Indians (a subgroup of the Mapuche nation) agree to leave their 1,500-hectare (3,700-acre) ancestral home. Nine families have refused to leave, complaining that sacred trees and herbs used in their religious rituals are not found on the new land offered by Endesa.

The Chilean government says that a 1992 law protecting Indian lands is superseded by a new law that permits expropriating property for energy needs. In March 1997, after Chile’s National Environmental Commission recommended against the Endesa dam, the commission’s director was forced to resign and the ruling was reversed. In July, the National Indigenous Development Board (CONADI) demanded that Endesa stop work on its Ralco dam on the Bio Bio .In August, as CONADI was preparing to vote against the dam, President Frei dismissed three anti-dam boardmembers and the vote was canceled.

You Don’t Monkey with Mink
UK – Animal Liberation Front activists are probably having second thoughts after releasing 6,000 captive mink from a fur farm in Hampshire, England. The liberated mink scattered into the nearby Forest Owl Sanctuary where they set about killing birds about to be released back into the wild. Mink can attack calves and foals and can swim under ducks and drag them under. “The mink have no shame and no mercy…. (They) have already taken out a chihuahua,” the London Independent reported. An embarrassed ALF spokesman told the Independent “at least they’ll have a taste of freedom.” (And chihuahua.)

Dirty Secrets: Kishon Tell
ISRAEL – For three decades, the Kishon River has carried industrial waste into Haifa Bay, turning the bay brown and rendering the fish inedible. Greenpeace activist Offer Ben-Dov told the Chronicle Foreign Service that the Kishon “is much deader than the Dead Sea. In the Dead Sea, they found some living bacteria. Here, there’s nothing.” Both industrial wastes and untreated municipal sewage pour into the Kishon and “when you combine those two things together, totally new pollutants are created,” Ben-Dov said. Military facilities are the worst polluters but their activities are classified: Not even the Israeli Environment Ministry can inspect them. According to the Chronicle Foreign Service, the ministry’s budget is less than 1 percent of the federal budget and the current environment minister, Rafael Eitan, is a political appointee, “a right-wing former general with no experience in the field.”

Community Conservation Collapse
KENYA – Political violence and El Niño storms have pushed the tourist- dependent Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) toward bankruptcy. In May, KWS Director David Western complained that he had been given the boot for opposing illegal commercial land-grabs inside Kenya’s famed national parks. Western told The Daily Telegraph that he had been pressured to allow gem companies to sink mines in Tsavo National Park. Marijuana plantations have sprung up in Mount Kenya National Park and Kenya’s last remaining forests (supposedly protected by presidential decree) are falling to land deals that Western claimed are approved at the “ministerial level.” Western was a leading proponent of “community-based conservation” that seeks to protect wilderness resources by giving local people a stake in protecting the land, plants and animals. Outside magazine reported in June that “many experts regard community-based conservation as the best and perhaps last hope for promoting planetary biodiversity in the next century.” The failure of this approach in Kenya would be “colossal and immediate, like the recoil of a highly loaded spring,” Cornell University scientist professor Charis Cussins told Outside.

Aloha, Statehood: Hello Independence
US – Thousands of native Hawai’ians, Native Americans and their supporters marked the 100th anniversary of the illegal US annexation of their homeland by US Marines with an Aloha March to the US Capitol. The march to press native sovereignty claims began with a day-long Ho’olokahi (prayer vigil) at the statue of King Kamehameha in the House of Representatives’ Hall of Statues. Outside the capitol, vigilers marked the passage of every hour with 20 minutes of drumming and chanting. At the sound of the pu (conch shell), speakers addressed the crowds to share their mana’o (ideas). In 1993, President Clinton signed the Apology Bill (Public Law 103-150) and formally apologized for the military seizure of sovereign Hawai’ian lands. The next step, many native Hawai’ians feel, is for the US to recognize Hawai’ian independence. “Hawai’ians are the other Native Americans and we are seeking justice,” explained Hawai’ian Rights Movement activist Butch Kekahu [PO Box, 182, Anahola, HI 96751, (808) 822-7643. jiabufiybd@hotmail.com].