Friday, December 12, 2003

Fried-day FEATURED ARTICLES - Reforming ABC News Coverage:  Calling the Media to its Proper Role - FOLLOW-UP: International Human Rights Day - Union Rights - Memo asks scientists at UC labs to explore new types of nuclear weapons - WMD's in the USA - Petition to lock down & destroy them - The Bush Nuclear Policy: Making the World Safe for Nuclear Weapons? 2 QUOTES OF THE DAY "I support a zero option for all nuclear weapons . . . my dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons are banished from the face of the earth." - - President Ronald Reagan  (January 16, 1984) "I view our nuclear arsenal as a deterrent . . . And the President must have all options available to make that deterrent have meaning." - - President George W. Bush (Responding to a question about developing low-yield nuclear weapons, March 13, 2002) KNOW YOUR HISTORY - DECEMBER 12th 1961 -- Martin Luther King Jr & 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Ga. 1979 -- NATO decides to deploy cruise & Pershing missiles across Europe. Annual protests follow. 1982 -- England: 30,000 women encircle U.S. cruise missile base, Greenham Common. 1983 -- Seventy people arrested in Boston outside a hotel where a "New Trends in Missiles" trade conference is being held. Inside the hotel, over 1,000 cockroaches are let loose to symbolize the likely survivors of nuclear war. 1986 -- Plowshares activists disarm Pershing missile launcher, West Germany. 2003 - TODAY - FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2003 California Statewide Work Stoppage/Buy Nothing Day in protest of the imminent repeal of SB60, which would have allowed our "undocumented" brothers and sisters the right to drive without threat of deportation in California. Don't go to work, school, or buy anything that day, as part of a statewide effort to shut down the CA economy that day. Spread the word...You do not have to be Latino to support this cause. RHINO HERE: If you missed Ted Koppel's quite telling behavior in this week's New Hampshire Demo Prexy debate, he asked Dennis Kucinich, Carol Mosely-Braun & Al Sharpton when they'd be pulling out since they had nexta no money & so low in the polls. "Are these just vanity campaigns?" he said. Sharpton, (Rhino's choice for the new U.S. Prexy Press Secretary) said something like, "I'm actually higher in the polls than some of the others & with way less money so that can tell you I'd be good at handling the budget." Then Congressman Kucinich sez, "I want the American people to see where media takes politics in this country." The crowd cheered. "We start talking about endorsements, now we're talking about polls and then talking about money. When you do that you don't have to talk about what's important to the American people." On December 10, ABC News pulled its full time embedded reporters from the campaigns of Dennis Kucinich, Rev. Al Sharpton and Carol Mosley-Braun. So the broadcast corporations, besides getting all the millions of dollars of campaign funds for ad sales, selling time on the people's airwaves, are narrowing the field of candidates before even 1 primary vote is cast? Join The Rhino in raising a little hell on the ABC News switchboard. Details at:   Reforming ABC News Coverage:  Calling the Media to its Proper Role http://kucinich.us/abcnews.php FOLLOW-UP: International Human Rights Day - Union Rights Tens of thousands of union activists and their allies took part in more than 90 events in 64 cities Wednesday, Dec. 10, to mark International Human Rights Day and take the union movement's campaign to restore every worker's freedom to choose a union to a new level. At town hall meetings, rallies, teach-ins and candlelight vigils, tens of thousands more pledged to educate and mobilize union members, fight employer interference on union organizing campaigns and lobby members of Congress to support improvements to labor law and keep workers' rights at the center of the 2004 election efforts. More on Dec. 10 events & actions.   http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/BdqyMQp1M7cl/ 50,000 faxes were sent to senators & representatives urging them to sign on as co-sponsors of important new legislation that would fix our broken labor laws. In response more than 125 representatives & senators have agreed. Please take a minute to send a fax to your senators and representative by clicking on the link below. Ask them to sign on as co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act.    http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/sponsorefca/i8eeikzy5xmwn WMD's in the USA - Petition to lock down & destroy them. ** Some nuclear weapons materials around the world are protected by just a chain link fence. ** Dangerous biological materials are available in laboratories all over the world because the same technology used to cure can be used to kill. ** Millions of deadly chemical weapons are also at risk; storage facilities are often poorly secured and the weapon canisters are old and in danger of leaking. When terrorists want to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons or materials, they will go where the materials are the least secure. That means that we must work with other nations to secure nuclear weapons and materials at the source; improve biological defenses; and secure and destroy chemical weapons and materials. Right now the US spends less than one percent of the defense budget on cooperative efforts to keep nuclear, biological and chemical weapons out of the hands of terrorists. (Source: Matthew Bunn, Harvard University, 2003) Sign a petition supporting efforts to lock down & destroy these materials ASAP. http://www.care2.com/go/z/9481/1052 Lest anyone thinks there could be a positive side to 4 more years of the shrub gang at the helm, even the idea of, "Well maybe it has to get really bad to wake up the public, so it can finally get better," please read the articles below. Rhino sez, "We must must must at all costs elect a democrat."   Bush presses lab nuke research Memo asks scientists at UC labs to explore new types of nuclear weapons By Ian Hoffman, OAKLAND TRIBUNE, 12/12/03 In a newly leaked memo, the Bush administration's top nuclear-weapons executive urged the three federal H-bomb labs to explore a full range of new thermonuclear weapons. National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks twice pressed weapons-lab directors last week to "take advantage of this opportunity" raised by repeal last month of a 1993 ban on low-yield nuclear weapons development. Critics of the administration's new nuclear policies say the Dec. 5 memo suggests a no-holds-barred approach to designing new weapons that is more reminiscent of a Cold War arms race -- without a competitor -- than trying to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.   "This is really very distressing," said physicist and public policy professor Frank von Hippel, co-director of Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security. "They're saying, 'Go after it, guys. We're back in the fifties. Come up with all the crazy ideas you can -- if there are any crazy ideas left out there.' This is fossil Cold War mentality surfacing again."... READ IT ALL AT: http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82?7E1865?7E1823833,00.html 8:18:29 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - The Bush Nuclear Policy: Making the World Safe for Nuclear Weapons? The Bush Nuclear Policy: Making the World Safe for Nuclear Weapons? The World Policy Institute, May 2002 The Bush administration's new nuclear doctrine represents an abrupt departure from the policies of prior administrations, Democratic and Republican alike. Far from representing "new thinking," as some observers have suggested, the proposed Bush nuclear policy represents the triumph of a small circle of conservative theorists who have long pressed for expanding the role of nuclear weapons as a guarantor of U.S. military superiority and a tool for exerting political and strategic influence. While President Bush has pledged to substantially reduce the numbers of nuclear warheads deployed by the United States, his proposed policy would dramatically expand the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy. If one looks beyond the numbers to the philosophy motivating the administration's new approach to nuclear doctrine, it's resemblance to pre-Reaganite, anti-arms control views of the role of nuclear weapons becomes clear. In contrast to Ronald Reagan, who came to believe that the elimination of nuclear weapons should be the ultimate goal of U.S. policy, the Bush administration's posture review seeks to give nuclear weapons a new lease on life by pressing for the development of a flexible nuclear warfighting capability grounded in a reinvigorated nuclear weapons complex. Unlike his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, who removed tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. ground and naval units as a way of lessening the risk of a nuclear confrontation, George W. Bush's approach paves the way for the development, testing, and deployment of a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons. And unlike the Clinton administration, which tried to pursue changes in U.S. nuclear policy without abandoning international arms control treaties, the Bush administration has already announced its intention to withdraw from one major agreement, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, and its nuclear plans threaten to undermine the other major pillars of the current global arms control regime. The debates about the wisdom of this new approach are well under way, and will no doubt continue for some time. Without presuming to resolve the larger policy debate, this report will highlight two important aspects of the Bush administration's proposed changes in U.S. nuclear policy which have yet to receive adequate attention: 1) The extent to which the new doctrine draws on an extremely narrow set of unilateralist assumptions championed by conservative think tanks like the National Institute for Public Policy and the Center for Security Policy, with minimal input from individuals with differing perspectives, whether they are retired military officials, moderate Republicans, or scientific experts; 2) The role of corporate and institutional interests that stand to benefit from stepped up investments in nuclear weapons and missile defense capabilities in shaping the new doctrine. But first we need some background on what the new Bush nuclear doctrine entails. IT'S ALL AT: http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/reportaboutface.html "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 7:01:15 AM    comment

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