16 Activists Arrested in Syracuse; Corporate Money wins in 2002

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NYPD Approves Feb 15 Rally but not March
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030210055453988.html
 

 
Ithaca Unanimously Condemns PATRIOT Act
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030210060015152.html
 

 
16 Peace Activists Arrested in Syracuse
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030207112151107.html
 

 
Security Lax at Indian Point
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030207111711577.html
 

 
Corporate Money was the Winner in 2002 Elections
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030207110404308.html
 

 
Segal Wins with Student Help
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/2003020604531131.html
 

 
Congress to Decide Fate of DoD Data-Mining Program
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030206044616320.html
 

 
Canada Rejects Patents on Higher Life Forms
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030206043759919.html
 

 
Oil and the War on Iraq
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030205123313271.html
 

 
US Greens: Reject Bush-Frist Plan, Enact Single Payer
 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030205122621960.html
 

 
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NYPD Approves Feb 15 Rally but not March
 

 
Organizers of the Feb. 15 anti-war rally, United for Peace and Justice,
 
have announced the NYPD has granted a permit to rally near the United
 
Nations (First Avenue stretching north from 49th Street) beginning at
 
noon.
 

 
Says United for Peace: "This is an important victory, and we are
 
confident that February 15 will be a day of massive, peaceful, powerful
 
protest in New York City. The Police Department has, however, so far
 
refused to approve a permit for a march. We insist on our right to
 
march, as well as to rally, to express our opposition to this war. We
 
expect to be successful in our vigorous political and legal efforts to
 
obtain a march permit. We will not be distracted from our objective of
 
mobilizing for February 15. Nor will we capitulate to the NYPD's attempt
 
to curtail our rights of expression and assembly: Military aggression
 
abroad is entangled with restriction of civil liberties here in the
 
United States, and we reject both."
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030210055453988.html
 

 
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Ithaca Unanimously Condemns PATRIOT Act
 

 
By DAVID HILLIS
 

 
The city of Ithaca unanimously passed a resolution expressing opposition
 
to the PATRIOT Act at the City Common Council meeting at City Hall last
 
night. Ithaca is the thirty-second locale to pass such a resolution.
 

 
Ithaca Mayor Alan Cohen '81 expressed his support for the resolution. "I
 
think it's a well balanced resolution," he said. "[America] is a magnet
 
to the rest of the world, and people flood to our borders. I just wanted
 
to express my whole-hearted support."
 

 
The Resolution to Defend the Civil Rights and Liberties of the People of
 
Ithaca proved to be controversial on two major points. One point of
 
contention was a resolve which initially barred city employees from
 
complying with the federal government in any action that violated the
 
Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment. The updated resolution, giving
 
more discretion to the individual, now reads that city employees are
 
required to "defend all civil liberties as outlined by the Bill of
 
Rights and Fourteenth Amendment."
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030210060015152.html
 

 
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16 Peace Activists Arrested in Syracuse
 

 
January 16, 2003, By Renee K. Gadoua Staff writer Syracuse Post-Standard
 

 
Syracuse police on Wednesday arrested 16 people protesting possible war
 
with Iraq after they refused to leave the entrance to the Federal
 
Building. "Their consciences say many more people will die if there's
 
war," Margaret Birdlebough said. Officers put plastic bands on the
 
protesters and escorted them to police vans after the protesters stood
 
at the entrance of the Federal Building for nearly an hour and declined
 
several requests to move. Some protesters wore masks, including one
 
depicting George Bush. One protester sat on the cold sidewalk, rocking a
 
doll and feigning crying. Another protester, dressed in a black robe and
 
papier-mache mask, stood in front of a 3-foot cardboard "missile," and
 
bent and picked up a doll covered with ashes. She lifted the doll above
 
her head, then rocked it and wailed as if in mourning.
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030207112151107.html
 

 
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Security Lax at Indian Point
 

 
By Mike Burke
 

 
The security guards work up to 16 hours a day, sometimes for seven days
 
straight. Morale is low. Their confidence in management may be even
 
lower. They admit being under-qualified and under-trained in key
 
security aspects. Also, they often have very little experience. Some
 
even show up for work drunk
 

 
These are not the security guards at the local shopping mall, but the
 
men and women entrusted to protect perhaps the most sensitive facility
 
in the New York area, the Indian Point nuclear power plant.
 

 
Twenty million people live within a 50-mile radius of Indian Point's
 
reactors. An attack on the facility could have apocalyptic consequences
 
and could render the entire New York City metro area uninhabitable. And
 
such an attack is no longer inconceivable to many: on Sept. 11 the two
 
hijacked planes that crashed into the Twin Towers flew directly over the
 
Indian Point nuclear site in Buchanan.
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030207111711577.html
 

 
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Corporate Money was the Winner in 2002 Elections
 

 
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Latest figures from the FEC show that the biggest
 
determinant of whether a candidate won in 2002 fall elections was not
 
their position on the issues, but the amount of money spent on their
 
campaign, said Greens. The Green Party of the United States supports
 
'Clean Money, Clean Elections' -- public campaign financing, especially
 
for congressional elections.
 

 
Data from candidates on contributions through Oct. 16, 2002 posted at
 
the Center for Responsive Politics show that out of 445 house races,
 
over 90% of the winners outspent the losers, with 299 winning candidates
 
outspending their opponents by 10 to 1. Only 14 candidates who spent
 
less than their opponents won.
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030207110404308.html
 

 
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Segal Wins with Student Help
 

 
by Ken Sain
 

 
Newly elected office holders usually get a honeymoon period where even
 
voters who supported other candidates wait and see what the new person
 
will do.
 

 
Not so for David Segal, who won election to the Providence City Council
 
to become the first Green elected in Rhode Island.
 

 
Segal won the District 1 seat, which includes Brown University. The
 
22-year-old Segal actively sought out help from students in winning his
 
election.
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/2003020604531131.html
 

 
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Congress to Decide Fate of DoD Data-Mining Program
 

 
Congress is now facing a key decision about the Pentagon's development
 
of a massive tool to "mine" the data of innocent Americans looking for
 
suspicious conduct - the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program.
 

 
Last month, the US Senate adopted an amendment ("the Wyden amendment")
 
holding up deployment of TIA until basic questions are answered about
 
its potential for error and abuse of privacy. But the amendment hasn't
 
passed the House yet, and the Pentagon has begun to lobby against it.
 

 
CDT has set up a special web page where concerned citizens can find out
 
who their Members of Congress are, with phone numbers, to call them and
 
urge them to put some limits on TIA until basic questions about its
 
effectiveness and privacy implications are answered.
 

 
The web site is http://www.cdt.org/action/tia/.
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030206044616320.html
 

 
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Canada Rejects Patents on Higher Life Forms
 

 
by Lim Li Ching
 

 
Canada’s ruling on 5 December 2002 makes her the only industrialized
 
country to prohibit patents on higher life forms. The test case was
 
Harvard University’s 17-year quest for ownership of its genetically
 
engineered "oncomouse". Researchers inserted a cancer-promoting gene
 
(oncogene) into fertilised mouse eggs, producing transgenic mice more
 
susceptible to tumours, thus facilitating clinical work and faster
 
experimental results for cancer research.
 

 
The oncomouse was patented in the US in 1988, and has patent protection
 
in Australia, Japan and several European countries. The patents give
 
Harvard exclusive rights to create the mice and charge licensing fees
 
for their use. The "invention" is licensed to Du Pont, which sells the
 
mice to research labs.
 

 
In its application, Harvard sought to protect both the process by which
 
the oncomice are produced and the end product of the process, i.e. mouse
 
and offspring whose cells contain the oncogene. The process and product
 
claims extend to all similarly altered non-human mammals.
 

 
Canada allows single-celled organisms, such as yeasts and bacteria, and
 
GM crops to be patented. It also allows patents for modified human genes
 
and cell lines. The Supreme Court, Canada’s highest court, however
 
conceded that ownership of more complicated life forms is a radically
 
different concept, thus ending the legal battles over the oncomouse.
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030206043759919.html
 

 
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Oil and the War on Iraq
 

 
Despite well-known ties to Big Oil, Bush Administration officials have
 
managed to keep a straight face as they insist that the drive to war
 
against Iraq is motivated only by an effort to eliminate weapons of mass
 
destruction and establish democracy.
 

 
Tomorrow we'll see what evidence Secretary of State Powell presents to
 
the United Nations. It is not credible that there would be such a strong
 
push for war if there were no oil in Iraq. Oil is power and this is in
 
significant measure a struggle over that power.
 

 
The connections between the Bush administration and the oil industry are
 
clear and pervasive. A remarkable 41 members of the administration have
 
ties to the industry, and both the President and the Vice President are
 
both former oil executives. National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice is
 
a former director of Chevron. President Bush took more than $1.8 million
 
in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industries in the 2000
 
election. The Bush people and the oil moguls do agree with one another
 
in part because they are one another. With influence like that, it's no
 
surprise that big oil corporations like ExxonMobil (with an annual
 
lobbying budget of nearly $12 million) and Halliburton (the Vice
 
President's former employer) have had an unprecedented role in
 
determining the nation's energy policies.
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030205123313271.html
 

 
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US Greens: Reject Bush-Frist Plan, Enact Single Payer
 

 
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Green Party of the United States urged Congress to
 
reject the Bush-Frist corporatization proposals for Medicaid and
 
Medicare and instead enact national health insurance to guarantee the
 
right to health care in the wealthiest country in the world.
 

 
"Greens have always made single-payer national health insurance a major
 
goal of the party," said Carol Miller, public health activist and New
 
Mexico Green. "The U.S. is the only democracy on earth that doesn't
 
guarantee access to health care, which is why 41 million Americans are
 
uninsured, tens of millions more are under-insured, and nearly half of
 
all personal bankruptcies each year are caused by health problems or a
 
large medical debt, even though 79% of the families filing for
 
bankruptcy had at least some health insurance coverage. It's time to get
 
health care decisions out of the hands of corporations, whose only
 
concern is maximization of profits, and back into the hands of patients
 
and physicians. Medicare should not be turned into the next Enron."
 

 
http://www.tcgreens.org/gl/articles/20030205122621960.html