Montana Green Bulletin April 2 2007

Montana Green Bulletin

April 2, 2007. Volume VI, Number 14

A PROJECT OF THE CASCOGREENS

Paul Stephens, Editor and Publisher 406.216.2711 greateco@3rivers.net

Table of Contents:

UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS

MT Green Party Convention April 21, Bozeman

Legislative update

Women Working for Peace in Colombia

Come to Boston for Biojustice 2007!

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES

News and links

WHAT'S WRONG WITH MORE BIG CHAINSTORES?

Walgreen's exposed in 20-20 segment

BILLS FOR SALE

The Medicare Drug Benefit

GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens

Do we really need a legislature?

Conversion strategies for Malmstrom's Minuteman ICBM silos

The Montana-Alberta Tie, Ltd.

How Midori Finally Found her Roots in Montana (and Winston-Salem, NC)

Havre vs. Lewistown: the Montana Academic Challenge

ZNET COMMENTARY

Beyond Munich: The UN Security Council Helps Disarm a Prospective Further Victim of U.S. Aggression By Edward Herman and David Peterson, April 02, 2007

Antiwar talk at the Boston Commons March 27, 2007
By Howard Zinn

FROM THE LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH

I loathe America, and what it has done to the rest of the world

By Margaret Drabble

FROM INDYMEDIA

Not-so-good Friday

OPERATION BITE: APRIL 6 SNEAK ATTACK BY US FORCES AGAINST IRAN
PLANNED, RUSSIAN MILITARY SOURCES WARN
FROM GLOBAL RESEARCH.CA

Israeli Press Report: US will Strike Iran on Good Friday

by Michael Carmichael

Brit "Hostage" Drama Pales in Comparison to MI6 and CIA Crimes Against Iran

by Kurt Nimmo

A NOTE ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION

WEBSITES AND OTHER RESOURCES

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE GREENS SUPPORT:

HEALTH CARE DOLLARS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS -- NOT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND CORPORATE PROFITS

STOP THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE NOT A LOCAL GROWTH INDUSTRY!

COAL DEVELOPMENT MUST BE MINIMIZED, NOT MAXIMIZED: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL!

END CORPORATE DOMINATION AND PREDATION: CORPORATIONS AREN'T PEOPLE, AND THEY DON'T HAVE "PROPERTY" OR OTHER RIGHTS!

For an introduction to Green Party philosophy and programs, go to

You can join the Montana Green Party at the NEW MONTANA GREEN PARTY WEBSITE!!

http://www.mtgreens.org

New section on Instant Runoff Voting with model bills/initiatives:

I will be posting my "Green Solutions" columns or other Bulletin excerpts as a blog, and there will be others from Montana Greens. We are also gearing up for the legislature, to regain ballot status, and to DUMP BAUCUS in 2008.

If you would like to join the Missoula, Billings, or Great Falls Green Party forums/listserves, here are the links:

(Missoula)

Paul Johnson of Missoula recently joined us, with his popular blog http://buzztail.blogspot.com/

(Billings)

(Great Falls) phone 216-2711

We have reactivated the Great Falls listserve, in hopes of establishing an official local Green Party group. Click on or paste the link, and join!

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UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS

Montana Green Party meeting in Bozeman, April 21.

This is an invitation to attend the Montana Green Party's annual meeting at the Bozeman Public Library (upstairs, "The Board Room"). The meeting is Saturday, April 21, from 10 am to 3 pm. The draft agenda is attached, and posted below. I hope everyone interested in an alternative to politics as usual will make plans to attend.

Sincerely,

Steve Kelly, co-ordinator

Calling All Greens!

2007 Montana Green Party Annual Meeting

Date: Saturday, April 21 10 am -3 pm (working lunch provided)
Where: Bozeman Public Library, "The Board Room" (upstairs)
Who: Montana Green Party members and all interested persons

Draft Agenda

a.. Elect 2 delegates and 2 alternates to national (G.P.U.S.). Hopefully, we will know by then if we are accepted.
b.. Update the Party platform. Hopefully, much of this will be accomplished in advance on the listserv.
c.. Discuss ballot access drive. Distribute forms. Do we want to keep the same five words that describe our Party on the form?
d.. Ballot initiatives? Instant Voter Runoff? Or, should we write a ballot initiative eliminating the signature requirement for small parties and independents to run for office. Washington (state) has a similar law.
e.. A brochure or flyer to distribute when gathering signatures. A Party membership form. Both need a coupon or mailer for supporters who wish to contribute funds.
f.. A Party logo? Bring sketches and ideas that can be used on letterhead, bumper-stickers and t-shirts.
g.. Candidates for 2008.
h.. Elect officers.
- steve kelly, co-ordinator botanica@imt.net

__________________

Great Falls Conservation Council

NEW DIGS - COLLEEN'S AT OLD COLUMBUS HOSPITAL (between 16 & 17th Street and 2nd Avenue North-2nd floor) Meets Thursdays at noon.

________________

Veterans for Peace has been meeting Saturdays at Baker Bob's, 110 Central, at 10 a.m. All interested veterans welcome to attend.

Peace vigil continues Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m. on the Civic Center steps. All local, state, and federal officials and employees encouraged to attend.

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FROM MEIC

Support HB 739

Here is the factsheet I have prepared for HB 739 - please distribute it to your list. Messages to any Senators would be appreciated. The legislative switchboard is 444-4800. Thank you!
Pat
P.S. If anyone has ideas for improving this factsheet, please pass them along to Pat, Anne, or Jeff at MEIC.
--
Patrick Judge
MEIC Energy Program Director
PO Box 1184, Helena, MT 59624
406/443-2520

(factsheet prepared by Patrick Judge, MEIC)
House Bill 739 contains several, important provisions to protect consumers from further disruption in Montana's energy policy. In particular, it addresses the unfortunate situation that has arisen in Great Falls in connection with Electric City Power and the proposed 250 megawatt coal-fired Highwood Generating Station. (note that this is not an advanced, coal gasification project)
Even though this power plant represents a major environmental hazard and comes at a total cost of $720 million, the residents of Great Falls were never given the opportunity to vote on this risky venture (note that the City would be a one-quarter owner of the proposed plant). HB 739 ensures that this type of major project would only proceed with 1) the consent of the voters, and 2) a determination by the Public Service Commission that it truly would serve the public interest.

Commission Oversight
Under HB 739, a municipal electric utility issuing more than $5 million in bonds or using more than $5 million of public money would first have to demonstrate to the PSC that:
. it is governed and regulated by an elected board
. it would provide adequate & reliable service at prices that are more favorable than the default supply
. it would pick up its share of qualifying facility contracts, and meet Montana's renewable energy standard
. it would not harm the remaining default supply customers

Public Vote
Perhaps most important, HB 739 guarantees a voice to the citizens of Great Falls or other municipalities that might contemplate a major energy project. The residents of Great Falls did get to vote on recent swimming pool measure, but have thus far been deprived of the opportunity to directly speak to the millions of dollars that may be spent / bonded for, in connection with Highwood. If this is an exercise in "public power," then the public deserves to be heard.

Legislative History
An early version of the bill was introduced as HB 134 (Lange). While that bill was supported by members of the Great Falls-based "Citizens for Clean Energy" group, the Public Service Commission expressed some concerns. Those concerns were addressed in the revised version, HB 739. The PSC is neutral on this bill.
HB 739 passed the House with 79 votes on 3rd Reading, and passed the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee on a 7-2 vote. This bill deserves continued, strong, bi-partisan support.
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FROM PAUL HOUSE

Senate Bill 432 is the 2% biodiesel bill for Montana. It's passed the Senate and headed for the House, but needs support. The New West article linked below has contacts for key votes. The bill is soft on 'mandating' anything, and therefore is nothing to fear no matter how much you love petroleum. It only mandates bio in diesel if the bio is made in MT, can be sold for a reasonable price, and only if the weather permits.

Please take a minute and send in your comments.

Paul
Paul House, Bozeman Cottage / Bozeman Biofuels
PO 562, Bozeman, MT 59771
(406) 580-3223 verizon cell
(253) 669-1501 efax
www.bozemancottage.com www.bozemanbiofuels.com

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Women Working for Peace in Colombia

A Montana speaking tour by Yaneth Pérez: president of the Dawn of Women for Arauca
April 9 to 19 from Billings to the Bitterroot (schedule at end of this announcement)

The Dawn of Women for Arauca Association works to promote women's rights and social justice in one of the most war-torn regions of Colombia.

"We, as women, are suffering the consequences of the war in Colombia" says Yaneth. "We watch our husbands being arrested or killed, or having to flee from our homes in order to save their lives. We're then left alone to care for our children and provide them with a decent future. Women who speak out against the war and for social justice have been threatened, arrested, and killed."

The people in Arauca (a state in northeastern Colombia) are suffering from the war and government repression. More than one hundred community leaders have been killed and many more have been imprisoned on false charges of "rebellion." Occidental Petroleum has a huge oilfield and pipeline in Arauca that are being protected by the U.S. and Colombian military.
The U.S. government is providing Colombia with $1.5 million per day in military aid. Two guerrilla groups have been fighting against the government for more than 40 years. Amnesty International USA has repeatedly documented the Colombian military's involvement in human rights abuses and has called for a complete cut off of military aid to Colombia.

"We don't need any more weapons in Arauca" says Yaneth. "There are already more than enough guns and bombs to kill all of us. Instead of sending arms, we ask the U.S. government to provide support for schools, health clinics, housing, and small farmers so that we can take care of our families."

Pérez is being accompanied by Scott Nicholson - a Missoula resident and board member of Community Action for Justice in the Americas. Scott has been in Arauca since July 2006 documenting the human rights situation in the region. The presentation will include his photos of the war in Arauca.

This event is sponsored by Community Action for Justice in the Americas
() , Montana Human Rights Network () , and the Montana Peace Seekers Network () .

Billings - Monday, April 9 5:30 P.M. - reception, 6 P.M. - presentation
Good Earth Market, 3024 2nd Ave. North, Downtown Billings
Bozeman - Tuesday, April 10 7 P.M. - Strand Union Building 276
Montana State University
Helena - Wednesday, April 11 6:30 P.M. - Simperman Amphitheater
Carroll College
Butte - Thursday, April 12 7 P.M. - Library Auditorium
Montana Tech
Kalispell - Monday, April 16 7 P.M. - Board Room, Blake Hall
Flathead Valley Community College
Pablo - Tuesday, April 17 Noon - Late Louis Caye Sr. Memorial Building
Salish Kootenai College
Missoula - Wednesday, April 18 7:30 P.M. - Gallagher Business Building 123
University of Montana
Hamilton - Thursday, April 19 7 P.M. St. Francis of Assisi Church Parish Life Center
411 S. 5th St.

Anyone in Great Falls interested in arranging for an appearance here can contact Scott Nicholson/Colombia Journey

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Come to Boston for Biojustice 2007!

BioJustice 2007 is a week long celebration of sustainable food and alternatives to corporate healthcare. It is being developed by a wide coalition of public interest groups, activists, farmers, scientists, and concerned citizens, working together in response to the biotechnology industry's international convention scheduled for the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center during May 6-9, 2007.

The biotech industry is bringing thousands of executives, lawyers, public relations people and corporate scientists to Boston to promote their agenda of genetically engineered food, unaffordable high-tech medicines and dangerous 'biodefense' research that increases the threat of new biological weapons. Through parades, rallies, educational events and publications, music, a free health care clinic and free daily non-GMO meals, Biojustice 2007 will dramatize popular resistance to this agenda and highlight a wealth of community-based alternatives.

BioJustice 2007 supports a decentralized local food economy that is free of genetically modified organisms, and is committed to working towards an accessible health care system not dominated by pharmaceutical companies and their costly and unreliable synthetic drugs. We oppose the commodification of life and support community resistance to the plans for a biological weapons lab in the heart of the Roxbury neighborhood. Join us!

See our full schedule of events, beginning on May 1st, (continually updated) at

Help spread the word! forward this information; also check out www.biojustice2007.org (online soon!).

----------------------------------------------
Brian Tokar
Biotechnology Project
c/o Institute for Social Ecology
P.O. Box 93
Plainfield, VT 05667
802-229-0087

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FROM GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES

New Green Pages available online

http://www.gp.org/greenpages/content/volume11/issue1/index_11-1.php

http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml

Take a ride on the Reading

The Green Party National Committee (GNC) voted on Reading, PA as the host site for this year's national meeting taking place from July 12-15. The meeting promises to be an educational, inspiring and fun time for all. We will offer an expanded campaign school, skills building workshops, an Americana music festival and a chance to meet hear from Green Party presidential candidates. The Berks County Green Party and the Annual National Meeting Committee (ANMC) are working hard to ensure that an inspiring, educational and fun time is had by all!

Green Party Initiates Impeachment Petition

The Green Party has been opposed to the war in Iraq from before it started and we have called for impeachment almost as long. You can now sign the recently created Green Party Petition to Impeach Bush and Cheney.

Please go here to write your congress person or local newspaper using the Green Party automated system.

http://www.gp.org/action/index.shtml

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WHAT'S WRONG WITH MORE BIG CHAINSTORES?

Walgreen's exposed in 20-20 segment

Two large 24-hour Walgreen's stores are nearing completion in Great Falls. This is in addition to two Albertson's pharmacies, a CVS store (formerly Osco's), Wal-Mart, ShopKo, K-Mart, etc. And these are just the large out-of-state chains. Hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics also have on-site pharmacies. Meanwhile, locally-owned Snyder Drug, which has been here for more than a century, was sold out of the family and may close. The other long standing local employee-owned Public Drug will probably survive, because it is the only store downtown. The County Health Clinic and other non-profits seem to use K-Mart, perhaps having negotiated a special deal. And Wal-Mart, with its line of $4 generics, will take another big chunk of the low-income market.

So, why did we allow two new Walgreen's to open, here? Local business leaders told us: "We're pro-business." Our replies that they were putting themselves and other local residents out of business seemed not to register with them. Few main-street businesses would even sign our petitions against another Wal-Mart Superstore, and we were attacked and ostracized by some of the same businesses which another Wal-Mart would have destroyed. What's wrong with this picture? ABC's 20-20 last Friday gave us an inside look at how Walgreen's operates. -- PHS

_________________

From Chief Investigative Reporter Brian Ross

Pharmacy Errors: Unreported epidemic?

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/BrianRoss/

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2997449

Unreported Pharmacy Errors

Our teams of "20/20" producers who went undercover to 100 big-chain drug stores and found a shocking rate of everyday errors and a failure to spot potentially dangerous drug interactions.

Our "20/20" undercover investigation into pharmacy errors sprawled four months and 100 big chain drug stores in four states. It was designed with the help of two of the country's leading experts on the issue of pharmacy errors, Professors Ken Barker and Betsy Flynn of Auburn University.
Alexandra Gehrke, seen here at seven months old, was given the wrong medication for seven weeks. Instead of preventing seizures in Alexandra, the medicine given to her mother by a Walgreens pharmacist caused them, resulting in severe brain damage that doctors say will affect Alexandra for the rest of her life.

Alexandra's mother Tracey Gehrke was supposed to be picking up a dose of Phenobarbital to prevent seizures in her four-month-old daughter who had been born premature. But a Walgreens pharmacist mistakenly filled the bottle with a powerful diabetes medicine for adults that is the same color and size as Phenobarbital but has a distinct number and brand that the busy pharmacist apparently missed.

Alexandra Gehrke is now eight years old. Although she is expected to have a normal life expectancy, Alexandra cannot walk, talk or feed herself.

Alexandra's case is one of what some fear is an unreported epidemic of pharmacy errors at the country's growing chain drug stores. In a four-month "20/20" investigation, Brian Ross and the Investigative Team went undercover and found out that many prescriptions are not even filled by pharmacists but by pharmacy technicians who are often just high school students. Pharmacists are supposed to then check each prescription.

Our teams of "20/20" producers who went undercover to 100 big-chain drug stores and found a shocking rate of everyday errors and a failure to spot potentially dangerous drug interactions.

And with this waiver, most pharmacy customers sign away the right to get information about their prescription drugs without even realizing it.

Yet, at this month's big pharmacists convention, no one wanted to answer questions about pharmacy errors, and our "20/20" producers were told to stop asking them on the convention floor.

The fact is no one really knows how many serious errors are made at this country's biggest pharmacies -- including CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens, Eckerd and Rite Aid -- because neither the federal government nor 46 of the 50 states require drug stores to report their errors. Mary Ann Wagner, the senior vice president of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, a Washington, D.C. trade group, spoke to "20/20" on behalf of the drug store chains. While Wagner maintained "there's a tremendous amount of concern" about pharmacy errors in the industry, she admitted, "We don't keep track of them." As for the big chains, she says they are spending huge sums in new training and high-tech programs designed to prevent errors in the billions of prescriptions filled each year.

In the case of now eight-year-old Alexandra Gehrke, while the jury found Walgreens responsible and awarded Alexandra's family $21 million, the pharmacist who admitted responsibility for the error, William Zaeske, still works for Walgreens. He is now the pharmacy manager of a nearby store and declined to comment to ABC News.

Retired Walgreens pharmacist Bill Kennedy has testified in several court cases like Alexandra's against his former employer. Even though he worked there for decades and became the president of the pharmacists' union, Kennedy says he was threatened with his job for taking too much time filling prescriptions.
Beth Hippely was an active mother of three from Lakeland, Fla., who was left brain-damaged, disabled and unable to care for herself and her family after she suffered a stroke. A Walgreens pharmacy technician, who was just a high school student at the time, gave her the wrong dosage for a prescribed blood thinner.

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BILLS FOR SALE

The Medicare Drug Benefit

Will Rogers once said that "We have the best Congress money can buy." This was back in the 1930's. On last Sunday's CBS "60 Minutes" program, Andy Rooney lamented the cost of running for and getting elected President. It was $100,000, he claimed, when Lincoln won in 1860. (His opponent, Stephen Douglas, only spent $50,000, which Rooney thought might have been the reason he lost). GWB spent some $380 million, while Sen. Kerry "only" spent $330 million -- again, a possible reason for his defeat. Rooney posed the question, "Do we really want to choose our leaders this way?" Wouldn't we rather have the most honest, wisest person with the best policies, rather than the one who can raise and spend the most money on these stupid campaign ads?

Earlier in that "60 Minutes" show, there was a segment on the Medicare Drug Benefit bill, which costs the taxpayers some $50 billion a year. It is the most expensive single increase in government healthcare entitlements in 40 years -- since the original Medicare program began in the 1960's. And nearly everyone agrees that it is a massive fraud and abuse on the American taxpayers, bought and paid for by 1000 or more lobbyists, lawyers, and PR people from the pharmaceutical industry. Most of the $500 billion it will cost over the next 10 years is pure profit for a handful of drug companies, their stockholders, and executives. Even worse, at least 16 former Senators, Congressmen and staff who were key to passing this bill are now employed as lobbyists or executives in the pharmaceutical industry, some of them with 7-figure salaries. Conrad Burns would be one of them. -- PHS

Here's the link to the story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/29/60minutes/main2625305.shtml

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(CBS) If you have ever wondered why the cost of prescription drugs in the United States are the highest in the world or why it's illegal to import cheaper drugs from Canada or Mexico, you need look no further than the pharmaceutical lobby and its influence in Washington, D.C.

According to a new report by the Center for Public Integrity , congressmen are outnumbered two to one by lobbyists for an industry that spends roughly $100 million a year in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to protect its profits.

One reason those profits have exceeded Wall Street expectations is the Medicare prescription drug bill. It was passed three-and-a-half years ago, but as 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft reports, its effects are still reverberating through the halls of Congress, providing a window into how the lobby works.

The unorthodox roll call on one of the most expensive bills ever placed before the House of Representatives began in the middle of the night, long after most people in Washington had switched off C-SPAN and gone to sleep.

The only witnesses were congressional staffers, hundreds of lobbyists, and U.S. Representatives like Dan Burton, R-Ill., and Walter Jones, R-N.C.

"The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill," says Jones. "The bill was over 1,000 pages. And it got to the members of the House that morning, and we voted for it at about 3 a.m. in the morning."

Why did the vote finally take place at 3 a.m.?

"Well, I think a lot of the shenanigans that were going on that night, they didn't want on national television in primetime," according to Burton.

"I've been in politics for 22 years," says Jones, "and it was the ugliest night I have ever seen in 22 years."

The legislation was the cornerstone of Republican's domestic agenda and would extend limited prescription drugs coverage under Medicare to 41 million Americans, including 13 million who had never been covered before.

At an estimated cost of just under $400 billion over 10 years, it was the largest entitlement program in more than 40 years, and the debate broke down along party lines.

But when it came time cast ballots, the Republican leadership discovered that a number of key Republican congressmen had defected and joined the Democrats, arguing that the bill was too expensive and a sellout to the drug companies. Burton and Jones were among them.

"They're suppose to have 15 minutes to leave the voting machines open and it was open for almost three hours," Burton explains. "The votes were there to defeat the bill for two hours and 45 minutes and we had leaders going around and gathering around individuals, trying to twist their arms to get them to change their votes."

Jones says the arm-twisting was horrible.

"We had a good friend from Michigan, Nick Smith, and they threatened to work against his son who wanted to run for his seat when he retired," he recalls. "I saw a woman, a member of the House, a lady, crying when they came around her, trying to get her to change her votes. It was -it was ugly."

When the prescription drug bill finally passed shortly before dawn, in the longest roll call in the history of the House of Representatives, much of the credit went to former Congressman Billy Tauzin, R-La., who steered it through the house.

"It's just a messy process," Tauzin says. "I mean, the old adage about if you like sausage or laws, you should not watch either one of them being made is true. It's a messy process."

Tauzin says that the voting machines were open for three hours "because the vote wasn't finished."

As for arms being twisted? "People were being talked to," he says.

And of Walter Jones' comment that it was the "ugliest night" he had "ever seen in politics in 22 years?"

"Well, he's a young member," counters Tauzin with a laugh. "Had he been around for 25 years, he'd have seen some uglier nights."

Watch the complete segment in streaming video, or read the complete transcript at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/29/60minutes/main2625305.shtml

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GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens

Do we really need a legislature?

The Montana legislature is proving to be almost as bad. State legislatures have largely been taken over by a group called ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council. http://www.alecwatch.org/

I've written about this often in the past, and every time I discuss the legislature with anyone, I ask them if they've heard of ALEC. Virtually no one has, nor does anyone understand how and why this organization wields so much power in our state legislatures. Until people start learning about it and opposing it, there is simply no hope for our legislatures to do anything different than what they are doing now: trashing the environment, denying global warming, creating a police state, subsidizing the insurance industry instead of providing healthcare, building more prisons, cutting welfare, education, and other human services, promoting the corporate agenda of less taxes and regulation, less scrutiny and transparency in government, and more influence by corporate lobbyists over every aspect of our lives. And most Democrats seem to go right along with it, arguing for more "insurance" instead of healthcare; more "defense" and "Homeland Security" funding instead of waging peace; more prisons and "cops on the street" rather than ending drug prohibition and other "morals" offenses; and soliciting corporate campaign contributions instead of fighting corporate crime and exploitation.

What corporations are we talking about? Enron and Arthur Andersen, CCA, Wal-Mart, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the oil companies, automobile industry, coal industry, electric utilities, military contractors, war mongers, the private prison industry, etc., etc. ALEC is a Who's Who of corporate criminals and opponents of universal health care, public education, civil rights, safe food, clean energy, and peace. Whatever most individual citizens want and need for their survival and to improve our quality of life, ALEC is working to destroy it. It's one of the most insidious organizations anywhere. And you can bet they had a large role in passing the pharmaceutical industry's Medicare Drug Benefit described, above.

How does Montana's congressional delegation stack up, here? We know that Conrad Burns took more money from corporate lobbyists than any other senator, and he did more damage with his power -- especially in deregulating and consolidating the corporate media and telecommunications industry. They, of course, are the ultimate beneficiaries of most lobbyists "campaign contributions" and other campaign spending, since most of it is spent on "media buys."

Senator Baucus, of course, is "K Street's Favorite Democrat," as a recent article in The Nation revealed. (K Street's Favorite Democrat by Ari Berman
) He was also one of the critical Democratic Senate votes in favor of the Medicare Drug Benefit, as well as the massive Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of the people, and to end federal estate taxes entirely. He voted for the war, the Patriot Act, and to abdicate Congress's power to declare war. That is why we continue to maintain our "Dump Baucus in 2008" campaign. There is nothing he can do to answer our complaints except not to run, again.

Congressman Rehberg is just as bad or worse in the House, and supports the corporate ALEC agenda in nearly every case. Yet, Montanans keep electing these "Republicans" (who have no concept of a republic or good government), and their counterparts in the state legislature, along with a few Baucus-type Democrats who make sure that there are no departures from this program even if the Democrats happen to win. Gov. Schweitzer, like Schwinden before him, is largely subservient to the coal and other "resource" industries, corporate agribusiness, Monsanto, and the like. And even on those issues where he supports a green agenda, the legislature won't support him. Once you've taken money from the corporate criminals, it's hard (and even dangerous) to double-cross them. Our elected "leaders" are afraid to do the right thing even when they know what it is, and they continue to maintain their loyalty to their financial backers and contributors rather than the public interest. Should we really "take pride in" the fact that Montana politicians, once bought, stay bought?

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Conversion strategies for Malmstrom's Minuteman ICBM silos

The 50 Minuteman Missile silos centered around Conrad, Montana are a distinct species, built under contract by Sylvania rather than Boeing. We have plans for them. The announcement last week that these 50 silos are definitely slated for retirement brought strong protests from Senators Baucus and Tester, as well as Congressman Rehberg. Baucus called it "outrageous." Senator Tester, who actually lives and farms in that part of the state, has more than enough information to celebrate the closing, but his "handlers" apparently won't let him do so.

Some 20 years ago, I chaired a local committee to "convert" Malmstrom AFB into a peaceful, tax-paying (instead of tax-consuming corporate welfare) economic powerhouse for north-central Montana. We had many ideas, including several which have already been implemented at the Great Falls International Airport on Gore Hill. These included a major airfreight hub or terminal (like Federal Express); aircraft maintenance, repair, or even assembly (like AvMax), a home base for an Ecological Defense Force modeled on the New Deal CCC, with firefighters, hazardous waste and other clean-up crews, as well as environmental law enforcement agents (instead, we now have a regional Homeland Security Base). Malmstrom could have also been completely privatized as an industrial park doing some of the above, or being a manufacturing facility for wind turbines or whatever else anyone wanted to manufacture, here. Consistent with a long tradition of turning obsolete military facilities over to Indian tribes, I've also suggested housing a national Native American University there, since Great Falls is in the heart of Indian Country and already has a surrounding Native population in the 10's of thousands to draw from.

Many of these projects have already been accomplished or planned, but not at the obvious site to do so, Malmstrom AFB. Instead, it's the civilian Airport which is now in a major boom and expansion phase, with new hangers planned or under construction, the National Guard Facilities constantly being upgraded and expanded, etc. Many local military people have long favored turning Malmstrom over to the various Guard units, while leaving the Airport to civilian, commercial functions. That would also seem to be extremely practical from an air traffic control and logistics standpoint. Now, F-16's (soon to be F-15's, a bigger, faster plane), B-1's, C-5's, and other large, noisy military aircraft share the Airport with Federal Express, general aviation, and the airlines. This has to be some sort of accident waiting to happen -- particularly since the main runways at the airport are directly adjacent to and overfly some dense residential housing developments. By using Malmstrom for all military aviation and other military functions, there would surely be many advantages over mixing everything together at one crowded civilian airport.

As for the missile silos, we were always hard-pressed to think of any practical civilian functions to which they might be converted. Missile silos in other states have simply been filled in, or in some cases, sold or turned over to the farmers who own the land, or other civilians for whatever imaginative purposes they might have. (Since they're called "silos", some people ignorant of their construction thought they might actually store grain. However, this is highly impractical, since they are buried deep underground.) They do work very well as bomb shelters or other refuges for Y2K survivalists and other paranoids, however.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a long visit with Doug Ormseth, a Great Falls native and the owner of Shortgrass Web Development http://www.shortgrass.com/index.phtml?p=home as well as having been the former director of the Downtown Business Improvement District. Currently, he also manages the Columbus Center where I once had an office as Green Solutions.

Doug is one of the true visionaries of Great Falls, and as such, gets very little credit with the City and Chamber of Commerce. However, when the conversation got around to nuclear disarmament and converting Malmstrom to productive purposes, Doug mentioned that he has been working on an economic development strategy since the early 1990's, which has a perfect use for the silos after the missiles have been removed. That is to convert them into server warehouses either for government use or civilian internet providers such as Google, Yahoo, and the like. If we absolutely have to keep Malmstrom open as an Air Force or National Guard base, we could continue using the silos to house military computer networks, the IRS, or other government agencies and their servers.

These silos (there are 200 of them) would be the ultimate "secure server" stations, connected by the existing high-capacity fiber-optic and wireless networks which are in place for the missiles. Imagine how secure your data would be, protected against even a 1-megaton thermonuclear explosion within a few hundred yards! The "blast doors" which cover the silos at ground level weigh something like 30 tons, and require a large bulldozer even to move them. (In case of a missile launch, they are instantly blown off sideways by high explosives). The silos are built of reinforced concrete many feet thick, and can actually withstand a near-miss by a nuclear warhead! Each 10 silos are connected to a command center "capsule" which is even stronger, buried deeper, and presently houses the command and launch control center for a "flight" of 10 missiles. These facilities would be perfect repositories for information storage which needs to be absolutely secure against terrorism, sabotage, or other destruction.

You can contact Doug at the Columbus Center, 1601 2nd Avenue North, Suite 530
Great Falls, MT 59401 Phone: 406.268.1115 http://www.shortgrass.com/index.phtml?p=home

_______________

The Montana-Alberta Tie, Ltd.

With most of our attention being devoted to stopping the Highwood Generating Station for the past couple years, a major high-voltage power line connecting Great Falls with Alberta has largely slipped beneath the radar. It goes through boring farmland, with little impact on scenic values or agricultural production, and it is claimed that it will encourage the growth of wind energy production, both for Montana use and for export to Alberta, Canada -- the nearest high-density urban population to the fruitful plains of central Montana.

So far, so good, or so we thought. I had not been following the MATL discussion at all. I should have been suspicious when Peggy Beltrone, the City, the Development Authority, and most politicians were lining up to promote and support it. But having often been accused of being "against everything," I thought that maybe I could ignore this issue entirely. Not so. The public hearing quickly revealed that, as one citizen put it, "all the farmers are against this, and all the politicians are for it." Needless to say, I found my sentiments agreeing with the farmers -- even though some of their reasons, like the line would interfere with "soil sterilization" in their no-till, chemical wheat-growing strategies, were anything but consistent with Green agronomy. Some of the large local landowners, however, had even better reasons than I gave in my early testimony for questioning the validity of this project.

What became clear during the course of the Hearing is that this line has a lot to do with the proposed Highwood Station and other "merchant plants," as well as selling the cheap hydropower from Missouri River dams (now owned by PPL) to Canada at a greater profit, since Canadians will pay a premium because they are more concerned about meeting Kyoto standards (limiting or taxing greenhouse gas carbon emissions) than we are. If the Highwood Station isn't built, there may be less need or interest in building this line.

My comments were essentially that all the costs and burdens attending this powerline needed to be paid by the private, commercial owners of the line, and I questioned whether or not it was appropriate to use Eminent Domain to force landowners to accommodate the line, even though this was a private venture and not part of a regulated, public utility. I was given a state website to consult concerning the Eminent Domain issue.

The landowners, many of whom had testified at several regional hearings, were unanimous in criticizing the DEQ and other state agencies for promoting out of state corporations over the interests and well-being of Montanans, but most were willing to accept MATL if all their concerns were answered, and they were compensated for their economic losses. Apparently, they individually sign some sort of contract with the company, and get some sort of financial compensation, but if they don't, Eminent Domain does come into play, and they are forced to take the deal whether they like it or not. Of course, they always have the political option of trying to shut down the project entirely, and that may happen if the company involved is not straightforward about its real plans and intentions, which it appears it has not always been.

Although two commercial wind farms are proposed between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alberta, in the vicinity of Cut Bank, the plans are still vague and apparently not yet finalized or funded. We have been led to believe that nothing but windpower would be distributed by this line (largely from south to north, or from Montana to Alberta, although there seems to be something in the DEIS which claims that Alberta power could be sent south as well -- obviously, both could not happen simultaneously, although one citizen claimed that the DEIS was misleading on that account). But most power produced in Montana is still coal-fired, and it's all mixed together on the grid. If Canadians pay more for the clean wind and hydro-power, then we are stuck with the dirty coal power, and there would be more incentives to build plants like the Highwood Station and keep the antiquated (and very dirty) Colstrip in operation.

The question remains that if the Highwood Station isn't built, and current windpower projects are used in place of it - even to the extent of shutting down existing coal plants at Colstrip, etc. - then why do we need a major power transmission line to Canada? This was a point forcefully made by several opponents of the line.

So far, though, the environmental and clean energy communities haven't mobilized against it. Citizens for Clean Energy was holding its weekly meeting at the same time, but at the other end of town, and only Mark Good and Gene Sentz of environmentalists I know testified mildly against MATL, or in support of it with certain caveats. Mark gave a good presentation in favor of windpower, although both he and Gene, who is from Choteau, were concerned about lines and wind turbines impacting the scenic values of the Rocky Mountain Front. Choteau resident and comedian David Letterman has even joined a landowner's suit to oppose the construction of powerlines from Gibson Dam, so I don't suppose he cares much for MATL, either.

In fact, the proposed line will be 30 miles or more this side of the Front, on flat farmland with only minimal impact on scenery or other tourist values. However, it will impose considerable costs on farmers who must farm around the large pylons which support the wires. These also impact aerial crop-spraying, and Buck O'Brien, a prominent farmer and former candidate for Congress mentioned that one of his friends had actually died in a sprayplane collision with a power line. There is also the considerable hazard from electro-magnetic radiation (EMR) from high-voltage power lines, which has been demonstrated to have health impacts both on people and livestock. The power industry, of course, vigorously denies this, and like global warming, has suppressed and destroyed much of the research which details and quantifies this risk.

____________

How Midori Finally Found her Roots in Montana (and Winston-Salem)

The great Japanese-American violinist, Midori, was spending last week in Great Falls, working with our youth orchestra and school music programs in a remarkable project which she carries out twice a year with smaller, regional orchestras. (Her other destination for this year is Winston-Salem, North Carolina -- home of Wake Forest University, I'm told). Last Thursday evening, we had to choose between attending the public hearing on MATL and Midori's performance of the Mendelssohn Concerto with the Youth Orchestra. Fortunately, they were in the same building, the Civic Center (which also houses the Mansfield Center for the Performing Arts -- another big draw, I suppose, for Midori. We are told that all Japanese revere the name of the late Ambassador Mansfield.) Since the two events were only a few steps apart, some of us were able to dance back and forth between the two proceedings, hardly missing anything worthwhile.

The Great Falls High School Drama Department even managed to piece together a sort of John and Yoko tribute for Midori, in a production of the play "John Lennon and Me," about some terminally-ill teen-agers living in Nashville, and fantasizing about their singing and acting careers which they will not live to experience. I doubt that Midori got a chance to see this play, having been performing or rehearsing in conflict with it every night, but I saw it last Saturday, and as fate would have it, sat directly behind the Salonen family. Bill Sr. is a former Principal of GFHS, and he didn't seem too pleased with the risqué dialogue of the play, in which his grandson had a leading role. I defiantly left my UCLA cap on throughout the performance, though, which seemed to cheer him up. (You get kicked out of CMR, the other high school here, for wearing a hat indoors, a rule which they tried to apply to me when I was a substitute teacher there in the 1990's).

Seeing Midori perform and work with the Great Falls Symphony and Youth Orchestra last week, I couldn't help but recognize her as a High Priestess of the Cult of Orpheus, if not quite yet the Imperial Violinist of Japan. She has that Nadia Boulanger look; or maybe she's another Wanda Landowska who says, "You play Bach your way, and I'll play him his way." I didn't get to hear her play any Bach, unfortunately, but I'm sure her version of the Sonatas and Partitas would be most revealing.

She played Beethoven and Mendelssohn this time, and made them both sound simple and transparent. Our Great Falls Symphony sounded better than I've ever heard it. For decades, we've been living on illusions, but like "The Music Man," belief finally triumphed over salesmanship and school bureaucracy. We've got the music in us, and it only needs to be liberated, not forced out with rote and discipline. Such is the Suzuki Method, of which Midori is the epitome.

___________

Havre vs. Lewistown: the Montana Academic Challenge

Ian Marquand, a commercial TV news director in Missoula, is just as familiar a figure in North Central Montana because of his long-time hosting of "The Montana Academic Challenge," a tournament-style matchup of smaller, rural high schools throughout the region, sponsored by the rural electric and telecommunications co-ops. The sessions are taped at the University of Great Falls. (Does he still produce the "Under the Big Sky" features? If so, he should know that KRTV quit running them several months ago).

The AA schools like CMR and Great Falls High School do not participate in this. They have their own yearly Academic Bowl, which I used to regularly attend as part of my Mensa/Gifted Ed regimen. However, my frustration at the teachers and question writers occasionally got out of hand, when they would ignorantly count an answer wrong which was quite correct. The questions for this event were taken directly out of the school curriculum, so they were often less than challenging to the best and brightest of the two large schools.

The opposite problem has long plagued Marquand's MAC. I don't know where he gets his questions, but they are often so obscure and irrelevant that many of the schools (some are Class C schools with 30 students or less in the entire high school) must wonder what the point of this whole exercise could be, except to make them look stupid. And in the smaller schools, many of the MAC contestants participate in every sport, but there is little opportunity for music, drama, speech & debate, and the like.

Not so with Havre and Lewistown. These are Class A schools, from towns in the 5000-10,000 population range, with a hundred or more students in each high school class. Thus, they have the full spectrum of cultural opportunities, and as the contestants were introduced, very few of them even mentioned participating in sports. Perhaps Marquand has found a different source of questions, too, for these students were able to answer most of them, as was I. They were much better informed about Montana history and geography, American history, and global issues than is usually the case.

A few weeks ago, White Sulphur Springs was one of the contestants. It supports a high school of about 80 students, but it is also the birthplace of such notables as Dirk (Niewoehner) Benedict and Ivan Doig. The WSS "student athletes" put on such a dismal showing that I was prompted to search the internet for their school website. I am somewhat familiar with WSS, having attended 8th grade there in 1960-61, and I've kept in touch more recently in various ways. Googling WSS schools and education, I also found an excellent website maintained by the local bank which had links to all the resources necessary for an excellent high school education, maintained separately from the school system. The White Sulphur Springs school website was a travesty. It had no content whatsoever besides a link to an encyclopedia and the sports schedules! Go figure. I e-mailed the bank, and suggested that they send their webmaster over to the school, and set up a decent website there, as well as training a couple of students to maintain it. (I know they have at least one intelligent, activist student there, as well as a good history teacher, both of whom I met a couple of summers ago at the Meagher County Bookfest). Unfortunately, the bank's e-mail system was defective, and my communication seems to have been lost, although they did call and leave a message to that effect. I intend to stop in on my next trip and meet with them in person.

Getting back to the Havre-Lewistown (Fergus High School) competition, there were some interesting twists, which ended in a virtual photo-finish with Havre answering the final question right at the buzzer, before the question was even completed. The question began with "Seoul is the capital of South Korea. What.." At that point, Havre rang in with "Pyongyang" just as the final bell sounded, which proved to be the correct answer, and decided the contest in Havre's favor.

Some of the other "controversial calls" impacted both teams. One question was something to the effect of "What was the American policy of closing off the Western Hemisphere to European colonization?" The Havre captain promptly answered, "Imperialism." I'd have given him credit for that, but the answer being sought was, of course, "The Monroe Doctrine." In another round, in answer to the question, "Which one of these belongs to the order Hymenoptera? a) bumblebee b) bluebird, or...," the Havre captain answered "bluebird," which is of course incorrect, but humorously logical nonetheless. (Hymenoptera refers to insects with membraneous wings).

Fergus got its share of bad calls, too. When asked, "What is the French word for the "mixed race" people found in Montana, and recognized more as a distinct ethnic group in Canada?", the Lewistown captain, Mr. Chen, answered "Creole." This is technically correct, and that is what they would be called, for example, in Louisiana. However, the term we use here is "Metis" (equivalent to the Spanish "Mestizo"). This was especially ironic because Lewistown was founded and first settled by Metis, led by the Alouette family.

Getting back to the issue of whether or not smaller schools can or do provide a higher quality of education, I suspect that either of these teams could easily defeat teams from CMR or Great Falls High. In fact, we had a test of that proposition recently, with an individual competition of academic achievement for the best students from all the schools in the region. Conrad, a Class B school, won the competition outright, over CMR, GFHS, and all the smaller A, B, and C schools. It may have had something to do with several Hungarian families and their descendents who are still prominent there.

-- Paul Stephens

/\/\/\/\/\

ZNET COMMENTARY

Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet. To learn more folks can consult ZNet at

Beyond Munich: The UN Security Council Helps Disarm a Prospective Further Victim of U.S. Aggression By Edward Herman and David Peterson, April 02, 2007

[The authors would like it understood that a shorter, standard op-ed length version of this commentary was drafted and submitted very widely across the major U.S. print media-and found to be 100 percent unpublishable.]

Imagine that when Hitler was threatening to invade Poland, after having swallowed Czechoslovakia-with the help of the Western European powers' appeasement of Hitler at Munich in September 1938-the League of Nations imposed an arms embargo on Poland, making it more difficult for the imminent victim to defend itself, and at the same time suggested that Poland was the villainous party. That didn't happen back in 1939, but in a regression from that notorious era of appeasement something quite analogous is happening now.

Here is the United States, still fighting a brutal war of conquest in Iraq, which it is now doing with UN Security Council approval, with open plans and threats to attack Iran and engage in "regime change," gathering aircraft carriers off the coast of Iran, already engaging in subversive and probing attacks on the prospective target, and the UN Security Council, instead of warning and threatening the aggressor warns, threatens and imposes sanctions on the prospective victim!

The way it works is that the United States stirs up a big fuss, proclaiming a serious threat to its own national security, and expressing its deep concern over another state's flouting of Security Council resolutions or dragging its feet on some point of order such as weapons inspections-we know how devoted the United States and its Israeli client are to the rule of law!

In the Iraq case, this noise was echoed and amplified in the media, often splashed across headlines and drummed up in editorial commentary. In turn, elite opinion in the United States and Britain coalesced around the beliefs (a) that a WMD-related crisis really existed in Baghdad and (b) that it required the Security Council's special attention. Straight through March 19-20 2003, Iraq, the prospective target of a full-scale attack, decried the absurdity of this U.S.-U.K. noise, and filed regular communiqués with the Security Council and Secretary-General documenting the U.S.-U.K. aerial strikes on its territory,[1] including the "spikes of activity" period from September 2002 onward.[2] The vast majority of the world's states and peoples also rejected the war propaganda-including the largely voiceless U.S. public, where in the weeks before the war, two-thirds of non-elite opinion stood firmly behind multilateral approaches to defuse the crisis, foremost of which was permitting the UN weapons inspections to take their course.[3] But then, as now, pretty much the entire world recognized the U.S.-U.K. hijacking of the Security Council, and its strategic misdirection away from a defense of the actual target of the threats (Iraq) onto the execution of the policy of the states making those threats while playing the role of Iraq's potential victims (the U.S. and U.K.).

So the aggression planning proceeded then and does now with the cooperation of the UN and international community. In the Iraq case, the Security Council allowed itself to be bamboozled into restarting the weapons-inspection process, accepting this as the urgent matter, rather than the war-mobilization and threat of aggression by the United States and its British ally. Although the Security Council did not vote approval of the U.S.-British attack, it helped set it up by inflating the Iraq threat and failing to confront the real threat posed by the United States and Britain. Then, within two months after "shock and awe," the Security Council voted to give the aggressor the right to stay in Iraq and manage its affairs, thereby approving a gross violation of the UN Charter after the fact.

Now, four years later, the Security Council has outdone itself. Not only has it failed to condemn the U.S. and Israeli threat to attack Iran-the threat itself a violation of the UN Charter,[4] and one made ever-more real by the U.S. invasions of neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq during this decade alone, now followed by a huge U.S. naval buildup near Iran's coast to levels not seen since the U.S. launched its war on Iraq four years ago in what the New York Times just called a "calculated show of force."[5] But even worse, the Council has aided and abetted these potential aggressors by adopting three resolutions in the past eight months under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, each of which affirms that Iran's nuclear program is a threat to international peace and security, and reserves for the Council the right to take "further appropriate measures" should Iran fail to comply-that is, should Iran not cave-in to U.S. demands on exactly the terms demanded.[6]

Since July 31, the Council has demanded that Iran "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development"[7]-despite the fact that Iran's right to engage in these activities is guaranteed under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.[8] Since December 23, it has identified the existence of Iran's nuclear program with so-called "proliferation sensitive nuclear activities"[9]-despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency has never shown Iran's program to be engaged in any kind of activities other than peaceful ones. Indeed, in the December 23 resolution, the Council used the phrase "proliferation sensitive nuclear activities" no fewer than eight different times to describe Iran's nuclear program, the clear-and perfectly false-allegation being that for Iran to do research on and develop its indigenous nuclear fuel capabilities places Iran in violation of its NPT commitments.

But perhaps most egregious of all, the March 24 resolution prohibits Iran from selling "any arms or related material" to other states or individuals (par. 5), and calls upon all states "to exercise vigilance and restraint" in the sale or transfer of a whole list of weapons systems to Iran, "in order to prevent a destabilizing accumulation of arms." (par. 6).[10] As the editorial voice of The Hindu immediately recognized, the first term is critical "not so much because the Islamic Republic is a major vendor of weapons even to Hamas or Hizbollah but because it gives the U.S. an excuse to intimidate or interdict all Iranian merchant shipping under the guise of 'enforcement'."[11] Likewise with the second term, which, if history is any guide, Washington will interpret as a strict prohibition on weapons sales to Iran, thus depriving the potential victim, faced with attack by one or more nuclear powers, of the right to obtain even non-nuclear means of self defense. This of course has been a standard U.S. tactic over many years, even against puny victims-Guatemala in 1954 and Nicaragua in the 1980s, among other cases. But now the United States has succeeded in getting the Security Council to help it impede the self-defense of yet another target of aggression. In this truly Kafkaesque case, the state targeted for attack (Iran) has been declared a threat to the peace by the Security Council, at the behest of a serial aggressor openly mobilizing its forces to attack the "threat."[12]

It should be recognized that the treatment of Iran's nuclear program, and the Security Council's cooperation in this treatment, is the ultimate application of a global double standard, enforced by an aggressive superpower now able to get away with both hypocrisy and murder. Only the United States and its allies may possess nuclear weapons. They alone may threaten to use nukes. They alone may improve their nukes and delivery systems. Only client states such as Israel may remain outside the NPT indefinitely and without penalty. The United States may ignore its NPT obligation to work toward nuclear disarmament. It may even renege on its promise never to use nukes against nuke-free states that joined the NPT. But no matter. By sheer fiat-power, no other state may acquire nukes without U.S. consent. Nor as the case of Iran shows may a state engage in its "inalienable right" to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes unless and until the United States approves.

We are in the midst of a crisis within the post-war international system, as a serial aggressor is now able to mobilize the Security Council, tasked with the maintenance of international peace and security, to declare the state that it threatens with war a menace to the peace and to help the aggressor disarm its target. This carries us beyond Munich.

---- Endnotes ----

1. For an extensive list of documents filed at the United Nations by the Iraqi Government over the period August 29, 2001, through March 26, 2003, see David Peterson, "No Memo Required," ZNet, July 1, 2005, .

2. See David Peterson, "'Spikes of Activity'," ZNet, July 5, 2005, ; and David Peterson, "British Records of Prewar Bombing of Iraq," ZNet, July 6, 2005, .

3. See Steven Kull et al., Americans on Iraq and the UN Inspections, Program on International Policy Attitudes, January 21-26, 2003, df/jan03/IraqUNInsp1%20Jan03%20rpt.pdf .

4. See, e.g., Chapter I, Article 2: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations" (par. 4), .

5. "USS John C. Stennis Now Operating in Persian Gulf," Navy Newsstand, Ma rch 27, 2007, ; "Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border," RIA Novosti, March 27, 2007, ; and Michael R. Gordon, "U.S. Opens Naval Exercise in Persian Gulf," New York Times, March 28, 2007, .

6. See Chapter VII, & lt; . -We believe it essential to understand that for the Security Council to adopt a resoluti on under Chapter VII of the UN Charter means above all that either a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of outright aggression has occurred. Otherwise, there is no point to the Council's resort to its Chapter VII functions and powers. Regardless of what the Council's other members may believe about the import of the Iran resolutions, their assent to these resolutions grants an enormously powerful and dangerous tool of coercion to the United States.

7. Resolution 1696, July 31, 2006, par. 2, .

8. See the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Preamble, and Articles I, II, and IV, .

9. Resolution 1737, December 23, 2006, par. 2, .

10. Resolution 1747, March 24, 2007, par. 5, par. 6, .

11. "Stepping towards the precipice," Editorial, The Hindu, March 27, 2007, .

12. See Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "Hegemony and Appeasement: Setting Up the Next U.S.-Israeli Target (Iran) For Another 'Supreme International Crime'," ZNet, January 27, 2007, .

[ Edward S. Herman is an economist and media analyst, co-author with Noam Chomsky of Manufacturing Consent; David Peterson is a Chicago-based researcher and journalist. ]
==================================

ZNet Commentary
Antiwar talk at the Boston Commons March 27, 2007
By Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn, addressing the crowd gathered for the March 24th 2007 antiwar rally at the Boston Commons.

If somebody invaded your home, and smashed things up, and terrorized your children, would we give them a timetable? When I look at this latest Democratic proposal for a timetable, you know, maybe 18 months from now, at the same time funding the war for another 140 billion dollars, you know, it's as if you gave an intruder in your house a timetable for withdraw, and meanwhile, made a nice dinner for him. No, we can't do that, we have to get out. We don't belong in Iraq. The people in Iraq do not want us there, the American people expressed themselves clearly that the American people don't want us there. It seems the only people who want us there are the members of Congress and the Bush administration.

You know what? We shouldn't have anymore non-binding resolutions. This administration feels that everything is non-binding, you know? According to Bush the Ten Commandments are non-binding. You know, "Thou shall not kill" is non-binding. The only kind of resolution that.., there is a resolution that the House of Representatives could pass, which is binding and which is not subject to presidential veto, and that is a resolution for impeachment. It's time to talk about impeachment. We had 4 years of war in Iraq; we've had 4 years of what the Constitution requires as grounds for impeachment that is "high crimes and misdemeanors." We've had high crimes committed by this government: aggressive war. At the end of World War II, at the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazi leaders were hanged for carrying on wars of aggression. And we are carrying on a war of aggression.

I think what we ought to start talking about is not just the war in Iraq, but war in general. Because, and I say this, I join the other veterans who spoke from this microphone, I am a veteran of World War II, I was a bombardier in the Air Force in World War II. And my own experiences, and my own study of history, have persuaded me that war solves no fundamental problems, no matter what excuses are given to us by our so-called leaders. No matter what we are told about fighting for freedom and democracy, fighting for civilization, no matter what we are told, what tyrant is in power, there is no excuse for war, which is the mass indiscriminant killing of huge numbers of people. No excuse for that. War should come to an end, and we should think beyond the war in Iraq, and insist that we will never go to war again for whatever reason is given to us.

You know they talk about terrorism and the war on terrorism, and just think, at the time of 9-11, this country had 10,000 nuclear weapons. We had submarines armed with nuclear weapons, we had airbases in a hundred countries, and yet 9-11 took place. Militarism, war, submarines, nuclear weapons, they solve nothing.

And if we are going to really do something about terrorism, we ought to get rid of war, because war IS terrorism. We need to stop all this pride in being a great military power. I don't want my country to be a great military power. I want my country to be a great humanitarian power. When people were drowning in New Orleans and in Mississippi because of Katrina, I was thinking of the helicopters over Iraq which should have been saving people here in this country, instead of killing people over there. We should be using our enormous wealth to give everybody in this country free healthcare, and I mean everybody. Let's not talk about legal immigrants and illegal immigrants, citizens and non-citizens, every human being deserves free healthcare, every human being deserves an education. Remember those signs of last May, "No Human Being is Illegal," except maybe the people in the White House.

Albert Einstein said after World War I, thinking of the horrors of that war, he said: "War will not stop until men refuse to fight." And we are now seeing men and women refusing to fight in Iraq. We need to support them. And we need to support the family of those who have died in Iraq. And when enough people refuse to fight in Iraq, and when enough of us support them in their refusal, then the war will not be able to continue. So I look forward to that time when not only this war ends, but all war ends, and we can finally live in a country which we can be proud of. Thank you.

/\/\/\/\/\

[I've owned a copy of the Oxford Companion to English Literature, most recently edited by Margaret Drabble, for many years. However, I've only rarely used it. Last week, I started out looking up Boswell and some of the other 18th century writers, and was immediately impressed. So I Googled her (knowing she is married to Michael Holroyd, who wrote a great biography of GB Shaw. ) Here is one of the recent links I found:]

FROM THE LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH

I loathe America, and what it has done to the rest of the world

By Margaret Drabble

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/05/08/do0801.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/05/08/ixopinion.html

I knew that the wave of anti-Americanism that would swell up after the Iraq war would make me feel ill. And it has. It has made me much, much more ill than I had expected.

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.

I can hardly bear to see the faces of Bush and Rumsfeld, or to watch their posturing body language, or to hear their self-satisfied and incoherent platitudes. The liberal press here has done its best to make them appear ridiculous, but these two men are not funny.

I was tipped into uncontainable rage by a report on Channel 4 News about "friendly fire", which included footage of what must have been one of the most horrific bombardments ever filmed. But what struck home hardest was the subsequent image, of a row of American warplanes, with grinning cartoon faces painted on their noses. Cartoon faces, with big sharp teeth.

It is grotesque. It is hideous. This great and powerful nation bombs foreign cities and the people in those cities from Disneyland cartoon planes out of comic strips. This is simply not possible. And yet, there they were.

Others have written eloquently about the euphemistic and affectionate names that the Americans give to their weapons of mass destruction: Big Boy, Little Boy, Daisy Cutter, and so forth.

We are accustomed to these sobriquets; to phrases such as "collateral damage" and "friendly fire" and "pre-emptive strikes". We have almost ceased to notice when suicide bombers are described as "cowards". The abuse of language is part of warfare. Long ago, Voltaire told us that we invent words to conceal truths. More recently, Orwell pointed out to us the dangers of Newspeak.

But there was something about those playfully grinning warplane faces that went beyond deception and distortion into the land of madness. A nation that can allow those faces to be painted as an image on its national aeroplanes has regressed into unimaginable irresponsibility. A nation that can paint those faces on death machines must be insane.

There, I have said it. I have tried to control my anti-Americanism, remembering the many Americans that I know and respect, but I can't keep it down any longer. I detest Disneyfication, I detest Coca-Cola, I detest burgers, I detest sentimental and violent Hollywood movies that tell lies about history.

I detest American imperialism, American infantilism, and American triumphalism about victories it didn't even win.

On April 29, 2000, I switched on CNN in my hotel room and, by chance, saw an item designed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war. The camera showed us a street scene in which a shabby elderly Vietnamese man was seen speaking English and bartering in dollars in a city that I took to be Ho Chi Minh City, still familiarly known in America by its old French colonial name of Saigon.

"The language of Shakespeare," the commentator intoned, "has conquered Vietnam." I did not note down the dialogue, though I can vouch for that sentence about the language of Shakespeare. But the word "dollar" was certainly repeated several times, and the implications of what the camera showed were clear enough.

The elderly Vietnamese man was impoverished, and he wanted hard currency. The Vietnamese had won the war, but had lost the peace.

Just leave Shakespeare and Shakespeare's homeland out of this squalid bit of revisionism, I thought at the time. Little did I then think that now, three years on, Shakespeare's country would have been dragged by our leader into this illegal, unjustifiable, aggressive war. We are all contaminated by it. Not in my name, I want to keep repeating, though I don't suppose anybody will listen.

America uses the word "democracy" as its battle cry, and its nervous soldiers gun down Iraqi civilians when they try to hold street demonstrations to protest against the invasion of their country. So much for democracy. (At least the British Army is better trained.)

America is one of the few countries in the world that executes minors. Well, it doesn't really execute them - it just keeps them in jail for years and years until they are old enough to execute, and then it executes them. It administers drugs to mentally disturbed prisoners on Death Row until they are back in their right mind, and then it executes them, too.

They call this justice and the rule of law. America is holding more than 600 people in detention in Guantánamo Bay, indefinitely, and it may well hold them there for ever. Guantánamo Bay has become the Bastille of America. They call this serving the cause of democracy and freedom.

I keep writing to Jack Straw about the so-called "illegal combatants", including minors, who are detained there without charge or trial or access to lawyers, and I shall go on writing to him and his successors until something happens. This one-way correspondence may last my lifetime. I suppose the minors won't be minors for long, although the youngest of them is only 13, so in time I shall have to drop that part of my objection, but I shall continue to protest.

A great democratic nation cannot behave in this manner. But it does. I keep remembering those words from Nineteen Eighty-Four, on the dynamics of history at the end of history, when O'Brien tells Winston: "Always there will be the intoxication of power. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever."

We have seen enough boots in the past few months to last us a lifetime. Iraqi boots, American boots, British boots. Enough of boots.

I hate feeling this hatred. I have to keep reminding myself that if Bush hadn't been (so narrowly) elected, we wouldn't be here, and none of this would have happened. There is another America. Long live the other America, and may this one pass away soon.

/\/\/\/\/\/\

Not-so-good Friday

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/03/356501.shtml

[The coffee-shop talk and the listserves the past few days have been dominated by this news story. I don't know anything more about it than that. Perhaps it's the proverbial "trial balloon" to see whether or not "public opinion" will support such an operation against Iran. -- PHS]

OPERATION BITE: APRIL 6 SNEAK ATTACK BY US FORCES AGAINST IRAN
PLANNED, RUSSIAN MILITARY SOURCES WARN

GENERAL IVASHOV CALLS FOR EMERGENCY SESSION OF UN SECURITY
COUNCIL TO WARD OFF LOOMING US AGGRESSION

By Webster G. Tarpley

Washington DC, March 25 --

The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the
well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian
Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran's nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

"We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: " Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it," he continued.

Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. "This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran," Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, who would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.

Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. "This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East," he commented.

"Moscow must expert Russia's influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter," said General Ivashov. "In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force," he concluded.

________________

Global Research Feature Article

URL of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CAR20070401&articleId=5244

Israeli Press Report: US will Strike Iran on Good Friday

by Michael Carmichael April 1, 2007

Citing Russian media and AP, the Jerusalem Post is now reporting that the US will strike Iran on Good Friday between the hours of 4.00 am and 4.00 pm in a coordinated series of air strikes and missile attacks aimed at selected strategic targets.

Russian intelligence sources identify US forces assembled in the Persian Gulf armed with aircraft and missiles that could carry out the hard power attack. The US fleet in the Gulf includes two aircraft carriers: USS Eisenhower and USS Stennis with a third on the way, USS Nimitz.

Russian sources describe Iran's nuclear facilities as well as the command and control architecture of its military as the primary targets of the US attack.

Iran's detention of 15 British sailors has shifted the focus of the international community away from its nascent nuclear program.

The JP article below has attracted numerous comments this morning, several of which came from US citizens who support Israel and are keenly enthusiastic about the Pentagon's plans to attack Iran. A small selection is reprinted below the article. One particularly curious item is from a person who identified himself as, "Micah, USMC - USA" who expressed his support for Israel with a metaphor comparing Iranians and Iraqis to "21st Century Nazis."

Due to its sympathies for the right-wing of the Israeli political spectrum, the Jerusalem Post is regarded as one of the most conservative journals published in Israel. The avowedly right-wing newspaper is owned by Hollinger, Inc. Due to their holdings in Hollinger, Conrad Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, are frequently described as former owners of the Jerusalem Post, however, Black is now undergoing a trial in Chicago where he is accused of defrauding Hollinger of sixty million dollars. One ranking neoconservative with strong ties to the Bush White House and the Pentagon, Richard Perle, is a Co-Chairman of the board of Hollinger.

Michael Carmichael

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apr. 1, 2007 1:00 | Updated Apr. 1, 2007 9:46

'US ready to strike Iran on Good Friday'

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF AND AP

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173879218400&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps "from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6," according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.

According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted a security official as saying, "Russian intelligence has information that the US Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory."

Iran fears strike by 'warmongers'

The Russian Defense Ministry rejected the claims of an imminent attack as "myths." There was no immediate response from Washington.

The reports come as the Iranian chief of staff, Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, was quoted on Saturday by Iran's Fars news agency warning leaders of Arab countries that Israel plans to open a "suicidal attack" on its neighbors this summer, to "prevent the withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq and the area."

"I warn the dear leaders and Muslim brothers in the neighboring countries of the occupied territories that this suicidal attack of the Zionists is threatening them," he said.

The countries in danger, he said, were "Lebanon and Syria, and later Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

Also on Saturday, Russia urged Britain and Teheran to resolve the dispute over 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran last week, a local news agency reported.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin urged the two sides to provide the United Nations with their own assessments as to what happened and where exactly the detention occurred so that the body could conduct an independent probe.

"We hope these actions will provide a foundation for the soonest possible resolution of the crisis," Kamynin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that the captured British sailors and marines trespassed in Iranian waters and called world powers "arrogant" for failing to apologize, the country's official news agency reported.

"The British occupier forces did trespass our waters. Our border guards detained them with skill and bravery. But arrogant powers, because of their arrogant and selfish spirit, are claiming otherwise," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a speech in the southeastern city of Andinmeshk.

The European Union grappled with a double bind over Iran Saturday - the country's nuclear program and its seizure of the British troops - and reported no progress on either issue.

A debate about Iran's nuclear ambitions had been scheduled as a key agenda item but "was overshadowed to a certain extent by the issue of the sailors and marines," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after hosting a two-day EU foreign ministers meeting in Bremen, Germany.

The Foreign Ministry in Iran dismissed the EU's "biased and meddlesome" comments on the captured troops, saying the dispute solely involved the governments of Iran and Britain.

Speaking to reporters in Bremen, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett urged Iran to resolve the crisis over the military personnel peacefully, saying London remains open to dialogue.

"We encourage Iran to peacefully resolve this issue," she said.

"We continue to express our willingness to engage in dialogue and discussions with Iran," she added. "That is very much in the best interest of our people and that is our foremost concern."

"I think everyone regrets that this position has arisen," she said. "What we want is a way out of it."

AP contributed to this report.

/\/\/\/\/\/\

FROM GLOBALRESEARCH.CA

Brit "Hostage" Drama Pales in Comparison to MI6 and CIA Crimes Against Iran

by Kurt Nimmo

Global Research Feature Article March 29, 2007

URL of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070329&articleId=5224

Another Day in the Empire

"Perhaps we should get some perspective by imagining how we might react if the Iranians had occupied France and were patrolling the English channel," runs a post on the UK Telegraph, responding to the capture of 15 British sailors by Iran.

Indeed. But I can think of one better.

Perhaps we'd get some perspective if we realized MI6 and the CIA plotted against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. "If there had not been a military coup, there would not have been 25 years of the Shah's brutal regime, there would not have been a revolution in 1979 and a government of clerics," Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister and leading member of a political party that traces its origins to Mossadegh's National Front, told the Christian Science Monitor on the 50th anniversary of the coup and installation of the Shah. "Now it seems that the Americans are pushing towards the same direction again. That shows they have not learned anything from history."

"When Iranians rose up against the Shah with cries of 'Death to the American Shah!,' when their new regime emerged as bitterly anti-American, and when a group of them took American diplomats hostage in 1979, many Americans wondered how this could have happened in a country they had always considered friendly," Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah's Men, told the History News Network. "Once they understand what the United States did to Iran in 1953, they will understand why so many Iranians became angry at the United States."

"For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered. Perhaps because Mossadegh represents a future denied, his memory has approached myth," Dan De Luce writes for the Guardian. "Beyond Iran, America remains deeply resented for siding with authoritarian rule in the region."

Of course, the average American, who likely would have a difficult time finding Iran on a map, is almost completely ignorant of these historical facts. He does not know that the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, trained by the CIA and Israel's Mossad, "became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest and detain suspected persons indefinitely" and "operated its own prisons in Tehran (the Komiteh and Evin facilities) and, many suspected, throughout the country as well. SAVAK's torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails," according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Finally, Britain's largest newspaper, in fact the highest circulation newspaper in the world, neocon Rupert Murdoch's Sun, amidst banner ads of naked women showing off curvy derrieres, declares Leading Seaman Faye Turney "was forced on the orders of ranting president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to write a letter of apology to the Iranian people."

Even if true, this is a shade better than being kidnapped in Afghanistan, Iraq, or on the streets of Milan, Italy, and "extraordinarily" rendered by the CIA and sent to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, or Uzbekistan to be tortured.

No doubt Ahmadinejad's alleged rant is mild when compared to water boarding or the sort of severe trauma inflicted on prisoners at the Bagram torture facility (said to be comparable to being run over by a bus) or for that matter rape by way of chemical light at Abu Ghraib.

_____________

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-- Paul Stephens greateco@3rivers.net 406 216-2711

THE MONTANA GREEN BULLETIN is an unofficial publication of the Cascade County Greens. We network among the Green Party of the United States and other Green Party organizations, including the Montana Green Party, Glacial Lake Missoula Greens, Yellowstone Greens, Greens/WORK, and others. We also belong to the Montana Peace Seekers, and various other peace, justice, and environmental sustainability groups. All opinion and analysis is presented according to traditional "fair use" doctrines, and remains the property and responsibility of the authors. Any corrections or retractions will be made the following week, if received in time to do so.

This Bulletin is distributed without charge to public officials and the media, as well as those who request it. It should be taken as a kind of weekly press release, and anything in it which isn't otherwise copyrighted or reserved may be freely reprinted or distributed with attribution, or may be used as a news source (again, with attribution) by other media.

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Valuable websites and other resources:

Alternative Radio from Boulder, CO http://www.alternativeradio.org/ is broadcast Mondays at 1:00 p.m. on KUFM/KGPR, 89.9 FM in Great Falls, and at other frequencies in western Montana. Making Contact originated by Norman Solomon can be heard Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. on the same stations. You can hear Pacifica radio on the internet at http://www.kpkf.org (that's the LA station), or your favorite part of the country, linked from there. Pacifica's Democracy Now with Amy Goodman is available M-F and archived on the net at http://www.democracynow.org .

Try other major stations by searching the web, or browsing (call letters).org. Internet radio is coming to be a necessity here in Montana, and is an excellent source of foreign language news and culture, as well. You can also get KEMC, Billings public radio from http://www.yellowstonepublicradio.org in various streaming formats.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/ national Bozeman-based election/corporate law reforms

http://www.greeninstitute.net/ non-profit educational institute for Green values

http://www.wildrockies.org/ Alliance for the Wild Rockies member organizations

http://www.meic.org website of the Montana Environmental Information Center

http://www.aeromt.org/ Alternative Energy Resource Organization, Helena

http://OrganicConsumers.org news and information about food safety

http://www.ippn.org links to just about every Green, peace, and justice organization

http://www.montanapeaceseekers.org Montana peace seekers, local chapters

http://www.greencommons.org national website and discussion forum for Green activists

http://www.chlorophyll.us/ another prominent Green blog

http://www.wagingpeace.org/ "Sunflowers" Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

http://www.pnhp.org Physicians for a National Health Policy (single payer system)

http://www.native-voice.com Website for bi-weekly newspaper, The Native Voice

http://www.IndianCountry.com Indian Country Today, daily national newspaper

http://www.missoulanews.com Missoula Independent weekly newspaper, online

http://www.billingsnews.com Billings Outpost independent weekly newspaper, online

http://www.queencitynews.com Helena independent weekly newspaper, online

http://www.drugpolicy.org Website of the Lindesmith Center, Drug Policy Foundation

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/ The Center for Voting and Democracy

http://www./seattle.indymedia.org Independent media center for Seattle, with links

http://www.murrayinfo.com/greens/ Missoula Greens resources, Iroquois Federation

http://www.gp.org/ Green Party of the United States

http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml GP News links and blogs

http://www.greens.org/s-r/ Synthesis/Regeneration, publication of Greens/GPUSA