TL: GREENPEACE MAGAZINE March/April 1989
SO: Greenpeace USA (GP)
DT: March 1989
Keywords: greenpeace periodicals us digests gp /


The Ties That Blind: Australia's Quest For Relevance
Indonesia Kicks The Pesticide Habit
French Bulldoze Greenpeace In The Antarctic
Whitewash: The Dioxin Cover-up


WHITEWASH: THE DIOXIN COVER-UP 

by Peter von Stackelberg 

Industry and the EPA have papered-over evidence of dioxin
contamination from pulp and paper mills.

INDONESIA'S PEST MANAGEMENT MIRACLE 

by Kay Treakle and John Sacko 

Indonesia manages pests the old-fashioned way, without
pesticides.

THE TIES THAT BLIND 

by Andre Carothers 

Australia's four-decade slumber in the shadow of the United
States has left it a third-class world power. But there's a new
generation "down under" that isn't going to take it anymore.

ECONOTES: Pariah ship dumps waste--Turtles on the ropes--
Cousteau criticized--Mexican power plant plagued--West Coast
trash destined for island paradise.

BRIEFINGS: Queensland's last-gasp attempt to claim Daintree
wilderness.

FORUM: The nuclear allergy catches on.

CAMPAIGNS: French assault Greenpeace activists in Antarctica--
Canada's uranium mine minefield--Driftnetters snared--John
Cormack remembered.

ACTION ACCESS: Write the World Bank--Protest whaling at home--
Discover garbage solutions--Vote with your dollars-- Get help
for hard-to-swallow water--Meet Greenpeace Canada.


ECONOTES

THE SAGA OF THE LEPER SHIP 

FOR 27 MONTHS, THE Khian Sea drifted in and out of international
ports looking for a home for its cargo: 14,000 tons of ash from
Philadelphia's municipal incinerator. In November, the ship
appeared off the Singapore coast with a new name, an empty hold
and unanswered questions about what happened to its cargo.
According to the ship's captain, Arturo Fuentes, "We brought it
to a country, and barges with cranes came alongside to scoop the
ash out." 

Since his claim has not been substantiated, and no country has
admitted taking in the ash, it seems likely that the barge's
cargo was dumped in international waters somewhere between the
Suez Canal and Singapore. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency is considering prosecuting the Khian Sea's owner,
Amalgamated Shipping, for violations of the Ocean Dumping Act.

The Khian Sea began its voyage in August 1986. It had no luck
dumping the contaminated ash until arriving in Gonaives, Haiti,
in January 1988 (see Campaigns, Greenpeace, May/June 1988). By
describing the cargo as "fertilizer," the ship obtained a permit
to unload. "By the time the Haitian government realized what
they had agreed to," says Greenpeace waste trade campaigner Jim
Vallette, "the Khian Sea had dumped a third of the ash on a
beach." Although government officials demanded that the ship
reclaim its "fertilizer" and get out, the Khian Sea left
approximately 4,000 tons of ash and sailed off.

The next stop was Yugoslavia in early July, where Amalgamated
Shipping claims it then "sold" the Khian Sea to a recently
incorporated company called Romo Shipping. This paper transfer
did little more than give the ship a new name, and in September,
the Felicia set sail for the Suez Canal on its way to the
Pacific. Thanks to Greenpeace, Sri Lanka, the Philippines,
Indonesia, and Singapore were warned of the ship's cargo and,
despite at least one offer of "a large sum of money," denied it
a berth. Says Captain Fuentes, "Greenpeace really did us in." 

Unfortunately, this is not the first incident involving
Philadelphia's waste. In March 1988, after receiving a warning
from Greenpeace, Guinean government officials demanded that
Bulkhandling, Inc., remove 15,000 tons of Philadelphia's ash
that they had dumped on its shores (see "Return to Sender,"
Greenpeace, November/December 1988). On July 2, a ship returned
the ash from Guinea to Philadelphia.

KEMP'S RIDLEYS ON THE ROPES 

IN A FEAT OF NAVIGATION THAT has mystified biologists since it
was first discovered, the entire known population of nesting
female Kemp's ridley sea turtles returns every year to the same
beach to lay eggs. The site, an unassuming stretch of sand on
Mexico's Gulf coast, was discovered in the 1940s when biologists
obtained a scratched strip of movie film documenting as many as
40,000 females digging nests in the sand.

Since then, the number of nesting females that return has
dropped precipitously; last year, fewer than 400 appeared for
the annual gathering known as the "arribada." Since October, 30
dead Kemp's ridleys have washed up on Florida beaches, a further
sign that the population is in serious trouble. 

"We've never had this many Kemp's wash up," says Jan Johnson of
Greenpeace's sea turtle campaign. "It is a crisis situation."
Many sea turtles die in the nets of shrimp fishermen, a problem
that has provoked heated arguments between environmentalists and
the industry along the Gulf coast. The temporary reopening of
formerly closed shrimp beds along the Georgia Florida border is
thought to be contributing to the ridley's decline.

The state of Florida has declared an official emergency and is
considering enacting legislation to further protect the sea
turtles. Greenpeace is working to extend the existing
protections, now in force throughout most of Florida from May to
August, so that they are enforced year round.

COUSTEAU FOUNDERS ON MORUROA 

WHEN JACQUES COUSTEAU announced in 1987 that the Calypso was
going to the French nuclear test site at Moruroa, Pacific
activists took notice. It was an undeniably intriguing event:
French ecologist and explorer meets French force de frappe. The
legendary ship and its telegenic captain were visiting the
fragile atoll that has borne the brunt of some 140 nuclear tests
over the last 25 years. 

A year later, the activists were bitterly disappointed. Instead
of the condemnation they expected, the Cousteau Society produced
what one observer called "a whitewash." In a lengthy open letter
to Cousteau subtitled "You are out of your depth," Tahitian
activist and anthropologist Bengt Danielsson catalogued the
deficiencies in the Cousteau visit. The expedition, which
Danielsson calls "a guided tour," lasted only five days and
included no medical doctors to examine the effects of radiation
on neighboring islanders. Cousteau's mini sub, capable of
descending to 200 meters, proved inadequate to the task of
inspecting cracks in the atoll, which may extend down to 1,200
meters. And Cousteau completely neglected to examine the
suspected relationship between the destruction of Moruroa's
reefs and the alarming rate of ciguatera poisoning (a fish
poison caused by algal blooms) among Polynesians. 

Cousteau may have also underestimated the relish with which
French sympathizers exploited the captain's public statements.
A progovernment newspaper in Tahiti announced "his green light
should therefore silence the voices of the often partial and
dishonest individuals who criticize the Moruroa tests." Coming
from Danielsson, the criticisms are particularly telling. The
anthropologist and his wife had dedicated their book on France's
Pacific policy to"Captain Courageous" Jacques Cousteau.

THIS WAS NOT A TEST 

THE MEXICAN POWER AUTHORITY is eager to get the Laguna Verde
nuclear power plant on line. So eager, in fact, that when a
cooling system explosion ripped through the plant last November,
authorities tried to disguise the accident as a "safety
exercise." When stories appeared in the Mexican press, the
Federal Electric Commission branded them "informative
terrorism." But after 15 senior technicians resigned in protest,
the plant's backers have lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. 

Anonymous interviews conducted by Mexican newspapers with plant
employees revealed that poor design caused the explosion--pipes
half the required diameter were used in a closed high pressure
system. The plant's managers decided to hide the accident
because they feared that negative publicity would delay start-
up. "How is it possible that all this time these systems weren't
tested?" one technician is quoted as saying. He also predicted
a future nuclear accident "due to the innumerable design errors
and the irresponsibility and corruption of the directors of
Laguna Verde." 

More than a decade late and $3 billion over projected costs,
Laguna Verde is actively opposed by a coalition of environmental
and church groups. The area around Laguna Verde has been under
a state of siege since mid-October, when Mexican troops
surrounded the plant and threatened protesters with arrest.
Observers speculate that the rush to start the reactors is due
to the Federal Electric Commission's eagerness to present the
new administration with a fate accompli.

PARADISE DUMPED

DAN FLEMING'S BUSINESS card reads, "owner/lobbyist," an apt
title for the entrepreneur who is trying to persuade the
Marshall Islands government to let him "augment" the atolls with
ten percent of the U.S. west coast's municipal garbage.
Fleming's company, Admiralty Pacific, has already contracted to
begin hauling waste by 1990, but it has yet to gain final
approval from the Marshall Islands government or finish a $3
million environmental impact assessment.

In his proposal, Fleming declares that his plan is a "win win
solution to . . . the industrialized world's need to find a
source of deposit for its solid waste and sludge." Arguing that
what the Marshall Islands need is more land, Fleming writes,
"that which nature has done over the centuries can and is often
duplicated by man." If the islands decide not to let him raise
their altitude with garbage, suggests Fleming, the Marshalls
will disappear under the sea, a victim of the greenhouse effect.

Unfortunately, the bales of garbage Fleming plans to transport
to the Marshalls, like all municipal waste, will be laced with
metals, cleaning fluid, solvents, lead-based paints, motor oil,
pesticides and other toxic materials. Moreover, the plan does
little to help formulate a long-term solution to the United
States' garbage problem, and it opens the door to various waste
dumping schemes of an even less benign nature. Perhaps the New
Zealand Herald says it most succinctly: "It's your rubbish. You
should keep it."


BRIEFINGS

QUEENSLAND'S LAST STAND 

UNLESS THE STATE OF Queensland wins a last ditch attempt to
reverse Australian law in court, a long and bizarre chapter in
one of that country's best-known environmental battles will end.
At the center of the controversy is the Daintree wilderness, a
patch of tropical rain forest in Cape York on Australia's
northeast coast. The Queensland government, notorious for
opposing conservation in any form, is suing the federal
government in an effort to return jurisdiction over Daintree to
the state capitol in Brisbane. As of now, thanks to the federal
government in Canberra, the rain forest is protected as a
national park.

Daintree gained international notoriety in 1983 and again in
1984, when activists organized long and strident protests
against the state's road-building plans. During the battle of
Daintree, activists climbed trees, constructed elaborate
barricades and buried themselves up to their necks in the earth.
The road, a 20-mile mud track that parallels the coast, was
eventually built, but not before international attention was
focused on the unique and rapidly disappearing Daintree
wilderness.

The latest controversy began to take shape in 1982, when the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) placed the
rain forest on the inventory of The World's Greatest Natural
Areas. In 1984, the World Heritage Committee, a branch of the
United Nations that decides whether a natural area is "of such
outstanding value that its conservation concerns all people,"
passed a resolution calling upon the Australian federal
government and the Queensland government to nominate Daintree
for World Heritage listing. 

Instead of allowing Daintree to join the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids
of Egypt, the Grand Canyon and other World Heritage sites,
Queensland sent delegations, at taxpayers' expense, to the World
Heritage conference in Paris in 1987 and again to Brazil last
December to lobby against being listed.

Queensland justifies this ludicrous behavior by suggesting that,
among other things, World Heritage listing infringes on citizen
and state rights, hurts the local economy and cedes control of
state assets to "foreigners." Queensland has found allies in the
lunatic fringe of the far right, who see World Heritage listing
as part of an international "one-world government" conspiracy.

Queensland officials have been so cavalier with the truth that
the federal government in Canberra was forced to publish and
distribute a point-by-point refutation of their propaganda. The
argument that locking up Daintree would destroy the local timber
economy, for example, neglects to mention that most of the
region's valuable hardwoods are gone; what remains is suitable
for wood chips but little else. The state ignored offers of
federal compensation for lost jobs and alternative employment.
Moreover, according to the Ministry of Environment, "independent
consultants found the timber industry a declining and 
insignificant part of the north Queensland regional economy . .
. due to declining yields since the 1960s." 

Neither were Queensland officials swayed by the arguments of the
Australian Academy of Sciences, the Australian National Parks
and Wildlife Service, and rain forest experts from around the
world. In the late 1970s, biologists discovered an idiosperm, an
ancient species of tree, flourishing in Daintree. The rain
forest is also the habitat of two extremely rare species of
tree-climbing kangaroos and a unique species of white opossum.
According to the IUCN's technical evaluation, "the tropical
forests of Queensland are living floral and faunal museums,
relics of the Gondwana era of 100 million years ago."

Despite, or perhaps because of, the efforts of Queensland's
delegation, the World Heritage meeting in Brazilia granted
Daintree World Heritage status last December. Queensland's
argument that it could take care of its own natural areas rang
hollow in Brazilia when word reached the meeting that officials
in the state capitol had failed to stop a cement company from
blowing up the biologically important bat caves in Mount Etna.
The bat caves were the focus of another long-running battle
between conservationists and the state, which wanted to see the
mountain quarried for limestone.

Queensland's last stand is in the courts, where the state is
hoping that the country's strong tradition of states' rights
will help move jurisdiction over Daintree back to the state
capitol in Brisbane. The courts ruled against Queensland in a
similar case two years ago, and observers are confident that the
state will lose again.


WHITEWASH: THE DIOXIN COVER-UP

By Peter Von Stackleberg

DIOXIN: A PRIMER The word "dioxin" has been splashed across
environmental magazines during the last decade. Vietnam vets
exposed to dioxin-laden Agent Orange suffer from chronic
illnesses Love Canal and Times Beach are a homeowner's worst
nightmare. Several pesticides, herbicides and wood preservatives
have been pulled from the market because they contain dioxin. To
most of us, it's just a word, and a scary one. 

"Dioxin" doesn't refer to one single chemical, but to a whole
chemical family consisting of 75 individual members. These
members all have the same basic three-ring structure--a nucleus
of two benzene rings connected by a ring of oxygen atoms. What
makes one dioxin different from the next is the amount of
chlorine attached to its outside edges.

The position and amount of chlorine attached determines the
toxic potential of the resulting dioxins. 2,3,7,8-
tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) has four chlorine atoms and
is the most toxic chemical ever synthesized by humans. Hex a-,
hepta-, and octadibenzo-p-dioxins have six, seven and eight
chlorine atoms respectively, and are less toxic than TCDD.

Scientists today think that dioxin imitates natural steroid
hormones, such as estrogen, in our bodies. Dioxin fits into a
protein "receptor," which then triggers a whole range of basic
biochemical reactions. This action can be compared to a key
fitting into a lock that in turn opens the door to a house with
many different rooms. The dioxin "key" turns the protein
receptor "lock," making many parts of the body vulnerable to
dioxin's harmful effects. 

Dioxin is dangerous because minute quantities trigger such a
wide range of health effects, ranging from aching joints, strong
headaches, irritability and insomnia, to chloracne, cancer,
birth defects, reproductive failure and immune system disorders.
The suppression of the immune system has great implications,
since it leaves the organism vulnerable to diseases from other
sources.

In addition to its enormous toxicity, dioxin is highly
bioaccumulative because it is fat-soluble. It is passed up the
food chain and stored in the fat cells of each organism, not
unlike the old nursery rhyme about the dog that swallowed the
cat that swallowed the bird that swallowed the spider that
swallowed the fly (that might have been exposed to dioxin).
Already, dioxin is found in the milk of the average North
American mother. It is possible for nursing infants to be
exposed to up to 200 times more dioxin than healthy adults,
leaving the margin of safety for the nursing new-born
frighteningly small. 
--Renate Kroesa and Judy Christrup


IN THE DYING DAYS OF THE SUMMER OF 1987, a ramshackle house in
an isolated valley in Oregon's Coastal Range became the focus of
international media attention. It was long in coming. Since the
mid-1970s, Carol Van Strum had almost single-handedly conducted
a vigorous campaign to end the use of dioxin contaminated
herbicides in her home state. The decade of struggle, chronicled
in A Bitter Fog, might well have ended with the completion of
the book. Except that Van Strum and her husband of eight years,
attorney Paul Merrell, soon realized that the herbicide story
was just part of something bigger. 

Information on dioxin, a chemical that can be as dangerous as
plutonium, was scattered and incomplete, they discovered. Even
worse, EPA officials were reluctant to release publicly their
own studies, some of which showed a connection between dioxin
and paper mills. Using freedom of information laws, Van Strum
and Merrell obtained EPA's dioxin studies in 1986 and set to
work piecing together a report that pulled the dioxin/paper mill
connection from behind, in the authors' words, "a smokescreen of
government secrecy." 

In August 1987, the report, entitled No Margin of Safety and
published by Greenpeace, burst like a bomb on the pulp and paper
industry and its regulators within the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). Evidence gleaned from thousands of pages of the
EPA's own documents demonstrated that pulp mills were spewing
dioxins into the air and water, creating what Van Strum and
Merrell call a public health emergency. 

But that was only the beginning. Someone inside the American
Paper Institute (API), the paper manufacturer's trade
organization, saw the report and sent a collection of documents
to Greenpeace. These documents substantiated Merrell and Van
Strum's charges that senior EPA officials and the industries the
agency was supposed to regulate were working together to limit
public knowledge about the hazards of dioxin and a host of other
dangerous chemicals. According to U.S. District Judge Owen M.
Panner, the documents revealed an agreement "between the EPA and
the industry to suppress, modify or delay the results of the
joint EPA/industry [dioxin] study or the manner in which they
are publicly presented."

SINCE AT LEAST 1980, EPA SCIENTISTS AND researchers with
Canada's environment and health departments have been expressing
their concern about the growing dioxin contamination of the
environment. They are concerned about the high toxicity of
dioxin and its extreme ability to bioaccumulate. Dioxin is the
term commonly used to describe a group of about 75 compounds
with the same basic chemical structure. 

2, 3 ,7, 8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is the most
studied member of the dioxin family. TCDD is also the deadliest
substance ever produced. Its toxicity has been compared to
plutonium--the EPA's procedures for handling these two materials
are the same.

Industry representatives have argued that low levels of dioxin
do no harm, but this contention has never been supported by
scientific research. During congressional hearings in 1980, EPA
scientists testified that TCDD was so powerful a carcinogen and
teratogen that even the lowest measurable doses caused cancer
and birth defects during laboratory tests. "EPA considers dioxin
a carcinogen and, as all carcinogens, considers there to be a
finite risk at any level," said the EPA's Alec McBride. "EPA
considers any level as posing a degree of risk." 

Cancer is not the only danger that dioxin poses. The effects of
TCDD in all species of animals tested under laboratory
conditions included weight loss, liver damage, hair loss,
abnormal retention of body fluids and suppression of the immune
system. Other effects of exposure to TCDD include birth defects
and infertility. The dangers to the unborn in particular were
emphasized by the EPA's Don Barnes. In a memo written on March
16 1987, he said:

"Pregnant women, lactating mothers, developing fetuses and
nursing infants constitute a sub population of special concern.
Human body burdens [of dioxins and furans a closely related
group of highly toxic chemicals that are often found with
dioxins] are likely to lead to additional burdens to the fetus
and the nursing infant, which are not mimicked in the animal
tests. Increases in the mother's body burden as the result of
[dioxin/furan] contaminated food would likely lead to additional
exposures."

In the late 1970s and early '80s, public concern over dioxin
contamination centered on sites like Love Canal and Times Beach.
But it soon became evident that dioxins are far more widespread
in the environment than two places in New York and Missouri.

IN THE FORESTS OF VAN STRUM AND MERRELL'S valley, and in many
others up and down the Coastal Range, the spraying of defoliants
similar to Agent Orange was commonplace during the 1970s and
into the early 1980s. So were health problems that many people
complained were the result of that spraying. 

"One woman had had fourteen miscarriages in the years she had
lived in the valley. Another told of her two miscarriages and of
her son born with defective lungs and liver. The young wife of
a logger had been unable to complete a pregnancy in the five
years they had been married," wrote Van Strum in her book.

In Oregon, Larry Archer and his wife Laura lived near a
reservoir that was sprayed with herbicides while she was
pregnant with her second child. He was present when the baby was
born. Van Strum wrote, "'The baby--it was a girl,' Archer said.
'She was perfect, from her toes to her eyebrows. I mean, her
face was perfect too.... But that was it. It ended at the
eyebrows. That's all there was--just this kind of a bowl, with
a kind of tissue over it. She couldn't breathe. There wasn't any
brain to tell her to breathe."' 

Van Strum, Merrell and others say the evidence clearly shows a
link between herbicide spraying programs, dioxins and birth
defects. What concerns them is that dioxins have been detected
in places where little or no spraying of herbicides has been
done and from a variety of sources. Dioxins are showing up
everywhere in the environment--and in the food chain.

Dioxins are always produced when chlorinated compounds are
burnt. Municipal incinerators, for example, produce dioxins when
they burn garbage containing chlorinated plastics like polyvinyl
chloride (PVC). Dioxins are also unwanted by-products in the
manufacture of chlorinated chemicals, such as Agent Orange and
the wood preservative pentachlorophenol (PCP).

EPA scientists suspected some sort of link between pulp mills
and dioxin in 1980. Their suspicion was substantiated in 1983,
when fish caught downstream from several Wisconsin River pulp
mills were found to contain high (50 parts per trillion) levels
of dioxin. The dioxin studies secured by Van Strum and Merrell
in 1986 confirmed the cause-and-effect relationship. Samples
from sites slated for "control" sampling and predicted to have
only "background" dioxin levels consistently revealed high
levels of dioxin contamination when downstream from or near pulp
mills.

Chlorine in the pulp bleaching process acts to form toxic
chlorine-based compounds, including dioxin. Kraft-type pulp
mills, where chlorine gas is used in the first stage of the
bleaching process, are the biggest culprits. Chlorine gas reacts
with compounds in wood lignin to create dioxin precursors and
many other chlorinated compounds. These toxic compounds, called
organochlorines, are released into the air and water when wastes
are dumped. In North America, more than 150 pulp mills are
dumping organochlorines, and most likely dioxins, into nearby
rivers and lakes. An average-sized pulp mill discharges between
35 and 50 tons of chlorinated compounds every day.

"Dioxin, really, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
pulp mill effluents," says Renate Kroesa, Greenpeace's
international pulp and paper campaign director. "Up to 1,000
different chlorinated compounds, only 300 of which have been
identified, are formed during bleaching and discharged with the
effluent. Among the compounds identified, we find many well-
known carcinogens that are regulated when they come from
chemical industries. But, when they are discharged by the pulp
and paper industry, there are no limits."

THE ISLANDS SCATTERED IN THE GEORGIA Strait between the British
Columbian mainland and Vancouver Island are close to heaven.
Sparkling blue water, the deep green of fir spruce and hemlock
and rocky shores make it a beautiful area. The waters around the
islands teem with life. Pods of orcas are not an uncommon sight.
Crabs, oysters and shellfish abound. But the beautiful scenery
is marred by foul air at Crofton, Vancouver Island, where a pulp
mill vents its wastes into the air and water. 

Like the canaries that once warned coal miners of deadly gases
in their pits, the Crofton blue heron colony serves as a warning
of new dangers. For the last two years, the eggs from the blue
heron colony near Crofton have failed to hatch. Dioxins were
detected in the herons' eggs during studies conducted in 1983
and 1986. The dioxins came from two sources: hex a-, hepta-, and
octa-dibenzo-p-dioxins were coming from lumber industries in
British Columbia that use dioxin-laden pentachorophenol wood
preservatives; TCDD was coming from the pulp mill. Since PCP use
has decreased since 1987, levels of dioxins associated with it
have dropped. But the pulp mill operates beyond capacity, so
levels of TCDD dioxin have tripled over the last two years. 

Crofton's paper mill is an example of an industry-wide problem.
Dioxins not only find their way into the water. They also
contaminate the bleached pulp produced by these mills. What this
means is that all bleached paper products--coffee filters,
disposable diapers, toilet paper, everything--are potentially
contaminated with dioxin. Paper industry executives would prefer
to keep this quiet. And they almost did, were it not for the
ally who sent the American Paper Institute's internal papers to
Greenpeace.

The API papers show a concerted effort on the part of the EPA
and industry to hide the problem. The strategy began with an
effort to slow the introduction of regulations aimed at
eliminating dioxin contamination. In an internal memorandum to
the American Paper Institute's executive on December 30, 1986,
one staff member claimed that "the industry has been able to
forestall major regulatory and public relations difficulties by,
among other things, agreeing to cooperate in a joint study with
EPA." 

In addition to forestalling regulatory action, the paper
industry put together a "dioxin response team," which
recommended "a public affairs strategy calling for activities
keyed to, and in advance of, the release of the joint
EPA/industry dioxin study." 

A comprehensive API plan dated March 2, 1987, treated the public
health threat posed by dioxin as a public relations problem. The
industry's strategy was to: "1) keep all allegations of health
risks out of the public arena--or minimize them; 2) avoid
confrontations with government agencies, which might trigger
concerns about health risks or raise visibility of issue
generally; 3) maintain customer confidence in integrity of
product; and 4) achieve an appropriate regulatory climate." 

In the same document the industry said it would meet with EPA
administrator Lee Thomas to tell him that dioxins pose no real
health hazard and that the problem is one of "public
perception." One of the industry's objectives was to have the
EPA "rethink" its dioxin risk assessment and issue a statement
saying dioxin causes "no harm to environment or public health." 

In its efforts to sway the EPA, the American Paper Institute
planned to turn EPA attention away from dioxin contamination of
paper products. At the same time, it was working to "improve
intelligence gathering within EPA," including identification of
"allies" and "adversaries" within the agency. 

According to an API report distributed to its members on August
10,1987, the industry achieved at least some of its public
relations goals: "[EPA] Administrator [Lee] Thomas indicated a
willingness to cooperate with the industry to ensure that the
public would not be unduly alarmed about this [dioxin] issue." 

In its efforts to stifle public discussion of the dioxin hazards
posed by its plants, the pulp and paper industry even attempted
to get the EPA to violate the freedom of information laws. In a
sworn statement given May 2,1988, the EPA's McBride said the
paper industry had specifically asked that the agency not
release information to Van Strum, as it was required to do by
law.

A letter written on March 18, 1987, by Carol Raulston, the A
PI's vice president for government affairs, to a public
relations firm employed by API, indicates that these efforts to
interfere with freedom of information laws were successful. She
wrote: "EPA has agreed to the following: to characterize the
information (about dioxin contamination) as meaningless, used
only to establish testing procedures; to respond with a letter
to Ms. Van Strum today, but to ship the material on April 1; to
meet with us to discuss the public affairs strategy on this and
how subsequent requests for information will be handled."

When questioned about this, EPA's McBride jumped to the defense
of his agency and said, "These were not agreements. When they
say EPA has agreed to the following, these are EPA's decisions
independent of anything we heard from the paper industry.
Clearly what you have is a lobbying firm that has failed in its
primary objective, which was to have us not release the data.
They are trying to make it look as if they have accomplished
something."

Although the pulp and paper industry was trying to stifle the
release of government information it discovered some disturbing
new revelations about the dangers that dioxin contamination of
paper products presented. TCDD, the most deadly of the dioxins,
was found in bleached pulp at levels ranging from one part per
trillion to 51 parts per trillion (ppt) in the vast majority of
the samples taken. Levels of related chemicals were found to
range from 1.2 ppt to 330 ppt.

Part of the industry's public relations strategy was to dismiss
these levels--"trace amounts" as they have often been called--as
being far below any level that presented danger to the public.
In a speech to an API industry forum on March 8,1988, Thomas C.
Norris of P.H. Glatfelter Company, an API member, told his
colleagues that the results of the industry's testing work into
the dioxin problem had been "extremely encouraging." 

"First, the dioxin detection levels are quite low," Mr. Norris
said. "They range from no detection in the disposable diaper
sample to 3.8 parts per trillion in paper towels to 14 parts per
trillion in non-barrier food packaging." He went on to say that
tests done for the industry had demonstrated only minimal
movement of dioxins and related chemicals from paper products to
the human body. "We are very encouraged by these results, and
the bottom line is that all of the testing work done to date
confirms that our paper products are safe," Norris said.

Yet other tests sponsored by the API itself showed that super
absorbent disposal diapers had up to 11 parts per trillion of
dioxin in them, paper towels up to 7 parts per trillion, and
various types of paper plates up to 10 parts per trillion. A
draft report prepared for the industry in June 1987 by the
research firm of A.D. Little found that between 50 and 90
percent of the dioxins in paper products "in contact with food
oils or water is available for consumption."

Even more damning words about the hazards of dioxin in paper
products were then being written by EPA officials. "If the
exposure estimates utilized in the risk assessment are
reasonably accurate--and I have no reason to believe they are
not," wrote EPA scientist Dr. Fran Gostomski on July 10,1987,
"we are presented with a risk estimate for at least one exposure
scenario--ingestion of dioxin from coffee filters--that exceeds
the lifetime risk level at which EPA would generally be expected
to take regulatory action. In addition, this risk estimate does
not take into account the very probable occurrence of
simultaneous exposure to multiple sources of dioxin from
bleached kraft paper products."

If one were to take milk or cream with that coffee, it would add
even more dioxin to the diet. In the Summer of 1988, at the
International Dioxin Symposium, the Canadian Health Protection
Branch of the federal health department presented evidence
showing that dioxin in paper milk cartons had migrated into the
milk. This despite paper industry assurances that it was
impossible for dioxins to migrate from cartons. 

Although EPA is aware of the connection between pulp mills and
dioxins, the agency has failed to produce regulations that would
eliminate dioxin contamination of air, water and paper products.
Instead, in April 1988 the EPA decided to do another, bigger
study of all 104 pulp and paper mills that use chlorine. 

"It's totally unnecessary," says Van Strum. "It's the classic
'further study' in place of taking any regulatory action. They
know there are hazardous levels of dioxins and furans in pulp
and paper products. There's simply no need for further study."

She said that after the initial study of five mills revealed
dioxin contamination, the EPA drafted a number of regulatory
actions. These drafts have never been translated into effective
measures. "The industry flacks within EPA prevailed and put off
action until further studies were done," Van Strum said. 

The Environmental Defense Fund and National Wildlife Federation
sued EPA for its complacency. Settling out of court, EPA agreed
to complete a risk assessment of the 104 mills by April 30,1990.
But even after that is done, EPA can: 1) refer the problem to
another federal agency; 2) decide that dioxin from bleached wood
pulp doesn't produce an unacceptable risk; or 3) take another
year (until April 30,1991) to propose regulations.

WHILE NORTH AMERICA STUDIES DIOXIN, SEVeral European governments
have decided to deal with the problem head on. Throughout
Europe, the need for highly bleached paper products is being re-
evaluated. Sweden, for example, has stopped the sale of chlorine
bleached disposable diapers. In Austria, consumers are using
unbleached brown coffee filters and milk cartons.

"Household products are one of the most important keys in the
struggle against environmentally unsound consumer goods," said
Brigitta Dahl, Swedish minister of the environment. "Therefore
we are now concentrating our efforts against chlorine and
dioxins in the most common household products. This will be a
strategically important contribution. If one gets paper bleached
with chlorine out of consumer products, one also gets large
amounts of chlorine out of the industrial stage, and the
consumers don't have to live with an environmental threat on
their breakfast tables, in their bathrooms and in large parts of
their lives."

Sweden is making great strides in getting dioxins and all other
toxic organochlorines out of its pulp and paper mills. Today the
Swedish pulp industry discharges about 3.5 kilograms of
organically bound chlorine per ton of pulp. But new laws require
that mills reduce their discharge to 1.5 kgs/ton by 1992 and
completely stop it by the year 2000. Swedish mills are using
oxygen bleaching, among other things, to meet this goal. 

The North American pulp and paper industry has used delaying
tactics to avoid legal liability for medical problems that
people may have suffered as a result of exposure to dioxin, Van
Strum said. She says the EPA is hesitant to regulate dioxins for
the same reason.

"There is no question they are trying to avoid regulating the
most toxic known substance. There are two reasons for this," she
said. "First, if the EPA were to say dioxins were hazardous,
they [would] create a liability in cases like the Agent Orange
litigation. Second, several laws the EPA administers
specifically state only safe doses of pollutants can be released
into the environment. Saying dioxins are hazardous at any level
would seriously affect many industries and activities."

Industry recognizes dioxin-contaminated paper as a problem.
Unfortunately, some solutions being offered are inadequate,
because they eliminate or reduce dioxins in the final product,
but continue releasing them into the environment. For example,
Dow Chemical Corporation is developing ion-exchange resins that
would remove organochlorines from pulp. But if this method were
implemented, the dioxin-saturated resins would still have to be
disposed of somewhere.

A major political fight may be required to stop the spread of
deadly dioxins and other organochlorines. Regulations that
include a time table for zero discharge of these toxics seem far
away. EPA policy makers continue to stall; they attempted to
reduce their obligation to clean-up dioxin-contaminated sites by
announcing last year their intent to increase-- by 16 times--the
levels of exposure that will be deemed acceptable. Fortunately,
EPA's Science Advisory Board agreed at their December 1988
meeting that "there is no firm scientific evidence" for the
proposal.

Greenpeace is pushing for standards that will completely
eliminate organochlorine discharges by 1993. This can be
achieved by abandoning the use of chlorine in the bleaching
process. "What is needed is a lot of local participation by
people," Paul Merrell says. "That is the only way that the
spread of dioxins into the environment from pulp mills will be
halted quickly," he adds. 

In addition to political pressure, the economic weight brought
by changing consumer demand for bleached paper products may be
needed to force government and industry in North America to deal
with the problem. Greenpeace has asked for the immediate
introduction of chlorine-free and/or unbleached paper products,
as well as a higher recycling rate of paper products. The North
American industry has resisted these demands. Coffee filter
producers, for example, claim that they do not have enough
unbleached pulp to produce unbleached filters. Yet at the same
time the pulp industry is undergoing an enormous expansion
program, all geared to producing more chlorine-bleached pulp.
Unbleached pulp is cheaper and easier to manufacture. 

For years whiter-than-white paper products have been associated
with hygiene by consumers. Now they should be seen as a threat
to health and the environment. "Paper is a natural product, made
of a potentially renewable resource," says Renate Kroesa. "How
can we ever come to terms with living on this planet if we don't
even produce paper in an environmentally sound way?" 

Peter von Stackelberg is a freelance writer living in Edmonton,
Alberta.


THE GREENPEACE DIOXIN AGENDA

1) Abandon use of chlorine for bleaching wood pulp. Use oxygen
based bleaching chemicals, and produce unbleached paper
products, whenever possible.

2) Stop incineration of chlorinated waste and household garbage
and set up comprehensive recycling and source reduction
programs.

3) Stop production and use of chlorinated phenols, such as the
wood preservative PCP (pentachlorophenol). 4) Stop use of
chlorine in combination with carbon in metallurgical processes,
such as magnesium production. 

Eventually all sources of dioxin should be eliminated. This may
mean stopping all production, use and combustion of chlorinated
compounds, which are foreign and toxic to the environment.


INDONESIA'S PEST MANAGEMENT MIRACLE

ATTACK OF THE KILLER BUGS

By Kay Treakle and John Sacko

When bugs began to eat into Indonesia's new-found independence,
the government turned in its chemical weapons and opted for a
hands-on approach.

AFTER YEARS OF RELYING ON CHEMICAL insecticides to control rice
pests, the Indonesian government has adopted integrated pest
management (IPM) as a national policy and banned the use of 57
pesticides on its important rice crop. As a result, Indonesian
farmers have dramatically cut their use of toxic pesticides and
increased yields in rice paddies across the archipelago.

Indonesia is the first country in the world to take the radical
step of institutionalizing a pest control strategy by
presidential decree. The commitment of President Raden Suharto
to IPM reverses two decades of agricultural practices brought on
by the "Green Revolution," which promised miracle rice yields
but ultimately delivered devastating crop losses and an
expensive chemical addiction. 

Indonesia got started on the pesticide treadmill in 1967 when,
upon taking office, President Suharto pledged to make his
country, then one of the world's largest rice importers, self-
sufficient in rice. The ingredients for his Green Revolution
were simple: grow strains of rice specially developed to stand
up straight, produce more kernels, and resist insects and
diseases. Add irrigation, heavy doses of pesticides and
fertilizers, and the technological package is complete. By the
early 1980s, Indonesia's impressive yields made this country of
170 million people self sufficient in rice.. 

But the economic and ecological cost of self-sufficiency was
high. Government bureaucracies, under the influence of high tech
agricultural research institutions and powerful chemical
companies, pushed a calendar-based chemical application as the
solution to all the farmers' pest problems. Government loan
packages invariably required that if a farmer accepted a loan,
he or she had to accept the chemicals. The pesticide treadmill
was virtually guaranteed by some of the highest pesticide
subsidies in the world. During the first decades of Indonesia's
Green Revolution, the government subsidized as much as 85
percent of pesticide costs spending an astonishing $150 million
a year. 

The widespread adoption of the chemical approach left many
farmers with the idea that pesticides are progressive and
modern. With the cost of chemicals inconsequential the
prevailing attitude became, "the more the better." 

But the "progressive" pest control strategy eventually wreaked
ecological havoc on Indonesia's rice fields and turned
Indonesia's Green Revolution brown. During the 1970s, a small
flying insect called the rice brown plant hopper destroyed
millions of tons of Indonesian rice. Using typical Green
Revolution methods--the introduction of a new strain of rice,
IR36, and an arsenal of chemicals--the pest was suppressed. But
only temporarily. 

In 1986, the plant hoppers were back. And by the end of the
season, 100,000 hectares, roughly 600,000 tons, of rice were
devastated. Chemical applications, in some cases up to 15 per
month, did nothing to prevent disaster.

The fact is, for Indonesia's rice fields, along with those in
Thailand and the Philippines, the use of pesticides actually
contributed to the destruction of rice by the plant hopper.
Long-term studies now show that there is virtually no
correlation between the use of pesticides and increased rice
yields. 

The conclusive evidence was developed by scientists with the
Gadjah Mada University and the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations, along with Dr. Peter Kenmore, then
a graduate student from the University of California at
Berkeley. Their work concluded that the use of pesticides killed
off the plant hopper's natural enemies including wolf spiders,
lady beetles and wasps. The pest problem was further exacerbated
by spraying such highly toxic pesticides as methyl parathion and
diazinon, which actually stimulated the reproduction of the
brown plant hopper. An FAO report concluded that the plant
hopper "was a pest because of, not in spite of, pesticide
applications."

Having discovered the cause of the hopper infestation, the
problem then became how to promote its cure. Neither President
Suharto in Jakarta, nor the rice farmer in the fields would have
willingly given up pesticides without an effective alternative.
Fortunately, that alternative, IPM, was then being successfully
tested in the field. 

The IPM approach involves conserving the hopper's natural
enemies, manipulating the planting time to interfere with the
steady supply of plant hopper food (rice), and spraying only
when the pests actually became a threat. At that point, farmers
would apply chemicals designed to do the job without stimulating
plant hopper reproduction. 

Translating IPM from field tests to a national policy was a
monumental undertaking, which has become one of the most
progressive and successful agricultural extension programs in
the world. Based on a bottom-up approach to decision-making and
training developed by an interdisciplinary team of scientists,
including anthropologists, entomologists, and social scientists,
the Agricultural Extension Service was able to train more than
15,000 farmers in the IPM techniques in the first year. The
decentralized approach worked like a telephone tree: 30 trainers
taught IPM to 200 master field trainers, who in turn trained
farmers in groups of 20 to 30. These groups subsequently became
the nucleus for training other farmers. The government also
supplied 1,000 motorcycles so that trainers and pest observers
could swarm around the countryside monitoring pest infestations
and teaching farmers how to cope without pesticides.

During the first season, pesticide use dropped drastically, and
in the third season since the IPM decree, overall insecticide
use fell 90 percent. During that same period, rice yields were
up, from 6.1 tons per hectare in 1986 to 7.4 tons per hectare in
1987. Farmer's costs dropped from 7500 rupiah in 1986 to 2200
rupiah in 1987, despite an overall increase in the price of the
chemicals.

Since Suharto's decision, more and more farmers have laid down
their backpack sprayers and are taking greater responsibility
for managing their crops. Increased incomes should help the
economy, and the government will be able to use money previously
used to purchase pesticides to further implement IPM. 

The only losers in the IPM deal are the pesticide producers,
including such multinational giants as ICI, Ciba-Geigy, Bayer,
Monsanto and Hoechst. Dow Chemical Pacific lost 80 percent of
its business almost overnight, including half its shipment of
Dursban, which was ordered before the ban. Dow has also had to
postpone construction of a $4 million Dursban production
facility. And Ciba-Geigy is now reconsidering plans to build a
$10 million organophosphate manufacturing plant.

Petitions against the order have been submitted to the
government, and the companies have complained that the severity
of the brown plant hopper threat has been exaggerated by the
Indonesian government in order to justify a switch in
agricultural policy.

But Indonesia has no intention of bowing to industry pressure.
The government plans to train 2.5 million farmers by 1994. And
other Asian countries--including such important rice producers
as China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and India--have
recently developed similar projects with FAO assistance. 

Kay Treakle is the director of Greenpeace pesticides campaign,
and John Sacko is a freelance writer working with the
Washington, D.C., canvass program.



THE TIES THAT BLIND: AUSTRALIA'S QUEST FOR RELEVANCE

By Andre Carothers

"Friendship should not mean being servile. A friend who does
everything you want is not a friend but a slave." 
--Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez, president of Costa Rica.

SYDNEY, OCTOBER 1988: ON A SUNNY OCTOBER morning in Sydney's
majestic harbor, Australia celebrated its bicentennial. Gray
warships, their decks lined with sailors, glided one by one into
the bay. The crowds that lined the shore cheered and waved, and
dozens of small craft parted to let them in. It seemed the
archetypal national celebration-- part military, part parade,
with picnics and music and a blur of noise and color. 

But for the protesters. As if from nowhere, a pair of whining
black inflatables flashed toward the warships, careening around
and through a protective cordon of police launches. One boat,
its bow extended by a streaming flag that read "Nuclear Free
Seas," heeled and turned into the towering wake of the warship's
bow. Rocked by the boiling water, the inflatable held just long
enough for a man in a life jacket to lean against the gray flank
of the USS New Jersey and attach a yellow wooden nuclear
warhead. Held by a pair of toilet plungers, the warhead swung
against the ship's side and stayed, perhaps a minute, before
dropping into the foam. The New Jersey, in the jargon of the
protest business, had just been "tagged."

1988 was Australia's year of port protests. Riding surfboards,
kayaks and almost every kind of vessel, Australia's protesters
met the majority of nuclear-capable navy warships that visited
the country in 1988. In Fremantle, near Perth, sailors aboard
the USS Brewton sprayed the peace flotilla with high-pressure
water hoses. In Melbourne, the British carrier Ark Royal was
refused a berth by the local seaman's union after an inglorious
three day wait anchored outside the harbor. Nuclear weapons,
declared the union members, were not welcome in Melbourne. Even
the prostitutes went on strike, serving notice that the navy
ships could "take their money, ships, bombs and diseases and go
home."

Few of the country's bicentennial celebrations were free of some
sort of counter-demonstration. It was as if the self-conscious
acknowledgment of an important birthday brought to the fore a
century of domestic divisions. Bumper stickers appeared that
read "200 years of Aborigine Genocide." Australia's anti-nuclear
senator, Jo Vallentine declared "you don't invite guests with
nuclear weapons to a birthday party." A newspaper in Melbourne,
referring to the use of hoses to fend off the peace flotilla,
decried the "ugly spectacle of foreign troops assaulting
Australian citizens." Australia's Bicentennial Naval Salute was,
in the words of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation
commentator, "an utter disaster."


I am tempted to write "it could only happen in Australia," but
that would suggest a familiarity that I cannot claim. With the
bene fit of four weeks "down under," I can only argue that, like
an individual, Australia's people and its politics are
remarkable not for what fits comfortably together, but for what 
is contradictory and inconsistent.                             

Australia is at once independent and fawning in its foreign
policy. It is a champion of the nuclear test ban in the United
Nations and a funder of peace studies. Its parliament seats a
pair of senators elected solely for their support of nuclear
disarmament. In 1985, its former U.N. Disarmament Ambassador,
Richard Butler, single-handedly saved the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty conference from a near-fatal diplomatic
deadlock.                                   

And yet it has been the staunchest supporter of the United
States' most notable foreign policy fiascoes, in particular its
intervention in Vietnam, and it has turned a blind eye to the
presence on its soil of U.S. bases that have an undeniable
nuclear war fighting capability (a strategy that the Australian
government officially opposes). It has been largely incapable of
forming a coherent and independent foreign policy, content
instead to ape as best it can the diplomatic shifts and turns of
successive U.S. administrations. 

This is the Australian paradox, born of the tension between its
quixotic century-long quest for a place on the world stage and
the stark realities of its profound strategic irrelevance.
During the bicentennial, it all came out. At the same time that
the country professes to be shrugging off its self-confessed
national inferiority complex (the much-criticized "cultural
cringe") and forming for the first time a particularly
Australian identity, those in charge of organizing the
bicentennial planned the final celebration around the arrival of
foreign military hardware. It was a telling moment.

I WAS NOT IN THE PRESENCE OF AN AUSTRALIAN for more than a few
minutes, and this one by chance on a plane from Los Angeles to
Sydney, before I was told about Australia's close relationship
with the United States, about how General Douglas MacArthur
saved the country from Japanese invasion in World War II. It is
a measure of this tale's allure that several Australian
historians have expended considerable effort arguing, with
little impact, that the invasion was not to happen. Military
documents obtained after the war show that the Japanese strategy
was harassment, not invasion--the logistical requirements of
occupation were thought to be prohibitively high.

But the myth persists, and with it a unique set of foreign
policy priorities. Australians have always considered themselves
under imminent threat of invasion. In the 1940s, the danger was
Japan. But as the international scene changed, Australia simply
refocused its fears. The Japanese threat gave way to the
Chinese, then Russian, and now Indonesian. As a result, public
opinion has tended to side with swords rather than plowshares:
in 1980, more than 60 percent of the Australian public thought
that their country ought to acquire nuclear weapons. 

Because of their fears, Australians are obsessed with gaining
the cooperation of "great and powerful friends." The country
exists it seems, only in relationship. Well after it achieved
independence from Great Britain, Australia continued to be its
client state, fighting dutifully in every war waged by the
Crown, from South Africa to Suez to the Somme. It offered up its
heartland as a testing ground for the British nuclear weapons
program, despite knowing that encampments of aborigines had
slipped through the military sweep of the area. As late as the
early 1960s, Australian Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies was
able to say without fear of reproach, "I am British to my
bootstraps." And it was not until 1972 that Australia adopted
its own national anthem, preferring instead to sing, in chorus
with the other scattered remnants of empire, "God Save the
Queen." 

With the postwar decline of Britain's international role,
Australia turned quickly to the United States. It was an
Australian, not an American, who coined the phrase "All the way
with LBJ." Prime Minister Harold Holt said those words in 1965
while presiding over an ecstatic welcome to the American
president. Throughout the Vietnam era Australia was America's
staunchest ally, supplying troops and equipment according to the
U.S. administration's stated needs, all the time pretending that
it was in response to direct requests from South Vietnam.

Australia's devotion was not lost on the United States: when
Johnson turned to Eisenhower for advice on how to conduct this
increasingly unpleasant war, the former general encouraged the
embattled president by saying, "We still have the Australians,
and the Koreans, and our own convictions." 

The aim of Australia's slavish devotion to U.S. foreign policy
aims was to gain "a great and powerful friend' to force the
United States to extend its nuclear umbrella over Australia.
This four-decade campaign, which consistently and irrevocably
distorted Australia's own foreign policy objectives, awaits a
comprehensive assessment. But even a cursory review suggests
that the return is worth markedly less than the investment.

TWO TREATIES CODIFY THE U.S.-AUSTRALIA security relationship.
The first, and by the far most important, is the UKUSA treaty
also known as the "secret treaty." Signed in the 1940s by
Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and New
Zealand, the secret treaty coordinates the extended spying
apparatus of the five countries, a gigantic bureaucracy of some
20 major agencies with more than a quarter million personnel and
a budget of roughly $18 billion. Nine-tenths of this network is
of U.S. origin (the CIA, the mammoth National Security Agency,
the National Reconnaissance Office and a dozen other entities),
while the contributions of Australia and New Zealand constitute
a tiny fraction. Although the treaty is well documented, none of
the signatories acknowledge its existence.

It is the benefits of this security arrangement that Australian
governments over the years have held up as one of the great
advantages of alliance. In fact, the benefits may be less than
advertised. Intelligence relationships, as any fan of spy
history knows, are not "relationships" in the conventional sense
of the word. "There is no such thing as a friendly intelligence
agency," said the chairman of an Australian parliament inquiry
into the intelligence community, "only intelligence agencies of
friendly countries." An Australian officer quoted by
intelligence experts Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson puts the
case even more succinctly: "Intelligence community is a
misnomer. It is really a collection of warring sects."

In the Australian-American context, the security tie is
decidedly one-sided. Australia's primary contribution to the
deal is the land underneath a CIA installation near Alice
Springs called Pine Gap, one of three major U.S. bases on
Australian soil. Begun in the 1950s under cover as a U.S.
"weather station," Pine Gap is one of the largest satellite
ground stations in the world. It was not revealed publicly that
Pine Gap is run by the CIA until 1975. Although all the U.S.
bases are now called "joint facilities," three of Australia's
last five Prime Ministers have confessed that while in office
they knew little about what went on at Pine Gap. 

The record suggests that little intelligence of real importance
is shared with Australians. According to Ball, "former staff at
Pine Gap have confirmed that much of the material analyzed at
the Signals Analysis section (from which Australians are
prohibited) is never passed on to Australian officers." During
his trial for spying in 1977, TRW employee Christopher Boyce
(subject of the film, The Falcon and the Snowman) testified that
the U.S. was deceiving Australia "on a daily basis."

The intelligence relationship can also be used against
Australia. When Gough Whitlam was elected prime minister in
1972, the CIA temporarily cut off the flow of information on the
grounds that the new government of Australia was a security
risk. "I was told by my superiors that the Australians might as
well be regarded as North Vietnamese," said CIA officer Frank
Snepp. 

Even worse, some historians are convinced that the CIA has
meddled in Australia's domestic affairs. Although the extent of
the CIA's role in Whitlam's 1975 sacking by the governor-general
has been hotly debated, it is generally conceded that, at a
minimum information embarrassing to Whitlam was collected and
distributed by CIA agents in Australia.

The other treaty that governs U.S.Australian relations is called
ANZUS. While the UKUSA treaty is a private agreement with
concrete, if sometimes abused commitments, ANZUS is a very
public, oft-cited alliance with little substance. Signed in 1951
by Australia, New Zealand and the United States (thus the name),
ANZUS consists of a few pages of rhetoric embellishing a vague
and ambivalent commitment on the part of the United States to
come to the aid of the other signatories in the event of a
crisis.

In the late 1940s, the United States was loath to make many
binding global commitments outside of Europe, concentrating
instead on rehabilitating Japan and Germany as allies to contain
the Soviet Union. Australia, by contrast, feared a resurgent
Japan and lobbied heavily for some sort of strategic alliance.
The result was ANZUS. To get the treaty approved, Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles assured a wary U.S. Congress "there is
no question at all of the United States ever sending any troops
to Australia or New Zealand." Its goal, he said, was to give
those two nations "some appearance at least of a shield around
them at home." 

Ever since, the United States has considered ANZUS an agreement
of convenience. One example: in all of Australia's dealings with
Indonesia, perceived today as the main threat to Australian
security, the United States has paid little attention to the
"debt" owed Australia for its decades of cooperation. "ANZUS
meetings were called when the United States wanted support,"
points out Australian political scientist J.A. Camilleri, "and
suspended when the United States didn't want to be seen as
supporting Australia over Indonesia." 

By placing itself firmly in the shadow of U.S. policy, Australia
is chronically in the dark about what lies ahead. During the
Vietnam era, for example, each shift in U.S. policy (and there
were many) put Australia "in the embarrassing position of having
to argue that no change had taken place ' says Camilleri, "or
that the change coincided with Australian wishes." Thus in March
1968, two days after Australia issued its most strident
statements to date denouncing North Vietnam and supporting
Johnson's "no negotiations" position, the U.S. president
announced a bombing halt and the beginning of negotiations. 

Likewise, while U.S. agricultural policy has gutted markets for
Australia's wheat, U.S. trade with New Zealand has actually
increased since 1984, when New Zealand Prime Minister David
Lange triggered the highly public "ANZUS crisis" by banning the
visit of the U.S. Navy's nuclear-capable warships. "There is
little evidence that countries that maintain a subservient
relationship o to a superpower are treated any better than those
that retain the possibility of more independent action," says
Jim Falk, director of the Department of Science and Technology
Studies at Australia's Wollongong University. 

He might also add that Australia's posture has hindered its
impact on world politics. When nations bordering the Indian
Ocean floated the idea of a "zone of peace" in that region,
Australia's conditional support was rejected by then Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi, who demanded to know how peaceful the
zone could be, and how sincere was Australia's commitment, if it
continued to host U.S. military bases.

IAN COHEN HOLDS COURT IN THE LOFT OF Serendipity, a wood and
glass house off the main road to one of eastern Australia's most
beautiful beaches. Cohen is a scholar and practitioner of the
art of direct action--civil disobedience as a means of social
change-- and the acknowledged leader of Australia's small but
growing cadre of "bow riders." These are the activists who have
evaded police launches and clutched the bow of a foreign warship
as it steams into an Australian port.

"In 1984 I ran as a candidate for the upper house on a total rat
bag platform. I wanted to do things like put a breathalyzer
outside Parliament to see how many senators were driving the
nation under the influence." As part of his election effort,
Cohen paddled a surf-board into Sydney Harbor and rode the bow
of Prime Minister Robert Hawke's ceremonial barge as it crossed
the harbor in a gala televised launch of his re-election
campaign. "Lateral thinking," he calls it. "rat bag thinking."
The campaign garnered two arrests and some 24,000 votes.

Cohen and his colleagues might be called the New Nationalists,
a term once used to describe the groundswell of patriotism that
surrounded the ill fated Whitlam government of 1972-1975. Among
other things, the New Nationalists want to make clear the danger
that port visits of nuclear-capable ships pose to the Australian
public. This touchy subject the focus of a two-year long Senate
inquiry has proved to be an effective strategy for the peace
movement, as the experience of the bicentennial attests. U.S.
policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear
weapons aboard naval vessels is not popular around the world
(see Fomm) and the fact that a nuclear accident in port would be
a catastrophe has forced various Australian jurisdictions into
issuing twisted rationales that only reinforce the peace
movement's case.

When queried about its plans in the event of an accidental
release of plutonium in Hobart, for example, the state
government of Tasmania declared, "the policy of the U.S.
government is to neither confirm nor deny whether a vessel is
carrying nuclear weapons, and therefore we do not have a
specific plan to deal with this matter." 

As to the question of who pays for cleaning up a hypothetical
meltdown near the Sydney Opera House, the activists refer to the
case of the dive ship Coralita, which was slammed against its
berth in Cairns by the passing USS Berkeley last spring. The
$100,000 repair bill has yet to be paid. When queried, the
Australian government said that "there is no international
agreement covering the subject incident as specified" and
suggested that the Coralita's destitute owner "forward further
correspondence relating to this matter to the U.S. Embassy in
Canberra." While the Coralita's dive business edges toward
bankruptcy, the case remains in limbo. 

Similarly, Greenpeace's efforts to subpoena the captain of the
USS Ramsey, accomplished by tossing a legal writ through the
window of the officer's departing limousine, came to naught when
the American declined to appear in a Brisbane Court. His
testimony is crucial to the trial of seven Greenpeace activists
who face up to eight years at hard labor for getting in the way
of the warship in Brisbane's harbor. "It shows a profound
disrespect for the truth," says former U.S. attorney general
Ramsey Clark. "The United States wants to leave the dirty work
of prosecuting critics of its nuclear policies to Australian
courts." 

Equally unnerving to the Australian peace community is the role
of the two other U.S. military bases besides Pine Gap: Nurrungar
and Northwest Cape. The facilities contribute to global
monitoring, communications and data transfer, either through
links with orbiting U.S. satellites or as very low frequency
transmitters. Debate rages over whether these capabilities
contribute to international stability or whether they are being
used to help fashion a war-fighting strategy, a first-strike
capability, and the SDI "Star Wars" program. In truth they can
do either, a fact that puts them on the Soviet Union's list of
nuclear targets. What matters is how they are used, and that
question is shrouded in such secrecy that few people, and very
few Australians, know which way they lean. 

Such slights do not sit well with Australia's peace and
environmental activists. Cohen's colleagues include rock star
Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, who helped start the now-defunct
Nuclear Disarmament Party in 1984, and a pair of disarmament
senators, Irina Dunn and Jo Vallentine, who routinely get
arrested at protest rallies. "I work for the day when the sun
will rise on a nuclear-free self-reliant and truly independent
Australia," says Senator Vallentine, "not on a country viewed as
a European outpost or the 51st state of the United States." 

Vallentine's vision of a truly independent Australia and her
resentment of the U.S. presence is increasingly shared by the
Australian public. The occasional protest treks to Pine Gap,
Northwest Cape and Nurrungar, were once strictly hard-core
affairs--"Maoist heavies eager to confront U.S. imperialism and
all its lackeys head on," in the words of one long-time marcher.
Now the gatherings which include mothers, families and the
occasional federal senator, have attained "an almost middle-
class respectability," according to the Melbourne Age. 

Eight years ago, 64 percent of the Australian public thought
that the country should acquire nuclear weapons. Today that
proportion has dropped to under 30. Only 20 percent now support
port visits, and less than 40 percent support the presence of
U.S. bases. The proportion of Australians who see the Soviet
Union as an imminent threat has dropped to only 6 percent, the
lowest level ever recorded. "Australians are maturing," suggests
retired U.S. Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRoque. "No nation can long
endure a subservient relationship to another nation under any
terms. It is inevitable that they would seek greater
independence."

IF COHEN REPRESENTS A FRESH AND PURE anti-establishment strain
in the Australian public, the current Prime Minister, Robert
Hawke, embodies the convoluted end product of Australia's half-
century-long role as America's junior partner. "In 1983 the
Australian government voted a Labor government into office,"
writes the Economist, "and discovered they had got a
conservative one instead." 

Hawke comes from the far right of Australia's traditionally left
Labor Party. He is afflicted with what Andrew Mack, director of
Australia's Peace Research Institute, calls "unreflective pro-
Americanism." After coming into office, Hawke backed a secret
agreement with the Reagan administration that would have
permitted a test flight of the MX missile to splash down in the
Tasman Sea. As it happens, the deal was leaked to the press and
a sheepish Hawke backed out. It was a victory that exhilarated
the peace community in the U.S. and Australia. But Hawke is
unrepentant. "The stuff about the meek inheriting the earth is
a lot of bulls hit," Mr. Hawke is quoted as saying. "The weak
need the strong to look after them." 

During the 1983 mini-crisis over whether to let a nuclear-
capable British ship dry-dock in an Australian shipyard (union
opposition threatened to turn a simple repair job into a
national referendum on port visits), the government in Canberra
issued a press release that evaded the issue at hand but
reconfirmed Australia's support for the nuclear-capable navies
of Britain and the United States When foreign minister Bill
Hayden moved offices, an enterprising reporter gathered up some
of his discarded files and discovered that the press release had
been written by U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. "Hawke
has moved the Australians closer to the Americans than any
conservative would have dared to," says Pacific security expert
Peter Hayes. For the moment, Hawke's curious political amalgam
holds sway in Australia. But the differences between Hawke and
Cohen most likely will be resolved in favor of Cohen. "Young
people are far more radical on issues like these than old
people,"says Andrew Mack, "and the old people are dying off." 

The question, then, is what form will Australia's inevitable
independence take. Were it not for the unanticipated political
demise of Gough Whitlam, Australia might be well on the way to
charting a course independent of the United States. As it
stands, even the shift toward an more independent defense policy
as outlined by Defense Minister Kim Beazley does little more
than acknowledge a belated understanding of the fiction of
ANZUS. As with many of Australia's policy revisions, it is two
decades late. When Richard Nixon announced the Guam Doctrine in
1969, it was clear that the United States wanted its more
distant allies to take care of their own defense needs. "Even in
organizing our own self defense," says Jo Vallentine, "we are
doing it because the Americans told us to."

Some observers say that the U.S. role in the Pacific will
inevitably decline even further. Budgetary restraints and the
changing international scene suggest that U.S. bases in the
Philippines will be closed or moved before the turn of the
century, pushing the locus of arms control and strategic
concerns even further north, to South Korea and Japan. In any
case, the most influential phenomenon in the region is the
growth of Japan's economic power, not the balance of power
between the United States and the Soviet Union. "Power in the
world is no longer in military terms," says Admiral LaRoque. "In
the long view, the Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos don't really
want to keep us around. By the end of the century, most of the
U.S. forces may be out of the Pacific."

Certainly Australia has a larger role to play internationally
than the one it has contented itself with so far. The
understanding that ANZUS is meaningless, save for the hold it
has on the Australian psyche, is long overdue. Australia can
take a lesson from New Zealand in this regard. That country's
frank assessment of its strategic irrelevance has left it free
of the real and notional ties that blind Australia. Its
relatively insignificant snub, in strategic terms, of U.S.
warships gained it an international prominence unique in its
history, and even more importantly, afforded it a greater impact
on world affairs than its larger neighbor. New Zealand seems
rather pleased with its new-found status. As a writer for New
Zealand's The Listener magazine put it, "We have taken a small
step, and it feels good." 


FORUM

NUCLEAR ALLERGY CATCHES ON 

CONSIDER THIS: A LONG time U.S. ally, trying to extract itself
from the nuclear arms race, declares its country "nuclear free"
and bans naval vessels bearing nuclear weapons from its harbors.
In response, the United States threatens to end the alliance,
insisting that its huge arsenal of nuclear weapons on ships and
submarines-- now numbering some 9,277 warheads--must have free
access to the country's ports. If you wish to be our friends,
goes the message, you must take our Navy's nuclear weapons. 

The scenario is increasingly common. Eight of America's closest
allies now face internal turmoil and strained relations with the
United States due to the "nuclear diplomacy" of the U.S. Navy,
which insists on its "right" to bring nuclear weapons to all
ports of call, even if it violates the nuclear-free policies of
host countries.

The current wave of controversy began in January 1985, when New
Zealand Prime Minister David Lange decided not to allow a U.S.
destroyer to visit New Zealand ports, unless it would agree not
to bring nuclear weapons into the country's harbors. The U.S.
response seemed out of proportion: it suspended military
relations with New Zealand under the ANZUS mutual security
treaty, severing most defense and intelligence ties. 

By making an example of New Zealand, the Pentagon hoped to deter
a "nuclear allergy" from spreading among countries that question
the wisdom of allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed in their
harbors.

Clearly, the deterrent has failed.

ù In 1985, Iceland, a strategically placed NATO ally, told the
United States it would enforce its long-standing nuclear-free
policies and no longer allow nuclear weapons in its harbors. The
U.S. Navy has not challenged this position.

ù In 1986, Spanish voters agreed to join NATO under the
condition that no nuclear weapons be "introduced to Spanish
territory." Although ships with nuclear weapons still call in
Spanish ports, their visits have become less frequent amid
ongoing debate over whether the anti-nuclear law applies to
Spanish harbors 

ù Japan's policies that explicitly forbid bringing nuclear
weapons into the nation's harbors are widely thought to be
violated by the U.S. Navy. The Navy's plan to home port two
warships equipped with nuclear armed Tomahawk Sea Launched
Cruise Missiles (the Fife [DD 991] and the Bunker Hill [CG 52])
in Yokosuka has embarrassed the Japanese government and sparked
a new round of protests. 

ù In April, the government of Denmark fell when the Parliament
moved to enforce a 30-year-old policy barring nuclear weapons
from its land and waters in peacetime. Following an inconclusive
election, a "compromise" was found allowing port calls to
resume, but the issue remains volatile. Says opposition
spokesman Lasse Butz, "We don't want to be defended by nuclear
weapons." 

ù In May, the Philippine Senate passed legislation to ban
nuclear weapons from its territory, which includes the U.S.
Subic Bay naval base and Clark air force base. Although the
Philippine gov eminent dropped its demand to include a nuclear-
free provision in its new base treaty with the United States,
the issue is destined to cause bilateral friction in the years
ahead. 

These and similar events in Norway, Canada, Greece, and several
Pacific island states are sometimes wrongly characterized as
"anti-American." In fact, they are clearly directed against
nuclear weapons, not American forces.

In every case, countries have acted only against ships believed
to carry nuclear weapons. The U.S. Navy's policy of "neither
confirming nor denying" the presence of nuclear weapons on its
vessels has only broadened the protests, by making even
nonnuclear Navy ships objects of Suspicion. 

Nor are the protests just against American ships. In June, the
HMSArk Royal, a British carrier armed with nuclear weapons,
chose not to visit Valetta, Malta's capital, after dock workers
towed an empty 80,000-ton tanker across the mouth of Grand
Harbor in an anti-nuclear protest. Four months later, the Ark
Royal faced further protests in Australia and was turned away
from docks in Melbourne by the striking seaman's union. And
Greenpeace has held protests against Soviet nuclear-capable
ships in the Baltic and the Mediterranean. 

All this controversy highlights the enormous role that navies
play in the nuclear arms race. Over 16,000 nuclear weapons--
almost one-third of the world's total--are afloat in the U.S.,
Soviet, French, British and Chinese navies. 

Moreover, the deployment of nuclear weapons at sea is uniquely
global. America's land-based nuclear weapons are stored in seven
NATO countries and South Korea. But U.S. sea based nuclear
weapons are brought to about 100 countries each year, most of
which have no desire to be drawn into the nuclear arms race or
to face the consequences of a nuclear accident.

The spreading"nuclear allergy" has begun to attract attention in
Washington where Paul Nitze, the State Department's chief arms
control advisor and a former navy secretary, has proposed
removing all nuclear weapons from U.S. surface ships if the
Soviets do likewise. Such an "INF at sea" agreement would not
only alleviate the problem with allies, argues Mr. Nitze, it
would also be in America's strategic interests. 

If the United States wants its allies to share more of the
defense burden, it will have to pay more attention to their
concerns. Respecting their nuclear-free policies and getting rid
of nuclear weapons on ships should be the first two steps.

Michael Ross is the international communications coordinator for
Greenpeace's Nuclear Free Seas campaign. His editorial also
appeared in the International Herald Tribune.


CAMPAIGNS

ANTARCTIC AIRSTRIP CONFLICT 

IN EARLY JANUARY, French construction workers at the Dumont
d'Urville base in Antarctica twice assaulted Greenpeace
demonstrators using their fists and heavy construction
equipment. Although no one was seriously injured, Greenpeace
activists narrowly escaped being crushed by heavy earth moving
machinery. Others emerged scraped and bruised from a melee that
left the local French commander "very shocked." He later
admitted that the workers were "beyond control" and promised to
"try and stop further violence."

The confrontation began January 5, when Greenpeace activists
aboard the Gondwana arrived at the French base to protest the
construction of an airstrip near the breeding grounds of one of
the continent's largest Emperor penguin colonies. Blasting and
earth moving at the site have killed Adelie penguins in
violation of Antarctic treaty agreements and are also thought to
contribute to the decline in the population of the Emperor
colony. 

Greenpeace activists erected a specially designed Antarctic
survival shelter on the airstrip, successfully halting the
construction, which usually continues 20 hours a day. Eight
hours later, construction workers on foot and driving heavy
construction equipment charged protesters who had formed a
protective line around the hut. Two Greenpeace volunteers clung
to the front of a bulldozer that was pushing heavy boulders
toward other activists lying on the ground. Twice, trucks had
to be backed up to release protesters whose heavy clothing
had become trapped in the wheels.

The construction workers made a second attempt to move the
protesters two days later from a new location at the end of the
runway. While some workers restrained the protesters, others
attached a chain to the hut and dragged it 20 yards with an
earth mover before the chain broke.

The confrontation ended January 12, after French officials
agreed to a meeting and inspection of the site under certain
conditions, including the right of Greenpeace personnel to
examine the entire area and talk with base scientists. "We now
have an opportunity to change the focus to the real issue
surrounding Dumont d'Urville," said Greenpeace expedition
coordinator Peter Wilkinson, "which is the impact of the
airstrip on the ecology of the area."

After a tour of the base and interviews with French scientists
on January 14, Greenpeace scientist Liz Carr said, "It appears
the French themselves have grave doubts about the ultimate fate
of penguins who are to be dislodged for this airstrip." Paul
Bogart, Greenpeace's Antarctic campaigner, called upon members
of the Antarctic Treaty to "demand that France stops this lunacy
of building an airstrip in the middle of such an ecologically
important area."

The Greenpeace ship MV Gondwana left New Zealand in late
December with a crew of 30 to resupply the Green peace Antarctic
base on Ross Island and to continue the program of environmental
monitoring at government bases there. It is the fourth
Greenpeace expedition to Antarctica, and the third year
Greenpeace's World Park Base has been in operation.

THE COST OF CIGAR LAKE URANIUM 

DESPITE A GLOBAL URANIUM glut, Canada's mining industry, the
world's largest, is in full swing. One province, Saskatchewan,
has three massive uranium mines that supply one-fifth of the
world's uranium. Cigar Lake is the fourth, ready to go on line
as soon as regulatory and other hurdles are removed. Cigar Lake
is unique among Canadian uranium mines because the uranium is
highly concentrated and deeply buried. Simply getting it out of
the ground presents unprecedented hazards to workers and the
environment.

The average uranium deposit has a "grade" of 0.05 percent, which
means that for every ton of rock gouged from the earth, only
about five pounds are usable uranium ore. The average grade of
the Cigar Lake deposit is an astonishingly high 14 percent (some
parts of the formation have concentrations up to 50 percent). As
a result, Cigar Lake is a gold mine for the Cigar Lake Mining
Corporation (CLMC) but a mine field for the workers. 

While mining, workers are exposed to a host of radioactive
dangers such as gamma radiation as well as uranium and thorium
dust. Of particular concern is radon gas. A team of scientists
of the French Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique has calculated
that a person standing in a Cigar Lake mine shaft without
protective gear would breathe a lethal dose of radon gas in four
hours.

The Canadian Labor Congress is now calling for a reduction of
the allowable dose of radiation exposure to workers. The mining
industry is likely to oppose this move. According to Green
peace's international uranium project coordinator John Willis,
"a dose reduction now would probably make Cigar Lake impossible
to mine." There is a good chance that the mine will open before
the exposure reduction guidelines are put into effect. If this
happens miners may find themselves working under exposure
conditions 10 times higher than those considered safe.

Although worker safety is a crucial problem, it is not the only
one unearthed by the Cigar Lake controversy. Radon gas will not
be confined to the lungs of the miners or the mine area; the
deadly gas can travel hundreds of miles. In addition, the mining
of Cigar Lake will result in millions of tons of radioactive
waste known as "mine tailings."

Despite the alarming and obvious risks, development of Cigar
Lake continues. CLMC has managed to keep the initial phase of
the project exempted from public hearings, and no hearings have
been announced for the full scale mine.

At the opening of the provincial New Democratic Party (NDP)
convention in Saskatoon, Greenpeace activists circulated
brochures and literature about the environmental impact of
uranium mining. Greenpeace demands that at the absolute minimum,
there must be public hearings on the project. Ironically, the
NDP (Saskatchewan's current opposition party) does have a policy
of phasing-out uranium mines but has yet to take a firm stand on
Cigar Lake.

"The party has to make such a commitment [against uranium
mining] or risk looking like it has acted in very bad faith,"
says Willis. "NDP should be leading the fight; instead it risks
having an empty policy that says 'stop uranium mining,' but not
'stop the mines' such as Cigar Lake." 

Greenpeace campaigners brought the issue of hazardous uranium
mining to a new height on November 3rd. Nelson Sawyer and Rein
Ratsep climbed the nine-story headquarters of the Cigar Lake
Mining Corporation in downtown Saskatoon. At present, CLMC is
test drilling. If the firm digs up a "safe" and economical
method to extract the radioactive material from the earth, they
will proceed with full-scale production in 1992.

DRIFTNET BAN UPHELD 

JAPANESE TRAWLERS WILL NOT be able to use drift nets to fish for
salmon in U.S. waters off Alaska as a result of a Supreme Court
decision reached on January 9. 

The Supreme Court denied a Commerce Department request to permit
Japanese drift nets because their use violates provisions of the
Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The use of the 9-mile-long
"curtains of death" by the Japanese drift net fleet has already
killed scores of northern fur seals, thousands of Dall's
porpoises, and hundreds of thousands of sea birds.

In June 1987, Greenpeace, the Center for Environmental Education
and other environmental organizations sued the Commerce
Department to prevent it from issuing a permit to the Japanese.
In February 1988, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the
permit violated the MMPA and issued an injunction to stop
Japanese fishing. The Commerce Department appealed the ruling to
the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, allowing the
lower court ruling to stand.

"We've made tremendous progress working through the courts to
finally halt the massacre of wildlife by the Japanese salmon
drift net fishery," said Alan Reichman, the North Pacific ocean
ecology coordinator for Greenpeace. "Now we want a ban on the
use of large-scale drift nets on the high seas. Scientists
fisheries managers and environmentalists alike agree that the
nets are causing an ecological disaster."

JOHN CORMACK REMEMBERED 

JOHN CHARLES CORMACK DIED peacefully in his sleep Thursday,
November 17,1988, at the age of 76 in Vancouver. "Cap'n John"
was the only fisherman on the west coast of Canada who was
willing to take a motley group of protestors up to the Aleutian
Islands in the fall of 1971 to protest the American nuclear test
at Amchitka Island. His 80-foot halibut seiner, the Phyllis
Cormack was renamed Greenpeace. The rest, as they say, is
history.

In 1975 and 1976, John took the helm on the first two Greenpeace
voyages to save the whales. In 1978, he took command of the
converted mine sweeper James Bay and steered into the heart of
the Russian whaling fleet. After that, the Russians stayed away
from the west coast. It was John Cormack who introduced the
first batch of Greenpeacers to the Kwakiutl Indians of northern
British Columbia, whose "Killer Whale" crest became the world
famous symbol for subsequent Greenpeace anti whaling expeditions
and was featured on the Rainbow Warrior.
--Bob Hunter


ACTION ACCESS

MOURNING IN BRAZIL 

IN DECEMBER, ACTIVIST Chico Mendes was gunned down in
northwestern Brazil by an assassin hired by hostile cattle
ranchers. Winner of the 1987 U.N. Environment Program Global 500
award, Mendes was widely respected for his successful fight to
set aside protected areas of rain forest for "ecologically
sustainable activities," such as rubber tapping and the
gathering of Brazil nuts. "Chico was a great tapper, always five
or six trees ahead of the rest of us," says Mendes' cousin.
"[He] always talked of coming back here. But his political
duties were too great."

The frontier style murder of Mendes, who led opposition to
development projects in the Amazon, brings home the escalating
pressure Western loans have put on dwindling areas of virgin
rain forest, especially in Polonoroeste, where Mendes was
killed. In 1986, Brazil received a $500 million loan to expand
its power sector, building roads that opened this and other
areas to ranching, farming and land speculation. Another $500
million power-sector loan, currently waiting approval, would
fund dam construction, flooding an area the size of Indiana,
displacing up to half a million Indians and opening new
wilderness areas. A $200 million agricultural development loan
to Polonoroeste is also pending.

Although startling environmental damage has already been done,
there is hope for a change in development funding policy. In May
1987, World Bank President Barber Conable conceded publicly that
in Polonoroeste, "the bank misread the human, institutional and
physical realities of the jungle and the frontier." 

Please write President Conable, requesting that the bank deny
agricultural and power-sector loans to Brazil and provide money
for energy conservation and ecologically sustainable projects
instead. President Barber Conable, 1818 H St., Washington, DC
20433. Please send copies to Secretary Nicholas Brady,
Department of Treasury, 1500 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington
DC 20220.

PROTEST WHALING IN YOUR TOWN 

DON'T MISS THE DEMONSTRAtion in your area on the next National
Day to Protest Icelandic Whaling: Saturday March 25th. Cities
planning demonstrations include San Diego, San Francisco,
Sacramento, Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, California, Boulder New
Haven; Washington, D.C.; Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Lake
Worth, Florida; Atlanta; Boise; Chicago; Des Moines; Maurice,
Louisiana; Baltimore; Boston, Amherst and N. Dartmouth,
Massachusetts; Ann Arbor and Remus, Michigan; Minneapolis;
Kansas City, Missouri; Morristown, New Jersey; New York,
Rochester and Amherst, New York; Cincinnati, Columbus and
Middletown, Ohio; Port land and Eugene, Oregon; Philadelphia,
Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Nashville; Austin; Seattle; and
Madison. Please write us for a complete list of demonstrations
in other cities.

In addition to marching, please write the following corporate
presidents to ask them to stop buying fish from Iceland.

Mr. David K. Chapoton, 
President, Tastee-Freez International,
8345 Hall Rd., Utica, MI 48087. 

Mr. Jim Cataland, 
President, Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips,
5121 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown, OH 44515. 

Mr. J.W. Marriott, CEO, 
Marriott Corp.,
1 Marriott Dr., Washington, DC 20058. 

Mr. Jeff O'Hara, President, 
Red Lobster USA,
6770 Lake Ellenor Dr., Orlando, FL 32859. 

Mr. James Near, President, 
Wendy's International,
4288 West Dublin Granville Rd., Dublin, OH 43107. 

Mr. Barry Gibbons, President, 
Burger King Corp. 
17777 Old Cutler Rd., Miami, FL 33157. 

On Monday, June 12th, Greenpeace will hold a second national
protest day, to coincide with the opening of the International
Whaling Commission meeting in San Diego. To organize a support
demonstration in your community, please write us for a free
Icelandic Whaling Demonstration Kit. Greenpeace Iceland
Boycott,1436 U St., NW, Washington, DC 20009.

DOWN IN THE DUMPS? 


ACROSS AMERICA, CITY NEIGHborhoods, rural towns and suburban
communities are facing the dilemma of how to avoid the short-
sighted and dangerous solution to the growing trash problem:
costly municipal incinerators. The Institute for Local Self
Reliance (ILSR) offers information and consulting to community
groups and local governments on the costs and benefits of
alternative garbage handling technologies. For information,
contact the ILSR at 2425 lath St., NW, Washington, DC 20609;
202-232-4108.

THE TOUGH GO SHOPPING 

WE ALL LIKE TO VOTE WITH our dollars, but standing in the
supermarket aisles, it's hard to know which companies conduct
animal tests, dump hazardous waste or hold defense contracts.
Shopping for a Better World--A Quick and Easy Guide to Socially
Responsible Supermarket Shopping, published by the Council on
Economic Priorities (CEP), provides some answers. This pocket-
sized booklet rates companies and brand names in 10 areas, from
advancement of women and minorities to nuclear power, military
contracts and animal testing. The guide gives the thumbs up to
Procter and Gamble, Newman's Own, and Tom's of Maine, while
American Brands, Texaco and American Cyanamid receive low
ratings. To order, send $5.95 to CEP 30 Irving Place, New York,
NY 10003.1-800-U-CAN-HELP or 212-420-1133.

DRINKING PROBLEM 

IF YOUR COMMUNITY HAS A problem with its drinking water, Public
Interest Video Network (PIVN) wants to help. In a 28-minute film
presentation, PIVN visits six communities that have successfully
confronted diverse threats to their water supplies, such as
toxic waste, pesticide and sewage contamination. "Your Water,
Your Life" is available in 16 mm and VHS to community groups for
$29.95. This includes a citizen's guide listing publications,
contact organizations and state agencies. Order from Public
Interest Video Network, 1642 R St., NW, Washington, DC 20009,
202-797-8997.

CANADA MEETS 

THE GENERAL MEETING OF Greenpeace Canada will be held on March
29th,1989, at 12:00, in the Vancouver office, 2623 West Fourth
Ave. Vancouver, B.C. V6K 1P8; 604-736-0321. All Greenpeace
Canada members are welcome.

Paid for by Greenpeace Action. Greenpeace Action is a sister
organization of Greenpeace USA that promotes environmental
protection and disarmament through grassroots organizing,
education and legislation.