Our oceans are in crisis. Though the ocean seems limitless and bountiful, our oceans no longer sustain as much life as they used to. Overfishing, habitat destruction, and poor management have all led to this alarming decline in the health of our oceans.

Incredibly, special interests are working to convince the Bush administration to weaken existing ocean protections. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is currently asking the public to comment on how to revise the guidelines that protect essential fish habitat.

Please take a moment to tell the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect our oceans. Then ask your family and friends to help by forwarding this e-mail to them.

To take action, click on this link or paste it into your web browser: pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=313&id4=OHFreep

Background

April 17, Washington, DC - The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) strongly condemned today's assassination of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, leader of the Hamas movement, by the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Rantisi, his 27 year old son Mohammed, and a number of others were killed by an Israeli missile strike on their car as it was traveling through Gaza City Saturday evening.  ADC has a long-standing policy of opposing any attacks directed against civilians, no matter who the victims or the perpetrators might be.

ADC has been strongly critical of the policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders by the Sharon government, most recently the March 22 murder of Hamas' founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.  ADC notes that today's murders constitute yet another escalation in the conflict by Sharon and a provocation that is almost certain to intensify the cycle of violence and complicate efforts to resume peace negotiations.  ADC reiterated its conviction that the only way to stop the conflict is to bring about a complete end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

As the election comes nearer,  we must look at look at who has done the most to benefit hard working, middle-class families as well as the working poor. We must see through the fog of overly negative spin and distortion that the Bush campaign has been working overtime to produce and look at the facts about who helps middle-class American’s and who doesn’t.

While the Bush campaign attempts to distort John Kerry’s record, the facts show that John Kerry has proposed nearly three times as much new tax relief for middle-class families as George Bush.  John Kerry has innovative proposals to help families pay for tuition so their children can get the education they deserve and to create a health care plan to provide coverage to the hard-working families that deserve and to lower the tax rate for companies, large and small, that create good, quality jobs in America.

The record shows that George W. Bush has done very little to help the middle-class and working poor families that this nation relies on and instead has given almost all the tax cuts to the top 2% of the income bracket and has only hurt those in the bottom 98% percent of the income

Dear Mr. Shipway, Bath Iron Works:

We are gathering at Bath Iron Works on this day, April 23, in order to sound the alarm about the dangerous and destabilizing role of the Aegis destroyer in U.S. foreign and military policy.  

Last year the Bush administration walked away from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic (ABM) Treaty with Russia that outlawed testing and deployment of so-called "Theatre Missile Defense" systems, a part of the new Star Wars program.  The Aegis destroyer is now testing, and will soon deploy, these new interceptor systems just off the coast of China.  The U.S. intends to deploy Aegis interceptors in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan (just 90 miles off the coast of mainland China), and in Australia.  This will be a provocative move that will essentially negate China's 20 nuclear missiles thus forcing them to build more.  Today the U.S. has 7,500 nuclear weapons of our own.