-------- NUCLEAR (by country)
-------- australia
A-bomb scientist rejected nuclear weapons
Obituaries Mark Oliphant Helped win the war
July 23, 2000
Sunday Telegraph UK
http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/07/23/insight/in09.htm
PROFESSOR Sir Mark Oliphant, who has died in Canberra aged 98, played a central role in the development of the first atomic bomb.
But the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left Oliphant with a burden of guilt that ever after affected his public life and work, and accounted for some puzzling inconsistencies.
Oliphant was already renowned for his work on sub-atomic particles at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, when, in the darkest days of World War Two, the refugee German scientists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls delivered to him their famous memorandum arguing the feasibility of the uranium bomb. Oliphant backed Frisch and Peierls, and, through Henry Tizard, scientific adviser to the Air Ministry, the British quest for the bomb took shape.
Oliphant feared the outcome, but feared even more that the Nazis might get the bomb first.
Later, he was second only to James Chadwick (who had discovered the neutron) in the British team which from 1943 worked with the Americans on the Manhattan Project, the wartime atomic bomb programme.
But the use of the atom bomb in Japan in 1945 horrified Oliphant, who found the slaughter of animals for food so disagreeable that he observed a strict vegetarianism.
At Bertrand Russell's urging, he joined Albert Einstein and others as a founder member of the Pugwash Movement of scientists against nuclear weapons and came to avoid all research of a military nature.
Oliphant spoke up for J Robert Oppenheimer, the American nuclear scientist who became a victim of McCarthyism, and he marched in the streets against the Vietnam war. At the same time, he held some strongly conservative views. After his appointment as Governor of South Australia, he strenuously opposed the libertarian policy of the Labour Premier, Don Dunstan, towards pornography.
Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on October 8 1901, the eldest of five sons.
His father was a civil service clerk whose reading encompassed theology and the classics; his mother was a schoolteacher.
After the Unley and Adelaide secondary schools, Oliphant went on to Adelaide University, where, in 1925, while working as a science demonstrator, he attended an Ernest Rutherford lecture. Inspired by the great man, he reached Cambridge two years later as an exhibitioner at Trinity.
Working under Rutherford in nuclear physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, he made his mark among a brilliant collection of scientists, including John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, who split the atom; James Chadwick; and Patrick Blackett, who traced the electron and positron.
As war approached, Oliphant turned to developing microwaves that would transform radar into a war-winning device.
After his work on the atomic bomb, the post-war years were a period of growing frustration for Oliphant. From 1950, as director of the Research School of Physical Sciences at the newly founded Australian National University, he was determined to build the world's most powerful accelerator for particle research. It was destined to be mocked as Canberra's "White Oliphant".
In 1971, the South Australian premier, Don Dunstan, secured Oliphant's appointment as Governor - the first native South Australian to hold the post.
In his five lively years he spoke out in unprecedented fashion for causes such as conservation and the environment and against drunken drivers, racism, violence and single-sex schools.
For many years, he was followed by baseless smears suffered during the McCarthyist days, when the eminent scientist who had helped to win the war was unable to obtain an American visa.
Yet immediately after the war, the US decided to award Oliphant the Medal of Freedom with gold palm, the highest among various honours for nearly 100 foreign scientists, and intended for him alone.
But the Australian government of the day refused to allow foreign awards for civilians, and not until 1980 did Oliphant's case come to light, through the researches of Oliphant's joint biographer, Stewart Cockburn.
Oliphant was appointed Knight of the British Empire in 1959 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1977.
He married, in 1925, Rosa Wilbraham, of Adelaide, who died in 1987. A son died in 1933, another in 1971; a daughter survives. - (c) The Telegraph, London
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan keeps options on first strike open
Washington Times
July 21, 2000
World Scene
http://208.246.212.80/world/ed-column-20007212156.htm
BERLIN - Pakistan would consider using nuclear weapons first if attacked by conventional forces, its deputy foreign minister said Thursday.
"There is no way Pakistan can hold out any assurance that it will not use any nuclear weapons if its existence is threatened," said Inam ul Haque, the highest-ranking Pakistani official to visit Germany since nuclear tests in 1998.
"There is no such assurance on the part of India either," he said during a breakfast briefing for journalists.
Pakistan carried out nuclear tests in May 1998 in response to similar tests from arch-rival India, which drew worldwide criticism and sanctions. India has said it is committed to a "no first use" nuclear policy.
-------- israel
How to counter the Iranian threat By Marc Daugherty
July 23 2000
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/07/23/Features/Features.9994.html
The debate over how to respond to Iran's successful test of the Shihab-3 last week is heating up --
During a rally in Teheran two years ago, the Shihab-3 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile made a star appearance. Though still a work in progress, the missile's aims were clear: It was draped with English- and Farsi-language banners reading, "Israel must be wiped off the map."
With its successful test last week, such bellicose bombastics are suddenly credible. The Shihab-3's 1,300-km range puts Israel easily within reach. And though Israeli defense experts say Iran is still years away from deploying fully operational batteries, the threat posed by Teheran only seems to increase.
Already, Iran is developing the 2,000 km.-range Shihab-4, which it claims will be used to carry satellites into space and not for military purposes. Yet satellites and intercontinental ballistic missile warheads are generally launched in the same way. Thus, when in 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, the Americans suddenly understood how vulnerable the US had become.
The London-based Jane's Intelligence Review recently revealed that Iran, with the help of North Korea and Russia, has developed a network of roughly 50 non-conventional weapons research and production plants, including 17 nuclear research facilities. Its main missile program center is located in Teheran's southwestern suburbs.Ê
Furthermore, according to former defense minister Moshe Arens, once chief aeronautical engineer at Israel Aircraft Industries, there are "a lot of good Iranian scientists around, including Iranian professors at American universities - some of international stature. They have a pretty good image of themselves, not that of a third-rate power. The sky's the limit."
IRONICALLY, Iran's first nuclear reactor was delivered by the US to the shah in 1968. It was refurbished with Argentinean help in the 1980s, while Iran also developed chemical weaponry, following its bitter experience as victim of chemical weapons during its war with Iraq.
Iran is now believed to have a large stockpile of chemical weapons, including nerve and blister agents, and, according to the CIA, sulfur-mustard and cyanide agents. Its production capacity is estimated at roughly a thousand tons a year. Iran is also reported to have developed a home-grown biological agents program.
No less worrying are US congressional reports that Russian expertise is making its way to Iran, enabling it to develop missiles with intercontinental range aimed at the US and Europe.
Though its internal economic situation is weak, Iran has been shopping in Ukraine and Russia for advanced missile technologies. In 1992, for example, Teheran offered to exchange oil for Ukrainian missile know-how.
Russia's control over its missile force is weakening and, despite American protests, the Russians are now openly trading rockets for rubles. Moreover, considering how entrenched organized crime and corruption is in Russia, it is doubtful the Russian government will be able to control future missile exports.
Indeed, according to a study by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, it is increasingly likely, under the present conditions, that Iran will acquire an assembled ICBM.
Nuclear capability is also within Iran's reach, according to former CIA director John Deutch, who has called Iran's nuclear weapons program "broad-based."
During a congressional testimony, Deutch stated: "Iran is attempting to develop the capability to produce both plutonium and highly enriched uranium. In an attempt to shorten the time line to a weapon, Iran has launched a parallel effort to purchase fissile material, mainly from sources in the former Soviet Union."Ê
IRAN'S profound resentment of the US and its perceived regional vassal, Israel, has a complex history.Ê
Iranian hostility toward the US has been smoldering since 1953, when the US, through the intervention of the CIA and a cutoff of foreign aid, helped overthrow Iranian left-leaning nationalist Mohamed Mossadegh, who had attempted to nationalize foreign oil interests.
Indeed, the young shah Reza Pahlavi is still remembered by his toast in honor of the CIA's first director, Allen Dulles: "I owe my throne to almighty Allah... and to the CIA."Ê
The shah soon became a staunch anti-Communist ally of the US and a pillar of American influence in the Middle East. In 1957, with CIA assistance, he organized the SAVAK, a secret police organization that brutally suppressed dissidents and terrorized the population.
Thanks to US procurements, Iran possessed the mightiest military in the Middle East, but many Iranians thought the shah was squandering the nation's resources.
The arms deals made the shah appear an American stooge and fixed the US in the collective Iranian mindas a power undermining the cultural integrity of Iranian society. By the time the shah was overthrown during the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Moslem clergy resented Western influences, including everything from Hollywood movies to women's rights.Ê
Israel was also identified - and despised - as an intimate ally of the shah. According to British intelligence historian Nigel West, the Mossad had run joint operations and provided training for the SAVAK. And, of course, Zionism was considered an abomination by the fundamentalist regime, perceived as a threat to Moslem hegemony in the region.
FOR ALL President Mohammad Khatami's reformist ambitions, Iran's official foreign policy has changed little. To this day, Iranian leaders claim they fear an attack by the US, Israel, or some conspiratorial collusion of the two. They claim Israel wants to overthrow their regime and destroy their society.
This week, Iranian Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi called the Shihab-3 a "strategic weapon meant to guarantee the defense of the nation in face of any external threat."
He added that the missile was intended to "strengthen the defense of the Islamic world against any possible threat" by "creating a military balance in the world."
In a commentary published shortly after the July 1998 test of the missile, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said it was aimed at Israel the "aggressor."
"The neighboring countries do not pose any threat," he wrote; rather, Iran was worried about "the nuclear capability of the Zionist regime" and that the US wanted to "paint [Iran] as a regional monster."Ê
Yet Shamkani also said he believed "a military strike by the United States and Israel was unlikely in the foreseeable future." And, indeed, it is clear that for all the rhetoric about the supposed unity of the "Islamic world" against the West, the regional reality for Iran is less idyllic.
"First of all, Iran has an enemy next door - Iraq," explains Arens. "They were on the verge of beating the Iraqis [during the Iran-Iraq War], even though the Iraqis got a lot of help from the United States, [but] when the Iraqis used poison gas and hit their cities with missiles they succeeded in turning the tables on them."
According to Arens, Iran feels threatened by "enemies all over," and therefore feels the need to develop non-conventional weaponry. Iran believes "the rest of the world is trying to turn them into a pariah state and see the ayatollahs removed from power."
Indeed, Iran and secular Turkey are at odds over conflicting interests, namely in Central Asia. Iran and nuclear power Pakistan back opposing forces in the protracted Afghan civil war. And the US bases in Saudi Arabia, as well as the heavy American naval presence in the Persian Gulf, threaten Iran's feelings that it should wear the regional policeman's mantle.
Still, Arens stresses, we shouldn't doubt the Iranians hate Israel.
ACCORDING TO Barry Rubin, a Middle East expert who writes a column in The Jerusalem Post, Iran's massive missile development program is a direct result of its inability and reluctance to devote the even larger resources required to renew its aging inventory of conventional weapons such as tanks and airplanes.
Iran's cash-strapped ally, Syria, seems to be manufacturing large quantities of ballistic missiles for very similar reasons, according to a recently released US Air Force report which highlighted Israel's extreme vulnerability to a first strike and an attendant vulnerability even to a false alarm.
Syria's entire defense against Israel seems to rest on chemical weapons and warheads. One scenario involves Syria making a quick incursion into the Golan Heights and then threatening chemical strikes if Israel resists, perhaps using a new, more lethal Russian nerve gas capable of penetrating protective gear. Such a move would probably drive Israel to nuclear attack.
Israel's development of an deterrent/defense network against non-conventional attack - the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, a fully fielded Jericho II ballistic missile, and the recently German-acquired strategic submarine force - seems to have heralded a change in the IDF structure. Ha'aretz quoted Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz discussing the establishment of "a strategic command to... prepare an adequate response to [such] long-term threats."
This vulnerability and Iran's close ties to Damascus could explain OC Air Force Maj.-Gen. Eitan Ben-Eliahu's statement that Israel would consider resorting to a preemptive attack "if any country gets close to achieving a nuclear capability."
NEVERTHELESS, according to Tel Aviv University defense studies professor Reuven Pedatzur (a former fighter pilot who provides briefings to the IDF's National Security College and hosts the weekly defense issues show on Army Radio), Israel's political leaders have failed to develop a clear national deterrence doctrine or provide any reliable insight into Iranian motives.
Pedatzur, who has conducted a number of feasibility studies on the Arrow, says the system will hurt Israel's security - first, because it doesn't work, and second, because it could spur Iran into adopting a more aggressive posture.Ê
Indeed, by deploying the Arrow, Israel could damage the delicate psychological fabric of mutual deterrence by creating the impression that it is preparing to win a nuclear war by developing the means to survive a Syrian or Iranian surprise first strike.Ê
Arens disagrees. "This is a specious argument," he says. "People who use this argument have never put themselves in the position of the people who need to make these decisions."
Arens explains that Teheran or Damascus would first have to send one missile, presumably to test Israel's defenses. Before they actually press the button, "the man making the decision needs to say to himself, 'If they [Israel] intercept that missile it will become clear that he attempted to launch a nuclear strike against Israel; and that's the end of Iran.'"
At that point, "all hell will break loose," says Arens.
SCORNFUL OF such potential scenarios, Pedatzur says the IAF has been opposed to the Arrow project for years and that Prime Minister Ehud Barak was against the project during his tenure as chief of General Staff.
Pedatzur adds that the Arrow's published cost assessments are being kept unrealistically low to satisfy a defense establishment hungry for big pork-barrel projects.
"Too many people in the [Israeli] defense establishment are using the Iranian scarecrow to serve their own political or financial needs," he claims.
Pedatzur says he has noted a worrisome trend of the Iranian missile threat being unduly exaggerated in the minds of an Israeli public already anxious about regional saber-rattling.Ê
"The Iranian threat is being inflated for purely political reasons," he says. "At this juncture, no minister or prime minister will have the courage to tell the public 'There is a threat, yet beware that no technological solution exists to effectively neutralize it; hence, we should found our defense policy on classic deterrence.'"
Pedatzur adds that the typical characterization of Iran as an irrational regime is unreasonable. Surely, he says, "Iran is well aware what we are capable of." He adds: "I tell my students, if Iran is irrational, we just should all pack up and leave, since nothing will stop it launching a missile strike if it really wants to."
Pedatzur bases his assertions regarding the Arrow's ineffectiveness on the research of Dr. Uzi Rubin, current director of the Homa directorate overseeing the Arrow project.
Pedatzur deplores the lack of any public debate on the Arrow and the possibility of developing a more classic deterrent policy to counter Iran. He proposes a non-conventional triad composed of ground-, sea-, and air-launched strategic platforms.
Such a doctrine, commonly called a "second strike" capability, would more credibly signal Israel's ability to retaliate to any regional non-conventional aggression while refraining from spending already scarce financial resources on such questionable projects as the Arrow, according to Pedatzur.
Nevertheless, Arens insists Israel has no technological substitute for the Arrow.
And - most troubling - Jane's maintains that the Arrow is no substitute for deterring a first strike.
----
How to counter the Iranian threat
By Marc Daugherty,
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/07/23/Features/Features.9994.html
(July 23) -- The debate over how to respond to Iran's successful test of the Shihab-3 last week is heating up --
During a rally in Teheran two years ago, the Shihab-3 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile made a star appearance. Though still a work in progress, the missile's aims were clear: It was draped with English- and Farsi-language banners reading, "Israel must be wiped off the map."
With its successful test last week, such bellicose bombastics are suddenly credible. The Shihab-3's 1,300-km range puts Israel easily within reach. And though Israeli defense experts say Iran is still years away from deploying fully operational batteries, the threat posed by Teheran only seems to increase.
Already, Iran is developing the 2,000 km.-range Shihab-4, which it claims will be used to carry satellites into space and not for military purposes. Yet satellites and intercontinental ballistic missile warheads are generally launched in the same way. Thus, when in 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, the Americans suddenly understood how vulnerable the US had become.
The London-based Jane's Intelligence Review recently revealed that Iran, with the help of North Korea and Russia, has developed a network of roughly 50 non-conventional weapons research and production plants, including 17 nuclear research facilities. Its main missile program center is located in Teheran's southwestern suburbs.Ê
Furthermore, according to former defense minister Moshe Arens, once chief aeronautical engineer at Israel Aircraft Industries, there are "a lot of good Iranian scientists around, including Iranian professors at American universities - some of international stature. They have a pretty good image of themselves, not that of a third-rate power. The sky's the limit."
IRONICALLY, Iran's first nuclear reactor was delivered by the US to the shah in 1968. It was refurbished with Argentinean help in the 1980s, while Iran also developed chemical weaponry, following its bitter experience as victim of chemical weapons during its war with Iraq.
Iran is now believed to have a large stockpile of chemical weapons, including nerve and blister agents, and, according to the CIA, sulfur-mustard and cyanide agents. Its production capacity is estimated at roughly a thousand tons a year. Iran is also reported to have developed a home-grown biological agents program.
No less worrying are US congressional reports that Russian expertise is making its way to Iran, enabling it to develop missiles with intercontinental range aimed at the US and Europe.
Though its internal economic situation is weak, Iran has been shopping in Ukraine and Russia for advanced missile technologies. In 1992, for example, Teheran offered to exchange oil for Ukrainian missile know-how.
Russia's control over its missile force is weakening and, despite American protests, the Russians are now openly trading rockets for rubles. Moreover, considering how entrenched organized crime and corruption is in Russia, it is doubtful the Russian government will be able to control future missile exports.
Indeed, according to a study by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, it is increasingly likely, under the present conditions, that Iran will acquire an assembled ICBM.
Nuclear capability is also within Iran's reach, according to former CIA director John Deutch, who has called Iran's nuclear weapons program "broad-based."
During a congressional testimony, Deutch stated: "Iran is attempting to develop the capability to produce both plutonium and highly enriched uranium. In an attempt to shorten the time line to a weapon, Iran has launched a parallel effort to purchase fissile material, mainly from sources in the former Soviet Union."Ê
IRAN'S profound resentment of the US and its perceived regional vassal, Israel, has a complex history.Ê
Iranian hostility toward the US has been smoldering since 1953, when the US, through the intervention of the CIA and a cutoff of foreign aid, helped overthrow Iranian left-leaning nationalist Mohamed Mossadegh, who had attempted to nationalize foreign oil interests.
Indeed, the young shah Reza Pahlavi is still remembered by his toast in honor of the CIA's first director, Allen Dulles: "I owe my throne to almighty Allah... and to the CIA."Ê
The shah soon became a staunch anti-Communist ally of the US and a pillar of American influence in the Middle East. In 1957, with CIA assistance, he organized the SAVAK, a secret police organization that brutally suppressed dissidents and terrorized the population.
Thanks to US procurements, Iran possessed the mightiest military in the Middle East, but many Iranians thought the shah was squandering the nation's resources.
The arms deals made the shah appear an American stooge and fixed the US in the collective Iranian mindas a power undermining the cultural integrity of Iranian society. By the time the shah was overthrown during the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Moslem clergy resented Western influences, including everything from Hollywood movies to women's rights.Ê
Israel was also identified - and despised - as an intimate ally of the shah. According to British intelligence historian Nigel West, the Mossad had run joint operations and provided training for the SAVAK. And, of course, Zionism was considered an abomination by the fundamentalist regime, perceived as a threat to Moslem hegemony in the region.
FOR ALL President Mohammad Khatami's reformist ambitions, Iran's official foreign policy has changed little. To this day, Iranian leaders claim they fear an attack by the US, Israel, or some conspiratorial collusion of the two. They claim Israel wants to overthrow their regime and destroy their society.
This week, Iranian Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi called the Shihab-3 a "strategic weapon meant to guarantee the defense of the nation in face of any external threat."
He added that the missile was intended to "strengthen the defense of the Islamic world against any possible threat" by "creating a military balance in the world."
In a commentary published shortly after the July 1998 test of the missile, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said it was aimed at Israel the "aggressor."
"The neighboring countries do not pose any threat," he wrote; rather, Iran was worried about "the nuclear capability of the Zionist regime" and that the US wanted to "paint [Iran] as a regional monster."Ê
Yet Shamkani also said he believed "a military strike by the United States and Israel was unlikely in the foreseeable future." And, indeed, it is clear that for all the rhetoric about the supposed unity of the "Islamic world" against the West, the regional reality for Iran is less idyllic.
"First of all, Iran has an enemy next door - Iraq," explains Arens. "They were on the verge of beating the Iraqis [during the Iran-Iraq War], even though the Iraqis got a lot of help from the United States, [but] when the Iraqis used poison gas and hit their cities with missiles they succeeded in turning the tables on them."
According to Arens, Iran feels threatened by "enemies all over," and therefore feels the need to develop non-conventional weaponry. Iran believes "the rest of the world is trying to turn them into a pariah state and see the ayatollahs removed from power."
Indeed, Iran and secular Turkey are at odds over conflicting interests, namely in Central Asia. Iran and nuclear power Pakistan back opposing forces in the protracted Afghan civil war. And the US bases in Saudi Arabia, as well as the heavy American naval presence in the Persian Gulf, threaten Iran's feelings that it should wear the regional policeman's mantle.
Still, Arens stresses, we shouldn't doubt the Iranians hate Israel.
ACCORDING TO Barry Rubin, a Middle East expert who writes a column in The Jerusalem Post, Iran's massive missile development program is a direct result of its inability and reluctance to devote the even larger resources required to renew its aging inventory of conventional weapons such as tanks and airplanes.
Iran's cash-strapped ally, Syria, seems to be manufacturing large quantities of ballistic missiles for very similar reasons, according to a recently released US Air Force report which highlighted Israel's extreme vulnerability to a first strike and an attendant vulnerability even to a false alarm.
Syria's entire defense against Israel seems to rest on chemical weapons and warheads. One scenario involves Syria making a quick incursion into the Golan Heights and then threatening chemical strikes if Israel resists, perhaps using a new, more lethal Russian nerve gas capable of penetrating protective gear. Such a move would probably drive Israel to nuclear attack.
Israel's development of an deterrent/defense network against non-conventional attack - the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, a fully fielded Jericho II ballistic missile, and the recently German-acquired strategic submarine force - seems to have heralded a change in the IDF structure. Ha'aretz quoted Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz discussing the establishment of "a strategic command to... prepare an adequate response to [such] long-term threats."
This vulnerability and Iran's close ties to Damascus could explain OC Air Force Maj.-Gen. Eitan Ben-Eliahu's statement that Israel would consider resorting to a preemptive attack "if any country gets close to achieving a nuclear capability."
NEVERTHELESS, according to Tel Aviv University defense studies professor Reuven Pedatzur (a former fighter pilot who provides briefings to the IDF's National Security College and hosts the weekly defense issues show on Army Radio), Israel's political leaders have failed to develop a clear national deterrence doctrine or provide any reliable insight into Iranian motives.
Pedatzur, who has conducted a number of feasibility studies on the Arrow, says the system will hurt Israel's security - first, because it doesn't work, and second, because it could spur Iran into adopting a more aggressive posture.Ê
Indeed, by deploying the Arrow, Israel could damage the delicate psychological fabric of mutual deterrence by creating the impression that it is preparing to win a nuclear war by developing the means to survive a Syrian or Iranian surprise first strike.Ê
Arens disagrees. "This is a specious argument," he says. "People who use this argument have never put themselves in the position of the people who need to make these decisions."
Arens explains that Teheran or Damascus would first have to send one missile, presumably to test Israel's defenses. Before they actually press the button, "the man making the decision needs to say to himself, 'If they [Israel] intercept that missile it will become clear that he attempted to launch a nuclear strike against Israel; and that's the end of Iran.'"
At that point, "all hell will break loose," says Arens.
SCORNFUL OF such potential scenarios, Pedatzur says the IAF has been opposed to the Arrow project for years and that Prime Minister Ehud Barak was against the project during his tenure as chief of General Staff.
Pedatzur adds that the Arrow's published cost assessments are being kept unrealistically low to satisfy a defense establishment hungry for big pork-barrel projects.
"Too many people in the [Israeli] defense establishment are using the Iranian scarecrow to serve their own political or financial needs," he claims.
Pedatzur says he has noted a worrisome trend of the Iranian missile threat being unduly exaggerated in the minds of an Israeli public already anxious about regional saber-rattling.Ê
"The Iranian threat is being inflated for purely political reasons," he says. "At this juncture, no minister or prime minister will have the courage to tell the public 'There is a threat, yet beware that no technological solution exists to effectively neutralize it; hence, we should found our defense policy on classic deterrence.'"
Pedatzur adds that the typical characterization of Iran as an irrational regime is unreasonable. Surely, he says, "Iran is well aware what we are capable of." He adds: "I tell my students, if Iran is irrational, we just should all pack up and leave, since nothing will stop it launching a missile strike if it really wants to."
Pedatzur bases his assertions regarding the Arrow's ineffectiveness on the research of Dr. Uzi Rubin, current director of the Homa directorate overseeing the Arrow project.
Pedatzur deplores the lack of any public debate on the Arrow and the possibility of developing a more classic deterrent policy to counter Iran. He proposes a non-conventional triad composed of ground-, sea-, and air-launched strategic platforms.
Such a doctrine, commonly called a "second strike" capability, would more credibly signal Israel's ability to retaliate to any regional non-conventional aggression while refraining from spending already scarce financial resources on such questionable projects as the Arrow, according to Pedatzur.
Nevertheless, Arens insists Israel has no technological substitute for the Arrow.
And - most troubling - Jane's maintains that the Arrow is no substitute for deterring a first strike.
-------- japan
Radioactive Water Leaks in Japan
Associated Press
July 23, 2000
From: Ndunlks@aol.com
Small amount of radioactive water found leaked at Japan nuclear plant
TOKYO (AP) - A small amount of radioactive water was found to have leaked at a nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan after officials shut down one of its reactors because of an oil leak, the plant's operator said Monday.
There was no danger, however, of any radiation escaping outside the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Okuma, said Yoshimi Hitosugi, spokesman of Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Okuma, a town located on the Pacific Coast in Fukushima prefecture (state), is 150 miles northeast of Tokyo.
Hitosugi said plant officials found about 39 gallons of radioactive water that had leaked near the No. 2 reactor at around 10:20 p.m. Sunday, about an hour after the No. 2 reactor was manually shut down.
Officials had noticed an alarm indicating the lowering of oil levels inside the tank in the turbine facility, Hitosugi said. The oil leak was stopped after officials closed the valve supplying oil to control the turbine, he said.
Plant officials were still investigating the cause of the leakage of oil and radioactive water, Hitosugi said.
On Friday, the No. 6 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant was shut down after a leak of waste gas was detected in a tank where steam used to power the turbines was turned back into water.
No leak of radioactive material was reported at the No. 6 reactor, which was shut down as a cautionary measure after a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of eastern Japan.
The plant has six reactors.
Japan has an extensive nuclear power program, as the resource-poor nation depends on nuclear energy for a third of its electricity.
Public faith was shaken, however, by the nation's worst nuclear accident on Sept. 30 last year at a fuel-processing plant in Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, that took the lives of two workers and seriously injured a third.
Dozens of people are believed to have been exposed to less harmful radiation in the accident, which set off an uncontrolled atomic reaction.
-------- korea
Russian Outlines Some Options in N. Korean Missile Proposal
By David Hoffman
Washington Post
Sunday, July 23, 2000; Page A19
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/23/095l-072300-idx.html
MOSCOW, July 22-North Korea is leaving open the kind of satellite-launching capability it could receive from other countries in exchange for giving up its own ballistic missile program, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said today.
Ivanov was responding to questions raised by Western leaders about Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Pyongyang this week during which North Korean leader Kim Jong Il proposed forgoing his missile program in exchange for international help. Ivanov is attending the Group of Eight summit on the Japanese island of Okinawa, and his remarks were reported by Russian news agencies.
U.S. officials said Washington might be interested in the North Korean offer if it were clearly understood that the launch capacity would be outside North Korean territory and subject to international technology controls. But, officials said, it would be dangerous to provide launch capability from within North Korea.
The ostensible threat from North Korea is a major reason a limited U.S. national missile defense system has been proposed; President Clinton is to make a decision on the plan later this year or possibly leave it for his successor. If North Korea formally abandoned its missile program it could weaken the rationale for the U.S. program, which Russia and China have resolutely opposed.
Ivanov, speaking of the North Korean proposal, said, "This might be assistance by certain states, or a pool [by multiple countries]. . . . In other words, there are choices in solving this question," the Interfax news agency reported. The issue "has been raised and needs to be solved," the Russian Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
Tass also quoted Ivanov as saying that North Korea is ready to abandon its current missile program if it can launch one or two satellites for scientific purposes each year from the territory of other countries and with their assistance.
"It will be a step forward if this operates and everyone understands it," Ivanov said. "Everybody has displayed interest in North Korea's proposal, and this is without doubt. They understand that if this formula works, this will be an important step toward relieving tensions" on the Korean peninsula.
After meeting today with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, Clinton expressed a willingness to look into the North Korean offer. "It's not clear to me what the offer is, and what is being requested in return for it," he said. "I think it is something that needs to be explored."
Also today, Ivanov said experts are working on the possibility that Russia will join the U.S.-led consortium building atomic reactors in North Korea in a plan intended to head off nuclear proliferation.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Government lists its wants for Lee trial
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Computer code manuals, documents from Los Alamos National Laboratory and unspecified printouts are among the items prosecutors want to introduce as evidence in the trial of a fired lab scientist accused of security breaches. It also wants a telephone list of the Los Alamos Chinese Cultural Association, a log book with newspaper clippings and a map of China, a letter in Chinese, travel photos that appear to be of China, alumni listings and business cards. The material was seized in an April 1999 raid on the home of Wen Ho Lee, who is charged with 59 counts, most alleging that he transferred restricted information from secure to unsecure computers and computer tapes. The trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 6.
-------- utah
Utahns need to fight proposed Skull Valley N-waste facility
By Steve Erickson
Sunday, July 23, 2000
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C175021193%2C00.html
Twenty years ago, the people of Utah were united in opposition to a project that threatened everything we stand for, even our very existence - the MX missile deployment in the West Desert. Because we shouted a resounding, collective No!, the MX shell game scheme was scrapped.
It will take the same collective, persistent, informed and committed effort to defeat Private Fuel Storage's proposed high-level nuclear waste facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation.
While reasonable people can disagree over the size and nature of the risks this project poses, how those risks are assessed and what is "acceptable risk", it should be understood that the project's impacts upon the state - even without a catastrophic release of radiation - are nearly all negative. Nor can it be fairly said that the process to date evaluating the PFS deal has been credible or open to public participation.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the other three agencies that have approval power over the project have already, for all intents and purposes, caved to PFS and the nuclear industry. That should come as no surprise. The NRC has "never actually denied a license application (requested by the industry), except in one case for failure to consider environmental justice issues," according to testimony from the Nevada Governor's Office.
After all, the NRC is the son of the AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission that Utahns know deliberately and knowingly subjected all Americans downwind of atmospheric nuclear tests to radiation exposures and lied about it for decades. Like the AEC, the NRC represents and promotes the industry with far more vigor than it regulates it.
Of all the potential negative impacts this project may have on Utah, among the worst will be the effect on our image, how the rest of the world views us and how we view ourselves. Will our motto in 2002 be "The World's Waste is Welcome Here"?
If the PFS facility is permitted, and if a proposal by Envirocare to take the hottest "low level" radioactive wastes from all over the nation is approved by the Legislature and the governor next winter, then Utah will be a one-stop, full-service dumping ground for EVERY variety of radioactive waste there is! Is this how we want to sell our "Pretty, great state"? Is this the legacy we wish to leave future generations of this land, this people?
What can Utahns do - what can you do - to keep this nuke dump proposal from becoming a reality? First, learn about the issue. You might start with the Downwinders Web site www.downwinders.org and its links to information. Talk to your family, your friends, neighbors and co- workers. Seek guidance from your spiritual leaders. Contact your congressmen (Senators Hatch and Bennett have been conspicuously silent on this issue). Make this an election year issue - ask the candidates what they will do to stop PFS. Write a letter to the editor. Join an organization working to stop this project.
Encourage organizations to which you already belong to take a stand in opposition. Sign a petition that just says no (available on the Downwinders Web site). Contribute to Downwinders. Get involved!
Participate in the only public process left. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the PFS scheme has been issued. But the NRC has printed limited copies (Utah state government received just three - count 'em, three - copies of the document), and has scheduled just two three-hour hearings in Salt Lake and Grantsville, July 27 and 28 (written comments are due Sept. 21).
Write the NRC, ask for a copy of the DEIS, demand that copies be made available to all who request them, tell the NRC that the comment deadline must be extended another 60 days, insist that more public hearings be held in Utah, as well as in the cities where the spent fuel originates and cities along the transportation routes. (Write to Office of the Chief Information Officer, Reproduction and Distribution Services, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and comment via the NRC Web site www.nrc.gov/NRC/NUREGS.
It is not too late. Like MX, this deal is mostly about money and politics, not sound science or smart policy. This project, like MX, can be stopped. Utahns, the choice is yours: Act now or regret later.
Steve Erickson is spokesman for Downwinders, a research and educational foundation established in 1978 in Salt Lake City. The organization takes its name from the residents living in the prevailing wind pattern surrounding the Nevada Test Site who have been exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing conducted there.
-------- us nuc politics
The Problem With Powell
By Robert Kagan
Sunday, July 23, 2000; Page B07
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/23/112l-072300-idx.html
As the 10th anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait approaches, imagine for a moment what the world would look like if Saddam Hussein's Aug. 1, 1990, conquest had been allowed to stand. Imagine that George Bush had not launched Operation Desert Storm but had decided to draw the line at Saudi Arabia and let Saddam keep Kuwait. Or, to put it another way, imagine what might have happened had President Bush listened to Colin Powell.
Such musings are pertinent now because Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush the elder, is a safe bet to become secretary of state if Bush the younger gets elected. George W. may even announce Powell's "appointment" at next week's Republican convention, so eager is he to link himself to the charismatic general's national popularity. Recently Bush said he felt "honored" that Powell would even consider the job.
Slow down, W. Naming Powell may be good politics, but will it make for a good foreign policy? Not if past performance means anything.
Powell's thinking after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is well documented. As Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor reported in "The Generals' War," Powell argued in internal deliberations that "we can't make a case for losing lives for Kuwait--we must communicate to Saddam Hussein that Saudi Arabia is the line." Like a majority of Senate Democrats (but not Al Gore), Powell wanted to limit the American response to economic sanctions. Like Pat Buchanan, Powell believed "the American people do not want their young dying for $1.50 a gallon oil." Defending Saudi Arabia and leaving the Iraqi army in Kuwait was the "prudent option."
Powell was shocked when President Bush announced that Saddam's invasion "will not stand." At the time, Dick Cheney and other top Bush officials were aghast at Powell's timid response. As Brent Scowcroft writes in his memoirs (co-authored with Bush), "I was frankly appalled at the undertone of the discussion, which suggested resignation to the invasion and even adaptation to a fait accompli." Scowcroft recalls "a huge gap between those who saw what was happening as the major crisis of our time and those who treated it as the crisis du jour." To Lawrence Eagleburger the invasion of Kuwait was "the first test of the postwar system." But Powell acted as if "the crisis was halfway around the world and doing anything serious about it would be just too difficult."
Cheney, Scowcroft and Eagleburger were right. Powell's judgment at this historic juncture was dreadful. Had Bush followed his advice, Saddam would now be dominant in the Middle East and a potent figure on the world stage--flush with a decade's worth of revenues from conquered Kuwaiti oil fields, controlling a decisive share of the world's petroleum supply and backed by a victorious and confident army loaded for bear with modern weaponry. Had there been no Desert Storm, and hence no inspections to reveal and curtail Saddam's hidden weapons programs, Iraq would now be bristling with missiles carrying nuclear, chemical and biological warheads.
Powell's error was no isolated case of faulty reasoning. His judgment during the gulf crisis fit within a broader doctrine of nonintervention derived from his experience in Vietnam. In his memoirs Powell wrote that when his generation's "turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support." A perfectly sensible doctrine when intelligently applied. But, unfortunately, Powell applied it to the Iraqi aggression of August 1990. And a couple of years later, he applied it to Bosnia and opposed intervening to stop Serbian aggression, too.
Powell's military judgment is not the problem. He rightly insists that overwhelming military force and ground troops serve American purposes better than gradual escalation and airpower alone. During last year's Kosovo war, Powell criticized President Clinton for ruling out the ground option. When it comes to planning and carrying out a military mission after the president has already decided to act, Powell is pretty sound. But he's not the guy you want helping to make that big decision.
The problem with Powell is his political and strategic judgment. He doesn't believe the United States should enter conflicts without strong public support, but he also doesn't believe the public will support anything. That kind of iron logic rules out almost every conceivable post-Cold War intervention.
But the logic is flawed at both ends. It discounts the kind of political leadership President Bush displayed in 1990 and underestimates the public's willingness to support military action when moral and strategic interests are at stake--not only in the Persian Gulf but even in the Balkans.
It's also out of sync with the kind of foreign policy George W. Bush claims to favor. Bush is no wild interventionist; if anything, he talks too often about paring foreign deployments. But Bush's sense of America's role and the use of force is a good deal more expansive than Powell's. His view seems much closer to his dad's. What he needs at the State Department is a sober-minded Republican foreign policy heavyweight such as Dick Cheney, Richard Lugar or Chuck Hagel.
Will poor strategic judgment disqualify Colin Powell as a potential secretary of state? Probably not. We live in strange times. If Powell had forgotten to pay nanny taxes 10 years ago, he'd be history. But who is going to hold it against him that on the most important strategic questions of the post-Cold War era, Powell has come up with the wrong answers?
The writer, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
-------- us nuc waste
USA Today
07/23/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Idaho
Idaho Falls - After more than a year of controversy, construction could begin in 30 days on a plant to sort and ship Idaho's stockpile of radioactive garbage out of the state. The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has approved an air quality permit for a new treatment facility at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
It Doesn't Take Rocket Science To Test Missile Defense, Start With Basic Math
Washington Post
Sunday, July 23, 2000; Page B02
By Burton Richter
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/23/080l-072300-idx.html
There are two debates going on in Washington about the proposed national missile defense system. The questions are: Do we need one? And can we build one? Each, of course, depends on the other. If we don't need it, why build it? If we do need it and can't build it, we had better find some other way to protect ourselves. Answering the first question will depend on political judgment. Answering the second should depend on knowable facts.
As a physicist with experience building large-scale, complex systems, I shall leave the first debate to others and focus only on what we know, and what we need to find out, to judge whether we can build a missile defense system.
Proponents of the new system argue that if it had passed its most recent test (it didn't, but they will make the same argument about the next test), enough would have been known about the system's effectiveness to technically justify a decision to spend $60 billion, by current Congressional Budget Office estimates, on its deployment.
This is wrong. Three technical issues have to be considered first: How reliable does the system have to be? How do we know how reliable it is? How does it handle decoys that are sure to accompany the real thing? One successful test is not enough to answer these questions.
The goal of the new technology is to block a limited attack by a "rogue nation." (North Korea is most often used as an example, though instead of "rogue" the State Department now uses the blander term "state of concern.") Located in Alaska, the system would consist of a large radar to track incoming missiles and about 100 interceptors. There are various scenarios but it is generally assumed that the time from launch of an attacking missile to impact in the United States would be about 25 minutes. Our existing defense satellites would signal a missile launch in less than a minute, the Alaska radar would pick up the warheads and any decoys a few minutes later, and the interceptors would be launched to meet the attacking devices in space above the earth's atmosphere. The interceptors would destroy the attacking warheads by impact--called hit-to-kill. The combined speed of the incoming weapon and the outgoing defensive weapon is so large that a hit by only a few pounds of material in the defensive weapon would be enough to disintegrate the attacker.
This job is much harder than hunting a flying duck with a rifle. It is much more like shooting a gnat with a gun firing pins, with only one pin in each interceptor. This cannot be done by aiming, pulling the trigger and letting the pin fly. The interceptor has to be equipped with a homing system that allows it to steer itself to the target in the final moments of flight. The interceptor must be able to distinguish the real weapon from possible decoys as well. To do this, it would use radar and also sensors that measure the heat radiated by each object in the attacking constellation of the real weapon and its decoys. Since simple decoys are lightweight and cool much faster in space than the heavier warhead, the sensors steer the interceptor to the warmest target. There are more sophisticated decoys, however, that can fool the temperature sensors.
How reliable does the defensive system have to be? To answer this, we can begin with some high school arithmetic. Assume for the sake of argument that an attack is composed of five missiles (the massive attack we used to worry about from the Soviet Union would have involved hundreds or thousands) and suppose that the chance of one interceptor finding and destroying the real warhead from one of the attacking missiles is four out of five, or 80 percent. Then, the chance of killing all five incoming warheads with five interceptors would be calculated this way: 0.8 for the first interceptor on the first warhead, multiplied by 0.8 for the second on the second, and so on for all five. Work it out, and the probability of getting all five is about 33 percent, or a two-out-of-three chance that at least one of the incoming warheads will get through. Since one warhead can kill hundreds of thousands of people, that is not good enough. If the single interceptor reliability is 90 percent, the risk falls to one chance out of three. To bring the risk of a warhead getting through down to one chance out of 10, the single interceptor reliability has to be at least 98 percent.
No space launch system has ever achieved a reliability of 98 percent. We can, however, ease the reliability requirement by shooting more than one defensive missile at each attacking missile. To reach the one-in-10 risk, a single interceptor's reliability has to be only about 85 percent if two interceptors are fired for each attacker, 73 percent if three interceptors are fired, and so forth. However, this improvement in effectiveness occurs only if each failure has a different cause. If all the failures arise from the same problem--for example, an inability to distinguish the real warhead from its decoys--no increase in effectiveness comes from firing more interceptors. If the first interceptor can't distinguish the real from the fake, then neither can the second, the third, or any succeeding shot.
Once we've decided how reliable the system needs to be, the next question to be answered is: How do we know how reliable it is? Measuring reliability requires testing. After a test, any bug found is fixed, and another test is scheduled. In a complicated system, though, tinkering with one component can put another one out of kilter. Thus, if correcting the first failure involved any significant repair or redesign, in effect you have a new system and the testing starts over.
With the missile defense system, at each stage so far, the talk in Washington has been about proceeding to deployment if it passed the next test. This is a very low hurdle to jump because there are only two things you know with certainty from one successful test. You know with 100 percent confidence that the system is more than zero percent effective--it did work, after all. You also have zero confidence that the system is 100 percent effective--it can fail on the next try. All you know from the success of a single test is that with 50 percent confidence, the system is at least 50 percent reliable. No product I can think of, military or civilian, has ever gone into production in such circumstances. To reach one in 10 odds that one warhead will get through with two defenders on each attacker, it would take 18 successful tests with no failures of the full system (95 percent confidence that each interceptor is at least 85 percent reliable).
Decoys that can confuse the homing sensor in the interceptor are the Achilles' heel of this system. There are "dumb" decoys that look the same as the warhead to radar. Balloons are an example--inflate them to the correct size and coat them with the right material and it is hard for the radar to tell the warhead from the decoy. There are also "average-intelligence" decoys that make the balloons the same shape as the warhead, and add a light bulb and a battery to the inside of the balloon to maintain its temperature the same as that of the warhead. A "genius-level" decoy can add many more levels of similarity, for example surrounding the warhead with a cooled balloon to make it look like a decoy. All of these are easier to build than an intercontinental missile.
No test of the planned system against even average-intelligence decoys is planned in the foreseeable future. From what we know, the proposed defense system can defeat only the dumbest decoys.
There are two much more effective missile defense systems than the one now under debate that could be used against the rogue nation threat. The first would use the same radar and missiles, but would replace the hit-to-kill interceptor with a nuclear bomb. That would make decoys irrelevant, because the explosion would take out warhead and decoys alike over a wide area.
The second alternative system is one that would attack enemy missiles right after launch, instead of in space. Called boost-phase interception, this would be simpler and cheaper than interception in space, because a rocket on the rise is a much easier target than a warhead. It is bigger and slower; it gives an unmistakable signature to the defense satellites, to the radar and to the heat seekers on the interceptor (because of the hot rocket plume), and the rocket is extremely vulnerable to any hit. A new defensive missile is required, land-or possibly sea-based, because the booster must be intercepted within about two minutes of launch and the existing missile is too slow. The ABMs would have to be based close to the potential target, as they could be to North Korea, for example, so this system would be useful only against threatening nations located near enough to the sea or near enough to the territory of one of our allies.
We are now in the third round of missile defense debates. In the first two cases, we concluded after much effort that the technology was not up to the job, and we opted for arms control. The Nixon administration wanted to defend our missile force and instead signed the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Reagan administration wanted to defend the entire nation with what became known as the Star Wars defense system, but moved instead to decrease the nuclear threat through a series of treaties to reduce the number of nuclear weapons deployed by each side.
While the system proposed now has a less ambitious goal than Star Wars, the task is still very difficult. The intercept-in-space, hit-to-kill system now under development is the most technically challenging of the possible alternatives. It is the easiest to confuse with relatively simple decoys. The proposed test program is inadequate to ensure the necessary reliability before we begin to spend big money on national missile defense. The proposed system is not ready to graduate from development to deployment, and probably never will be.
Burton Richter, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for physics, is professor of physical sciences at Stanford University and former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
---
Legacy of Ground Zero: Make War No More
New York Times
July 23, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l23kyl.html
To the Editor:
In "The Cold War Lives: In Search of a Missing Link in the Logic of Arms Control" (Week in Review, July 16), you quote Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona: "Would we really incinerate every Iraqi because of some action by Saddam Hussein? I'm not sure we would, and I'm not sure we should."
I suggest that Senator Kyl visit the cities and atomic bomb museums of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to help him resolve any uncertainty. While stationed at the American Navy base in Sasebo, Japan, I paid several visits to the nearby city of Nagasaki and its bomb museum. Any ideas I had held about the justification for the use of such weapons were quickly swept away by the sickening realization that we killed nearly 75,000 men, women and children in a flash.
Photos of children burned to a crisp have a way of clearing up lingering doubts about the "proper" use of nuclear weapons.
MICHAEL W. HOVEY New Rochelle, N.Y., July 16, 2000 The writer is coordinator of peace and justice education at Iona College.
-------- nuc other
Voodoo Science
Washington Post
Sunday, July 23, 2000; Page X11
LETTERS
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/23/026l-072300-idx.html
In the 25 June issue of Book World, Charles Platt has presented a very negative review of Robert Park's Voodoo Science. Platt never addresses the principal issue in the book, that the public is being flooded with claims for new science and technology that do not bear scrutiny and that frequently violate the most fundamental (and well established) physical principles.
Book World readers should be interested in just who is Charles Platt. It is probably no coincidence that the two areas of Park's book that Platt chooses to discuss are cold fusion (thrence to James Patterson) and anti-gravity (the reference to a Russian emigre scientist). Platt is a science fiction writer who has turned to writing nonfiction articles on science topics. Two of his major articles in Wired magazine have been on--you guessed it--cold fusion and anti-gravity. He never really says he is a believer in either, but the titles of his articles ("What If Cold Fusion Is Real?" and "Breaking the Law of Gravity") leave no doubt which side he is on. Furthermore, Platt is the president and CEO of CryoCare, an organization that will freeze your body shortly after you are legally dead and preserve it for however many centuries it takes for medical technology to advance to the point that you can reliably be brought back to life.
HERBERT GURSKY Great Falls, Va.
Perhaps Charles Platt read a draft version of Robert Park's Voodoo Science. He certainly didn't read the published version. Had he done so, he would have spared himself the embarrassment of asserting that "none of the targets in Voodoo Science is allowed to speak for himself," apparently because Park chose not to talk to any of them. All of the "targets" have spoken for themselves many times, at great length, and in the most public of forums. Park does most of them a favor by paraphrasing (rather than quoting, as Platt would have him do) their scientific claims, since few can make a coherent case. Five members of the cold-fusion mafia hired lawyers to do it for them in an Italian court.
After the science editor of La Republica called them "scientific frauds" and compared them to "fornicating priests" for having defiled "the temple of truth," the five brought suit against the paper.
Following a lengthy trial, the court found against the "cold-fusion five," and ordered them to pay the paper's court costs. The presiding judge issued a 14-page decision noting several cases of clear misrepresentation among cold-fusion claims, and observing that the supporting evidence remained (as of 1996) as flimsy as ever.
The court's decision clearly did not satisfy Platt, who alludes to "hundreds of papers" (presumably published since 1996) confirming the reality of cold fusion, and accuses Park of withholding such evidence as the fact that he attended a meeting in 1999 at which several such papers were presented. In fact, Park does describe one such meeting, at which "Only six papers on cold fusion were submitted, and two of the speakers did not show up." Most of the audience soon drifted away--probably because nothing new was being said--and listeners who bothered to ask probing questions were subjected by true believers to the usual verbal abuse.
The extent of Platt's incomprehension of matters scientific is demonstrated by his remark to the effect that theoreticians remained unable, for 42 years after the discovery of the phenomenon known as "superconductivity," to explain how it worked. That is true but irrelevant, since the reality of superconductivity was never in doubt. It is not the modus operandi of cold fusion, the Patterson fuel cell, therapeutic touch or any of the other dubious "miracles" of fringe science about which mainstream scientists harbor doubt. It is the very existence of such phenomena.
Park's book is really about truth itself, and the profound respect for it which scientists (and mathematicians like myself) all share. Intellectually, we know that scientific truths are forever tentative, and tenable only until disproved by observation or experiment. But viscerally, we are convinced that there is such a thing as "the truth," that science has learned quite a lot of it, and that we personally are engaged in learning more. Park's anger, which he is occasionally unable to disguise, arises from the fact that fringe science diverts unwarranted amounts of time, effort and cash from the quest.
Park cannot have failed, while acting as the eyes, ears and occasional voice of the American Physics Society in Washington, to make his share of enemies. The mere fact that he helped assemble a prestigious study panel that has consistently debunked feasibility claims concerning successive versions of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (a k a "Star Wars") rendered that inevitable. It is a pity that his splendid book had to be sent for review to so bitter and uncomprehending a member of the list.
JAMES CASE Baltimore, Md.
I am extremely disappointed that The Washington Post--a newspaper I have long regarded as an icon of journalistic integrity--would publish such a shameful review as Charles Platt's. His "review" is little more than an ad hominem attack against a distinguished American scientist.
Platt's description of Park as a "former physicist" will come as a surprise to the many members of the American Physical Society, where he serves as director of the public affairs office. And it will further surprise his publisher Oxford University Press, arguably the most distinguished publisher of academic writing.
I read Voodoo Science this past weekend, prior to seeing Platt's review, and found it to be a delightful survey of the entire range of pseudoscience, junk science and pathological science. Park reveals the magnitude of dollars lost debunking these schemes and shows how far into the federal bureaucracy (and public treasury) scientific fraud has penetrated. His description of how 9-year-old Emily Rosa of Boulder, Co., devised an experiment (materials cost: $10) to test the abilities of "touch therapists" is alone worth the price of this book. Emily's work was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Charles Platt has not been published in JAMA. Prior to his review, most of his credits were for science fiction, including pieces in Omni magazine. His articles in Wired include a glowing description of a miraculous solution for the world's nuclear waste problems. Platt is a charter member of the "voodoo science" movement. That you allowed him to review Park's book is a sad commentary on the state of contemporary journalism.
JOHN F. WALKER Boulder, Co.
As a producer and host of a radio program on science, I am continually made aware of the great divide between science and the media.
I had always thought that The Washington Post was an exception to that rule. But in reading Charles Platt's review, I was appalled to see that even The Post had stooped to allowing an alternately whining/finger-wagging and fully (and obviously) agenda-minded writer into your pages. See: http://www.cryocare.org/people/cp.html. And please don't stop there; check out the organization and what it does.
So The Post is running reviews on books related to science by a person who has founded a company that "cryopreserves" (with or without body). Perhaps you have all had your brains frozen--at least the rational part.
DORIAN DEVINS Producer/Host, The Green Room
Charles Platt's review accuses Robert Park of mocking "credentialed NASA scientists" for investigating a "gravity-shielding effect." But Park merely points out that the existence of a gravity shield can be shown to be contrary to a number of important scientific principles. This method of analysis is well known. For example, many years ago, Isaac Asimov, the late science and science fiction writer, humorously described a supposed chemical called "thiotimoline" which was so highly soluble that it dissolved 2 seconds before it was poured into the water. Some readers, not knowing where Asimov's science ended and his fiction began, took him seriously and asked where to obtain some of this magical chemical. To prove that this was impossible, aside from being a joke to begin with, Asimov described how to stack up a battery of thiotimoline cells, each one operating an electric switch 2 seconds before the next one.
Using this device, a light would go on 24 hours before the experimenter dumped the first dose of thiotimoline into the first cell, and thus the user could predict tomorrow's weather (rain or shine), or whether a space rocket launch would be successful the next day. Eventually his readers got the message: thiotimoline is impossible because its assumed existence leads to impossible results. The same is true of a gravity shield, and scientists are therefore justified in demanding solid proof that the apparent reduction in weight of a rotating disk in Russia is really due to a "gravity shield" and not just to inaccurate measurements.
RICHARD LEVINE Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering Southern Methodist University
I wish to thank Book World for having selected Voodoo Science for review, and for getting both my name and the title correct. Well done!
I was, however, somewhat startled to discover in Charles Platt's review that I am a "former physicist." I hope this does not get back to the University of Maryland, which has paid my salary for my work as a full professor of physics for 27 years.
Platt, on the other hand, is a science fiction writer. The danger in writing science fiction is that, like masturbation, if you do too much of it you may begin to mistake it for the real thing. That could explain Platt's position as president and CEO of CryoCare, a company that freezes the heads of what the company calls "patients." Presumably the heads will be reattached to bodies and switched back on when the technology becomes available. It is a truly splendid example of voodoo science.
Like most people drawn to voodoo science, Platt longs for a world that is some other way than the way it is. They pose no great threat to science. Voodoo science is a sort of background noise, annoying, but rarely rising to a level that seriously interferes with genuine scientific discourse. The more serious threat is to the public, which is not often in a position to judge which claims are real and which are voodoo. Those who are fortunate enough to have chosen science as a career have an obligation to help the public make that distinction.
ROBERT L. PARK Professor of Physics University of Maryland
Charles Platt responds:
Park states in his book that his "direct involvement in research wound down" after 1982. Since he seems to have done no research for at least 15 years, I described him as a "former physicist."
This phrase is the only specific statement that he and most of his friends have disputed. My primary complaint remains unchallenged: He didn't bother to visit laboratories, read papers, verify facts, or talk to people whom he attacked. Some may be frauds, but better journalism is needed to establish this.
My personal interest in human cryopreservation is irrelevant, since Park's book didn't even mention the topic. A quick search online would show that I have been a harsh critic of cryonics as it is currently practiced.
As a journalist I have investigated borderline science, but have endorsed only repeatable research. My 10,000-word study of gravity shielding found no evidence for that phenomenon, although apparently I am condemned merely because I examined it. Such knee-jerk ridicule has intimidated scientists who fear career damage, and has created a chilling effect on free inquiry. Park chooses to ignore this point, which I made at the conclusion of my review.
We welcome letters. Send no more than 200 words please, along with your full name, address and telephone (we will not publish the last two) to bwletters@washpost.com or to Book World Editor, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity.
-------- MILITARY (by country)
-------- bangladesh
Plot to Kill Bangladesh Leader Reported
New York Times
July 23, 2000
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/bangladesh-plot-afp.html
DHAKA, Bangladesh, July 22 -- Army explosives experts found a powerful bomb this week near the spot where Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wazed was scheduled to speak at a ceremony today, officials said.
An official with the prime minister's office confirmed news reports saying that an explosive device weighing 167 pounds had been discovered Thursday in her home district of Gopalganj, 60 miles from the capital, Dhaka.
The report said the device was buried about 50 yards from where the prime minister was scheduled to speak and was removed by army experts for examination.
Information Minister Abu Sayeed accused the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and its ally, the fundamentalist Jamaat e Islami party, of being involved in the plot.
Anwar Zahid, a spokesman for the nationalist party leader, Khaleda Zia, called the charges "absolutely baseless."
The police arrested three suspects, described by the daily newspaper Janaknatha as members of the Jamaat's student wing. But the identities of those arrested could not be confirmed.
"I am not afraid of death as it is inevitable and will come when God will desire so," Sheik Hasina was quoted as saying during her scheduled stops today, which included the opening of a 250-bed hospital in Gopalganj. "Almighty Allah sends people on the earth to perform some duties and they will not die till those works are fulfilled."
In 1996, the government also discovered a plan to assassinate Sheik Hasina when she went to Tungipara, also in Gopalganj district, to offer prayers at the grave of her father, Bangladesh's founder, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1975.
-------- china
These supercomputers are made in China
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Washington Times
July 23, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-letters-200072318219.htm
Your June 27 article "China uses computers from U.S. illegally" is baseless. The alleged use of U.S.-made supercomputers to simulate nuclear detonations by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics runs counter to readily available information as well as common sense.
China has a strong record of developing high-performance computers needed for its scientific and defense-related undertakings. In the past decade, China has successfully developed several types of supercomputers that are capable of performing billions of computational operations per second. The Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics is just one of the many scientific facilities in our country that use such Chinese-made supercomputers in their related research and development work.
It is public knowledge that the American supercomputers allowed for decontrol are not exactly advanced. And no one expects the United States to export its "best and fastest" models. When it comes to such a sensitive and important job as a simulated nuclear explosion, China will not, nor will it need to, use foreign-made supercomputers.
ZHANG YUANYUAN Press counselor Chinese Embassy Washington
-------- india/pakistan
Explosion Kills at Least 9 Army Soldiers in Pakistan
New York Times
July 23, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/00/07/23/news/world/pakistan-explosion-ap.html
QUETTA, Pakistan -- A powerful explosion ripped through a congested market in southwestern Pakistan late Saturday, killing nine soldiers and injuring 28 people, emergency officials said.
The explosion occurred outside an area where military personnel congregate in Jinnah market in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. The force of the explosion shattered glass in nearby buildings and sent residents running for cover.
There were contradictory reports about the type of explosion. Deputy Commissioner Akhtar Hussain Sayal said the explosion was caused by a bomb attached to a bicycle, while an official at a military-run hospital said it was caused by a rocket.
Police have sealed off the area. All roads in and out of the city have been closed, said Sayal.
At the military hospital, a doctor reached by telephone said that three wards in the hospital were packed with the wounded. He refused to give his name, but said, "it is like all hell has broken loose on us."
At the civilian hospital in Quetta, Dr. Shamim Gul said only one of the injured was brought there for treatment. It appeared that most of the wounded were army personnel, who would be treated at the military hospital, she said.
Nasirullah, the lone injured person at the civilian hospital, said he was sipping tea in a nearby hotel when a mighty explosion threw him off his chair. The last thing he said he remembered was something falling on his head.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bomb, the third in Quetta on Saturday. The earlier explosions occurred behind separate police stations and didn't cause any injuries or damage. Police were investigating all three blasts.
There was no immediate comment from the military, which rules Pakistan.
Within hours of the explosion Baluchistan's Inspector General of Police, Abdul Hai Qadar, was suspended along with two other senior police officials, said the state-run news agency, The Associated Press of Pakistan.
The men were suspended "because of their failure to apprehend the culprits behind a series of bomb blasts in Quetta," said The APP.
A series of explosions have rocked Quetta in recent months. Police officials fear they may be retaliatory bombings by disgruntled tribesmen of the Mari tribe.
The tribesmen have strongly criticized the arrest of one of their leaders in connection with the slaying of a judge.
---
Pakistan military plans to disarm militants
Washington Times
July 21, 2000
By Ben Barber
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000721214245.htm
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - The military government that seized power in October is finalizing plans to disarm up to 1 million Islamic militants, including thousands in a group labeled as terrorist by the United States, a senior army spokesman said Thursday.
"The government is working on a schedule that will be announced very soon to ask for collection of all prohibited-bore weapons and unlicensed weapons" held by militant groups, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi said in an interview.
"We have to be gradual and get the people with us before deweaponizing," said Gen. Qureshi, director general of Inter-Services Public Relations.
The militant groups have formed a state within the state and are so powerful that journalists, politicians and even the military fear to openly criticize them, according to several prominent Pakistanis who feared to be quoted.
Four major Islamic groups are expected to be targeted by the army for weapons collection, including Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which was listed by the U.S. State Department on its annual terrorist list.
The group was known as Har-kat-ul-Ansar when in 1995 it kidnapped five foreign tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir, including two Americans. Four of the tourists are believed to have been murdered; one was beheaded.
The militant groups began to emerge in 1989 after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan left thousands of weapons and fighters available for a new cause - the liberation of Kashmir from India.
The training and arming of militants by Harkat and by the equally powerful Lashkr-e-Tayyeba created a subculture of heavily armed zealots that the army and Pakistan's elite class fear could try to seize power.
"The militants have more men under arms than the Pakistani army's 500,000 troops," said one political figure closely linked to senior army leaders.
"They have 2 million armed militants," said the political figure, who added that he was skeptical the army would dare to try to seize their weapons, regardless of Gen. Qureshi's remarks Thursday.
The general, who trained 20 years ago at Fort Benning, Ga., and is considered close to Pakistan's chief executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said the government had already prepared the ground for weapons collection by banning public display of weapons several months ago.
The ban came after the United States and other countries protested at the hijacking of an Indian Airlines passenger jet last winter. The hijacking ended when India released three prominent Pakistani militants who went on to lead tumultuous, armed rallies in Pakistan - threatening America, Israel and India.
Fearful of being branded supporters of terrorism, Pakistan's military government - while insisting it still supported what it called freedom fighters in Kashmir - has tried to keep the militants from displaying the guns in public.
The next step, said Gen. Qureshi, is to beef up local police forces "so we can provide security to civilians."
"Then we move to deweaponization - within less than a few months."
After all weapons with larger caliber than that of the police are collected, the government will collect all fully automatic weapons and unlicensed weapons, he said.
Aside from the Islamic groups, there are many tribal areas along the border of Afghanistan and Iran where clans defend themselves with automatic rifles and shotguns - a long-standing tradition as well a necessity in an area without much central or provincial security in place.
Gen. Qureshi gave no indication the weapons collection would aim at those tribal groups.
A Western diplomat said Wednesday in Islamabad that the government is paralyzed by four large armed groups that are transporting militants into the Indian portion of Kashmir.
The military spokesman said Pakistan needs to turn from its never-ending security concerns -which range from the militant groups to the militarized border with India, to sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites to the movement of terrorists in and out of Afghanistan.
"There is no doubt in anyone's mind, including the military, that we need economic progress and need peace," he said. "There is no doubt in the army that we have no business running a country."
-------- iraq
UNICEF Iraq Child and Maternal Mortality Surveys
23 July 2000
UK Independent
From: "Laurence Aboukhater" <lozabouk@melbpc.org.au>
In July and August 1999, UNICEF launched the first surveys of child and maternal mortality in Iraq since 1991. The findings revealed an ongoing humanitarian emergency in Iraq.
During the 1980s substantial progress was made in reducing child mortality throughout Iraq. If this reduction in child mortality had through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer child deaths (under-five) in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.
These surveys measure the levels and trends of child mortality over the past 20 years, at the country level, by region, and by other key population characteristics. Two surveys of child and maternal mortality were undertaken, one covering the the 15 governorates in the southern part of the country (home to approximately 85% of the Iraqi population) and the other in the northern autonomous governorates of Dohouk, Erbil and Al-Suleimaniyah.
The surveys were carried out between February-May 1999, together with the Government of Iraq in the southern and central parts of Iraq and with local authorities in the autonomous northern region of the country. Technical support for both surveys was provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Southern and Central Iraq Northern Sector The findings in context
Southern and Central Iraq
The survey covering southern Iraq revealed that in the heavily-populated southern and central parts of the country, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago. In the south and centre of Iraq both infant and child mortality more than doubled. Likewise infant mortality - defined as the death of children in their first year - increased from 47 per 1000 live births to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame.
Child Mortality Rates (under-5 years) Date Deaths per 1000 live births 1984-1989 56 1994-1999 131 Infant Mortality Rates (under-1 year) Date Deaths per 1000 live births 1984-1989 47 1994-1999 108
Other key findings:
Girls have a slightly lower rate of child mortality (under-5) - 125 deaths per 1000 live births as opposed to 136 deaths per 1000 live births among boys. Children who live in rural areas have a higher mortality rate than children living in an urban area: 145 deaths per 1000 live births as opposed to 121 deaths per 1000 live births. Between 1989 and 1999, the maternal mortality ratio in the south and centre is 294 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Northern Iraq
In the autonomous northern region, under-5 mortality rose from 80 deaths per 1000 live births in the period 1984-1989 to 90 deaths per 1000 live births during the years 1989-1994. The under-5 rate fell to 72 deaths per 1000 live births between 1994 and 1999. Infant mortality rates followed a similar pattern.
Date Infant Mortality (under-1 year) Child Mortality (under 5-years) Deaths per 1000 live births Deaths per 1000 live births 1994-1999 58.7 71.8 1989-1994 71.5 89.5 1984-1989 63.9 80.2 1979-1984 73.8 104.4
The findings in context
If the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.
As a partial explanation, Carol Bellamy, UNICEF Executive Director, pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."
UNICEF, as a member of the UN family, recognises that economic sanctions are an instrument intended by the international community to promote peace and security. UNICEF's concern is that whenever sanctions are imposed they should be designed and implemented in such a way as to avoid a negative impact on children. Surveys on the situation of children and women are essential to the ongoing monitoring of the humanitarian situation in Iraq.
The survey's findings cannot be easily dismissed as an effort by Iraq to mobilise opposition to UN sanctions. The large sample sizes - nearly 24,000 households randomly selected from all governorates in the south and centre of Iraq and 16,000 from the north - helped to ensure that the margin of error for child mortality in both surveys was low.
UNICEF was involved in all aspects of both surveys, from design to data analysis. UNICEF had full access to the hard copies of the interview records and the complete data sets for the surveys at all times and is happy with the quality of these surveys. They have been thoroughly reviewed by a panel of independent experts and no major problems were found with either the results or the way the surveys were conducted.
The surveys also found that a dramatic increase in bottle-feeding of infants has occurred in Iraq. Given the contribution of bottle-feeding to higher levels of malnutrition and child mortality, UNICEF is urging the Government to remove breastmilk substitutes from the rations and replace them with additional food for pregnant and lactating women. UNICEF has also called on the Government to promote exclusive breastfeeding of infants as a national policy.
UNICEF also stresses the need for the full rehabilitation of Iraq's education sector, and urged a focusing on quality of education, infrastructure rehabilitation and planning for the future.
-------- thailand
Purchase of U.S. fighters draws fire in Thailand
Washington Times
July 21, 2000
By Richard S. Ehrlich
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000721214426.htm
BANGKOK - Thailand's plan to purchase of 16 used American fighter jets for $130 million has sparked a bitter guns-or-butter debate in this cash-strapped nation that is only beginning to recover from a regional economic crisis.
Supporters of the deal say the fleet of secondhand F-16s, which will streak across the tropical sky at 1,500 miles per hour, are needed to keep Thai defenses strong in a region wracked by ethnic tensions.
"As we cannot afford to buy new jets, we decided to buy the used F-16s which are still in good condition, and very efficient, and can be used for the next 15 to 20 years," said Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, who also serves as defense minister.
"It's crucial that the Thai air force remains strong, so we cannot allow it to go underequipped," Mr. Chuan said.
Thailand's Cabinet recently approved the purchase, even though the last time this Southeast Asian nation fought a major battle was more than 25 years ago alongside American troops in the Vietnam War.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress agreed to the Thai purchase.
But the pending deal has elicited a barrage of criticism from those who argue that aerial bombardment cannot solve military threats to Thailand, which typically consist of small-scale raids by guerrilla groups that operate in dense jungle border areas.
Moreover, they say the country can ill afford the F-16s, even with a hefty discount for purchasing used models.
"Budget realities have forced the armed forces to reduce the role of many of their whiz-bang fighting machines to token appearances," the respected Bangkok Post newspaper said in a recent editorial.
"Funding another costly weapons system when more fundamental, if less glamorous, needs are apparent, flies in the face of the government's stated goal of improving governance within the public domain."
An editorial cartoon illustrating the page was more blunt. It showed the prime minister grinning inside the cockpit of a giant F-16, in front of three impoverished Thai villagers, dressed in rags.
The cartoon's caption said: "Another squadron of toys to play with."
Critics claim the money would keep more Thais alive if spent on AIDS, drug addiction and - for the military - an improved defense on the ground against Burmese, Laotian and other foreign dissidents who have staged small but bloody terrorist assaults in recent months.
Warplanes would be essentially useless against the occasional gunfire that erupts along Thailand's borders because it quickly subsides, thanks to long years of peace and improved regional relations, they add.
For example, F-16s would be unable to stop battle-hardened, minority ethnic Wa guerrillas based in Burma, who have turned northwest Thailand's border into a sieve for hundreds of tons of methamphetamine, critics say.
Because of the 1997 economic collapse that began in Thailand and spread throughout Asia, Thailand backed out of an earlier agreement to buy eight F-18 Hornet warplanes from the United States.
Since 1987, the United States has shipped $3.4 billion worth of arms to Thailand, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a lobbying group that is critical of U.S. weapons sales.
These include a $177 million telecommunications control system, more than 100 tanks at $1 million each and a $50 million Westinghouse air defense system, according to the FAS.
Washington prizes Bangkok as its closest ally in troubled Southeast Asia.
By treaty, both nations would defend each other in case of attack. Thousands of U.S. troops jointly train with Thai forces each year.
The F-16 Fighting Falcon, built by Fort Worth, Texas-based Lockheed Martin, is extremely deadly in both air-to-air, and air-to-surface, attack. Depending on configuration, the bubble canopy, shark-nosed jet can fire 12,000 pounds of bombs, rockets, cluster dispensers, Maverick, Durandal and other attack missiles, plus Sidewinders for defense.
America has built more than 4,000 F-16s, keeping more than 2,000 for the U.S. Air Force and selling about 2,000 to various nations.
-------- u.s.
Okinawan Women Fighting for Support From U.S. Servicemen
New York Times
July 23, 2000
By CALVIN SIMS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/072300japan-us-children.html
GINOWAN, Japan, July 22 -- Shortly after moving to this military town in Okinawa two years ago, Etsuko Higashiyama, a 29-year-old secretary, fell in love with a United States marine from Arkansas. They dated for more than a year, and when Ms. Higashiyama became pregnant, the couple considered marriage, she said.
But the marine, who finished his tour of duty in Okinawa last December, left without warning for the United States, leaving Ms. Higashiyama to raise their daughter -- now 7 months old -- alone in a country that is not always charitable to children of mixed parentage.
"The last contact I had with him was by e-mail when I informed him that I had given birth to a girl," Ms. Higashiyama said. "He didn't respond. I don't think he wanted to know."
Until recently, there was little that Ms. Higashiyama or thousands of other abandoned Okinawan women and children could do about this predicament. United States servicemen left the island with no reprisals, and there was no agreement in force between Japan and the United States to make them pay child support.
Now, Annette Eddie-Callagain has taken up the cause of the Japanese women whose desperate faces, she said, came to haunt her when she was a United States Air Force lawyer stationed in Okinawa 10 years ago. Large numbers of women came to her for help in obtaining child support from American servicemen, but she had little recourse.
"All I could do is write to the base commander, who, if he chose to, would hunt down the serviceman and convince him to assume his responsibilities," she said. "But after a few months of payments, the child support usually stopped."
Five years ago, Ms. Eddie-Callagain returned to Okinawa and opened a private law practice where she is waging her own private war on deadbeat military dads.
So far, she has filed cases on behalf of 50 Okinawan women, including Ms. Higashiyama, who are seeking child support from men who have returned to the United States.
Social service agencies and children's rights advocates estimate that there are about 4,000 Okinawan children abandoned by American servicemen.
Many single mothers have not heard from their husbands or boyfriends for months, if not years, and cannot afford to raise their children alone, the advocates said. In some cases, the women face eviction because they lack rent money. Many of the women no longer qualify for, nor can they afford to send their children to, racially mixed military and Christian schools. So their children go to Japanese schools, where they are often bullied and many drop out.
"You can't imagine the physical and emotional trauma that these Okinawan women and their children suffer when these United States servicemen desert them," said Naomi Noiri, a professor of law at the University of the Ryukus in Okinawa. "They fall between the cracks in our society because there are no legal or social mechanisms in Japan or the United States to provide for them."
The United States has signed reciprocal agreements with countries like Germany, Sweden and Britain to enable the mother of a child whose father has returned to his homeland to seek financial support with the help of government authorities. But no such pact exists with Japan.
There are about 22,000 United States military personnel stationed in Okinawa prefecture, and the local government estimates that about 200 Amerasian children are born in Okinawa annually.
In the past week, in the run-up to the annual meeting of the world's largest industrialized nations in Okinawa, the Japanese media have reported widely on the racial discrimination, poor education and financial distress that many of these biracial children endure in Japanese society. The news reports have characterized the plight of the Amerasian children as yet another example of the social ills caused by the many United States military bases in Okinawa -- not exactly the tone the Japanese government was seeking when it decided to hold the meeting here, putting one of the country's poorest regions in the spotlight.
Despite the lack of a bilateral agreement with Japan regarding child support, Ms. Eddie-Callagain is taking her clients' cases directly to the child enforcement offices in each of the 50 state governments in the United States. She is trying to convince states where the deadbeat fathers reside to prosecute them in family court.
Ms. Eddie-Callagain said she won her first case in March 1999 when Illinois began docking the wages of a former United States serviceman to provide financial support for his two children in Okinawa.
And the crusading lawyer's office is now authorized to collect DNA samples to establish paternity in the event that accused men claim they are not the fathers.
In addition to their battle for child support, Okinawan mothers of Amerasian children are demanding better education, free of the abuse the children often suffer in Japanese public schools, which are notorious for bullying children who do not fit in.
But the Japanese and United States governments have so far ignored the mothers' pleas for better schooling. Two years ago, a group of mothers took matters into their own hands and turned a rented two-story house here into the country's first school for Amerasian children.
Midori Thayer, principal of the AmerAsian School in Okinawa, said the fledgling institution provided a nurturing atmosphere where children could learn in both English and Japanese and did not have to feel ashamed of their dual backgrounds. Her three biracial children, whose father had abandoned them, were among the first pupils. About 70 percent of the school's 40 students come from single-parent homes.
It has been a struggle keeping the school running. It receives no support from the United States or Japan, and there are only a few private donors. Parents often find the $250 monthly tuition a bit steep. Ms. Thayer buys old textbooks at garage sales and begs Japanese schools for old desks and other furniture. She is seeking donations and financing from international aid organizations to move the school to a larger building where she can accommodate dozens of students on a waiting list.
For 12-year-old Arisa Garrison, who is of mixed race, attending Tomishiro Elementary, a Japanese school here, was sheer torture. Her classmates called her "half" -- a racial epithet -- and ridiculed her because she did not speak English well, although she looked American. Many Amerasian children speak poor English because Japanese is the primary language at home.
At the Japanese school, Arisa often found tacks in her shoes or nasty notes that said she was stupid and should go back to America. "I hated going there," she said of her two years at Tomishiro. "I was bullied almost every day. I missed many days of school because I was so sad."
Since transferring to the Amerasian school three months ago, Arisa has not missed a day and is inseparable from her new friend, 13-year-old Nicky Miyagi. "She's easy for me to talk to because she knows exactly how I feel," Arisa said. "At my old school, I felt like I was on a hostile planet."
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Federal funds could pay for alternative-fuel buses
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
July 23, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-letters-200072318219.htm
I was surprised to read that Metro General Manager Richard A. White denies there is available funding to pay for the extra cost of alternative-fuel buses (" 'Cleaner' buses more expensive, officials say," Metropolitan, July 7). In the article, Mr. White maintained that if Metro purchases more environmentally friendly buses it will not be able to buy as many buses as it needs because they cost more than diesel buses. He then told your reporter: "There's no special pot of money for any of this."
Metro may not have a "pot of money" to pay for the incremental costs of alternative-fuel buses, but Mr. White is fully aware that federal money is available. Metro can purchase buses that operate on compressed natural gas instead of diesel and still get the number it needs. Transit agencies across the country are taking advantage of millions of dollars in federal funding to enable them to do just that.
In January, the Natural Resources Defense Council-Sierra Club Clean Bus Campaign furnished Mr. White's staff with a list of federal programs that will help pay for the incremental costs of new infrastructure and buses that use compressed natural gas. More recently, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, in a letter to Mr. White dated June 16, offered to help Metro secure additional federal funding to subsidize purchases of alternative-fuel buses. In the last sentence of her letter, she wrote: "I urge [the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority] to make a decision as soon as possible so that any request I make for appropriations under the Clean Fuel Formula Program would be considered timely."
The Clean Fuel Formula Program, which is designed to assist public transit agencies in the conversion to alternative-fuel fleets, will pay for 80 percent of bus purchases and infrastructure conversion. In a letter to Mrs. Norton dated June 22, Mr. White responded, "I appreciate your willingness to assist in securing Clean Fuel Formula Grant Program funds for alternative fuel buses."
So why did Mr. White tell your reporter there is no "special pot of money" to pay for alternative-fuel buses?
Unfortunately, this is not the first time Mr. White and his staff have misrepresented the facts on this issue. Jack Requa, chief operating officer for Metro bus services, gave a presentation to the Metro Board on May 11 in which he claimed it would cost as much as $20 million and take as long as two to three years to retrofit one fueling station to accommodate buses using compressed natural gas. This is a wild exaggeration. According to the General Accounting Office, the average cost to retrofit a fueling station is $1.7 million for a 200-bus fleet, and the cost can go as high as $5 million, but there are ways to cover the infrastructure cost. Metro can work out a deal with a private contractor. One private vendor, Trillium, is retrofitting two fueling stations for Los Angeles for free in exchange for a long-term contract to provide gas. The vendor plans to have the stations completed in six to eight months.
By failing to provide accurate information about alternative-fuel buses to the Metro Board, Mr. White and his staff are defacto making policy for Metro. The alternative fuels workshop held on July 6 was a step in the right direction to give the board more information, but that workshop should have been held a year ago, before the board decided to purchase 360 new diesel buses over the next three years without having the information it needed to make an informed decision.
Buses using compressed natural gas are the right choice for the Washington area. Metro should change its contract for the 100 buses it has ordered for next year and buy only buses that use compressed natural gas. Mrs. Norton is ready to help secure funding, and there is plenty of time to retrofit a fueling station before the first such buses would arrive. Metro should put out a request for proposals immediately to find a private company to retrofit a station.
ELLIOTT NEGIN Washington communications director Natural Resources Defense Council Washington
-------- environment
USA Today
07/23/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Montana
Helena - W.R. Grace & Co. has repurchased its former vermiculite mine at Libby, which has been blamed for hundreds of asbestos-related deaths and illnesses, and revoked the Environmental Protection Agency's access. The EPA has been negotiating the cleanup of the site. Grace officials said in a letter to the EPA that it is forbidding officials from entering because of liability issues.
---
USA Today
07/23/00 http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
North Carolina
Hampton - A medical waste incinerator here is again accepting waste after state health inspectors cleared the facility for operation. Safety Disposal system of South Carolina voluntarily shut down the incinerator July 11 after the city turned off the facility's water service. Company officials said a glitch in a bank account resulted in the incinerator's water bill not being paid.
---
USA Today
07/23/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
New Hampshire
Concord - Researchers who have plucked thousands of frogs from ponds around the state since 1998 have seen many deformed creatures, but the most recently collected specimens were the first with more than four limbs. A volunteer pond monitor reported discovering several native bullfrogs with five or six legs along with tadpoles sprouting bulbous tumors. Researchers are baffled about what is causing the deformities.
---
USA Today
07/23/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Arizona
Tucson - Federal wildlife officials approved a developer's plans to build nearly 100 homes on land designated critical habitat for the endangered pygmy owl. Eric Tobin will be allowed to develop 20.8 acres of desert in Marana. In return, he will leave 2.8 acres on his property undisturbed and will buy for preservation an additional 60 acres of open critical habitat in Pima and Pinal counties.
---
Decide for yourself
Washington Times
July 21, 2000
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin
Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://208.246.212.80/national/inbeltway.htm
Coinciding with the government's newly released National Assessment on Climate Change, the nonpartisan Competitive Enterprise Institute has introduced a revolutionary new technology to bring global climate forecasting into the home.
By responding to subtle shifts in individual microclimates, the hand-held precision device -available for only $8 - allows any person to quickly make his or her own assessment of global climate change. The device is said to detect global cooling, too.
The national assessment report is being attacked by the CEI for its "scientifically unfounded" forecasts. Dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government, CEI is astounded that the assessment actually attempts to predict global warming impacts on nine different regions of the United States.
---
Lowering the Global Thermostat
New York Times
July 23, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l23glo.html
To the Editor:
Bob Herbert is right to see global warming as a terrible danger (column, July 17). It is also a challenge to change our habits.
Large and small consumers face a triple threat: higher energy prices, an uncertain supply and environmental damage. The problem is that demand in this country is outstripping affordable and reliable supplies of energy.
Some industries and policy makers call for new supplies, when the fastest, cheapest and cleanest way to help consumers is to cut demand by using energy more efficiently. That would avoid energy shortages, reduce power costs and limit environmental harm.
DAVID NEMTZOW Washington, July 18, 2000 The writer is president of the Alliance to Save Energy.
To the Editor:
Bob Herbert ("Global Cooling," column, July 17) could have mentioned another way to reduce global warming: policies that slow tropical deforestation. The destruction of rain forests causes approximately 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. By helping interested countries conserve their forests, Americans can also maintain an ecosystem that, in some cases, removes gases already in the atmosphere. These forests also buffer equatorial solar radiation.
Rain forests also protect genetic diversity that may be helpful in countering some of global warming's possible ills, like outbreaks of pests and viruses from the tropics. This is an affordable global insurance policy that enjoys international and bipartisan support but inadequate financing.
JOHN O. NILES Stanford, Calif., July 17, 2000 The writer is a staff scientist at Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology.
To the Editor:
Re "Global Cooling," by Bob Herbert (column, July 17):
Solar energy deserves emphasis in any strategy for reducing global warming. In 1977, with the help of a federal tax credit, I installed a solar hot-water system and cut my fuel oil consumption by 20 to 25 percent. It's a shame that the federal tax credit for home solar systems was allowed to expire during the Reagan administration.
If we restore that tax credit, the saving in oil might rival the ecological benefits achieved by fuel-efficient cars.
JAMES S. BERNSTEIN Rockville Centre, N.Y., July 17, 2000
To the Editor:
In addition to the ways Bob Herbert offers "to move from our pollution-choked present" (column, July 17), why not plant trees on a large scale, starting right here in New York City?
Trees consume carbon dioxide and airborne pollutants.
The more there are, the better they can do this essential work.
Looking out my window onto Amsterdam Avenue, I see just one struggling tree on a block that suffers a parade of cars, day and night.
Let's plant more trees and show the world how simple remedies can play a big role in preserving life on earth.
MICHAEL RADKOWSKY New York, July 17, 2000
---
G.E. Fouled the Hudson
New York Times
July 23, 2000
ttp://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l23wel.html
To the Editor:
Re "The Welch Mystique" (editorial, July 20):
John F. Welch Jr., chairman of the General Electric Company, would serve the public well to direct his $7.1 million advance and other proceeds from a coming book about his career and business philosophy toward the environmental restoration of the Hudson River. G.E.'s PCB contamination of the Hudson leaves a pernicious blot on the G.E. monogram.
PATRICIA BIRNIE Tucson, July 20, 2000 The writer is chairwoman of the G.E. Stockholders' Alliance.
-------- spying
Ruth Werner, 93, Colorful and Daring Soviet Spy
New York Times
July 23, 2000
By DAVID BINDER
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/obit-r-werner.html
Ruth Werner, a colorful and successful Soviet spy whose exploits included radioing invaluable atomic bomb data to Moscow in the middle of World War II, died on July 7 in Berlin. She was 93.
In her 20 years as an intelligence operative in China, Poland, Switzerland and England, she had a number of close calls. But she always managed to extricate herself from the predicament -- unlike Klaus Fuchs, the agent who fed her the British atomic bomb secrets, who was imprisoned in Britain for nine and a half years, or Richard Sorge, the master spy who recruited her, who was executed in Japan in 1941.
Her espionage work was entwined with her romantic life, which included an affair with one of her spy chiefs; later she married a British Communist to become a British citizen and only later came to love him. She told some but not all of her story in a 1974 autobiography, still observing the iron rules of conspiracy by never mentioning Fuchs, who was still alive.
Werner was known by the code name Sonja, which was given to her by Sorge in 1933. Ruth Werner was her pen name. All of her various identities had their roots in a prosperous Jewish household in Berlin, where she was born Ursula Ruth Kuczynski, one of six children of Robert Rene and Berta Kuczynski. Her father was a distinguished economist.
Werner was drawn early to the communist movement and became a member of the German Communist Party at 19. She was immediately fired by the publishing house where she worked. Soon afterward she met and married Rolf Hamburger, an architect.
She started writing for the party newspaper, Rote Fahne. In 1930, having been told by the party that she would be contacted in Shanghai, she moved with her husband to China.
They began a pleasant bourgeois life, but she was waiting impatiently for the promised contact. It took four months and friendship with Agnes Smedley, an American leftist journalist, who introduced her to Sorge. Sorge, then 35, had been the Shanghai agent of the Soviet army's intelligence service for a year. The service was known by its Russian initials, GRU.
Sorge asked whether she was ready to face danger. She nodded and agreed to make room available for his clandestine meetings with Chinese Communists, the chief interest of Moscow.
Werner joined the ring without her husband's knowledge, stored weapons and hid a Chinese comrade who was on the run. Two years later, when Sorge left Shanghai for Moscow, he recommended her to the GRU.
Though her marriage was deteriorating, she and her husband had had a son, Michael, while in Shanghai. When the GRU asked her to go to Moscow for training, she left the boy with in-laws in Czechoslovakia.
In the GRU school she learned Morse code, Russian and how to build radio transmitters and receivers. In February 1934 she was sent to turbulent Manchuria, which had been seized from China by the Japanese. Her boss was Ernst, a former sailor, with whom she became romantically involved.
"Our transmitter was the link between the partisans and the Soviet Union," she wrote. She sent coded messages twice a week, and bought and transported chemicals for explosives for the Chinese Communist partisans.
In 1935, Moscow, fearing the two spies were about to be exposed, ordered Werner and Ernst to flee China. She accepted an assignment in Poland, this time with her husband, although she was pregnant with Ernst's child. Her daughter, Janina, was born in April 1936.
In late 1938 she was sent to Switzerland to set up a new spy ring, again with her husband, but he soon left for the Far East. In February 1939 she met Len Beurton, an English Communist who had fought in Spain with the international brigades. For him, he once wrote, it was "love at first sight; she had a very good figure."
In 1940, the GRU authorized a marriage of convenience by which Werner became British, but the love came to be mutual -- the marriage lasted until his death three years ago.
Werner had already begun clandestine transmissions from a radio set she had built in her rented house near Oxford when, in 1941, she met Fuchs, who was working at the British atomic research facility nearby.
The two spies would bicycle into the countryside for their meetings, and Fuchs would hand over written materials that, Werner once told an interviewer, were "like hieroglyphics."
Norman Moss, author of "Klaus Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atomic Bomb" 1987), said that Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's chief aide, set up the Soviet atomic bomb project in 1942 as a result of the information transmitted by Fuchs and Werner, and that the information saved the Soviet researchers a great deal of time. The Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949.
Werner was also running other agents, including a Royal Air Force officer, a specialist in submarine radar and even her brother and father. She was once told that the chief of GRU had said, "If we had five Sonjas in England, the war would end sooner."
In the early 1950s she and her family -- another son, Peter, had been born in 1943 -- left England for East Berlin. Her only connection with the GRU after that was in 1969, when she was invited to a ceremony to receive her second Red Banner, the highest Soviet military decoration.
She turned to writing, producing some short stories; a biography of Olga Benario, a German Communist who was gassed by the Nazis in 1942; and her autobiography.
She is survived by her three children, five grandchildren and three sisters.
-------- terrorism
FBI: Cigarette smugglers aided Hezbollah
USA Today
07/22/00
http://usatoday.com/news/ndssat01.htm
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - In a quiet street of tidy, middle-class homes, the house of Mohamad Youssef Hammoud was notable to neighbors only for the steady stream of people passing through.
Federal authorities say at least some of them were members of a cigarette-smuggling ring that was raising money for the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.
On Friday, 17 suspects were arrested in raids of houses and businesses in and around Charlotte, FBI officials said. One person was arrested in Michigan. All were indicted on federal charges including immigration violations, weapons offenses, money laundering and cigarette trafficking, U.S. Attorney Mark Calloway said. Twelve remained in custody Saturday; the others were released on bond.
Hearings for the suspects held in Charlotte will begin Wednesday, while the Michigan man was scheduled to be in court on Monday. Hammoud, one of those arrested in the raids, was identified as the group's ringleader by sources working with a state-federal task force that investigated the group, according to an affidavit.
A source told agents Hammoud was well-connected to Hezbollah members in Lebanon and is believed to have received Hezbollah-sponsored military training.
The source ''believes that if Hezbollah issued an authorization to execute a terrorist act in the United States, Mohamad Hammoud would not hesitate in carrying it out,'' the affidavit read.
Hezbollah issued a statement Saturday in Beirut that denied any involvement with the people charged in Charlotte.
It was unclear whether Hammoud or any of his co-defendants had an attorney who could comment on the case.
Eleven of those arrested remained jailed Saturday; the others were released on bond after court hearings Friday. Bassam Youssef Hammoud, 33, of Northville, Mich., was being held Saturday for federal marshals at a jail in Detroit, a jail officer said.
No one answered the door Friday evening at Hammoud's gray-blue house, where dents in the front door and damaged aluminum louvers in a window remained as evidence of the morning raid.
Those who lived nearby said they knew little of its occupants, but did notice periodic gatherings and what appeared to be a constantly changing set of occupants.
''Other than all the meetings, where there'd be 15, 20 cars parked in front of the house, and the fact that there was a revolving door, they didn't bother anybody,'' said Paul Booher, who lives two houses down.
Booher said the only time he spoke to anyone at the house was when he knocked on the door and asked if they'd like to join the local homeowners' association. The man who answered said he'd have to talk to the landlord. ''They wouldn't let anyone get to know them,'' he said.
The investigation began in 1996 when Iredell County authorities noticed people with out-of-state license plates making large cash purchases from JR Tobacco, a discount tobacco outlet in Statesville.
The ring allegedly bought cigarettes in North Carolina, which has relatively low cigarette taxes of five cents a pack, and unloaded them in Michigan, where prices are higher because of 75-cent-a-pack taxes.
The profits were allegedly used to smuggle money to Hezbollah in Lebanon since 1996.
FBI officials would not comment on how much total money they believe was sent. An FBI informant said one of those arrested, Ali Hussein Darwiche, had transported more than $1 million from the U.S. to Lebanon, and another $360,000 in cashiers checks was traced to Lebanon, according to an affidavit.
Three of the suspects are believed to have provided material support or resources, including night vision devices, global positioning systems, digital photo equipment and computers, Calloway said.
Hezbollah draws its support from the 1.2 million-member Shiite Muslim community, Lebanon's largest sect, and enjoys the financial backing of Iran and the crucial political endorsement of Syria.
In the 1980s, Hezbollah was believed to be the umbrella group for militants who kidnapped Westerners and destroyed two U.S. Embassy compounds, the U.S. Marine headquarters at Beirut and a French military base. A total of about 290 Americans and about 60 French soldiers were killed. Hezbollah is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
In recent weeks, Hezbollah guerrillas have been treated like heroes in much of the Arab world. Their years of resistance to Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and infliction of casualties on Israeli forces there weakened Israel's resolve. Israel ended its 18-year occupation of the area in May.
Scholars who follow terrorism and Middle East politics said groups such as Hezbollah use different legal and illegal means to raise money.
Albert Eldridge, a political science professor at Duke University who teaches a course on international terrorism, said this is the first time he had heard of a terrorist group trafficking in cigarettes to raise money.
''You want to be able to tap into large amounts of cash. And so, what comes to mind immediately today where there are large amounts of cash: drugs or, increasingly, cigarettes,'' he said.
-------- activists
Protesters Warm Up; Mayor Upset; Los Angeles Ready for Democrats
New York Times
July 23, 2000
By TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/072300wh-dem-cvn.html
LOS ANGELES, July 22 -- Scores of would-be protesters have bivouacked in the Malibu mountains at a training camp featuring vegetarian cooking and classes in climbing skyscrapers. The mayor has published a stern warning against violent protest and nonviolent civil disobedience, with tough talk about rubber bullets and pepper spray, stiff fines and jail. And a federal judge has ruled that the police department's initial plan to keep demonstrators fenced far away from the entrance to the Democratic National Convention was unconstitutionally restrictive.
Welcome to Los Angeles where, as usual, worlds collide. Two years ago, when civic leaders fought to get their first national political convention since the Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy here in 1960, they promised it would be a chance to celebrate the city's comeback from the plagues of the early 1990's with a four-day, internationally televised fiesta of the first order. But since then, practically nothing has gone as planned and the convention, Aug. 14 to 17, is shaping up as the biggest test in years for this sprawling, congested, divided city's mettle and its perpetually searching sense of itself.
The City Council, all but 3 of whose 15 members are Democrats, has sought to block using city money to pay expected convention cost overruns, largely out of enmity for the convention's chief booster, Mayor Richard J. Riordan, a Republican whom many of them loathe. The billionaire businessmen who promised to sponsor the convention have fallen to feuding in public. And no one knows just what mischief a loosely connected confederation of protesters whose concerns range from economic globalization to capital punishment, abortion, environmental justice, homophobia, housing and campaign finance might wreak.
"The way to understand it, as one law enforcement official who I will not name told me, is like managing a week of peaceful, unlawful activity in order to keep it peaceful," said State Senator Tom Hayden of Santa Monica, the "Chicago 7" alumnus who says he finds in the protesters echoes of his 1960's radical roots. "That's the challenge. The lawlessness is in the eye of the beholder, because it will be mostly misdemeanors, like blocking traffic and crossing against the light. I think it can be managed."
City officials, mindful of the recent protests in Seattle and Washington, have been less sanguine, and they went to federal court to fight an effort by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to overturn the security zone around the convention site at the downtown Staples Center as impermissibly broad. This week, in a sharp rebuke, Judge Gary Feess ruled that the city's plan to seal off a 186-acre site around the convention, and keep protesters penned in a parking lot out of earshot and direct sight of the convention delegates, was unconstitutional. The judge also ruled that the city's permit application process for parades and use of public parks for protests, which requires a 40-day advance application, was unconstitutionally restrictive and vague.
Judge Feess said the security zone "burdens speech more than is necessary," but he suggested that some relatively minor modifications to the northeast corner of the zone, near the arena entrance, could satisfy his concerns. The city, the police, the Secret Service and convention planners were scrambling to come up with an acceptable alternative, to be presented to the Civil Liberties Union over the weekend and reviewed on Monday, though they warned it would require more officers.
Meantime, Mr. Riordan surprised many of his top aides and appalled convention planners 10 days ago with a sharply worded op-ed article in The Los Angeles Times that even some of the mayor's strongest supporters called a miscalculation likely to inflame the situation and rile potential demonstrators. Mr. Riordan denounced an umbrella organizing group of protesters called D2KLA as anarchists bent on violent disruption and property destruction, when in fact the group's Web site pledges nonviolence.
"Don't stick your head up and make yourself a target," said one convention planner, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "And don't get your facts wrong."
Protest groups were particularly incensed that Mr. Riordan not only vowed not to tolerate violence or vandalism but also said that "we cannot tolerate nonviolent civil disobedience, such as the blocking of access to roads or buildings," time-honored protest tactics.
"He is making a concerted effort to criminalize people of conscience, particularly the peaceful activists," said John Sellers, director of the Ruckus Society, a group based in Berkeley that co-sponsored the five-day training camp for 200 demonstrators in the Santa Monica Mountains this week. "He's making every effort to marginalize us, vilify us before we even get into town, and therefore to make it easier for us to be dismissed and brutalized in the streets of Los Angeles and to scare more everyday folks away from being out in the streets with us with their concerns."
While protesters at past conventions have been confined mainly to designated areas, such areas have usually been directly across from the convention arena, and most big city police departments, including New York's, typically try to negotiate a certain amount of permitted civil disobedience (like blocking part of a street) in exchange for avoiding greater unplanned disruptions.
But the Los Angeles Police Department has a reputation for comparative high-handedness, and several local politicians said it should have been clear from the start that the plan for keeping protesters across the street from the Staples compound, behind a 14-foot fence, with their view to the arena blocked by a parking lot full of temporary trailers and television equipment, would never pass muster. At the same time, the Los Angeles department is comparatively small, about one-third the size of New York's. Los Angeles has just 9,346 officers (including supervisors) while the convention is expected to draw 5,000 delegates, nearly 15,000 journalists and an unknown number of demonstrators.
A police spokesman, Lt. Horace Frank, said the department was confident that its planning for convention security, in progress for more than a year, would be up to the task. The department has canceled all vacations and regular days off for officers and civilian employees alike, and has worked out cooperation agreements with the county sheriff's department, in which its deputies will handle transportation security for delegates, and be available to process the arrests of protesters in the event of mass arrests. He said state officials had also assured the department of additional help if needed.
"It's been a massive endeavor, Herculean to say the least," Lieutenant Frank said. "But it's one that we feel very good about and very confident of. We recognize that the majority of protesters are legitimate groups who are going to be behaving in a legal and lawful manner, but we also know that there are those groups who are going to inject themselves and try to do harm, and we're prepared."
Mr. Hayden acknowledged that 50 to 200 protesters might actually be from anarchist groups bent on destroying property to make a point, and based on the experience at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last year, city officials' biggest fear is that such groups might blend in with more peaceful ones and cause trouble when it is least expected.
The Secret Service was worried enough about the difficulties in securing Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles that it moved Vice President Al Gore from the Biltmore Hotel there to Century City, several miles away from the convention site. And the federal court hearing on the security zone was so crowded with demonstrators this week that even some news organizations could not get in to cover it.
For their part, Democratic Party officials and aides to Mr. Gore are having to walk a delicate line between making sure their typically fractious party is not seen as trying to stifle peaceful protests, while exercising diplomacy with a police department and local establishment whose help they need to have a successful convention.
"We feel the real action of the convention is going to be in the hall, and we're real excited about it," said Peter Ragone, speaking for the party's convention committee. "We recognize the possibility of demonstrations and protests and we're confident that the joint security team has the plans in place to deal with potential situations."
Mr. Hayden, who visited the protesters' training camp to lend moral support, said the biggest potential problem remained the city's unavoidable traffic and sprawl.
"On a normal day here, we're congested," he said. "For God's sake, the Indiana Pacers couldn't get from Santa Monica to the Staples Center in time for the first game of the playoffs. In my view, if the convention is shut down, it'll be simply because L.A. itself is this great, congested colossus and it grinds to a halt."
---
Free speech issue
Washington Times
July 21, 2000
Inside Politics Greg Pierce
News and political dispatches from around the nation.
http://208.246.212.80/national/inpolitics.htm
Activists who have set their sights on next month's Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles scored a victory Wednesday when a federal judge said city officials must give protesters better access to the convention site.
U.S. District Judge Gary Feess agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the city and police department, the Associated Press reports. The suit claimed a wide buffer zone officials planned to establish around the convention site - the downtown Staples Center - would violate protesters' constitutional rights by keeping them too far from delegates.
"When it's convenience versus the First Amendment, convenience loses every time," Judge Feess said. "It is hard to imagine an event when free speech activities would be more important."
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Housing Activists Get the Heave-Ho
Washington Post
Saturday, July 22, 2000 ; A01
By Petula Dvorak Washington Post Staff Writer
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23847-2000Jul21.html
The shh-shh-shh of sandpapering was silenced yesterday when three renegade renovators were arrested inside an abandoned Columbia Heights row house, foiling a quixotic effort to commandeer the property and turn it over to a homeless family.
Homeowners on the block, who for three days had been challenging the mission and the method of the activists, cheered when D.C. Battalion Fire Chief James Short Jr. declared 2809 Sherman Ave. NW unsafe and ordered the occupants to put down their tools and leave the building.
"I'm fixing this house for a homeless family," chanted Oren Casdi, 29, who stopped sandpapering only when the police clicked handcuffs onto his wrists. The Kent State student went limp, first apologizing to the officers for forcing them to carry him down the rickety stairs and then repeating his mantra.
Once outside, some neighbors countered with their own chant: "Get some money, buy one on your own!"
The conflict between the two factions at Sherman Avenue and Girard Street NW had been building since Wednesday, when a newly formed group calling itself Homes Not Jails posted slogans and began hauling trash from the abandoned property.
Though the group's action brought attention to the shortage of affordable housing in the nation's capital, in the end, the plan for Sherman Avenue was thwarted by the intense opposition from residents. Homeowners on the block said the summary takeover by outsiders was insulting, given their long and successful fight to have the house condemned by the city.
The activists were "heartbroken," as one said, that the efforts of a predominantly white group were misunderstood by the black residents on the block. The racial tension was evident from the beginning, and yesterday's arrest produced a frank dialogue.
"We're not South Africa on the Potomac here," said M.A. Doll-Fitzgerald, an advisory neighborhood commissioner. "Through police, through our representatives and with patience, government works. We were making it work as a community."
Jennifer Kirby, who helped organize the housing advocates, said she had hoped group members could barter the sweat equity they put into the house for ownership for a homeless family.
But there was a problem with the tactic.
"If they had picked a government property, it would have been a lot less complicated and they would've made a better point," said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1).
Land records show that the building was bought 11 years ago by Paul Musoke, who now resides in Uganda. Musoke hadn't paid taxes on the building in four years, and when he could not be reached, the building's $1,500 tax bill was paid in a tax auction on Thursday, Graham said.
The owner still has six to nine months to buy the building back from the tax auction by paying off the tax lien. Otherwise, it will belong to the person who paid that fee on Thursday. District officials could not locate the name of the buyer yesterday.
The two-story row house hadn't been occupied in about four years. As Short walked through the rooms with an entourage of police officers, he noted that the smoke detectors were not hard-wired, there were holes in the floors and ceilings, the back door was boarded up and there were no utilities.
"This building is declared unsafe. And there are no work permits," Short said. "Ya'll have to leave."
After he left, police tried to clear the building and arrested the three activists who kept working.
"This is not a new situation; we find about 10 buildings like these a week," Short noted, adding that he believes enforcing the law cannot be tainted by value judgments that make the activists' actions acceptable. "Crack dealers do it. They go into a house that isn't theirs and stay there. This is not different."
The members of the group who were in the house--Casdi, Jamie Loughner, 36, and Aaron Woldie--were taken away in handcuffs and charged with illegal presence, a misdemeanor carrying a $25 fine, said Sgt. Joe Gentile, a police spokesman.
After the patrol cars rolled away, after the yellow crime scene tape was stretched across the steps and after police stood guard at the door, the debates continued.
"It's a black and a white thing," said one resident who was raised on Sherman Avenue and spoke on the condition that he not be identified. "If a brother took the boards off that house over there," he said, pointing to another condemned building on the block, "he'd be arrested right away and no media would be out here. And all he's doing is looking for a place to live, too."
Doll-Fitzgerald said her neighbors support the idea of rehabilitating abandoned homes, but felt that the activists went about it in a Colonial fashion--without including them. "We are taxpaying residents here who want to do things according to the law," she said.
In their defense, the activists said many neighbors believe there is a housing logjam and supported their guerrilla tactics.
"We got 50 signatures in one hour along Gresham and Girard streets," said Kate Loewe, 21, one of the organizers. "One of the stores gave us coffee. There was a lot more support from the neighbors."
One supporter was Willie Jackson, who has lived across the street from the abandoned house for 27 years. He said he was grateful to see someone take such an aggressive approach on the eyesore he lives with. "I wish they could've stayed and finished," he said.
Graham, watching the activists pack their tools and roll up their signs, said he was conflicted. Nuisance properties are one of his causes, and he said his heart sang when the paint-splattered activists spoke of the need to rehabilitate abandoned housing in the District.
But he also knows how the grandmothers who looped their arms with his and shared the shade of their parasols with him feel about protecting their blocks themselves.
"The issue here is not 2809 Sherman Avenue," he said. "The issue is that there are 600 houses in Ward 1 that are owned by a city and the pace of their rehabilitation is glacial. I think everyone agrees with that."
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Anti-U.S. protest greets G-8 leaders
Washington Times
July 21, 2000
By Eric Talmadge
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://208.246.212.80/business/default-200072123930.htm
OKINAWA CITY, Japan - Thousands of protesters formed a human chain around the gates of a U.S. air base Thursday as leaders of the world's seven leading industrial powers and Russia assembled on this World War II battleground island to discuss narrowing the gap between rich and poor countries.
En route to the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin picked up North Korea and China as allies in his campaign to derail American plans to build an anti-missile nuclear shield.
President Clinton set aside stalled Mideast peace-making efforts at Camp David to take part in his farewell summit of the Group of Eight.
"The Okinawa summit will create a framework to fight infectious disease, increase access to basic education and expand opportunity through information technology," Mr. Clinton said on the way to the meeting. "Despite a stronger global economy, too many people around the world live every day without essential health care, basic literacy or the opportunity to share in the benefits of modern technology."
The president's first scheduled event was a speech to the people of Okinawa at the island's Peace Park, where the black walls of a monument bear the names of 237,318 soldiers - Japanese, American and British - and civilians who perished in a ferocious, 82-day battle during World War II.
So fierce was the fighting that it convinced President Harry S. Truman that he had no alternative to using the atom bomb against Japan.
While Mr. Clinton was en route to the summit, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and the other G-8 leaders met with the heads of four of the world's poorest nations to explore how technology can close the gap between them.
"There was an agreement on the fundamentals for development, including the overwhelming importance of education," Mr. Summers said.
He said the meeting will produce specific suggestions at the summit.
The leaders of poor nations who attended were Chuan Leekpai, prime minister of Thailand; Olusegun Obasanjo, president of Nigeria; Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa; and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria.
Executives from the California-based Internet equipment provider Cisco Systems Inc. and other companies attended the discussions, along with experts on poverty from the United Nations and World Health Organization as well as World Bank President James Wolfensohn.
"It was a very productive and very interesting session that gathered a variety of perspectives that sets the stage for a G-8 that emphasizes development issues," Mr. Summers said.
On Okinawa, organizers estimated more than 25,000 protesters mobilized in a human chain stretching 11 miles around Kadena Air Base to oppose the heavy U.S. military presence on the island. About 30,000 members of the service are stationed there.
Police deployed about 22,000 officers, most flown in from other parts of Japan, but no violence was reported during one of the island's largest protests in years.
Protesters - many of them accompanied by their children -wore headbands with anti-base slogans. Organizers yelled into loudspeakers, "Clinton, take your troops home" and "We don't want your troops."
"As teachers, we have vowed never to send our students to war again," said Isao Kaneshiro, head of a local teachers' union. "I want President Clinton to know that we don't want his troops here."
Okinawa - near the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, China and southeast Asia - is considered by U.S. officials to be of crucial strategic importance. But many Okinawans say the U.S. presence is too heavy and want it reduced or eliminated.
Military-related crime is a frequent source of tension. The recent arrest of a 19-year-old Marine accused of breaking into a home and climbing into bed with a sleeping schoolgirl reignited anger.
"Most Okinawans welcome the summit," an editorial in the Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper said. "But there are concerns as well. We are concerned that the bases, which cause such damage to us, will be praised by the summit leaders."
The G-8 - the United States, Japan, Britain, Italy, Canada, Germany, France and now Russia -has held summits each year for the past 25 years. This is the fourth summit Japan has hosted and the first it has held outside of Tokyo.
While Mr. Clinton flew to the island, Mr. Putin wrapped up the first visit by a Russian leader to North Korea. He was joined by the North's ruler, Kim Jong-il, in urging the United States to scrap the proposed missile shield. The two said North Korea's missile program, one reason the United States wants to build the shield, is meant for peaceful purposes and not attacks on other nations.
On Tuesday, Mr. Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin signed a statement denouncing the U.S. missile-shield plan. France and Germany share Russia's concerns that it could be destabilizing.
Russia said it will push at the summit for a write-off of Soviet-era debts, despite a bill passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives barring debt forgiveness until Russia shuts its intelligence listening post in Lourdes, Cuba.
The meetings are being held at a subtropical, seaside resort in the city of Nago. Officials are hoping it will put Okinawa on the international tourism map. The Foreign Ministry says the summit is expected to cost $750 million, including security, construction and road repairs.
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Anti-Fujimori protests planned for inaugural
Washington Times
July 21, 2000
World Scene
http://208.246.212.80/world/ed-column-20007212156.htm
LIMA, Peru - A group of 400 protesters were set Thursday to leave Iquitos, the northeastern city on the Amazon River, for Lima to protest the Sunday inauguration of President Alberto Fujimori.
Opposition leader Alejandro Toledo, who dropped out of the presidential race in protest, was scheduled to bid the group farewell.
Organizers with Mr. Toledo's Peru Possible party said the protesters would make the first half of the 620-mile journey by boat, down the Amazon, before continuing on to the capital by land.
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Global Fast-Food Frenzy
Washington Post
Sunday, July 23, 2000; Page B07
By Jim Hoagland
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/23/077l-072300-idx.html
Novelist Joseph Conrad located the ultimate horror of the colonial soul in the Belgian Congo's jungles. Journalist Jonathan Eig has found the equivalent for the 21st century stomach in the checkout line at 7-Eleven.
"At the nation's 7-Eleven stores . . . customers often finish their meals while standing in line to pay for them, leaving only a wrapper to be scanned at the register," Eig reported in the Wall Street Journal last week as he surveyed America's addiction to ever-faster food. "Today about 45 percent of all weekday meals are prepared in 30 minutes or less."
Make that "or a lot less." The article profiled Steve Sanger, chairman and chief executive of General Mills, who has built a career by asking of his firm's varied food products: Can we make it "one-handed"?
That is, can Betty Crocker's scientists, nutritionists and other experts come up with edibles to be downed without interrupting our other-handed typing, driving, channel surfing or jet-fighter flying?
Eig pointed out that Sanger's firm has just acquired Pillsbury, so he can add that venerable company to the empire of one-handed eating. Sanger's major contribution to American well-being thus far seems to be Go-Gurt, identified by the newspaper as a "child-friendly yogurt in a squeezable tube [that] has vaulted General Mills to the top of the yogurt business." An adult version of the tube, with enhanced yogurt slideability, debuts later this summer.
The grown-up Go-Gurt marketing campaign will confirm forever for the French and many other Europeans that the United States is a nation designed for, and increasingly by, 7-year-olds who have many more important things to do than sit down and eat well.
A decade of living in France probably explains my recoiling at the thought of an entire lunch or dinner going the way of all flesh in the checkout line at the 7-Eleven. No rude maitre d', no rough red wine to wash down a stinky cheese, no handwritten obscure menu to decipher--you call that a meal, mon ami?
Put it another way: If the one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind, is Sanger's one-handed eater king in the era of the global? Are the information revolution's pressures so intense that taking time to eat is being priced out of the market?
That has been the fear all along in France, where the preparation, consumption and discussion of food are civic sacraments. Change in French dining habits denotes change in French society. The fact that McDonald's is so popular with their young is a cause for French elders to worry--not proof that their worry is pointless or hypocritical, as many Americans assume.
Against this background, Jose Bove's deconstruction of a McDonald's in southern France last August has come to be seen as a national act of defiance and heroism. Sheep farmer Bove is expected to get off without punishment when judgment is rendered in his case on Sept. 13.
But is the publicity-prone Bove "Everyman raging at the tidal waves of globalization," as columnist Richard Reeves recently described him in the International Herald Tribune?
Bove's protest is in fact against a protectionist act--the U.S. 100 percent tax on Roquefort cheese that punishes France for banning American hormone-treated beef--and therefore for free trade. It would be just as easy to portray this shrewd French farmer as raging against the tides of protectionism. But that is a less heroic pose.
Bove has read the temperature of his times. The rapid shrinking of the globe causes the French and other Europeans to worry about the sanctity of the dinner hour and the safety of the food now fetched to them from the four corners of the earth. They seek a new Maginot Line to protect them from incoming American steak doused with hormones or from assault by genetically modified soybeans.
Their reaction is both similar to and different from the fears the shrinking of the globe provokes in the United States. For Americans, the debate is about missiles the North Koreans or Iraqis may soon be able to shoot at the United States on rockets. The U.S. Maginot Line is one built of interceptors the continent needs to knock down the missiles.
Americans fear others are out to kill them. The French know that far more often we kill ourselves, eventually, through what we ingest. Mad cow disease and North Korean rockets are agents standing in for larger fears about mortality that stalk us all, of whatever nation and tradition.
---
China cracks down on banned sect
USA Today
07/22/00- Updated 03:58 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwssat02.htm
BEIJING (AP) - Hustling peaceful protesters into vans, Chinese police cracked down Saturday on Falun Gong members who marked the first anniversary of the banning of their meditation group with banners and brief displays of civil disobedience.
One plainclothes policeman dragged away a woman by the ankles as an officer in a green uniform gripped a clump of her hair in crowded Tiananmen Square, one of China's most famous tourist sites and a popular venue for Falun Gong protests.
In past demonstrations, the group has been able to mobilize large numbers of protesters, and there was anticipation that the sect would orchestrate a big turnout Saturday to defiantly mark the one-year ban.
But most of the scattered protests Saturday involved individuals or small groups unfurling banners or sitting down in the square cross-legged in the lotus posture. About 100 people were rounded up during the morning, the most popular time for the group to protest.
The largest group involved about 25 people who successfully blocked police from immediately seizing their banner. Police eventually broke up the protesters.
Founded eight years ago, Falun Gong attracted millions of followers, drawn by its blend of slow-motion exercises and ideas drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the group's exiled leader, Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk.
Followers say practice promotes health, moral living and, in experts, supernatural powers.
But the government has called Falun Gong an unprecedented threat to communist rule. It has accused Falun Gong of cheating followers and causing 1,500 deaths, mostly of followers who it said refused medical treatment according to what it claims are the group's teachings.
Equipped with binoculars and walkie-talkies, legions of police patrolling Tiananmen Square often swoop down on protesters seconds after they whip out a banner or begin meditating. Within minutes, protesters are stuffed into police vans stationed on the margins of the square.
Blistering hot weather made the job difficult for the police Saturday because their views were obstructed by hundreds of visitors carrying umbrellas, which Chinese use to block the sun.
Still, they managed aggressively to nab the protesters and disperse crowds of tourists who stopped to gawk.
After plainclothes police grabbed one man who was sitting cross-legged, they took a camera away from a foreign tourist who was taking pictures in the area. They took the film out of the camera and exposed it to daylight, ruining the photos. The police then walked away, ignoring the tourist's protests.
On the northwest corner of the square, a pair of women held up a yellow banner with one of the sect's names, ''Falun Dafa,'' in red Chinese characters. The banner was up for about 20 seconds - an eternity compared to most protests - before police grabbed the women by their arms and snatched away the banner.
One middle-aged woman walking by with her family spotted the banner and yelled ''Arrest them!''
Since the government banned the sect one year ago, police have been detaining members and state-run media have been denouncing the group in a fierce smear campaign.
Several newspapers on Saturday ran a commentary by the official Xinhua News Agency that said Falun Gong is a ''poisonous torrent'' that is ''anti-humanity'' and ''anarchistic.''
Xinhua said Li, the exiled leader, has encouraged followers to break the law and demonstrate, resulting in a recent increase in illegal gatherings at Tiananmen Square.
---
China arrests on Falun Gong protesters
USA Today
07/22/00- Updated 08:49 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
BEIJING - Falun Gong followers marked the first anniversary of China's ban on the group Saturday, unfurling banners and meditating in scattershot protests that were snuffed out within seconds by legions of police. About 100 people were rounded up Saturday morning. More are expected to be picked up as the civil disobedience continued in the afternoon. Founded eight years ago, Falun Gong attracted millions of followers, drawn by its blend of slow-motion exercises and ideas drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and its founder, an ex-government grain clerk.
---
USA Today
07/23/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Wyoming
Cheyenne - Three billboard companies have rejected anti-rodeo advertisements by the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals amid concerns the ads would offend those with ties to the livestock industry. PETA officials said people should be alerted to animal cruelty in rodeos. Professional rodeo officials say they follow strict guidelines to protect animals.
OneList subscribers:
1. NucNews 00/07/23 - Announcements
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>
2. New Opposition to Goshute Nuke Waste Dump
From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
3. A Time to Kill DOE's $100k Bribe Bill? Legislative developments.....
From: easlavin@aol.com
4. Inculpatory Criticality Info Long Concealed, A Reason to Kill DOE Bribe Bill?
From: easlavin@aol.com
5. Not enough compensation in CONpensation Plan?
From: easlavin@aol.com
6. Announce: Website Update - "NEW!"
From: Winston Weeks <wweeks@mail.aros.net>
8. Lack of OUTRAGE
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>
9. FW: (en) Turkey, Nuclear Alert from Akkuyu
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>
-------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 06:52:12 -0400
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>
NucNews 00/07/23 - Announcements
1) Global Peace Walk Sunday, July 23rd, Global Peace Walk 2000 will be arriving in St. Louis Missouri and we need helpers there to connect with the walkers for hospitality, networking, etc. A team will stay in St. Louis organizing for main walk event August 15th while some go to sundance in South Dakota and come back for Aug15 to continue walking east with indigenous spiritual people. Please send contact info you have for people in St. Louis. Call walk voicemail 415-267-1877 or walk cellphone 888-285-8865 x 61389. Thanks,David Crockett Williams <gear2000@lightspeed.net>, Co-coordinator Global Peace Walk 2000 http://www.globalpeacenow.org
2) Indian Point Update -- THEY DID IT!!!!!! From: "Elie" <elie@highlands.com> Sat, 22 Jul 2000 13:11:31 -0500
Thursday, July 20, at 1:00 pm Michele, Janine, Margaret, and Tom locked down a door at Con Ed headquarters in NYC for almost an hour.... A crowd gathered and someone shouted out, "Free the heroes, arrest Con Ed." The video will air over Media One public access channel on Saturday, July 22, at 6:30 pm, Tuesday, 8:30 pm, and Wednesday at 11:00 pm. It will be listed either as Con Ed Lockdown or Solutions for Survival. If you can help get it on the air in your cable area let me know and I will get you a copy. Please pass this on to anyone who is interested. Phone interviews, photos and a copy of the video are available to press.
3) ANTI-NUCLEAR CAMP NEAR "MAYAK" 11th annual public opposition to dangerous industrial projects July 23 - August 5, 2000 For more information on previous anti-nuclear camps in Russia and public opposition to nuclear power in regions of Russia visit the website of The SEU Anti-nuclear campaign http://www.ecoline.ru/antinuclear
4) Peace Action Announcements: - Video footage of the successful July 18 Stop Star Wars protest at the US Capitol is now available online linked from http://www.peace-action.org/July18press.html. - One of the most important stops on the Missile Stop Tour is coming up on July 30 at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. We plan to be there with our mock missiles and hope you can join us. We're already hearing some reports of Peace Action buses filling up to come to Philadelphia.
5) The Nuclear Control Institute (Washington, D.C., USA) has posted a G-8 briefing on the U.S.-Russia plutonium disposition issue on its web site. The briefing will be distributed at the NGO center in Okinawa to interested media and others. http://www.nci.org/g8brief.htm. More information about weapons plutonium disposition and the dangers of MOX are available at http://www.nci.org/nci-wpu.htm.
6) A poem for Hiroshima week (written after hearing testimonies of Hibakusha) Monday's Plantings by Philip Havey
ta ichimai
Idling on the steps of the Yokohama Species Bank I was turned to steam, leaving only my shadow behind to be tended and cultivate like a bed of flowers.
kagero ya
Those who flinched so they only had their eyelids burned away were entertained by fat, black walnuts of oil rendered from vermin, pets, third plantings and other organic matter near the epicenter who'd fallen back upon the earth as rain.
kono shita ni
After the roof tiles boiled off, the houses themselves swayed before departing, as consistent with the optics of August heat. When a lesser light finally cut the smudged wind, he wondered by what means he'd aquired such a fine candelabra in his moment of need, until, he looked up to find the five fingers of his right hand spanned wide apart and burning.
yume no mizu ni
She had not been surprised to find herself naked among lichen pied rocks in Asano Park while the circle of city skyline burned around her; fire and desolation were lately native to her dreams. Encountering their district baker, Mr. Myshito, she asked him to go home and inform her husband how their two children had been torn from he arms by great dragons of ash.
(Such ideas occur full-blown in a dreamer's mind.) A portly man, still swaddled in oven whites, he angled his bowed to her station and pledged to provide what assistance he could before shambling off between two flapping walls of fire as if to tend his loaves.
"Surely", she told herself at that point (as she would many times over before the day ended), " I have reach the point at which awakening must happen." umi wa michishio The Almanac relates how the elements turned against them.
When the five costal rivers needed to run sweet and shallow to the sea, the salt tide didn't neap before noon.
Its steady morning's rise forced early refugees up into an impasse with those clambering down to escape the heat.
Shortly after eleven, everything fell away too sharply for anything to matter either way.
monoi ni omoishi
The pika appeared pink, blue, red or orange depending where the observer stood. No one remembers the plane, heard its drone or saw anything separate from it. Light simply blazoned every where at once. Had one person said-"Yes, I saw it fall!"- it would not have been so bad. Later all agreed, aircrew and our people alike, the cloud which followed did not form the great portobello, journals would report, but made a question mark as clearly written in a cursive Western hand,
mizu aosagi no
As people who value comic books, we naturally bled the color of India Ink and blotched, pointilated, like strawberries. Citizens in a land where communal bathing served a norm, the first burned cooked contoured to the city's safety cisterns as the rage of firestorms brought the non-flowing waters within the delta to a boil.
Among those who prized graphic body adornment as a subtle art, the keloid patterns of roses raised almost at once were not instructive.
nasugusa ya
Within five days, the world about us blossomed while our hair fell out. As we sickened, bluets, goosefoot, knotweed and rape grew in profusion; While our blood paled, colors profused to lemon, cerise, madder and cerulean; As the call went out a crossed the islands to send us canes and crutches, lavender heaved asphalt up, peonies broke out among fallen roof-beams and prodigious coils of kudzu tugged down anything that leaned. Gladiola rooted among the bodies of the dead where no bulbs were sown. Hairy beans, lilacs, sesame, and clover knitted vomit to the high panic grass. The sicle-senna at Yokogawa Station alone ran so thick that rumor had it where we huddled within our borax soaks that the tools of what happened had, in some cruel manner, been fashioned from the seed of wildflowers.
hirou mon
A gardener's ability to use felt images leads to more preferential plantings, which explains why the glassy blue melt of seventy thousand milk-bottles curves so easily around the squares of tarmac cut from those once busy intersections where policemen directing morning traffic were reduced to a scatter of glove-snaps and buckles barely noticed among the random constellations of their brass-buttons.
Nor was it accidental, therefore, that mason jars brimming over from the excess of scorched eyelets from schoolchildren's shoes from playgrounds be integrated artfully with crates of briefcase handles later swept up along the commercial routs, each stippled like thin bass fry when light passed through the softer flesh of the hand. Take care, for with so much to see on this pathway of lunchboxes puckered to shiny muffins and tin stepping-stones, one easily might miss the border welds of fused sewing scissors upended in the earth to approximate the look of sawgrass and never know how Hiroshima had once been a city full of maidens and mothers.
momochidori
At some point the weeds crept in- The first spontaneous wreathes of paper-cranes and painted stones proved acceptable, as did the fountains, temples and bells which followed in kind until desk-weights, chopsticks, cocktail coasters and T-shirts inscribed with prays for tranquillity in florissant dyes followed their natural course.
In the end, we fielded plastic zinnias to setoff signs in 127 languages instructing pilgrims how to rinse their mouths and wash their hands should they inadvertent make contact with the doves of peace wheeling about the sky in flocks of thousands above Ground Zero.
ta icima "planting a patch" (Kobu)
kagero ya "summer shimmer"(Basho)
kono shita ni "under this"(Shiki)
yume no mizu ni "not seeing a dream"(Kyoshi)
uni wa michishio "sea at hightide"(Seisensi)
mono ni omoshi "a rather distant thing"(Takuboku)
mizu aosagi "water laps their legs"(Buson)
natsugusa ya "summer grass"(Basho)
hirou mon "things picked up"(Chiyo-ni)
momochiori "ten myriad birds"(Yoshino)
Phil Havey
------------
New Opposition to Goshute Nuke Waste Dump
CITIZENS GROUP READY TO FIGHT NUKE WASTE SITE
Message: 2
From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
Salt Lake Tribune --
Saturday, July 22, 2000
by Brent Israelsen
A bipartisan bevy of prominent Utahns is organizing to oppose a plan that would bring much of the nation's high-level nuclear waste to the state's western desert.
They call themselves the "Citizens Against Nuclear Waste in Utah," and they aim to foment public opposition to a spent nuclear fuel storage facility proposed for the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Gov. Mike Leavitt has fought the idea but recently conceded the state might not be able to stop it.
"We want to invite citizens of Utah to join us to stop radioactive waste from being stored on the Goshute Reservation," said Jim McConkie, a Salt Lake City attorney leading the effort. It has the support of former Gov. Norm Bangerter, a Republican, former Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson, a Democrat, and others.
The invitation comes none too soon. The proposal to store up to 40,000 metric tons of nuclear waste on the reservation is the subject of a draft environmental impact statement recently released by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will hold two public hearings next week in Salt Lake City and Grantsville.
McConkie, the Democratic candidate for the state Senate seat being vacated by Scott Howell, D-Sandy, said the citizens group will educate the public about the dangers of the Goshute proposal and raise money to support a lawsuit already filed by opposition members within the tribe.
Another key goal of the group, McConkie said, is to help the Goshutes find a viable economic-development alternative to the waste storage idea.
The Goshutes have a lease agreement with Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of eight out-of-state electric utility companies looking for a place to dispose of spent-fuel rods from their nuclear power plants.
Leon Bear, chairman of the Goshute tribe, said he has had no discussions with Citizens Against Nuclear Waste in Utah but would welcome any alternative ideas for business development on his reservation, one of the most economically disadvantaged in the country.
"We're here to make sure our tribe survives. That's the bottom line.
We need an economic base to provide our tribal members with jobs and provide income so they can live," Bear said.
But few economic development ideas are likely to be as lucrative as the deal with PFS, which would pay the Goshutes tens of millions of dollars over the next 20 years. Exact financial terms of the deal have not been made public.
Bear, however, said the tribe could walk away from the PFS lease agreement.
"Nothing is written in stone nowadays, just like the [Indian] treaties with the U.S. government," Bear said.
McConkie's group plans to formally announce its formation on Tuesday at the state Capitol Rotunda. It will hold public meetings Wednesday in the Salt Lake City Council Chambers and Thursday at Westminster College. Also on Thursday, the group plans to march from the Salt Lake City-County Building to Little America Hotel for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's public hearing.
Besides Bangerter and Wilson, joining McConkie in organizing the citizens group are former U.S. Rep. Wayne Owens; former U.S. Attorney Brent Ward; former U.S. Sens. Jake Garn and Frank Moss; Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan; Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini; Murray Mayor Dan Snarr; former Utah Sen. Dave Jones; Utah Sen. Paula Julander; Utah Rep. Ralph Becker; Rabbi Frederick Wenger; Kathleen McConkie-Collinwood, Democratic candidate for Utah's 1st Congressional District; Salt Lake City attorneys Bradley Parker and Robert Bradley; retired Unisys executive Rocky Navarro; actress Anne Sward Hansen; and American Indians Henry Clayton and Alberta Mason.
"We're willing to lend our name to a good cause and help out," McConkie said. "This will give voice to the broad majority that is opposed to it. I haven't talked to anyone who wants radioactive waste that takes 10,000 years to [decompose] to be sitting 45 miles from Salt Lake City.
Although the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on Friday issued a media advisory of the citizens group's activities, McConkie said, the group is not affiliated or financially supported by the state.
The state, however, is glad to have the help, said DEQ Director Dianne Nielson. DEQ and Leavitt's office have lost several key battles this year in their quest to stop the PFS-Goshute proposal.
--------
A Time to Kill DOE's $100k Bribe Bill? Legislative developments.....
Message: 3
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 13:24:23 EDT
From: easlavin@aol.com
Good afternoon:
Anyone seen hide nor hair of the DOE $100k bribe bill (or son of RECA)? Does anyone have anything to report about legislative developments on compensation and medical care for sick workers and residents, Federal Tort Claims Act Amendments, etc.? Please, everyone share your information (on and off line) so that we can all make sense out of the mess that Congress and the White House have made out of the promise to help DOE's victims. This is no time to hold back information. All should share with all.
The manner of drafting the DOE and PACE bills was secretive. The manner of the adoption of Senator Thompson's Senate Amendment 3250 to S. 2549 was shameful. He has answered none of our questions. Let's not repeat history and let a big bad bill slip by us while our attentions are diverted.
The Department of Energy proposed $100,000 payments to each sick nuclear weapons worker as "compensation," in a program that would be run by DOE, which made the workers sick in the first place, a blatant conflict of interest. DOE's indecent proposal fails to assure lifetime medical care and compensation benefits, valuing nuclear weapons workers less than coal miners who are victims of Black Lung disease, while not proposing to tax the influential polluters to pay for the program. Few would actually qualify for benefits under DOE's scheme, which leaves out chemical and heavy metal toxicants from compensation, leaving victims to the tender mercies of mostly indifferent state workers compensation systems.
The $400 million DOE proposal is too little, too late. DOE's indecent proposal should be rejected. Real reform is required, not one-time payoffs and immunity for DOE's contractors.
Energy Secretary Richardson "apologized" for the agony of sick nuclear weapons workers, but President Clinton and Vice President Gore need to apologize too, at a DOE facility, to some of the actual victims -- the families and actual Nuclear Weapons workers, residents, Downwinders and Atomic Veterans injured, maimed, disabled and killed by the DOE and its five decades of uncontrolled workplace and environmental pollution. All hurt by the nuclear weapons complex should be compensated, not just a handful of workers at certain plants with a few specified diseases.
The contributions of CHE and Downwinders members resulted in the Nuclear Weapons Workers, Atomic Veterans and Residents Compensation and Health Act (NWWVARCHA) draft on the Downwinder's sight. When the DOE $100k bribe bill turkey dies, we should go for the best compensation bill, not the hindmost.
Let's unite across the USA and take NWWVARCHA to the Presidential, Senate and Congressional campaigns, and make candidates say whether they will support full and fair compensation, not CONpensation.
Those responsible for nuclear weapons recklessness that hurt Americans should be prosecuted. DOE contractors should be taxed on their pollution and excess profits to pay for full and fair compensation for all sick workers and residents.
The proposal is too little because it fails to assure lifetime medical benefits for all sick workers, only those with certain cancers and beryllium disease. The bill fails to assure open public hearings and procedures. The bill fails to provide an agency independent of DOE -- the Department of Labor -- to make decisions. DOE would make decisions on compensating workers it has made sick: this is a blatant conflict of interest that "tempts dishonor," as the Supreme Court put it. The pallid proposal offers to "settle" for only $100,000 per victim, a paltry sum, instead of lifetime compensation benefits.
Compare the urgency with which the tort system responded to tobacco illnesses. The $145 billion verdict in Florida sent a message to tobacco companies. In the case of tobacco, some State laws were changed to make it easier to sue wrongdoers. In contrast, DOE demands that its ultrahazardous activities remain exempt from suit against the government under the discretionary function exemption in the Federal Tort Claims Act. DOE must not have its way with the law or DOE will continue to have its way with the victims of its pollution and crimes. DOE nuclear weapons compensation laws must favor the vicims, not the DOE victimizers. Criminal behavior by DOE and its tatterdemalion contractors should result in criminal indictments by State and Federal prosecutors.
Compare the medical care and compensation afforded for over thirty years to sick coal miners who are victims of Black Lung disease. Under federal law, if they are found disabled due to pneumoconiosis, coal miners have rights to lifetime medical care and monthly benefits. They have rights to independent hearings before Department of Labor Administrative Law Judges as well as appeal rights and judicial review that DOE would deny. Coal miners also receive Black Lung benefits for widows and orphans. DOE is not proposing to tax the polluters who killed and crippled the sick workers. Black Lung benefits are funded by a fifty cent per ton tax on coal. DOE wants to use its budget, with a cap on benefits. Congress should make the polluters pay -- DOE's contractors should be held responsible and taxed for their pollution, just as Superfund site proprietors must pay for cleanup.
The one-time, $100,000 (or $200,000) bribe proposals are too late: DOE stalled sick nuclear weapons workers until midway through this Presidential election year, when it is very doubtful whether there is time left in this session of Congress to pass any bill, good or bad. The $400 million is a pittance that is designed to help only 3000 workers. There are many times more victims of nuclear weapons.
This is an insult to those who suffer and have died from our domestic nuclear weapons production and testing since 1943, a tiny fraction of the $35.1 billion the Brookings Institution says America spends each year on nuclear weapons.
With kindest regards, I am Sincerely yours, Ed
Edward A. Slavin, Jr. Box 3084 St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084 (904) 471-7023 (904) 471-9918 (fax)
http://www.downwinders.org/victims.html (victims' testimony, columns and legislation)
http://www.downwinders.org/ed.htm (Ed's column on nuclear compensation)
http://www.downwinders.org/slavinhtml.htm (Ed's U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs testimony, "DOE's Toxic, Hostile Working Environment Violates Human Rights.")
---------
Inculpatory Criticality Info Long Concealed, A Reason to Kill DOE Bribe Bill?
Message: 4
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 13:36:11 EDT
From: easlavin@aol.com
Dear friends: Information that bears directly on coverage, liablity, jurisdiction, benefits and medical care is still being concealed, and parceled out a particle at a time. Are we expected to believe that there have only been 60 criticality accidents worldwide? Does that include gaseeous diffusion plants? Could it be that this is yet another reason not to let DOE stampede a bad bill through Congress?
http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/releases/archive/00-099.html
Criticality accidents report issued
Time to kill the DOE $100k/$200k bribe bill? What do you reckon?
Regards, Ed Slavin
Criticality accidents report issued
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 19, 2000 Since 1945 there have been 60 criticality accidents world-wide with varying levels of severity, from the most recent, a September 1999 accident in Japan that resulted in the deaths of two workers, to the very first fatal accident during the WWII Manhattan Project. All of these criticality accidents are now chronicled in a new report from the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, made public today.
The report, a joint effort of the United States and the Russian Federation, is the latest revision of a report first published in 1967 titled "A Review of Criticality Accidents." It includes significant new information about accidents that occurred in the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Argentina and Japan. The report begins by separating accidents into two distinct categories: process accidents and research reactor accidents.
Separating the two categories is important because of distinct differences between the two. In process accidents, administrative or physical controls are generally in place to prevent any sort of criticality, meaning that when criticality occurs it is wholly unwanted and unexpected. In research reactor accidents, some measure of criticality is purposely achieved, usually during experimentation, and ends up getting out of control somehow.
One of the report's principal authors, Thomas McLaughlin, of the Laboratory's Nuclear Criticality Safety group, says the report serves not only to reconstruct criticality accidents but to also offer information central to the prevention of accidents and the most effective response should an accident occur. "The most important sections of the report deal with observations and lessons learned from process criticality accidents," said McLaughlin. "All criticality accidents are dominated by design, managerial and operational failure, it's important that these issues be the focus for accident prevention."
A criticality accident occurs when the minimum amount of fissile material required to sustain a chain reaction is accidentally brought together. For example, when the nucleus of Uranium-235 disintegrates, two or three neutrons are released, and each is capable of causing another nucleus to disintegrate. However, if the total mass of the U-235 is insufficient to sustain a chain reaction, the neutrons simply escape. In most criticality accidents this chain reaction is very short lived, causing a neutron population spike and resultant radiation, heat and, in many cases, an ethereal "blue flash," a phenomenon of the air surrounding a neutron burst becoming ionized and giving off a flash of blue light.
The first-ever criticality accident resulting in a fatality occurred at Los Alamos' Omega Site on Aug. 21, 1945, and involved a 6.2-kilogram nickel-plated plutonium sphere and neutron-reflecting tungsten- carbide blocks. A critical assembly was created accidentally while the reflecting-blocks were stacked around the Pu sphere. The lone experimenter, Harry Daghlian, while moving a block in order to take a measurement had the block slip and drop onto the center of the assembly, causing a "superprompt" criticality event. Daghlian removed the dropped block by hand to stop the chain reaction and in doing so received a radiation dose estimated at 510 rem. He died 28 days later.
The vast majority of accidents do not result in death, but there have been 21 fatalities from criticality accidents since 1945. Nine of these fatalities were due to process accidents, and 12 resulted from research reactor accidents, according to the report. Of the 21 deaths, seven occurred in the United States, 10 in the Soviet Union, two in Japan, and one each in Yugoslavia and Argentina. There have been no accidents involving the transportation or storage of fissile materials. Only one accident, at the JCO Fuel Fabrication Plant in Tokimura, Japan, resulted in measurable exposures to members of the public, and these were well below allowable annual exposures to workers.
The report, originally scheduled for publication near the end of 1999, was held until now in order to add information from the process accident in Japan. "We felt it was very important to wait until we had the facts from this latest event so they could be added to this new revision," said McLaughlin. "The entire team working on this report wanted to make sure that it was a comprehensive as possible and contained the most up-to-date information."
In addition to McLaughlin, the report's authors are Shean Monahan of LANL, Norman Pruvost of Galaxy Computer Services, Inc., and Vladimir V. Frolov, Boris G. Ryazanov and Victor I. Sviridov all of the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in Obninsk, Russia,
----------
Not enough compensation in CONpensation Plan?
Message: 5
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 20:13:33 EDT
From: easlavin@aol.com
vcolley@earthlink.net (Vina Colley)
Monday, June 26, 2000 6:57 AM,
quoting Lousiville Courier Journal article
For all the credit given Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and Assistant Energy Secretary David Michaels for pushing a compensation package through the administration, critics said the Energy Department plan had shortcomings.
"The administration proposal . . . is weak both substantively and politically," said Bob Schaeffer, public-education director for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a network of about 30 organizations representing communities near nuclear facilities.
"It hardly goes far enough in terms of the damage done to the workers."
His organization would like to see the congressional plan include payments to residents harmed by the activities of nearby nuclear sites, such as the Paducah plant's neighbors whose drinking-water wells were contaminated and closed. Government whistle-blower groups would like to see the legislation compensate workers who risked their jobs to reveal wrongdoing.
Those may be issues for another day, said one Capitol Hill staff member involved in the compensation bill, but the focus for now is on getting help for sick workers.
Yes, like Scarlett O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day." Do you believe that? Who favors killing the $100k/$200k bribe bill? Regards, Ed Slavin
----------
Message: 6
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 19:06:45 -0600
From: Winston Weeks <wweeks@mail.aros.net>
Announce: Website Update - "NEW!"
A petition to stop nuclear waste coming to a "temporary" ISFSI in Skull Valley, Utah.
http://www.downwinders.org/petition.doc
History of Nuclear Waste Accidents (NIRS)
http://www.nirs.org/roadsrails/accidentshistorybrochure.htm
Utahns need to fight proposed N-Waste facility:
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,175021193,00.html?
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Lack of OUTRAGE
Message: 8
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 00:02:03 -0700
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>
Y'all, What has this got to do with Nuc issues you ask..... EVERYTHING my Droogies. The lack of ACCOUNTABILITY, the CRIMINAL MISCONDUCT which goes UNPUNISHED, the outright LIES by the JUSTICE DEPT.
"We know that the Department of Justice has had some relevant FBI documents, including significant documents, for months. Yet they have sat on them despite congressional subpoenas and repeated requests from the office of special counsel," said the official. "This does not bode well for Janet Reno's Department of Justice, and it deserves a lot more critical look than it has received to date."
See what happens if YOU don't comply with a Congressional Subpoena my Droogies!
"But he said he found odd the agency's aversion to disclosure of information, especially when his 10-month examination - like past congressional and agency inquiries - conclusively cleared the government of any blame for the standoff's tragic end"
What's ODD here is that the DRAGON'S MINION has "Conclusively cleared the government of any blame for the standoff's tragic end" in light of the statement below.
"The special counsel's preliminary report concludes that problems have been resolved, and the Justice Department is complying with requests for access to about 300,000 remaining Waco documents"
How can you "Conclusively" clear the Government with 300,000 documents remaining to be examined?????
And what about your lack of OUTRAGE my Droogies. YOUR worried about getting compensation when YOUR getting CONNED!
Later
<http://dallasnews.com/waco/116429_waco_23tex.html>
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Turkey, Nuclear Alert from Akkuyu
Message: 9
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 22:25:52 +0100
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>
A - INFOS NEWS SERVICE http://www.ainfos.ca/
ATTENTION PLEASE !!!
NUCLEAR ALERT FROM AKKUYU / TURKEY !!!!!!!!!!
On July 24 (J 24), the Turkish Government will select of a nuclear vendor to build the Akkuyu nuclear plant.
We know that "Akkuyu nuclear plant" project threat "the right of living" of humanity, not only who lives in the Eastern Mediterranean but also lives in the Earth. In spite of our resistance against "Akkuyu nuclear plant", the Turkish Government could not hear our voice and insist on this project. And so we protest the Turkish Government could not hear our voice; on July 24, we will meet in Ankara for the protest demonstration and we send our protest messages to the Turkish Prime Ministry.
We invite you to participate our message calling. On July 24 (J 24), please send your protest messages to the webmaster@basbakanlýk.gov.tr email address. Thank you for your solidarity..