------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
*U.S. Firm to Retrieve Russian Sub
*India and Russia boost ties
*Clearly present dangers
*Bangladeshi visitor
*U.S., North Korea Wind Up Talks
*Taiwanese President Names Premier
*Taiwan's Premier Quits Amid Nuclear Power Row
*Taiwan premier resigns
*Former Official Denies Racial Bias
*Clinton raises money for Lee prosecutor
*Brookhaven Lab to Get $170 Million From U.S.
*Damage Caused by Lee Clarified at Hearing
*Clinton: Golf Is Like Life
*Bush & Gore Campaigns Agree to Address Nuclear Policy
*Buckley ANG becomes Buckley Air Force Base
*Letters: Nuclear Testing Debate
*Senate Backs Crackdown On Leaks of Classified Data
*Senate Passes Water Bill
MILITARY
*Ten years of German reunification
*Voice of the Kremlin?
*Europeans Reject U.S. Bid to Lower U.N. Dues
*U.S. carries too big a financial burden, Holbrooke says
*Wargames: Air Force Space Command's Battle Plans
*NEW PLAN FOR THE X-33
*Vietnamese legacy
OTHER
*Move to Save Wildlife Snags Spending Bill
*Scientists Track Pollutant's Course
*Debate Rises Over a Quick(er) Climate Fix
*Saving the dolphins
*Senate clears bill for energy, water projects; veto promised
*Taco Bell's Core Customers Seem Undaunted by Shell Scare
*Police Brutality Revisited, But Not on Federal Ground
*Senator Presses for Bill to Combat Terrorism
*A Mission to Redirect Money Used for Defense
*A sad day in ALP history, thanks to Bracks
*Milosevic orders arrest of leaders of strike
*Milosevic says foes are under control of the West
*Nader, Buchanan want to debate
*States
-------- NUCLEAR (by country)
U.S. Firm to Retrieve Russian Sub
New York Times
October 03, 2000 Filed at 10:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- The Norwegian subsidiary of a U.S. firm run until recently by Dick Cheney will help recover the remains of the 118 seamen who died in the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk.
The contract for the retrieval operations was awarded Monday to the Tananger, Norway branch of Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based oil services firm.
Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995 until August, when he resigned to become the GOP vice presidential nominee.
Representatives of the company's Tananger branch signed the contract Monday with the Rubin military design bureau, which designed the Kursk.
Igor Spassky, the head of Rubin, told a news conference in St. Petersburg that the retrieval work would begin about Oct. 18.
He said it would be impossible to bring back all the remains, since most of the compartments in the shattered submarine were destroyed in the Aug. 12 disaster.
``We expect that we'll be able to retrieve 20 to 30 percent of the crew in this operation, which would be a very good result,'' Spassky said. ``The rest we will have to bury after we raise the sub itself.''
Neither side would say how much the contract is worth, though Rubin had reportedly offered $9 million to another Norwegian company, Stolt Offshore, to take part in the operation. That deal fell through.
Authorities still have not determined what caused the explosions and sinking of the Kursk, which went down during military exercises.
Russian officials say the most likely scenario was a collision with a foreign submarine. But the United States, which has acknowledged that its submarines were monitoring the military exercises, has denied that. American officials say the Kursk may have gone down after a torpedo misfire.
---
India and Russia boost ties
BBC News
Tuesday, 3 October, 2000
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_952000/952956.stm
India is heavily dependent on Russian military equipment India and Russia have signed a strategic partnership agreement which both sides hope will revive a relationship that has faded since the end of the Cold War.
The deal was signed in Delhi by President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
It covers a whole range of bilateral concerns from defence and peaceful nuclear co-operation to trade and science and technology.
The agreement stresses that the new partnership is "not directed against any other state or group of states, and does not seek to create a military-political alliance."
Mr Vajpayee described the agreement as "a solemn and long-term commitment on the part of Russia and India to work in close cooperation as partners on all issues, political, economic and international".
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Putin was given a ceremonial welcome by the Indian President, KR Narayanan.
Speaking to journalists after the ceremony, he said that Russia was particularly interested in economic, cultural and scientific relations and military and technical ties.
But he added: "Of course, combating terrorism is a very important part of our work."
Fading relationship
The BBC's Delhi correspondent Mike Wooldridge says that the visit has been noticeably more low-key than President Bill Clinton's in March.
Mr Putin is the first Russian president to visit India in nearly eight years and comes amid improving ties between Delhi and Washington.
India and the erstwhile Soviet Union were close allies from the 1950s onwards, but that relationship has wilted recently.
One area in which progress is expected to be made is military co-operation between the two.
India's armed forces are heavily dependent on Russian equipment with recent purchases of Su-30 fighter aircraft and T-90 tanks.
Defence contracts signed during the visit are expected to be worth several millions of dollars.
Security
Both countries are concerned over international terrorism and religious extremism.
India is trying to contain separatist rebels in the disputed northern state of Kashmir while Russia is facing the same problem in Chechnya.
The two leaders agreed to forge a coordinated strategy to deal with Islamic militancy in Afghanistan, where recent advances by the ruling Taleban have revived concerns about renewed conflict in Central Asia.
Brahesh Mishra, Mr Vajpayee's principal secretary, said that a joint statement issued on Wednesday would give details of a joint working group on Afghanistan.
Mr Putin also said he had called on India to to take "concrete and specific" steps to resume peace talks with Pakistan.
Trade and technology
Russia is also providing India with technical expertise for two nuclear reactors in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Mr Putin is scheduled to visit an atomic research centre near Bombay.
The visit will also seek to improve trade between the two countries which has fallen to $1.5bn in 1999 from $5.5bn at the beginning of the 1990s.
---
Clearly present dangers
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
Jan Nowak
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-2000103203320.htm
This book is a collection of essays by 16 prominent political thinkers, who describe themselves as "conservative internationalists." They include people of the caliber of William Kristol (who, with Robert Kagan, is the editor), Elliott Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Gedmin, Richard N. Perle, Peter W. Rodman and Paul Wolfowitz.
"Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy" appears at a time when the American public seems to have lost any sense of danger. The Soviet Union is no more. The United States remains the only superpower, with a military force unmatched by any other country or any imaginable coalition of countries. Little wonder, therefore, that in this year's presidential election campaign foreign policy issues are relegated to the back burner.
The book is also an important and timely reminder that we may be living in a false state of calm before the approaching storm. True, any all-out direct attack on the United States or NATO is simply inconceivable. The authors identify, however, several potential sources of conflict, which could endanger the vital interests of the United States. The proliferation of nuclear and bacteriological weapons could make America's urban centers prime targets for terrorist attacks. China may emerge as a hostile superpower intent on establishing its hegemony over Asia. More imminently, Beijing may attempt to take over Taiwan by force or intimidation.
There is considerable uncertainty over the future course of Russia's domestic and foreign policy. North Korea, armed with nuclear weapons, poses a continuing threat to democratic South Korea, Japan and the entire region. Ballistic missiles in the hands of rogue states,Iraq and Iran may encourage one or both of them to take control of the Persian Gulf or to attack Israel. In view of these potential threats, all of which are likely to require American intervention, the authors express justifiable alarm over the decline of American military capabilities since the Gulf War.
One might add to this list of dangers the lingering Vietnam War syndrome, which makes the American public unwilling to accept loss of blood in military entanglements far from home. Military superiority is largely meaningless without the political will to use it and to make unavoidable sacrifices when national security is at stake.
On a list of chapters dealing with possible crises and opportunities the book places China before Russia. The order should be reversed. It is true that today's Russia is too weak in an economic and military sense to pose a direct threat to Western democracies. President Vladimir Putin, however, makes no secret of his goal to reduce American global influence as much as possible. And he has considerable means at his disposal.
Mr. Putin has the ability to block any American initiatives undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations by using Russia's veto power. He provides support to countries hostile to the United States. His huge arsenal of nuclear and conventional weapons creates opportunities to arm rogue states. By fueling and encouraging regional conflicts, Russia can play the role of aggressor by proxy, dragging the United States into armed conflict while Russia officially stands aside.
Maybe these stimulating studies need one more point. Changing this present Russian mindset will be the most important challenge to the next president. The Clinton-Gore administration has tried to achieve this objective through accommodation with Russia's superpower ambitions. In this view, nothing should be done which could offend Russia's perceived sense of pride and nationalism. A blind eye has been turned to the negative aspects of Mr. Putin's foreign and domestic policies. The worse Mr. Putin's actions are, the more reason to "engage" Russia, according to the Democratic platform. Such willing and unconditional engagement can only mean appeasement.
The current dangerous mindset of the Russian political elite will be changed not by appeasement, but by effectively blocking any realistic prospects of rebuilding the Russian empire. In practical terms this means the further enlargement of NATO, to eliminate the present unprotected region lying between the borders of the alliance and Russia. Economic assistance to Russia through international institutions should be conditional upon Russian acceptance of a true partnership relationship with NATO and respect for human rights within its own borders. Such conditions, strictly enforced, could be used as leverage for positive change.
This is by no means an anti-Russia proposal. Any threat to Russia from the United States or NATO is pure political mythology. The true threat to Russia is the demographical disaster resulting from uncontrolled pollution, corruption and the dire poverty of its people. The Russian population shrank from 151 to 146 million in just the last 10 years. If present trends continue, it will drop to 135 million in the next quarter of this century and to 89 million at the end of it. In view of this catastrophic outlook, the spending of 5 to 6 percent of GNP on its armed forces and the costly research on new weapons seem totally irrational. A Western policy that would force Russia's ruling elite to accept the country's present borders as final and would redirect its resources to improving the daily life of the Russian people would surely best serve Russia's future, as well as the interests of the Western democracies.
Jan Nowak is a former consultant to the National Security Council on Central and East European Affairs. For 25 years, he was director of the Polish Service for Radio Free Europe
-------- bangladesh
Bangladeshi visitor
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison
News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-200010321245.htm
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed will travel to Washington later this month in the first official U.S. visit of a Bangladeshi government leader.
She will meet with President Clinton Oct. 17 on the second day of her three-day visit, the Bangladeshi government announced yesterday.
The official BBS news service said Sheik Hasina and Mr. Clinton will sign a number of agreements in the field of information technology, nuclear energy and the environment.
Government officials also said she will discuss the extradition of two convicted assassins of the country's founder, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, who was also Sheik Hasina's father. They are seeking political asylum in the United States.
Sheik Hasina's visit follows Mr. Clinton's trip to Dhaka in March, which was the first visit by an American presiden
-------- korea
U.S., North Korea Wind Up Talks
New York Times
October 03, 2000 Filed at 9:51 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-North-Korea.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- American and North Korean officials wrapped up several days of talks with both sides saying they had made progress on negotiations aimed at ending a stalemate over North Korea's development and export of missiles.
Details of the meetings would be announced later, possibly this week, Charles Kartman, special U.S. envoy for North Korea, told reporters late Monday after emerging from the U.S. mission to the United Nations, where the talks were held.
Kartman said final arrangements are being worked out for a visit to Washington next week by Cho Myong Nok, the first vice chairman of North Korea's National Defense Commission.
``We've made a lot of progress on a number of things,'' Kartman said of the discussions that began Wednesday. ``We're going to have this visit. We're done talking here in New York.''
President Clinton will meet with Cho, considered second in command to the North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, from Oct. 9-12. The visit was characterized by the State Department on Friday as ``an important step forward in promoting bilateral relations.''
The talks come amid slowly improving U.S.-North Korean relations following attempts at reconciliation between North and South Korea.
The previous round of missile talks ended in July with North Korea insisting its program was a sovereign exercise in self-defense, but also with indications from cash-strapped Pyongyang that it might curb the program in exchange for payments of about $1 billion a year.
North Korea is believed to be capable of targeting virtually all of Japan as well as other Asian countries with its missiles. A potential long-range missile threat has been cited by the Clinton administration as one reason for considering a U.S. missile defense program -- a decision the president has deferred to his successor.
-------- taiwan
Taiwanese President Names Premier
New York Times
October 03, 2000 Filed at 10:03 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Taiwan-Premier-Resigns.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian moved swiftly to replace his resigning premier Wednesday, picking a long-time member of his party to take over as the island's No. 3 ranking leader.
Chen picked Vice Premier Chang Chun-hsiung to replace Tang Fei, a presidential spokesman said during a news conference. Tang quit Tuesday night, saying his declining health prevented him from keeping the job.
The choice of Chang, a lawyer and former lawmaker with the president's Democratic Progressive Party, marks the president's abandonment of an effort to find a non-partisan premier who could bridge differences in the legislature. The Taiwanese premier is the third most powerful member of the government behind the president and vice president, and one of his main responsibilities is to push the administration's policies in the island's unruly, fiercely partisan legislature.
``The president urged opposition parties to join him to discuss national affairs and to give up their differences,'' presidential spokesman Chen Che-nan said.
Many political experts applauded Chen when he appointed Tang premier about four months ago. Tang, a longtime member of the former ruling Nationalist Party, was expected to help smooth relations with Nationalist lawmakers, who make up the majority in the legislature.
But Tang was unable to win over the Nationalists, still vengeful after the party's defeat in the March presidential election. Before the vote, the party had controlled Taiwan's presidency for more than five decades.
Chang could also have problems pleasing lawmakers.
After the appointment was announced, Nationalist lawmaker Ting Shou-chung said he would not accept the DPP premier. The Nationalists and the People's First Party have the majority in the legislature and won't tolerate the president ``pushing his own way,'' Ting said.
Shortly after accepting the premiership, Tang underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor from between his lungs. He struggled to recover from the operation and has complained of dizzy spells.
Tang also disagreed with the president about whether Taiwan should finish constructing its fourth nuclear plant. The president's party has long opposed the project, but Tang favored completing it. Many believe the dispute was a key reason for Tang's departure.
Smiling and looking relaxed Wednesday morning, Tang declined to discuss his resignation in detail. He told reporters that he had no regrets about his decision to serve as premier.
Tang said he had served in the government for 49 years. ``I'm finished fighting my war,'' he said, prompting laughter from reporters.
As Chen's government struggled to convince the public that it has a solid economic policy, Taiwan's stock market steadily declined, losing about 40 percent of its value since April.
Vice Finance Minister Yen Ching-chang said he talked with Chang late Tuesday about the workings of Taiwan's financial markets. Yen said Chang's concern over the financial markets should give investors confidence in the new premier.
---
Taiwan's Premier Quits Amid Nuclear Power Row
New York Times
October 03, 2000 Filed at 9:37 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-taiwan-.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (Reuters) - Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian Wednesday appointed Vice Premier Chang Chun-hsiung the island's premier to replace Tang Fei who resigned citing deteriorating health, the president's chief of staff said.
Chang, 62, is a veteran of the ruling, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). It was unclear how arch-rival China would react to the news.
``The cabinet will undergo a minor reshuffle immediately and they will assume office in the shortest time possible to maintain political stability,'' the president's chief of staff told reporters.
The new cabinet would focus on finance and economics, the chief of staff said.
The resignation of Tang, a stalwart of the main opposition Nationalist Party, came after a row over whether to scrap the island's fourth nuclear power plant.
---
Taiwan premier resigns
USA Today
10/03/00- Updated 05:20 PM E
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#pale
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Premier Tang Fei resigned Tuesday, ending weeks of speculation that he would step down because of health problems and a disagreement with the president over a nuclear plant. Tang, who took the job five months ago, announced his resignation after a brief meeting with President Chen Shui-bian. Tang said the move was prompted by health problems. In April, he underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor from between his lungs.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Former Official Denies Racial Bias
Associated Press
October 03, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scientist-Congress.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Energy Department's former intelligence chief denied Tuesday that racial considerations led him to target Wen Ho Lee in a probe of alleged Chinese spying at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory.
Notra Trulock told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that two former co-workers are lying when they accuse him of racial bias.
``I stopped efforts by (Energy Department) managers ... to compile a database on the ethnicity of American citizens with access to classified nuclear information,'' Trulock said.
Former Los Alamos counterintelligence chief Robert Vrooman stood by his claim that Trulock and other officials investigated the Taiwan-born Lee because he is ethnic Chinese. Trulock's predecessor, Charles Washington, also has accused Trulock of racial bias.
``Every time Lee's motive was discussed it came down to his ethnicity,'' Vrooman said. ``There was never any other motive discussed.''
Tuesday's hearing was the latest of several held after Lee pleaded guilty last month to one count of mishandling nuclear secrets and was released from jail.
Lee, 60, had been fired from his Los Alamos job and then indicted on 59 federal felonies for transferring nuclear weapons information to portable computer tapes. Although the charges stemmed from the investigation into possible Chinese espionage, Lee was not charged with spying and has denied he ever planned to give secrets to any other country.
The judge in the case apologized to Lee for ordering him jailed for nine months, saying federal officials misled him about key details, including how damaging Lee's data would be to national security.
Two Los Alamos experts clashed on that issue at Tuesday's hearing. Retired Los Alamos scientist John Richter said the computer files had details of several sophisticated nuclear weapons but not essential information about the manufacturing techniques needed to make them.
Countries like India and Pakistan, which have tested nuclear weapons but do not have the most sophisticated nuclear technology, would have no use for Lee's data, Richter said. He compared the data to a partial recipe.
``They don't have the ingredients. They don't even have the kitchen,'' Richter said. ``It isn't going to help them much.''
But Stephen Younger, the associate Los Alamos director in charge of nuclear weapons research, repeated his view that Lee had taken the ``crown jewels'' of American nuclear weapons design.
``Although the information itself does not convey all of the technology necessary to build deliverable weapons, it could advance the design effort enormously,'' Younger said. ``In the wrong hands, the information downloaded by Dr. Lee could enable a proliferant nation to design relatively crude but nevertheless effective nuclear weapons without nuclear testing.''
Trulock, meanwhile,said neither Vrooman nor anyone else raised racial profiling concerns during the probe. Vrooman said he once left a telephone message for Trulock seeking to discuss his concerns, but Trulock never called back and Vrooman's supervisor asked Vrooman to drop the issue.
Trulock has sued Lee, Vrooman, Washington and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, saying their discussions of alleged racial profiling defamed him.
Vrooman said the FBI agents investigating Lee shared his doubts about the case.
``I met with the FBI agents weekly, and we always discussed our reservations about this case,'' Vrooman said. ``By December 1998 ... we absolutely thought that Lee was not the right man.''
Trulock said he had given the FBI a list of 12 possible suspects, including Lee and his wife, Sylvia, a former Los Alamos employee. Trulock has said that four others on that suspect list were Asian-American, while six were white.
Trulock said the 12 suspects included some who worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, although Vrooman said after the hearing that all 12 were from Los Alamos.
Trulock said Vrooman was the first official to mention Lee as a possible suspect. Vrooman said he brought up Lee's name because Lee had been investigated in the 1980s for making a phone call to another scientist under a security investigation.
On the Net:
Energy Department: http://www.energy.gov/
Senate Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.senate.gov/
---
Clinton raises money for Lee prosecutor
USA Today
10/03/00
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue03.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton has said he was ''quite troubled'' by Wen Ho Lee's nine-month stay in solitary confinement as the government built a case against him. But that won't stop Clinton from raising campaign money for the former top prosecutor in the case - a college chum running for Congress.
As U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, John Kelly had sought the solitary confinement and other restrictions for Lee after he was indicted on 59 federal felony counts last December. Lee went free last month after pleading guilty to one felony.
As a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House, Kelly is traveling to Washington Wednesday for a $500 per-person campaign fund-raiser headlined by Clinton.
''The president is very committed to helping him win the race and helping the Democrats win back the House,'' White House spokesman Elliot Diringer said Tuesday. Diringer said Clinton's request for a report on the federal government's treatment of Lee was a separate issue.
Kelly said Clinton didn't bring up the Lee case when the two campaigned together in New Mexico last week.
''I know he has a great deal of respect for the work I've done at the Justice Department,'' Kelly said.
Lee was fired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory last year and later indicted on the counts of mishandling nuclear secrets. Lee was freed after reaching a plea bargain with the Justice prosecutors. The judge who released him, U.S. District Judge James Parker, apologized to Lee for his nine-month detention in solitary confinement.
Clinton said then that Lee's treatment in jail ''just can't be justified'' and that he was ''quite troubled by it.''
Attorney General Janet Reno, Kelly and other officials have defended their actions, saying the nuclear secrets Lee downloaded were a national security threat.
-------- new york
Brookhaven Lab to Get $170 Million From U.S.
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By TINA KELLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/nyregion/03BROO.html
GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Oct. 2 - Brookhaven National Laboratory is slated to receive $170 million in federal money, including $5 million for an accelerated cleanup of environmental hazards, under a bill approved by the Senate today. The money is expected to allow the lab to take on additional projects.
The federal laboratory, in Upton, is to receive $100 million for projects using its relativistic heavy-ion collider, which smashes together the nuclei of very heavy atoms at nearly the speed of light. An additional $35 million would support the spallation neutron source, which generates neutrons without using nuclear reactors. The national synchrotron light source, a powerful X-ray used to examine molecules, is to receive $3 million and an additional 12 employees. The remaining money would go toward other projects.
The lab has come under fire in recent years for contaminating soil and ground water on the 5,300-acre property, which has been a federal Superfund site since 1989. In 1996, lab officials announced that radioactive tritium had been leaking from the lab's high-flux beam reactor into the ground water. The government later dismissed the contractor that had run the lab for 50 years.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, the Brooklyn Democrat, sponsored the bill in the Senate. "I see bringing Brookhaven back as one of my high priorities," Mr. Schumer said in a phone interview, "not only for Long Island but for all of New York, and I think this year's budget really begins us on that track.
"As Long Island's economy moves into a high-tech mode, there's an understanding of the huge ancillary benefit that scientific research brings. Look, there are still some people who are opposed to one thing or another, but overall the tone between town and gown, if you will, is much, much improved."
But one group opposed to nuclear research has raised concerns about the new money for the cleanup. Scott Cullen, a lawyer for the Standing for Truth About Radiation Foundation, based in East Hampton, said he was worried about how the money would be allocated.
The group is also concerned about the company handling the cleanup, the Bechtel Corporation. "At other places where they did it quicker, they also did it dirtier," Mr. Cullen said.
The director of the lab, John Marburger, said Bechtel was responsible for managing the cleanup and would subcontract some of the work. "It is not the case that this money will simply go to Bechtel," he said. "This money actually will pay for cleanup activities that will accelerate the cleanup. We are not giving up our responsibility or our control with this arrangement."
The House passed the bill on Friday, and President Clinton is expected to sign it.
---
Damage Caused by Lee Clarified at Hearing
Washington Post
Tuesday, October 3, 2000
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1793-2000Oct3?language=printer
A leading nuclear scientist said today he "erred" at the bail hearing for former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Wen Ho Lee when he gave the impression that 99 percent of the material Lee downloaded was unclassified.
John L. Richter told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee this morning that he considered only one of the three different computer categories that Lee downloaded to portable tapes to be 99 percent unclassified. The other two categories he said were classified and "should not be" made available to other nations.
The unclassified category, referred to as computer codes, is made up of scientific principles; the second category, called material processes, deals with the characteristics of elements such as plutonium and uranium; and the third category, called input decks, contains the designs of actual U.S. nuclear weapons.
When asked by Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) why the impression emerged from bail hearings that he believed all three categories were unclassified, Richter responded: "There it [the three categories] was all handled together."
Asked directly whether he testified that at least 99 percent of the nuclear secrets that Lee downloaded to tapes was unclassified, Richter stated: "It's an accurate statement regarding the codes." But, he added with regard to the other two computer areas: "If I did say it - mean - say it that way, then I didn't mean it, and I . . . erred . . . I was not referring to the data files or the input decks."
Richter said he agreed with Los Alamos Deputy Director Stephen Younger, who also appeared on the panel, that information in the downloaded materials relating to plutonium and uranium is not found in open literature.
Richter maintained, however, that more than just the downloaded tapes were needed to make sophisticated nuclear warheads such as the United States now maintains. It requires, "a four-foot shelf of drawings, specifications, material processes and so forth . . . and that's not on the tapes."
-------- us nuc politics
Clinton: Golf Is Like Life
Associated Press
October 03, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Clinton-Golf.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bill Clinton says his reputation for awarding himself free shots on the golf course -- golfers call them ``mulligans'' -- is greatly exaggerated. He doesn't do it all that much, and even when he does, he says, he doesn't get a lot of benefit from it.
``My mulligans are way overrated,'' the president said in an interview with Golf Digest, in which he explained his mulligan philosophy and said he loves the game because it brings him closer ``to being a normal person.''
Taking mulligans ``screws your game up,'' Clinton told interviewer Thomas Friedman, a foreign policy analyst for The New York Times and a contributing editor to the golfing magazine. The New York Times Company owns Golf Digest.
``You'd be surprised at how many times you don't get a bit of good out of it,'' Clinton said.
``I normally don't (take them),'' he said. ``I let everyone have one off the first tee, and then normally what I do when I'm playing with people is, I just play around and if somebody makes a terrible shot I say, 'Well, take that one,' and then I give everybody else one.''
Clinton said golf takes his mind off work. ``I like it for the same reason a lot of other busy people don't: I like it because it takes so much time,'' he said.
``You can't do well if you're thinking about anything else. ... This is the nearest I ever am to being a normal person.''
Of course, when you're the most powerful man in the world, it's impossible to really get away for a private round.
On a typical outing, Clinton is accompanied by more than a half-dozen golf carts carrying Secret Service agents, a police sniper, a photographer, a man carrying U.S. nuclear codes, various aides and someone with a secure telephone so the president can speak to world leaders between putts.
The president said Americans don't begrudge his time spent on the golf course because they know he works hard at his job. He was in Florida Tuesday, raising money for Democrats, and planned to sneak in a golf game Wednesday, weather permitting.
Clinton offered the theory that he may be the only president whose golf game has improved while he was in office. His nearly eight years in the White House may have grayed his hair, but they have also improved his backswing.
``It's only because I've gotten to play with all these pros and other good golfers, and they give me all this good advice,'' the president said.
He may have overlooked some other White House golfers whose game improved in office. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a latecomer to the game but became a golfing zealot. George Bush also got plenty of professional golfing advice during his White House years.
In the interview, conducted in August during a round of golf at the Army Navy Country Club in Fairfax, Va., Clinton said he gets to play with some regularity -- five times a month during the summer and about three times a month the rest of the year. He also has a practice tee at the White House, where he works on his short game.
Clinton, who took up the game as a boy and first played an old course in Hot Springs, Ark., said he's about a 12 handicap and has shot 15 or so rounds in the 70s, but is ``liable to have a bad round now and then.''
Clinton also had these things to say about golf:
--His ``dream foursome'' would include ``Lincoln and the two Roosevelts.''
--Golf is not an interest shared by other members of his family. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton may play once a year to ``humor'' him and daughter Chelsea took a few lessons but never got interested.
--As for Al Gore: ``You know, he tried to learn, and started playing a little bit because of his son,'' is all Clinton had to say.
Like all good competitions, Clinton said, golf is much more than just a simple game.
``Golf is like life in a lot of ways: The most important competition is the one against yourself. All the biggest wounds are self-inflicted. And you get a lot of breaks you don't deserve, both ways. So it's important not to get too upset when you're having a bad day.''
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush & Gore Campaigns Agree to Address Nuclear Policy
US Newswire
3 Oct 8:00
To: Assignment Desk, Political Reporter
Contact: Megan Colligan, 917-626-6502 or 212-584-5000
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1003-102.html
News Advisory:
-- Bush Representative Richard Perle and Gore Representative Graham Allison Join Robert McNamara, Richard Butler and Other Prominent National Policy Experts in Boston for Pre-Debate Briefing On Urgent Nuclear Issues
WHAT: Bush & Gore At the Nuclear Crossroads: The Next Presidency, Nuclear Policy & National Survival, a pre-debate "deep briefing" for journalists covering the presidential debate in Boston.
Leading experts and representatives from the Bush & Gore campaigns will provide top-level analysis and reviews of candidates' positions on such pressing nuclear issues as arms control agreements, proliferation, nuclear instability in South Asia, U.S. relations with China and Russia, missile defense, mini-nukes and the activities of the national weapons labs.
WHEN:
Tuesday, October 3 -- Noon to 3:30 p.m, (Lunch served) Shuttle bus to presidential debate site provided to credentialed journalists covering the debate (one-way only)
WHERE:
Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Stanbro Room, Mezzanine Level 64 Arlington Street (between St. James and Colombus Avenue)
WHO:
-- Samina Ahmed, Harvard University
-- Graham Allison, Gore Campaign 2000
-- Jonathan Alter, Sr. Editor, Newsweek
-- Alan Berger, The Boston Globe
-- Amb. Richard Butler, Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector, Iraq
-- Betty Bumpers, Peace Links
-- Alan Cranston, Former California Senator
-- Jonathan Granoff, Chair, American Bar Association, Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament
-- Lisbeth Gronlund, Union of Concerned Scientists/Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
-- Bill Joy, Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Sun Microsystems
-- David Koplow, Former Deputy General Counsel for International Affairs, Department of Defense
-- Robert McNamara, Former Secretary of Defense
-- Jack Mendelsohn, Lawyers Alliance for World Security
-- Janne Nolan, The Century Foundation
-- Chris Paine, Natural Resources Defense Council
-- Richard Perle, Bush Campaign 2000
-- Ted Postol, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-- Jonathan Schell, Journalist
-- Admiral Stansfield Turner, Former Director, Central Intelligence
-- Susan Shaer, Women's Action for New Directions
Media planning to cover this event can RSVP to Megan Colligan at 917-626-6502. Lunch will be served at the briefing.
---
Buckley ANG becomes Buckley Air Force Base
Global Network
3 October 2000
by Loring Wirbel
http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/actions/buckley.htm
Some 20 protesters gathered at the Buckley Field north gate at noon October 2, to protest at the official ceremony changing the name of Buckley Air National Guard Field to Buckley Air Force Base. The Space Command, primary manager of the base following its change, apparently felt that the rumored "Buckley Total Force Base" name was a little too over the top for public consumption.
The media stayed safely ensconced within the confines of the base during the protest, with the Denver Post in particular using a throwaway line that basically made fun of the protesters' concerns. The media fully buy into the Space Command line that the purpose of Buckley's Aerospace Data Facility is to "watch for missile launches." (It's important to point out, however, that the Rocky Mountain News did a fairly sympathetic pre-demo article on Sunday, though they had no one at the protest.) Eileen Welsome, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of "The Plutonium Files," who now works for the alternative Denver weekly Westword, was at the demo to gather some initial info on Buckley, though her main purpose was to interview Bill Sulzman and Carl Kabat for an article on the Minuteman Missile silo Plowshares action in August. She is interested in doing more on Buckley, however, which is more interest than we've seen expressed from anyone at Westword in the past.
The basic scoop with Buckley, located east of Denver in Aurora, Colo., is that it is the largest consolidated intelligence base in the western hemisphere for joint use of the National Reconnaissance Office and National Security Agency. It has 13 radomes, six at the main site, and dual clusters of four and three radomes to the east of the main field. The six radomes in the main field are apparently interspersed between those that support downloading of two generations of infrared satellite watching for missile launches -- the older Defense Support Program and the new Star-Wars-related Space-Based Infrared System-High (SBIRS-High) -- and a group of unacknowledged radomes that download information from the Jumpseat and Mercury classes of signals intelligence satellite. One of the cluster of radomes to the east is probably a download station called "Ranger", used in the Navy's follow-on to the White Cloud intelligence program - at least according to researcher Duncan Campbell, who visited Buckley in July.
Campbell says that it is becoming common for the U.S. to intersperse radomes for Star Wars purposes and intelligence purposes, as it is doing at Pine Gap in Australia and Menwith Hill in England. This way, local parliamentarians in England and Australia can be kept away from these bases so that they can't observe Star Wars upgrades. The U.S. does not allow local government officials to tour these bases, because, according to a classified State Department document from 1996, the government does not want to admit to its allies that it conducts signals intelligence from space (pretty lame, eh?). It's probably good for activists that they are doing such interspersing of radomes, as it helps unite peace-in-space activists and civil liberties activists.
Incidentally, Bill S. and I figured there were probably at least 10,000 people doing intelligence-related work around Buckley, because the ADF portion of the base employs at least 4000, and new Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, and TRW facilities to the west of the base appear to employ well over 5000. But the Denver Post said this morning that as many as 65,000 people have jobs that are Buckley-related (!!! - does this number include retail businesses serving Buckley?), a number that amounts to one-fourth of the citizens of Aurora.
We're getting psyched for a Saturday demo at Peterson AFB, home of the Space Command, where we anticipate a good turnout.
Loring Wirbel CPIS/PPJPC
lwirbel@aol.com
Opponents of space warfare to march at Buckley ceremony 1 October 2000 By Deborah Frazier, Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
The march for peace isn't over for Bob Kinsey.
The United Church of Christ minister will be at Buckley Air National Guard Base on Monday for the official renaming ceremony. As Buckley Air Force Base, the Space Command facility will monitor satellite-based military systems.
"I'll be there to call attention to space warfare," said Kinsey, who sent out 30 e-mails Saturday to rouse others. "The space command is involved in targeting weapons and using satellite coordinates to target missiles."
That, for Kinsey and members of the Colorado Springs-based Citizens for Peace in Space, is contrary to the 1969 Peaceful Uses of Space Treaty, signed by the United States, that outlaws nonpeaceful endeavors in space.
At Buckley are 12 giant white golf ball-shaped domes each sheltering a 65-ton antenna and a 70-foot-diameter dish. During Desert Storm, the system detected Iran's SCUD missiles and dispatched the data to Patriot missile crews.
That all sounds like war to Kinsey, an honorably discharged U.S. Marine who has been a peace activist since the 1960s.
"On one hand, we walk around saying we accept everyone in the world as friends. On the other hand, we want to dominate them," said Kinsey.
"We used these satellites to carry out our missions against Kosovo," said Kinsey. "It's like our defense for using the military against the Indians in the West.
"We said the Indians were savages and deserved it, just like today people say we have to have foreign oil to keep the economy going," said Kinsey.
While Buckley has offered tours to the Aurora Chamber of Commerce and other select groups, the viewings didn't include Aerospace Data Facility, which analyzes information from satellites.
Bill Sulzman of Citizens for Peace in Space, who has been banned at the facility for protests, said he doesn't expect a lot of protesters at Buckley on Monday because it's midday on a workday.
"Colorado is evermore involved in warfare," he said, adding that Raytheon, the nation's third-largest defense contractor, is located across the street from Buckley and is expanding.
"Satellites are important in warfare," said Sulzman. "They are the eyes and the ears. What goes on at Buckley is the cutting edge of war."
---
Letters: Nuclear Testing Debate
New York Times
October 03, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/science/03LETT.html
To the Editor:
The article "A Great Hope of Physics Falls on Hard Times" (Sept. 26) quotes a Lawrence Livermore Laboratory associate director as saying that its multibillion- dollar laser facility is needed to maintain our nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing. This might leave the dangerous impression that the failure of this laser project would require restarting underground testing.
In fact, many weapons experts say the nuclear stockpile can be maintained and evaluated using penetrating radiographic hydrotests, without this facility.
We should also be concerned about the risk-taking, optimistic advocacy of the giant Livermore project. It raises doubts that this lab can be entrusted with the maintenance of the existing nuclear stockpile.
STEPHEN E. BODNER Pittsboro, N.C. •
To the Editor:
I disagree with the contention that a new giant laser at the National Ignition Facility will allow the nation to maintain its nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing (Sept. 26).
The opposite side is that if N.I.F. fails, we will not be able to maintain the stockpile without nuclear testing. I believe neither is true.
Sound arguments can be made that N.I.F. is not required to maintain the stockpile. The best that can be said for the program, besides the economic benefit to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, is that the physics of inertially confined fusion is related to weapons physics.
GERALD E. MARSH Chicago
The writer is a consultant on nuclear technology.
Science Education Needed
To the Editor:
The recent article on Bendectin ("Controversial Drug Makes a Comeback," Sept. 26) touches on the larger issue of scientific evidence in the public eye.
Some medical products never proven to be toxic, like Bendectin and silicone breast implants, have involved billions in settlements. We trust our peers to respond on the basis of scientific evidence, and yet huge suits against Bendectin were won without any scientific proof before being overturned on appeal.
The American public doesn't need more public advocates to take our cases to court. We need a better scientific education to understand the implications of drug research and an ability to make health decisions outside the influence of junk science and "conventional wisdom."
RENEE GINDI Berkeley, Calif.
Helping Pandas Survive
To the Editor:
Assisted breeding programs, like the one for giant pandas run by our conservation partner, the San Diego Zoo, address only a small piece of the survival puzzle and should not be confused with the ultimate goal of conserving wild pandas ("With a Little Help From Friends, Pandas Hang On," Sept. 19).
Protecting pandas in their natural habitat is indisputably the highest priority in conserving this critically endangered species.
When protected from poachers and habitat destruction through effective field-based conservation programs, giant pandas have an excellent chance of holding their own in their natural environment.
GINETTE HEMLEY Washington
The writer is vice president for species conservation at the World Wildlife Fund.
To the Editor:
Since 1980, there has been intensive research on wild pandas in China, showing that they are breeding there and that populations appear to be recovering. A major community development project is in progress in areas around some panda reserves, with ecotourism expected to provide an economic incentive to protect the species. There is training for staff and for local people involved in monitoring certain forest areas, and China has also instituted a logging ban, an important measure for pandas and people living near them.
The panda surely deserves extraordinary efforts, but spending large sums of money to perfect captive breeding will neither save the species nor address the root causes of extinction: habitat loss and fragmentation and the illegal killing of wildlife.
JOSHUA R. GINSBERG New York
The writer is the director for Asia at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Delaying the Inevitable End
To the Editor:
The denial of death is alive and well as evidenced by "Searching for Genes to Slow the Hands of Biological Time" (Sept. 26) on extending human life. Has anyone even questioned the underlying assumption that this would be a good thing? Ultimately, of course, these endeavors will fail, even if they succeed. Sure, we may live longer (as we do now compared with 100 years ago). But we'll never reach what we're trying to in our technological Tower of Babel. And with that will come even more apathy and disappointment, and more compensatory risk-taking. The final irony will come when we all die from suffocating overpopulation.
DR. CHRISTOPHER BAILEY Newberry, Fla.
---
Senate Backs Crackdown On Leaks of Classified Data
Washington Post
Tuesday, October 3, 2000 ; Page A07
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Compiled from reports by Reuters and the Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63927-2000Oct2.html
The Senate voted to crack down on leaks and security breaches by government agencies and boost allocations for the National Security Agency. The bill authorizing funds for intelligence programs--the amount was not disclosed--would make it a felony for government officials to release any classified information, not just data involving nuclear weapons or defense secrets.
The bill, approved by voice vote, also would require the State Department to certify that its employees comply with regulations for handling classified information.
---
Senate Passes Water Bill;
Clinton Vows Veto
Washington Post
Tuesday, October 3, 2000
By Eric Pianin and Dan Morgan Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63780-2000Oct2.html
The Senate gave final approval yesterday to a $23.3 billion package of energy and water projects, but the vote fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a threatened veto and was certain to further complicate efforts in Congress to complete work for the year.
The bill was stuffed with election-year projects to satisfy both parties and the White House. But President Clinton said yesterday he will veto it over a Missouri River water management provision that the administration and environmentalists say would favor barge traffic over the preservation of endangered wildlife.
At issue is a measure forbidding the administration to go ahead with a plan to provide a more natural flow of water in the upper Missouri River in spring to protect wildlife. The administration plan is strongly backed by Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) but opposed by downstream members representing farmers and barge interests who argue it could result in flooding.
Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) renewed his warning that Vice President Gore's presidential campaign could suffer a backlash in Missouri, a battleground state.
"If the Gore campaign believes it's in their interest for Clinton to veto this bill, I guarantee this will have [adverse] ramifications--and I'm going to ramificate," said Bond, a senior Appropriations Committee member.
Bond has been joined by the entire Missouri congressional delegation, including House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D), in urging the president to support the language in the bill. Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, a Democrat who is challenging Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R), also has backed Bond in the dispute.
While Clinton in previous years has signed bills delaying the river management plan, he said yesterday in a statement that this measure would "jeopardize the survival of three threatened and endangered species" and establish "a dangerous precedent" regarding environmental law. While many Democrats and administration officials play down the issue's significance in the fall elections, House Deputy Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asserted that a veto would ensure "a huge political gain for the Republicans in Missouri."
Yesterday's 57 to 37 vote was the latest example of the one-step-forward, two-steps-back approach to the year-end negotiations between Republicans and the White House. Three days into the new fiscal year, Congress and the administration have yet to agree on 11 of the 13 annual spending bills.
So far, the president has signed only the defense and military construction spending bills for fiscal 2001, but Congress has yet to send him a single bill funding any domestic department or agency. Government agencies are operating under a short-term continuing resolution set to expire midnight Friday. The House could take up as early as today a second bill that would keep the government afloat through Oct. 14.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said that "should be enough," but he gave no guarantees that Congress would wrap up its work by that date.
The House today is scheduled to take up the $18.8 billion House-Senate compromise version of the Interior Department spending bill, including a $12 billion, six-year land conservation initiative.
Although the measure has strong support from the White House and the bipartisan leadership in both houses, a grass-roots revolt flared yesterday in the House. Some members said they want to keep pushing for the 15-year, $45 billion Conservation and Reinvestment Act, passed overwhelmingly by the House in May.
Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) charged that the initiative in the Interior Department bill omitted key protections for property owners in the broader bill while giving the government "incredible new power to purchase" private land. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) called the initiative "a hollow proposal" that was "inappropriate."
Chances for passage of the Conservation and Reinvestment Act in this session faded when Lott said there was "no way" he would put it before the Senate.
Some House conservatives are angry that the Interior bill contains $107 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, its first increase since 1995.
The energy and water bill approved by the Senate yesterday and by the House last week came together after a raft of harbor dredging and flood control projects were added in a last-minute flurry of back-room bargaining. One House negotiator, Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), came away with $2 million for repairs to Lock and Dam 10 on the Kentucky River after pleading for double that at the outset of House-Senate deliberations.
The bill also added $1.5 billion for maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal and cleaning up military nuclear sites, and increased funding for renewable energy such as solar, wind and geothermal sources by $60 million.
However, it includes no new funding for the CALFED Bay-Delta project, a high administration priority that involves restoration of wetlands near the San Francisco Bay. Clinton said the bill also provides insufficient funds for Everglades restoration. All told, the final bill includes $1.9 billion more than the initial House bill, $935 million more than the Senate version and $920 million more than Clinton requested.
Six Democrats joined with 51 Republicans to pass the bill in the Senate, while one Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), voted against it. McCain, a prominent congressional "porkbuster," complained that the bill contains $1.2 billion of special projects earmarked for members and their districts.
"If [Olympic] gold medals were awarded for pork-barrel spending, the budget negotiators would be gleaming in gold from their award-winning spending spree," McCain said.
-------- MILITARY (by country)
-------- germany
Ten years of German reunification
Washington Times
EDITORIAL • October 3, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-200010320239.htm
On the 10th anniversary of the reunification of Germany, the generation that stood on the Brandenburg Gate cheering for the wall to fall is restless. Less than half of eastern Germans polled say they are happy with democracy. Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl - the father of the reconciliation - was not invited to speak at the celebration due to his involvement in a campaign-finance scandal, and politicians are bickering about who should take credit for the country's oft-forgotten successes.
Lest Germans drape their celebration halls in black today, perhaps they should remember what the last decade has brought them. Despite the challenges to employment and the budget cuts that were necessary after the unification, Germany is the second leading importer and exporter of merchandise trade in the world. And for all the complaints about the economy, Germany's gross national product remains above that of the United States, at $28,870 per capita. The German government has also made a smooth transition to its new offices in Berlin, where the capital city boasts of cutting-edge technology and architecture, and a seamless main street between the former east and west sides of the city.
With the end of the Cold War, time formerly spent in protecting national security leaves German activists to wring their hands over the state of the environment or whether to pay the minimal student fees to be applied to university students. And rather than eliminate the need for the United States as security partner, the new, integrated Europe has strengthened the partnership of Germany and the United States in last year's NATO mission to the Balkans. An expanding European Union and the adoption of the euro are further signs that the reunification is forging long-term economic security and democracy in Europe.
Those who waved their pickaxes against the Iron Curtain one decade ago need not wave them now against their own politicians. The country they have rebuilt gives reason to celebrate indeed.
-------- russia
Voice of the Kremlin?
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
Paul J. Saunders
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-2000103203023.htm
New developments in Russia add to the mounting evidence that the Kremlin is seeking considerably greater influence over Russia's mass media. But viewing these battles solely as a defense of the country's free press ignores Russian realities and obscures other developments that may be more troubling.
Recent visits to the United States by the Russian oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky have been clearly aimed at rallying American support for attempts by the two men to fend off government pressure on their media empires. Mr. Berezovsky is trying to maintain some influence at Russia's ORT public television, in which he owns a 49 percent stake, while Mr. Gusinsky hopes to find a way to keep control of his firm Media-MOST - currently in default on substantial loans from the gas monopoly Gazprom. As a part of this effort, each of the two has strongly criticized Russia's direction under President Vladimir Putin and stressed his own commitment to democracy, free markets and free expression.
In both cases, there is less here than meets the eye. In fact, the commitment of Mr. Berezovsky and Mr. Gusinsky to a free press seems inversely proportional to their closeness to the Kremlin. Both men were more than willing to allow their television stations and newspapers to become state propaganda organs to get their patron Boris Yeltsin re-elected; they became uncomfortable with this role only when it became clear that they would have considerably less access to, and influence over, Mr. Yeltsin's successor. Similarly, neither has hesitated to use the media under his control to advance personal political and business objectives.
Mr. Berezovsky's increasingly zealous "defense" of Russian democracy - conducted through his dramatic resignation from parliament, various open letters and attempts to find allies in the United States - seems to be largely a reprise of Mr. Gusinsky's highly successful exploitation of the opposition of his television station, NTV, to the Putin government and carefully cultivated Western contacts to blunt the Kremlin's strong pressure on him earlier this year. Mr. Berezovsky's case is harder to make, however; Mr. Gusinsky at least had the foresight to position himself as a "democrat" much earlier and has played at politics in Washington, where he has hired top-flight law and public relations firms, as well as in Moscow. Mr. Berezovksy's more recent "conversion" is much more obviously opportunistic.
Moreover, other developments may be more significant for Russian media freedom than the government's assaults on Mr. Gusinsky and Mr. Berezovsky. Russia's new "information doctrine" - which describes some media activity as a threat to Russian security and provides a basis for greater state control - is particularly troubling. It demonstrates a clear failure to understand the importance of the media as a check on government power and a fundamental mistrust of the ability of Russian citizens to decide for themselves which media outlets are reliable and which are not.
Press Minister Mikhail Lesin's admission that the government has classified a portion of his ministry's budget as "secret" is also of concern. Though Mr. Lesin claimed that the funds are to be used for "special propaganda measures" related to Russia's ongoing brutal intervention in Chechnya, many Russians have expressed concern that the government may have plans for secret subsidies to particular newspapers or other media.
On a related matter, the government's spending on the media is listed in next year's budget as a single line item rather than a group of individual accounts. Needless to say, this would also serve to conceal state support for favored media organizations.
While the Kremlin's pressure on Mr. Berezovsky and Mr. Gusinsky is multi-dimensional and is not solely related to their media holdings - after all, both have amassed great personal wealth under questionable circumstances - the information doctrine and new measures by the press ministry are less ambiguous in their impact. Each of these moves markedly alters the environment in which the Russian media operate.
They also change the relationship between the Russian media and its audience. Television and newspapers today are often heavily slanted toward particular political interests, but viewers and readers know who is paying for what. They also know which media the state controls and which it does not. Obscuring state support for media outlets not only weakens the free press, but also undermines the confidence of an already cynical public in the information they receive. Neither of these developments will contribute to Russian democracy.
The United States can and should express concern over declining press freedoms in Russia. But our support must be reserved for processes and institutions rather than individuals - particularly Russia's tycoons. Too much is at stake in Russia for America to become involved in Moscow's political intrigues.
Paul J. Saunders is director of The Nixon Center
-------- u.n.
Europeans Reject U.S. Bid to Lower U.N. Dues
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/world/03NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 2 - The European Union today rebuffed an American request to have Washington's dues to the United Nations lowered, as a crucial review of how much each country should contribute to the organization's budget began.
The European message, delivered by Ambassador Jean-David Levitte of France, which now holds the union's rotating presidency, echoes voices of opposition from Japan, other Asian countries and a number of developing nations that reject a reduction in dues for the United States, the country with the world's largest and arguably strongest economy.
The United States, still the United Nations' largest debtor, has been arguing that a restructuring of assessments is overdue, and Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, the American envoy who is under an ultimatum from Congress to cut American contributions, has been casting a revision of the payment scale as a broader reform measure here.
"The roots of this issue run deep," he said, "and they don't relate solely to the United States failure to pay all of its dues on time."
Many other nations agree that the scale needs reworking, but only to reflect real changes in the world economy. Budget assessments are based on a nation's share of the world gross national product and on currency movements.
By that standard, some countries in financial trouble should pay less and a number of newly affluent countries should pay more, but the United States - with about 27 percent to 29 percent of the total world gross national product and an assessment rate of 25 percent - would not qualify for a reduction. Europe's collective share of the world G.N.P. is also about 29 percent.
"The European Union nonetheless contributes 36.6 percent of the regular budget," Mr. Levitte said today. "That is a distortion, and means in stark terms that each of the Union's member states pays considerably more than its national wealth."
In addition to the bill for 25 percent of the United Nations regular annual $1 billion budget, the United States is charged for 30 percent of the separate, fluctuating peacekeeping budget, which in the coming year is likely to total more than $2.5 billion. Congress has already lowered peacekeeping payments to 25 percent - a move seen here as a violation of treaty obligations - and is now demanding that the regular budget share be reduced to 22 percent.
Americans have couched this as a request for a general lowering of the ceiling on any regular budget contribution. The Europeans rejected that today in their opening position in a debate that is likely to go on into December. The review of assessments for both budgets is conducted every three years.
"We consider that the ceiling of 25 percent is already a great privilege because the United States represents 29 percent of the world G.N.P.," Mr. Levitte said in an interview after his speech. "Already the U.S. is paying 4 percent less than its share in world GNP."
"Our growth in the E.U. has been, unfortunately, less impressive than the growth in the United States, and the euro is going down while the dollar is going up," he said. "The E.U. contribution should go down and the U.S. contribution should go up. What we cannot accept is the ceiling going down from 25 percent to 22. It is too unfair. The principle for everybody is the capacity to pay."
Japan is also opposed to a lowering of American dues when the Japanese, with just below 15 percent of world G.N.P. is assessed 20.6 percent of the regular United Nations budget.
---
U.S. carries too big a financial burden, Holbrooke says
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
By Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000103214544.htm
NEW YORK - U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke yesterday told skeptical diplomats that they must reduce the United Nations' "over-dependence" on a single nation to pay its bills.
By reducing the maximum amount of money a government pays to the U.N. regular and peacekeeping budgets, the U.S. share of expenses will go down as well. Pressure from Congress has made the assessment issue a key U.S. goal at the United Nations this year.
"As it moves into the 21st century, the U.N. must leave behind the unhealthy practice of placing excessive reliance on a single contributor," Mr. Holbrooke told members of the Fifth Committee of the U.N. General Assembly yesterday morning.
"The principle of avoiding over-dependence on any one member state was embedded in the U.N.'s methodology from the outset, but has fallen victim to politics, inertia and actions on all sides."
If the organization does not reduce Washington's share of the budgets by a total of 8 percent, Congress will not release some $600 million of the $1.7 billion the organization says the United States is in arrears. The deadline for this money is December.
The arrears issue has crippled the U.S. leadership at the United Nations in an era of increased peacekeeping responsibility and ossified management.
Currently, the United States is assessed 31 percent and 25 percent of the peacekeeping and regular budgets, respectively. However, it has been paying the 25 percent and less than 22 percent, respectively, since 1994, accruing considerable debt, according to U.N. ledgers.
The United States accounts for roughly 28 percent of the world's gross national product, which is the organization's bedrock definition of a country's capacity to pay U.N. assessments.
However, other nations, including the wealthy European Union and poor Group of 77 developing nations, yesterday rebuffed the U.S. call to lower the ceiling. They said the members must pay according to their abilities, without regard to political objectives.
Speaking on behalf of the European Union, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte noted that EU nations accounted for 29.5 percent of the world's GNP, yet paid 36.6 percent of the U.N. regular budget.
This shows "in stark terms that . . . on schedule and without conditions, each of the EU's 15 member states pays a surcharge of one-quarter of its share of world GNP," said Mr. Levitte, adding "that is why the European Union would like the ceiling to remain at its current level of 25 percent."
The 132-nation Group of 77 developing nations, which includes China, also advocated keeping the 25 percent ceiling - but only for developing nations.
"Any modification of the current ceiling would be considered only if it spreads the burden of payment among the major contributors without affecting the G-77 and China," Nigeria's Arthur C.I. Mbanefo said on behalf the group.
Shortly after it was founded, the United Nations had a scale ceiling at 39 percent, even though the United States accounted for almost half of global GNP. In 1973, the ceiling was reduced to 25 percent and, as Mr. Holbrooke pointed out, the organization has 56 new members.
The United States is expected to pay some $3 billion to U.N. activities this year, including $830 million for assessed contributions to the regular budget and peacekeeping. The remainder, Mr. Holbrooke noted, are voluntary contributions to U.N. development, health, disarmament, humanitarian aid, human rights and environmental activities.
-------- u.s.
Wargames: Air Force Space Command's Battle Plans
Part One: Playing Games in Space
Global Network
3 October 2000
By Frank Sietzen, Jr., SPACE.com
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_battlelabs_001003.html
WASHINGTON Sept. 29 - It all began January 21, the day after the Presidential inauguration. The political pressures had been building for months, although few knew about the crisis. Now around a table in a secured room sat the President of the United States, the Vice-President, Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Behind them in a row of seats sat their staffs and aides. The crisis had quickly escalated.
The first attack had rendered silent America's constellation of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The GPS control center in Colorado Springs reported it had lost contact with the constellation; first in a degraded signal and then completely.
Within hours of that crisis, The President received notice of another space disaster. Several commercial communication satellites used by the military to route communications and pagers to ships at sea had been disabled; how was not yet clear. At Cape Canaveral, terrorists had contaminated the fuel storage facility for the Space Shuttle fleet.
Without firing a shot the nation's winged ships were grounded.
And now came the most threatening news of all: NASA Johnson Space Center was reporting that the International Space Station had been damaged by a wave of small objects let loose from a ballistic missile.
The President and his staff now faced the most serious decision ever made by a U.S. chief of state: did the attack on U.S. space assets constitute a first strike against the nation? High up in silent space, had World War Three begun?
If this sounds threatening and frightening, that is the whole idea. For these scenarios will be facing not the real U.S. President and his cabinet but a simulation. Stand-ins for the President, Vice-President, Secretary of Defense and the whole U.S. military leadership will take their places around a table on January 21, 2001-the day after the next real U.S. President takes office.
"We need to learn how to better protect our space assets. In this way will we be better able to develop our future plans."
Rob Hegstrom, Game Director for the Schriever 2001 space wargame The simulation, the Air Force's first all-space wargame, will test how well U.S. space assets would withstand an attack. The answers might well shape how the military-and civil -space program evolves in the years ahead.
"This will be the first Air Force level space wargame," said Rob Hegstrom, Game Director for the Schriever 2001 space wargame. The week-long simulation of an air and space attack will be held at the Schriever Air Base in Colorado Springs next winter, the first of annual series.
The goal? "We need to learn how to better protect our space assets," Hegstrom said. "In this way will we be better able to develop our future plans," he added.
Space wargames are not a new exercise. The U.S. Army, as part of its "Army After Next" effort has held three such simulations. Each produced surprising results and, according to some, disturbing questions that have yet to be answered by U.S. national policy.
Questions such as the depth and level of the responsibility of the U.S. military to commercial space industry when its systems are used for national defensive purposes. "We pose questions such as how will these results shape the baseline (military) force in development," Hegstrom said.
For the week, two separate teams will portray U.S. leaders facing a gradually escalating crisis. One new scenario will be added each day, and the President and his staff must plan responses in real time just as if the simulated events are happening.
Since the day-to-day game is classified, specific plans are not detailed. But the scenarios all focus on a U.S. space capability as projected in 2015, with the rise of a geopolitical 'peer competitor' to the U.S. that has developed a major space program.
While Hegstrom said that no specific wargame plan can be discussed, it was reasonable to assume that, with a permanent U.S. space station in orbit in 2015, "terrorist threats to the space station could easily be assumed as a valid possibility," he said.
Other assumptions about the state of the space program in 15 years include advanced navigation satellites, military spaceplanes, advanced launch vehicles, space stations, and a capability the Pentagon calls "Launch on Demand", being the ability to rapidly launch boosters and piloted craft within hours of an order. Today such a launch takes months and years to prepare.
"Once military leaders 'hot wash' the results from the week-long play," Hegstrom said that 'gold nuggets'-major lessons learned from the exercise- will be passed up the chain of command for consideration. "The Air Force will be addressing long range issues, such as denial of access to space, terrorist attacks on space installations, and jamming of space communications," Hegstrom suggested, so that programs can be developed now to counter any potential future threat.
And the final space of the U.S. space program after the crisis? How will it evolve in the game? "This is a free-play wargame," he said. "Anything can happen when a world crisis arises."
Wargames: Air Force Space Command's Battle Plans
Part Two: Supporting the Warfighter From Above
By Frank Sietzen, Jr., SPACE.com
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_battlelabs_001004.html
WASHINGTON, October 2 -- While leaders in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Command learn new lessons on the vulnerability of U.S. space assets, new space battle laboratories, or "battlelabs," are working to help soldiers, sailors and airmen on the ground.
"We're trying to measure the worth of new ideas and present the best to senior Air Force leaders," said Lt. Col. Terry Sando, deputy commander of the Space Battle Lab at Schriever Air Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Sando's group is one of six Air Force battlelabs spread across the country looking at how space assets can improve or enhance U.S. military operations.
The labs and other space warfare centers are each situated at military installations. The researchers look into such areas as information superiority, communications, reconnaissance, force protection, robot aircraft or other aspects of the military's operational and technological needs. Some projects can be discussed publicly, Sando said. And, of course, others are classified.
"There is no real limit as to what we can look into," said Sando. The labs have about 24 staffers assigned to each with a budget of $4.5 million. They focus on commercial space systems -- called 'commercial-off-the-shelf-technologies' or COTS in defense-speak -- that can be readily adapted for the military's use. Sando's space lab reports directly to Air Force Space Command, part of the tri-service U.S. Space Command. Air and space superiority is the goal of the 21st-century Air Force.
What does that mean?
Controlling air and space -- who flies or orbits, what those craft do while traversing the heavens.
During times of conflict it is "battlespace" that must be controlled -- the ability of American forces to deny access to space by any enemy of the U.S. or its allies.
That includes everyday communications moving through space: voice, e-mail, paging signals, computer data and weather projections, as well as reconnaissance images of enemy forces and basic military communications between forces, fleets and command centers. Space is now a medium through which massive amounts of ordinary data flows.
Even logistics and the planning of surface maneuvers requires "eyes" and "ears" that overlook a future battlefield -- from high orbit. And that will someday include the ability of the Air Force to attack rapidly anywhere in the world at any time.
Such a projection of American power can be enhanced by space-based systems. The battlelabs are culling the best of today's commercial products or new inventions. "This is new technology that could change warfare, or have relevance to the fighting force," said Sando.
But while the equipment might be available today, the applications have a futuristic feel. One project, called SILC {Space Object identification in Living Color) uses color optical lenses to identify different satellites in orbit.
"We know that different satellites give off different colors," Sando explained. By aiming telescopes or optical lenses toward the path of the satellite, military engineers can determine which they are -- and their purposes.
Another project is named STORC (Space Tracking of RV Convoys). Working with the Department of Energy, military planners use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to locate un-launched ballistic missiles.
As warheads for the U.S. missile fleet are moved from the field to storage areas, GPS tracking receivers are mounted on the cases of the warhead, giving the Air Force a digital "signature" of the warhead's precise location. "This is near real-time," said Sando, meaning that the rocket stages and warheads can always be monitored.
Project BRISC -- for Bomb Impact Assessment Reach-back Involving Space Collectors -- doesn't use any new optics but instead sends back compressed images and signals from missiles in flight in tiny micro-bursts to their tracking and launch operators. The purpose? "It gives us a constant stream of data on the missile's health, its location and I.D. as it heads into its target," said Sando.
Other battlelab projects include space surveillance, environmental monitoring and remote sensing. A major research effort involves the Air Force's desire for what is termed "Space Control" -- literally determining who can access and use space.
What is the nature of that research effort? "Sorry, that area is classified," Sando said.
The results of all these studies are rushed to the field for testing before ultimately finding their place in the military's operations budget.
The Air Force is not alone in studying space warfare. The Army also has its space battlelab. And while the Navy doesn't have one as yet, its Project TENCAP (Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities), along with the Navy Research Lab and Center for Space Technology are looking toward space systems that can be adapted for the Navy's unique needs.
The new emphasis on space is all part of a changing military, new strategies and the evolution of war.
The U.S. military force in the early 21st century that takes advantage of the nation's explosive technological advances to enhance its weapons systems will be shaped by the contingencies of future wars.
---
NEW PLAN FOR THE X-33
Hypersonic military spaceplanes go quietly about their business.
Global Network
3 October 2000
NASA and Lockheed Martin have agreed to a plan to go forward with the X-33 program, which includes an aluminum fuel tank, a revised payment schedule, and a target launch date of 2003. The X-33 was designed as a prototype to test the technologies that will eventually be developed into a replacement for the space shuttle. Unfortunately, problems with original composite fuel tank and a range of other problems caused serious delays to the X-33's schedule, and raising concerns that it would never launch. This revised schedule is 4 years later than the X-33 was originally supposed to lift off.
Original Source:
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/2000/00-284.html
Internet Coverage:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0009/29x33/
http://www.spaceviews.com/2000/10/01b.html
See also: Securing space for the military
http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/yspace/articles/spaceplane.htm
--------vietnam
Vietnamese legacy
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison
News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-200010321245.htm
U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Douglas Peterson has taken another step to help improve relations with the country that once held him a prisoner of war.
Mr. Peterson yesterday presented the communist government with the first batch of U.S. equipment to help clear unexploded land mines and other ordnance left over from the Vietnam War.
"This equipment will assist in preventing individuals being killed or maimed by weapons that were used in a conflict 30 years ago," he said.
He described the donation of the equipment as a "very, very important moment in the relations between the United States and Vietnam."
"This physical commitment that America has to removing unexploded ordnance and mines shows America's zeal, if you will, in the future to removing this important impediment to land use in Vietnam," he said.
"People in the U.S. have been concerned about the leftover unexploded ordnance and mines in Vietnam for many years."
Lt. Gen. Le Hai Anh, chief of Vietnam's general staff, accepted the equipment that included mine detectors, protective gear, Global Positioning System units and medical kits.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Move to Save Wildlife Snags Spending Bill
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/politics/03SPEN.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - The three oddly named species - two birds and a fish - are unfamiliar to most people. But the piping plover, the least tern and the pallid sturgeon have emerged as central players in the drama surrounding passage by Congress of a $23.6 billion spending bill for energy and water projects.
The fate of the three species, all of which live on the upper reaches of the Missouri River, is, according to the environmentalists and Clinton administration officials, tied to increasing the river's spring flows every three years and reducing water levels by about one-third for 8 to 10 weeks in the summer.
That idea, however, has led to a major water fight between environmentalists and the recreation industry in up-river states like South Dakota on one side and farmers and the barge industry in downriver states like Missouri on the other.
Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, has attached a provision to the spending measure blocking the Army Corps of Engineers from implementing its plan to change the river flows.
Mr. Bond has argued that the plan increases the risk of catastrophic springtime floods in his state and that keeping the water levels low in the summer will harm barge operators on the Missouri.
The Senate approved the energy and water projects measure today despite a threat issued last week by the White House chief of staff, John D. Podesta, who wrote Congressional leaders that if Mr. Bond's amendment remained, President Clinton would veto the bill.
Today's vote, largely along party lines, was 57 to 37, less than the two-thirds necessary to override a veto.
Yet in the calculus that often surrounds spending bills where state political interests often clash with national ones, the fight over the flow of the Missouri River presented the administration with a difficult choice.
Should it side with environmentalists, an important constituency, and the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a key ally? Mr. Daschle is trying to protect the $85 billion recreation industry in up- river states, where lakes, streams and reservoirs favored by anglers are often drained to maintain high river flows for barges on the lower stretches of the river.
But choosing to support the environmentalists and Mr. Daschle, who favor the Corps plan, may exact a political toll.
The Army proposal is opposed by Missouri Democrats, like the House minority leader, Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the mayors of St. Louis and Kansas City and Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose close race for the Senate could be affected by the veto.
And, some Republicans warn that if Mr. Clinton carries through with his veto threat, he might alienate enough Missouri voters to cost Vice President Al Gore that state in the presidential election.
"People in Missouri know about this," Mr. Bond said, "and if the Gore campaign believes it is in their interest to have Clinton veto this, I guarantee you this will have political ramifications."
Much of this fight is over one small, stocky, insect-eating bird, the piping plover; another forked-tail member of the gull family, the least tern, and the pallid sturgeon, a fish whose ancestors date back 150 million years, according to fossil records.
"Certainly they have been on this planet a lot longer than the politicians who are currently debating this issue," said Mike Olson, the Missouri River Coordinator at the United States Fish and Wildlife's office in Bismarck, N.D.
Once abundant in the Missouri and on its banks and sand bars, the three species are all threatened, and the pallid sturgeon is approaching extinction.
Fish and Wildlife biologists and environmentalists blame management of the Missouri for the species' problems.
Dredged to create a deep, fast- moving channel and with upstream dams releasing water at constant and high rate - all to accommodate barge traffic - the Missouri has become increasingly unfriendly for the species. Biologists say that the sturgeons' spawning behavior is set off by a rise in water flow in the spring.
"The spring rise helps give them the urge to do the right thing," Mr. Olson said.
The fast-flowing spring river also washes organic material into the Missouri, which helps increase the number of insects that the piping plover feeds on, and helps create sand bars that are nesting areas for the plovers and the terns.
Reducing water flows creates small pools where the baby sturgeon can grow without fear of larger predatory fish or being buried by sediment.
Environmentalists and the Fish and Wildlife Service argue that for years the Army Corps of Engineers has operated the Missouri River primarily for the benefit of the barge industry, spending $7 million to $8 million for an industry whose Missouri River operations only generate $6.8 million in economic benefits.
But a coalition of farmers, grain companies and barge operators say they worry that lowering the water levels and in essence creating two shipping seasons would mean the demise of the barge industry on the Missouri, leaving railroads with a virtual monopoly on transporting bulk cargo. They also argue that the increase in the spring flows will make down-river states more vulnerable to floods like the record 1993 deluge that devastated the region.
"The reason we manage the waterway system was to provide a low cost transportation system on the river and prevent these flooding events. What Fish and Wildlife wants to do is reverse that trend," said Christopher Brescia, president of the Midwest Area River Coalition 2000, a group of agricultural and industrial producers, shippers and barge operators that oppose the Corps plan.
---
Scientists Track Pollutant's Course
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-Dioxin-Sources.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- For the first time, scientists say they have pinpointed many of the industrial polluters responsible for the dioxin that is ending up in the Arctic.
To perform the study, scientists at New York City's Queens College modified a computer program originally designed to track fallout in the event of a nuclear accident.
They found that 35 municipal waste incinerators, cement kilns and steel plants in the eastern and central United States account for one-third of the dioxin reaching Nunavut Territory in the Canadian Arctic.
For example, during the one-year study a single municipal waste incinerator in Harrisburg, Pa., accounted for nearly 5 percent of the dioxin reaching Broughton Island, just north of the Arctic Circle on Baffin Bay.
Another waste incinerator in Ames, Iowa, contributed about 5 percent of the dioxin reaching Chesterfield Inlet on Canada's Hudson Bay, 2,000 miles away.
``I think the study demonstrates that we should revise our concept of neighbors,'' said Greg Block, director of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The organization funded the study.
Dioxin is of particular concern in the Arctic because it is an extremely long-lived pollutant that tends to build up in the fat of animals and people. Native people in the Arctic consume a diet high in fish and sea mammals, so on average their bodies carry about twice as much dioxin as a person living in southern Canada or the United States.
Dioxin has been shown to cause cancer, brain damage and reproductive abnormalities in animals, but the degree of its threat to humans remains unclear.
``We are increasingly worried about this situation,'' said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the Canadian president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. ``The environment is actually our supermarket.''
The computer program used in the study, developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, simulates the weather across North America on an hour-by-hour basis.
Researchers entered into the program detailed information about releases from more that 40,000 dioxin sources, then followed individual ``puffs'' of contaminated air. Once the air had reached the Arctic, they estimated the dioxin fallout.
The study showed that most of the dioxin reaching the eastern part of the Canadian Arctic comes from the eastern United States. Dioxin released in the Midwest tends to end up farther west.
Dioxin is made whenever chlorine and carbon are burned together, so it is produced in a wide variety of situations, from steel manufacturing to trash burning.
---
Debate Rises Over a Quick(er) Climate Fix
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/science/03GREE.html
A sharp new debate has sprung up among atmospheric scientists over where to aim efforts to stave off the prospect of global warming from the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Some say the main target should be carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, while others say the most practical solution is to focus first on less common, but more powerful, substances possibly influencing climate, like methane, ozone and soot.
The debate comes just as negotiators from more than 150 countries are preparing to head to The Hague next month to put flesh on the bones of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a treaty outlining commitments by industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions and help poor countries avoid new emissions as their economies grow.
The argument for attacking the less common greenhouse ingredients is mainly based on the idea that these substances contribute to harmful air pollution as well as climate change - and so an easier case can be made to policy makers and the public to clean them up.
They are also relatively easy to attack with existing or developing technologies, whereas carbon dioxide can still generally be reduced only by burning less fuel.
Proponents of this strategy, most notably Dr. James E. Hansen, an influential NASA climate expert, say that cutting carbon dioxide, at least in the short term, is a far more daunting task because it is a basic byproduct of burning coal and oil. In other words it is a basic byproduct of almost every aspect of modern life.
But there are problems with focusing on other heat-trapping substances, as well, other scientists say. Soot and the other greenhouse gases, they argue, constitute an extraordinarily complex brew whose influence on climate and interactions with each other and with clouds and other atmospheric ingredients are still poorly understood.
"When you add in their chemical interactions, most scientists' eyes glaze over, it's so complicated," said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric chemist who is chief scientist of Environmental Defense, a private conservation group.
The debate was spurred last August, when Dr. Hansen and a team of his colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is based in Manhattan, published "Global Warming in the 21st Century: An Alternative Scenario," in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the paper, they said that deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions were probably impossible in the short run, while the other gases and soot were already targets because of their contribution to old-fashioned pollution. In its conclusion, the team used a word rarely found in studies of global warming: "optimistic."
The analysis has since been criticized by some longtime colleagues of Dr. Hansen and embraced by industry groups and elected officials who have long voiced doubt about the science behind climate change and the need for big cuts in fossil fuel use.
Just last Thursday, for example, Dr. Hansen's findings were repeatedly cited by Republican senators holding a hearing questioning the need for the Kyoto Protocol, which has been signed by more than 100 countries but has yet to be ratified by any industrial powers. Many of the treaty's provisions focus on cutting carbon dioxide.
Dr. Hansen's critics, including many influential experts on the atmosphere and climate, say that emissions of all of the gases should be curtailed wherever this is possible and not too expensive but that cutting carbon dioxide must still be a top priority.
For his part, Dr. Hansen said that both sides in the debate had largely either misrepresented or misinterpreted his study. He said the fundamental goal was simply to find the most efficient - and politically and economically palatable - way to cleanse the atmosphere of human effluents that have the biggest impact on climate.
He said he still hoped that once the dust settled, policy makers from all parts of the spectrum might find merit in the proposal.
"I think it may be possible to get conservatives and liberals to agree on common-sense steps that slow down the climate experiment," Dr. Hansen said.
The "climate experiment" to which he referred is a substantial rise in the amount of greenhouse gases released into the air by human activities since the start of the Industrial Revolution. So far, the insulating effect of these gases is the equivalent of turning on two one-watt Christmas tree light bulbs over each square yard of the earth's surface.
That does not seem like much additional energy, Dr. Hansen said, but as a comparison he and others have calculated that the extra wattage accounting for the difference between the last ice age and current equable conditions is 6 to 9 watts per square yard.
If greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, the human-caused increase in energy bathing the surface could exceed four watts per square yard, a rise that begins to approach the change from the last ice age until now. That is bound to jog climate, Dr. Hansen said.
Dr. Hansen, besides being a respected climate scientist, is an inveterate pot stirrer who in the sweltering summer of 1988 told a Senate committee "it is time to stop waffling" about climate change, adding that signs had emerged that humans were causing some of the global warming measured in the 20th century.
His new analysis is clearly intended to provoke his peers to re-examine assumptions made over the last 10 years, particularly by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of hundreds of scientists working together under the auspices of the United Nations to assess global warming and possible responses. Their first update in five years is due in January.
Most atmospheric scientists have long recognized that more than a dozen greenhouse gases and various kinds of particles emitted by combustion and industry affect the flow of energy to and from the earth. (Most particles reflect sunlight like a parasol, cooling the planet; carbon soot tends to absorb energy and heat up.)
But for the last decade, carbon dioxide has been the main target of climate experts and diplomats trying to stabilize climate. Its concentration in the atmosphere has risen by a third from levels seen before the Industrial Revolution; once added to the air, it takes many decades to disappear; and levels could double from pre-industrial amounts by the end of the new century, scientists project. Also important, it is relatively easy to measure the emissions and their sources and "sinks," and processes that remove them from the air are fairly well understood.
But Dr. Hansen noted that carbon dioxide emissions are not continuing their relentless climb at anywhere near the pace set in the last century, as fuels are used more efficiently and dirty ones, like coal, are supplanted by cleaner ones, like natural gas.
Rather than seeking relatively costly additional cuts in carbon dioxide now, he said, the best return on an environmental investment in the short term would be to look at the other greenhouse culprits on his list. Then, later in the new century, when technologies have matured that offer sources of energy without new streams of carbon dioxide, the emphasis can shift back to that gas.
Here is his thinking on the best targets for action now.
First there is black carbon - microscopic soot particles released from inefficient diesel engines, unfiltered power plants or burning forests. These tiny particles, besides harming lungs, absorb heat and also - like other particles in the air - form seeds for cloud droplets. They tend to make clouds darker, Dr. Hansen says, reducing clouds' tendency to reflect sunlight and make the earth's surface cooler.
He said that if continuing efforts to reduce conventional pollution from fossil-fuel burning spread from wealthy countries to developing countries, the amount of this heat- trapping substance in the air would quickly drop.
Methane is on most lists of priorities for reducing the greenhouse effect, and Dr. Hansen said it had, if anything, been underplayed as an important target. Methane comes both from natural sources like bogs and from a host of human sources, including coal mines, leaking pipelines, landfills, belching cattle and rice paddies.
Dr. Hansen's study concluded that efforts to shift to rice-farming methods where fields are drained more frequently could cut releases. Also, his team pointed to Australian research showing that changing feeding patterns or mixing certain anti- gas additives in feed for tropical cattle cut by 40 percent their release of this gas without interfering with growth. With two billion cows, sheep, and goats belching away - half of them in the tropics - there is plenty of potential to cut into the greenhouse effect, he and supporters say.
Finally, the Goddard analysis emphasizes the importance of reducing ozone, an evanescent gas that is not on the list of greenhouse gases considered under the Kyoto Protocol because it is not directly produced by human activities.
Ozone, a poisonous molecule consisting of three oxygen atoms, is continually formed and destroyed when sunlight hits air, particularly when that air is laden with nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, or other emissions from burning fuels or forests. This is the lung-searing brew called smog.
Separately, ozone is formed high in the stratosphere, where it shields the planet from harmful radiation. Wherever it exists, it traps heat.
Dr. Hansen said that as with carbon soot, as China, Mexico and other industrializing countries start to enact pollution controls to cut smog, they will also indirectly be lessening their greenhouse impact.
But other scientists say the situation is not that clear-cut. One reason ozone has largely been left out of greenhouse equations so far is that its relationships with other greenhouse gases and other compounds in the air are almost impossibly complex.
For example, extremely reactive hydroxyl radicals, OH, which are created as ozone encounters other compounds, destroy methane molecules. In essence, one greenhouse gas eats the other.
"OH is the detergent of the atmosphere, scrubbing everything," said Dr. Monika Mayer, a research scientist in the climate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She published a study last month in The Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres in which she and several colleagues concluded that future trends for ozone and methane would largely cancel each other out.
Generally, she said, models show that although ozone should increase in cities, on average around the globe levels should drop, and this will allow methane to persist longer in the air because there will be fewer hydroxyl radicals there to destroy it.
The effects of all of this on climate, she concluded in the paper, are likely to be a wash.
Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist and chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, said he agreed with Dr. Hansen that the complexity of chemistry in the atmosphere should not deter efforts to cut ozone, methane and other substances that contribute both to pollution and climate problems.
He pointed to recent work showing that although levels of ozone and nitrogen oxides, which help create ozone, have been dropping over the United States and western Europe, they are relentlessly rising elsewhere.
One study, Dr. Cicerone said, showed that nitrogen oxide concentrations in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan rose 60 percent from 1987 to 1998. There is plenty of concrete benefit to be gained, with little of the potential pain that might come from putting the same effort into reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
But other scientists fear that any shift away from reducing burning of coal and oil would only impede long- term progress toward limiting the human influence on climate.
"The most important thing is to stabilize all these emissions," said Dr. Thomas P. Ackerman, chief scientist in the Energy Department's atmospheric radiation measurement program in Richland, Wash. "And there's no way you're going to do that without attacking the fossil-fuel problem. We're a society that likes to have simple solutions, but there are no easy answers here."
For his part, Dr. Hansen seems satisfied simply to have nudged the climate debate toward considering partial, common-sense solutions that he feels have been neglected.
He added that one way to spur interest would be to illustrate the other harmful qualities of the greenhouse ingredients on his list up close and personal.
Maybe, he said, it would make sense to "lock people in a room with a good bit of ozone and black carbon in the air until they come up with some positive ideas."
---
Saving the dolphins
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison
News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-200010321245.htm
The Mexican ambassador is disappointed that the United States has not yet reopened its market to Mexican tuna, even though Mexican fishermen meet international standards for protecting dolphins.
"We need to put an end to a situation that has become a source of tension and frustration in our bilateral relations," said Ambassador Jesus Reyes-Heroles.
The ambassador complained that the 12-year ban has cost Mexico millions of dollars in lost revenue.
"Formally speaking, the embargo on Mexican tuna has been lifted since 1999, but a court decision is still pending that will allow the use of the 'dolphin safe' label and guarantee effective market access," Mr. Reyes-Heroles said.
U.S. and Mexican officials held two days of talks last week on the situation, but little has changed.
"As has been recognized by the U.S. government, Mexico has undertaken great efforts to eliminate incidental dolphin deaths associated with tropical tuna fishing by enhancing and improving its methods and practices, while complying with both national and international obligations," the ambassador said.
---
Senate clears bill for energy, water projects; veto promised
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
By John Godfrey
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200010322223.htm
The Senate last night passed 57-37 legislation providing $23.1 billion for energy and water projects for 2001, some 10 votes shy of the support that will be needed to overturn a promised presidential veto.
President Clinton objects to a provision that would block the Fish and Wildlife Service from revising operation rules for the Missouri River to allow it to rise with the spring snow melt and during heavy rainfall.
But folks from Missouri, including the Democratic candidates for the Senate and governorship, say failure to block the rules will cause flooding in Missouri and all but kill barge traffic. The river begins near Great Falls, Mont., and flows through North and South Dakota. It ends in St. Louis, where it flows into the Mississippi River.
"I guarantee you this will have political ramifications and I am going to 'ramificate, '" said Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican.
Just four Democrats voted for the bill, while Sen. John McCain of Arizona was the sole Republican to vote against it.
"This year's energy and water . . . bill is very critical, particularly at a time when our nation is facing rising gas and energy prices," Mr. McCain said before the vote. "That is why I am utterly disappointed that the final agreement for this bill blatantly disregards these national priorities in favor of special interests giveaways."
In a written statement issued last night, Mr. Clinton called the measure "deeply flawed" and "anti-environmental."
"Accordingly, I will veto this bill when it reaches my desk," he said.
The bill appropriates $2.4 billion more for 2001 than was appropriated for 2000 and exceeds the House version of the bill by $1.9 billion.
"A grand total of $1.2 billion is added in pork-barrel spending," Mr. McCain said, holding up a 21-page list, including $25 million added for ground-water restoration in California's San Gabriel Basin, $400,000 for aquatic weed control in Lake Champlain, Vt., and language directing the Army to "extend the sheet pile wall on the west end of the entrance to Dillingham, Alaska, small boat harbor."
Mr. McCain says he will mount a similar attack against the final version of the Interior Department's fiscal 2001 budget, to be considered today by the House. The $18.8 billion bill includes $973 million in fire emergency appropriations, $686 million for land acquisition, and is 28 percent more than the prior year's appropriation.
Congress also will begin work on legislation to further extend the federal budget deadline from Oct. 6 until Oct. 14.
As for the Missouri River provision, Sen. Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, said the provision ignores federal environmental laws and fails to take into consideration the needs of upstream states.
"It is unfortunate that it has to come to this," Mr. Daschle said of his efforts to muster the votes needed to sustain a Clinton veto.
Mr. Daschle said he tried repeatedly to compromise with the Missouri senators and revise the 40-year-old rules governing control of the river's waters but "we have been rebuffed."
Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, said the current rules often require drawing down water levels in Fort Peck Lake in Montana to support barge traffic in Missouri.
"In its current form, the [operations] manual simply does not provide an appropriate balance among the competing interests, both commercial and recreational, of the many people who seek to use it," White House Chief of Staff John Podesta said in a letter to lawmakers late last month.
But the message is the wrong one in Missouri, where Vice President Al Gore faces a tough fight with Texas Gov. George W. Bush in their bid for the presidency and local Democrats disagree with the White House.
"It is vitally important to the residents of the State of Missouri that [the administration] plan be re-evaluated," Missouri Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan in wrote a letter to the president provided by Mr. Bond.
"Any questions? Call my office. I love talking about this issue," Mr. Bond wrote in his letter
-------- genetics
Taco Bell's Core Customers Seem Undaunted by Shell Scare
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By GREG WINTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/business/03TACO.html
Meet Jaime Troche, fast-food devotee. The native New Yorker eats from one chain or another at least once a day. He has recently been laid off from his job, and worries about money. He is 19 years old, and likes big piles of food. By all accounts, he is the model Taco Bell customer.
Last week, Mr. Troche heard that Kraft had sold a supermarket version of Taco Bell shells that contained genetically engineered corn not approved for human consumption. He also read that the Taco Bell chain had bought shells from the same factory. But it fazed him not, and, without any second thoughts, he headed in for his usual taco within days of the recall by both companies. "I've eaten at Taco Bell for years, and I'm still here," Mr. Troche said. "If no one's getting sick, and no one's dead, I'm O.K. with it."
If it seems curious that the stock of Taco Bell's parent company, Tricon Global Restaurants Inc., is actually higher than it was in the days before the shell scare last week, consider this: securities analysts who follow the company are so confident that Taco Bell's core customers are unconcerned about genetically engineered foods that few expect the episode to have any measurable effect on the restaurant's sales. The company says sales figures for recent weeks have not yet been compiled, but it also does not expect the recall to have much impact.
Of course, unlike Kraft's product, the Taco Bell shells did not test positive for the genetically altered corn known as StarLink, which has only been approved for animals. But that may be beside the point. Analysts say the restaurant's clientele, overwhelmingly male and usually between the ages of 16 and 29, is primarily worried about what the industry refers to as "the deep discount" - and little else.
"If you're eating at Taco Bell, health consciousness is not high on your list of concerns," said John Ivankoe, an analyst for J. P. Morgan. "I don't think this is going to change the eating habits of its customers."
Even Tricon, which also owns KFC (the former Kentucky Fried Chicken) and Pizza Hut, admits that its customers generally come to Taco Bell for the array of "indulgent craving foods," and has learned that tampering with the menu can be costly.
While the rest of the industry is growing at roughly 3 percent, sales at Taco Bell have been particularly flat this year, and at times have dipped as much as 8 percent. Mitchell J. Speiser, a Lehman Brothers analyst, attributes the chain's sub- par performance to the introduction of higher-end foods, priced "north of a dollar," that have alienated some of its cost-conscious constituency.
"Genetically modified products do increase yields and lower costs," Mr. Speiser said. "So, if it were to lower prices, I think Taco Bell customers would be all for it."
Many believe Taco Bell is somewhat insulated from any serious fallout because it has very little presence abroad, where consumers have heightened concerns about genetically engineered food. KFC is popular in Asia and Pizza Hut is prevalent in Europe, where the debate rages hottest, but fewer than 300 of Taco Bell's 7,000 restaurants are outside the United States.
Environmental groups in this country worry about consumer apathy, and stress that as many as one in four people have food allergies and could have a reaction to proteins like the one found in StarLink. Yet, they say the F.D.A. has no process for testing ingredients before they come to market, leaving that responsibility to the food companies.
"The big concern is that this illegal corn is in the food supply," said Matt Rand, biotechnology campign manager for the National Environmental Trust. "We're expecting that we're going to find more of it in other food products."
-------- police
Police Brutality Revisited, But Not on Federal Ground
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By SHAILA K. DEWAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/nyregion/03ART.html
When Bradley McCallum, a former artist in residence of the New York Civil Liberties Union, conceived of a public art project focusing on police violence, he anticipated trouble getting the city's permission to display the project.
Instead, it was the federal government that prevented him from setting up the piece yesterday outside the United States Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan.
The project, titled "Witness: Perspectives on Police Violence" and created in collaboration with Jacqueline Tarry, consists of five emergency call boxes with speakers in place of the buttons normally used to call the police or the Fire Department. The speakers play the recorded voices of victims, families, lawyers and police officers whose lives have been affected by police violence.
On Sunday, Mr. McCallum and Ms. Tarry had begun a citywide tour with the call boxes. They had permits allowing them to set up at sites of police violence as well as courthouses where such cases were tried.
The first stop was the Bronx street corner where Anthony Baez was choked to death in 1994. Francis X. Livoti, a police officer, was acquitted in state court of criminally negligent homicide, but later convicted, in a trial at the courthouse on Pearl Street, of violating Mr. Baez's civil rights.
Although the federal government is sometimes perceived as the only recourse for victims of police violence, federal employees - the marshals responsible for courthouse security - refused to honor Mr. McCallum's city permit.
The artists set up the call boxes in a public plaza nearby. As a curious man studied one of the boxes, which are cast from an original 1910 mold but painted black instead of the customary red, Mr. McCallum said he was not sure that the content of the piece had been the problem. "What's more frustrating is that there wasn't really the effort to even look at the permit," he said. He said security officers had received written notice last week.
Mr. McCallum said he would try to get permission from the federal marshals to return.
The federal government, not the city, has jurisdiction over that block of Pearl Street, said Anthony Moritz, a deputy marshal on duty last night. The officials who issued the permit could not be reached, nor could the Marshals Service.
Although the piece is openly critical of the city, with one recorded interview of an officer saying, "The police department itself must be dissected, taken apart and put back correctly," Ms. Tarry said the Mayor's Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting had cooperated.
Sidestepping the city's public art guidelines, the artists applied for permission to use the call boxes as props in a film documenting the project. The only hesitation by the city, Ms. Tarry said, had come when they wanted to go to the sites of violence. "They don't want to retraumatize neighborhoods for the sake of a film," Ms. Tarry said. "It was striking that their concern was for the community."
-------- terrorism
Senator Presses for Bill to Combat Terrorism
Washington Post
Tuesday, October 3, 2000 ; Page A23
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62836-2000Oct2.html
Trying to ensure that recent recommendations by the National Commission on Terrorism are not ignored, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is pushing legislation designed to bolster new counterterrorist technologies, tighten controls over biological pathogens and crack down on terrorist fundraising.
Kyl hopes to attach his measure as an amendment to the fiscal 2001 Intelligence Authorization Act on the Senate floor before Congress adjourns later this month, having agreed to drop a controversial wiretap provision to enhance its prospects for passage.
"Everybody talks about trying to do something about terrorism, but little action ever ends up occurring," Kyl said last week in an interview. "It just seems to me we need to do whatever we can do."
The legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), gives the president six months to devise a long-term research and development initiative aimed at developing new technologies for countering terrorist attacks involving chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The measure also requires the secretary of health and human services to impose security regulations at research laboratories handling biological pathogens that are as strict as those in place at national laboratories handling nuclear materials.
To combat fundraising in the United States for terrorist groups under the guise of charities or educational groups, the bill requires creation of a task force headed by the treasury secretary to develop plans for countering such activities utilizing "all criminal, civil and administrative sanctions available under federal law, including sanctions for money laundering, tax and fraud violations, and conspiracy."
The bill also requires a CIA report on the advisability of current guidelines restricting the recruitment of terrorist informants, and an FBI report on the feasibility of establishing an office that would broadly disseminate counterterrorist information gathered by FBI agents throughout the intelligence community.
In concert with a final report released in June by the National Commission on Terrorism, Kyl had proposed authorizing the FBI to share foreign intelligence information obtained from domestic wiretaps with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
But Kyl said he has agreed to drop that provision in the face of opposition from the Justice Department and a coalition of civil liberties groups. Kyl said he still believes the FBI has the power to disseminate such information now and only wanted to ensure that the FBI and the CIA are in sync when it comes to fighting terrorists.
In a letter to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Center for National Security Studies said the proposed language on sharing wiretap information "breaches the well-established and constitutionally vital line between law enforcement and intelligence activities."
Whatever the actual impact, Kyl said he doesn't want to fight about now and possibly jeopardize acceptance of the commission's recommendations.
"I just want to get something done," Kyl said.
-------- activists
A Mission to Redirect Money Used for Defense
New York Times
October 03, 2000
By GUSTAV NIEBUHR
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/03/national/03PEAC.html
ST. CLOUD, Minn., Sept. 27 - Under a radiant autumn sky, a bus with a sign identifying it as the "Moneymobile" pulled into the College of St. Benedict, a Roman Catholic institution near here. The bus's five young occupants emerged and inflated nine large balloons, which assumed a form both festive and esoteric - billowing, multicolored pie charts and bar graphs representing federal spending.
As a largely student crowd of about 100 gathered, one of the bus passengers, Shauna Farabaugh, 23, announced what was coming: a presentation by a Catholic organization on a cross-country tour urging that military spending be reduced and that the money saved go to health care and education.
"What we choose to prioritize as funding says a lot about us as a nation," Ms. Farabaugh said, as another person from the bus, dressed as Uncle Sam, appeared for a scripted debate about federal spending and social needs.
The presentation was part of a two-month effort by Pax Christi USA, a venerable peace organization with 14,000 members and headquarters in Erie, Pa., to call attention to an issue with which it has long been concerned.
But in a larger sense, the bus journey illustrates how some religious organizations have been trying to call attention to broad issues that fall outside the themes that seem to dominate the close presidential race, themes like tax cuts and prescription drug costs for the elderly.
Over a 40-day stretch in July and August, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith antiwar organization, held a series of events in Washington called the People's Campaign for Nonviolence, seeking nuclear disarmament, abolition of the death penalty and the lifting of sanctions on Iraq.
"We are, in our modest but persistent way, continuing to call for those changes," said the Rev. John Dear, the fellowship's executive director. "There's a lot of grass-roots organizing happening," Father Dear said, "on justice issues."
In a separate effort in June, a group of religious leaders and retired generals and admirals issued a statement calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Their statement - part of an effort called the Nuclear Reduction/Disarmament Initiative - called for "a great national and international discussion and examination of the true and full implications of reliance on nuclear weapons, to be followed by action leading to the international prohibition of these weapons."
The statement has been signed by Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and others.
"Many of us in positions of religious leadership follow these matters more closely than many people would assume," said one signer, the Rev. John A. Buehrens, president of the Unitarian-Universalist Association.
Noting the statement's interfaith character and the number of military officials who signed, Mr. Buehrens added, "It's not coming from a romantic or naïve view of the dangers in this world."
Pax Christi's project began in March, when the organization released a statement signed by 34 Catholic bishops, some of them retired, calling for "a national Catholic campaign of prayer, study and action to end exorbitant military spending."
Titled "Bread, Not Stones," it said the federal budget should be viewed as a "moral document," reflecting compassion for society's have-nots. It also described a lack of health insurance and adequate child care for poor families as "a tragic consequence of a nation which chooses to spend only 6 cents on education and 4 cents on health care for every 50 cents it spends on the military."
Later, the organization received an offer of help - use of the Moneymobile - from a nonprofit organization called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, whose president is Jerry Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. The group holds that military spending can be cut without endangering national security, and the money redirected to health care and education.
Before the Iowa presidential caucuses and the New Hampshire primary last winter, the group dispatched its bus through both states, holding public events with the inflatable charts, a spokesman, David Crosson, said.
For the last three weeks, the bus has made its way among college campuses, Catholic high schools and public parks in California, New Mexico, Texas, Missouri and Minnesota. Stops are planned in 33 cities, with Chicago, New York and Boston to come, before the tour ends in Burlington, Vt., just before Election Day.
Those on board say the presentations have sometimes drawn only a handful of people. But sometimes there are crowds like the one at St. Benedict.
"We do a lot of college campuses," said Katie Krolczyk, "and some are into it and some are not."
Shortly before they visited St. Benedict, in nearby St. Joseph, Ms. Krolczyk and the tour organizer, Eric LeCompte, stopped by a Catholic high school in St. Cloud to speak with students. During a break, Mr. LeCompte said that neither he nor others in the bus favored cuts in military pay. "In no way do we think that providing less for our soldiers is just," he said.
---
A sad day in ALP history, thanks to Bracks
The Age
Tuesday 3 October 2000
By PETER HOLDING
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20001003/A28001-2000Oct2.html
Alan Oxley, a former chief of staff to John Cain, writes (on this page on Saturday) that it is depressing to see members of the Labor Party criticising Steve Bracks over police methods at the World Economic Forum protests. Oxley claims the Premier's comments reflect Bracks' understanding of "the history of socialism and the Labor movement".
I am not sure exactly what history Oxley is referring to. But if he is suggesting the Labor movement has a history of identifying more with police than with demonstrators, or of supporting police in removing their personal identification before launching an attack on demonstrators, he is sadly in error.
Demonstrations, including peaceful civil disobedience, have long been an integral part of Labor history. They occurred in the context of opposition to conscription in World War I. They occurred again with the mass rallies in opposition to the Vietnam War that were decried by opponents at the time for being unlawful obstruction, which indeed they were. The Labor movement participated in rallies against uranium mining and nuclear armaments. Picketing, a tactic commonly used by trade unions, often involves unlawful obstruction.
Oxley engages in semantics in describing Gandhi's tactic of non-violent resistance. Oxley claims it was non-violent only because Gandhi used it as an alternative to armed insurrection. He says it was not peaceful due to its element of obstruction, which inevitably provokes confrontation with the authorities. But one either believes that a democratic society ought to extend a measure of tolerance towards peaceful civil disobedience, or one does not.
Oxley claims the leaders of S11, like other groups overseas that oppose globalisation, are not a true "movement" but merely a "concordance of fringe opinion and a collaboration of street politics". But the criteria for extending a measure of tolerance to peaceful civil disobedience cannot depend on who is doing the disobeying, or whether they fit into Oxley's or the Premier's definition of a true "movement".
There are legitimate and serious concerns in society about aspects of the economic, social and environmental impact of globalisation. Many, even most, ALP members share these concerns.
It is possible a proportion of the S11 demonstrators, including the Trotskyist groups described by Oxley, set out to violently provoke the police. But if that occurred, those committing violent acts ought to have been arrested.
Oxley attempts to paint all the S11 demonstrators as either belonging to the Trotskyist groups or being dominated by them. This approach, far from being reflective of Labor history, would have done Bob Menzies or Henry Bolte proud. Menzies won a number of elections with his red-ragging, and Bolte tried to claim all anti-Vietnam demonstrators were dominated by the communist groups that participated in the moratoriums. Bolte distinguished himself by exhorting opponents of anti-Vietnam demonstrators to "run the bastards down" - a mentality that has apparently lived on in some of the opponents of the S11 demonstrators.
But clearly the S11 demonstrations included other groups that were committed to non-violent protest. One of these groups was made up of Victorian unions, and nobody has suggested it behaved in other than a disciplined and peaceful manner.
In the case where the behavior of demonstrators is violent, the appropriate course for police is to arrest those who are perpetrating violence, using only appropriate force. The fact that the law prohibits the use of excessive force in effecting arrests appears to be occasionally overlooked by those who do not tolerate peaceful civil disobedience.
They also overlook the fact that on no account can there be any justification for the police removing their personal identification.
In the face of these serious allegations, it was intemperate of the Premier to say - before any investigation of what actually occurred had been conducted - that the demonstrators "deserved what they got" . The comment creates an apprehension that the government, along with elements of the media, may have contributed to conditions that led to police possibly behaving in an inappropriate or unlawful manner.
The media have tried to portray the dissent within the ALP at the Premier's comments as coming only from the party's Left. I know this is not the case, and it will be a grave error for the Premier to assume it is.
Apart from being intemperate, the Premier's comments have created a political difficulty - the opportunity that his comments have extended to the very groups Alan Oxley describes. These groups are now likely to attempt to disrupt entry to the forthcoming ALP state conference, in a context where a number of conference delegates have little sympathy either with the groups or with the Premier's comments about the events at the S11 demonstration.
Peter Holding is a barrister, ALP member and former social policy adviser to the Victorian Trades Hall Council. These opinions are his alone. E-mail: opinion@theage.fairfax.com.au
---
Milosevic orders arrest of leaders of strike
USA Today
10/03/00- Updated 04:42 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwstue07.htm
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Escalating the Yugoslav crisis, President Slobodan Milosevic's government on Tuesday ordered the arrest of leaders of one of the strikes launched to drive him from power.
The announcement by the Belgrade prosecutor followed a government statement warning of ''special measures'' against those responsible for the wave of strikes and blockades called to force Milosevic to accept defeat in Sept. 24 elections.
The arrest order raised fears that Milosevic may resort to the army and police to hold on to power, despite calls at home and abroad for him to step down in favor of challenger Vojislav Kostunica.
The opposition showed no signs of backing down and has called on Yugoslavs to come to Belgrade on Thursday for a final push to drive Milosevic from power.
On Tuesday, strikes spread to a key copper mine, and 50,000 demonstrators took to the streets in Yugoslavia's two largest cities - 20,000 in Belgrade and 30,000 in Novi Sad, while barricades were up around the central town of Cacak.
In the capital, an estimated 20,000 people chanting ''the police are with us'' marched toward Milosevic's residence. Hundreds of riot police turned them away without incident.
Milosevic acknowledges Kostunica won more votes in the five-candidate contest but insists he fell short of the required majority and called a runoff for Sunday. Milosevic's opponents claim Kostunica won the election outright and refuse to participate in the runoff, claiming the Yugoslav president would only cheat again.
In a statement late Tuesday, the Belgrade prosecutor's office ordered the arrest of 13 alleged organizers of the strike at the Kolubara mine, which provides coal to a major electric power station.
The 13 include Nebojsa Covic, a former pro-Milosevic mayor of Belgrade who joined the opposition after disputed 1996 local elections.
In the televised statement, the government warned that it would not tolerate ''violent behavior,'' which disrupts vital institutions and threatens the lives of citizens.
''Special measures will be taken against the organizers of these criminal activities,'' the government said, clearly threatening opposition leaders with arrest. ''These measures also apply to media that are financed from abroad and are breeding lies, untruths and inciting bloodshed.''
Despite the warning, the opposition remained defiant.
''The government is branding us saboteurs and enemies, so why don't they put us on trial?'' Kostunica told 40,000 cheering supporters Tuesday in Kragujevac. ''Let them dare. Milosevic is the biggest creator of chaos in Serbia,'' he said referring to Yugoslavia's main republic.
Late Monday, Milosevic dispatched the army's chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, to the Kolubara mine to demand the strikers return to work. It marked the first time Milosevic has used the military in any role during the current crisis.
But the miners told him early Tuesday they would remain on strike until Milosevic accepts defeat. The government struck back by introducing four-hour power cuts to opposition-controlled cities, blaming the strikers for a shortage of coal.
There were other signs the government was preparing to get tough.
Police in the southern town of Vranje dispersed about 2,000 protesters, and opposition officials said dozens were arrested Tuesday. They were promptly sentenced to between 10 and 30 days in jail for taking part in the work stoppages and road blocks, the opposition coalition reported.
However, the wave of public outrage over the apparent election fraud showed no sign of abating.
Workers at a copper mine in the southern town of Majdanpek walked off after parking dump trucks at the mine gates and unloading dirt and rocks to build barricades, the private Beta news agency reported.
In Belgrade, high school students blocked a downtown squares with garbage containers and tens of thousands opposition supporters marched to the government statistics bureau, which counted the votes from last month's election. Marchers chanted: ''Thieves! Thieves!''
Barricades remained up around Cacak, where almost all shops remained shut. Merchants displayed signs in the windows proclaiming: ''Closed because of Robbery,'' alluding to the contested vote count.
Striking railroad workers cut lines from Serbia to Yugoslavia's smaller republic, Montenegro.
In Nis, about 400 workers walked out a tobacco factory, carrying a huge photograph of Milosevic draped in black cloth as a sign of mourning.
''All Serbs know by now that Milosevic lost the elections - except the electoral commission,'' Nis Mayor Zoran Zivkovic told 10,000 people gathered for a rally.
Milosevic remained defiant. His spokesman, Nikola Sainovic, accused the opposition of ''brutally lying'' in its claims to have won the first-round balloting.
''They want chaos in the streets in order to trigger foreign intervention,'' Sainovic said.
---
Milosevic says foes are under control of the West
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
By Dusan Stojanovic ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000103222950.htm
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - In his first address to the nation since a disputed election, Slobodan Milosevic yesterday branded his opponents puppets of the West. A wave of unrest aimed at driving him from power swept Yugoslavia, and the government responded by arresting dozens of strike leaders.
The general strike and road blockades brought Yugoslavia to a virtual halt in the most serious challenge yet to Mr. Milosevic's 13-year rule. Even the government weather bureau said it would stop issuing forecasts until he concedes defeat in the Sept. 24 presidential election.
In at least two towns, protesters broke into television stations -among the pillars of the Milosevic regime.
The strikes even spread to Mr. Milosevic's birthplace, Pozarevac, where about 20,000 protesters blocked roads and stopped public services, the independent Beta news agency said.
A spokesman for the opposition coalition, Cedomir Jovanovic, reported several incidents including a clash with police in Surcin, 12 miles west of Belgrade, in which four persons were injured.
Dozens of strike leaders were arrested, opposition officials said. The opposition called for people to converge on the capital Thursday in a push to drive Mr. Milosevic from power.
Vojislav Kostunica, the opposition leader who says he won the election outright, told reporters "what is happening now is a revolution - a peaceful, nonviolent, wise, civilized, quiet and smart democratic revolution."
Mr. Milosevic has conceded finishing second to Mr. Kostunica and called a runoff on Sunday. But in his televised speech, he accused his opponents of seeking to plunge the country into a "foreign occupation" in which "Yugoslavia will inevitably break up."
State radio reported that the government printing office has started making ballots for Sunday's vote. However, Mr. Kostunica told striking miners yesterday: "There will be no runoff."
White House Press Secretary Jake Siewert said the United States supports the opposition in its decision to boycott the runoff, saying, "It's time for the government to recognize that they lost in the first round and the opposition prevailed."
Mr. Milosevic said in his speech: "A puppet government guarantees violence, the possibility of a war lasting for years - everything except peace. Only governing ourselves guarantees peace."
Strikers clogged roads across Serbia, which with the smaller Montenegro republic makes up Yugoslavia.
After blockades and a student rally in Belgrade during the day, about 10,000 people assembled in the city center after sundown in what participants called a spontaneous protest in response to Mr. Milosevic's speech.
"I am here, waiting in the streets of Belgrade where he can't even show his face," opposition campaign manager Zoran Djindjic told the crowd, which booed at every mention of Mr. Milosevic's name. "Let him come here and tell us why he has been doing all the terrible things for more than 10 years."
In Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest city, protesters broke into the state television building, interrupting programming.
Hundreds of employees of state-run firms in Novi Sad joined a column of tens of thousands of opposition protesters carrying banners reading "He's Finished."
Protesters in the southern town of Prokuplje seized a local TV station, prompting authorities to cut electricity.
And in the southwestern town of Uzice, railway workers walked off the job and thousands of industrial workers joined them, cutting the country's main north-south railway link.
In a veiled threat to tens of thousands of strikers, Mr. Milosevic said: "Serbia is obliged . . . to defend itself from the invasion prepared through various means of subversion."
The opposition scoffed at the speech, saying in a statement that it "epitomizes a dictator facing ouster, who is begging for help from the people he terrorized for 10 years."
"Milosevic made a threatening, very nervous and very unstable speech," Mr. Djindjic said.
Mr. Kostunica visited strikers yesterday at the Kolubara coal mine, 30 miles south of Belgrade, and urged them to hold out.
"We're only days away from getting rid of Mr. Milosevic when the flames of change will engulf the whole country," he said. "There will be no runoff because if we had agreed to it, we would be stomping on the will of the people."
"Long live the president" the miners shouted back, addressing Mr. Kostunica.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has resisted Western calls for Mr. Milosevic to accept defeat, offered to mediate between the two men at a meeting in Moscow. There was no immediate response.
But Mr. Kostunica criticized Moscow and Washington for their handling of the crisis. "Russia is too cautious," Mr. Kostunica said. "Russia is defending the indefensible."
Mr. Kostunica said Washington's insistence on prosecuting Mr. Milosevic for war crimes had strengthened "Milosevic in his belief that these elections are a question of life and death for him."
---
Nader, Buchanan want to debate
Washington Times
October 3, 2000
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200010322518.htm
Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan don't agree on much, but they're standing together in contending they both should be included in the presidential debates.
Both plan to be in Boston for the first debate today. However, they will be outsiders looking in, barred from a national forum that could have given their flagging third-party campaigns a boost.
Mr. Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate, and Green Party nominee Mr. Nader fell far short of the 15 percent support they needed in major polls, the level of support required by the sponsoring bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
As one caller put it to CNN's "Larry King Live," on which both men appeared last night: "Give up, Mr. Buchanan."
"I never give up, young lady," Mr. Buchanan replied, blaming a lack of money, sparse media coverage and getting barred from the debates as killing his campaign.
Mr. Buchanan also said Republican nominee George W. Bush wouldn't want him standing on the same stage in debates.
"Mr. Bush has abandoned conservatives. That convention was an insult to Reaganism," he said, referring to the Republican National Convention and former President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Nader, appearing on the show's second half, had harsh words for Vice President Al Gore. He said that even if he wasn't running for president, "no way" would he vote for Mr. Gore.
Mr. Gore has spent "eight years on his knees to big business," Mr. Nader said.
Mr. Nader also urged people to contact the television networks and the debate commission to push for inclusion of the third-party candidates because "Bush and Gore can't say no to them."
"If there's a massive, peaceful demonstration tomorrow in Boston, where the whole world is watching, maybe Al Gore and George Bush will be shamed into at least having one debate with a four-way discussion of important issues that they are just deliberately discarding," he said.
Mr. Nader and Mr. Buchanan have received 3 percent support or less in recent national surveys. These same polls, however, show that one-third or more would like to see a four-way debate, with Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Nader joining Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush.
While neither Mr. Nader nor Mr. Buchanan plans to crash tonight's event, both will make themselves available to reporters before, during and after to provide analysis.
The two also let protesters in Boston raise the fuss for them.
About 30 people, some dressed in Colonial garb and tricornered hats, boarded the Boston Tea Party ship yesterday and dumped televisions into the harbor. Taped to the TV sets were the names of the networks and the Democratic and Republican parties.
---
USA Today
10/03/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Conneticut
Stamford - State Rep. Christel Truglia and more than 50 other housing advocates went on a 9-mile walk to focus attention on the lack of affordable housing in lower Fairfield County. They walked from Stamford to Norwalk, the area they say is hardest hit by the affordable housing crunch. Rents for one-bedroom units in Stamford range from about $900 per month to $1,800.
West Virginia
Charleston - Nearly a third of the 867 inmates at West Virginia's maximum-security prison staged a peaceful sit-down protest and presented administrators with 16 demands. The demands ranged from being allowed to keep more personal items in their cells to health care. "They are all things we can sit down and work with," said Otis Cox, state military and public safety secretary.
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