------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
China, U.S. OK Militar Exchanges
Fed Govt rejects Kakadu 'bullying' claims
Canberra Sold to French Company
Japanese Nuclear Plant Leaks
Army finishes up chemical arms cleanup at atoll
Russia Bomber Missions Expected
Russia's Kursk Probe Mired While Salvage Plan Forms
Sunken Russian Sub To Be Raised
Officials to raise Kursk from sea
Nuclear Fuel Fragment Found Leaking
Nuclear security lapse found
Classified nuclear documents mailed
Canberra Sold to French Company
Georgia
FBI Combs Dump For Los Alamos Tapes
Lab workers split $131 million jackpot
Hanford could start moving spent nuclear fuel next week

MILITARY
Another Bump in a Rocky Road for Colombia and Venezuela
Dealers Use Silenced Pit Bulls to Guard Drugs
The Fight in Kashmir
Astronauts Board Endeavour as NASA Prepares for Launch
Shuttle to Lift Off on Mission to Space Station
U.N. Agency Seeks N.Korean Food
U.S. and Yemen Agree on Rules for Investigating Cole Bombing
Explosion at U.S. base injures 3 Marines

OTHER
Oil Spill Closes 26 Miles of Mississippi River
WHITE PLAINS: FOUL WATER DISCHARGE
Better Light Bulbs, and Other Bright Ideas
States
Troopers' Union Defends Stops Linked to Profiling
Police Corruption Charges Reopen Wounds in Oakland
HARTFORD: POLICE CHIEF SANCTIONED
Free Speech In America -- If You Dare?
Call For a United Revolutionary Presence
Chances are, somebody's watching you
Carnivore passes muster
Evidence of FBI evasions feeds Carnivore doubts
MANHATTAN: SURVEILLANCE CAMERA BILL
U.S. PRESSES AFGHANISTAN FOR BIN LADEN

ACTIVISTS
Activists remember 'Battle of Seattle'
Convention Protesters are Found Not Guilty
Ben Cohen bemoans betting on big-business
Protestors Take to the Streets and Demand Estrada's Resignation
Rosa Parks museum opens
Group: Drilling will mar Oregon trail
Oklahoma
David R. Hunter
Juliet Garretson Hollister, 84; Led Temple of Understanding
Obituaries: Tom Kinsey
Final Push For Forest Protection
Reclaim the Cities: from Protest to Popular Power


-------- NUCLEAR

China, U.S. OK Militar Exchanges

Associated Press
November 30, 2000 Filed at 8:42 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-US.html

BEIJING (AP) -- China and the United States tentatively agreed Thursday to more exchanges between their militaries, helping bring a semblance of stability to often rocky ties between the distrustful defense establishments.

Two days of talks between U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Walter Slocombe and a raft of Chinese generals exhibited the wavering dynamics that now characterize overall relations. China's pledge last week not to help Pakistan, Iran and others build nuclear-capable missiles brightened the atmosphere, Slocombe said.

At the same time, a recent Chinese defense policy paper -- discussed in the talks -- directly and indirectly singled out the United States and its military alliances in the region as a threat to China.

Slocombe said he told the Chinese such remarks are ``unhelpful.''

He later told reporters: ``There's no question that the United States and China have real differences about issues, and that some of those are quite important differences. There's a difference between that and regarding each other as enemies.''

He told the Chinese that U.S. military alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia and others provide the region with stability for economic growth.

Still Slocombe said his meetings with Gen. Chi Haotian, the defense minister, Gen. Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of the Chinese military's general staff, and others produced ``tangible results.''

Both sides mapped out plans, subject to final approval, for more high-level visits between their militaries next year, China's participation in international defense forums and possible discussions on the military's role in disaster relief, Slocombe said.

``They're very modest and gradual steps. The military-to-military relationship is clearly going to grow, if at all, gradually,'' Slocombe said.

China also gave a positive but limited review of the talks. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said ``the consultations have increased understanding and trust.''

The sober assessments underscored how realistic both governments are about military cooperation after years of fitful ties. Relations opened in the 1980s were stopped after China crushed the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in 1989. They began a slow crawl back three years ago but were scuttled by the U.S. bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia in May 1999.

In patching up differences, both sides have tried to focus on areas of agreement and lessen the chances for conflict. In his meetings, Slocombe said they touched on both -- discussing ways to support better relations between the Koreas and differences over Taiwan and proposed U.S. anti-missile defenses.

Both sides even compared notes on the different receptions North Korea gave Defense Minister Chi and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on separate but overlapping visits last month, Slocombe said. He declined to elaborate.

-------- australia

Fed Govt rejects Kakadu 'bullying' claims

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Thu, 30 Nov 2000 8:40 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-30nov2000-27.htm

The Federal Government has rejected suggestions it bullied the World Heritage Committee into not listing Kakadu National Park as "in-danger."

Green groups and Aboriginal traditional owners had wanted the committee to take a strong stand against the Jabiluka uranium mine.

Even though an in-danger listing would not have stopped the mine going ahead, the Wilderness Society says it opens the door for mining in all World Heritage protected areas.

Environment Minister Robert Hill says the Government did not attempt to influence the committee.

"They are a strong willed lot the World Heritage Committee, they would not be easily bullied and we are not the types to try and bully," he said.

The Australian Conservation Foundation says it is now up to all Australians to help save the unique environment and culture of Kakadu, just as they did with the Great Barrier Reef.

-------- france

Canberra Sold to French Company

Excite News
November 30, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/001130/11/canberra-cogema

MERIDEN, Conn. (AP) - Canberra Industries, which makes equipment to detect and monitor radioactivity, has been sold to a French nuclear industry company for $170 million.

Canberra's parent company, Packard BioScience Co., said Wednesday it will use the proceeds to develop biotechnology products and services.

The buyer, Cogema Group, is owned in part by the French government. Cogema owns uranium mines, provides uranium enrichment and recycles spent nuclear fuel rods. The company also designs and decommissions nuclear power plants and research laboratories.

The company has no plans to move Canberra from its Meriden headquarters or reduce the work force, said Christian Petit, president and chief operating officer of Cogema's nuclear measurement unit. About 350 Canberra employees work in Meriden.

Petit will head the new unit created by the Canberra acquisition. Canberra president George Serrano will report to Petit.

Canberra has worked on the decommissioning of the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment facility in Tennessee and the cleanup of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado.

-------- japan

Japanese Nuclear Plant Leaks radiation

Associated Press
November 30, 2000 Filed at 9:02 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Radiation-Leak.html
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2000/11/11302000/ap_japannuke_40498.asp

TOKYO (AP) -- A small amount of radiation escaped from a nuclear power plant in western Japan on Thursday during a gas sampling, but the leak posed no threat to local residents or the environment, officials said.

The leak occurred at the Oi nuclear power plant in the state of Fukui, about 250 miles west of Tokyo, when a worker opened a gas valve, Ministry of International Trade and Industry officials said.

About five minutes later, a monitor attached to an exhaust pipe, which releases gas into the environment, showed an increase in radiation. But monitors outside the plant showed no radiation increase, a sign that Thursday's leak posed no threat to local residents, according to ministry spokesman Fumito Omagari.

The three workers in the sampling room were not exposed to radiation, and the plant continued running, he said.

Japan's nuclear power industry has been plagued by accidents.

The country's worst nuclear accident occurred Sept. 30, 1999, at a uranium-reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo. It killed two people, seriously injured one more and exposed hundreds to radiation.

-------- johnston atoll

Army finishes up chemical arms cleanup at atoll
Closure of the Johnston facility could come by next fall, and it could become a nature refuge

Hawaii Star-Bulletin
Thursday, November 30, 2000
By Gregg K. Kakesako Star-Bulletin
http://starbulletin.com/2000/11/30/news/story4.html

The Army today completed destroying its stockpile of chemical weapons stored at Johnston Atoll and is on track to close the Pacific island facility next fall.

"The destruction of Johnston Atoll's stockpile amounts to 6 percent of the nation's original stockpile," said Gary McCloskey, project manager of the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service eventually would like to see the atoll, 825 miles southwest of Hawaii, turned into a natural refuge, said Kathy Herlinger, spokeswoman for the Army program manager for chemical demilitarization.

Since 1926 the atoll has been a national bird refuge. The area has been managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service since 1940, and three of its smaller islands are teeming with birds and are restricted and off limits.

Four islands make up the atoll, with the 625-acre Johnston Island the only one now inhabited. At one time, more than 1,250 people -- 80 percent of them civilians -- worked on Johnston Island.

However, no decision has been made by the Department of Defense as to which organization will control the atoll.

During the past 10 years, 412,000 munitions -- rockets, projectiles, bombs, mortars, containers and mines -- have been destroyed.

This amounted to 2,031 tons of the 31,496 tons of chemical weapons stockpiled in nine locations on the mainland, Herlinger said.

Johnston Atoll is the only facility outside of the United States.

McCloskey said the facility has destroyed more than 2,000 tons of chemical agents in the form of nerve agent GB, also known as sarin and VX, and blister agent HD.

Last night, the facility completed the destruction of 13,302 land mines filled with the nerve agent VX.

Of the more than 100,000 VX land mines manufactured in the late 1950s and early 1960s, 13,302 were stored on Johnston. The land mines were designed to disperse the lethal VX agent, a clear, orderless and tasteless liquid that affects the nervous system.

Johnston's disposal furnaces were built in 1985, and operations began in 1990. Herlinger said that one proposal calls for gutting the furnaces and other buildings and not tearing them down.

Maj. Stan Health, Army spokesman, said that during the next year the Army, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies will clean up the island.

The bird refuge has coexisted as a refueling and supply point for the military during World War II and the Korean War and as a test site for atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1960s.

There was one accidental explosion of a Thor missile in 1962 which resulted in the pollution of a small portion of Johnston Island with plutonium oxide.

However, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency has played down the possibility of radiation dangers on the north side of Johnston Island. The agency has said several options, including leaving the 24-acre area alone or removing the contaminated soil to a U.S. mainland dump, have been discussed.

-------- russia

Russia Bomber Missions Expected

Associated Press
November 30, 2000 Filed at 5:42 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russian-Bombers.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Russian air force has moved several Tu-95 Bear bombers to air bases in northern Siberia and may be planning soon to fly them close to U.S. airspace off Alaska, officials said Thursday.

Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for Defense Secretary William Cohen, indicated the Pentagon sees no threat in the Russian moves and considers them an effort to bolster the public image of a military in decline.

Bacon said it fits a recent pattern of Russian air training and surveillance and suggested the Russians remain trapped in ``Cold War thinking'' despite the collapse of communism and the end of the nuclear arms race.

``We regard the Cold War as being over,'' Bacon said, even though U.S. forces still monitor Russian forces.

Within the last few days the Russians moved several Bear bombers to Anadyr air base, in far northeastern Siberia near the Bering Sea, and three Bear bombers were sent to Tiksi air base, in north-central Siberia on the Laptev Sea, Bacon said.

Bear bombers are propeller-driven, long-range aircraft capable of launching nuclear weapons.

``We would anticipate that in the next few days they might fly one or several of these planes up through the Bering Straits and close to Alaska,'' Bacon said. ``We are well-trained, and we're ready to deal with these episodes.''

The last time the Russians deployed bombers over the Bering Sea was March 5-6, the spokesman said.

Bacon's comments appeared designed to pre-empt a Russian claim to have penetrated U.S. air defenses off Alaska. The Russians twice this fall flew warplanes near the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan and afterward released photographs showing they had approached the carrier.

The earlier episodes showed the Russians are ``perhaps lodged deeply in Cold War thinking,'' Bacon said. He dismissed suggestions that, in allowing the Russian planes to approach the Kitty Hawk, the Navy had let down its guard.

``These planes were acquired by the battle group's radar at some distance off; they were followed,'' Bacon said. In the October incident, there was a delay in launching interceptor aircraft from the Kitty Hawk because the carrier was refueling and lacked the wind speed to get planes airborne, he said.

``If the Navy had felt there was an emergency under way, they could have broken off the refueling, accelerated the carrier and launched the planes,'' Bacon said. ``I think the fact is, there was nothing about either of these incidents that led the Navy to believe that anything out of the ordinary was happening, that they were under any particular threat or that they needed an extraordinary response.''

---

Russia's Kursk Probe Mired While Salvage Plan Forms

Reuters
November 30, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - An international team will in December hand the Kremlin an $80 million plan to raise the Kursk next summer, but Russia was still in the dark over the cause of its worst submarine disaster, a top official said on Thursday.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said three theories were still being considered to explain the fate of the nuclear-powered vessel, which plunged to the bottom of Barents Sea in August, killing all 118 sailors on board.

``There are two projects at the final stage of consideration by the consortium,'' Klebanov said of plans to raise the submarine. ``I think by the end of December we will have final confirmation of the project.''

The Dutch government has given 500,000 guilders ($190,000) to fund a consortium's technical feasibility study, which is being coordinated by the Kursk Foundation -- a group of donors pledging to help finance the operation.

Rio Praaning, the foundation's secretary general, said one plan was to hoist the Kursk in two parts: the mangled and torpedo-packed bow separately from the less damaged stern.

Klebanov said foreign governments and companies would be asked to split the cost of the operation with Russia. He said it would not exceed $80 million.

The Kremlin has said experts are still considering as causes of the disaster an accident in the torpedo bay, a collision with a World War Two-era mine or a crash with a foreign submarine.

Top naval officers favor the theory of the foreign submarine. NATO nations deny their subs were in the area.

``We have got quite detailed confirmation of the consequences after the start of the accident...each of the theories is explained in some detail,'' Klebanov said. ``But unfortunately there are three theories, not one. For now.''

SWIRLING RUMORS, NO RADIATION

Klebanov quashed the latest rumor to swirl through Russia's press about what caused two explosions aboard the vessel.

Thursday's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper quoted an ``expert'' saying a fuel leak from a torpedo triggered an explosive chain reaction which ripped a hole in the craft's bow.

``I want to tell you again that there is a government commission which I lead and until you hear its final decision I cannot call these theories but conjecture,'' Klebanov said.

Russian divers and colleagues from the Norwegian arm of U.S. oil firm Halliburton cut into the sub in October and brought up 12 bodies from the wreck, which lies in more than 100 meters (330 feet) of stormy Arctic waters.

Klebanov said Halliburton, Dutch firms Smit International and Heerema and Kursk's Russian designers the Rubin bureau were part of the consortium conducting the salvage feasibility study.

He said Russia was determined to raise the craft despite no signs of a radiation risk so far.

``Independent scientists have said...over the next 10 years it will be no threat,'' he said.

``But we should raise the submarine because we think the atomic reactors should not lie at that depth in middle of the Barents Sea...it would be a constant source of international tension: ecological, political, all kinds.''

Praaming said the project was driven not only by ecological concerns but the opportunity for old rivals to work together.

``We think this is an international problem and so it should be solved with international cooperation...Now it's up to the international community to think how to take its fair share.''

He said former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher was joining the foundation, which is chaired by two former Dutch and Russian ministers.

---

Sunken Russian Sub To Be Raised

Associated Press
November 30, 2000 Filed at 11:40 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Kursk.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk will be raised from the Barents Sea next summer to lessen concerns over a possible mishap from its two reactors, officials said Thursday.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who heads a government commission on the Kursk tragedy, said the reactors pose no immediate danger and will remain safe for at least 10 years.

``But we need to raise the submarine, because nuclear reactors lying on the seabed ... in a busy fishing area, would be a constant source of international tension,'' he said at a news conference. ``Despite all our assurances that the reactors are safe and nothing will happen to them, many people wouldn't trust us.''

The Russian Navy has said that the Kursk reactors were automatically shut down when the vessel exploded and sank Aug. 12. No radiation leak has been registered.

Klebanov spoke after meeting with Rio Praaning, secretary general of the Kursk Foundation, an international fund-raising organization based in the Netherlands. Klebanov said the resources raised by the foundation would be spent to pay for the services of foreign participants in the approximately $80 million project to raise the vessel.

Praaning said that the Norwegian arm of Halliburton, a Dallas-based oil-services company that organized a previous salvage mission to the Kursk, was taking part in a feasibility study for the project.

The Russian government paid $6 million to Halliburton for the 18-day salvage mission that ended in early November, Klebanov said. The Russian and Norwegian divers, who entered the Kursk, recovered the bodies of only 12 of the Kursk's 118 crewmen from a maze of mangled steel.

Klebanov's commission has failed to determine the cause of the disaster, saying it was a collision with a foreign submarine or a World War II mine, or an internal malfunction in the Kursk's forward torpedo room.

Praaning indicated that the Kursk's forward compartment, which was demolished by the powerful explosions, could be left on the seabed about 350 feet deep. Klebanov tacitly acknowledged that point, saying that the primary goal for the next salvage effort will be to raise the reactors.

Environmental groups and other critics say lifting the ship would be too dangerous because of the submarine's two nuclear reactors, torpedoes and other munitions.

Both Klebanov and Praaning played down those fears. They refused to discuss technical details, saying the feasibility study would take care of all those concerns.

The salvage mission would also be very expensive, and it remains unclear whether the badly damaged 14,000-ton vessel could withstand the pressures of being raised, or if it would break into pieces during the operation.

---

Officials to raise Kursk from sea

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 05:59 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm

MOSCOW - The sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk will be raised from the Barents Sea next summer to lessen concerns over a possible mishap from its two reactors, officials said Thursday. An official said the reactors pose no immediate danger and will remain safe for at least 10 years. The Russian Navy has said that the Kursk reactors were automatically shut down when the vessel exploded and sank Aug. 12. No radiation leak has been registered.

-------- ukraine

Nuclear Fuel Fragment Found Leaking

Associated Press
November 30, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant found a highly radioactive fuel fragment atop the sarcophagus that covers a reactor ruined in the world's worst nuclear accident, officials said Thursday.

The 8-inch fragment, found last week, emits radiation of some 200 Roentgen an hour at close range, which is thousands of times higher than normal background radiation.

The fuel piece could have been blown onto the roof through a ventilation shaft located between the ruined reactor No. 4 and Chernobyl's only working reactor, No. 3, said Svetlana Linkevych, a spokeswoman for sarcophagus workers.

Experts are now determining how the fuel got onto the sarcophagus roof and how to remove it safely, she said.

The sarcophagus was hastily constructed to cover the reactor that exploded and caught fire in April, 26, 1986, spewing a radioactive cloud over parts of Europe.

With the help of foreign aid, Ukraine is trying to make the leaky structure environmentally safe. It is believed to contain tons of radioactive fuel and dust.

Some 180 tons of nuclear fuel were located in the reactor at the moment of its explosion, and scientists have accounted for only 140 tons of it.

Ukraine has promised to close down the plant on Dec. 15 following pressure from Western nations, domestic and foreign environmental groups and ordinary Ukrainians concerned about the site's safety.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Nuclear security lapse found
Classified material mailed to unauthorized addresses

Pioneer Planet
Thursday, November 30, 2000
DAVID PACE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/4/news/docs/038633.htm

WASHINGTON Already shaken by security lapses, the Energy Department is now acknowledging that 15 percent of classified documents mailed from three government nuclear laboratories last year went to addresses not approved to receive such material.

Department officials insist the errant mailings, disclosed in a new report from the agency's inspector general, did not compromise security and that the problem has been fixed.

But that assessment was challenged Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.

``They don't know that,'' said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. ``You can rationalize, justify just about anything, but at the end of the day, you don't know what might have been lost. You have to fear the worst in a situation like that.''

The Energy Department keeps a computer database of addresses that are eligible to receive classified data. Anyone mailing classified data is supposed to check this list to ensure the address is approved.

The report said the mailings to unauthorized addresses were discovered in May, shortly after two computer disks containing nuclear secrets disappeared from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The disks reappeared three months later behind a copying machine at the lab.

Department security officials alerted by the agency's inspector general acknowledged that the mailings violated department policy but concluded that no classified information was compromised. They blamed contractors who did not have access to the list of approved addresses.

But Inspector General Gregory Friedman disagreed. In his report to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, he blamed a ``breakdown in the execution of internal controls designed to prevent transmittal of classified documents to inappropriate recipients.''

Richardson did not respond to a request for comment. However, Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier already has taken steps to crack down on contractors who mishandle classified materials.

In a Nov. 14 memo to Friedman, Glauthier said the department is developing new rules under which contractors could lose some contract payments and be fined up to $100,000 if they fail to protect classified information. He said the new rules will be announced by May 31.

The investigation examined 177 mailings of classified documents last year from the Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.

Investigators found that 27 of the mailings, or about 15 percent of those reviewed, were sent to other federal agencies or federal contractors that were not in the database of approved addresses.

Shelby has been an outspoken critic of security lapses at Energy Department labs. Last year, Los Alamos fired scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was later indicted on charges of improperly transferring nuclear secrets to portable computer tapes.

---

Classified nuclear documents mailed

Evansville Courier & Press
11/30/00
WASHINGTON By DAVID PACE Associated Press writer
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200011/30+nuclear113000_news.html+20001130

Already shaken by security lapses, the Energy Department is now acknowledging that 15 percent of classified documents mailed from three government nuclear laboratories last year went to addresses not approved to receive such material.

Department officials insist the errant mailings, disclosed in a new report from the agency's inspector general, did not compromise security and that the problem has been fixed.

But that assessment was challenged Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.

"They don't know that," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. "You can rationalize, justify just about anything, but at the end of the day, you don't know what might have been lost. You have to fear the worst in a situation like that."

The Energy Department keeps a computer database of addresses that are eligible to receive classified data. Anyone mailing classified data is supposed to check this list to ensure the address is approved.

The report said the mailings to unauthorized addresses were discovered in May, shortly after two computer disks containing nuclear secrets disappeared from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The disks reappeared three months later behind a copying machine at the lab.

Department security officials alerted by the agency's inspector general acknowledged that the mailings violated department policy but concluded that no classified information was compromised. They blamed contractors who did not have access to the list of approved addresses.

---

Canberra Sold to French Company

Associated Press
November 30, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Canberra-Cogema.html

MERIDEN, Conn. (AP) -- Canberra Industries, which makes equipment to detect and monitor radioactivity, has been sold to a French nuclear industry company for $170 million.

Canberra's parent company, Packard BioScience Co., said Wednesday it will use the proceeds to develop biotechnology products and services.

The buyer, Cogema Group, is owned in part by the French government. Cogema owns uranium mines, provides uranium enrichment and recycles spent nuclear fuel rods. The company also designs and decommissions nuclear power plants and research laboratories.

The company has no plans to move Canberra from its Meriden headquarters or reduce the work force, said Christian Petit, president and chief operating officer of Cogema's nuclear measurement unit. About 350 Canberra employees work in Meriden.

Petit will head the new unit created by the Canberra acquisition. Canberra president George Serrano will report to Petit.

Canberra has worked on the decommissioning of the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment facility in Tennessee and the cleanup of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado.

-------- georgia

USA Today
11/30/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Georgia

Atlanta - A plan to release water from three reservoirs into the Chattahoochee River to float a barge carrying three 360-ton steam generators has alarmed water officials upstream. Billions of gallons from the reservoirs would be required to float the barge from Apalachicola, Fla., to a nuclear plant near Dothan, Ala. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must decide whether to rely on predictions of winter rains to refill the reservoirs. The water officials say it's dangerous for a river system in a drought.

-------- new mexico

FBI Combs Dump For Los Alamos Tapes

Associated Press
November 30, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scientist-Secrets.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Scientist Wen Ho Lee says he discarded 17 computer tapes full of nuclear weapons data at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a source familiar with the case.

FBI agents are combing the muddy, snowy Los Alamos County landfill where lab trash is buried, saying the search could last weeks.

Agents won't confirm they're looking for the discarded tapes in the landfill, but if the pocket-sized computer cartridges Lee downloaded in the lab's top-secret X Division were thrown into the trash, the 50-acre dump is a likely place where they ended up.

Agents have said for months that they want to find the tapes Lee swore he destroyed.

A source familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Lee said he disposed of the tapes in a Dumpster inside the X Division fence in January 1999.

Lee has been undergoing closed debriefings in which he promised, as a condition of a plea agreement that won his release in September, to tell agents what happened to the tapes. The source would provide no details of Lee's disclosures.

The landfill search began while the debriefings were under way. An amended plea agreement filed in early November extends the debriefing period into mid-December.

The disposal of the tape cartridges happened just days after Lee's security clearance was revoked, according to a timetable provided last summer by federal prosecutors. They said Lee repeatedly sought access to the division after his access card was deactivated and that he gained access three times, including once in January 1999 when a fellow lab employee let him in.

Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis, who prosecuted Lee, declined to comment.

Stacy Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Lee family, has declined to comment on the landfill search.

The San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday that Lee told agents in secret debriefing sessions that he tossed the tapes into the trash in January 1999 and that they never otherwise left the lab. The newspaper did not elaborate on its sources.

Lee lost his security clearance in December 1998. Prosecutors have alleged he sought access to the X Division 16 times between Dec. 23, 1998, and Feb. 23, 1999 -- including 3:31 a.m. Christmas Eve 1998.

FBI agent Doug Beldon said ``numerous'' agents and evidence technicians expect to rake through piles of dirt and trash at the landfill daily ``for quite some time.''

The search team wears white protective clothing. The workers use bulldozers to move mounds of garbage and hand rakes to comb the debris.

Lee, jailed without bail Dec. 10, 1999, was freed Sept. 13 after pleading guilty to one count of downloading restricted data to tape. Fifty-eight counts were dropped.

Lee has sworn he never passed any secrets to any unauthorized person, and the government never charged him with espionage.

The FBI initially said it was looking for seven tape cartridges and had already found three others.

At the time of his release, Lee told investigators he also made copies of those 10 tapes but had destroyed the copies as well, FBI and Justice Department officials have said.

If anyone found the tape cartridges -- and if restricted nuclear weapons data were still encoded on them -- there are several computer companies that might be able to recover such data.

---

Lab workers split $131 million jackpot

USA Today
11/30/00
http://usatoday.com/news/ndsthu07.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Laboratory-Lottery.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Fourteen workers at the Sandia nuclear weapons lab will see their bank accounts mushroom: They won a $131 million lottery jackpot.

Duane Carr, one of the people who pitched in $10 each for the Powerball tickets, was skeptical when one of the others called to drop the bombshell that they had won.

''I was like, 'Oh, yeah, right,''' he said. ''I didn't want to get too overexcited until I went over to his house and confirmed the numbers for myself. Then the champagne started popping.''

All of the employees work in security for the government's Sandia National Laboratories.

They were so excited that they arrived at the lottery office before lottery workers showed up for work Thursday morning.

The winners can choose a pretax lump sum of $70.3 million or take the $131 million prize in 25 annual installments.

For now, Carr has no plans for the cash. ''As soon as I get the money in hand, then I'll start thinking about it,'' he said.

Twenty 20 states and Washington, D.C., participate in Powerball.

-------- washington

Hanford could start moving spent nuclear fuel next week

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Thursday, November 30, 2000
By LINDA ASHTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/hanf30ww.shtml

YAKIMA -- Contractors at Hanford nuclear reservation expect to start removing spent nuclear fuel from the leaky K Basins, just 400 yards from the Columbia River, next week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday.

"It's a top priority because it's so close to the river and also a priority because the basins are very old, essentially past their useable life," said Doug Sherwood, Hanford project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Also, "roughly a third of the radioactivity at Hanford is in those basins," he said.

The K Basins are two decaying indoor pools filled with 2,300 tons of corroded, irradiated fuel.

The Energy Department was doing a final readiness review for the K Basins project on Thursday. Once it's complete, contractor Fluor Hanford will make any changes needed, and the goal is to start moving the fuel by the middle of next week, said Erik Olds, a DOE spokesman in Richland.

Under the Tri-Party Agreement, a legal document setting deadlines for cleanup work at Hanford, the transfer of the spent fuel was supposed to begin by Thursday.

Sherwood said he's not bothered by the minimal delay.

"From my perspective, it's really more important for this project to get off the ground and start moving, and continue to move, fuel until they get the job done," Sherwood said.

Olds said crews have been working 24 hours a day, including through the Thanksgiving weekend, to prepare to start moving fuel.

The effort expended to get the project going timely was recognized by the EPA, Sherwood said.

"They don't need a slap in the face from a regulator today," he said.

The legal deadline to finish moving the fuel is July 31, 2004.

"With the installation and testing of a state-of-the-art fuel moving system, we are soundly positioned to embark on a process that will see 2,100 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel moved safely away from the Columbia River," said Keith Klein, DOE's Hanford manager.

Olds said six baskets of fuel are loaded and sitting under water ready to go. The canisters will be moved to a vacuum drying facility, where moisture is removed and replaced with inert helium gas.

Then the containers will be moved to the canister storage building in the 200 West Area, in the central part of the 560-square-mile reservation.

The fuel would be stored at Hanford until a national repository site is built, possibly at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The spent fuel canisters represent about 80 percent of the nation's inventory of irradiated nuclear fuel left over from Cold War weapons production.

Last year, DOE fined Fluor $330,000 for work quality problems on the project, but the required improvements were made to the government's satisfaction by December 1999.

-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Another Bump in a Rocky Road for Colombia and Venezuela

New York Times
November 30, 2000
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/world/30VENE.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Nov. 29 - When Venezuela played host to a group of Colombian rebels last week, the overture touched off a nasty dispute between the two countries. But today they said their leaders would meet on Friday at the inauguration of Mexico's new president, and try to resolve the matter.

A Colombian official, calling the dispute the most serious between the countries in years, said the presidents, Andrés Pastrana of Colombia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, "are going to see each other in Mexico, and obviously they'll touch on this."

The official said the two might not be able to resolve the dispute, but could at least decide when and where to hold further discussions.

In Caracas, José Vicente Rangel, the Venezuelan foreign minister, told reporters that he was confident that the two men would settle the matter.

On Monday, Venezuela recalled its ambassador to Colombia for consultations, just three days after Colombia announced that it was temporarily recalling its ambassador.

Colombia's relations with Venezuela have often been rocky, with frequent disputes pertaining to their long, isolated and porous border. But this year, with Colombia trying to force the start of peace talks in the face of worsening violence by the rebels and other insurgent groups, Bogotá has been particularly sensitive to what it sees as foreign intervention.

President Chávez, a populist who is critical of United States influence in Latin America, has antagonized Colombia by criticizing President Pastrana's multibillion-dollar, American-supported plan to curtail coca production and guerrilla influence.

There have been persistent reports in the Colombian press that Mr. Chávez has established a working relationship with the rebels. And Colombia has complained of incursions by Venezuelan armed forces into Colombian land and airspace.

But for the Pastrana administration, the final insult came last Wednesday when Olga Marín - daughter of Manuel Marulanda, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC - attended, along with another rebel leader, the Latin American Parliament being held in Venezuela's legislative chamber. It was not a session of the Venezuelan assembly, but Colombian officials said Venezuelan lawmakers had organized the forum.

Ms. Marin, wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap both marked "FARC," attacked the program aimed at reducing coca cultivation as a creation of Washington's policy makers.

Colombian officials said they were angry at not being informed about the FARC's attendance at the forum until the day before Ms. Marin spoke. "It's an aggressive act, a meddling in our internal affairs," said Senator Miguel Pinedo.

Mr. Chávez threw one last punch, holding the "Colombian oligarchy" responsible for the nation's chaos.


-------- drug war

Dealers Use Silenced Pit Bulls to Guard Drugs

jointogether.org
11/30/00
http://www.jointogether.org/sa/default.jtml?O=265235

Drug dealers are having the vocal cords of attack dogs cut or cauterized so they can sneak up on police approaching stash houses, the APB News reported Nov. 22.

"You don't know the dog's there until he's in front of you," said Doug Allen, a detective with the Toledo, Ohio, Police Department's gang task force.

A state law banning surgical "debarking" of any dog considered to be vicious took effect last month. Under the measure, dog owners of any silenced dog must report the surgery to the police.

Michael Walters, a spokesman for the American Veterinary Medical Association, said pit bulls are being used by drug dealers because they are so easily trainable.

Investigators said reports of debarked dogs have been coming in from other parts of the country, as well.

-------- india/pakistan

The Fight in Kashmir

New York Times
November 30, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/opinion/L30KAS.html

To the Editor:
Re "A Path to Peace in Kashmir" (editorial, Nov. 24):

I am afraid you are being unduly optimistic. There can be no peace in Kashmir unless India is prepared to let the people of Kashmir decide their own future. As there is not the slightest evidence that India is willing to concede this democratic right, the Kashmiri people have no option but to continue their struggle.

ASAF ALI SHAH Lahore, Pakistan, Nov. 25, 2000

-------- space

Astronauts Board Endeavour as NASA Prepares for Launch

New York Times
November 30, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Space-Shuttle.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Five astronauts boarded space shuttle Endeavour on Thursday for a late-night launch on a mission to deliver giant solar panels to the International Space Station.

Perfect weather was forecast for the 10:06 p.m. liftoff.

NASA had to put out a small grass fire near the launch pad and remove a loose bracket before commander Brent Jett Jr. and his crew could climb aboard Endeavour.

Launch managers dispatched a fire truck to the pad as soon as the fire broke out Thursday evening. It was extinguished within a few minutes.

Earlier in the day, NASA delayed fueling Endeavour by two hours so technicians could remove a bracket that was dangling from the pad. NASA feared the metal bracket could break off and strike Endeavour's wing at liftoff.

The bracket is supposed to hold up a water pipe on the outside of the walkway room used by astronauts to board the shuttle. It was seen dangling during a routine inspection, said NASA spokesman George Diller. Another loose bracket nearby was replaced.

During the last shuttle countdown, in October, a 4-inch pin was left on Discovery's external fuel tank and delayed the flight by one day. To avoid another embarrassing last-minute discovery this time, NASA had technicians check the pad more thoroughly for tools and other stray objects.

NASA had only about 2 1/2 hours to remove the bracket and still have enough time to fuel the shuttle and make the liftoff. The launch window lasts only a few minutes in order for Endeavour to use the least amount of fuel to reach the International Space Station, Alpha.

The world's largest, most powerful set of spacecraft solar wings are packed aboard Endeavour. The shuttle astronauts will attach the wings to the space station; once unfurled, the panels will stretch 240 feet from tip to tip and 38 feet across, constituting the largest structure ever deployed in space.

The electricity-producing solar wings will provide the power necessary to open up the entire station and to run the U.S.-made laboratory section when it arrives in January. Alpha's three residents have been confined to two of the station's three rooms because of insufficient power for heating.

Station commander Bill Shepherd and his Russian crew have been living on Alpha for the past month. The Endeavour astronauts will be their first visitors.

The shuttle astronauts are taking up Christmas presents for Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev from their families, as well as fresh fruit and hot sauce -- an order put in by Shepherd.

Shepherd and his crew are not due back on Earth until February. The shuttle astronauts will be away 11 days.

---

Shuttle to Lift Off on Mission to Space Station

New York Times
November 30, 2000
By WARREN E. LEARY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/science/30SHUT.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The space shuttle Endeavour is to lift off Thursday night on a mission to add powerful new solar-power wings to the International Space Station.

The five-man shuttle crew will be the first visitors to the three astronauts who established long-term residence at the station almost a month ago.

The space shuttle is scheduled to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:06 p.m. Eastern time. Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said no major technical issues stood in the way of the flight and weather forecasters predicted a 90 percent chance of acceptable weather at launching time.

In the cargo bay is the largest, most complex payload ever hauled by a shuttle to the growing space station. It includes a 17-ton package of expandable metal girders, batteries, electronics, cooling equipment and solar panels that are to supply the power necessary for future growth of the station.

If the solar arrays either cannot be attached or fail to work, space agency officials said all expansion of the station would cease until the power problem was rectified.

The International Space Station, a $60 billion project sponsored by 16 nations led by the United States and Russia, now consists of a 143-foot stack of three modules and appendages weighing 162,000 pounds. When completed in 2006, it will cover an area larger than a football field, and weigh one million pounds.

The new solar assembly, which will expand into a pair of wings stretching 240 feet, will increase by five times the amount of electrical power available to the energy- starved station.

Solar cells now on the station produce only enough electricity to operate critical equipment aboard the Russian-made Zvezda service module, the crew's living and command unit, and the Zarya cargo module. The third main section, the American-made Unity connecting section, or node, remains largely dormant while awaiting more power.

Robert Cabana, a civilian astronaut who manages missions to the station, says the $600 million solar power assembly will be the largest rigid structure ever assembled in space, stretching further than the wingspan of a Boeing 747 airliner. "They'll provide enough electricity, if they were down here on earth, to power 30 homes," Mr. Cabana said.

A three-person crew has been aboard the station since Nov. 2, when it began a four-month tour in what is to be a permanent occupancy of the research outpost. The commander, Capt. William M. Shepherd of the United States Navy, and two Russian counterparts, Lt. Col. Yuri P. Gidzenko of the Russian Air Force and Sergei K. Krikalev, a veteran civilian astronaut, have been setting up systems to make the station habitable.

The Endeavour crew, commanded by Cmdr. Brent W. Jett of the Navy, begins its tiring and potentially hazardous construction job shortly after arrival. Joseph R. Tanner, a civilian astronaut, and Lt. Col. Carlos I. Noriega of the Marines will conduct spacewalks to assemble the platform.

Dr. Marc Garneau of the Canadian Space Agency will operate the shuttle's Canadian-built, 50-foot robot arm in lifting and installing the entire assembly. The mission's pilot is Lt. Col. Michael J. Bloomfield of the Air Force.

For the first time, the spacewalking astronauts will be equipped with three, lipstick-sized cameras on their helmets. With this equipment, astronauts in the docked spacecraft, controllers on the ground and people viewing the operations on NASA television or on the Internet will be able to view what the astronauts see while working in space.

After erecting the tower structure and supporting equipment, the astronauts will return to the shuttle airlock when the pair of blue-and-gold solar panels unreel from their carriers like window shades. If their is a deployment problem, the spacewalkers will be prepared to use special power tools to help extend the wings.

The shuttle astronauts are taking special precautions because the solar arrays, the biggest ever unfurled in space, have a theoretical chance of causing a dangerous electrical arc between themselves and the station. Because the arrays generate about 200 volts of unregulated direct current, there is a potential danger of electrocution for spacewalking astronauts from unwanted electrical discharges, said Jeff Hanley, the NASA space station flight director.

Although the question has been studied extensively, he said, the lack of data concerning arrays this size makes it hard to determine the level of hazard.

-------- u.n.

U.N. Agency Seeks N.Korean Food

Associated Press
November 30, 2000 Filed at 5:57 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-North-Korea-Food.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.N. World Food Program is seeking more than 800,000 tons of food to feed 8 million North Koreans and compensate for crop shortfalls caused by droughts and typhoons, the organization said Thursday.

A crop and food assessment by the WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization found that North Korea's rice production was down 31 percent this year and that corn output fell 235,000 tons from 1999.

``The country will need to import 1.87 million tons of cereal between November 2000 and October 2001 to cover the gap between what it has and what it needs to feed its 22 million people,'' according to a WFP update of the situation in North Korea.

Other U.N. agencies issued a simultaneous worldwide appeal for $68 million in nonemergency aid for North Korea projects in such areas as water purification and health.

The ``cycle of severe hunger'' will continue in North Korea unless problems such as water contamination are dealt with, said Abigail Spring, a WFP spokeswoman. A majority of North Koreans drink fouled water, she said.

The United States has been by far the most generous contributor to WFP appeals to help North Korea, providing 67 percent of the total in response to a series of requests since 1995, Spring said. Another major contributor is South Korea.

A State Department official said the United States is aware of the new WFP request and is studying it.

The Clinton administration says its donations to North Korea over the years answered WFP requests and were unrelated to political considerations.

In general, however, the United States has responded more quickly and more generously to WFP appeals for North Korea than it has for other countries, reflecting the importance the administration attaches to improving relations with Pyongyang.

Andrew Natsios, a Bush administration disaster relief official who has studied North Korea's food problems, said the Clinton administration withheld food aid during 1996-97 for political reasons.

During that period, 2.5 million North Koreans died of starvation, said Natsios. He described as ``total nonsense'' administration claims that food disbursements were not linked to political goals.

Since 1995, the United States has provided 1.2 million metric tons of food worth $425 million to North Korea.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea in October in an attempt to obtain curbs on its missile program. President Clinton has said he may go there before leaving office.

To ensure the food reaches its intended recipients, the WFP has 43 officials monitoring food distribution in 161 counties, Spring said. The North has declared 50 counties off limits for security reasons, she said.

WFP access to the interior of the country has increased sharply in recent years. The less restrictive environment was reflected in recent days with the visit of Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, who traveled to the eastern industrial town of Chongjin as well as rural areas hard hit by years of bad weather and economic mismanagement.

Famine prevailed in much of North Korea in the mid-1990s, and drought has returned this year after good growing seasons in 1998-1999.

Hall reported that he found severe shortages of food and power in the hard-hit rural areas. ``You need to travel outside the capital and into the countryside, and you'll discover that things are very bleak and very cold,'' Hall said.

The most recent WFP appeal for North Korea was in July 1999, when it sought donations to feed 8 million people. About 5.5 million tons were targeted for children under 18.

In 1998, a number of international agencies collaborated on a nutritional survey in North Korea. It found that 78 percent of the population suffered from acute or chronic malnutrition.

-------- u.s.

U.S. and Yemen Agree on Rules for Investigating Cole Bombing

New York Times
November 30, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/world/30YEME.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The United States said today that it had signed an agreement with Yemen on how to proceed with the investigation into the bombing of the destroyer Cole after American demands for more access.

Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said at a news conference that the agreement "meets the need of both sides in terms of being able to conduct their investigations in a manner that is consistent with their legal principles." He said the agreement, signed in Aden, Yemen, this morning by the United States ambassador, Barbara K. Bodine, and a Yemeni Interior Ministry official, "lays out ways for proceeding, access to information and evidence and potential witnesses."

He would not give further details or say whether the Yemenis were now allowing American investigators to attend interviews with suspects, as they had requested.

But a Federal Bureau of Investigation official, without giving details, said F.B.I. agents in Yemen do get access to interviews and have a chance to ask follow-up questions, though not directly.

[A Yemeni security official, speaking in Sana, the capital, said on Thursday that under the agreement, "the American investigators will be allowed to attend the questioning and if they want to question suspects or witnesses they will write their questions on a paper and hand it over to Yemeni investigators who will directly ask the suspects."

[The official said American investigators will "be given more chances to take part in the investigation and related measures, though indirectly." He did not elaborate.]

The F.B.I. official said the agreement made formal what has been happening for some time.

Mr. Boucher and other spokesmen have repeatedly praised cooperation by Yemen in public, although there have been signs of impatience in Washington. The bombing of the Cole on Oct. 12, which killed 17 sailors, was followed by weeks of confrontations between senior officials of the two governments over Yemeni limits on F.B.I. investigators.

---

Explosion at U.S. base injures 3 Marines

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 03:45 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu02.htm

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Three U.S. Marines injured in an explosion were in stable condition Thursday after receiving treatment in Bosnia and Germany, officials said.

Capt. Kelvin Dudenhoeffer, 41, Chief Warrant Officer Robert Hayworth, 41, and Gunnery Sgt. Richard O'Connell, 38, were injured Tuesday at U.S. Camp Bedrock near the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla, the Army headquarters said in a statement.

The men are part of the Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team.

Hayworth and O'Connell were taken to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, said Marie Shaw, a hospital spokeswoman. She said they were based in Beaufort, S.C.

Both are in stable condition, the Army statement said.

Dudenhoeffer is also in stable condition and remains at the Task Force Med Eagle Hospital, Eagle Base, in Bosnia. His hometown was not known.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Oil Spill Closes 26 Miles of Mississippi River

Associated Press
November 30, 2000
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/national/30NATI.html

PORT SULPHUR, La., Nov. 29 - A tanker spilled a half-million gallons of crude oil into the Mississippi River, closing a busy shipping route and threatening wildlife.

No injuries were reported, but some pelicans and other animals were found covered with oil, said Roland Guidry, a state oil spill response coordinator.

The 800-foot tanker, the Westchester, lost power on Tuesday evening and apparently ran aground about 60 miles south of New Orleans.

The river was closed to traffic from the accident site to near the mouth of the river as contractors cleaned up the spill.

---

WHITE PLAINS: FOUL WATER DISCHARGE

New York Times
November 30, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/nyregion/30MBRF.html

NEW YORK

About 13,000 gallons of wastewater containing trace amounts of lead, mercury and other contaminants spilled into the Bronx River last week during a cleanup project at the Kensico Reservoir. New York City officials have said there was no threat to public health. A contractor opened the wrong manhole, and the wastewater was eventually sent into a tributary of the river. City and state officials are to meet today to discuss the spill. Winnie Hu (NYT)

NEW JERSEY

NEWARK: PASSAIC RIVER STUDY

Federal officials yesterday announced a $100,000 preliminary study of how to clean up the polluted Passaic River and restore its commercial and recreational viability. The study, to be conducted by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, will collect data from environmental reports, flood control plans and other sources. The study will cover 17 miles of the Passaic snaking through densely populated and industrialized areas of Essex, Hudson, Bergen and Passaic Counties.

TRENTON: WATER-POLLUTION PLAN

State Senate President Donald T. DiFrancesco announced a $50 million plan to protect the state's drinking water yesterday. Mr. DiFrancesco plans to run for governor next year. His proposal would repair abandoned municipal landfills, reduce agricultural runoff and other pesticide pollution, and help reduce levels of the chemical contaminant MBTE. He also proposed nearly tripling the Department of Environmental Protection's chemical monitoring stations to 300 from 115, requiring testing of private wells and establishing a drought-monitoring system. (NYT)

---

Better Light Bulbs, and Other Bright Ideas

New York Times
November 30, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/opinion/L30WAR.html

To the Editor:

Re "Treaty Talks Fail to Find Consensus in Global Warming" (front page, Nov. 26):

The United States could go a long way toward meeting emission standards set down by the Kyoto Protocol, agreed to in 1997, if those 90 percent of Americans voicing concern for the planet would follow two basic prescriptions for environmental responsibility:

One, increase home energy efficiency by using simple household innovations like compact fluorescent light bulbs, upgraded insulation and energy-saving shower heads. (Homeowners could see a multi-ton reduction in the carbon dioxide emissions they cause each year and in the process save hundreds of dollars in yearly energy costs.)

Two, earmark the savings for earth-friendly goods and services available in stores and online, thereby encouraging a shift to a more sustainable marketplace.

DAVID WEAST Madison, Wis., Nov. 27, 2000

---

USA Today
11/30/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arizona

Phoenix - Conservationists are urging Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to protect 480,000 acres of the Sonoran Desert as a national monument. Babbitt will tour the site, which includes a mix of ridges, peaks and grasslands. The area reaches from the Maricopa Mountains south of Buckeye to the Sand Tank Mountains southwest of Gila Bend.

Kansas

Garden City - The city would need to spend $2.2 million to upgrade its aging municipal swimming pool to fix environmental and safety problems, a consulting firm says. The study recommended replacing the pool's structural shell, filtration system and bathhouse and improving the deck and equipment. The pool, built in 1922, is the size of a football field. It's called the largest free swimming pool in the world.

North Carolina

Boiling Spring Lakes - Endangered and rare plants and animals will be preserved on 5,400 acres in this Brunswick County town. The preserve is one of the world's six remaining principal habitats for Venus' flytraps and home to 38 other rare and endangered plants and animals. The state Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services acquired the land from Reeves Telecom, the town's developer.

-------- police

Troopers' Union Defends Stops Linked to Profiling

New York Times
November 30, 2000
By IVER PETERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/nyregion/30TROO.html

TRENTON, Nov. 29 - The president of the New Jersey troopers' union defended today the aggressive drug-interdiction stops the state police started making more than a decade ago - even if, he said, race was sometimes one reason a trooper made a stop.

"We were never taught racial profiling, we were taught criminal profiling," said Ed Lennon, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association. "And to the extent race entered into it, it did."

For example, he said, "in the case of Jamaican posses, they were from Jamaica and they happened to be black. That didn't mean we should stop every black driver on the road, but if you encountered some that fit a criminal profile, that could indicate they may be a posse and may be transporting or dealing in marijuana."

He said that when the drug-interdiction efforts began about 10 years ago, troopers received commendations from their superiors and glowing news coverage for drug seizures they made on Interstate 95, just north of the Delaware Bay Bridge and just south of where the interstate leads into the New Jersey Turnpike.

Mr. Lennon's comments, coming two days after a massive release of documents that brought new visibility and withering criticism of New Jersey's history of racial profiling, elicited a mixed response. William Buckman, a defense lawyer whose curiosity about the high number of blacks being arrested on the turnpike in Gloucester County led to the first successful use of a claim of racial profiling to suppress evidence found during a traffic stop, said Mr. Lennon's remarks showed the state police were still defending racial profiling. But he also said it reflected the way rank-and-file troopers were following policies dictated from the top of the department.

"I agree with Mr. Lennon that they were given the green light and told to do this from the hierarchy, from their training," Mr. Buckman said. "It is still absolutely outrageous," Mr. Buckman went on, "but I absolutely agree that they were being rewarded for it and that was the way for a trooper to advance."

Mr. Lennon insisted today that race was never the only reason for a stop, and he said he was describing the early days of the antidrug campaign, when zero tolerance for drugs was the watchword from the attorney general's office and newsworthy arrests brought letters of commendation from the police superintendent.

But critics of the police say his description of police training and practice at the time confirms what state officials have only lately admitted - that racial profiling was widespread.

"That's why I've always said that the hardest part of this effort against racial profiling is still in front of us," said the Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey. "Despite the state's admission of discrimination, no one in leadership at the state police has publicly admitted that what they did was wrong. The culture of the place doesn't allow them to see it. The troopers are just waiting to go back to business as usual."

Assemblyman LeRoy J. Jones Jr., a member of the New Jersey Legislative Black and Latino Caucus, echoed that view. "I think those comments capture the discriminatory process of the state police," Mr. Jones said, "and they continue to show insensitivity toward the healing process that obviously should occur."

Mr. Lennon said the aggressive traffic stops began at the southern end of the New Jersey Turnpike and were picked up by troopers elsewhere when news reports of major drug hauls on the turnpike spread.

"A lot of the troopers down there received trooper-of-the-year awards for doing that job," Mr. Lennon said. "They got special assignments and promotions, and when other troopers saw what they were doing, they said, `We're going to go out and get those drugs off the turnpike.' "

Mr. Buckman was a public defender in Gloucester County who represented many of the motorists who were subsequently arrested on the turnpike on drug charges.

"I noticed that although the drug problem spanned all races and classes, the only arrests we were seeing off the turnpike were African-Americans," Mr. Buckman, now in private practice in Moorestown, said in a recent interview. "And talking anecdotally with the other defense attorney we put our heads together and came up with a new legal strategy to challenge the issue of racial profiling."

The success of the drug-interdiction efforts in Salem and Gloucester Counties produced the first rumblings of what would become the profiling scandal that now envelops New Jersey law enforcement.

These days, many state troopers are seething, Mr. Lennon said, at the accusations that their aggressive drug interdictions were tainted by racism. Many troopers loathe Gov. Christie Whitman for firing Carl Williams, the former superintendent of state police, for saying what Mr. Lennon repeated today: that the drug trade is often associated with ethnic groups, including white motorcycle gangs who, Mr. Williams said last year, were sometimes connected with the amphetamine business.

So, while Mr. Lennon said he was simply stating the obvious, critics of the police complained that his comments reflected a failure by the police to recognize the severity of racial profiling.

Mr. Jackson said he and other civil rights leaders were going to call on state lawmakers to adopt laws that would make it a crime for the police to engage in racial profiling. But despite the outcry over the issue, public opinion polls have shown that troopers still enjoy deep support among many New Jersey residents, and the agency remains so politically sacrosanct that few legislators have been willing to speak out against it.

"If it was anything else but the state police, there would have been an outcry," Mr. Jackson said. "But with the state police, the Legislature has been dead silent."

---

Police Corruption Charges Reopen Wounds in Oakland

New York Times
November 30, 2000
By EVELYN NIEVES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/national/30OAKL.html

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 28 - On his first day as mayor here, Jerry Brown, the former California governor, swore to make reducing Oakland's notorious crime rate a top priority. To prove his point, within three months, he had forced the popular police chief to resign and was pushing an aggressive approach to policing that would brook no tolerance for even petty crimes.

Now, after two years, Oakland's crime rate, which had already been dropping before Mr. Brown took office, is hovering near a 30-year low. But all is not rosy. So far this year, 78 people have been murdered on Oakland's streets, 10 more than in all of last year; by the Police Department's own projections, the city of 400,000 people will tally 85 murders by the end of 2000, more than in the year before Mr. Brown became mayor. (San Francisco, with twice as many residents, has had 49 homicides so far this year.)

More significantly, the Oakland Police Department, which Mr. Brown has repeatedly praised for its assertive community policing, has been rocked by a corruption scandal. Four officers have been indicted on misconduct charges, including abusing and falsely accusing suspects - the same kinds of crimes that have hurt the Los Angeles Police Department.

The four officers - Matt Hornung, 29; Clarence Mabanag, 35; Jude Siapno, 32; and Francisco Vasquez, 44 - were indicted this month on a total of more than 60 charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, kidnapping, assault, filing false police reports, filing false documents and making false arrests.

The four, who worked for the narcotics division on the graveyard shift in West Oakland, a neighborhood known for some tough streets, were investigated after a rookie officer, Keith Batt, 23, who worked with them complained about what he called misconduct over three weeks in June and July involving seven or eight victims. (Mr. Batt quit shortly after reporting on the officers.) The prosecutor's office is still investigating the officers' records before and after that period, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the four on charges of civil rights violations.

Mr. Vasquez has fled the state and is believed to be in Mexico, but William Rapoport, a lawyer for Mr. Siapno, said he believed that the other three officers, who are free on bail in Oakland, will plead not guilty to all charges on Dec. 6.

Mayor Brown said that even if the charges are proved true, the case against the officers proves that the Police Department is working in Oakland. "These were allegations that came internally, and the Police Department took very prompt action and worked very closely with the district attorney's office," Mr. Brown said. "So the system worked."

Quoting F.B.I. statistics, the mayor said that Oakland's overall crime rate had dropped by double digits in two years. He added that it was unfair to compare the Oakland Police Department's crisis with the police scandal in Los Angeles, where three officers were found guilty this month of conspiring to obstruct justice by fabricating evidence and framing gang members, and a fourth officer was acquitted.

"It's apples and oranges," Mr. Brown said. "The Oakland Police Department is an excellent police department."

But Alan Schlosser of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco said that the comparisons to Los Angeles were striking and that the Oakland case begged further, deeper investigation. "In Oakland they are focusing on four police officers in a period of three weeks," Mr. Schlosser said. "And that raises real questions about the scope of the Oakland investigation. It's a little hard to believe that this surfaces in June and that it's just a three-week problem."

Many Oakland residents, he added, have publicly said they were aware of police abuses. Residents in West Oakland who were interviewed by investigators were not surprised about this, he said. "Some were victims of these four officers, and said that this was not just a problem with these four, that it was widely known."

Ray Keller, assistant public defender for Alameda County, said his office expected its investigation to broaden beyond the four officers, and possibly to lead to the reversal of hundreds of convictions.

"What we are concerned about is the patterns that are apparent in the investigations by these police officers and the similarities of those investigations with those investigations involving other officers," Mr. Keller said. He said his office was investigating 275 to 280 cases "that have either already resulted in convictions or are still pending pretrial, meaning they haven't been resolved." He added: "The large majority are post-conviction, meaning there's already been a trial or a plea of no contest and the person has been convicted. We are in the process of getting many of those convictions undone and set aside."

About 30 convictions have been set aside based on the investigation so far, he said.

The charges against the four officers, who called themselves the Riders, according to the prosecutor's indictment, have reopened old wounds in Oakland, where the Black Panther Party was founded partly as a police watchdog group. They have also stirred bitter passions among those who say they have long been warning city officials that some police officers have routinely gone too far in pursuit of arrests.

Members of People United for a Better Oakland, a police watchdog organization known as Pueblo, say that they have been complaining for years, to no avail, about the very types of misconduct charged against the four officers.

Complaints to the Citizens' Police Review Board, "have increased dramatically," said Mike Nisperos, the public safety liaison for the city manager, and member of the civilian board, which has logged 184 complaints through August of this year alone. He added that all four officers charged with corruption have had complaints lodged against them by civilians that are unrelated to those for which they were investigated.

The Pueblo group's leaders say such complaints have gone unheeded by the mayor, who they say has refused to take a strong stand against corruption.

Mayor Brown said that he has taken such a stand and spoken out and listened at public meetings shortly after charges against the officers' surfaced. "I say let the system and all its checks and balances work," he said. "What else am I supposed to do?"

But the atmosphere of hostility toward the police in Oakland is such that the defense will seek a change of venue for the trial, said Michael Rains, who is defending Officer Mabanag, and whose law firm is the general counsel to the Oakland Police Officers Association. His client and Officer Siapno have each received notices of termination from the Police Department, effective Dec. 1, he said, which the defense plans to appeal.

"One of the lawyers in the L.A. case had remarked that they had made a mistake by not requesting a change of venue," he said.

---

New York Times
November 30, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/nyregion/30MBRF.html

CONNECTICUT
HARTFORD: POLICE CHIEF SANCTIONED

Acting Police Chief Robert S. Rudewicz, who took the job in July after the previous acting chief was demoted for poor performance, will be suspended next week for lying about the timing of a minor car accident. The suspension is scheduled to begin Tuesday, the day the city's new chief, Bruce Preston Marquis, takes over the force. Mr. Rudewicz admitted he had falsified an accident report in which he claimed his city-owned Crown Victoria struck a highway guard rail between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Oct. 13. He later admitted the accident happened at 1:30 a.m. and that he had lied to avoid speculation that he had been drinking, which he had not been, he said. Paul Zielbauer (NYT)

---

Free Speech In America -- If You Dare?

Thu, 30 Nov 2000 16:23:27 -0800
RadTimes # 118 November, 2000

In Military Style--Police NOW SWEEP America's streets and buildings for law--abiding protestors: Increasingly, police interrogate and arrest citizens who police believe are planning to attend demonstrations. Is it now, Free Speech In America--If You Dare?

How Far Can Law Enforcement Go--TO CRUSH POLITICAL DISSENT? During the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia, Police Squads arrested on streets and private property, law--abiding protestors, bystanders and tourists--to prevent them from attending demonstrations. LAPD on 10--22--00 used clubs and rubber bullets, to attack and run off lawful--demonstrators supporting the (October 22nd Coalition) PROTEST against--police brutality. The coalition had secured a city permit for the demonstration. In American, police now--arrest, jail, and execute, a citizen's (Right To Free Speech and Assembly).

When Do Demonstrators Become--Terrorists? The Anti--Terrorist Act of 1996 appears aimed at public dissent: The Act contains language which can charge law--abiding citizens of being agents or affording support to terrorist organizations: Broadly written--intent to commit terrorist acts is defined: (Appeared To Be Intended Toward Violence or Activities Which Could Intimidate or Coerce a Civilian Population; or To Influence the Policy of a Government). (18USC Sec. 2331): Any picket line or demonstration, alleged by police to have blocked or obstructed public access, could qualify as Terrorist Activities to intimidate or coerce a civilian population: Terrorist charges make it possible for police to forfeit attending demonstrators' homes used for meetings and the vehicles they used for transportation to the event. Concern: Police agencies may selectively charge a person or organization with either a low level offense, or Terrorist Offense, for the same illegal act: Example: A fist fight between union demonstrators and persons crossing a picket line, can be upgraded by police to charge union members with (Terrorist Activity).The 1996 Anti-Terrorist Act, broadly--redefined (Terrorist Acts) as (involving any violent act or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state). The violent or physical act need not cause bodily harm: The Act can be used by police to target any group of persons--that would dare demonstrate for or against any issue.

Secret Hearings--Secret Witnesses: U.S. Police routinely purchase court testimony to convict defendants: Under the 1996 Anti-Terrorist and Death Penalty Act, prosecutors may use secret/paid informants, secret testimony, secret witnesses, and other hidden evidence to convict citizens for terrorist acts: Defense against government terrorist charges, even against the Death Penalty, may be difficult where citizens have no access to know the alleged evidence against them or the right to cross examine government secret witnesses: Secret--Hearings, Witnesses, Jurors: can be invoked by Government to allegedly protect national security, government investigations, jurors and witnesses. Conviction for terrorist activities can result in huge fines, property forfeiture, prison sentences and execution. Should citizens be allowed to have access to the evidence the U.S. Government is using to convict them? Are secret--witnesses, hearings, and jurors, in the best interests of a free society?

---

Call For a United Revolutionary Presence at the Presidential Inauguration

Thu, 30 Nov 2000 17:12:39 -0800
RadTimes # 119 November, 2000

WE ALREADY KNOW WHO WON... CAPITALISM AND THE RULING CLASS

Take to the Streets of Washington Against Capitalism, Against the State, and Against the Death Machine of Globalization

FOR CLASS WAR AND A CLASSLESS, STATELESS SOCIETY

On Saturday, January 20th, 2001 thousands of people from all over the United States will converge on the streets of Washington, D.C to protest against the dictatorship of the corporate class, the circus of US representative "democracy", and the international death machine that is the US government.

The demonstration in Washington the day of the presidential inauguration is a great opportunity to demonstrate our opposition, not only to whomever it is that may eventually win the presidency, but to the entire state system, from the dictatorship of capital, to the sham of representative democracy, by making Washington ours during inauguration day and disrupting the ceremony of the ruling class. In the spirit of the mobilizations of the past year, from Seattle, to Washington, to Cincinnati, and everywhere in between, we are calling for revolutionaries to stand together as a bloc and refuse to serve as mere numbers for reformist and authoritarian organizations that don't represent our desires, aims, or aspirations. Instead, we propose a demonstration that not only highlights our opposition to the present order, but also puts forth revolutionary anti-authoritarian alternatives.

Therefore, we are calling for anti-authoritarian revolutionaries to bring their banners and flags, be they black, red, red and black, black and green, or whatever else and gather in Washington at 10 am on Saturday, January 20th, 2001* under the slogan "Class War Now...For a Classless, Stateless Society." We are not calling for any particular tactics, simply for revolutionary anti-authoritarians to come prepared to march on the Presidential Inauguration and for a festival of resistance, struggle, and revolutionary alternatives to the capitalist system.

It will take a lot of work to make this mobilization a success and a show of force for the North American revolutionary movement. If you wish to help make the January 20th initiative succeed, spread the word, organize caravans to Washington, copy and distribute this call, make banners and flags, keep in touch as details of the mobilization become available, contact us to endorse the call, and come to Washington on January 20th ready for a festival of resistance.

The Barricada Collective <barricadacollective@hotmail.com> Sabate Anarchist Collective (NEFAC)

*Location to be announced

-------- spying

Chances are, somebody's watching you

USA Today
11/30/00
By M.J. Zuckerman, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovthu.htm

ARLINGTON, Va. - A short walk from Arlington National Cemetery, up a hill from the Pentagon, there is an inconspicuous two-story brick building in which a group of technicians monitors the activities of millions of Americans over closed-circuit television. This is neither a super-secret spy network nor an Orwellian mind-control project. This is the domain of Carlene McWhirt, a supervisor with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, accustomed to "Big Sister" jibes from co-workers. She and a team of technicians observe and control the flow of traffic along nearly 100 miles of the interstates linking Washington, D.C., to its booming suburbs.

This $40 million surveillance center - a state-of-the-art advancement over similar systems in Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles - controls 110 remote-control cameras, more than one every mile, nearly all able to zoom in close enough to read a license plate - or to peer inside a vehicle. The Virginia Smart Traffic Center, like many other double-edged advances in technology, reinforces the notion that privacy today is fluid and rapidly evaporates once we step out our front doors.

Whether as motorists or pedestrians; as visitors to convenience stores, banks, ATM machines or the post office; as shoppers with credit cards or telephone users; even at leisure, in parks, playgrounds and golf courses, we're constantly on candid camera. Full-time surveillance is a reality of modern life.

In northern Virginia, McWhirt and her staff can quickly summon help, alert local radio and TV, post warnings on electronic signs and divert traffic. Their goal: "Spot an incident, dispatch help, and be on the scene in under five minutes, to provide assistance and keep traffic moving," she says.

But if improperly used - and McWhirt enforces strict discipline - that equipment could easily see into the homes and offices along the interstates.

"We need a modern-day Paul Revere riding from city to city warning people: 'The cameras are coming! The cameras are coming!' " says Norman Siegel of the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In an effort to raise public awareness, Siegel's office conducted a block-by-block inspection of Manhattan. Volunteers identified 2,397 surveillance cameras in use. And that was two years ago.

No one accuses the Virginia Smart Traffic Center of abuse. McWhirt and her employees don't identify motorists. Their gaze doesn't stray from the roads or into the homes and offices within range of the cameras' long lenses. And while the cameras from time to time spot a motorist at the side of the highway answering nature's call, system operators are under strict orders to avert their stare.

Maryland's eye on I-95

But just a few miles up I-95, Maryland authorities recently weathered criticism for what some residents regarded as an abuse of their privacy. On Sept. 27, officials identified 26,500 Maryland motorists using I-95, and then sent those people letters asking where they were going that day, why and with whom as part of a mass transit survey.

"We were trying to determine demographic information to determine the number of stops" needed along a new high-speed rail line between Washington and Baltimore, says Frank Fulton of the Maryland Mass Transit Administration. "We didn't want to collect any personal or private information."

But that wasn't the perception.

"Quite a few motorists thought Maryland crossed the line" by identifying them, says Mantill Williams of the American Automobile Association. "There is a broad constitutional right for motorists to lawfully travel across the United States without police or governmental interference. I suppose the question becomes, 'What do you consider interference?' "

Your expectations of privacy "depend on where you are in public, on your own property or someone else's," says law professor Michael Froomkin of Miami University in Florida. Generally:

There's little "reasonable expectation of privacy" in public places. Anything that can be seen is fair game. A couple kissing in a park can be photographed without permission.

If you're on someone else's property, your expectation of privacy is determined by them, except for limited superseding state laws. A homeowner may photograph a couple at a party kissing in the living room, but not in the bathroom.

The strongest "reasonable expectation of privacy" is inside your home with the curtains drawn. Courts also have generally held that you have a high expectation of privacy in public bathrooms and dressing rooms, during phone conversations or when sending e-mail.

However, voice mail and computer files may be monitored. Nearly 75% of major U.S. firms in an April survey said they record and review employees' activities, including e-mail, Web connections, phone calls and computer files.

"Part of the problem is that abuse does not flow from the misuse of specific information," says Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU. "It's the loss of dignity and autonomy from being constantly placed under surveillance."

A town under surveillance

It's not just major metropolitan areas, with their traffic woes and perception of crime, that are investing in public surveillance.

Nevada, Mo., a town of 9,000, now employs surveillance technology to assure discipline, safety and efficiency, says Carol Branham, the parks and recreation director.

Ten surveillance cameras already operate in Nevada (pronounced Neh-VAY-duh). A Web camera is soon to be added to a secluded section of parkland, and additional surveillance technology is coming next year. The long-range plan, Branham says, is to cover the golf course and other public areas - while avoiding public locker rooms or bathrooms.

For now, most of the cameras are in use at the town's 14,000-square-foot community center, where they minimize the need for security staff. "Even though we are a small town, we recognize that we face some of the same problems as big cities," she says.

And when an after-school "who-hit-who-first" dispute erupts on the basketball court or petty vandalism is committed in the activity room, the culprit "finds it hard to deny it when we play back the tape," Branham says.

"The few times we've had to use it, it's proved a very positive tool."

Though there have been no concerns voiced over the cameras, she says, she agrees with those who say it would be worthwhile to put up warning signs and establish some limit on how long the videotape is retained.

The battle over public surveillance has grown shrill in Britain, where an effort to control hooliganism at soccer matches 15 years ago has grown into what critics call a "surveillance canopy": 1.5 million cameras operated by the government and the private sector.

"The 1998 Data Protection Act sets conditions that there must be notification" posted in surveillance areas, says activist Simon Davies of Privacy International. "But with 1.5 million cameras about, the signs would be a public nuisance. So there's a general acceptance that wherever you go, you will have cameras pointed at you."

The Data Protection Act also sets limits on how long a surveillance tape may be kept and allows citizens access to any image made of them. In the USA, there are no national regulations on public surveillance, though a few localities have placed limits on public surveillance.

"We don't seem to care about privacy until it's too late, and then we want to have it back," says Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington.

The British experience should have captured Americans' attention, says Simson Garfinkel , author of Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century. Garfinkel notes that the British government's expenditure of more than $1.5 billion in the past decade on surveillance has created a powerful industry. "They have large commercial interests there selling fear, (making it) difficult to shut them down."

With some technical ingenuity, authorities today can easily reconstruct large portions of an individual's life using cameras and other equipment at banks and office buildings, on street corners and highways, in parking garages, subways and buses.

For example, video surveillance at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., helped authorities determine that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold acted alone in their 1999 killing rampage in which 13 died. And in the Oklahoma City bombing case, a McDonald's security camera provided evidence that linked Timothy McVeigh with the truck carrying the bomb.

Police rarely ask

Those are exceptional circumstances. The ACLU and the Justice Department both say it is rare for authorities to use surveillance so extensively.

While the American Management Association estimates that the private sector operates more than 1 million closed-circuit TV systems, police agencies rarely ask to review those tapes.

"On some occasions, law enforcement has come to us and asked what area our (ATM) camera covers, and if they are interested, they come back with a subpoena," says Boris Melnikoff, the American Bankers Association special adviser on security. "We provide them only the frames that are germane ."

One such case involved the May 1997 murder of Jonathan Levin, the 31-year-old son of Time Warner chief executive officer Gerald Levin. Upon learning someone had used Jonathan Levin's ATM card days after the murder, authorities obtained the videotape from a mid-Manhattan ATM. But the tape had been reused so many times that the image was too obscured.

The ACLU's Siegel, who happens to live near the Manhattan bank, says he was appalled such a crucial piece of evidence was unavailable.

That might seem an odd position for someone who is generally associated with challenging law enforcement requests. But he argues that surveillance has its place, and if there's going to be surveillance, standards are needed to assure that it's effective and not abusive.

Siegel has lobbied the New York Legislature, without success, to establish guidelines requiring:

All video surveillance to be listed on a public register.

Warning signs in every surveillance zone.

Strict limits on access to and distribution of surveillance tapes.

Tapes archived for a limited time - and their quality standardized to ensure they can be viewed.

"Americans should be alarmed at the growth of surveillance in society without even minimal standards or regulation," Siegel says.

The Postal Service makes extensive use of video surveillance at its 40,000 facilities. But there are no standards of use and operation, says Dan Mihalko of the Postal Inspectors office. "We call them 'hold-up cameras.' We don't think of them as surveillance."

Yet, in September, one of those cameras recorded Austin office worker Juanita Yvette Lozano mailing a package. That camera placed her at the center of a major presidential campaign scandal.

Based on that tape, Lozano, who works for George W. Bush media consultant Mark McKinnon, was suspected of mailing a package containing political briefing papers to a Gore campaign figure.

While neither the FBI nor Lozano's attorneys will discuss the case, McKinnon insists the package contained a pair of slacks he was returning to The Gap. The matter remains under investigation.

"Face it, you give up a lot of privacy to engage in today's society," says Mary Culnan, professor of management and information technology at Bentley College, in Waltham, Mass.

Minimizing intrusions

"Move that camera," snaps "Big Sister" McWhirt as one of the multiple images on the 25-by-10-foot projection wall in the Virginia traffic center reveals a camera under a trainee's control swinging dangerously close to viewing homes lining the highway.

McWhirt says they do what they can to minimize intrusiveness. They are prohibited from videotaping, unless asked to by state police for investigative purposes. They do not report what they see unless it is to assist motorists or to help police. They do not, for example, alert police when drivers' traffic speeds exceed limits. And they never zoom in closer than necessary.

"Once we have determined what's going on at, say, an accident scene, we pull back and try to act responsibly," she says. "These images are fed live to TV; we don't want a gruesome accident appearing on television."

Anyone who wants to check can go to www.highwaynet.com to watch the live Webcast, alternating among 25 cameras.

"If they were fixed so we couldn't move (our view) up and down the interstates, we would be negligent in our coverage," she says. "No matter what we do, there's going to be some criticism."

---

Carnivore passes muster

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 08:40 AM ET
By John E. Collingwood
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncoppf.htm

Those who clamor for access to someone else's personal records rarely force themselves to consider exactly what they will do with the information once they have it.

Without hesitation we subscribed to an independent review of Carnivore by the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI), despite a previous USA TODAY editorial arguing that the "public should have no trust at all" in whatever IITRI finds. Today we are reading that based largely on the conclusions in the IITRI draft report, Carnivore should not be used and that the IITRI review and prior internal testing documents indicate we "misled" the public.

Here are the facts and why we strongly disagree: IITRI was commissioned to conduct an independent review, which it did. IITRI was given complete access to the hardware, software and source codes that constitute Carnivore. The central findings clearly substantiate, not contradict, the facts consistently maintained by the FBI. For example, IITRI independently concluded:

"Carnivore represents technology that can be more effective in protecting privacy and enabling lawful surveillance than can alternatives."

"The supervising judge can, and regularly does, independently verify that traffic collected is only what was legally authorized."

"Operating Carnivore introduces no operational or security risks to the (Internet-service-provider) network where it is installed."

"Properly configured, it accumulates no data other than that which passes its filters," and it "restricts data available to the FBI to specific types from or to specific users."

The report states that Carnivore does not "read all incoming and outgoing e-mail messages" and that it does not "nearly have enough power 'to spy on almost everyone with an e-mail account.' "

Most importantly, the report concludes that "intentional violations of court-prescribed limitations, or of FBI procedures, are likely to be detected through judicial oversight and FBI supervision."

The IITRI report did recommend possible improvements that we find constructive. We are also glad that the review and draft reports are open for public comment.

The FBI documents we released earlier pertain to the development and testing stages of the system. The IITRI report analyzes the final system and how it is used.

In any case, the conclusion remains unchanged: This system ensures that the government complies with the strict court orders that govern its use in those limited situations when a court has authorized the interception of computer communications.

Unless we decide to allow criminals and terrorists to use simple e-mail technology to defeat effective law enforcement, Carnivore remains the best alternative to ensure that the government does not exceed whatever narrow authority is granted by a supervising court.

John E. Collingwood is an assistant director of the FBI.

---

Evidence of FBI evasions feeds Carnivore doubts

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 08:40 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/nceditf.htm

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI are normally in the business of hunting down the lies, evasions and missing documents that may hide a crime. But for the past eight months, as questions have grown about their Internet-snooping program called "Carnivore," both agencies have been the source of misinformation instead.

Last week, the Justice Department released the preliminary results of an outside analysis conducted to convince a wary public that the device wouldn't invade the privacy of innocent Internet users.

Yet rather than calm those fears, the details of the report confirm that Carnivore threatens privacy. Worse, a number of facts revealed through the outside review show that assurances made by top FBI and Justice Department officials were misleading if not outright deceptive.

Among the review's most startling findings is that regardless of the privacy problems, Carnivore, sold as a crime-fighting tool, might not be very useful. The FBI developed it to monitor Internet communications, under court order, for evidence of crime. But the simplest encryption programs can foil the system, the report reveals. Specifically, reviewers found that free encryption software available over the Internet can make Internet communications unreadable to Carnivore. In addition, many of the largest, most technically sophisticated Internet providers are immune to Carnivore. "Customers of certain (Internet service providers) are effectively beyond reach," the report says. And one common class of e-mail is untraceable.

Even more disturbing is evidence that the FBI and Justice Department played fast and loose with the facts about Carnivore before the outside review was conducted. Among the instances:

The FBI told Congress that because misusing Carnivore is a federal felony, employees who did so would be subject to criminal prosecution, civil liability and termination. Yet the outside review found that identifying such rogue agents would be "impossible" because all Carnivore users share the same log on. Impact? Prosecution of law-breaking agents is crippled.

The FBI told Congress that Carnivore provides "a trustworthy machine-based memorialization of the evidence." In other words, they promised that Carnivore would provide reliable evidence for use in court. Yet the outside review found "significant deficiencies" in the system's ability "to protect the integrity" of the information it collects because the software doesn't always work right. Impact? Even after snooping, Carnivore evidence may not hold up in court after defense attorneys tear it apart.

The Justice Department told Congress that Carnivore could gather "the information authorized by court order, and only that information." But the outside review found that the current version of Carnivore collects more information than some court orders specify, including the length of e-mail messages. The report also concludes that a single accidental mouse click could lead to an illegal invasion of privacy. Impact? Privacy is not sufficiently secure.

The FBI Web page says Carnivore is "not susceptible to abuse because it requires expertise to install and operate." The outside review concludes that the cybersnoop program would be easy for Internet-company insiders to hijack. All they'd have to do is plug a standard computer monitor into the Carnivore machine and watch the screen when FBI employees access Carnivore through a phone line. Impact? They could "learn enough to gain control" of Carnivore for their own uses.

That's bad enough, but there is still reason to doubt whether the outside review fully exposes the problems with Carnivore.

In fact, the FBI has admitted to USA TODAY that it failed to give reviewers a log of the 1999 deployments of an early version of Carnivore that showed problems installing the system on Internet companies' networks. It is unclear whether those problems would hinder Carnivore or pose a threat to privacy. Regardless, the FBI required outside reviewers to assume there were no technical problems attaching Carnivore to the Internet, an assumption the FBI should have known was false.

So after years of development, millions of dollars and endless secrecy, what does the FBI have? Not the sophisticated crime-buster that Congress was promised, but a snooping system that poses more of a threat to innocent Internet surfers than sophisticated criminals.

So far, the FBI continues offering excuses, arguing that it will fix all of these problems now that they have been pointed out. But the FBI has used Carnivore two dozen times without any of the new safeguards, recklessly endangering privacy. No one has been held accountable for that. Next year, the FBI will introduce a new version of Carnivore. The bureau is telling the public that the device's problems will be fixed by then, though its behavior during the past eight months offers little basis for trust.

Since Attorney General Janet Reno has repeatedly failed to give Carnivore serious oversight, it is time for Congress to act: Shut it down. Force the FBI to explain the misinformation it peddled to Congress and the public. Spend the money to build a program that can both protect privacy and actually catch criminals.

---

MANHATTAN: SURVEILLANCE CAMERA BILL

New York Times
November 30, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/nyregion/30MBRF.html

New York City government agencies would have to notify the City Council before installing surveillance cameras in public places, under a bill proposed by Councilman Sheldon S. Leffler. The Council would then have 30 days to hold a public hearing, although the individual agency would not need Council permission to go ahead. The measure would not affect installation of cameras by the police during undercover operations or as a result of a court order. Eric Lipton (NYT)

-------- terrorism

Morrock News,
Thursday, Nov. 30, 2000


U.S. PRESSES AFGHANISTAN FOR BIN LADEN: The U.S. is ratcheting up the pressure on the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, threatening sanctions that could include an arms embargo if terrorist Osama bin Laden isn't evicted -- into American custody. . . . "We're going to continue to increase the price that the Taliban pays for their continued harboring of bin Laden, their continued willingness to allow (his) al-Qaeda infrastructure to remain in place," a U.S. administration official told the Reuters news service. Bin Laden is the top suspect in terrorist actions including last month's suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

-------- activists

Activists remember 'Battle of Seattle'

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 10:04 AM ET
By Patrick McMahon, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndswed10.htm

SEATTLE - Street battles against corporate globalization have moved on to places like Washington, D.C., Prague, Bangkok and Philadelphia. But the spirit of Seattle lives on. Several thousand protesters here are expected to celebrate, educate, agitate and perhaps get arrested Thursday, a year after 50,000 activists briefly shut down a World Trade Organization summit, shook the city from smugness and prompted the arrest of 600.

''We're going to mobilize hundreds of informed agitators and globalization resisters,'' predicts activist Dale Hodges, 48, a Seattle tofu salesman. ''We're out to celebrate what happened here and to remind people what happened here.''

While organizers say no violence is planned, the Seattle Police Department has taken extraordinary steps to avoid a repeat of last year's nationally televised vandalism and street battles with police in riot gear.

''We're as ready as any department could be,'' says Gil Kerlikowske, a tough-talking former U.S. Justice Department official brought in as police chief this year following Chief Norm Stamper's early retirement after the WTO fiasco.

Seattle became the focal point of protest against multinational trade organizations last year when it hosted the meeting of trade ministers. WTO and U.S. officials maintained that only through free and open international trade would living standards improve worldwide.

But protesters blasted WTO and other organizations as unaccountable agencies that usurp local sovereignty, give multinational corporations unbridled power and erode environmental and labor protections. ''Seattle was by no means the birthplace of the struggle against corporate globalization, but it sent a huge message to the rest of the world that there is support in (the) belly of the beast,'' activist Han Shan says.

Shan is program director of the Ruckus Society, the Berkeley, Calif., group that trains activists for civil disobedience. He is one of the few out-of-state activists returning for Thursday's events. ''Mostly, I just want to see old friends,'' he says.

Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund lawyer Patti Goldman of Seattle, whose trade expertise and WTO critiques made her a celebrity a year ago, said, ''I'm starting to sense growing excitement in the city. People are getting out their No WTO buttons.''

Events Thursday include a potluck vegan barbecue at noon at Westlake Plaza downtown. A student walkout at Seattle Community College is set for 12:30 p.m., followed by a street rally and marches downtown to Westlake Park.

On Friday, activists plan a mass filing of financial claims against the city stemming from last year's arrests. But it remains an open question whether violence will overtake events Thursday and whether tear gas will once again waft through downtown.

City officials are taking a stern tone that demonstrators risk arrest if they act without city permits, block traffic, interfere with downtown business or spawn any violence.

Cautious downtown merchants, still mindful of several millions of dollars in property damage downtown last year, are decorated for holiday shopping and expect to remain open - some with extra security. ''We fully support the right of free and public expression,'' says Mayor Paul Schell, politically wounded by last year's events. But, ''we will swiftly respond to law-breaking or vandalism or violence of any kind.''

Still worrying officials here is whether there will be a reappearance of anarchists who are blamed for turning last year's events violent. ''Make no mistake,'' City Council member Jim Compton warned. ''There are people trying to pick a fight with the city. If they stick their chin out and say 'hit here,' we should find them a warm bed in the county jail.''

While there were no major injuries a year ago, the tumult was a blow to Seattle, which considers itself a laid-back, tolerant city unaccustomed to the chaos and neighborhood disruptions of a year ago. Police felt hamstrung by city directives that prevented early arrests, and activists felt police overreacted with the use of tear gas and rubber bullets.

''Do people still have hurt feelings on both sides? You bet. People really do,'' says police Capt. Jim Pugel, who oversees the downtown police. ''But we've learned a tremendous amount.''

The city police chief retired early. The political viability of Mayor Schell - up for re-election in 2001 - remains debatable. Criminal cases against most protesters have long ago been dismissed. And the message from City Hall to protesters is: We're ready for you.

Don't look for police in riot gear, at least at first. Don't look for no-protest zones. ''The message is that you have to protect lives, protect property and you have to protect people's right to protest,'' Chief Kerlikowske says.

---

Convention Protesters are Found Not Guilty

Associated Press
November 30, 2000
National News Briefs By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/national/30NATI.html

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 29 - Forty protesters arrested at the Republican National Convention for blocking a downtown intersection have been acquitted.

The protesters, acquitted on Monday, were among 43 people charged with causing a traffic-snarling blockade on Aug. 1.

Two protesters were convicted of obstructing a highway, a misdemeanor; another was convicted of a summary offense.

---

Ben Cohen bemoans betting on big-business

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 03:04 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndsthu09.htm

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Ex-hippie ice cream maker Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's says he has been getting some tough lessons in big business since his company sold out to the conglomerate Unilever.

Now, Cohen said Thursday, he worries that the food giant's promises of continued social activism may be melting away like a pint of Cherry Garcia left out in the sun.

''Ben & Jerry's will become just another brand like any other soulless, heartless, spiritless brand out there - that's my concern,'' Cohen said in an interview.

Under pressure from shareholders, Cohen and partner Jerry Greenfield agreed in April to sell their baby, a Vermont ice cream maker with an image steeped in social activism and tie-dyed idealism, to Unilever, a British-Dutch food conglomerate. After the sale, Cohen and Greenfield remained as company employees and members of a separate Ben & Jerry's board.

The buyout came amid widely publicized assurances that Ben & Jerry's social mission would not be lost - assurances that a Unilever spokesman repeated Thursday.

''In its first 20 years, Ben & Jerry's opened only seven scoop shops with nonprofit partners,'' Stephen Milton said. ''We're going to open five next year.''

But Cohen said he is worried. His worries mounted last week when Unilever picked Yves Couette, a longtime executive from its ranks, rather than the Ben & Jerry's veteran favored by Cohen and Greenfield, as the new chief executive of the ice cream maker.

''The only way the social mission of Ben & Jerry's and the heart and soul of the company will be maintained is to have a CEO running the company who has a deep understanding of our values-led social business philosophy, who had experience with the company and with how that worked in practice,'' Cohen said.

Through an assistant, Greenfield declined a request for an interview.

Unilever's Milton countered that Couette, a Frenchman with experience working in the United States, Mexico and Indonesia, has the needed experience.

A list of the company's social objectives for 2001 includes helping to build playgrounds and launching a new flavor tied to that effort; lobbying to extend the life of the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact, which provides more income for farmers; and developing more environmentally friendly packaging.

But Cohen said he is dissatisfied that the ''social audit'' promised of Unilever's operations had not been completed yet.

And he said he is upset that Unilever would not allow a $5 million fund set up to help new businesses with a social agenda get on their feet to carry the Ben & Jerry's name.

''Now it's been made clear to me that Unilever doesn't want there to be any connection between Unilever and this fund,'' he said.

Milton replied that Unilever is worried about protecting the Ben & Jerry's brand name. He said the fund could be called ''Ben's Venture Capital Fund,'' but not ''Ben & Jerry's Venture Capital Fund.''

Cohen also said he had learned after the sale that what he had understood to be legally binding agreements for Unilever to continue pursuing Ben & Jerry's social agenda had turned out not to be legally binding - another complaint disputed by Milton.

''We understand that Ben's very concerned,'' Milton said. ''He's a founder of the company. He has a huge emotional stake in the company. Our view is, judge us by our actions.''

---

Protestors Take to the Streets and Demand Estrada's Resignation

Associated Press
November 30, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Philippines-Estrada.html

MANILA, Philippines -- Tens of thousands of Filipinos rallied across the country Thursday, burning colorful effigies of President Joseph Estrada and threatening civil disobedience if he refuses to resign over corruption allegations.

In Manila, thousands of demonstrators swarmed near the presidential palace, swelling the ranks of others who had held an overnight vigil. Organizers distributed brooms symbolizing the need to clean up government corruption. Some protesters threw wads of paper dipped in red paint at pictures of Estrada, while others listened to speeches and rock bands.

Some protest leaders said Estrada's refusal to resign has left no alternative to civil disobedience.

``The only option available for the people is to force Estrada out of office in the fastest and most peaceful manner available,'' said Rafael Mariano, chairman of the left-wing Bayan and Peasant Movement of the Philippines.

An unusual alliance of laborers, farmers and office workers has mounted daily demonstrations this week throughout the Philippines. Their goal: To pressure Estrada into stepping down now instead of awaiting the outcome of an impeachment trial due to begin next Thursday.

Business and labor groups say a lengthy trial would prolong the country's political crisis and endanger its economy by damaging business confidence.

Estrada insisted again Thursday he would not resign and denied allegations that he had accepted millions of dollars from illegal gambling lords and from excise taxes intended for tobacco farmers. He shared a lunch of fish, rice and vegetables with poor people in a province north of Manila, and later joined a rally by several thousand supporters in the capital -- part of an effort by his administration to counter the protests against him.

Estrada blamed the country's economic problems on his critics.

``It is saddening that while we were implementing programs to help uplift our countrymen from poverty, some sectors were working hard to bring down our economy and our political system,'' he told the cheering crowd, which reportedly received free food and transportation money.

Meanwhile, the demonstrations continued.

Transport drivers in some areas walked off their jobs, snarling traffic on Andres Bonifacio Day, a national holiday commemorating the birth of a leader of the country's revolution against Spanish colonialism.

In many cities, humorous Estrada effigies were paraded and then burned to roars of approval from the crowds. In southern Bacolod, thousands of people joined a candlelight protest in front of the city hall. In Bicol, protesters held a mock impeachment trial and found Estrada guilty.

And in Davao, a man impersonated Estrada in a mock prison cell, carrying a large bottle of liquor in one hand and a deck of cards in the other -- the president, a former action movie star, has acknowledged a history of heavy drinking, womanizing and gambling.

Estrada's impeachment trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 7 in the Senate, where he faces charges of bribery, corruption and violation of the people's trust. He will be removed from office if two-thirds of the 22-member Senate votes to convict him.

---

Rosa Parks museum opens

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 03:10 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - It was a cold evening 45 years ago Friday when a Montgomery city bus stopped in front of the Empire Theater. The driver got up and told black seamstress Rosa Parks she would have to give up her seat for white passengers. That event - which touched off the Montgomery bus boycott and began the modern civil rights movement - is recreated inside a new museum honoring Parks. The museum opens Friday on the site of the old theater.

---

Group: Drilling will mar Oregon trail

USA Today
11/30/00- Updated 02:03 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndsthu01.htm

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - A group dedicated to preserving historic trails says natural gas exploration will mar the view from the Oregon Trail, a vista essentially unchanged from when pioneers traversed it 150 years ago. Wolverine Gas and Oil Corp. wants to sink five wells to look for gas near South Pass in southwestern Wyoming, a move that would create new roads and, if gas is found, pipelines. South Pass, the midway point on the Oregon Trail, is a designated national historic monument that was a natural route for wagon trains to trace through the Rocky Mountains between 1843 and 1868.

''It is a treasure for everyone in the United States, not just people in the immediate area. It's something that should be preserved for everyone,'' said Dick Ackerman, national preservation officer for the Oregon-California Trails Association.

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management and the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company say the group need not worry.

Researchers photographed future well sites and superimposed pictures of existing drilling sites, providing an idea of what wells, roads and pipelines could look like from the trail, BLM spokesman Mike Brown said.

''We recognize their concerns, and we're doing everything we can to meet those concerns,'' he said.

Richard Moritz, a Wolverine vice president, said the wells will be kept a mile or two away from the trail. He also said wells and related equipment could be painted in colors like the sagebrush landscape, hidden behind earthen berms or obscured with camouflage netting.

At more than 7,000 feet, South Pass was the highest point on the Oregon Trail. Pioneer diaries refer to the landmark more consistently than any other on the 2,000-mile trail, Ackerman said. Beyond South Pass, routes branched off to Utah and California.

The BLM manages South Pass and all but a few slivers of southwest Wyoming's remote country, an area rich in wildlife habitat and natural gas. Upward of 2,000 gas wells are planned in the Green River Basin west of South Pass, Brown said.

''If there's a need for the energy, which we understand there is, we're all for it,'' Ackerman said. ''But we're also for saving some of this important heritage.''

---

USA Today
11/30/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City - The Sierra Club has filed notice of its intent to sue Seaboard Farm Inc. over the company's alleged violation of Superfund laws at a facility in Beaver County. The environmental group alleges Seaboard failed to report "enormous amounts" of ammonia gas pollution allegedly coming from the site. A Seaboard spokesman said the suit is based on "hype and unfounded accusations."

---

David R. Hunter

Associated Press
November 30, 2000 Filed at 6:15 a.m. ET
Obituaries in the News
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-Deaths.html

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (AP) -- David R. Hunter, who believed philanthropy was a way to redistribute wealth and power, died Saturday at age 84.

Hunter was executive director of the Stern Fund, a liberal, Manhattan-based foundation that operated from 1963-86. He also directed the Ottinger Foundation during the same period.

The Stern Fund distributed money to support such things as black voter registration in the South, the anti-nuclear movement and public-interest law firms.

---

Juliet Garretson Hollister, 84; Led Temple of Understanding

New York Times
November 30, 2000
By WOLFGANG SAXON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/national/30HOLL.html

Juliet Garretson Hollister, in whose kitchen an interfaith organization called the Temple of Understanding was born 40 years ago, died on Sunday at her home in Greenwich, Conn. She was 84.

In 1960, at a time when nuclear Armageddon was not unthinkable, she felt the need to do something, she said later.

As she recalled it, she was sitting in her kitchen when, over peanut butter sandwiches, she told a like- minded friend, "The world is in a mess." Her prescription, for a starter, was to promote dialogue and understanding among the world's religions.

Mrs. Hollister, who was "just a nice little mother," as she put it, at first got nowhere. She was also, however, the wife of a well-connected partner in a Manhattan law firm and did not simply take the "no" of foundation executives. Then she met Eleanor Roosevelt, who liked her idea and opened doors for her.

Mrs. Hollister's idea became the Temple of Understanding, which grew into an international educational group recognized by the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization.

As its moving spirit and chairwoman, Mrs. Hollister met and became acquainted with world figures like the Dalai Lama. From its Manhattan headquarters and under her leadership, the group organized symposiums, round-table discussions at the United Nations, educational projects, global forums and spiritual summit meetings abroad.

In addition to Mrs. Roosevelt, she was supported by Dr. Albert Schweitzer; Pope John XXIII; U Thant, secretary general of the United Nations; Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India; and President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt.

The Temple of Understanding has chapters overseas and was based in New York at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights before moving in the 1990's to its present center, on Fifth Avenue at 56th Street.

Mrs. Hollister's husband, Dickerman Hollister, died in 1983. She is survived by their two sons, G. Clay, of Chevy Chase, Md., and Dickerman Jr., of Greenwich; a daughter, Catharine H. Ecton of Cabin John, Md.; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Juliet Garretson was born in Forest Hills, Queens. She studied comparative religion at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, but as a woman found the road to a career in theology blocked.

But reading up on the world's great faiths, she became convinced that they all, in one way or another, shared basic humane principles.

That belief inspired her concept of the Temple of Understanding as an educational platform and a meeting place for people to learn about one another's creeds: what Eleanor Roosevelt called a "spiritual United Nations."

---

Obituaries: Tom Kinsey
Painter 1927-2000

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 30/11/2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0011/30/text/obituaries.html

Just weeks after his great friend, the peace campaigner Pat Pottle died in Britain, the painter Tom Kinsey has died of a heart attack; he was 73.

With Pottle, during the 1950s and early '60s, Kinsey campaigned, drank, and told stories in the Committee of 100, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. They made mischief and some history.

Gustav Thomas Katz was born in Czechoslovakia, his mother of the Austrian aristocracy and his father a Catholic doctor who devoted himself to the anarchists' cause in civil-war Spain.

In 1939, his parents took young Katz to England. He spent his adolescence in Wales and, in 1947, inspired by a passing van proclaiming "Kinsey, tripe dealers of Flint", formally changed his name from Katz to Kinsey.

He studied art in the 1950s, moving into the milieu of the likes of John Minton, Jeffrey Bernard and Quentin Crisp.

In 1958, Kinsey moved to Snowdonia to paint, work in the slate quarries and pursue his fondness for mountain climbing - he led local rescue teams.

His subject became the north Wales hill-farmers, men with huge hands, hard faces and wonderfully expressive eyes.

At the same time, Kinsey became involved in the peace movement. He was distinguished by his talent for organisation and his anarchic, mischievous sense of humour. He travelled to eastern Europe as Bertrand Russell's emissary, and, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, sent admonitory telegrams under Russell's name to the Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev and to President Kennedy (and one to Russell telling him that his name had been attached; the philosopher approved).

In the late '60s, the home Kinsey shared with his then wife, Anna, and his sons, John and Tim, became a haven for lost souls.

He stopped painting because, he said, the people he had painted were no longer there. To his amusement, he was the world's only anarchist master of foxhounds, although the hunts were conducted on foot.

When he began to paint again, in the late '80s, the subject of one of his more striking works was of Leon Trotsky dressed as a foxhunter. Trotsky was an enthusiast of the hunt.

In 1998, he sold up in Wales and moved to a cheaper life in the Czech Republic. He could be eccentric and was troubled by illness but he had an irrepressible love of life. He never sold out the contradictions in his character. He was a great raconteur, kind, loyal and generous.

He and Anna divorced; she survives him, as do his two sons.

The Guardian, London

---

Final Push For Forest Protection

Thu, 30 Nov 2000 22:54:56 GMT

Dear Mac McLean: You can take action on this alert either by email or preferably on the web at:
http://actionnetwork.org/take-action.tcl?key=29017A13549B1130053858C179

Alert expires on December 30, 2000

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

Your Forest Protection Vote Counted!

While your vote in the presidential elections may still be in dispute, your vote to protect America's Heritage Forests is not!

According to Secretary of Agriculture: "Never before have the American people so actively participated in helping to decide how their public lands should be managed. The fact that more than 1.5 million comments were received from Americans show that these truly are all of the people's lands, not just a few, and they care deeply about how they are cared for."

Please Email Your Forest Protection "Vote" to the President Today! (Simply follow the easy directions below.)

Your Comments Brought Results!

In response to an overwhelming number of comments sent by forest supporters like you, the Forest Service recently announced that it is moving to protect nearly 60 million acres of forests.

How You Can Help Close the Final Loopholes

Despite the great strides made by the Forest Service, its protection plan still allows for "stewardship" logging operations to proceed, and delays protection for the priceless Tongass Rainforest in Alaska for four years.

The timber industry has used "stewardship" logging and as an excuse to conduct business as usual - including clearcutting old-growth. Additionally, waiting four years to include the Tongass would result in thousands of acres of clearcuts in Alaska's Ancient Rainforest as the timber industry races to log as much as possible within the 4 year gap.

Thanks To Your Voice, The Forest Service Has Come A Long Way. Now It's Up To President Clinton To Finish The Job!

In just a few days, President Clinton will finalize the Roadless Area Protection Plan.

Please follow the simple directions below to email President Clinton urging him to close the plan's stewardship loophole and to protect the Tongass Rainforest immediately.

You can also get the message to him by calling the White House at 1-866-366-3655 (press 0 to bypass the recorded message).

Even if you've already called or emailed the President, please send him a message again today!

Thank you again for your efforts to save our remaining wild forests. Together we are making a difference.

Sincerely,

Amy Luckey Internet Campaign Director http://www.OurForests.org

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

INSTRUCTIONS TO RESPOND VIA THE WEB: If you have access to a web browser, you can take action on this alert by going to the following URL:

http://actionnetwork.org/take-action.tcl?key=29017A13549B1130053858C179

INSTRUCTIONS TO RESPOND VIA EMAIL: Just choose the "reply to sender" option on your email program, and edit the letter below as you wish. You must include the whole letter in your response including "-YOU MAY EDIT THE LETTER BELOW-" and "-END OF LETTER-". Please do not add your name and address to your letter. Action Network automatically does this for you.

We STRONGLY encourage you to make edits directly to our sample letter below, and put the alert talking points into your own words. An individualized letter is worth ten computer generated letters. Of course, hundreds of unedited letters will still create a large impact, so please reply even if you don't have time to personalize the letter.

Your letter will be addressed and sent to: President Bill Clinton

-------YOU MAY EDIT THE LETTER BELOW---------

I applaud the dramatic improvements the Forest Service has made to the Roadless Area Protection Plan in response to the overwhelming public support for the protection of our Heritage Forests.

By strengthening the Forest Service proposal in the following two areas, you will ensure an enduring and historic legacy for future generations:

1. Prevent destructive logging under the guise of "stewardship;" and 2. Immediately protect the Roadless Areas of the priceless Tongass Rainforest in Alaska from all logging and road construction.

-------END OF LETTER-------------------------

Sincerely yours,

Mac McLean 1448 Fairmont Street Washington, DC 20009

If you would like to be removed from the Heritage_Forests list, please respond to this email with "REMOVE" as the subject line or visit: http://actionnetwork.org/home.tcl?key=29017A13549B1130053858C179

---

Reclaim the Cities: from Protest to Popular Power

Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:59:04 -0800
RadTimes # 117
by Cindy Milstein <cbmilstein@aol.com>
Perspectives on Anarchist Theory - Vol. 4, No. 2 - Fall 2000

"Direct action gets the goods," proclaimed the Industrial Workers of the World nearly a century ago. And in the short time since Seattle, this has certainly proven to be the case. Indeed, "the goods" reaped by the new direct action movement here in North America have included creating doubt as to the scope and nature of globalization, shedding light on the nearly unknown workings of international trade and finance bodies, and making anarchism and anticapitalism almost household words. As if that weren't enough, we find ourselves on the streets of twenty-first-century metropolises demonstrating our power to resist in a way that models the good society we envision: a truly democratic one.

But is this really what democracy looks like?

The impulse to "reclaim the streets" is an understandable one. When industrial capitalism first started to emerge in the early nineteenth century, its machinations were relatively visible. Take, for instance, the enclosures. Pasture lands that had been used in common for centuries to provide villages with their very sustenance were systematically fenced off - enclosed - in order to graze sheep, whose wool was needed for the burgeoning textile industry. Communal life was briskly thrust aside in favor of privatization, forcing people into harsh factories and crowded cities.

Advanced capitalism, as it pushes past the fetters of even nation-states in its insatiable quest for growth, encloses life in a much more expansive yet generally invisible way: fences are replaced by consumer culture. We are raised in an almost totally commodified world where nothing comes for free, even futile attempts to remove oneself from the market economy. This commodification seeps into not only what we eat, wear, or do for fun but also into our language, relationships, and even our very biology and minds. We have lost not only our communities and public spaces but control over our own lives; we have lost the ability to define ourselves outside capitalism's grip, and thus genuine meaning itself begins to dissolve.

"Whose Streets? Our Streets!" then, is a legitimate emotional response to the feeling that even the most minimal of public, noncommodified spheres has been taken from us. Yet in the end, it is simply a frantic cry from our cage. We have become so confined, so thoroughly damaged, by capitalism as well as state control that crumbs appear to make a nourishing meal.

Temporarily closing off the streets during direct actions does provide momentary spaces in which to practice democratic process, and even offers a sense of empowerment, but such events leave power for power's sake, like the very pavement beneath our feet, unchanged. Only when the serial protest mode is escalated into a struggle for popular or horizontal power can we create cracks in the figurative concrete, thereby opening up ways to challenge capitalism, nation-states, and other systems of domination.

This is not to denigrate the direct action movement in the United States and elsewhere; just the opposite. Besides a long overdue and necessary critique of numerous institutions of command and obedience, the movement is quietly yet crucially supplying the outlines of a freer society. This prefigurative politics is, in fact, the very strength and vision of today's direct action, where the means themselves are understood to also be the ends. We're not putting off the good society until some distant future but are attempting to carve out room for it in the here and now, however tentative and contorted under the given social order. In turn, this consistency of means and ends implies an ethical approach to politics. How we act now is how we want others to begin to act, too. We try to model a notion of goodness even as we fight for it.

This can implicitly be seen in the affinity group and spokescouncil structures for decision making at direct actions. Both supply much needed spaces in which to school ourselves in direct democracy. Here, in the best of cases, we can proactively set the agenda, carefully deliberate together over questions, and come to decisions that strive to take everyone's needs and desires into account. Substantive discussion replaces checking boxes on a ballot; face-to-face participation replaces handing over our lives to so-called representatives; nuanced and reasoned solutions replace lesser-of-two - (or three) evils' thinking. The democratic process utilized during demonstrations decentralizes power even as it offers tangible solidarity; for example, affinity groups afford greater and more diverse numbers of people a real share in decision making, while spokescouncils allow for intricate coordination - even on a global level. This is, as 1960s' activists put it, the power to create rather than destroy.

The beauty of this new movement, it could be said, is that it strives to take its own ideals to heart. In doing so, it has perhaps unwittingly created the demand for such directly democratic practices on a permanent basis. Yet the haunting question underlying episodic "street democracy" remains unaddressed: How can everyone come together to make decisions that affect society as a whole in participatory, mutualistic, and ethical ways? In other words, how can each and every one of us - not just a counterculture or this protest movement - really transform and ultimately control our lives and that of our communities?

This is, in essence, a question of power - who has it, how it is used, and to what ends. To varying degrees, we all know the answer in relation to current institutions and systems. We can generally explain what we are against. That is exactly why we are protesting, whether it is against capitalism and/or nation-states, or globalization in whole or part. What we have largely failed to articulate, however, is any sort of response in relation to liberatory institutions and systems. We often can't express, especially in any coherent and utopian manner, what we are for. Even as we prefigure a way of making power horizontal, equitable, and hence, hopefully an essential part of a free society, we ignore the reconstructive vision that a directly democratic process holds up right in front of our noses.

For all intents and purposes, our movement remains trapped. On the one hand, it reveals and confronts domination and exploitation. The political pressure exerted by such widespread agitation may even be able to influence current power structures to amend some of the worst excesses of their ways; the powers that be have to listen, and respond to some extent, when the voices become too numerous and too loud. Nevertheless, most people are still shut out of the decision-making process itself, and consequently, have little tangible power over their lives at all. Without this ability to self-govern, street actions translate into nothing more than a countercultural version of interest group lobbying, albeit far more radical than most and generally unpaid.

What the movement forgets is the promise implicit in its own structure: that power not only needs to be contested; it must also be constituted anew in liberatory and egalitarian forms. This entails taking the movement's directly democratic process seriously -- not simply as a tactic to organize protests but as the very way we organize society, specifically the political realm. The issue then becomes: How do we begin to shift the strategy, structure, and values of our movement to the most grassroots level of public policy making?

The most fundamental level of decision making in a demonstration is the affinity group. Here, we come together as friends or because of a common identity, or a combination of the two. We share something in particular; indeed, this common identity is often reflected in the name we choose for our groups. We may not always agree with each other, but there is a fair amount of homogeneity precisely because we've consciously chosen to come together for a specific reason -- most often having little to do with mere geography. This sense of a shared identity allows for the smooth functioning of a consensus decision-making process, since we start from a place of commonality. In an affinity group, almost by definition, our unity needs to take precedence over our diversity, or our supposed affinity breaks down altogether.

Compare this to what could be the most fundamental level of decision making in a society: a neighborhood or town. Now, geography plays a much larger role. Out of historic, economic, cultural, religious, and other reasons, we may find ourselves living side by side with a wide range of individuals and their various identities. Most of these people are not our friends per se. Still, the very diversity we encounter is the life of a vibrant city itself. The accidents and/or numerous personal decisions that have brought us together often create a fair amount of heterogeneity precisely because we haven't all chosen to come together for a specific reason. In this context, where we start from a place of difference, decision-making mechanisms need to be much more capable of allowing for dissent; that is, diversity needs to be clearly retained within any notions of unity. As such, majoritarian decision-making processes begin to make more sense.

Then, too, there is the question of scale. It is hard to imagine being friends with hundreds, or even thousands, of people, nor maintaining a single-issue identity with that many individuals; but we can share a feeling of community and a striving toward some common good that allows each of us to flourish. In turn, when greater numbers of people come together on a face-to-face basis to reshape their neighborhoods and towns, the issues as well as the viewpoints will multiply, and alliances will no doubt change depending on the specific topic under discussion. Thus the need for a place where we can meet as human beings at the most face-to-face level - that is, an assembly of active citizens - to share our many identities and interests in hopes of balancing both the individual and community in all we do.

As well, trust and accountability function differently at the affinity group versus civic level. We generally reveal more of ourselves to friends; and such unwritten bonds of love and affection hold us more closely together, or at least give us added impetus to work things out. Underlying this is a higher-than-average degree of trust, which serves to make us accountable to each other.

On a community-wide level, the reverse is more often true: accountability allows us to trust each other. Hopefully, we share bonds of solidarity and respect; yet since we can't know each other well, such bonds only make sense if we first determine them together, and then record them, write them down, for all to refer back to in the future, and even revisit if need be. Accountable, democratic structures of our own making, in short, provide the foundation for trust, since the power to decide is both transparent and ever amenable to scrutiny.

There are also issues of time and space. Affinity groups, in the scheme of things, are generally temporary configurations - they may last a few months, or a few years, but often not much longer. Once the particular reasons why we've come together have less of an immediate imperative, or as our friendships falter, such groups often fall by the wayside. And even during a group's life span, in the interim between direct actions, there is frequently no fixed place or face-to-face decision making, nor any regularity, nor much of a record of who decided what and how. Moreover, affinity groups are not open to everyone but only those who share a particular identity or attachment. As such, although an affinity group can certainly choose to shut down a street, there is ultimately something slightly authoritarian in small groups taking matters into their own hands, no matter what their political persuasion.

Deciding what to do with streets in general - say, how to organize transportation, encourage street life, provide green space, and so on - should be a matter open to everyone interested if it is to be truly participatory and nonhierarchical. This implies ongoing and open institutions of direct democracy, for everything from decision making to conflict resolution. We need to be able to know when and where citizen assemblies are meeting; we need to meet regularly and make use of nonarbitrary procedures; we need to keep track of what decisions have been made. But more important, if we so choose, we all need to have access to the power to discuss, deliberate, and make decisions about matters that affect our communities and beyond.

Indeed, many decisions have a much wider impact than on just one city; transforming streets, for example, would probably entail coordination on a regional, continental, or even global level.

Radicals have long understood such mutualistic self-reliance as a "commune of communes," or confederation. The spokescouncil model used during direct actions hints at such an alternative view of globalization. During a spokescouncil meeting, mandated delegates from our affinity groups gather for the purpose of coordination, the sharing of resources/skills, the building of solidarity, and so forth, always returning to the grassroots level as the ultimate arbiter. If popular assemblies were our basic unit of decision making, confederations of communities could serve as a way to both transcend parochialism and create interdependence where desirable. For instance, rather than global capitalism and international regulatory bodies, where trade is top-down and profit-oriented, confederations could coordinate distribution between regions in ecological and humane ways, while allowing policy in regard to production, say, to remain at the grassroots.

This more expansive understanding of a prefigurative politics would necessarily involve creating institutions that could potentially replace capitalism and nation-states. Such directly democratic institutions are compatible with, and could certainly grow out of, the ones we use during demonstrations, but they very likely won't be mirror images once we reach the level of society. This does not mean abandoning the principles and ideals undergirding the movement (such as freedom, cooperation, decentralism, solidarity, diversity, face-to-face participation, and the like); it merely means recognizing the limits of direct democracy as it is practiced in the context of a demonstration.

Any vision of a free society, if it is to be truly democratic, must of course be worked out by all of us - first in this movement, and later, in our communities and confederations. Even so, we will probably discover that newly defined understandings of citizenship are needed in place of affinity groups; majoritarian methods of decision making that strive to retain diversity are preferable to simple consensus-seeking models; written compacts articulating rights and duties are crucial to fill out the unspoken culture of protests; and institutionalized spaces for policy making are key to guaranteeing that our freedom to make decisions doesn't disappear with a line of riot police.

It is time to push beyond the oppositional character of our movement by infusing it with a reconstructive vision. That means beginning, right now, to translate our movement structure into institutions that embody the good society; in short, cultivating direct democracy in the places we call home. This will involve the harder work of reinvigorating or initiating civic gatherings, town meetings, neighborhood assemblies, citizen mediation boards, any and all forums where we can come together to decide our lives, even if only in extralegal institutions at first. Then, too, it will mean reclaiming globalization, not as a new phase of capitalism but as its replacement by confederated, directly democratic communities coordinated for mutual benefit.

It is time to move from protest to politics, from shutting down streets to opening up public space, from demanding scraps from those few in power to holding power firmly in all our hands. Ultimately, this means moving beyond the question of "Whose Streets?" We should ask instead "Whose Cities?" Then and only then will we be able to remake them as our own. ---- Cindy Milstein is a faculty member at the Institute for Social Ecology (see <http://www.tao.ca/~ise/> for more on the ISE as well as a companion essay to this one by Ms. Milstein, "Democracy is Direct") and a board member for the Institute for Anarchist Studies.


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