------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
The hunt for red hot cargo
Missile Talks Sought
Peter Hain shunted to Trade Dept.
Souevnirs a risk for Gulf force
Risks From Uranium Limited, Experts Say
Saddam's secret weapons
Bush pledge to push missile defence plan
PIKETON WORKERS ON HOLD AGAIN
'DOWNWINDERS' HONORED:
Radiation Victims Honored
MILITARY
Myanmar's Military Rule Entrenched
ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace uses riot police van in nuclear protest
Oppose John Ashcroft
"WBAI: The Democratic Party's Newest Target"
-------- NUCLEAR
The hunt for red hot cargo
Sunday 28 January 2001
The Age
By LARRY SCHWARTZ
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/01/28/FFXJWW06GIC.html
He is the son of a Port Albert shark fisherman. But Chris Robinson says as a child he wasn't allowed to accompany his father in the boat; his mother feared he might favor that kind of life.
Still, he has spent much of his life on the sea in exploits that have gained him repute as among the most courageous of environmental activists.
Mr Robinson, 48, returned home late last year from working in a whale sanctuary in the Mediterranean after being approached to join a flotilla protesting against the passage of two British-flagged ships ferrying plutonium fuel from France to Japan.
He has been readying his 12-metre boat, Fand, at Hastings, on the Mornington Peninsula, and will set sail for Sydney in mid-February to join the Australian contingent meeting New Zealand activists expecting to front the two carriers between Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.
Anti-nuclear campaigners are closely monitoring the progress of the vessels, which reportedly left France last weekend with enough plutonium in MOX (mixed oxygen plutonium) fuel for 30 atomic bombs. They are undecided on the precise action they will take when they encounter the nuclear fuel carriers, each with three 30mm cannons on board, more mindful of potential environmental disaster.
A softly spoken and reluctant hero, Mr Robinson risked his life to search for others on the Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior, when it was sunk by two limpet mines in Auckland Harbor in July, 1985. The Warrior was to have joined a protest against French nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific.
A decade later, Mr Robinson was one of three activists sought by French police on the atoll. He may have piloted inflatable Zodiacs in the path of whalers' harpoons and crawled across a deck to lift the anchor of a boat impounded by Spanish authorities during a protest against whaling, but he dismisses some reported escapades as "poetic licence". He would rather talk about the protest than himself.
The Tasman Sea "can throw anything at you", says Mr Robinson's long-time friend, Dutch-born activist Henk Haazen, who is readying the 15-metre cutter Tiama in Cronulla, Sydney, to join the flotilla.
Mr Haazen, who will sail with his New Zealand wife Bunny McDiarmid and their 12-year-old daughter, Ruby, plays down the risk to protesters from an encounter with the heavily armed ships, which will ferry the reprocessed plutonium fuel to be used at a nuclear power reactor in western Japan.
But he makes no effort to conceal his concerns at the risk to the environment of a process that has seen nuclear waste shipped from one side of the world to be reprocessed and returned for further use.
"We have the Barrier Reef and the beautiful Australian coastline and there is always a possibility when you are carrying around this sort of stuff that a ship can be sunk," says Mr Haazen, 46.
Japanese nuclear power reactors have for some years sent their waste for reprocessing by a company called Cogema at the la Hague reprocessing site in Cherbourg, France.
Plutonium is extracted from the waste and a new MOX fuel is packaged in pellets to be shipped back to Japan.
The previous transportation of MOX fuel created a furore in late 1999 over quality control, which saw the Japanese Government reject a load shipped on one of the two carriers of the UK Government-owned British Nuclear Fuels.
"This is the fourth shipment to come through our waters that we know of," says Carolin Wenzel, media officer on nuclear issues for Greenpeace Australia. "There's going to be an intensification. The projection is there'll be at least 80 mixed oxygen plutonium shipments in the next 10 years."
Skippers of at least seven boats, including Mr Haazen's Greenpeace-owned Tiama, have indicated they will take part in the independent protest against the passage of the two British ships. Setting out from Sydney with Tiama and Fand will be the 10-metre Sydney vessel Antarctic, skippered by Mark and Bec Jeremy.
Mr Haazen says another three Australian skippers "are seriously trying to join the flotilla if they can get their boats together in time" and as many in New Zealand have expressed an interest.
The two British vessels, the Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, left Cherbourg Harbor last weekend. Greenpeace says the ships appear to have chosen a "circuitous route" to minimise controversy after international condemnation, notably from New Zealand, though not Australia. "It's this tricky thing where on the one hand they say it's safe," says a Greenpeace officer, "but on the other they're avoiding being in too close contact with any ports on the way. And the freighters are armed to the teeth."
Spotter planes off the South African and Tasmanian coastlines will be dispatched to help update protesters on the progress of the Pintail and Teal on the 30,000-kilometre voyage.
"Otherwise we wouldn't have a hope in hell of finding them," says Mr Haazen, who was also a crew member on the Rainbow Warrior but was on shore when it sunk in Auckland Harbor in 1985.
He, Mr Robinson and Greenpeace founder David McTaggart were in the news a decade later when sought by French police who thought they had infiltrated France's nuclear test site at Mururoa Atoll, in the South Pacific.
They remained hidden on a nearby island, Vana Vana, during the search. Mr McTaggart had earlier told the media they might bury themselves in the sand on Mururoa using small plastic pipes to help them breathe.
Mr Robinson decries the failure of the Australian Government to join international condemnation of the transport of 230 kilograms in weapons-usable MOX fuel.
"I would expect total embarrassment because we are at the beginning of the chain by giving them uranium," he says. "So I don't expect we're going to hear much from the Australian Government in fact." Educated at Yarram High and Melbourne High, Mr Robinson became involved in Greenpeace while travelling in Europe in the late 1970s. He is still active as an environmentalist, independent of Greenpeace.
Mr Robinson says the Australian public is too often kept in the dark on nuclear issues. "What we're trying to do is to point out what's going on."
A spokesman for the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said late last week he had been notified about the shipments by authorities in France and the UK and had been assured there were adequate provisions for transportation and handling the materials on board.
Greenpeace's Carolin Wenzel says Australia has remained silent despite protests by others, notably New Zealand's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Phil Goff.
South Africa's Minister for the Environment and Tourism, Valli Moosa, reportedly said last week his government would monitor the passage of the ships and keep the public informed. He said South Africa would prefer the ship to stay out of the exclusive economic zone 300 kilometres off its coast.
Elisabeth Mealey, Greenpeace International media officer working on the MOX shipments issue, says there has been opposition also from some Pacific Island countries and Portugal.
Mr Robinson recalls the time French intelligence agents sunk the Rainbow Warrior in 1985.
"The skipper and I were going through and making sure everyone wasn't on. We went out the back door when the water came in and we didn't know there was anyone down."
He denies reports that he dived repeatedly to save his friend, 33-year-old photographer Fernando Pereira, who died when the ship went down. "I was on the boat when she hit the bottom. But I was not diving into the water. But if I had known that someone ..."
Mr Haazen and Ms McDiarmid were visiting Ms McDiarmid's parents in Auckland when the Rainbow Warrior was sunk.
"The first bomb went off right underneath our cabin. It was about 11 o'clock in the evening and the likelihood that we would have been there would have been pretty high," says Mr Haazen.
He is expecting a peaceful protest next month. "We won't interfere with the safe operation of the vessels," he says. "We just want to be out there and be very loud about it and raise our flags and banners and talk to them on the radio and say we don't want you in our back yards."
---
Missile Talks Sought
U.S., Chinese experts want compromise on shield
Sunday, January 28, 2001
San Francisco Chronicle
Erik Eckholm,
New York Times
mailto:feedback@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/28/MN188624.DTL
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=bushchina28&date=20010128
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/sun/news/docs/039486.htm
Beijing -- With President Bush determined to build a national missile defense, U.S. and Chinese military experts have begun exploring ways to make such a shield more palatable to China and say a compromise, although extremely difficult, might be possible.
American plans for a missile shield have stirred opposition in capitals across the globe, but China's resistance may be the most intractable.
A way out of the impasse might be found, military experts say, but it will require near-heretical political steps by leaders in Washington and Beijing. Without some accommodation, experts and Chinese officials warn, the American missile program could poison relations, set off a dangerous arms race across Asia and even raise the chances of a war.
Up to now, U.S. officials have said the proposed defenses are intended to counter only smaller powers such as Iran and North Korea while offering little more than assurances that a missile shield is not aimed at stifling China.
But Chinese leaders are acutely aware that any working system may effectively neutralize their bantam nuclear forces, and they fear it will subject them to potential American bullying -- particularly regarding Taiwan.
As it has become clear that a new administration is determined to press ahead with a missile shield, experts from both countries say, new thinking is required.
"If the American intention is to use this system to defend against China, then I can't see any room for compromise," said Li Bin, a nuclear physicist and arms control expert at Qinghua University who advises the government. "But if they really are just worried about the so-called rogue states, and they aren't trying to undermine China's deterrent," he said, "then it may be possible in principle to reach agreement."
An unofficial group of nongovernment American military experts visited Beijing recently to discuss the issue with Chinese officials and scholars.
The Chinese officials listened to proposals for compromise, according to some who attended, but did not endorse them and mainly restated Beijing's opposition to the U.S. plan, while the interest of scholars outside the government was more obviously piqued. But the fact that Chinese authorities attended and allowed such meetings to take place at all suggested their strong desire to find a way for their concerns to be taken into account.
"We wanted to help the Chinese understand more clearly that the missile- defense train has already left the station," said Bates Gill, an arms expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington who was part of the visiting American group. "They can try to engage in a serious dialogue with the United States, or they can keep their heads in the sand as important decisions get made."
Military experts on both sides of the Pacific say the ideas they discussed would require Bush to place clear limits on the size of the missile shield program and -- risking sharp divisions in the Republican Party and Congress -- to acknowledge China's stature as a nuclear power.
The Americans would have to agree, implicitly at least, that China could preserve a capacity to hit back at the United States with at least a few nuclear bombs, even after suffering a surprise U.S. attack. That would require that the United States accept a Chinese arsenal just large enough to outnumber any proposed defense.
The Chinese, these experts say, would have to move beyond their reflexive condemnations and relax the hypersecrecy that has surrounded their weapons program, allowing the United States a clearer idea of the size and capability of their arsenal. They would have to convince American planners that any nuclear buildup will be keyed to the size of the U.S. system. That would allow China to keep something resembling the minimal capacity for a counterattack that it has had in the past but would not fundamentally alter the balance.
The immediate goal would not necessarily be a treaty, like those the United States negotiated with the much more powerful Soviet Union to stabilize the arms race, which openly endorsed a balance of terror.
Rather, the two countries could begin by seeking a more private and informal "strategic understanding" about the expected size of the shield as well as the number and kinds of offensive weapons China plans to develop, Gill said.
James Mulvenon, an expert on the Chinese military at the Rand Corp. who was also part of the discussions, said, "Even if China doubled or tripled its strategic nuclear forces, it would not affect the strategic balance between China and the United States, as Washington would still possess an overwhelming advantage."
The "real worry," he said, is that an arms race would seriously erode relations, and that China might supply missiles or countermeasures to the very countries a missile shield is intended to defend against.
China's nuclear weapons program is based on a strategy of "minimal deterrence." Instead of matching U.S. and Russian missile forces in a costly arms race, China developed a small force under the assumption it could ride out a nuclear attack, then still hit an enemy city with a few bombs -- enough to make any opponent think twice.
"What China worries about is losing its deterrent capability," said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Qinghua University.
-------- britain
Peter Hain shunted to Trade Dept.
Sunday, January 28, 2001
The Hindu
By Hasan Suroor
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/01/28/stories/03280007.htm
LONDON, JAN. 27. Even amid all the distractions over the Hindujas' passport affair it has not gone unnoticed that Mr. Peter Hain has been moved out of the Foreign Office in the reshuffle following Mr. Peter Mandelson's resignation.
The decision to shift Mr. Hain to a more low-profile ministry - he is now Minister for Energy in the Department of Trade and Industry - is widely seen to be linked to his outspoken opposition to the U.S. nuclear missile defence project and his difficulties with his boss, Mr. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, who believed that he had begun to speak out of turn once too often. More importantly, however, it is Mr. Hain's strong public criticism of the U.S. project that worried the Blair Government at a time when it is seeking hard to be on the right side of the Bush administration. The U.S. President, Mr. George Bush is deeply committed to the programme and is expecting Britain not only to support it but also work on its European allies to stop resisting it. This is one of the issues which Mr. Bush is expected to raise with the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair when he receives him in the White House in the next few weeks.
Britain's support to the programme is crucial both politically and because of some of the key physical facilities which would need to be located on the British soil to make it effective. Even as the Government is treading cautiously, Mr. Hain has been engaged in a campaign against the project and in a move that particularly annoyed Whitehall was a memo he sent to Mr. Cook warning that any move to support the programme could spark widespread public protests, reminiscent of the campaign against nuclear disarmament. The memo was leaked causing considerable embarrassment. Even sympathetic commentators found it unusual for a Foreign Office Minister to take a controversial stand on a sensitive issue even before the Government has made up its mind.
The Times had little doubt that it was his ``long standing member of the CND (campaign against nuclear disarmament) and his criticism of America's Star Wars missile defence project that may have cost him his job at a time when the Government is anxious to establish strong ties with the Bush administration.'' The Independent said Downing Street was said to be ``anxious that Mr. Hain's opposition to America's national missile defence system....could cause diplomatic problems...''
Mr. Hain's exit from the Foreign Office came within hours of a diplomatic row with South Africa caused by his remarks in an interview criticising the South African Government's policy of ``constructive engagement'' with Zimbabwe. The South African Foreign Minister protested Mr. Hain's remarks saying they could jeopardise the President, Mr. Thabo Mbeki's visit to Britain during this year, according to The Times.
Downing Street, however, maintained that the transfer was not a reflection on his record and he was a highly rated Minister. Mr. Hain was reported as saying that he was not apologetic about his ``style''. ``My diplomatic style was to tell it straight. On one or two occasions that style upset people; for instance, when I said that Mugabe (Zimbabwe leader) was driving his country into the sand he objected. Well, tough. I was speaking the truth,'' he said.
-------- depleted uranium
Souvenirs a risk for Gulf force
Sunday 28 January 2001
The Age
By BRENDAN NICHOLSON
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/01/28/FFXW6V06GIC.html
Australians who served in the Gulf War may have unwittingly exposed themselves to depleted uranium residues while taking souvenirs from Iraqi tanks blown up by allied forces.
Veterans taking part in a national health study have confirmed that they collected souvenirs from burnt-out vehicles.
Malcolm Sim, the Monash University professor in charge of the study, said some Australians who served in the Gulf could have been exposed to depleted uranium, but the number was not likely to be high.
Most Australians served in the Gulf War on ships and did not spend much time on land.
"But we know there were some possible exposures to depleted uranium," Professor Sim said.
"We know the ships docked near where the shells had been used to attack enemy tanks and there were souvenirs taken of bits of Iraqi tanks which may have been contaminated."
Fire may have also spread contamination.
A small number of Australians who served with United States and British forces took part in the ground war and could have had contact with depleted uranium.
The Federal Government announced last week that all Australians who served in the Balkans would be given medical examinations to assess whether they had been exposed to depleted uranium.
The Monash team hopes to examine all the 1865 Australians who served in the Gulf War and an equal number of service personnel who did not go to the Gulf for comparison.
Professor Sim said about 700 Gulf veterans had registered and many of them had already had their medical examinations. The study was going faster than he had expected.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process and is only slightly radioactive.
It is used in armor and anti-tank shells because it is extremely dense - nearly twice as heavy as lead - giving it greater hitting power.
The main health threat comes from its chemical properties and not from radioactivity.
But some reports say the depleted uranium can be contaminated with tiny amounts of plutonium, which can cause cancer if lodged in the body.
As a toxic heavy metal, depleted uranium may cause kidney problems and can be swallowed or inhaled as tiny particles dispersed by fires or when shells hit armor plating.
Professor Sim said that for some veterans, filling in the questionnaires brought back painful memories.
That fitted with the results of overseas studies, which showed significant levels of post-traumatic stress disorder were emerging.
"We've had feedback from a couple of people that thinking about it (the Gulf War) again and filling it out in a questionnaire was a bit traumatic," Professor Sim said.
"We can understand that. Some of the people had a difficult time and they relived bad experiences they'd had.
"They were not just out on ships swanning around. They were certainly under attack."
Giant clouds of vapor from burning oil wells hovered above the ships in the Gulf and were inhaled by servicemen and women.
The Monash team is also trying to work out which Australians were given the anti-chemical warfare agent pyridostigmine bromide, a potent drug designed to reduce the effects of any chemical warfare agents that attacked the nervous system.
-----------
Risks From Uranium Limited, Experts Say
Sunday, January 28, 2001
Washington Post
By David Brown
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53285-2001Jan26?language=printer
A furor in Europe over possible health hazards from depleted uranium ammunition that U.S. warplanes fired in the Balkans has no foundation in medical research, according to numerous studies and radiation specialists.
Long-term exposure to natural uranium, which is more radioactive than depleted uranium (DU), doesn't increase a person's risk for leukemia, lung cancer or other serious diseases, many studies have concluded. Chronic exposure to uranium can slightly alter kidney function, although not enough to affect health.
Depleted uranium has been studied far less than natural uranium, but researchers say nothing suggests it poses health risks. The best evidence is the experience of about 60 people heavily exposed to DU during the Persian Gulf War. Some still harbor DU shell fragments in their bodies, but they've developed no cancers or other serious illnesses.
"It is just not reasonable to assume that there is a causal connection between depleted uranium and reports of illness in this Kosovo or Bosnia situation," said John D. Boice Jr., former chief of radiation epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute.
This view was echoed by Naomi H. Harley, a researcher at New York University's department of environmental medicine, who helped write a report last year on depleted uranium for Rand Worldwide, a consulting firm. "It's virtually impossible for DU to cause any of the health effects that are perceived. It is impossible for DU to cause leukemia," she said.
Reports that eight Italian peacekeepers who served in Kosovo or Bosnia have died of cancer (reportedly most from leukemia) touched off deep concern among many Europeans. Thousands of rounds of DU munitions were fired in the Balkans, and some officials believe exposure to the remnants may be causing disease. They note that when European troops went into Kosovo in 1999, a NATO directive warned soldiers to be careful around targets hit by DU projectiles.
Numerous European political leaders in recent weeks have demanded that NATO remove DU munitions from its arsenals. The leaders aren't claiming they have evidence that DU is hazardous. Instead, they're not convinced by the evidence (most of it generated by U.S. and British researchers) that it's safe.
NATO is refusing to abandon the weapons but promises to investigate the reports.
The military uses depleted uranium because of its extreme density, about 1.7 times that of lead. It is put in some anti-tank projectiles to increase their striking power, and in tank armor as reinforcement. In civilian life, DU is used in the counterweights of flaps and rudders in airplanes, in boat keels and -- despite the current uproar -- as X-ray shielding in some hospitals.
Natural uranium is a mixture of three isotopes, or atomic strains, of the element. In depleted uranium, the two more radioactive ones (U-235 and U-234) have been largely removed for use in nuclear weapons or reactor fuel, leaving metal that consists primarily of the least radioactive isotope, U-238.
The form of radiation uranium emits is the alpha particle -- two protons and two neutrons. As subatomic particles go, alpha particles are extremely bulky and have very little penetrating power. Paper and skin stop them. The three isotopes decay into other radioactive elements over thousands or millions of years, some of which emit the more penetrating beta and gamma forms of radiation. Nevertheless, virtually all the radiation in samples of DU is alpha.
Because of that, external exposure to DU poses no hazard, not even to the skin, researchers say. The only possible risk arises when the exposure is internal, which can occur because DU shells can burn or vaporize when striking their targets.
Since 1940, research groups have followed the health of people exposed to uranium in the workplace. Nearly a dozen studies of about 78,000 uranium mill and processing-plant workers have found no increase in illness or cancer from exposures far higher than what could occur in the Balkans.
Specifically, there's no increase in cancer mortality overall among the uranium workers, nor in mortality from cancers of specific organs, such as lungs, the lymphatic system or bones. Uranium miners did show an increase in lung cancer, but that almost certainly arose from underground exposure to radon gas rather than uranium, researchers concluded.
Trace quantities of the element are in food, water and air. Most inhaled uranium is immediately exhaled, with only about 1 percent retained in the lungs. Similarly, ingested uranium is rapidly excreted, with little absorbed into the bloodstream. Nevertheless, studies from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, England, India, Japan, Nepal, Nigeria, Russia, the United States and Yugoslavia reveal that nearly everyone has minute amounts of uranium in their bones.
Leukemia -- the disease that reportedly claimed the Italian soldiers -- arises from cells in the bone marrow. People with alpha-emitting isotopes in their bones have no increase in leukemia. The best evidence is the experience of women exposed to the radioactive element radium in the 1920s while putting luminescent paint on watch dials in factories in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
"They ingested enormous amounts of radium, and they developed huge numbers of bone cancers," Boice said. "But they had no excess leukemia. That's because radium is an alpha-particle emitter like uranium, and the alpha particle can't get through the bone into the marrow to cause leukemia."
Bone cancer hasn't been linked to uranium, however, because the element emits so few alpha particles and so little is deposited in the bone, even with chronic exposure.
Most toxicologists believe uranium's potentially more serious hazard arises from its status as a heavy metal.
Some uranium mill workers who ingested large amounts of uranium dust showed temporary abnormalities in kidney function, such as increased excretion of certain kinds of protein. That abnormality didn't cause symptoms, and the workers didn't have higher rates of renal failure or kidney disease.
Since 1993, physicians at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center have periodically examined about 60 soldiers who were exposed to DU dust in armored vehicles hit by "friendly fire" during the Gulf War. About 15 still have DU fragments in their bodies and elevated amounts of uranium in the urine, but no kidney disease. There have been no cancers in the entire group, said Melissa McDiarmid, the physician who heads the monitoring team.
She added that the cohort -- all men -- has fathered 38 children since the war, with no birth defects.
Some Europeans have also expressed alarm that trace amounts of plutonium, a radioactive element produced by nuclear reactors, was detected in Balkan DU samples. This isn't surprising, researchers say, as some recycled reactor fuel is used in the enrichment process that separates the uranium isotopes.
In a commentary published yesterday in the medical journal the Lancet, N.D. Priest, a scientist at Middlesex University in Britain, says the contaminants occur in "inconsequential concentrations." That view is shared by NYU's Harley, who said that only "a few" of the thousands of alpha particles emitted per minute by a gram of DU would be from plutonium.
"The plutonium issue is really a nonissue," she said.
Special correspondent Sarah Delaney in Rome contributed to this report.
-------- iraq
Saddam's secret weapons exports
Iraqi dictator's bombs used in war against south Sudanese Christians
JANUARY 28 2001
By Anthony LoBaido WorldNetDaily.com
Editor's note: As reported in the New York Times recently, Saddam Hussein is rebuilding factories that produce weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. But what about the weapons Saddam has shipped out of Iraq and safely into other countries? And what are the details of Iraq's assistance in the Islamic genocidal killing fields of south Sudan? WorldNetDaily international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido, who made two trips inside Iraq last fall -- in addition to visiting Jordan, Kurdistan and Denmark in pursuit of this story -- presents a revealing look at this dangerous scenario.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has smuggled weapons of mass destruction into Algeria, Sudan and Libya -- and has played an ongoing role in the war in Sudan between the Islamic government of Khartoum and the black, mostly Christian and animist South Sudanese People's Liberation Army, WorldNetDaily has learned.
The chilling story comes via the Iraqi-Kurdish doctor, Hassan Abdul Salaam (a Muslim name meaning "Soldier of Peace"), who earlier shared with WorldNetDaily from his home in a repatriation camp here his revelations about Hussein's biological weapons program.
Salaam was conscripted into the Iraqi army where he served as a doctor. He was able to treat many Kurds and Iraqi soldiers injured in the fighting. Additionally, Hassan explained to WorldNetDaily how he learned from Iraqi military experts about how to survive a biological and chemical attack. Moreover, Salaam described in intimate detail the Iraqi biological and chemical weapons programs and their connections to Russian and Chinese military advisers -- experts on biological and biochemical war.
Chillingly, Hassan also documented that Saddam's top weapons henchman -- a certain Dr. Hassan Izbah -- is entertaining members of Japan's Om Shin Rikyo cult, which was found guilty of conducting the infamous nerve-gas attack in Tokyo a few years ago. Izbah is the point man Saddam uses to work with various cults and terror groups around the world.
Now, a few months after arriving safely in Denmark and having been debriefed by Interpol and the Danish Intelligence Service, Salaam has told WorldNetDaily about Saddam's weapons shenanigans -- thanks to the courageous help of the Danish Red Cross.
"The U.N. Security Council does not want to know the truth about Iraq's weapons. Consider that Russia and China are Iraq's allies -- and that France maintains close relations with Iraq. They all sit on the Security Council opposed to the U.S. and British bombings and sanctions against Saddam," said Salaam.
"When I was conscripted into the Iraqi army's biological weapons unit, I learned a lot about their military technology in this regard," Salaam said. "Artillery shells loaded with toxins and poisons: botulism, anthrax -- you name it, he's got it. I estimate over 8,000 liters of anthrax, 200 tons of VX nerve gas and an unknown quantity of agent 15. What Saddam and Dr. Izbah don't have on hand, they get from the North Koreans or the Russians ... or others."
Agent 15, according to MI-6, the British intelligence agency, is a non-lethal nerve gas that causes hallucinations, disabling enemy troops for several hours.
"Iraq is a major connecting point for global criminals and outcast regimes," Salaam continued. "Eastern European communists, the murderous Algerians -- and Libya -- had military officers visit our unit. Sudan as well. Most people know about the genocide in Sudan committed by the Islamic government against the black Christians. Those poor south-Sudanese -- they are worse off than even us Kurds."
"We worked diligently in labs that were set up by the Russians -- mobile units like domes the Eskimos live in, but bigger. The security around the workstations was incredible. The firepower and caliber of the soldiers was like a Special Forces operation. Muzahm Tassab al-Hassan and Abd-al-Rizzaq Shihab from Saddam's military industrial complex were also on hand. They are missile experts -- not doctors -- though real tough soldiers.
We worked with many toxins, preparing them for shipment out of Iraq. We had to work at odd hours, too, because the Iraqis were aware of the times the American satellites would be passing by overhead. I know these biological weapons were headed for Sudan, Libya, Algeria and possibly to some underground movements in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. And, of course, the PLO can't wait to get their hands on them. But Saddam wants to use them on Israel himself so, as long as Saddam is alive, the PLO won't get any biological weapons from Iraq."
Asked how he could go along with participating in preparing these weapons for export, Salaam added, "It was very difficult for me -- until they put a gun to my head when I protested. I wanted to live to see my wife and children again." The doctor's family was being held in an Iran-based refugee camp under the watchful eye of Iranian agents. He eventually managed to escape the Iraqi army and find safety in Iran, then Turkey, and finally asylum in Denmark.
"I know I can't undo what I've done, except to tell the intelligence agencies and the media what Saddam is up to," Salaam explained. "Even if the Iraqi assassins hunt me down and kill me off like Hussein Kamal [another Iraqi defector who exposed Saddam's weapon's programs to the CIA and Mossad station chiefs in Amman, Jordan], I will have fulfilled my duty before both Allah and mankind."
Saddam's war on Sudanese Christians
Piecing together Saddam's exports is tricky business. As WorldNetDaily has reported, Saddam's own company -- Asia -- is a billion-dollar enterprise. Asia exports oil, water, toys, food and baby needs to Turkey, Jordan and other states in the region. Even the Kurds get a piece of this action. America, the UK, Jordan and Turkey allow Asia to operate unencumbered, feeling that such trade is beneficial to the Kurds.
More problematic, however, is the fact that Saddam and his regime have constructed weapons plants in Sudan and smuggled weapons of mass destruction into Algeria. Moreover, Iraq built a biological-warfare laboratory complex in Libya 240 miles southwest of Tripoli. Another biological warfare complex built to produce botulism and anthrax was set up under the innocuous name of "General Health Laboratories."
The U.S. Defense Department has publicly stated that it has "no non-nuclear [method] to take out Libya's underground biological weapons facility at Tarhunnah." A conventional attack, says the Pentagon, will only stop production at the facility for one month or so.
The Tarhunnah plant was built as a sideshow to Gadhafi's "Great Manmade River Project," built with the help of a giant South Korean construction firm. Former CIA director John Deutch has called this plant "the largest underground chemical weapons plant in the world."
During the second term of the Reagan administration, the U.S. bombed Libyan cities Tripoli and Behghazi. Gadhafi has denied the existence of the Tarhunnah plant. Few, if any, in the West believe him.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is holding secret talks with Libya's ambassador to the United Nations. The talks center on the impending verdict in the Pan Am flight 103 bombing trial. Some 259 people were killed in the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. The men on trial are two highly trained Libyan intelligence agents, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima.
The conclusion of the trial reportedly will pave the way for Libya to restore "normal" ties with the U.S. and the European Union.
U.N. Ambassador James Cunningham, British U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock and Libyan U.N. representative Abuzed Omar Dorda are meeting to work out the details of the agreement.
In light of the Khartoum government's use of biological and biochemical weapons against the black south-Sudanese Christians, one may wonder: What are the conditions inside Sudan? South African missionary Peter Hammond of Frontline Fellowship is just one of many Westerners who have documented this horrendous holocaust.
According to a House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, in the early 1990s, the "Iraqis moved into the area of the Red Sea mountain range -- in Madabay in Khawr Ashraf, Port Sudan, in the region of Dalawat on the Red Sea near Hala'ib and the city of Tawker in the region of Karnakanat. The Iraqis brought into these installations high-tech equipment and computers, missiles, defense systems, anti-aircraft systems and radar systems.
By late 1993, the regions surrounding these installations were experiencing strict security measures and 24-hour armed patrols roam around it. In some areas, such as in the Port Sudan area, shepherds and nomads were completely removed from security zones within a 60-kilometer circumference.
Meanwhile, teams of Iraqi intelligence, military and commando officers arrived in Khartoum in the summer of 1995 to assist the Sudanese armed forces against what the Iraqis now called 'foreign intervention in Sudan.'"
The House report is filled with troubling information.
The Iraqi units were deployed to guard Saddam's weapons of mass destruction -- or WMD inside Sudan -- to train the Sudanese in intelligence gathering and to restructure the Islamic Sudanese Army in the same manner as the Iraqi Republican Guard.
Iraqi troops fought in south Sudan near Pibor against the black Christian SPLA army in the fall of 1995. About 120 Iraqi crews arrived in Pibor with tanks and uniforms marked with the insignia of the Iraqi Republican Guard. Iraqi artillery forces shelled SPLA camps in Torit with napalm bombs and wounded or killed over 250 people.
The Iraqi air force dropped chemical bombs on Kadugli and the Namang mountains in southern Sudan. Eyewitnesses reported that "deaths and injuries occurred among residents" and that "there was a big change in the color of the corpses and of animals and trees." Chemical warfare of this type has been well-documented in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia.
Other biological and/or chemical attacks were carried out at Nimule and at Kuya -- near Juba, Sudan's southern capital. The Tulushi-Tulus mountains area was also similarly attacked.
Near Soba, outside Khartoum, the Iraqis and the Sudanese also carried out tests of chemical agents in the desert. In May 1997, residents got sick when winds shifted suddenly and carried residues into populated areas.
By the summer of 1997, Khartoum completed the building of a new and far more sophisticated chemical weapons production factory in the region of Kafuri, north of Khartoum on the banks of the Blue Nile. The Kafuri facility includes laboratories, testing and prototype production sites for both chemical weapons -- including nerve agents -- and biological weapons, as well as storage sites for bulk chemicals and weapons loaded with both chemical and biological payloads.
Among the chemical weapons tested in Kafuri are 122mm and 152mm artillery shells, as well as rocket and tactical missile warheads. In building this factory, the Sudanese relied on technical assistance from Iraq and Iran. Additional expertise came from Egypt, Croatia, Bulgaria and Russia -- all recruited by Iraqi intelligence on behalf of the Sudanese. The key experts who helped with this program have been residing in a luxurious dormitory inside the compound.
The Yarmook Industrial Complex is another area of concern for the West. This military-controlled strategic installation covers an area of 10 by 20 kilometers in southern Khartoum. There are over 300 small buildings and sheds in seven clusters in the compound. The complex includes a production line for chemical agents, as well as production facilities for military equipment and weapons connected with the use of chemical weapons. These include warheads, bombs and canisters, as well as protective gear and special modifications to combat vehicles carrying these weapons.
In addition, the compound includes a special medical clinic, sports facilities, a mosque and a high-security living site where Muslim foreign experts from Iraq, Iran and Bulgaria live in two dormitories. There are also guesthouses for senior project advisers from Iraq and Iran. Moreover, there is a small farm ensuring the supply of fresh milk, vegetables and dates for the WMD workers. The famine and scorched-earth policies pursued by Khartoum in south Sudan do not affect the eating habits of these doomsday scientists.
Well-protected underground storage sites are found at several other locations as well.
The Sudanese military has recently begun training pilots and artillery officers in maintaining and using chemical weapons in a special school set up in the Wadi Seidna military compound. Osama bin Laden is building his own chemical weapons facility near the Islamic Center in Khartoum.
Playing hide and seek
Just as the American and British bombing of Iraq has continued since 1991 out of the media spotlight, so too has Saddam's transfer of WMD out of Iraq occurred below the radar of United Nations weapons inspectors.
In fact, it was not until 1994 that Germany's intelligence service became the first international spy agency to take inventory and document Saddam's WMD programs. The Iraqi dictator had even purchased needed items from Austria, Switzerland and Germany to upgrade those programs.
What else does Saddam have hidden inside Sudan? Consider the following:
A WMD facility was built during 1995 in an area near Wau in the Bahr-el-Ghazal province in southwestern Sudan, some 300 kilometers from the Uganda border.
Fissionable material, documents and weapons' subsystems were shipped via Jordan, utilizing Sudanese diplomatic mail privileges.
About 27.5 pounds of U-235, which had been originally supplied to Iraq by France for use in the French-built Osiraq research reactor, has been passed on to Ain Oussera, a town in Algeria. Where will this game end?
Salaam believes he has the answer: "America and the West must acknowledge that the continued bombing of Iraq is not the answer to curtailing Saddam's WMD program. As you say in English, `the cat's already out of the bag.'"
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush pledge to push missile defence plan
Sunday 28 January 2001
The Age - AFP
By JIM MANNION WASHINGTON
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/01/28/FFXTRT06GIC.html
President George W. Bush has reaffirmed his intention to deploy a national missile defence shield and cut US nuclear arsenals.
His defence secretary also made it clear that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty would not stand in the President's way.
The US leader restated his key election campaign promises just hours after his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, warned that deployment of the anti-missile shield would do "irreparable damage" to international security.
Mr Bush reminded reporters that he had pledged to deploy missile defences and reduce US nuclear arsenals, saying: "I'm going to fulfil that campaign promise."
"My point is, is that I want America to lead the world toward a more safe world when it comes to nuclear weaponry. On the offensive side, we can do so, and we can do so on the defensive side as well," he said.
Russia vehemently opposes the missile defence shield and has refused any changes to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which would bar deployment of even the limited anti-missile shield being developed by the US. Many US allies were also worried that fielding the system could ignite a new arms race.
However, Mr Bush's overture on nuclear arms reductions may appeal to Moscow, which has proposed that the US and Russia cut their arsenals to 1500 strategic nuclear warheads each, below the levels previously proposed for a START III agreement.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said a nuclear exchange with Moscow no longer was the main threat now facing the US and that circumstances had changed since the ballistic missile treaty was signed with the former Soviet Union.
The treaty "ought not to inhibit a country, a president, an administration, a nation, from fashioning offensive and defensive capabilities that will provide for our security in a notably different national security environment", he said.
"The President has not been ambiguous about this. He says he intends to deploy a missile defence capability for the country. He has concluded that it is not in our country's interests to perpetuate vulnerability," he said.
Speaking at his first news conference since being sworn in to a second term as Defence Secretary, Mr Rumsfeld would not say whether Washington was prepared to withdraw from the treaty. "I think it's something that's manageable," he said. "I don't know quite how it will be managed."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
PIKETON WORKERS ON HOLD AGAIN
Sunday, January 28, 2001
COMMENTARY EDITORIAL & COMMENT
The Columbus Dispatch Online Archival Article
By Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
Skepticism had accompanied the good news that flew around southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant in October, when then-Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson swooped down to deliver a pre-election gift of $630 million and the promise of jobs saved for years to come.
So, those same workers probably were the people least surprised by the news last week that a hitch has been thrown in the plan.
Too much neglect, too many evasions and some outright lies have plagued the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant over the past decades.
And so, despite the cheers, worry was etched on the faces of many workers who heard Richardson's announcement that some 1,200 jobs would be saved by keeping the plant on standby and launching a pilot project utilizing advanced technology after the Piketon plant is shut down in June.
That was the first good news in months at a regional economic mainstay, a place where hundreds of jobs already have been lost since the plant was privatized in 1998.
The Clinton administration and many members of Congress had ignored warnings about the dangers of placing in private hands the uranium-enrichment industry which supplies fuel to nuclear power plants. Of course, USEC, the federal corporation that lobbied so hard to leave the government, quickly developed the financial problems predicted by experts, forcing it to close Piketon years ahead of a "guaranteed'' stay-open date of 2005 and threatening the company's overall future viability.
Keeping the plant on standby was a sensible decision in case USEC's other plant, in Paducah, Ky. -- the only other domestic producer of the enriched uranium that fuels nuclear power plants -- also closed its doors.
Meanwhile, workers exposed to dangerous materials -- such as the plutonium secretly laced into uranium during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s -- had waited years just for some partial compensation. And forgive workers if they remain skeptical about any payment for past sufferings until the program actually goes into effect later this year.
These employees could be forgiven that October day for fearing that promises would not be kept.
And now, what are they -- many of them Cold War veterans who helped construct the nation's atomic defenses by producing weapons-grade uranium at peril to their own health -- to think? Indeed, what is an entire region -- economically depressed and oft-ignored by the powers that be in Columbus and Washington -- to think?
One of the first acts of the Bush administration's Energy Department was to suspend the Piketon standby program and hold up the initial $161 million released for the project on the Clinton administration's last day.
That followed an opinion issued by the General Accounting Office, an investigative agency that acts at the behest of Congress, that the initiative was being improperly funded. Richardson proposed using money from a pot of public funds left over from the USEC privatization.
But the GAO, whose opinion was requested by a Republican lawmaker suspicious that the Clinton administration was springing an October surprise designed to help Democrat Al Gore's election chances in Ohio, said the money was supposed to be used for expenses related to privatization and asserted the standby initiative didn't qualify.
The accounting office opinion doesn't carry the force of law, and Clinton administration legal counsel had insisted the allocation was proper. Of course, waiting to send off the initial payment until the day before Bush took office didn't help matters.
A spokesman for the Energy Department, now run by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, a former GOP senator from Michigan, said all the right things last week. The Bush administration remains committed to helping Piketon, carrying out the standby initiative and working out any problems with how the initiative is funded, according to spokesman Joe Davis.
The money was held up so a new administration and energy secretary could review the situation, he said.
Since Bush used the campaign to promise help for Piketon, there's little else his administration can say.
Still, I remember what one worker told me in the midst of the celebrating at the Piketon plant after Richardson's announcement, "I'll believe it when I see the money.''
Chances are, the money soon will be on the way. But it's not hard to understand why Piketon workers and other southern Ohioans might have that attitude.
Jonathan Riskind is chief of The Dispatch Washington bureau. jriskind@dispatch.com
-------- utah
'DOWNWINDERS' HONORED:
Utah adopts resolution Day of Remembrance for nuke test victims set
January 28, 2001
By ROBERT GEHRKE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Las Vegas Review-Journal
SALT LAKE CITY -- It's been 50 years since the Army first tested nuclear weapons in Southern Nevada, and the fallout is still lingering.
Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and his state's Legislature adopted a resolution Friday commemorating the anniversary of the first open-air atomic bomb test and the "downwinders" who paid the price.
Rep. Neal Hendrickson, D-West Valley City, said his parents and his sister died from cancer related to the fallout that drifted east from Nevada and blanketed parts of southern Utah.
"I happened to stand on the Black Ridge of St. George and watch those clouds come up and the dust blow over and fall on the citizens," said Rep. Jack Seitz, R-Vernal.
Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the first test. They went on for 37 years, with the government insisting all along they posed no threat.
"This is government at its absolute worst and if we don't remember it with a resolution like this we are going to repeat it," said Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George.
The resolution also notes that miners in Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico and the Navajo Nation who gathered uranium for the nuclear weapons program later contracted diseases caused by the radiation.
"I think we'll never know how much suffering went unrecognized," said Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan. His father had a sheep ranch near Payson, and said that after tests the fields were covered with white ash.
The resolution sets Jan. 27 as a Day of Remembrance "to recognize the legacy of the Cold War and express hope for peace, justice, healing, reconciliation, and the fervent desire and commitment to assure that such a legacy will never be repeated."
A group of downwinders gathered at the Capitol on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary.
Last July, President Clinton signed a bill paying up to $100,000 to people sickened by Cold War-era uranium mining and nuclear tests, expanding on a 1990 law.
-------- us nuc politics
Radiation Victims Honored
Sunday, January 28, 2001
Salt Lake Tribune
BY LINDA FANTIN
http://www.sltrib.com/01282001/utah/66597.htm
As far as golden anniversaries go, Saturday was about as solemn as it gets.
At 5:05 a.m. on Jan. 27, 1951, an atomic bomb lighted up the desert sky, the Nevada Test Site became operational and before long, lethal uranium deposits throughout the West were mined to build America's nuclear weapons arsenal.
Fifty years later, Ed Brickey is still losing friends to the fallout, friends like Carol Dewey of Dove Creek, Colo.
Dewey grew up around the uranium mines owned and operated by her late father. As president of the Colorado Plateau Uranium Workers, she lobbied tirelessly so that victims of radiation exposure, like her father, would be compensated by the U.S. government.
She died Thursday, her neck swollen with a rare form of cancer, and unexpectedly became one of the victims she intended to honor at Saturday's anniversary rally in the rotunda of the Utah Capitol.
"That's what we've come to expect when you grow up around a mill," said Brickey as he flipped through old photographs of Uravan, a Utah mining town outside Moab where he was raised. "We never had a choice. That's what's so sad about it."
Duped by the government about the dangers of atomic radiation, Brickey not only followed his father into uranium mining, he also worked at the Nevada Test Site.
On Friday, he joined a small group of uranium miners, Navajos and "downwinders" to commemorate the somber anniversary and to use the occasion to blast Washington, D.C., lawmakers for not doing enough to compensate victims of radiation exposure.
Led by Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch, Congress passed the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) guaranteeing up to $100,000 to downwinders and miners -- then didn't fund it for two years. Now the program is broke and the government is handing out IOUs.
In July, President Clinton signed an amendment to the 1990 law extending the compensation to millers and transporters of radioactive uranium ore. Again, the money is slow to follow and the government has yet to release the criteria so victims can apply for the funds.
"It didn't take near this long to compensate the Japanese for their suffering during World War II," said Mary Brickey.
Life is especially grim for the Navajos, who not only worked in the mines but lived downwind of the Nevada nuclear blasts. Goats and sheep ate grass contaminated by clouds of radioactive dust tainting the milk and meat that feed the clans. Even the rocks that were used to construct their houses are hot.
Elsie Mae Begay's hogan -- a traditional Navajo dwelling where Begay and her family had lived for years in Monument Valley -- has a floor made from such stones. Earlier this summer, the Environmental Protection Agency found that radiation levels were 80 times acceptable levels.
On Nov. 14, the EPA wrote to Begay promising to remove the hogan and replace it with a wooden structure by December.
"We're still waiting," Begay said Saturday.
Navajos often have a tougher time qualifying for federal aid because medical records, birth certificates and other official documents the government demands do not exist for many tribe members stricken with radiation-related diseases.
Others, like Dave Timothy, are excluded from the narrowly-written legislation.
Timothy lived in northern Utah in 1962 when winds plastered the area with radioactive fallout from above ground tests conducted at the Nevada site. Timothy, whose neck bares the scar from thyroid surgery, said he remembers the milk was so contaminated it had to be dumped down the sink.
But RECA only allows for downwinders in southern Utah to apply for compensation.
He called the legislation "a scam," saying it was designed to limit the government's risk, not to adequately compensate victims.
J. Truman agrees. The director of Downwinders says by restricting the categories of victims, Congress has prevented victims from "getting enough numbers to kick some butt in Washington."
He and others hope that will change.
"A lot of work must be done before justice is done," he said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- burma/myanmar
Myanmar's Military Rule Entrenched
AP
Sun, 28 Jan 2001
By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press Writer
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Myanmar's ruling military has eased its withering pressure on pro-democracy activists, raising hopes for some that a Western economic boycott is finally having an effect.
But even as a European Union delegation is scheduled to arrive Monday to press for more liberalization, some analysts say the junta is unlikely to meaningfully loosen a nearly 40-year grip on power.
Hope was recently sparked that a decade-old deadlock between the generals and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi could be broken after word emerged the two sides have been holding secret talks for nearly four months.
This dialogue, the first since 1994, is being called a "landmark" by dissident exiles and hailed by the United Nations. Some Western diplomats in the region say it's evidence the junta is in desperate economic straits.
But several Myanmar intellectuals, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid trouble with the junta, don't expect a resolution in the foreseeable future. Some foreign analysts agree.
"The dialogue is very much a show for the European Union, Japanese and the new Bush administration," said Josef Silverstein, an American political scientist who has studied Myanmar for a half century. "It's a play for the international community."
For a start, both Suu Kyi and the top military leaders are true believers in their competing political views, say observers who know the key players personally. Such people rarely are willing to compromise.
The generals regard themselves as Myanmar's saviors, and their hostility to Suu Kyi is almost visceral. Their core position - that they will retain power as long as they see fit - appears nonnegotiable.
"The Lady," as she is widely known, is a passionate democrat whose uncompromising stance sometimes borders on arrogance. This, and the Nobel Prize laureate's great popularity in the West, further infuriates the military.
On the surface, the capital of Yangon has rarely looked better. Traffic jams, shopping malls and high rises that indicate some people have benefitted from economic liberalization by a military group that seized power after brutally crushing a Suu Kyi-led uprising in 1988.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, had locked itself away from the world following a 1962 military coup. The ensuing regime - a mix of military rule and socialism - proved disastrous.
The economy is clearly the current regime's Achilles' heel and it has been deteriorating. Foreign investment has plummeted since 1997, hard currency is scarce, and rice, a key export, faces a glut on the world market.
This is worsened by continuing economic sanctions by Washington and the European Community. Japan, once the leading aid giver, is waiting for signs of political change before opening its pocketbook.
Myanmar says it wants sanctions lifted, and some concessions to Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy might prove enough to lessen international pressure. The EU delegation will assess the situation during its four-day visit.
The junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council, has stopped virulent attacks on Suu Kyi's party and has released some political prisoners, although Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since Sept. 22.
That's far short of meeting Suu Kyi's unswerving demand that the regime recognize the results of a 1990 election that her party won by a landslide.
Making such a concession to end sanctions would be unprecedented. Myanmar's military has been up against the wall many times, but never meaningfully yielded to foreign demands.
Western analysts say many in military ranks want the dialogue to fail, fearing that Suu Kyi's side might win and seek revenge for the imprisonment, torture and killing of democracy activists.
On the pro-democracy side, calls for demonstrations and other public action to pressure for change have fizzled in recent years.
"I think Suu Kyi's popularity is higher than ever. But I don't think people are going to pick up a weapon and go out on the streets - unless they kill her," Silverstein said.
Some in Myanmar are even more skeptical, saying that while antimilitary sentiment has risen, Suu Kyi's support is eroding as people grow frustrated with political stalemate and economic hardship.
"I don't trust anybody," said Aye Hla, a 21-year-old student, when asked if she backed Suu Kyi.
A bitter joke making the Yangon rounds recalls a Buddhist acceptance of fate that has been a key element of the modern political scene:
"The socialist regime did nothing and lasted 26 years. This regime has a done a few good things so it will last 52 years."
-------- activists
Greenpeace uses riot police van in nuclear protest
January 28, 2001
<http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9623>
DODEWAARD, Netherlands - Greenpeace activists duped police at a Dutch nuclear plant on Thursday, driving through a cordon in a second-hand riot police van to try to block a convoy of nuclear waste. The 11 protesters then chained themselves to the van, four of them to its wheels, as well as to a bridge forming the only access point into the Dodewaard nuclear power plant in the eastern Netherlands.
"We made it look like a real police bus. We fooled them," Greenpeace spokeswoman Annemiek van der Molen told Reuters from the site.
"It was a surprise," a police spokesman conceded. "It looked like a police van so it was let through. Then it became clear it wasn't ours."
The spokesman said that they arrested all 11 activists and a photographer and detained a further 10 protesters on the convoy's route. He said that the waste convoy was delayed by the protest, but was approaching the Dutch port of Flushing by early afternoon.
The Dodewaard nuclear power plant has been closed, but nuclear waste including spent fuel rods was to be taken to Britain's Sellafield to be reprocessed. Greenpeace said it was protesting against the practice of reprocessing nuclear waste at Sellafield, which it said causes large radioactive emissions into the air and sea.
The organisation is also calling on Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk to halt the transport of Dutch waste to Britain.
--------
Oppose John Ashcroft
Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Visit http://www.OpposeAshcroft.com for more information.
The position of Attorney General demands that the person who fills it be beyond reproach: a person of integrity and good judgment. John Ashcroft is a right-wing conservative with an exceptionally poor civil rights record and an astonishingly bad history concerning reproductive rights.
He has voted against affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws, against a crucial AIDS provision, against environmental protections, and has received extraordinarily high ratings and accolades from prominent ultra-conservative groups and institutions like the Christian Coalition and Bob Jones University. Moreover, Mr. Ashcroft's actions regarding the Ronnie White nomination demonstrate a clear lack of integrity.
People For the American Way, the NAACP, NARAL, LCCR, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the National Council of Jewish Women and other groups oppose the nomination of former Senator John Ashcroft to the position of Attorney General.
Please visit: http://www.opposeashcroft.com
Then add your voice by signing the petition there. This petition will be delivered to your Senator.
Please urge all your friends to call as well and visit http://www.opposeashcroft.com for more information about his nomination.
This message was sent to you by jbotkin@mmcable.com through the website http://www.opposeashcroft.com/ Report all incidences of abuse to webmaster@opposeashcroft.com
---------
"WBAI: The Democratic Party's Newest Target"
Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Lorna Salzman
From: Karl Grossman <kgrossman@hamptons.com>:
The following is by Lorna Salzman and is about what happened in the mid-1980s to Friends of the Earth, an equivalent in its heyday in the environmental movement to WBAI and KPFA, "Democracy Now," and all of what Pacifica was created to be--bold, grassroots-progressive, a real challenge to the "establishment." Lorna was Mid-Atlantic Representative of Friends of the Earth. She draws this from an article by her published in 1990. She can be reached at <lsalzman@aba.org>
Karl Grossman
WBAI: The Democratic Party's Newest Target
by Lorna Salzman
The sneak attack against WBAI-FM by its parent Pacifica Foundation did not happen suddenly. The gradual take-over by corporate and Democratic Party infiltrators happened over a period of some years, leading some to wonder just why the radio network staff, volunteers and local advisory boards never noticed what was going on. Perhaps they were so delighted just to get their stuff on the air without censorship that they figured free speech was all they needed.
But having said that, I think the latest struggle at WBAI in NYC needs to be seen not in isolation but as part of a nationwide pattern of subversion of progressive and radical voices and tendencies, a pattern that definitely includes the recent backlash by pro-abortion, women's and civil rights groups against the Nader presidential campaign and against the Green Party, which,along with those who sympathized with or gave voice to the anti-Republicrat feelings, will intensify over the next four years.
It was quite telling, at yesterday's teach-in by WBAI staff and supporters, to hear that the president of the Pacifica Foundation has retained her Federal government job through both Republican and Democratic administrations. Such stability in the face of purported partisan battles can only mean that "she must be doing something right", at least from her employer's point of view. By inference this means for the rest of us that he must be doing something wrong.
My contribution here is a history that presaged the WBAI battle by fifteen years: that of the (likely) Democratic Party/managerial elite/centrist takeover and destruction of Friends of the Earth between 1984 and 1986. The same maneuvers and patterns that characterize the Pacifica battle were eerily present in the FOE battle, in which I played a role: union busting, stifling of dissidents, suppression of information from FOE members, facilitated by the slow but inexorable "election" to the FOE board of directors of individuals with either a personal grudge against FOE founder Dave Brower or sympathetic to the message of the Washington DC managerial elite that only deference to and control by the DC loyalists would rescue the foundering organization.
FOE was not foundering in 1984. It had between 25,000 and 30,000 members. But it did have a new president, Rafe Pomerance (DC legislative director), after Brower resigned the presidency in 1980. At that FOE was pretty close to a break-even figure in its budget and at its highest membership level since its founding in 1979. And despite its comparatively small membership, it had the clout, expertise, experience and status equal to any of the other Beltway Biggies with their hundreds of thousands of supporters and multi-million dollar budgets (Greenpeace's budget was in the hundreds of millions of dollars at that time, due to their slave canvassers and top-down authoritarian structure).
As soon as Brower resigned the organization's morale, stability, mutual trust and solidity on issues like nuclear power and genetic engineering began quickly to erode. Old friends of Brower were turned against him by people with personal gripes and jealousy, who bought into the argument that FOE needed to grow and curry favor with Congress and that such "improvement" in its status and money situation required a tighter, more centrally controlled organization.
Rapidly after Brower left, the compromises on issues began, notably on nuclear power, where FOE - thanks to its energy advisor Amory Lovins and the San Francisco-based IPSEP (International Project for Soft Energy Paths) to promote Lovins' "soft energy path" - had taken the national lead in opposition. While I worked in NYC opposing Mo Udall's nuke giveaway to the nuclear industry on radioactive waste (which earned him a commendation from the Atomic Industrial Forum for resisting the anti-nuke groups), the FOE DC office was selling FOE out to him along with the Sierra Club, Environmental Policy Institute, etc. They didn't like my NY press releases naming the names of the sell-out groups and when I went down for a Nader Critical Mass conference, they pulled me into the inner office and proceeded to berate me for "washing dirty linen in public".
A bit later the head of the Sierra Club, to which I belonged, Denny Schaffer, had sent a letter to environmentalists urging support of the then-North Carolina governor against US Senator Jesse Helms. I wrote Schaffer, pointing out that the governor (Jim Hunt) had worked against a black anti-toxic waste dump group in NC by getting the US EPA to waive its (stringent) rules against siting such dumps less than 50 feet above groundwater. The site in Warren County, NC was about half that distance. Shaffer of course notified Rafe Pomerance, my boss, who suspended me for a few months. It turned out that the main reason was that the FOE PAC director, Bob Chlopak (formerly of US PIRG and a Democratic Party secret operative who some may be familiar with) had thrown "FOE" (i.e. Chlopak-FOEPAC) support to Hunt and was embarrassed by my letter.
Final straw was when FOE PAC announced its support of Walter Mondale BEFORE the Democratic Primary, claiming support of the staff. A big lie: only Chlopak's pals in DC supported him. The vast majority of the staff favored no endorsement at all until after the primary, and of those the majority opposed Mondale in any case.
After Chlopak announced the FOE PAC endorsement of a freshman LI congressman who had no environmental record to speak of, I wrote a letter on my behalf (I was Mid-Atlantic Representative of FOE, having been hired in 1975 by Brower) and that of the NY Branch, for whom I was a volunteer for two years prior to that, and for a year or so after my peremptory firing in 19840. In this letter I said that FOE PAC endorsements should be done only with the involvement and support of the FOE rep and/or branch in the particular district. Rafe Pomerance responded with a telegram: you are terminated due to insubordination.
After being fired, I watched the FOE Inquisition continue. They fired Brower (illegally). He was reinstated by the courts. Brower, seeing the staff cuts due to huge budget overruns run up by those who had TAKEN OVER AFTER BROWER LEFT THE PRESIDENCY, asked permission to run his own ad in their monthly paper Not Man Apart to solicit money to restore money to rehire staff. The board said yes. But Brower's ad contained all the information about what the board was doing, which revealed all the lies, corruption, and possibly illegal stuff going on. So the board confiscated all but 300 copies of NMA! So FOE members never found out what was going on. Here is what was going on. I knew it all first hand from other staff people, who sent me lots of stuff in plain brown envelopes (which I still have and which enabled me to write this entire ugly history in Philosophy & Social Action, a journal unfortunately not published in the US). The resemblance to the recent events at WBAI and Pacifica are uncanny.
--terminated FOE's anti-nuclear lobbying in DC;
--closed the San Francisco office (the seat of Brower's suppport and national headquarters), and moved it to Washington DC, which cost FOE probably about a quarter of a million dollars;
--made executive director Karl Wendelowski publisher of Not Man Apart, and enabled him to control all content of NMA;
--refused to act on a legally authorized resolution by a minority of Board members to call for a special members' meeting (which if held would be in California, where Brower had most support);
--issued a gag order prohibiting directors from using membership lists, to prevent members from finding out Board actions and from requesting a special members' meeting as was their right;
--demoted international and wildlife program directors in San Francisco and put them under direct control of the DC office (headed by Geoffrey Webb, Jeff Knight, Rafe Pomeance and Liz Raisbeck. The latter is now a v.p. of National Audubon, who warned the FOE board against listening to my "Left" agenda, and who also decided no anti-nuke lobbyist was needed in DC);
--vehemently resisted the unionizing of the SF office, and probably was instrumental in the decision to move the head office to DC;
--terminated all Friends of the Earth Foundation (501-(c)3 branch of FOE) grants to FOE, including the chairman's (Brower) fund;
--hired a law firm charging hundreds of dollars an hour, at FOE expense, to file baseless slanderous lawsuits against Brower, and refused to set dollar limits to the litigation;
--continued to appeal to members for funds for four FOE programs, three of which had already been DISCONTINUED due to staff cuts;
--campaigned during the court-ordered mail ballot election for the Board against Brower, and for the anti-Brower board majority and their prospective associates, in VIOLATION of FOE bylaws (I was one of the Brower slate for the board);
--refused to send members' ballots by first class mail; many were received late or not at all, disenfranchising nearly 20% of the entire FOE membership;
--made vicious ad hominem attacks against Brower at board meetings (Brower had just been operated on for colon cancer);
--took foundation grant money, solicited and earmarked for the marine mammals program in SF and spent it on its mid-west office (headed by a board loyalist) and on moving the SF headquarters to DC. The foundation who gave this money sued FOE in 1988 for the money and for damages; the suit was settled out of court with the then-directors, reportedly;
--Rafe Pomerance resigned in 1984 and it came out soon after the both Chlopak and Knight left mysteriously, with Chlopak and Knight receiving $30,000 in severance payments - a sum equal to all of FOE's entire cash balance for 1984. Chlopak also received indemnification from FOE against all future lawsuits that might arise as a result of his job with FOE, and the right to censor any and all public statements that FOE might make regarding his FOE tenure. Question: why did Chlopak demand and need this indemnification?
This severance was paid by the FEF part of FOE (tax exempt foundation) by the late Alan Gussow, without the knowledge or consent of the FEF board, which later refused to investigate the payments (FOE later decided to do so but the investigation probably never took place). When I wrote a rhetorical letter to the board about possible violation of fiduciary trust, their attorney David Sive called me on the phone with a veiled threat that I might be sued if I persisted.
The special mail election was held and Brower's slate lost by 160 votes. Brower resigned in 1986. He died this past November. He had gone on to found the Earth Island Institute, just as he had founded FOE after being ousted from the Sierra Club for his doubts about nuclear power.
Who were the people who turned against Brower and destroyed FOE? Good liberals all, excepting Bob Chlopak, who I am convinced was sent by the Democratic Party to FOE to undercut its uncompromising environmental policies, on nuclear power as well as everything else. Here are some of them:
Wes Jackson, director of The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas
Paul Berks, a clergyman who participated in non-violent sit-ins against the Rocky Flats Arsenal in Colorado;
Mark Terry, noted environmental and energy educator;
Anne Ehrlich, scientists and activist like her husband Paul;
Ann Roosevelt, wife of James Roosevelt, a liberal Democrat then active in Massachusetts politics;
Alan Gussow (deceased), well known painter;
David Sive, leading environmental attorney, author of environmental statutes and policies, former partner in Neuberger and Sive, at one time a pro-environment firm;
Edwin Matthew Jr., attorney at Coudert Brothers, large pro-corporate law firm and long time friend of Brower;
Rafe Pomerance, from the wealthy prominent Wertheim family that included nature writer Ann Simon, and Barbara and Jessica Tuchman. Rafe's mother Jo was a dedicated peace activist.
The subversion of progressives continues, on other fronts.
L.S.
Lorna Salzman 718-522-0253; 631-653-3387 lsalzman@aba.org
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