------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Russia warns eastward-looking NATO to keep away
Has U.S. really weighed missile shield's fallout?
Powell Wants Time Out on Sanctions
missile defense
Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo, on post Cold War nuclear framework:
Depleted Uranium
Question on DU in cruise missiles
Actual situation in Belgium
UN agencies are assisting a cover-up
Yeltsin to Spend 70th Birthday in the Hospital
Taiwan Wants Nuke Plant Completed
Political Wrangling Over Nuclear Plant Intensifies in Taiwan
Taiwan Lawmakers OK Nuclear Plant
Taiwan MPs Vote Down Government's Anti - Nuke Ruling
Taiwan legislature backs nuclear plant
Fast Computers, Deadly Enemies
A Futile Missile Shield
insurance covering nuclear accidents?
Lab Releases Radioactive Material
BUSH'S NUCLEAR DOCTRINE: FROM MAD TO NUTS?
Senate energy bill seeks nuclear, electric incentives

MILITARY
No Crops Spared in Colombia's Coca War
Gunman in Colombia Hijacking Seized
Gunman seizes plane, then is overpowered
Mexico Warns of Colombia Drug War Spillover
History Says Eradicating Drug Crops Doomed to Failure
Cloudy sunshine policy
Poland vows to raise armed force standards
How did uranium get into space?
America's Unguarded Frontier
U.N. SCALES BACK
U.N. seeks to tax international currency trades
Panel Suggests US Security Strategy
Panel recommends steps to improve security
The Army's 'Affair of the Heart'

OTHER
Whitman and Norton Win Confirmation in the Senate
Conservative Land-Use Groups Gain in Vote
No Threat Seen After Cattle Eat Banned Food
Whitman's Hectic Last Day Gives Her Successor a Hectic First Day
SHORELINE PRESERVATION
Smog and Mirrors
Wrong Way on Energy
Waste-Transfer Deal Prompts Firm to Resign
protecting Florida's Gulf waters
Germany will slaughter 400,000 cattle
Senate confirms Norton, Whitman
Police issue radar guns to civilian snoopers
U.S. Says City Has Failed to Release Data on Frisks
More Women Report Abuse by Patrolman in Suffolk
Denver to Pay $1.2 Million to Young Burglar Shot by the Police
Federal Court Will Not Pursue Diallo Case
SHERIFF'S PLEA AGREEMENT
No federal prosecution of Diallo cops
States
Families Demand Gaddafi Indictment Over Lockerbie
U.S. sanctions remain until victims compensated
Olympic criticism

ACTIVISTS
Faith-Based Groups Ask Bush to Take Nuclear Weapons Off Alert
Back from the Brink:
Davos Protest
Major Human Rights and Free Speech Violations in Davos, Switzerland
NGOs threaten Forum withdrawal
nukes/sustainability
Tell Citibank to End Predatory Lending!
Announcing first Youth Organization Meeting for the WCAR:
Announcing the Fisk/White House Conference on Reparations
Democracy Film Workshops
To Fight Sect, China Publicizes a Public Burning
INDIAN LEADER HELD
STAR WARS LETTERS TO EDITOR


-------- NUCLEAR

Russia warns eastward-looking NATO to keep away

Wednesday, January 31, 2001
Bergen Record
Associated Press
By DAVID McHUGH
http://www.bergen.com/morenews/russia31200101315.htm

MOSCOW -- NATO's eastward expansion could plunge Russia's relations with the West into crisis, Russian officials warned Germany on Tuesday. They also renewed their opposition to U.S. plans for a missile defense system.

Sergei Ivanov, the secretary of President Vladimir Putin's powerful Security Council, gave the blunt warning about NATO to German Defense Minister Rudolph Scharping. Germany is a key member of NATO.

"If implemented, these plans will create a fundamentally new situation in Europe that objectively infringes on Russia's political and military interests," Ivanov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. "This could lead to a serious crisis."

Former Warsaw Pact nations Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined the Western alliance last year, bringing NATO to the border of Russia's militarily strategic enclave of Kaliningrad, a chunk of Russian territory wedged between Lithuania and Poland but separated from the rest of Russia.

The former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are eager to join NATO. Russia vehemently opposes their membership, which would surround Kaliningrad with NATO members and give the alliance another border with mainland Russia.

Unconfirmed reports this month said Russia had sent tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, possibly as an expression of its opposition to NATO expansion. Scharping told a news conference that Germany had no evidence that Russia had sent such weapons to the enclave.

Scharping also discussed arms control issues, including Russia's opposition to a U.S. plan to deploy a missile defense system, with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev.

Russia has steadfastly opposed U.S. proposals to change the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow such a missile defense system and has lobbied U.S. allies in Europe against the proposal.

Sergeyev told reporters Tuesday that Russia would continue to insist on preserving the ABM treaty, calling it a "cornerstone of international security and stability," Interfax reported.

Scharping said at a press conference that although Germany was not part of ABM, his country "had a strong interest in maintaining and observing the treaty." The new administration of President Bush should conduct "intensive negotations both within NATO and with Russia" to work out differences over arms control, he said.

Scharping's visit comes ahead of a European security conference Saturday in Munich, Germany, which new U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to attend.

The Munich talks are expected to include discussion of the U.S. missile defense proposal. U.S. leaders say deployment of a missile defense system is necessary to protect the nation against limited ballistic missile attacks by such nations as North Korea and Iran. Russia and China contend that deployment of the system could re-ignite the arms race.

---

Has U.S. really weighed missile shield's fallout?

January 31, 2001
St. Petersburg Times
By PAUL DE LA GARZA
http://www.sptimes.com/News/013101/Worldandnation/Has_US_really_weighed.shtml

On Nov. 20, 1983, ABC broadcast a made-for-television movie, The Day After, about the horror of thermonuclear war.

It was a national event because we were in the middle of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear Armageddon was real.

We learned about intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and about multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) and about the deterrent strategy known as mutually assured destruction, or MAD.

But with the end of the Cold War, the nuclear threat vanished -- or so it seemed.

Yes, there was talk of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists, but it wasn't like the days of the "Evil Empire."

It started appearing again in the newspapers over the weekend.

The story had to do with the Bush administration's campaign vow to build a national missile defense system, and about the guessing game that is going on in capitals around the world on how the Chinese will respond, and the Russians, and our European allies.

A lot of folks seem to think that when, not if, we deploy a missile shield, we will spark another arms race, with China leading the charge.

The scenario goes something like this. If China feels threatened by the United States, it will build more nuclear bombs. If China builds more nuclear bombs, India, a rival, will build more nuclear bombs. If India builds more nuclear bombs, Pakistan, its enemy, will build more nuclear bombs.

If -- well, you get the picture.

So what is the Bush plan once we deploy and the Chinese feel threatened and the Russians feel threatened and we're back to the future?

During his recent confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he had been discussing the U.S. position with our European allies, "making sure they unde rstand (that) at the end of the day, it will benefit them, it will benefit the world."

But earlier, in his prepared statement, Powell seemed to suggest that the Bush administration hadn't thought the program through. "We will be developing a plan for the way ahead," he said, "including looking at the diplomatic ramifications."

You would think the plan was already well in hand.

Earlier this month, an American delegation of nuclear arms experts traveled to China for informal meetings with the Chinese to get them used to the idea of a missile shield.

Analysts see the Chinese as a bigger obstacle to national missile defense than the Russians.

The thinking is, that with only a handful of nuclear weapons, the Chinese feel more vulnerable. The Russians, on the other hand, could probably overwhelm any missile shield the United States deploys.

Analysts also point out that a souring of relations with China will hurt corporate America, with both countries squandering enormous moneymaking opportunities.

James Mulvenon, an expert on the Chinese military at the Rand Corp., was among the group that traveled to China.

Mulvenon said the message they carried to the Chinese was that "the missile-defense train has already left the station" and that it would be in their interest to engage the United States in dialogue.

Unlike before, the Chinese were willing to listen, Mulvenon said, noting there was no table thumping and no harsh rhetoric.

"It's a reflection of reality," he said. "They understand it's going to happen."

For the United States and China to reach a compromise, Bush and his counterpart, Jiang Zemin, will have to exert enormous political will.

Jiang will find himself trying to explain to his people that he agreed to a compromise because the Americans left him no choice.

But there is no guarantee that the Chinese will go along.

"The Chinese, they could go either way," Mulvenon said.

While U.S. nuclear forces are overwhelmingly superior to China's, Mulvenon said China could retaliate by helping to make the world even more unstable.

They could, for example, supply missiles or countermeasures to countries like North Korea and Iraq, the very targets of an American missile shield.

"A world in which you have multiple nuclear powers, and offensive and defensive arms racing," Mulvenon said, "is a much more dangerous world than the Cold War."

---

Powell Wants Time Out on Sanctions

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Powell-Sanctions.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Economic sanctions have been seen for years as a useful tool for dealing with wayward nations, sort of a halfway point between doing nothing and sending in the Marines.

Sanctions have been losing their cachet of late, with business interests complaining that sanctions seldom work and cost American business exports worth billions of dollars.

The anti-sanctions movement now has a formidable ally: Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Clinton administration questioned the utility of sanctions but not to the degree that Powell did when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago.

He practically pleaded with senators to knock it off.

``I would encourage the Congress to stop for a while. I mean stop, look and listen before you impose a sanction,'' he said. ``I mean, they just keep coming, and I think I've seen about half a dozen new ones ... in the last couple of weeks.

``I would encourage self-discipline on the part of the Congress; that when you're mad about something, or when there is a particular constituent interest, please stop, count to 10, call me, let me come up, let's talk about it before you slap another bureaucratic process on me.''

He said he plans a review of all current sanctions to determine whether they should be removed.

President Bush said Wednesday he will support a continuation of U.N. sanctions against Libya until that country accepts responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Bush commented after a Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence officer of murder in the bombing, which claimed 270 lives, mostly Americans.

Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute and veteran human rights advocate, hopes Powell does not act too precipitously.

``It would be a mistake to abandon sanctions in situations where there are no ready substitutes, as in the promotion of international human rights,'' Neier says, writing in The New York Times.

Neier cites the example of Myanmar, also known as Burma, where a military dictatorship has ruled harshly for more than a decade. The United States signaled its opposition to the junta years ago by banning new investments and stripping U.S. visas from leading members of the government.

Neier believes the sanctions are finally having an effect, pointing out that the government has opened negotiations with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of Myanmar's democratic opposition.

He also says that sanctions were instrumental in inducing South Africa's apartheid government to open the way to a transition to democracy.

Powell said that in preparing for his new role, he was astonished to find the number of countries subject to sanctions. It's a situation, he said, that makes it ``a little difficult for the administration to conduct foreign policy as effectively as we might.''

A 1997 report by the President's Export Council found 73 countries targeted by unilateral sanctions.

Leading the fight against sanctions is USA Engage, a corporate group which maintains that sanctions cost the U.S. economy $19 billion annually.

The group's research found there are or have been sanctions against South Korea and Saudi Arabia over labor rights; India and Pakistan for nuclear testing; Colombia for narcotics; and China for human rights abuses and environmental worries.

Citizens of Canada and Israel were sanctioned for doing business in Cuba. Egypt and Germany were threatened with sanctions because of objections to alleged religious persecution, as were companies in Russia, Malaysia and France for investing in Iran's petroleum sector.

Two countries under sanctions now, Powell believes, should remain under sanctions: Iraq, which has been under U.N. Security Council sanctions for more than 10 years, and Cuba, target of unilateral U.S. sanctions.

Powell said the United States must make clear to the Iraqis that the sanctions must be kept in place and ensure that funds earned through Iraq's oil-for-food program are not used to develop weapons of mass destruction. As for Cuba, Powell said President Fidel Castro is ``an aging starlet, who will not change in this lifetime. ... It is President Bush's intention to keep the sanctions in place.''

EDITOR'S NOTE -- George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.

---

missile defense

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Editorial-Rdp.html?pagewanted=all

Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

Jan. 29
The Toronto Star, on missile defense:

Canada shouldn't be forced to choose between Washington and our European allies on missile defense. That could split the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and weaken the world's strongest military alliance....The $60 billion program is wildly controversial. It aims to ring the U.S. with land-or sea-based missiles able to intercept an incoming missile. Americans are split on its merits.

The technology doesn't work. ...So Canadians have a reason to be skeptical.

But bigger questions loom.

Can Russia and China be persuaded to accept missile defense as harmless? Or will they upgrade and multiply their nuclear forces to be sure that they can ``overwhelm'' any U.S. defense?

Will NATO partners, including the nuclear-armed British and French, go along with Washington? ...How will nuclear mavericks India and Pakistan react if China boosts its arms?

Will they too?

It's hard not to see an arms race developing.

---

Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo, on post Cold War nuclear framework:

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Editorial-Rdp.html?pagewanted=all

Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

Jan. 25

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed in November that Russia and the United States cut the number of strategic nuclear warheads they hold to less than 1,500 each. The proposal was made before the new U.S. administration was formed, as if Russia wanted to get one step ahead on the issue.

We believe it is possible for the United States to accept the Russian proposal without compromising its own or its allies' security.

Russia must reduce its nuclear weapons to a level at which it can safely control them. If it does so, then to maintain the nuclear balance, the United States must cut its nuclear arsenal to the same level.

During the election campaign, Bush advocated a review by the United States of its nuclear policies, to leave behind the conditions dictated by the Cold War. He is perfectly right. We hope that new U.S. government will work with determination to reduce the nuclear threat.

-------- depleted uranium

Depleted Uranium,
Just The Tip of the Iceberg in Serbia

Wed, 31 Jan 2001
Common Dreams
by Jeremy Scahill
www.commondreams.org

BELGRADE - Already in Serbia the effects of NATO's depleted uranium munitions are apparently being felt by members of the Yugoslav Army who fought in Kosovo. Two former soldiers were recently discovered to have cancerous eye tumors. The Belgrade weekly tabloid Nedeljni Telegraf recently reported that three officers from the Army's Pristina Corps died of leukemia, while 10 others now suffer from the disease; four of them terminally. They join the dozens of soldiers involved with the wars in the Balkans now sick from what is being referred to as "Balkans Syndrome." Unfortunately, it wasn't until soldiers from Western countries began dying of cancer and getting sick that depleted uranium in the Balkans became an international issue for the corporate media. A fact not lost on people here.

"The West wouldn't give a damn if their troops weren't getting sick and dying," says 53 year-old taxi driver Nenad Bulatovic. "If we get sick, that' s collateral damage. We call that America's Milosevic Syndrome."

While leading scientists and environmentalists in Serbia are indeed concerned about the effects of DU munitions, they say it is just the tip of the toxic iceberg. "Depleted uranium is just one page in a very thick book of the ecological and health catastrophe caused by the NATO bombing," says Vukasin Pavlovic, Director of the Belgrade-based ECOCenter.

Pavlovic's group has just issued a ground-breaking report titled "Environmental Impacts of the NATO War in Yugoslavia." Though the report does deal with the question of depleted uranium, it seeks to sound alarm bells about the lesser-publicized effects of NATO's targeting of petrochemical factories, oil refineries and chemical plants during the 1999 bombing.

"War-induced negative effects cannot be viewed as collateral damage, because they are not induced by unintentional targeting, but by the deliberate and planned destruction of industrial and other environmentally hazardous systems," the report states.

During the bombing it became domestic wisdom not to eat fish from the Danube River because of concerns the NATO bombardment had contaminated the international waterway.

Their fears are certainly not unfounded.

One of the stunning revelations in the report is the sheer quantity of toxins released into the Danube, the source of drinking water for 10 million Europeans. The report highlights NATO's April 14-15th strikes on the Petrochemical Industrial Complex in Pancevo, which lies on the banks of the Danube, 10 miles outside of Belgrade. Within moments of the bombings, a devastating toxic cocktail poured into the river. This included some 3,000 tons of alkalis, 1,400 tons of vinyl-chloride monomers (VCMs), 1,000 tons of ethylene dichloride and 800 tons of 33% hydrochloric acid, according to the report. Attacks on the plant also resulted in an estimated 20 tons of highly carcinogenic VCMs entering the atmosphere. In 78 days of attacks, the petrochemical plant was bombed 9 times.

"NATO didn't use chemical weapons during the bombing," says Dr. Zorka Vukmirovic, a leading environmental physicist and one of the authors of the report. "But indirectly it caused the effects of chemical weapons use. If you release so many hazardous substances, major air pollutants and carcinogens in the vicinity of big cities like Belgrade and Nis, it is obviously a deliberate action against the civilian population."

But NATO's attacks on the Pancevo petrochemical plant are not limited to Serbia. Environmental groups and environment ministries from throughout the Balkans have discovered contamination of the Danube in several other countries. There are also studies from Greek environmentalists that the bombing caused increased pollution levels in the air over the northern Greek city of Xanthi.

The ECOCenter's report also raises particular concern over the repeated attacks on an oil refinery situated in a populated area in Serbia's second largest city Novi Sad. The report estimates that over the course of 12 NATO attacks on the refinery, some 80,000 tons of crude oil were incinerated, exposing the city's residents to a high concentration of hazardous, carcinogenic and toxic substances multiple times during the bombing.

"These compounds have a high cancer risk, particularly when inhaled," writes Professor Pavlovic. "Their deposition in the environment also jeopardizes other environmental media, particularly food storages and grain silos."

"The people of Novi Sad are and will continue to be victims of the NATO bombing," says Dr. Vukmirovic.

The report estimates that up to 50% of the sites targeted by NATO warplanes were "industrial and other hazardous objects with high environmental risks." Professor Pavlovic is now calling for modification of international war law conventions and standards. "Crimes against nature and its ecosystems must be added to the list of war crimes," he says. "International war law should confirm that ecocide, equal to genocide, is the most harmful and most dangerous form of destruction of nature."

The environmental destruction wrought by NATO's attacks continues to pierce through everyday life in Serbia. Dr. Vukmirovic says she doesn't drink the milk from a leading dairy farm near Pancevo for fear of contamination, "I only buy milk from Subotica (in the north of Serbia)," she says. Professor Pavlovic admits, "I love fish soup, but all of the scientists I know who are monitoring the Danube tell me not to eat it, so I just go without."

These sentiments are echoed at Green Markets around Belgrade where people make it a practice of asking merchants where their food is from. "We know they lie sometimes if they have goods from an area heavily hit by NATO," says Mirjana, a mother of 2. "It just makes me feel better to ask."

There are also fears in the agricultural sector here that goods exported from Serbia will eventually require labels with warnings about their safety.

Though the discussion of depleted uranium is certainly not new in Serbia, the current publicity makes it difficult to go anywhere without encountering a discussion or mention of DU. "Carla Del Ponte should take her depleted uranium out of this country before she takes Milosevic," a 70-something pensioner said outside the press conference of the Chief War Crimes Prosecutor when she was in Belgrade last week (He was not allowed in to the press conference).

In Kosovo, NATO has identified some 112 sites where it acknowledges using depleted uranium munitions. But NATO has not given the government in Belgrade a comprehensive list for the rest of Serbia. Estimates from the Yugoslav Army say that as much as 1.5 tons of DU was dropped on other areas of Serbia. Authorities in Belgrade have to date confirmed 5 sites in Serbia other than Kosovo where depleted uranium munitions were used. Four of these have been fenced off and declared public health risks.

Since NATO's bombing ended in June 1999, a number of reports from international agencies have examined the environmental impact of the NATO bombing. In several instances, these studies have supported NATO's contention that the consequences are negligible. In the first visit of the United Nations Environmental Program to Serbia weeks after the attacks ended, the agency declared they found no negative impact of the use of depleted uranium. When asked what methodology was used to search for DU contamination, the head of the delegation, Pekka Havisto, said they had taken random soil samples in Serbia. Scientists here say that's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Rather than publicizing the fact that NATO refused to provide the UNEP with a map of areas targeted by DU munitions, the agency elected to declare it had found no significant health risks.

"The United Nations tried to diminish or reduce the scope and negative environmental impacts of the NATO campaign," says Professor Pavlovic.

Eventually NATO released the map of 112 sites in Kosovo, most likely a fraction of the actual total. Now, almost two years after the bombing campaign started, the UN has begun analyzing the areas. But that's just Kosovo. The rest of Serbia remains in the dark because of NATO's refusal to make public the full extent of its DU use.

Without a highly detailed map of areas hit by depleted uranium, future health consequences may be the only way to discover where measures might have been taken to prevent further tragedies.

Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist based in Belgrade. He reported live daily for Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! during the 1999 NATO war and was one of the few foreign journalists in Belgrade to witness the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in October. He can be reached at jeremys@EUnet.yu

----

Question on DU in cruise missiles

Wed, 31 Jan 2001
Dr. Georg Schoefbaenker
<schoefbaenker@aon.at>

Last month I visited Serbia and found out that people there are very worried about possible health effects of DU. They refer to the presence of DU in Tomahawk cruise missiles. Does there exist some precise information on this?

Yes: DU is used in nose cones. I'm currently trying to find out exactly which CMs contain DU. This is official statement of US Department of Defense:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug1999/n08131999_9908131.html

DoD Launches Depleted Uranium Training

By Linda D. Kozaryn,
American Forces Press Service

Depleted uranium is used in M-1 Abrams tanks, Phalanx gun systems and some cruise missiles, as well as A-10s, Harriers and other military and civilian aircraft. The Abrams, Bradley fighting vehicles and other weapon systems use ammunition containing DU penetrators.

----

Actual situation in Belgium

Wed, 31 Jan 2001
by way of Greater Manchester and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
From: "Peter Vanhoutte"
gmdcnd@gn.apc.org

Dear Friends,

I just would like to inform you of some recent initiatives on DU in Belgium. Last year, we made a proposition of law in order to ban DU in ammunitions in our country. The debate in Parliament is planned for next month.

I just received some information that DU may be used also in our country during shooting exercises with US A-10's in the Limburg region (Helchteren). Until now, I didn't succeed in verifying it, because the Belgain authorities say they really don't know what kind of weapons the US army uses during it's exercices...

Last month I visited Serbia and found out that people there are very worried about possible health effects of DU. They refer to the presence of DU in Tomahawk cruise missiles. Does there exist some precise information on this?

Kind regards,
Peter Vanhoutte,

Member of Parliament
tel.: +32 475 598563 fax: +32 89 303198 e-mail: peter.vanhoutte@dekamer.be

--

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your work in the Belgian Parliament on this issue.

This question of DU in Tomahawks has been a topic of some debate. My personal investment in finding a factual answer is that the Raytheon corporation manufactures the Tomahawk cruise missiles here in Tucson, where I live. When we campaign against this and other Raytheon products, our credibility is at stake if we make a habit of saying false things. So I have tried to find the truth here.

Despite asking several people who make or have made the claim that DU is in some or all Tomahawks, I have yet to see an official document or credible independent assessment of the evidence at a Tomahawk missile impact site that would confirm DU is present in deployed Tomahawks.

What does exist that I have seen (I can cite papers if you wish) are several documents refering to DU being present in test-flight versions of the nuclear-capable Tomahawk. It is there to simulate the mass of the missing warhead so the missile has same flight characteristics during the test. Documents about clean-up at test sites, etc. are what I have seen or seen referenced.

I believe the entire confusion about the issue is based on people not understanding what they read in these documents, then journalists citing these people and mis-understood documents, and then the assertion becomes believed by repeated statement without checking of the facts.

Raytheon denies in writing to me that they use DU in making theTomahawk. The Navy has specifically denied in writing that they add it to the Tomahawk. (again, I can cite a letter). The Pentagon could certainly add DU later as part of a warhead package, but no evidence to this point has been presented. There is also the tacit admission that DU is a component in a typical thermonuclear bomb (as the neutron reflector, not a penetrator). But then, our question concerns the conventionally armed Tomahawks, not the nuclear version!

There is documentary evidence that the Pentagon is developing a penetrating warhead for the Tomahawk cruise missile, but no evidence I am aware of that it will necessarily contain DU (not all penetrating weapons contain DU).

Some claim that "black budget" (secret) weapons research may have included DU in some experimental Tomahawk or air-launched cruise missile warheads used against Yugoslavia or Iraq, but this is only speculation, supposition and hypothesis, and falls far short of fact about all Tomahawks. (and the air-launched cruise missile is a different weapon, about which I do not know as much, and many fewer were used in Yugo & Iraq than Tomahawks.)

Finally, I have done some speculating myself (which I can send to you if you would like) about the quanitities of DU possibly introduced to the environment by the number of cruise missiles known to have been fired vs. the quantities of DU that NATO admits was fired from the A-10 Warthog's 30mm gun. The cruise missiles could only be responsible for a small fraction of the A-10 total, and so while *IF* DU were present, they may be a concern for the immediate victims, in the end the Tomahawk cruise missiles could not be a leading culprit. They are a nasty and destabliizing enough weapon, without needing to debase our critique of them by alleging [without foundation] that they contain DU.

I would be happy to be proven wrong about the presence of DU in Tomahawk of air-launched cruise missiles, as it would be another point of criticism of the weapon. But I have not seen the evidence.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Jack

----

UN agencies are assisting a cover-up

January 31, 2001
Daily Star
by Najib Saab
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/31_01_01_b.htm

The United Nations has always been exploited by superpowers as a cover-up for political schemes. While this obvious statement is not news, we have been witnessing another form of abuse, using certain United Nations specialized agencies as accomplices to environmental extermination.

A few weeks ago, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson announced that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have both confirmed that there was no proven connection between leukemia and depleted uranium (DU), thus the shells used by NATO in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999, and earlier in Iraq, were not particularly hazardous and did not represent an actual health threat.

The UN has not, as yet, denied Robertson's statements, even though it is clear that at least a part of what he said was not true. UNEP had published a report in 1999 in which it requested that "highest priority should be given to finding pieces of depleted uranium and heavily contaminated surfaces, and measures should be taken for the secure storage of any contaminated material recovered."

The report urged that measures be taken to prevent access to contaminated sites, and "local authorities and people concerned should be informed of the possible risks and precautionary measures." Early laboratory results from 340 samples of DU found at sites targeted by NATO during the 1999 Kosovo conflict contain Uranium 236, which indicates that at least part of the material comes from reprocessed uranium.

It is hoped that the findings won't be watered down by the time the final report is published in March. However, how could NATO interpret UNEP's reports on the issue since 1999 as indicating that the remains of DU shells are not a health hazard?

The case of the World Health Organization, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. The media quoted "experts affiliated with the WHO in Geneva" as being skeptical regarding whether or not DU shells used in the Balkans had actually caused cases of leukemia among NATO forces. However, those same experts had warned in an earlier and less publicized report that children playing in war zones where bombing had occurred could be in danger.

Yet for years the children of Bosnia and Kosovo, and the children of Iraq before them, have been using the remains of tanks and military vehicles destroyed by DU shells as toys, and demolished factories as playgrounds, while those are the most hazardous sites according to UNEP. The dubious silence of WHO over NATO's statements was interrupted by another ambiguous announcement from WHO headquarters in Geneva, saying that it was "unlikely that depleted-uranium ammunition used by NATO troops could have caused cancer."

It further concluded that it was "unlikely" that exposure to NATO weapons containing DU "could have led to a higher risk of cancer among military personnel who served in the Balkan conflict."

After this conclusion, which sounds like a bill of clean health to NATO, absolving it of responsibility for health hazards associated with DU, WHO announced that it was "planning a study to assess whether there has been an increased rate of cancer amongst military personnel who served in the Gulf War or Balkans." It also called for the cordoning off and cleaning of sites in Kosovo where depleted-uranium ammunition landed during the NATO air campaign.

WHO's ambiguous position on DU, however, seems to be typical for that organization. When Environment & Development magazine launched a campaign three years ago to ban the use of asbestos, some of those benefiting from the hazardous trade relied on a 1993 WHO report which stated that there was no proof that asbestos in drinking-water constitutes a health hazard to the digestive system, in order to justify using it in public water networks. Again, no one in the organization objected to this selective use of the report.

The organization's report had refrained from saying that there was proof that asbestos does not harm the digestive system either, but purposely used ambiguity in the negative form. Those relying on WHO's report to promote asbestos ignore the fact that the problem is not restricted to manufacturing, but also includes moving, cutting and then disposing of the pipes years later. All asbestos products, including asbestos cement, that are considered safe unless fibers are produced as a result of friction from drilling, scratching or breaking, will eventually reach the end of their life cycle.

Despite a pictures of children playing with fragments of asbestos pipes near water network construction sites, which Environment & Development published, no explanation was forthcoming from the WHO. Do they want to apply their assumption that asbestos is safe in drinking water by asking people to stop breathing and dilute asbestos fiber in water whenever they come across its remains in construction and dumping sites? Do we blame NATO, which is a military organization with no claim to humanitarian interests, or an international organization, whose existence revolves around people's health, when it provides, through its silence or intentional ambiguity of its reports, a suspicious cover-up for killing human beings?

Could the health authorities of the US Army have been more concerned for health than WHO, when it warned in 1992 of the possibility of being more susceptible to cancer after being exposed to DU shells? Another report by a medical specialist in the British Army had warned in 1996 that soldiers who had been exposed to dust from depleted-uranium shells may be susceptible to cancer, as the percentage of radiation around bombed vehicles could exceed, by eight times, the allowed average, which makes soldiers susceptible to lung cancer, brain cancer and leukemia.

Ironically, the recently leaked reports only warn of dangers to NATO soldiers! Is it a lucky strike to the environment and humanity that growing numbers of European soldiers are showing now what is being called "Balkan Syndrome," and some of them died of leukemia and other strange diseases? If it hadn't been for the attention given to those, the whole issue would have been swept under the ambiguous statements of WHO and NATO, similar to what happened after the outbreak of the "Gulf War Syndrome."

What about thousands of children, and others in Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia, who died or are living ill with leukemia and a variety of cancers, assorted diseases and birth defects? What about the environmental destruction in these countries caused by depleted-uranium shells? The United Nations Environment Program should take the initiative to ensure that the role of international organizations is to protect people and the environment, at least through clear and honest statements that cannot be used as a cover for oppressive military superpowers. UN agencies will, otherwise, lose any remaining credibility.

Najib Saab, editor in chief of Environment & Development magazine, wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

Najib Saab, editor in chief of Environment & Development magazine, wrote this commentary for The Daily Star DS: 31/01/01

-------- russia

Yeltsin to Spend 70th Birthday in the Hospital

January 31, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - When former Russian President Boris Yeltsin celebrates his 70th birthday Thursday, congratulatory telegrams may well be addressed to the place from where he sometimes ruled the country: the Central Clinical Hospital.

In a cruel twist of fate for a man whose final years in power were dogged by illness, Yeltsin was taken to the hospital Tuesday with a suspected ``acute viral infection.'' He was expected to stay in bed until after his birthday.

The recurrent illnesses of Yeltsin became a hallmark of his later years in office. But his supporters say the way he left office -- the first time a Russian leader made a peaceful transition of power -- was a key achievement that showed Yeltsin never lost control.

Yeltsin has a history of health problems, including a multiple heart bypass in 1996. He spent most of his last year in office in the Central Clinical Hospital.

For a man who unarguably brought about incredible and dramatic change in Russia's history, there has been relative calm in his life since his dramatic 1999 New Year's Eve announcement handing power to Vladimir Putin.

In the years since, Yeltsin has released a third book of memoirs, appeared infrequently on television and met former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Germany.

Apparently, the former president, who used to have the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal at his fingertips, prefers to live without fuss in the bosom of his family in the luxurious country residence the Russian government gave him.

CONTRADICTIONS

Yeltsin's eight-year rule was marked by economic turmoil, an attempted coup, two military campaigns against rebel Chechnya and his own unpredictable personality.

Virtually all his working life was devoted to politics, first as he fought his way to the top of the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party in his native Sverdlovsk region and then as the champion of democratic reforms after storming out of the party.

The images imprinted in the public consciousness are those marking his rise and decline.

In 1991, he climbed energetically onto a loyalist tank during a hard-line communist coup attempt; in 1994 he drunkenly conducted an orchestra in Germany; four years later he almost stumbled during a trip to Kazakhstan.

Finally, on New Year's Eve 1999, he quietly donned his coat and fur hat and stepped out into the Kremlin courtyard, shook Putin's hand and sped off to his country residence.

Russians seem either to love or hate him, but most cannot ignore his historical significance.

``He is a very contradictory figure. Without doubt, he made a huge contribution to the fall of communism,'' political scientist Andrei Piontkovsky said. ``But on the other hand, Yeltsin created the system of bandit capitalism in Russia, if not by his will then he at least let it happen. He also unleashed a bloody war two times in Chechnya.''

Dmitry Yakushkin, Yeltsin's press secretary in the last two years of his rule, said that despite the president's illnesses, he was never out of control, but by the end he was tired.

He said Yeltsin was a strong family man who enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren and great-grandchild.

Yeltsin's retirement and privileges given by the state differ from the less generous treatment of ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, a man with whom Yeltsin was often at odds and who got little state support when forced to resign.

CONTROVERSIES CONTINUE, LEGACY DEBATED

Some of the controversies that marked Yeltsin's final period in office continue.

Allegations of corruption have surfaced again in the past two weeks with the detention in New York on a Swiss arrest warrant of former Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin for alleged money laundering, which he denies.

Speculation also remains that Yeltsin's close circle of advisers still has a say in the day-to-day running of the country and that Putin is trying to sideline them.

Since coming to office, Putin has reined in the power of the regions and defied his mentor by adopting the anthem of the former Soviet Union as Russia's national tune. He has also pursued a vigorous foreign policy, traveling abroad at a pace that would have been impossible for his ailing predecessor.

-------- taiwan

Taiwan Wants Nuke Plant Completed

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Taiwan-Politics.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- The opposition-led legislature passed a resolution Wednesday demanding that Taiwan finish building its fourth nuclear plant, a move that could bring months of political feuding closer to a resolution.

Passed by a 134-70 vote, the resolution called for the immediate restoration of the project to build the power plant -- but also urged the government to lay plans for a non-nuclear future.

The next step could involve a round of dealmaking with the government, which has said it was not legally bound by the resolution but would negotiate a new agreement.

For three months, the minority government and the legislature have been wrangling over the unfinished $5.4 billion plant, which the new administration wants to scrap as part of a plan to create a nuclear-free Taiwan. The plant was approved by the former Nationalist Party government, which lost the island's March presidential election.

When Premier Chang Chun-hsiung announced in October that the project would be scuttled, the opposition-controlled legislature protested, saying lawmakers should have been consulted.

On Wednesday, lawmaker David Chou of the anti-nuclear Democratic Progressive Party criticized the resolution, which also called for the gradual phasing out of nuclear energy in Taiwan.

``If you want to accomplish a goal of getting rid of nuclear power, why would you want to finish completing the plant?'' said Chou, the head of the DPP legislative caucus.

Many opposition lawmakers oppose nuclear power, but money has already been spent on the power plant project and they were incensed at the government's unilateral decision to abandon it.

Many had expected the resolution would demand Chang's resignation, and the fact that it did not was seen as an effort to smooth relations ahead of further negotiations. The resignation of the premier, Taiwan's No. 3 ranking leader, might have prompted the president to dissolve the legislature.

Three weeks ago, Taiwan's highest court ruled that Chang erred when he decided to halt the project without legislative input, and several members of the three-party opposition coalition have suggested he resign.

Lawmakers began a special two-day session Tuesday to discuss a resolution on the nuclear dispute. The vote came after further debate Wednesday morning.

Diane Lee, of the Peoples First Party, accused the premier of breaking the law by canceling a major project whose budget was approved by the legislature, saying he put his party's anti-nuclear goals ahead of a respect for legal procedure.

``The law is the law. Politics should be politics,'' Lee said.

Although the premier has been the main target of the legislators' criticism, many believe that when he canceled the nuclear plant, he was merely following the orders of the man who appointed him, President Chen Shui-bian.

The president has offered to mediate if the legislature's resolution fails to resolve the dispute. However, several lawmakers have said they doubt Chen would be an impartial mediator.

---

Political Wrangling Over Nuclear Plant Intensifies in Taiwan

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/world/31CND-TAIW.html?printpage=yes

HONG KONG, Jan. 31 - Taiwan's political stalemate hardened today, as the country's legislature voted to reverse a decision by President Chen Shui-bian to scrap a partially-built nuclear power plant.

The $5.5 billion plant is no mere public works project: it is the proxy for a much broader battle between Mr. Chen and the Nationalist Party, whom he swept out of power last March after 55 years of rule.

The legislature, which is dominated by the Nationalists, voted 134 to 70 to resume construction. It said that halting the project had caused "political turmoil, an economic slowdown, and social instability."

More tumult now seems likely, as Taiwan's prime minister, Chang Chun-hsiung, said the government was not obliged to follow the vote. But Mr. Chang offered to negotiate a deal with the legislature.

"It is about time the dispute, which has been troubling the people and the government for about 20 years, come to an end," said Mr. Chang's secretary-general, Chiu I-jen. "We hope the issue will be resolved without emotional conflicts."

Political analysts said Mr. Chen was under mounting pressure to find a compromise. The dispute over the power plant has paralyzed the government in Taiwan, earning the country unwelcome comparisons to the Philippines and Indonesia, two of the most chronically unstable Asian countries.

The standoff has also scared away foreign investors, hobbled the stock market, and undermined Taiwan's currency. The legislature's vote to restart the project caused the Taipei stock market to surge 2.5 percent.

"Everybody is expecting that a negotiation will bring some results," said Andrew Yang, the secretary-general of the Chinese Center for Advanced Policy Studies, a research organization in Taipei.

Still, Mr. Yang said it would be difficult for Mr. Chen to retreat. He promised to scrap the plant during the presidential campaign, and his party, the Democratic Progressive Party, is fervently opposed to the project.

Nuclear power is an explosive issue in Taiwan. As the lawmakers voted today, about 200 anti-nuclear protesters shouted slogans on the steps of the parliament. On Monday, a protester set himself on fire, suffering facial burns.

The plant, which is one-third completed, had been championed by the previous Nationalist rulers. They were outraged when Mr. Chen's government announced in October that it would halt construction, after $2.7 billion in costs.

The Nationalists won a victory earlier this month when Taiwan's highest judges ruled that the government had acted improperly in scrapping the plant without first consulting the legislature. But the judges did not declare the decision unconstitutional, which could have ended the dispute.

Instead, the judges said the two sides should work out their differences - a process they are now grudgingly contemplating.

Jason Hu, a spokesman for the Nationalists, accused the government of flouting the will of the legislature. But he said his party had not ruled out negotiating with Prime Minister Chang or President Chen.

Analysts noted that the legislature's resolution did not demand the resignation of Mr. Chang - an omission that may be intended to smooth the way for talks.

"The political reality is that the government and the opposition parties all want this thing solved," Mr. Hu said. "The country is already in havoc; people feel so uncertain about the future."

Another reality for the Nationalists is that they risk a lot in ratcheting up the dispute. If the party cannot resolve its differences with the government, it could mount a no-confidence vote against the prime minister.

If the opposition did that, however, Mr. Chen could dissolve the legislature and call early elections. In addition to bringing more turmoil, such a move could erode the lopsided majority that the Nationalists now enjoy.

---

Taiwan Lawmakers OK Nuclear Plant

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Taiwan-Nuclear.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- The Taiwanese government's campaign to scuttle a partially completed nuclear plant suffered a major setback Wednesday when lawmakers voted to restore the $5.45 billion project.

Chances were slim that President Chen Shui-bian would win the support of the opposition-controlled legislature, which for months has been feuding with the new government over the nuclear project, the island's fourth. At one point, the dispute threatened to topple the government.

With a vote of 134-70, legislators passed a resolution demanding that the government finish building the plant, the pet project of the previous Nationalist Party government.

Although the government is not legally bound by the resolution, the show of popular support puts pressure on the president to negotiate a compromise with the legislature.

``The Cabinet must respect the way we voted because it would be very dangerous if we allow the gridlock on the nuclear plant to drag on,'' said Hong Yuh-chin, a Nationalist Party caucus leader.

Two hours after the vote, Chen's government urged the legislature to begin negotiations within a week -- an invitation lawmakers said they couldn't accept until after an opposition meeting Thursday.

For most lawmakers, the debate was not about the merits of nuclear energy. Their resolution even demanded that the government come up with a long-term energy plan that would phase out nuclear power. Many just thought it was too late to cancel the fourth plant without wasting huge sums of money.

The main issue was whether the government could spike the nuclear project without consulting with the legislature, which approved the budget in the 1990s.

Three weeks ago, Taiwan's highest court ruled that Premier Chang Chun-hsiung made ``procedural flaws'' when he decided in October to shut down the plant. The court ordered the premier, who represents the government in the legislature, to consult with lawmakers and negotiate an agreement.

Lawmakers with the president's Democratic Progressive Party were disappointed with the vote's outcome. The anti-nuclear party has argued that Taiwan cannot store the nuclear waste and that other energy sources would be safer and cheaper.

``We must transcend party politics and think of what is good for the country,'' said DPP lawmaker Wong chin-chu.

Opposition lawmakers and several business leaders have argued that Taiwan will have an energy crisis and cause an industrial exodus if it doesn't finish the plant. The feuding over the plant was a factor in the stock market's 44 percent decline last year.

Outside the legislature on Wednesday, about 70 people wearing yellow headbands or straw farmer hats protested the resolution. One demonstrator held a sign that said, ``Legislators get bribes, and the Taiwanese people get a nuclear nightmare.''

---

Taiwan MPs Vote Down Government's Anti - Nuke Ruling

January 31, 2001
Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-taiwan-.html

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan's opposition-dominated legislature voted down Wednesday a cabinet decision to shelve a nuclear power plant, dragging out a political standoff that has dampened the economy and financial markets.

The Legislative Yuan, or parliament, passed 134-70 a resolution urging the cabinet to immediately reverse its October decision to halt construction of a $5.5-billion nuclear power plant -- the island's fourth and already one-third complete. Six deputies abstained.

``The unilateral, illegal decision to halt construction of the fourth nuclear power plant has caused political turmoil, an economic slowdown and social instability,'' the resolution read.

Tuesday, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung told parliament its resolution would not be legally binding, remarks which threaten to prolong a political crisis that has rocked the stock market and unnerved investors.

Angry opposition deputies threatened to recess indefinitely.

President Chen Shui-bian, a member of Chang's anti-nuclear Democratic Progressive Party, has offered to serve as a neutral mediator in a glimmer of hope the row could be resolved.

GO ALONG WITH OFFER?

But it was unclear if the main opposition Nationalist Party, ousted by Chen in presidential elections last March, would go along with his offer -- which if successful would strengthen the president's hand and boost his flagging popularity.

Nationalist Party chairman Lien Chan, who finished third behind Chen in the polls, urged the president ``to rein in at the brink of the precipice.''

The Nationalists had spearheaded a drive by an opposition coalition to oust Chen over the nuclear spat. It has since lost steam due to public opposition.

While the deputies voted, more than 200 anti-nuclear activists protested on the steps of parliament, displaying sunflowers and steel drums painted yellow with the nuclear hazard symbol in red to simulate drums for storing nuclear waste.

Police armed with clubs formed a human wall behind the shut gates of the parliament building in central Taipei as the peaceful protest entered its third day.

The business community mostly favors building the nuclear power plant, fearing electricity shortages in the future. But environmentalists say Taiwan cannot process nuclear waste or deal with potential nuclear accidents.

CUSHION IMPACT OF VOTE

In an apparent attempt to cushion the impact of the parliamentary vote and halt Taiwan's economic downturn, the cabinet approved a proposal to increase public infrastructure spending this year by $3.5 billion.

The move was expected to boost the island's gross domestic product in 2001 by 0.7 percentage points to 6.0 percent.

The domestic stock market appeared indifferent to the political crisis, surging 2.48 percent to 5,936.20 on strong foreign buying in electronic stocks.

Taiwan's top judges have said alternatives now include Premier Chang voluntarily resigning, parliament proposing a vote of no confidence against him or the legislature passing a bill forcing the cabinet to resume construction of the project.

Political analysts said Chang, who took office last October, was likely to fight to cling on to his job.

Opposition deputies are reluctant to propose a vote of no confidence against Chang, because President Chen could dissolve the legislature and call a snap election, analysts said.

The parliamentary vote came two weeks after the Council of Grand Justices censured Chang for not consulting lawmakers when he decided to halt construction of the project.

Testifying before parliament Tuesday, Chang defended his decision, saying it made Taiwan a safer place to live in and would not cause any power shortages because the government has plans for alternative power plants.

As of the end of 2000, Chang said, losses incurred from the controversial decision totaled $2.7 billion, much lower than the cost of continuing construction.

---

Taiwan legislature backs nuclear plant

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001131211657.htm

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Opposition lawmakers passed a resolution today demanding that Taiwan finish building its fourth nuclear plant, a move that could bring the island closer to resolving months of political feuding and gridlock.

Passing with a 134-70 vote, the resolution accused the government of "ignoring the constitution and causing political turmoil" by canceling the partially built nuclear plant in October.

The next step could involve a round of deal making with the government, which has said it was not legally bound by the resolution but would negotiate a new agreement.

For three months, the minority government and legislature have been wrangling over the $5.4 billion nuclear plant, which the new administration wants to scrap as part of a plan to create a nuclear-free Taiwan.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Fast Computers, Deadly Enemies

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By GARY MILHOLLIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/opinion/31MILH.html

WASHINGTON - As President Bush sifts through the pile of his predecessor's last-minute directives to spot the executive orders he wants to - and can - overturn, there is one he should put at the top of the list. Just days before leaving office, President Bill Clinton - in a last-minute gift to Silicon Valley - moved to lower the controls on the export of America's most powerful computers.

If Mr. Clinton's directive stands (Congress has 60 days to overturn it, but probably won't), a host of foreign countries will be able to build better weapons with American equipment.

Today, he who computes fastest wins wars. The United States has always used its most powerful computers to design nuclear warheads. And in modern warfare, computers are used for surveillance, communications, targeting and the precision- guiding of munitions.

Mr. Clinton's directive will allow computers that perform up to 85 billion operations a second to be sold to countries like China, India and Pakistan - all of which are building nuclear and missile arsenals - and to Russia, which is helping Iran do the same. These computers are 44 times more powerful than the ones these countries' military plants could buy from America only about a year ago. The result will be a big increase in foreign arms production.

In a press release about the new directive, the Clinton administration said that such export relaxation is inevitable. Controls on high-speed computers, it claimed, are "becoming ineffective" because of what's known as "clustering" - the ability to achieve fast computing speeds by connecting together a number of lower-speed computers. Indeed, Mr. Clinton went so far as to recommend that export controls on all computers might as well be dropped, a suggestion that, if followed, would include the export of the multimillion-dollar (and multithousand-chip) machines in our national laboratories now trying to simulate atomic explosions.

The truth is that clustering works, but not as well as a single fast machine. It is quite difficult to assign pieces of a complex calculation to different computers and then combine the results. Among other things, the connections between the computers slow the speed. That is why foreign buyers still pay top dollar for the fastest American computers they are allowed to buy: They can't get the same result with a bunch of laptops hooked together with cables.

In a mid-December report, the General Accounting Office criticized Mr. Clinton's previous computer-export relaxation, which raised the top allowable speed to 28 billion operations a second from 12.5. The agency said the new ceiling failed to assess "the national security impact on the United States of Russia, China, or other countries obtaining high-performance computing." That presidential directive, issued last August, goes into effect at the end of February.

And while the G.A.O. found that in some cases clustering is a successful substitute for higher-powered computers, it recommended convening a panel of experts to figure out what to do about clustering - not wholesale export deregulation.

The new administration should heed this advice and get its best brains working on the computer export problem. In the meantime, it should rescind, if it can, our outgoing president's hasty and ill-considered directive.

Gary Milhollin directs the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

---

A Futile Missile Shield

January 31, 2001
New York Times
DAMON ELDER Eugene, Ore.,
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/opinion/L31MIS.html

To the Editor:

Re "Bush Repeats Call for Arms Reduction and Missile Shield" (news article, Jan. 27):

President Bush's missile defense system will not protect us against the real threats from rogue nations. An attack will not come in a missile; it will come in a suitcase.

A terrorist government won't bother firing a nuclear missile at us when it can just smuggle a nuclear bomb across the border in some luggage that could be built with far more ease than a missile silo. This tactic would be safer for the rogue government, since it would be extremely difficult for us to track the bomb's origin, and we wouldn't know where to begin a retaliation.

Why spend billions of dollars on a system that shoots down treaties but not missiles?

Jan. 27, 2001

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

How is the public protected by insurance covering personal injury or property loss that might result from nuclear accidents?

University of Missouri-Rolla American Nuclear Society
Questions and Answers about Nuclear Energy
http://www.nuc.umr.edu/~ans/QA.html
http://www.nuc.umr.edu/~ans/pages31-40.html

The public is protected by insurance carried and paid for by the owners of nuclear power plants as required by the Price-Anderson Act, passed by the U.S. Congress. This Act makes it unnecessary for a member of the public to provide his or her own coverage.

This no-fault* insurance covers any nuclear accident that happens at a nuclear generating plant, or because of the transportation or storage of the plant's nuclear fuel or waste. Coverage is in two layers. The first is liability insurance provided by private insurers. The second is a financial pool funded by required contributions assigned to each reactor.

The total available coverage for any one accident at one of the more than 100 operating plants in the U.S. is $660 million. If accident damages go above this currently specified amount, the Act requires Congress to consider necessary and appropriate action to provide the needed compensation.

Following the accident at Three Mile Island, total claims paid out under the Act came to $41.5 million. The nuclear insurers also paid $20 million into an economic injury fund covering business and individuals within 25 miles of Three Mile Island, and $5 million into a public health fund.

* With no-fault insurance, claimants don't have to go through courts and lawsuits trying to prove who is at fault before getting a claim.

-------- new mexico

Lab Releases Radioactive Material

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Release.html

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- A small amount of radioactive material was accidentally released Wednesday morning at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but was not dangerous, the lab said.

The amount of tritium, which is used in nuclear weapons and fusion research, was small enough to present no danger to nearby workers or the public, the lab said.

The material is widely used to light exit signs in buildings, and even a sheet of paper can shield a person from exposure, authorities said.

Cylinders containing tritium gas were being packaged when the valve fitting on one cylinder apparently failed and triggered monitors inside the facility.

A worker present in the packaging room was exposed to less than one five-thousandth of the allowable annual exposure limit, the lab said.

Tritium emits low-energy beta radioactivity, and can be used in medical diagnostic tracers and for radio-therapeutic treatments.

-------- us nuc politics

BUSH'S NUCLEAR DOCTRINE: FROM MAD TO NUTS?

Sun, 31 Dec 2000:
By William D. Hartung
Stephen Kobasa
<skobasa@pop.snet.net>

Foreign policy issues were mostly an afterthought during the 2000 presidential campaign, and they continue to take a back seat in President-elect George W. Bush's discussions of the priorities of his incoming administration. But one critical foreign policy issue--U.S. nuclear weapons policy--demands immediate attention and debate. The Bush foreign policy team is quietly contemplating radical changes in U.S. strategy that could set off a global nuclear arms race that will make the U.S.-Soviet competition of the cold war period look tame by comparison.

In his only significant public pronouncement on the subject, delivered last spring, Bush put forward a schizophrenic view of the nuclear conundrum. On the positive side, he spoke of making unilateral cuts in U.S. nuclear forces and taking those forces off of hair-trigger alert. He even implied that the cold war doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD--the doctrine that spurred the U.S. and the Soviet Union to build thousands upon thousands of nuclear weapons as a way of ensuring that neither side would dare attack the other for fear of being annihilated in return) was a "dead relic" of a bygone era. On the negative side of the ledger, Bush endorsed the deployment of a massive missile defense program on the scale of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" plan, complete with interceptor missiles based on land, at sea, in the air, and in outer space.

The seeming contradiction in the Bush view--taking reassuring steps by reducing the size of the U.S. arsenal and taking forces off alert on the one hand, while provoking other nuclear powers with a massive Star Wars program on the other--disappears if you look at the common thread uniting these proposals: nuclear unilateralism.

Spurred on by the ideological rantings of conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, a powerful bloc within the Republican Party has increasingly come to treat negotiated arms control arrangements--like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I and II), and the proposed Comprehensive Test Ban treaty--as obstacles to U.S. supremacy rather than guarantors of a fragile but critical level of stability in the nuclear age. The right-wing rallying cry is "peace through strength, not peace through paper." If that means shredding two decades of international arms control agreements (most of which were negotiated by Republican presidents), so be it.

This unilateralist approach to nuclear strategy is a disaster waiting to happen. Bush advisers like Stephen Hadley have suggested that the U.S. can significantly reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons in its current arsenal of 8,000 to 10,000 strategic warheads. Simultaneously, the U.S. would need to modernize the force by developing low-yield nuclear weapons that could be used for missions like destroying hardened underground command centers or hidden weapons facilities.

The barely concealed premise of this emerging nuclear doctrine is a desire to make U.S. nuclear weapons more usable. This dubious proposition is grounded in the notion that a low-yield weapon could more readily be used as a threat, or actually dropped on a target, without sparking nuclear retaliation by another nuclear power. Some conservative analysts have even suggested that low-yield nukes are a "humanitarian" weapon, claiming that they can be used to take out underground biological warfare laboratories, for example, with less loss of life than would result from other approaches to destroying such facilities!

Of course, in the unfortunate event of a nuclear exchange prompted by a U.S. threat to use "mini-nukes," the Bush doctrine would trust in our spiffy new Star Wars system to protect us. The fact that such a system is far from reality and may never successfully be built does not seem to cool the passions of the new generation of nuclear use theorists (or NUTs, as some critics have called them).

(William D. Hartung <hartung@newschool.edu> is the president's fellow at the World Policy Institute at New School University and a military affairs adviser to Foreign Policy in Focus.)

--------

Senate energy bill seeks nuclear, electric incentives

January 31, 2001
USA:
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9666

WASHINGTON - A draft Senate bill aimed at improving the nation's supply of energy seeks incentives for nuclear power providers to produce more electricity, and would scrap decades-old rules in order to ensure grid reliability and give utilities flexibility in the fast-changing marketplace.

The nuclear and reliability provisions are a few of the scores of measures included in the draft obtained by Reuters.

Legislative sources expect the bill to be introduced next week by Sen. Frank Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The plan is seen as a vehicle for implementing many of the energy policies favored by the Bush administration, which claims the current power crisis in California, and continued expensive prices for most fuels, can be at least partially blamed on the lack of a coherent federal plan.

In the draft, the energy secretary would be directed to make payments to the owners of existing nuclear plants that produces in excess of the previous year's output.

"The amount of such payment shall be 1 mill for each kilowatt-hour produced in excess of the total generation produced over the most recent calendar year prior to the first fiscal year in which payment is sought," the draft said.

Payments were subject to amounts made available by Congress, and no power facility could receive more than $2 million in any one calendar year.

On reliability, the draft repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) and amends the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA).

PURPA mandatory purchase and sale requirements would be terminated, relieving utilities from having to buy power from qualifying facilities currently demanded in the law.

The 1935 PUHCA law would be replaced by a new 2001 version. The draft states that changes in regulations covering the natural gas and electric industries forced the changes.

"The purposes of this are to eliminate unnecessary regulation, yet continue to provide for consumer protection by facilitating existing rate regulatory authority through improved federal and state commission access to books and records of all companies in a holding company system, while affording companies the flexibility required to compete in the energy markets," the draft said.


-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

No Crops Spared in Colombia's Coca War

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/world/31COLO.html?pagewanted=all

SANTA ANA, Colombia, Jan. 29 - With considerable training and financing from the United States, the Colombian Army has begun an aggressive land and air assault on the country's coca-growing heartland, claiming to have killed a quarter of all coca crops there in the last six weeks.

Low-flying aerial spray planes - protected from groundfire by two elite battalions that are dropped into coca fields - have blanketed four regions of Caquetá and Putumayo Provinces, spraying herbicide over 65,785 acres as of Sunday, according to newly released military estimates. The two provinces are believed to produce three-quarters of Colombia's coca, the leaves of which are used to make cocaine.

Although aerial defoliation of coca has been used across Colombia for 10 years, government officials here say this is the first serious effort in this isolated region. The effort is a centerpiece of President Andrés Pastrana's Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar effort to cut Colombia's coca crop in half by 2005 and, with it, a crucial revenue source for leftist guerrillas who are active in the area.

To reduce the supply of drugs, the United States has pledged $1.1 billion toward that plan, mostly in the form of transport helicopters and training for antinarcotics troops. Their role is to protect spray planes and destroy coca-processing laboratories in the jungle.

The aerial eradication has not come without a price. Farmers in the Valley of Guamuez in northwestern Putumayo, a swath containing the largest concentration of coca, have complained that legal crops like plantains and yucca were destroyed along with coca. The farmers are typically poor, and some, caught in a violent world between rebels and paramilitaries, turned to coca to eke out a better subsistence.

"I have the proof to show that it wasn't just the coca farmers who have suffered," said Carlos Alberto Palacios, secretary of human development in the town of La Hormiga.

"We believe people will go hungry," said Mr. Palacios, an expert on the coca trade. "They've fumigated everything, fields and plantain rows and yucca and everything that people need to live on." Farmers have also complained of vomiting, rashes and other side effects.

On a half-hour helicopter flight with Gen. Mario Montoya over what was once Colombia's most bountiful coca-producing region, fields that once were bright green with coca and other plants were a pale brown, wiped free of vegetation for miles around.

The tin roofs of farmers' huts stood out, shining in the sun in a sea of drab brown. Military figures show that 45,551 acres of coca had been eradicated in that area - a triangle comprising the towns of La Hormiga, San Miguel and the western edge of Puerto Asís - as of Sunday.

"This is the only way," the general said, taking a look through the window of the copter. "We don't have another way."

General Montoya, who is in charge of the effort, said as much as 250,000 acres in the two provinces was dedicated to coca before spraying began Dec. 19, a figure far higher than an estimate last January of 185,000.

United States officials, who provide the Colombian authorities with satellite maps that help pinpoint coca fields, confirmed General Montoya's assessments. American officials also said the spraying - using glyphosate, a powerful chemical found in many pesticides - is at least 90 percent effective in first-time use, wiping out fields within a few weeks. General Montoya said that once a field has been sprayed, it takes three months before farmers can replant.

Mr. Palacios, the coca trade expert, and other town officials said farmers did cultivate coca, but also a host of legal crops, as well as cattle and other livestock. The defoliation, Mr. Palacios said, has prompted many farmers and their families to abandon their homes.

The health department of Putumayo is in the process of collecting testimony from farmers whose lands were sprayed, said Nancy Sánchez, who is supervising the effort as coordinator of the department's human rights section. The affidavits will be presented to doctors studying the effects of the defoliation, as well as the Colombian government.

"There's complaints about intoxication, diarrhea, vomiting, skin rashes, red eyes, headaches," Ms. Sánchez said. "In the children, above all, there are ill effects on their skin."

American officials dispute such reports, insisting that numerous tests on glyphosate have demonstrated that the pesticide cannot cause harm to humans or animals.

Nonetheless, directions on the application of glyphosate products in the United States warn users not to use "this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift."

The Colombian government, which is concerned about how aerial spraying will be viewed overseas by potential financial backers, points out that the farmers whose fields were sprayed had ample opportunity to sign pacts that would have prevented aerial eradication.

Under a program that already has 2,000 signatories across Putumayo, the farmers in the Valley of Guamuez could have agreed to yank their coca plants in return for up to $1,000 worth of livestock and food per family. Although many farmers across Putumayo remain suspicious about the government's promises, the government has pledged to those who sign that markets for legal crops are being developed.

"The people from this zone had not shown up," said President Pastrana's point man on Putumayo, referring to the farmers in the Valley of Guamuez. The official, Gonzalo de Francisco, added, "These people can't be angry with the fumigation; they were doing something outside legal norms."

Mr. de Francisco has also noted that destroying coca farms prevents the use of millions of gallons of pesticides and precursor chemicals needed to produce cocaine annually. Eduardo Gamarra, an expert on the coca trade at Florida International University in Miami, said the damage from coca farming and the processing of coca leaves has "some very serious environmental implications."

Mr. de Francisco said that complaints from farmers whose fields were sprayed have been filed with the government's internal affairs office, which investigates allegations of official wrongdoing. Those whose farms were unnecessarily sprayed can receive compensation, Mr. de Francisco said, noting that the farmers remain free to sign accords and join the government's self-eradication program.

General Montoya, who commands army brigades throughout the southern region, where most of Colombia's coca grows, acknowledged that "errors can present themselves" and that some legal crops were defoliated.

"We know that we can make mistakes," General Montoya said, "but the mistakes are minimal compared to the magnitude of the operation that we're undertaking."

The general explained that defoliating some legal crops is hard to avoid because coca farmers tend to hide their crops by planting next to larger, legal crops, like banana trees.

"When we've gone to examine the countryside, we've found that there's plantain bananas, we've found that there is yucca, but we've also found there is coca," General Montoya said.

The anti-coca effort has been fast, General Montoya said, but not easy. Because of the presence of rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the army must fly in soldiers from two American-trained battalions before spraying herbicide from OVZ-10 and T-65 planes. The soldiers later shower to cleanse themselves of any of the herbicide, the military says.

"The people here are always in the middle," said Ms. Sánchez, the health department worker. "The guerrillas come and they threaten, they make them pay taxes. Then the paramilitaries come and they get assassinated and threatened, and now the government comes in and fumigates them."

---

Gunman in Colombia Hijacking Seized

January 31, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Colombia-Hijack.html

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The hijacking of an airliner by a disaffected leftist guerrilla armed with a handgun ended when the pilot and several passengers overpowered him. The 31 people on the plane were unhurt, authorities said.

The six-hour drama, which began on a sweltering afternoon Tuesday in a rebel safe haven in southern Colombia, ended on the chilly tarmac in this capital in the Andes Mountains. It was broadcast live on television here.

``He is in the hands of the authorities,'' said Gonzalo de Francisco, a special representative of President Andres Pastrana. De Francisco said none of the 27 passengers and four crew members aboard the Dornier turboprop plane was hurt.

The hijacking underscored the lawlessness that critics say prevails in the haven ceded by Pastrana two years ago to the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in order to propel peace talks forward.

The so-called demilitarized zone has been renewed several times and was to expire again at midnight Wednesday. Pastrana had been expected to renew it, even though peace talks were broken off by the FARC last November. It was unlikely the hijacking would affect his decision, the president's aides said.

Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco, the commander of the air force, said the hijacker was a disaffected FARC rebel who wanted to go to Europe. He had boarded the state-run Satena airliner in San Vicente del Caguan, the biggest town in the demilitarized zone, and used a handgun to force the plane to fly to Bogota.

The plane had been conducting a roundtrip flight from Bogota to San Vicente del Caguan, with a stopover in the city of Neiva, when it was commandeered

Family members of those aboard watched horrified as the hijacked plane took off from San Vicente del Caguan. Some attempted to run onto the runway in front of the departing plane.

``I tried to prevent the plane from taking off, but the pilot signaled to me that I shouldn't,'' said Adela de Altamar, whose daughter Carolina was aboard the plane.

After arriving at the capital, the hijacker allowed six passengers to leave the plane, including one man with appendicitis and another suffering heart pains, Colombian Red Cross spokesman Walter Cote said. The other four freed passengers were women and children, Cote said.

De Francisco, sent by Pastrana to Bogota's airport to monitor negotiations with the hijacker, said the man had demanded to be taken out of Colombia.

It was the second hijacking in recent months involving the guerrillas.

In September, a jailed FARC rebel being transported from one prison to another hijacked a commercial flight and forced it to land at San Vicente del Caguan. He freed the 21 passengers and crew unharmed and fled into the rebel enclave. The rebels have refused government demands to turn him over to authorities.

---

Gunman seizes plane, then is overpowered

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001131211657.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia - A gunman commandeered a plane with 31 persons aboard in Colombian rebel territory yesterday and forced it to fly to the capital, where it sat on the tarmac in an hours-long standoff.

The hostage crisis ended late yesterday after the hijacker was overpowered by a passenger, according to a television report.

Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco, the commander of the air force, said the hijacker was a leftist guerrilla. But an air force officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the gunman told the control tower over the radio that he was a rebel deserter.

RCN television reported that the hijacker was demanding another plane to fly him out of the country, but officials did not immediately confirm the report.

-------- drug war

Mexico Warns of Colombia Drug War Spillover

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/world/31DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - The Mexican foreign minister, Jorge G. Castańeda, said he warned Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today that Colombia's neighbors are extremely concerned about the spillover effects of the conflict there, one in which the United States is becoming more heavily involved.

Mr. Castańeda, in Washington to prepare for the visit of President Bush to Mexico next month, his first abroad as president, said in an interview that Mexico is very "sensitive" to the worries about the spread of the Colombian conflict and that the United States should be too.

The Bush administration has inherited a $1.3 billion "antidrug offensive" plan from the Clinton White House, approved by Congress, that effectively helps Colombia fight rebels. The rebels control large swaths of land that produce coca and provide the rebels' main source of financing.

But surrounding countries, including Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador, have expressed fears of being dragged into the war by fighting that is spreading over their borders or of suffering environmental side effects, such as the pollution of their waters by fungicides used to spray coca crops.

"These are not silly concerns," Mr. Castańeda said. "These are concerns of very reasonable people and the United States should listen to these things."

Mr. Castańeda, a political scientist who recently taught at New York University, was appointed foreign minister by the new Mexican president, Vicente Fox, as much for his ability to build bridges with Washington as his ability to be candid.

The minister said General Powell was sympathetic to his pleas. Mr. Castańeda said he told the secretary of state that Mexico would be more "forceful" in trying to persuade the Colombian rebels, with whom Mexico keeps contact, to negotiate with the government of President Andrés Pastrana of Colombia.

So far, General Powell has deviated little in his public comments from support of Plan Colombia, which involves training of Colombian military by United States Army Special Forces instructors and supplying equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters.

The secretary stuck to that script at a brief appearance with Mr. Casta ńeda during which reporters were permitted to ask General Powell questions for the first time since he took office 10 days ago. "The Bush administration supports Plan Colombia as an effort to do something about the narco-trafficking problem in Colombia and in the region at large," General Powell said.

Asked if the United States was pushing too hard for a military solution rather than a negotiated one between the government and the insurgents, General Powell replied: "At the end of the day that will only be solved by a political solution, by negotiations. We encourage President Pastrana to keep working to see if we can find - he can find a political solution."

General Powell added, "I don't think there is a military solution to the insurgency problem." But, he continued: "The people of Colombia are suffering. They are in danger of seeing their democracy destroyed by the combination of narcotrafficking and insurgency."

The secretary and the foreign minister agreed to disagree on Cuba. Mr. Castańeda said that his government would work to strengthen financial and economic ties with Cuba

General Powell said the new administration would pursue relations with Cuba in a way that lets "Mr. Castro know that we disapprove of his regime." Sanctions on Cuba will remain, General Powell said.

"We will only participate in those activities with Cuba that benefit the people directly and not the government," he said.

--------

History Says Eradicating Drug Crops Doomed to Failure

January 31, 2001
jointogether.org
http://www.jointogether.org/sa/default.jtml?O=265861
http://www.suntimes.com:80/output/news/drugs21.html

As far back as the 16th century, the strategy of solving drug problems by eradicating the source has proven unsuccessful, the Ottawa Citizen reported Jan. 21.

In the 16th century, the Marques de Caete, the Spanish viceroy of Peru, tried to stop local Indians from chewing coca leaves by creating financial incentives to encourage farmers to substitute food crops for coca. When the approach didn't work, he tried to solve the drug problem by eradicating the source. He failed once again.

Heading into the 21st century, international anti-drug strategies again include targeting source plants, such as cannabis, coca and opium poppy, in the growing fields.

The United States and the United Nations, which are spending billions of dollars to eradicate drug crops, insist that the efforts can work with enough resources and cooperation. To that end, the United Nations has set 2008 as the target date for the total eradication of coca, opium poppy and marijuana.

The last time the United Nations set a target date was back in 1961, when it stated that coca and opium poppy would be wiped out worldwide by 1986.

Critics of crop-eradication programs say such efforts are a waste of time and money. They argue that eradication programs devastate ecosystems, destabilize societies, and spread violence and corruption from country to country.

Instead, they said the resources should be used on drug treatment. "As long as there is demand in the United States and Europe," said Jaime Ruiz, senior adviser to the president of Colombia, "there is going to be supply. If it is not from Colombia, it is going to be from somewhere else."

-------- korea

Cloudy sunshine policy

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-2001131213536.htm

The Bush administration has urged South Korea to change the name of its "Sunshine Policy" for diplomatic engagement with communist North Korea, according to reports out of Seoul.

Richard Armitage, expected to be nominated as deputy secretary of state, suggested calling its efforts an "engagement policy" in an apparent signal of dissatisfaction with North Korean responses to South Korea's diplomatic outreach.

Mr. Armitage broached the matter in a meeting last week in Washington with aides to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and members of his Millennium Democratic Party (MDP).

"Armitage suggested Seoul use the term 'engagement policy' instead of 'Sunshine Policy,' " Agence France-Presse reported, quoting a South Korean government source.

AFP added that "South Korean media said Armitage had warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had abused President Kim's 'Sunshine Policy' to get outside aid without changing his hard-line policies."

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that Lee Bu-Young, an MDP vice president, quoted Mr. Armitage as saying, " 'Unless North Korea achieves transparency in its production and exports of missiles, it will not receive a single penny from us.' "

-------- poland

Poland vows to raise armed force standards

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001131211657.htm

WARSAW - One-third of Poland's armed forces will meet NATO standards by 2006 and defense spending will be stabilized at the level of 1.95 percent of gross domestic product, according to a defense modernization program adopted by the government yesterday.

"By 2006, one-third of Polish soldiers will be fully equipped with NATO-compatible weapons and communications which will allow us to cooperate with NATO forces," Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek told journalists.

The program also guarantees "stable financing for the Polish armed forces at 1.95 percent of gross domestic product for six years," he added. Poland spent 2.04 percent of GDP on defense last year.

-------- space

How did uranium get into space?

31 JANUARY 2001
EurekAlert!
http://www.newscientist.co.uk
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ns-hdu013101.html

The Mir space station is determined to go out with a bang. Just a month before it is due to crash into the Pacific Ocean, it has thrown up one last puzzle. How did tiny radioactive specks of decay products of uranium end up on one of its instrument covers? The American scientists who discovered the radioactivity say it is the first evidence that space around the Earth is contaminated with uranium. The scientists, from California Polytechnic State University in Saint Luis Obispo, have three possible scenarios for its source. It could have come from nuclear weapons tested in space in the 1960s, or from uranium-powered satellites that have burnt up on re-entry into the atmosphere. Alternatively, an exploding supernova could have blasted the uranium into our Solar System many thousands of years ago. More data is needed to establish the true origin, the scientists say. Space debris expert John Zarnecki of the Open University in Milton Keynes says that all the explanations are plausible. "Anything that is up in Earth's orbit for more than a few weeks is bombarded with particles of space debris."

The Californian researchers, led by Roger Grismore, came across the uranium almost by accident. In June 1991, a small mitten-shaped space blanket made in California was placed over a glass instrument on the outside of Mir. The blanket, which consists of ten thin layers of aluminium and polyester, protected the instrument from solar radiation and showers of tiny meteorites. The blanket was removed in August 1995, returned to Earth and kept in a clean room for 16 months before Grismore and his team looked at it.

They used two spectrometers to analyse gamma radiation given off by the blanket. This revealed that the gamma rays had energies characteristic of two radioactive isotopes, lead-214 and bismuth-214-both decay products of uranium-238. "That is the thrill of science-seeing something that no one has seen before," says Grismore. To check that the blanket had not been contaminated in storage, the researchers also analysed a similar blanket that had stayed back on Earth. It emitted less than a tenth as much radiation.

Among the possible culprits, Grismore lists Starfish Prime, a US nuclear bomb test carried out on 9 July 1962 at an altitude of 399 kilometres-the highest known nuclear test, and higher than Mir's average orbit of 320 kilometres. China and the Soviet Union may also have experimented with atomic bombs at high altitudes.

Another possible source is one of the hundreds of satellites launched into space over the past 40 years, some of them powered by mini-reactors and some with depleted uranium for ballast. Two uranium-fuelled Cosmos satellites from the Soviet Union burnt up re-entering the atmosphere around 20 years ago.

The wild card is the idea of contamination from deep space. When supernovae explode they may spew out heavy elements such as uranium. "Supernovae are isotope manufacturing machines," says Paul Murdin of Britain's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. He agrees that the supernova which 340,000 years ago spawned the neutron star Geminga, roughly 400 light years from Earth, could be a source of the uranium.

Grismore believes high-altitude nuclear tests are the most probable source of the radioactive specks. But, he adds, "a supernova is the most intriguing".

Author: Rob Edwards
More at: Journal of Environmental Radioactivity (vol 53, p 231)
New Scientist issue: 3rd February 2001
http://www.newscientist.com

---

America's Unguarded Frontier

January 31, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/opinion/31WED2.html

The Air Force recently took a timely step toward preparing itself for 21st-century warfare by examining the vulnerability of America's military satellites in an imaginary future conflict. The United States is more dependent on satellites than any other nation, for commercial uses as well as for battlefield management and intelligence. Safeguarding these space systems from various forms of attack is critical to maintaining the nation's military might.

Fortunately, this is a special concern of Donald Rumsfeld, who headed an expert commission on the subject just before his nomination as secretary of defense. With his guidance, the Bush administration is likely to take a serious interest in protecting America's military space systems. But the administration's goals should be strictly defensive. Washington has no interest in making space an arena for combat.

America's military supremacy owes a great deal to its domination of what defense planners call the information battlefield. Using constellations of military and civilian satellites and ground-based computers and tracking stations, Pentagon commanders can often peer through the proverbial fog of war. They can monitor the movements of enemy forces, shield American troops from danger and aim bomb and missile strikes at their targets with great accuracy.

But these capabilities are vulnerable. The global positioning satellites that guide American missiles to their targets can be jammed. Intelligence and communications satellites are also susceptible to interference and data theft. Satellites can be targeted with missiles or blinded by lasers. Ground tracking stations can be attacked and skilled hackers can disrupt their computer systems. The recent Air Force exercise highlighted some of these weaknesses. It simulated attacks that could cripple ground stations, disable computers or blind photo reconnaissance satellites.

The Pentagon has already taken important steps to protect military satellites. Future positioning satellites will be equipped with special anti- jamming devices. Sensitive military communications are encrypted and sent on separate channels to avoid piracy. The most magnified reconnaissance pictures taken from space, the kind most useful in military targeting, are not commercially available, though less detailed images are now sold by private companies. In the event of possible laser attack, shutters can be closed over the sensitive optical systems of some satellites.

These are the right steps to be taking, along with continued research into new means of protecting satellites. The Pentagon should also track the activities of America's potential enemies in this area. Some day space may become a military battlefield. Washington should prepare for that day, but should do nothing to hasten it.

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

U.N. SCALES BACK

January 31, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/world/31BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON: The Security Council extended the mandate for the United Nations peacekeeping presence in southern Lebanon for another six months, but scaled back the contingent from 5,800 troops to 4,500. The mission has been in Lebanon for nearly 13 years. The Council again urged Lebanon to reassert authority in the south and speed up troop deployments following Israel's withdrawal. Christopher S. Wren (NYT)

GUINEA: U.N. PULLBACK The office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees said it had drastically reduced the number of its relief workers in southern Guinea because of increased fighting between the Guinean Army and rebel fighters from Sierra Leone. The agency had earlier said rebels were preying on the refugees, 250,000 of whom fled Sierra Leone. But it said Guinean soldiers are committing atrocities too. Christopher S. Wren (NYT)

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U.N. seeks to tax international currency trades

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
By Betsy Pisik
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200113122721.htm

NEW YORK - The United Nations yesterday issued a sweeping list of proposals to help the world's poorest nations cope with the effects of globalization, including an idea for a global tax on international currency transactions.

A 0.1 percent tax on $1.5 trillion worth of "speculative" currency transactions could yield $150 billion a year that could be used to stabilize volatile markets, said the report, compiled in collaboration with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and others.

Officials who drafted the report showed little enthusiasm yesterday for the measure, one of dozens that may wind up in a non-binding agreement nations will negotiate in March 2002.

"We have not recommended any such thing," Nitin Desai, the U.N. undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, said of the global tax, which is presented in paragraph 113 of the 64-page report and touted in its press kit.

Instead, he said, "It's one of the areas where the report is not clearly making an explicit recommendation but simply saying that someone has said, 'Think about it.'"

He declined to elaborate on how such a tax would be collected, administered or disbursed. Nor would he say whether U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan would endorse such a measure.

Reinhard Munzberg, the U.N. representative for the International Monetary Fund, and Enrique Rueda-Sabater, a World Bank senior manager, also pointedly refused to endorse the suggestion, which apparently was offered by nongovernmental organizations and unnamed member states.

A panel of high-profile financial analysts, including former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, is to release its own recommendations next month.

The U.N. officials no doubt are stung by reactions to earlier ideas for world taxes.

Last year, the authors of the U.N. Development Program's annual Human Development Report suggested a special tax on Internet commerce and messages. The suggestion - presented in less than a sentence - overshadowed the massive evaluation of human rights.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali derailed his hopes for a second term, in part, by suggesting in the mid-1990s that the United Nations raise funds by taxing international airline tickets. Largely because of that, the U.S. Congress made payment of $100 million in U.N. funds contingent on the organization's promise not to try to levy its own taxes.

"Among [private nonprofit organizations] there is a strong sympathy for a measure of this kind," said Danish Ambassador Jorgen Bojer. He said his own government was mildly interested in the idea but had decided it was not worth the political effort to pursue it.

The report released yesterday suggests scores of ways for the industrialized world to lower trade barriers, encourage debt forgiveness, and direct capital and investment dollars to the poorest nations.

Developing countries are advised in the report to improve access to microcredit loans, provide better regulation of financial markets, and reform tax and banking measures.

The officials note that official development assistance continues to shrink well below a long-standing target of 0.7 percent of developed countries' gross national product (GNP). The median in 1999 was only 0.25 of GNP, while the bulk of nearly $200 billion in private investment last year went to 20 nations.

Meanwhile, the world's poorest nations slid deeper into debt. Total debt equaled the total GNP in 1998 for the world's poorest countries.

World trade more than tripled to $5.4 trillion between 1995 and 1998, while exports from the least-developed nations accounted for $26 billion, a $2 billion increase in the same period.

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

Panel Suggests US Security Strategy

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Security-Strategy.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A ``catastrophic attack'' is likely to hit U.S. soil in the next 25 years, and the National Guard should be retrained as America's main protector against such an assault, an advisory commission on national security said Wednesday.

The United States also needs to reorganize the State Department, overhaul the Defense Department and invest more in scientific research and education systems that are ``in serious crisis,'' the report said.

``America faces ... new dangers, particularly to the homeland and to our scientific and educational base,'' said the report's introduction by former Sens. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and Gary Hart, D-Colo., co-chairmen of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century.

The 14-member commission -- established by Congress in 1998 -- urged President Bush, his administration, the new Congress and citizens to debate the dangers.

The biggest threat in the next couple of decades, the panel said, is the likelihood of an attack on the United States.

``Weapons proliferation (and) the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack,'' the report said. ``A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century.''

The second-biggest threat is inadequate scientific research and education, something the panel said poses ``a greater threat to U.S. national security ... than any potential conventional war that we might imagine.'' The panel recommended doubling spending on scientific research and development over the next seven to eight years.

``We put science, and science and math education, second ... because we believe it's second only to the threat of a weapon of mass destruction (hitting) one of our cities,'' said commission member Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House. ``The national security establishment has to look seriously at how much'' is spent on such programs, he said.

The report is the last of a three-phase study by the commission established in 1998. The first part suggested how the world might look in the coming quarter century. The second laid out a national strategy, and the third suggests changes needed to carry out the strategy.

Basic U.S. institutions are neglected and in some cases decaying, the group concluded.

It recommended creating an independent ``National Homeland Security Agency'' to plan, coordinate and integrate domestic security activities. Its mission would be to protect American lives and infrastructure, such as the highway system and information technology. It would be built around the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

``The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine global leadership'' by the United States, the report said. ``In the face of this threat, our nation has no coherent or integrated governmental structures.''

The National Guard should be given domestic security as a primary mission and ``be reorganized, trained and equipped to undertake that mission,'' the panel said.

Giving the Guard an elevated role is not a new idea. The Clinton administration, for instance, had planned for the Guard to operate a national missile defense system, should one be deployed.

The State Department, meanwhile, is a ``crippled institution that is starved for resources by Congress because of its inadequacies,'' weakening it further, and many of its core functions, such as foreign assistance, have been parceled out to other agencies in recent decades, the report said.

Creation of special bureaus such as those for human rights and political-military affairs led to complexity that has made it difficult to coordinate and lead foreign policy, the report said.

As for the Pentagon, it said, growth in staff and activities has ``created mounting confusion and delay,'' excessive laws have hobbled weapons acquisition and the failure to privatize some support activities ``wastes huge sums of money.'' The staffs of the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs and regional commands should be cut by up to 15 percent, the report said.

---

Panel recommends steps to improve security

01/31/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-01-31-security.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - A "catastrophic attack" is likely to hit U.S. soil in the next 25 years, and the National Guard should be retrained as America's main protector against such an assault, an advisory commission on national security said Wednesday.

The United States also needs to reorganize the State Department, overhaul the Defense Department and invest more in scientific research and education systems that are "in serious crisis," the report said.

"America faces ... new dangers, particularly to the homeland and to our scientific and educational base," said the report's introduction by former Sens. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and Gary Hart, D-Colo., co-chairmen of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century.

The 14-member commission - established by Congress in 1998 - urged President Bush, his administration, the new Congress and citizens to debate the dangers.

The biggest threat in the next couple of decades, the panel said, is the likelihood of an attack on the United States.

"Weapons proliferation (and) the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack," the report said. "A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century."

The second-biggest threat is inadequate scientific research and education, something the panel said poses "a greater threat to U.S. national security ... than any potential conventional war that we might imagine." The panel recommended doubling spending on scientific research and development over the next seven to eight years.

"We put science, and science and math education, second ... because we believe it's second only to the threat of a weapon of mass destruction (hitting) one of our cities," said commission member Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House. "The national security establishment has to look seriously at how much" is spent on such programs, he said.

The report is the last of a three-phase study by the commission established in 1998. The first part suggested how the world might look in the coming quarter century. The second laid out a national strategy, and the third suggests changes needed to carry out the strategy.

Basic U.S. institutions are neglected and in some cases decaying, the group concluded.

It recommended creating an independent "National Homeland Security Agency" to plan, coordinate and integrate domestic security activities. Its mission would be to protect American lives and infrastructure, such as the highway system and information technology. It would be built around the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine global leadership" by the United States, the report said. "In the face of this threat, our nation has no coherent or integrated governmental structures."

The National Guard should be given domestic security as a primary mission and "be reorganized, trained and equipped to undertake that mission," the panel said.

Giving the Guard an elevated role is not a new idea. The Clinton administration, for instance, had planned for the Guard to operate a national missile defense system, should one be deployed.

The State Department, meanwhile, is a "crippled institution that is starved for resources by Congress because of its inadequacies," weakening it further, and many of its core functions, such as foreign assistance, have been parceled out to other agencies in recent decades, the report said.

Creation of special bureaus such as those for human rights and political-military affairs led to complexity that has made it difficult to coordinate and lead foreign policy, the report said.

As for the Pentagon, it said, growth in staff and activities has "created mounting confusion and delay," excessive laws have hobbled weapons acquisition and the failure to privatize some support activities "wastes huge sums of money." The staffs of the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs and regional commands should be cut by up to 15%, the report said.

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The Army's 'Affair of the Heart'

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200113119193.htm

Perhaps the military's chronic recruiting and retention problems are worse than anyone imagined. That's the kindest explanation possible for the Army's new slogan, "An Army of one."

While it may not help the Army reach any recruiting targets, the slogan is a laser-guided index of the politically correct thinking currently operating in the Army's highest echelons.

Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera said, "I feel as if we are conveying a more accurate view of the men and women who comprise our Army." That may be true, if the Army consists of Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The slogan is purportedly aimed at independent young adults blown off by the regimentation demanded by the military. Mr. Caldera claimed, "It speaks to the individual strengths of each soldier and their part within the overall Army force."

Putting aside the fact that finding a rebellious teen-ager is approximately as difficult as finding a Ravens fan in Baltimore, an "overall Army force" is precisely the point - a group of individuals who subvert their wills to the good of the unit and, one hopes, the good of the nation. The motto of the Marine Corps, "Semper fidelis," or always faithful, speaks to the same principle - faithfulness to comrades and country.

Teamwork is a critical component of any military operation, even if it is merely (according to "Murphy's Rules of Combat") to give the enemy someone else to shoot at. Scholar F.E. Adcock observed, "Battles are sometimes won by generals; wars are usually always won by sergeants and privates." For that matter, "armies of one" can usually be best identified by their headstones, since teamwork often helps to keep the individual members of the team alive.

Combat soldiers depend on noncombat teams to do their duty as well. Since high performance often equals high maintenance, every combat plane used over Serbia's skies needed numerous maintenance personnel to keep it combat capable. Any general will agree that truck drivers are as important as tank drivers.

The Army seems to have forgotten this, and is attempting instead to impose a vision of a sensitive soldier who calls the shots. On the Army's web site, one of the first items listed under "The Army Vision" is the following statement: "Soldiering is, and always will be, an 'Affair of the Heart.'"

Yet soldiering never has been an affair of the heart, unless that is the part of the enemy that soldiers are supposed to aim at. Nor is soldiering supposed to be about peacekeeping missions, not asking and not telling, or awarding black berets for the military equivalent of Boy Scout duty.

Soldiering will never be about being "an army of one," although if the current leadership is fired, it may again be about being "all that you can be."

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Whitman and Norton Win Confirmation in the Senate

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/politics/31CONF.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - The Senate approved Gale A. Norton and Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey today to oversee the nation's policies on natural resources and the environment.

Ms. Norton, a former attorney general of Colorado who drew criticism from environmental groups and Senate Democrats for her record on conservation, was confirmed as interior secretary by a 75-to-24 vote. She is the first woman to hold the post.

The Senate voted 99 to 0 to approve Ms. Whitman as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The job does not now carry cabinet rank, but President Bush has said he supports upgrading the post to the cabinet, which would require an act of Congress.

Ms. Whitman said today that she would resign as governor of New Jersey on Wednesday. Donald T. DiFrancesco, the Republican president of the New Jersey Senate, is to become acting governor.

With its action today, the Senate has approved most of President Bush's cabinet members and top agency officials. The Senate has yet to vote on former Senator John Ashcroft to head the Justice Department and on Robert B. Zoellick as United States trade representative.

Ms. Norton, 46, faced stiff opposition over her record on land management. A coalition of environmental groups urged senators to reject her nomination, citing her view that federal agencies ran roughshod over states and private property owners.

But in her testimony in committee Ms. Norton described herself as a "passionate conservationist" and assured senators she would enforce existing environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act.

"She is entitled to the job," Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, said on the Senate floor. "We have probably never had a candidate for that job who is better educated or qualified in the areas of her jurisdiction."

But Democrats who opposed her selection said they were convinced she would not strike a balance between corporate interests and conservation. Ms. Norton is expected to push to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas drilling, for example.

"If it's a wildlife refuge, it's a refuge," said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. "It's not oil drilling land."

Ms. Whitman's path to confirmation was considerably less rocky. In her confirmation testimony, she promised vigorous enforcement of agency regulations on pollution.

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Conservative Land-Use Groups Gain in Vote

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/politics/31NORT.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - Gale A. Norton's confirmation today as secretary of the interior by the Senate, by a comfortable 75-to-24 margin, can also be seen as a victory for several conservative environmental groups with which Ms. Norton has been connected in her career.

The groups, which include the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Political Economy Research Center, the Defenders of Property Rights and the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates, have played an increasingly important role in the battles over Western land use and other environmental issues. Some have been pressing for the rights of property owners against the federal government in response to what they view as overly cumbersome federal environmental regulations and aggressive moves to protect Western land. Others have pressed for a free-market approach to environmentalism, arguing that market forces should determine the proper uses of federal lands.

In recent years, these groups have become a counterweight to the larger and better-financed liberal environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club, that opposed Ms. Norton's nomination. They have also received money from Eastern social conservatives and Western business interests, public records show.

Some involved with these groups emphasize that Ms. Norton, a onetime member of the Libertarian Party and the former Republican attorney general of Colorado, will not automatically favor their positions as interior secretary.

"I know when she takes on a new role, all bets are off," said Nancie Marzulla, president of the Defenders of Property Rights, a group that defends property owners in disputes with the federal government. "If I have a case to take before her, I expect she will probably grill me harder than other people."

Until her appointment, Ms. Norton served on the group's board of advisers and previously worked with Ms. Marzulla at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, based in Denver.

But others in the conservative environmental movement are optimistic that Ms. Norton will promote free-market environmental ideas.

"Gale Norton's nomination gives the Republican Party a chance to embrace these ideas," said Jane Shaw, a senior associate at the Political Economy Research Center, in Bozeman, Mont.

Critics of Ms. Norton, however, have attacked her positions on land use and private property and view the groups with which she has been affiliated as antienvironmental.

"Her whole life has been devoted to restraining federal authority and making it easier for extractive industries to do their business," Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an environmental organization in Washington that opposed Ms. Norton's nomination, contended.

"The pedigree for these think tanks and law firms," Mr. Cook said, referring to the ones with which Ms. Norton has been connected, "has at every turn been to oppose environmental regulations."

Financing for several of the groups with which Ms. Norton has worked has come from Richard Mellon Scaife, a figure involved in many of the attacks on former President Bill Clinton. The heir to a Pittsburgh family's fortune, Mr. Scaife has donated money to conservative land- use groups. The Sarah Scaife Foundation, which lists Mr. Scaife as its chairman, provided a total of about $200,000 in 1999 to groups with which Ms. Norton has had ties.

Another prominent conservative family, the Coors of Colorado, has also provided consistent backing for several conservative Western land- use groups through a foundation, records show. In 1999, the Castle Rock Foundation, a Coors foundation, provided about $100,000 to groups with which Ms. Norton has been affiliated, records show.

Oil, mining and timber interests - particularly small and independent Western operators - have also pitched in, each with contributions of a few thousand dollars. The financial records suggest that on one of the crucial environmental issues faced by Mr. Clinton and now by President Bush - the debate over the federal control of public land - Western and Eastern conservatives have found common ground.

One of the most prominent groups with which Ms. Norton has been connected is the Mountain States Legal Foundation, where she worked for about four years after law school. James Watt, whose tenure as interior secretary in the Reagan administration was controversial, was Ms. Norton's mentor there. The foundation handles litigation on cases relating to property rights and federal land management in the West.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $25,000 to Mountain States in 1999, records show, although William Perry Pendley, the president and chief legal officer of Mountain States, said he did not know whether the Scaife foundation was still a donor. Mr. Pendley also emphasized that Mountain States, which received more than $2.3 million in total contributions in 1999, has thousands of individual donors, and relies heavily on small ranchers, timber operators and independent oil and gas producers.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation has also given money to other land-use groups, including the Political Economy Research Center. In 1999, the foundation gave $177,000 to the center, the foundation's records show. Ms. Norton has done research at the center, and she remains close to its executive director, Terry Anderson, who served on the Bush-Cheney transition team on Interior Department issues.

The Castle Rock Foundation, established with the Coors fortune, has also contributed to land-use groups with which Ms. Norton has been affiliated, including the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Political Economy Research Center and the Defenders of Property Rights.

Castle Rock gave $35,000 to Mountain States in 1999, and $75,000 in 2000, as well as $40,000 to the Political Economy Research Center. It also gave $25,000 to the Defenders of Property Rights in 1999.

Mountain States and other land- use groups have also been financed by mining, oil and timber interests. The legal foundation listed modest donations in 1999 of $5,000 from mining giant Phelps Dodge Corporation, $6,000 from Idaho Forest Industries Inc. and $8,000 from the Louisiana Pacific Corporation. It also received donations from a variety of groups representing contractors and ranchers.

In 1997, Ms. Norton also helped create what is now the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy to change the Republicans' image on environmental issues, but less is known about the group's finances. The group held a Washington fund-raiser in 1998, raising $100,000, according to The Washington Post. Italia Federici, a former aide to Ms. Norton who now runs the group, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

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No Threat Seen After Cattle Eat Banned Food

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/health/31MADC.html

The Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that 1,222 cattle being held in a Texas feedlot had consumed a small amount of animal feed that contained the ground-up remains of other cattle, a violation of rules designed to protect the American food supply from mad cow disease.

Because mad cow disease has not been shown to infect any cattle in the United States nor to be present in the ground up remains of cattle, the risks that the feed was actually infected or passed the disease to cattle are negligible, said Dr. Murray Lumpkin, senior medical officer in the office of the Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

Still, this is the first time federal officials have learned that cows in the United States were given feed made through unsafe practices. Federal officials said the episode showed that the multilayered system of safety rules was essential to protect the food supply and that vigilance was critical to ensure that the rules were followed at all levels.

Despite the low risk, Purina Mills, a unit of Koch Industries that owns the plant that produced the feed, is announcing that it will voluntarily buy all 1,222 animals to assure that their meat does not enter the human food chain.

The practice of feeding cows to other cows - believed to be what started and amplified the mad cow disease epidemic in Britain and other European nations - was banned by the agency in 1997. But some American feed manufacturers have not been in total compliance with the regulations, said Dr. Lumpkin.

"This is not out of maliciousness," he said, "but rather is matter of needing time to get the system going."

It is not known what the company will do with the animals, Dr. Lumpkin said. Efforts to reach Purina Mills last night were unsuccessful.

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Whitman's Hectic Last Day Gives Her Successor a Hectic First Day

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/31JERS.html

TRENTON, Jan. 30 - She had not made a public appearance in days. But apparently Christie Whitman was busy doing more than just packing up her things at Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton.

On her final day as governor of New Jersey, Mrs. Whitman cleaned out her in-box by granting 12 pardons, signing the odd bill into law and issuing three executive orders. She found time to get away for lunch, to a fish restaurant in a shopping mall a few miles up the road.

Oh, and there was that other item. Something about $215 million in public money for a sports arena in downtown Newark.

The transfer of power in New Jersey will take place as smoothly as possible, given that no one here has ever lived through one like this before. At 6:50 Wednesday morning, Mrs. Whitman will be on a train to Washington for her swearing-in as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. At 10, her letter of resignation will be conveyed to the New Jersey secretary of state, automatically making the president of the State Senate, Donald T. DiFrancesco, the acting governor. Mr. DiFrancesco will take an oath of office at 11, mainly for the cameras.

But judging from Mrs. Whitman's last day in office, she was not exactly passing the baton to Mr. DiFrancesco. She was throwing it at him from a flat-out sprint.

Mr. DiFrancesco, a man whose disposition seems to range from moderate to mild, responded angrily to Mrs. Whitman's announcement of a tentative deal to build a new home for two professional teams, the New Jersey Nets and New Jersey Devils. He fired off a pointed statement noting that he had not participated, or even been asked for "input," in the negotiations.

Mr. DiFrancesco is now caught between two groups, each of which could hurt him in this November's gubernatorial election: the largely Republican voters in Bergen County, who will be angered if the Continental Arena in East Rutherford loses its two premier tenants, and the largely Democratic voters in Newark, who will lose if the arena project is killed.

Of course, Mr. DiFrancesco already had his own hands quite full. He spent this morning meeting with his political team, discussing how to raise millions of dollars for his gubernatorial primary campaign against the Jersey City mayor, Bret D. Schundler. Mr. DiFrancesco must now replace departing cabinet members, like Treasurer Roland Machold, who gave all of two days' notice on Monday, with no transition period. And, under the quirks of the New Jersey Constitution, Mr. DiFrancesco will still have to preside over the State Senate.

So far, Mr. DiFrancesco appears to be doing his best to ensure a stable changeover. He is retaining many of Mrs. Whitman's advisers, and is bringing over from the Senate most of what has been a fairly constant team of loyal staffers throughout his nine years as Senate president.

For example, Mr. DiFrancesco's new chief of staff, Jeffrey T. Michaels, 36, has been a deputy executive director of the Senate Republican majority since 1992, except for a short stint as a lobbyist. And his new chief counsel, James A. Harkness, 46, was the Senate majority's chief counsel from 1991 to 1998, when he, too, left to become a lobbyist.

"The core of the governor's office will be intact," Mr. Harkness said. "No. 1, they're good, and honestly, there's some need for some continuity. There's no honeymoon here."

For today, however, Mrs. Whitman was still acting very much the governor. She nominated three people as judges, including her banking commissioner. She issued executive orders creating two councils, thus adding to the list of positions Mr. DiFrancesco will have to fill.

And she pardoned 12 people, though most were guilty of minor offenses, and promised that there would be no Clintonian surprises. "These are all people who've committed crimes, were convicted, served their terms, and have kept their noses clean for, most of them, going on 20 years," she said.

Late in the afternoon, the governor's office was a blur of activity, as a parade of lawyers rushed to and fro, busy wrapping up the Newark arena agreement. They sped past a queue of State House reporters who were eager to quiz the governor about her emotions on her departure, and about how she felt as the United States Senate voted 99 to 0 to confirm her. The reporters were handed copies of the Newark deal only on their way out. In fact, Mrs. Whitman said, she missed the vote, sometime after 3 p.m.

As for her feelings, Mrs. Whitman said she was looking forward to a party tonight at Drumthwacket for her current and former aides. If she gets any sleep before leaving for Washington in the morning, it will be in the mansion's guest room, she said.

A radio reporter, Gene Dillard, asked whether Mrs. Whitman had any advice for Mr. DiFrancesco.

"Try to have some fun," she said.

A short while later, she was out the door for the last time.

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SHORELINE PRESERVATION

January 31, 2001
New York Times
Metro Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/31MBRF.html

CONNECTICUT

STAMFORD: Environmental advocates have asked the state government to create a program that would preserve undeveloped sections of Connecticut's shoreline. The Audubon Society of New York State and Connecticut, Save the Sound Inc. and the Regional Plan Association presented lawmakers on Monday with a report compiled after 10 public forums held last summer on the future of Long Island Sound. It calls for the creation of a reserve and financing for research, protection and restoration. (AP)

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RECKONINGS Smog and Mirrors

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/opinion/31KRUG.html

A couple of weeks ago, in one of his first statements about the California energy crisis, George W. Bush placed the blame squarely on pollution controls: "If there's any environmental regulations preventing California from having a 100 percent max output at their plants - as I understand may be - then we need to relax those standards." But his assertion was swiftly contradicted - not just by environmentalists and California officials, but by the energy industry. A spokesman for Houston- based Reliant Energy, which operates four Southern California plants, told The Los Angeles Times that assertions that environmental regulations were holding back power production were "absolutely false."

Nor, apparently, did environmental regulations play much of a role in California's failure to build new plants in the years since deregulation. In fact, environmentalists generally favored deregulation, because they thought it would lead to the construction of new plants, which would be gas-fired and hence cleaner than the coal-fired plants that still supply much of the state's power. Nimbyism - the objections of people who didn't want a plant near them - was more of a factor, but that's a different issue, and one that is quickly being resolved.

And yet the Bush administration has continued to push the idea that allowing more smog is the way out of the crisis. What exactly is going on here?

A cynic might suggest that this is all about payback to the companies that bankrolled Mr. Bush's campaign. But in the case of California smog, there isn't any direct payback. The only California power plant that has actually been kept offline by air quality rules belongs not to a Texas company but to the city of Glendale.

Now of course the administration is trying to use California's woes to sell its plan to drill for oil in the Arctic tundra - a plan that, if you do the arithmetic ("No fuzzy math!" roared the crowd), turns out to be virtually irrelevant to our current energy problems. At best, it might add a few percent to the nation's oil supply a decade or more from now. But the administration's enthusiasm for that plan also poses something of a puzzle. It is, after all, expensive to find and extract oil from the Arctic, even if you play fast and loose with the environment; so the windfall to oil companies won't be all that large. Oil industry service companies, like Dick Cheney's former employer Halliburton, will reap some immediate benefits; but it's still hard to see why this should be at the top of the agenda.

To understand the enthusiasm of the administration for all things dirty, I believe, you need to see it as something that goes beyond simple calculations of cost and benefit. What it's really about is political momentum - about eliminating Mr. Bush's legitimacy gap by winning a series of striking victories. In effect, his advisers hope that by repeatedly rolling over the moderates they can make people forget that the other guy actually got more votes. The environment, in particular, becomes a target precisely because the other side wants to protect it. Think of it as an attempt to create the illusion of a mandate using smog and mirrors.

Will this strategy work? As Jacob Weisberg recently noted in Slate, during the last few weeks of the campaign Mr. Bush's advisers tried a similar strategy, hoping to use the appearance of inevitability to convert his poll lead into a landslide. Instead, he lost the popular vote and came within a butterfly ballot of losing the electoral vote. But now he's in Washington, where it may be easier to turn perception into reality.

Whether or not the strategy is smart, however, its consequences will be far-reaching. Alaska is only the beginning; the man to watch next is Joe Barton, the Texas congressman who heads the House Commerce Committee's new subcommittee on energy and air quality. (Air quality was formerly the domain of the subcommittee on health and environment.) Coming soon, we can be sure, is a drive to gut as much as possible of the Clean Air Act.

It may seem bizarre that anti- environmentalism could become a goal in itself, that politicians might seek to despoil the environment not even for the sake of profit but merely to prove a point. But we're living in bizarre times; as they say, get over it.

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Wrong Way on Energy

January 31, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/opinion/31WED1.html

In his opening days in office, President Bush has taken on a number of issues such as taxes and education with discipline and an appearance of growing confidence. Perhaps for that reason he believes that California's energy crisis has given him the hot hand for rolling back environmental standards and pressing his shortsighted campaign to open the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. It hardly signals a balanced approach to put Vice President Dick Cheney, also an oil man, in charge of a task force aimed at developing an energy strategy to reduce America's "reliance on foreign oil" and "bring more energy into the marketplace." Mr. Bush made clear that legislation asking Congress to open the refuge would be an essential component of that strategy.

The president is certainly right on one point. The country needs a rational energy strategy that, as he also noted, encourages energy conservation as well as responsible exploration. But the first step in that strategy should not be to start punching holes in the Arctic Refuge. Even with improved drilling technologies, Mr. Bush's plan to open the refuge is as environmentally unsound and intellectually shaky as it was when Ronald Reagan suggested it 20 years ago and when Mr. Bush's father suggested it a decade ago.

For starters, it is wholly specious to suggest, as Mr. Bush does, a connection between opening the refuge and California's energy problems. Less than 1 percent of California's electricity comes from oil. California's fuel of choice is natural gas, and if Mr. Bush wants to find natural gas, there are far better places than the coastal plain to look for it. One such place is Alaska's North Slope, which includes far bigger proven natural gas reserves than even the most optimistic estimates for the coastal plain. Another is the National Petroleum Reserve, to the west of Prudhoe Bay, where former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt made available over four million acres for leasing.

To date, the oil and gas companies have shown little interest in the reserve and no interest in investing in the necessary infrastructure to transport natural gas from the North Slope. So it is outrageous for them to clamor for access to the pristine lands of the refuge at a time when they have barely begun to tap the significant resources in areas of far less ecological value.

Finally, as this page has noted many times before, the relatively trivial amounts of recoverable oil in the refuge cannot possibly justify the potential corruption of a unique and irreplaceable natural area. While government estimates of "technically recoverable" oil in the coastal plain run as high as 14 billion barrels, the amount of "economically recoverable" oil at today's prices - the only figure the oil industry itself pays any attention to - is a little over three million barrels. That is about six months' supply for the nation. A much larger amount, in conjunction with a grave national-security emergency, would be needed to consider even the environmentally sensitive drilling of which Mr. Bush speaks.

Before the California energy crisis blew up, the environmental community was reasonably confident that a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans in both the Senate and House could defeat, albeit narrowly, any effort to open the refuge to drilling. These calculations could change if, as now seems possible, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney decide to make opening the refuge a matter of party loyalty.

If they do, Congress, particularly the moderate Republicans, should turn a deaf ear. What Congress should insist on instead is a comprehensive energy strategy that emphasizes conservation as well as exploration and does not rely on old clichés like "freeing America" from foreign oil - an impossibility under any circumstances - or on unnecessary invasions of fragile public lands.

It should not be impossible to fashion a plausible exploration program that satisfies both environmental and energy needs. But the Bush administration is plainly going to need guidance from an energized environmental community to get there.

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Waste-Transfer Deal Prompts Firm to Resign

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/31LAWY.html

A New Jersey lawyer involved in a deal to locate a waste-transfer station in Linden, N.J., said yesterday that his law firm was resigning as counsel to Woodbridge Township, which is battling the plan.

"In recent days, there have been concerns regarding my personal interest in a real estate venture," the lawyer, Paul M. Weiner, wrote in a letter to James E. McGreevey, the mayor of Woodbridge, that was dated yesterday. "I am concerned that my firm's continued representation of Woodbridge may result in a distraction from the township's municipal business."

Mr. Weiner, a partner in the Weiner Lesniak law firm in Parsippany, N.J., is a part owner of waterfront land in Linden where New York City, as part of the shutdown of the Fresh Kills landfill, would like to set up a trash transfer station. The transfer station would handle about half of the city's daily load of trash, before the trash is moved by rail to distant landfills.

Among Mr. Weiner's partners in the Linden real estate deal are a New Jersey businessman who has been banned by New York City from the trash industry and the son-in-law of Linden's mayor. The deal is being examined by the New Jersey attorney general's office.

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protecting Florida's Gulf waters

January 31, 2001
Associated Press
Editorial Roundup
Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Editorial-Rdp.html?pagewanted=all

Jan. 28
Florida Today, Melbourne, Fla., on protecting Florida's Gulf waters:

Who said blood is thicker than water? Especially beautiful Gulf waters?

Just three days after his brother's inauguration as president of the United States, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush strongly informed the new administration that he opposes offshore oil and gas drilling in Florida's Gulf waters.

George W. Bush has indicated he wants to increase the exploration for energy in the United States and, as an observer for the Florida Public Interest Research Group notes, ``has surrounded himself with the most pro-drilling Cabinet in history.''

The federal government has the say-so on the sale or lease of about 6 million acres of waters south of Alabama near the Florida line...

In a letter to the Interior department last week, Jeb Bush wrote, ``Florida's economy is based upon tourism and other activities that depend on a clean and healthy environment. I respectfully request that you uphold Florida's ongoing commitment to protecting the Gulf of Mexico's marine environment...''

Jeb Bush deserves great credit and much public support for his strong stand against offshore oil drilling in waters close to Florida.

Now, President Bush needs to listen to his brother the governor.

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Germany will slaughter 400,000 cattle

01/31/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-01-31-mad-cow.htm

BERLIN (AP) - The German government announced Wednesday it would slaughter an estimated 400,000 cattle in an attempt to curb mad cow disease, a spokesman said.

Agriculture Minister Renate Kuenast had estimated it would cost the country about $166 million to buy the cattle from farmers, properly slaughter them and dispose of the corpses. After the animals are killed, they are to be tested for mad cow, the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

German ministers had claimed their country was free of the disease until the first case was discovered in November. Since then, several cases have been discovered every week, bringing the overall number of infected cattle to more than 20.

BSE has been linked with new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human version of the fatal brain-wasting ailment that has killed some 80 Europeans since the mid-1990s, mostly in Britain. Cattle parts ground back into feed are suspected of spreading the disease.

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Senate confirms Norton, Whitman

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
By Audrey Hudson
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001131223351.htm

The Senate yesterday brushed aside intense objections from environmental groups and confirmed President Bush's picks to head the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.

The Senate unanimously approved New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, whose appointment to head the EPA environmentalists called "a Christmas gift to America's polluters," on a 99-0 vote.

Gale A. Norton was confirmed on a 75-24 vote. Green groups had labeled her as "James Watt in a skirt," a reference to President Reagan's Interior secretary, who frequently opposed environmental activists.

Mrs. Norton, the first woman to head the Interior Department, received wide support from Western and Southern Democrats, but was opposed by some Eastern Democrats who want public lands off-limits to development and many types of recreation.

Environmental groups strongly opposed both nominations, but focused most of their attention on Mrs. Norton, former attorney general of Colorado, as an "anti-environmentalist" who would exploit public lands for natural-resources development.

"Some groups have mischaracterized her record . . . resorted to name-calling and false accusations," said Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican.

"Extreme environmentalists also suggested she cannot be trusted to protect our public lands, but it's not true. Her record demonstrates she values our public lands and will protect it," Mr. Smith said.

"I am both honored and gratified by the strong bipartisan vote of confidence I have received this afternoon," Mrs. Norton said in a statement.

"I look forward also to getting down to work - conserving the great wild places and unspoiled landscapes of our exquisite nation," Mrs. Norton said.

"These are the people's lands, and in the administration of President George W. Bush, the people's lands will be protected, managed and rejuvenated for the sake of Americans living today, and for the sake of all the generations of Americans yet to come," Mrs. Norton said.

Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, voted in favor of Mrs. Whitman, but acknowledged to his colleagues on the Senate floor his intention from the outset was to derail her nomination.

"I went in the hearings saying what can we do to show she would do a bad job. I don't proudly say that. Perhaps it was the wrong attitude, but she was able to alleviate any questions I had," Mr. Reid said.

Mr. Reid praised Mrs. Whitman's environmental record as governor of New Jersey, saying she set aside significant tracts of land as open space, reclaimed brownfields and cleaned up the state's beaches.

"Syringes and needles used to wash up on shore and people were afraid to go to the beaches, but that is no longer a problem in New Jersey," Mr. Reid said.

Senators on both sides of the aisle criticized environmentalists for employing a negative campaign against Mrs. Norton. Full-page newspaper ads said Mrs. Norton has an "extreme anti-environmental agenda, promotes exploitation, not conservation, and is out of step with mainstream American values."

"Gale Norton's support for self-regulation by polluters and limitations on corporate responsibility for environmental damage, combined with her failure to enforce clean-air and clean-water laws as a state attorney general, lead me to conclude she will seek to limit, evade and perhaps even subvert the tremendous responsibilities that reside in the office of the secretary of the interior," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, said Mrs. Norton's philosophy of multiple-use of public lands is "out of the mainstream of thought."

Western senators said Mrs. Norton will combine environmental protection with economic development, and allow more input from local and state governments.

"Unlike many in Washington, she understands that real environmental solutions seldom come from Beltway professionals, they come from real people with honest concerns for the land and the water," said Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Colorado Republican who also was considered for the Interior post.

"That kind of evenhanded approach to public-land management has been missing for the last eight years, and the West is worse off for it," Mr. Campbell said.

All of Mr. Bush's Cabinet nomination have been confirmed by the Senate, except that of Attorney General-nominee John Ashcroft. The Senate began debating Mr. Ashcroft's nomination last night and Republican leaders plan on bringing it to a vote this week.

-------- police

Police issue radar guns to civilian snoopers

January 21 2001
Sunday Times
BRITAIN
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/01/21/stinwenws01029.html

THE police, whose zeal in catching speeding motorists has earned them little popularity, have come up with an arresting new idea. Members of the public are being recruited as informers to mount roadside patrols that clock over-hasty drivers, writes Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas.

The new volunteer surveillance corps, kitted out with fluorescent jackets and radar guns, will brandish electronic scoreboards that flash up the motorist's speed. West Yorkshire police say the experiment, based on a Canadian project, is designed to act as a deterrent.

However, some motoring groups called the project "absolutely crackers".

The scheme is expected to be launched in Shipley, West Yorkshire, within the next few weeks, but may later be adopted across the country.

Although the volunteers will have no powers of prosecution, they will occasionally be backed up by police officers.

If volunteers spot "blatant" speeding and record the number plate, a warning letter could be sent to the motorist.

West Yorkshire Police Federation is less than overjoyed. "They're not trained for this job and could be a danger to themselves and other road users," said a spokesman. "This is policing on the cheap to make up for a shortfall in officers."

---

U.S. Says City Has Failed to Release Data on Frisks

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/31FRIS.html?pagewanted=all

Federal prosecutors investigating whether the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department are discriminatory have told a judge that the city stopped turning over data late last year that the prosecutors needed to finish the investigation.

The city's action has prevented prosecutors in the office of Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in Manhattan, from reviewing police documents and information concerning people stopped or frisked by officers since April 1999. The situation was disclosed in a recent letter from her office to Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court, who is hearing a separate civil rights lawsuit brought against the city and the Police Department by people who say they were illegally or improperly stopped and searched.

City lawyers have also stopped negotiating with the prosecutors over the stop-and-frisk practices, said a lawyer who has been briefed on the talks. The inquiry was undertaken to determine whether the Police Department's aggressive stop-and- frisk tactics discriminate against blacks and Hispanics. City and police officials have adamantly denied that their practices are discriminatory.

The city's corporation counsel, Michael D. Hess, whose office is responsible for turning over documents to the prosecutors handling the inquiry, would not comment, said Daniel S. Connolly, the office's special counsel.

Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for Ms. White's office, also refused to comment.

But a lawyer involved in the civil rights lawsuit, who represents people who say they were illegally or improperly stopped and frisked, called the city's decision part of a larger pattern. "This refusal to cooperate and to provide the documentation is simply an enlargement of the same pattern that has gone on with one individual case after another," said the lawyer, William Goodman, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "It's part of the clamming up and the stonewalling and the refusing to open up their operations to outside scrutiny."

As part of Ms. White's inquiry, prosecutors found last fall that the elite Street Crime Unit had engaged in racial profiling in recent years as a result of their aggressive campaign of street searches, a finding that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani vehemently rejected as politically motivated. The determination was reported by the news media in October, a short time before the city stopped turning over material to the prosecutors.

The reasons for the city's decision to withhold the data were unclear yesterday.

The investigation began in March 1999, several weeks after the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who was shot by four plainclothes members of the Street Crime Unit who fired 41 bullets, striking him 19 times. All four officers were cleared of criminal charges in the shooting. But the incident focused intense scrutiny on the aggressive tactics of the unit, credited with sweeping hundreds of guns off the street and winning record crime reductions, and the department's stop-and-frisk practices generally.

The investigation was undertaken to determine whether police officers, and members of the Street Crime Unit in particular, systematically deprived people of their constitutional rights, prosecutors said at the time it was announced. It was brought under civil rights legislation passed in 1994 after the videotaped beating of Rodney King by members of the Los Angeles Police Department.

In the face of the city's refusal to turn over any more stop-and-frisk data, prosecutors from Ms. White's office wrote to Judge Scheindlin, who is overseeing the civil rights lawsuit.

The Jan. 18 letter, from an assistant United States attorney, Sara L. Shudofsky, asked Judge Scheindlin to allow her office to review material that has been turned over by the city to the lawyers representing 10 people who say they were illegally or improperly searched.

The material, which included some of the same documents that the city had been turning over to the prosecutors, was given to the lawyers in the civil rights suit under a protective order that keeps it secret. Ms. Shudofsky's letter asked Judge Scheindlin to modify the order so prosecutors can review the material, which is contained in statistical databases created from stop-and-frisk forms, known in the Police Department as UF-250's.

Mr. Connolly said city lawyers would oppose the move to modify the order.

Ms. Shudofsky wrote that the prosecutors, under the 1994 civil rights law, have no statutory authority to compel the city to turn over the information that the prosecutors were seeking. But she said the city had been voluntarily turning over statistical databases with the stop- and-frisk data, along with arrest and complaint information, for the period from 1994 through the first three months of 1999.

"The government has been unable, therefore, to evaluate the N.Y.P.D.'s stop-and-frisk practices during the most recent time period, a time period in which the N.Y.P.D. has announced various changes that may have affected the practices under review," Ms. Shudofsky wrote.

The Police Department began using a new stop-and-frisk form several weeks ago that requires officers to provide more detailed explanations for the decision to stop and or search a citizen on the street. And in the months after the killing of Mr. Diallo, the Police Department reorganized the Street Crime Unit, changing the way it operates.

Ms. White's inquiry, like a similar one begun by Brooklyn federal prosecutors in 1997 after the station house torture of Abner Louima, was brought under the 1994 law that allows prosecutors to investigate whether a police department engages in a "pattern or practice" of civil rights violations. The law requires that prosecutors first seek changes in police practices through negotiation, but allows them to bring a lawsuit to force changes or seek federal oversight if talks are unsuccessful.

The change of administrations in Washington on Jan. 20, and the expectation that a new, more conservative Justice Department will emerge under a new attorney general, has raised questions about whether either inquiry will ever result in a lawsuit.

---

More Women Report Abuse by Patrolman in Suffolk

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By TINA KELLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/31COP.html

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Jan. 30 - Six more women have reported that they were treated improperly during traffic stops by a Suffolk County highway patrolman who has been accused of making women disrobe to avoid arrest.

The 6 new complaints bring the total to 10, and all but one of the women have either identified the patrolman as Officer Frank Wright or were issued tickets by him, according to the police and a lawyer representing some of the women.

An Internal Affairs task force is reviewing the 1,300 traffic tickets written in the last two years by Officer Wright, and has contacted 350 women to whom he issued tickets.

So far, four of the new complaints have been forwarded to the district attorney's office, which is conducting a criminal investigation. One woman said Officer Wright had detained her too long, another said he made her walk home barefoot, a third said he rifled through her purse and the fourth said he tried to look up her dress, the police said.

A fifth woman filed court papers today indicating that she intended to sue Suffolk County over an incident on New Year's Day. The woman, a 35-year-old from West Virginia, told a local lawyer, Gary Gramer, on Monday that she had been visiting Mastic Beach when a police officer stopped her for driving with an invalid inspection sticker.

When the officer discovered that the woman, identified by Mr. Gramer only as Mary, was driving with a suspended license, he took her behind his car and gave her the choice of taking off her shirt or being arrested and taken to jail.

"She explained that within the last six months she had had a lumpectomy, and had chemotherapy shunts in the area near her breast," Mr. Gramer said. "She was embarrassed, and she was not wearing a bra. He said he didn't care."

She took her shirt off, the lawyer said, and the officer drove her four blocks from her car, then made her walk back as he drove next to her. She identified the patrolman as Officer Wright from pictures on television, Mr. Gramer said.

The sixth case reported today involved a woman who registered a complaint with the Suffolk County district attorney's office. A spokesman there would not describe the nature of the charges or the name of her lawyer.

At a news conference in Yaphank today, the police said that in most of the cases in which Officer Wright had given women tickets in the last two years, he had given the women sobriety tests, but none of the women had been charged with driving while intoxicated.

"We're going to keep going through them," said John C. Gallagher, the Suffolk County police commissioner. "It's a long and painstaking task."

Mr. Gramer has said he intends to file five federal civil rights complaints next week on behalf of clients stopped by Officer Wright.

The first woman to come forward earlier this month, Angelina Torres, 27, of Mastic Beach, said the officer made her walk four blocks home wearing only underpants and high heels on New Year's morning. Another woman, Julianna Rubio, 19, of Ridge, said he made her stand outside his police cruiser on Dec. 27, wearing only her socks, while he flashed a light on her and laughed at her for 10 minutes.

Susan Pannone, 46, of Mastic Beach, has said she also intends to sue the county, saying that a policeman demanded that she pull up her shirt and show him her bra. She has not identified the officer in that case, Commissioner Gallagher said.

And Tracy Deon, 34, of Rocky Point, said Officer Wright drove her around handcuffed for an hour in September, and led her to a deserted parking lot, where his gestures led her to believe that the only way she would be released from custody would be to show him her breasts. She missed the 90-day deadline to file papers of her intent to sue the county, said Mr. Gramer, her lawyer.

Officer Wright, 34, was suspended without pay earlier this month for violating department procedures on reporting and transporting women in his cruiser. His lawyer, David Davis, did not return two phone messages seeking comment.

A spokesman for James M. Catterson Jr., the county district attorney, said he planned to present the case to a grand jury in February, and the F.B.I. office in New York is continuing a preliminary inquiry.

---

Denver to Pay $1.2 Million to Young Burglar Shot by the Police

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/national/31SETT.html

DENVER, Jan. 30 - The City of Denver has agreed to settle a federal civil rights case by paying $1.2 million to a teenager who was shot by the police three years ago, moments after he had burglarized a house. The shooting left the young man, now 15, a quadriplegic dependent upon a respirator to breathe.

The settlement to DeShawn Hollis, approved on Monday by the Denver City Council, is the most ever authorized by the city to settle a case involving police response, far surpassing the previous record of $400,000, which was paid last year to the family of a man who was shot to death by the police as they raided the wrong house in a drug investigation.

"I know this infuriates a lot of people, but it seemed to be the most reasonable solution," Councilwoman Kathleen MacKenzie said in an interview today. "But it was the best way to protect the city and a young man who will have huge medical costs the rest of his life."

Ms. MacKenzie, a member of the 9-to-2 majority who voted on the settlement, and other council members said they had encountered substantial anger from voters who did not believe that a criminal, even one so young as DeShawn was at the time of the burglary and one now so severely injured, should be entitled to taxpayer money.

But city officials involved with the case said elements of the shooting, including conflicting accounts of what happened by the two officers at the scene, had left the city vulnerable to losing in court and to a jury award that could have far exceeded the settlement. Even so, one of the council members who voted against the settlement said any amount sent the wrong message.

"What it says is if, in the commission of a crime, you are shot, we give you a reward," said the member, Ed Thomas, a former police officer. "It means a police officer in a split second had to think twice, and that puts him in jeopardy and the citizenry. It's not good for all of us."

The shooting occurred on Jan. 27, 1998, after the police responded to a 911 call about a burglary and found DeShawn and a 16-year-old friend running from a house. The friend gave himself up peacefully. But Officer Keith Cowgill, saying he saw DeShawn, five to six feet away, point a gun at him while running from the back of the house, shot DeShawn. The bullet passed through the boy's neck, causing instant paralysis.

Officer Cowgill told investigators: "I can close my eyes and I can picture that scene as clear as day. And he's got his finger on the trigger."

DeShawn's lawyer, Walter L. Gerash, said Officer Cowgill's partner, Steve Wampler, offered a different account, saying he did not see a gun in the boy's hand. Mr. Gerash said the gun, which was found to be not loaded, was tucked in the boy's waistband. Investigators said they found the young man's gun "under his body," according to a review by District Attorney A. William Ritter Jr.

A month after the incident, Mr. Ritter's office cleared Officer Cowgill of any wrongdoing, concluding that he "chose to shoot to live."

DeShawn was convicted of first- degree burglary and sentenced to two years of probation. He later sued the city under federal civil rights laws, charging the police with using excessive force.

While the settlement might have spared the city a larger damage award, Mr. Gerash said it benefited his client, as well. He said that waiting through a jury verdict and perhaps an appeal could have delayed for years the money his client needs for medical treatment.

---

Federal Court Will Not Pursue Diallo Case

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By SUSAN SACHS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/31CND-DIALLO.html?pagewanted=all

The Justice Department will not file federal civil rights charges against the four New York City police officers who were acquitted in state court last year in the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, United States Attorney Mary Jo White said today.

While the decision ends one phase of the long-running and still divisive Diallo case, it also releases the legal brakes on several related matters pending in other arenas.

A civil lawsuit by the Diallo family, seeking damages from the city was stalled while the officers remained at risk of federal prosecution, but is now expected to go forward. And the police department, which has restricted the four police officers to desk jobs since the shooting, will now have to decide their professional futures.

Mr. Diallo, an immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea, was killed as he stood in the lobby of his Bronx apartment building in the early hours of Feb. 4, 1999. The four plainclothes officers who confronted him in the darkness fired 41 shots at the young street vendor, hitting him 19 times. They said they believed he had pulled a gun. What Mr. Diallo had pulled from his pocket, it turned out, was a wallet.

The killing scraped a raw nerve in the city, provoking accusations of police brutality and racial bias from the start. In the days and weeks following the shooting, localized anger grew into a citywide protest movement embraced by an eclectic collection of celebrities from the worlds of entertainment, politics and civil liberties.

Mr. Diallo's death also set off a bruising public discussion over whether the city, particularly its black and minority citizens, was paying too high a price for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's much-vaunted crackdown on crime.

While the four white police officers were acquitted of wrongdoing in court, the shooting spawned a host of lawsuits and investigations into police tactics and resulted in some changes in the way they patrol the streets.

Mr. Diallo's parents, who moved to New York to follow the legal proceedings in the case and now live here, had hoped the Justice Department would pursue the case against the officers. In the meantime, they filed the civil case against the city seeking damages for his death and have each set up foundations to promote racial tolerance and better police-community relations.

In a federal civil rights case, the Justice Department would have been required to prove that the officers willfully deprived Mr. Diallo of his constitutional rights. The right in question would have been the 14th Amendment right against the taking of his life without due process.

The officers, in their trial last year, said they had made a mistake. The charges included second-degree murder, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment of bystanders. They were found innocent of all charges after telling a jury in Albany, where the trial was held to keep it out of the pressure-cooker atmosphere in New York City, that they confronted Mr. Diallo because they believed he was acting suspiciously.

Justice Department guidelines for stepping in after a state prosecution are broad. The case must involve "a substantial federal interest." The original state trial must have left that interest "unvindicated." And there must be strong enough evidence to convince federal prosecutors that they could win a conviction.

The federal government, however, has gotten involved in other matters involving the city's police. An inquiry by prosecutors in Manhattan concluded that members of the Street Crime Unit, where the officers involved in the Diallo shooting worked, engaged in racial profiling.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are pushing for changes in how the department investigates and disciplines officers accused of brutality.

There were no indications that the actions of the officers that night related to the problems raised in the civil rights inquiry.

Mr. Diallo's parents, who were told of the decision in a private meeting with Ms. White shortly before it was made public, have fought hard for a Justice Department prosecution. They and the police officers were promised last March that the department would make its decision within a matter of weeks.

Their lawyers had argued that a civil rights case could have its basis in the question of whether racial profiling had played a role in the killing or could stem from a Justice Department finding that the Bronx district attorney's office's prosecution was ineffective or incompetent.

Acting on similar grounds, federal prosecutors took up another racially charged case, against Los Angeles police officers who had been acquitted in a state court of beating Rodney G. King.

Kadiatou Diallo, the victim's mother, moved to New York last year, and created a foundation in his name. It is meant to provide college scholarships for African students in the United State as well as promote better police-community relations.

The father, Saiko Diallo, said on Tuesday that he would provide scholarships from his own funds for African or African-American students at Bronx Community College and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

---

SHERIFF'S PLEA AGREEMENT

January 31, 2001
New York Times
Metro Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/nyregion/31MBRF.html

NEW JERSEY

HACKENSACK: The Bergen County prosecutor says he may ask a judge to throw out a plea agreement with the former sheriff, Joseph L. Ciccone, who admitted to corruption charges on Jan. 11 and agreed to step down but then angered the prosecutor by seeking an immediate pension. The prosecutor, William H. Schmidt, said that he had agreed to let Mr. Ciccone, 40, seek a standard pension, effective at age 55, for his 17 years in law enforcement, but that Mr. Ciccone sought a pension, effective immediately, for a disability that he has not specified. Steve Strunsky (NYT)

---

No federal prosecution of Diallo cops

01/31/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-01-31-diallo.htm

NEW YORK (AP) - Four police officers cleared of state criminal charges in the shooting death of an African immigrant will not be tried for federal civil rights violations, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The officers were cleared of murder and other state charges last year. Amadou Diallo, 22, died two years ago in a hail of 41 bullets outside his Bronx apartment in what the officers testified was a tragic error.

In a statement released in Washington, the Justice Department said an investigation by its Civil Rights Division and by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White in Manhattan had determined that federal charges against the officers were not warranted.

Federal officials concluded they "could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers willfully deprived Mr. Diallo of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force," according to the statement.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said his office agreed with the findings of the investigation.

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to the members of his family for this tragic loss," Holder said. "We must learn from this deeply troubling incident."

The Diallo family, along with many of their supporters, had hoped for a federal civil rights prosecution of the officers. Diallo was black, and the four undercover officers were white in the Feb. 4, 1999, shooting that exacerbated racial tensions in the city.

Attorneys for the officers said the decision not to prosecute would bring the case to an end for their clients.

"It's a decision that's right on the law and right on the facts," said Steven Brounstein, attorney for Officer Kenneth Boss. "It was a tragic accident. ... I'm just pleased that the decision has been made."

The Diallo family still has a $61 million civil suit against the city, its last legal recourse in the case. Diallo was shot when he reached for his wallet; the officers said they believed he was reaching for a gun.

White's office proposed the meeting with the Diallo family after Robert Conason, the attorney for the victim's mother Kadiatou Diallo, sent a letter to Holder blasting Justice Department officials.

"The seeming lack of courage displayed by the failure to either seek an indictment or formally close the investigation could only be taken ... as an example of politics at its worst," Conason said.

All of the officers acquitted last year - Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy - remain on the force. They were searching for a rape suspect when they stopped Diallo outside his home.

Federal civil rights prosecutions following state acquittals are extremely rare. In the Diallo case, authorities would have required proof that the officers violated Diallo's civil rights by intentionally using excessive force.

In the state trial, the officers argued they fired in self defense, believing that Diallo was about to pull a weapon on them.

The officers were members of the NYPD's Street Crime Unit at the time of the shooting. They were driving around the Bronx in an unmarked car and wearing plainclothes when they spotted Diallo.

Shortly after Diallo's death, White announced her office had begun the civil rights probe.

White's office also has a separate investigation under way into police training and practices, especially by the Street Crime Unit.

The Diallo family, in its civil lawsuit, claims the officers used unnecessary force to deprive their son "his right to life."

It also charges the shooting resulted from racial profiling sanctioned by the police department, including stopping and frisking black males without justification.

---

States
01/01/31
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

California

Palm Springs - Police want 16 downtown surveillance cameras to keep an eye on the millions of people who stroll the desert resort town. Merchants hope the cameras will deter crime, but residents worry about lost freedom.

Louisiana

Hammond - The local police union says a requirement that officers write at least two tickets per shift is unfair and alienates the community. Despite the requirement, the number of tickets dropped in November. A few officers indicated they issued only the two-ticket minimum.

Michigan

Flint - Seventeen years after nine female police officers in Flint filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination and harassment, they are poised to receive compensation. U.S. District Judge Paul Gadola ordered half of a $2.25 million award paid by Feb. 28 and the rest by July. His ruling also chastised lawyers over delays.

-------- terrorism

Families Demand Gaddafi Indictment Over Lockerbie

January 31, 2001
USA Today
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/lockerbie-answers.html

CAMP ZEIST, Netherlands, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Relatives of the Lockerbie victims demanded the whole story after a Libyan was convicted on Wednesday, urging the United States and Britain to find out if Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ordered the bombing.

``They have pinpointed the jokers in the pack. Now we want the kings,'' said Betty Thomas, who lost her daughter and grand-daughter in the mid-air explosion.

U.S. president George W. Bush said he would keep up the pressure on Tripoli after a special Scottish court convicted Abdel Basset al-Megrahi of planting the suitcase bomb that blew Pan Am Flight 103 to bits in December 1988, killing 270 people.

``I want to assure the families and victims the United States government continues to press Libya to accept responsibility for this act and to compensate the families,'' Bush said.

But Libya's U.N. envoy insisted his government had ``nothing to do with this tragedy,'' and Megrahi's brother Mohammed Ali said he trusted in God that an appeal would succeed.

``This is not a fair verdict,'' said Arab diplomatic observer Ragda Mahmoud Neana. ``We live in a world dominated by the injustices of the big powers,'' she told reporters.

The Scottish murder indictment never alluded to a specific motive for the attack, beyond saying it was to ``further the purposes'' of the Libyan secret service.

U.S. warplanes acting on the orders of then president Ronald Reagan had struck at the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986, in a reprisal for the lethal bombing by alleged Libyan agents of a Berlin discotheque favoured by American troops.

A daughter of Gaddafi was killed in one of the strikes.

Other theories argued the Lockerbie attack was commissioned by Iran in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner over the Gulf by the U.S. missile cruiser Vincennes, which said it mistook the Airbus passenger plane for a fighter.

The death toll in that July 1988 incident was 290.

GADDAFI THE REAL PERPETRATOR?

Most Lockerbie victim families remain firmly convinced Libya's leadership was behind the blast.

They note it has agreed to pay compensation to victims of the September 1989 bombing of a French UTA airliner over Niger, in which 170 people died. A French court ruled last October that Gaddafi could be prosecuted in that case.

``This was not one lone man deciding single-handedly to avenge his government,'' said Lockerbie relative Helen Engelhardt Hawkins, an American whose husband died in the blast.

``The United States and British governments now have a duty to go after Gaddafi,'' said Brian Flynn, another American present at the court set up specially in the Netherlands.

In Washington, relatives who gathered to hear the decision welcomed the guilty ruling but wanted Gaddafi held accountable.

``This is the beginning. You can't make friends with someone who blows up an American plane,'' said Susan Cohen, who lost her 20-year-old daughter in the tragedy. ``This bloody murderer, Gaddafi, has destroyed my life.''

Cohen said Megrahi was ``really the hand of Gaddafi.''

George Williams, who lost his son, said: ``We still have Muammar Gaddafi to get...Gaddafi was the godfather. These guys were the hit men.''

Judges convicted secret agent Megrahi of murder and recommended a minimum of 20 years in jail, but acquitted co-accused Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, who worked for the Libyan national airline in Malta where the device was planted.

Gaddafi agreed in April 1999 to hand over Megrahi and Fahima for trial after receiving unpublished assurances from Britain and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that only the two suspects, and not Libya as a state, would be in the dock.

But Englishman Barry Barkley said on Wednesday: ``We need to know the motive. We need to know who was behind this. We need to know who killed our son and why.

``We are pleased at the verdict. It enables us to go for a wider inquiry (into) many of the questions unanswered by this court, which focused narrowly on who put the bomb on the plane.''

---

U.S. sanctions remain until victims compensated

01/31/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/lockerbie/2001-01-31-bush.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House said United Nations sanctions against Libya will remain in place until the country accepts responsibility for the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. ''I want to assure the families and victims the United States government will continue to pressure Libya to accept responsibility for this act and to compensate the families,'' President Bush said Wednesday at a Cabinet Room meeting with members of Congress.

"Nothing can change the suffering and loss of this terrible act, but I hope the families do find some solace that a guilty verdict was rendered."

A Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence officer of murder Wednesday, 12 years after the bombing, which killed 270 people. A second Libyan was acquitted.

"The United States and the United Kingdom have made clear to the government of Libya that the delivery of a verdict against the suspects in the Pan Am 103 trial does not in itself signify an end to U.N. sanctions against Libya," the White House said in a statement released shortly after the verdicts were read early Wednesday.

"U.N. Security Council resolutions call on Libya to satisfy certain requirements, including compensation to the victims' families and the acceptance of responsibility for this act of terrorism, before U.N. sanctions will be removed. The government of Libya has not yet satisfied these requirements."

In the statement, the Bush administration also said it would continue to "consult closely" with Britain "and then approach the government of Libya in the near future to discuss the remaining steps Libya must take under the U.N. resolutions."

Families of the victims called for Bush to support keeping the U.N. sanctions in place, and to support their pending lawsuits against Libya and leader Moammar Gadhafi.

"You can't make friends with somebody who blows up an American plane and kills a lot of innocent people," said Susan Cohen, whose 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, was killed in the bombing.

Theodora was one of 36 Syracuse University students aboard the plane when a bomb-laden suitcase exploded.

"Now we will go after Gadhafi. Gadhafi was the godfather - these two were the hit men," said George Williams, the father of another Lockerbie victim. "I want to hit him in the wallet so hard that all of the ... terrorist leaders will say, 'This is too damned expensive."'

The U.S. sanctions, which were first imposed in 1992, include an air and arms embargo and a ban on the sale of some oil-related equipment.

Last month, Namibia - on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement of some 130 developing countries - proposed a draft resolution to permanently lift the sanctions on the grounds that Libya had cooperated with the trial proceedings.

But the United States and Britain immediately balked, saying the measures couldn't be lifted while the trial was still under way.

---

Olympic criticism

January 31, 2001
Washington Times
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-2001131213536.htm

Greek Ambassador Alexandre Philon defended his country's fight against terrorism when he was called this week to the State Department, where officials complained about remarks by the speaker of the Greek parliament.

"The ambassador talked about the issue of terrorism and the relationship between our two countries," Greek Embassy spokesman Achilles Paparsenos said yesterday.

Mr. Philon also "expressed the widespread feelings in Greece that [U.S.] criticism is unjust," Mr. Paparsenos added.

The State Department summoned the ambassador on Monday to lodge complaints against Apostolos Kaklamanis, the speaker of parliament who criticized a U.S. congressional delegation for questioning Greece's ability to provide security for the 2004 Olympic Games.

The Greek press said State Department officials expressed "surprise and disappointment" at Mr. Kaklamanis' remarks.

Mr. Kaklamanis, in a statement last week, said, "It is inconceivable that the U.S. should play the role of prosecutor and Greece the accused, and the struggle against terrorism be used to apply pressure, as in the case of the Olympic Games."

The parliamentary leader, known as a critic of the United States, was responding to a statement issued by the congressional delegation, led by New York Republican Benjamin A. Gilman, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

The delegation said Greece faces a "challenge" in providing security for the games, according to news reports from Greece.

The United States has criticized Greece in the past for what Washington considered a lax policy on combatting terrorism. Recently, Greece and the United States have been cooperating, notably with an agreement last year with the FBI to combat organized crime and terrorism in Greece.

However, Greece also suffered a setback last year when a British diplomat was killed by members of the left-wing terrorist group November 17.

The terrorists have claimed credit for more than 20 assassinations over the past 25 years, but Greece has failed to arrest any suspects.

The Greek press yesterday noted that the government distanced itself from the diplomatic dispute by refusing to comment on Mr. Kaklamanis' remarks.

-------- activists

Faith-Based Groups Ask Bush to Take Nuclear Weapons Off Alert

31 Jan
U.S. Newswire
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0131-122.html

Faith-Based Groups Ask Bush to Take Nuclear Weapons Off Alert; Leaders, Celebrities Available for Interviews To: National and Assignment desks Contact: Ira Shorr of Back from the Brink, 202-545-1001; or Steve Kent of Kent Communications, 845-424-8382

News Advisory:

What: Church groups gained a new level of presidential access this week with the announcement of the White House office on faith-based social services initiatives. At the same time, religious leaders are also pressing President Bush on nuclear policy with a major interfaith effort urging him to implement his proposal of May 23, 2000, that "the United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status ... Keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch." The President has the authority to order US nuclear forces to stand down from their current minutes-to-launch, hair-trigger alert status. More than 60 religious leaders and denomination heads delivered their urgings for Bush to use it in the form of a sign-on letter, and asked him to meet with their delegation.

The letter is followed by national call-in days Feb. 5-6 in which citizens are urged to call the White House comment line at 202-456-1414 to register public support for de-alerting. Among the celebrities participating in the call-in days are actors Martin Sheen, Michael Douglas and Paul Newman. Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, whose handling of the Cuban missile crisis is portrayed in detail in the current movie "13 Days," is available for comment on de-alerting. The film will become the first to be screened at the Bush White House tomorrow night, and will screened again for the Congress Feb. 6, followed by a discussion with McNamara. The letter to Bush and White House call-in days are part of a national campaign to get all nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, "Back from the Brink," which facilitates the work of some 40 national groups.

WHO: These and many other religious leaders, celebrities and nuclear policy experts are available for interviews now:

-- Bruce Blair, director, Center for Defense Information, former nuclear missile silo commander

-- Bob Edgar, general secretary, National Council of Churches, signatory to religious leaders' letter to Bush urging de-alerting

-- Robert McNamara, former secretary of defense whose handling of the Cuban missile crisis is portrayed in the current movie "13 Days," screened tomorrow night at the White House

-- Martin Sheen, actor who plays the president in "West Wing"

-- Ira Shorr, director, Back from the Brink Campaign

-- Joe Volk, executive secretary, Friends' Committee on National Legislation, which spearheaded the religious leaders' letter.

WHEN & WHERE: Guests are available for comment via in-person or telephone interviews now through Feb. 6. For a full list of participating religious leaders and nuclear policy experts, call Stephen Kent of Kent Comunications at 845-424-8382

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, COPIES OF THE SIGN-ON LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH URGING DE-ALERTING, OR TO REQUEST INTERVIEWS, PLEASE CALL 845-424-8382 (24 hours)

---

Back from the Brink:
Top Film Stars Support Campaign

31 Jan
U.S. Newswire

Back From The Brink: Top Film Stars Tell Bush To De-Alert Nukes; Martin Sheen, Paul Newman and Michael Douglas Support Campaign To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Adam Eidinger, 202-986-6186 or Lauri Apple, 202-232-8997 both for Back From The Brink

News Advisory:

On Feb. 5-6, Hollywood stars Martin Sheen, Michael Douglas and Paul Newman will ask President George W. Bush to work with the Russians to take all nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. The celebrities will join thousands of people expected to light-up the White House switch board with calls as part of the National Call-in Days coordinated by the Back from the Brink Campaign, a nationwide effort to de-alert all nuclear weapons. Forty-three national organizations support the Campaign, begun in December 1999 as an effort to reduce the threat of accidental nuclear war.

"I'll be delighted to call the White House on February 5," says Sheen, who plays U.S. President Josiah Bartlet on NBC's West Wing. "Having thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert is an accident waiting to happen. President Bush expressed concern about this issue during his campaign. I'm going to call him to remind him that he was right." Numerous religious leaders and former members of the defense establishment also support the effort to take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. These include Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy administration and who is available for comment. McNamara is portrayed as a pivotal figure in the major motion picture 13 Days, a three-hour thriller depicting the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"While the Kennedys had 13 days to avoid nuclear war, today's leaders have less than 13 minutes," says Ira Shorr, director of Back from the Brink. Despite no longer being Cold War enemies, the U.S. and Russia still have thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, poised to be launched at a moment's notice. In a time of crisis or perceived attack, leaders on both sides have just minutes to decide whether to launch a massive nuclear strike. A single miscalculation or computer error could lead to nuclear war. Since a 1995 near-miss accidental nuclear launch, the serious deterioration of Russia's radar and early warning systems has increased the danger. "The Russians came within minutes of launching their missiles in 1995," Shorr says. "They feel even more vulnerable today and have tightened their hold on the nuclear hair-trigger."

What would an accidental nuclear war look like? The U.S. and Russia, together have some 5,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert -- the equivalent of 100,000 Hiroshima bombs.

President Bush has publicly called for de-alerting as many nuclear weapons as possible. In May 2000, he told a room full of leading statesmen and defense experts that "keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch." As was noted in the Republican Party's 2000 platform, keeping thousands of nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger is "another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation."

"During the National Call-in Days I am going to join my friends in calling President Bush to urge him to reduce the danger of accidental nuclear war by taking all nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert," says Paul Newman. "Please join me to let President Bush know you feel the same way."

To arrange interviews, call Ira Shorr at 202-545-1001. New, high-resolution photos of Martin Sheen on the phone and Paul Newman are available by contacting Adam Eidinger at 202-986-6186.

---

Report on the Jan 27 Davos Protest

From: Doc Rosen <drdrdoc@dr.com>

Today we drove by car from Klosters up to Davos. Davos is about 7000 meters above Klosters, a veritable fortress, easily protected from unwanted entry through its single small pass. As we headed up the Wolfgang Pass, we had to pass thru a police checkpoint. The car two cars ahead of us was refused entry and sent back the way it had come. There were four adults in the car. They did not look like trouble-makers. As we drove a bit further, we saw a truck parked and several men with rifles fitted for rubber bullets and tear gas were beginning to climb the hill near the truck to gain a better vantage point to watch cars coming up the hill. At the next little intersection we encountered a policeman in full riot gear standing there.

When we entered Davos, we found police standing at every intersection. Many roads were completely blocked by barricades to prevent cars from traveling through town. The entire city was guarded with a huge force of police and army and there was heavy equipment parked around town. We found out later what that was for.

As we drove up to the Dutch Asthma Clinic where our alternative (and legally OK'ed) conference was being held, we saw that the police were stopping pedestrians who were on their way to the conference (walking, by the way, in a totally different direction from the WEF conference). Police were checking papers, taking names, asking what the people were doing here--were they working for an organization, for the media, etc. The ambience was very disconcerting. Folks couldn't believe how their rights were violated.

The hall of the Asthma Clinic was filled; about 150 people were listening to a panel. More folks were out in the lobby. All were dressed nicely and were clean cut. Few were under age 30.

The total number of protesters which were able to make it to the protest in Davos later that afternoon was somewhere around 300. Official estimates were even less. Those who got stopped in Landquart at the bottom of the mountain were at least 600, including many buses. They held their own protest there, closing the highway and stopping the railway as well for some time. Police used tear gas on them. After leaving Landquart about 300-400 of the demonstrators held a further demonstration this evening in Zurich, where an alternative conference had also been held today.

The weather had turned snowy and blowy in Davos. Not a lot of fun to be out in. Those of us in Davos who marched, basically consisted of two groups: young activists and church groups. The young people chanted slogans and the older folks sang peace songs. There were only a few banners because they were next to impossible to get through security. I had written a couple of messages on notebook paper which got widely photographed. I wrote: Democracy Suspended in Davos (a slogan coined by Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth-UK. I also wrote No Global Rule without Transparency, Accountability and Democracy. I was interviewed at one point by Time Mag. I told the reporter that I was a member of Reclaim Democracy and Alliance for Democracy and that I came from Boulder, CO.

We were able to march from the train station to about half way to the Congress Center where the WEF was meeting. The police had barricaded the WEF so well throughout the entire week that the street in front of the Congress Center has been totally deserted. I think most of the invitees had no idea that a protest was even planned for today or noticed that it was even happening.

When the police stopped us at a barricade several blocks away from the Congress Center, they pulled up one of those large pieces of equipment we had seen earlier. They warned us in several languages that they were going to shoot their water cannon at us, and then they proceeded to do it; shooting fifty-foot-high, well-aimed long-distance volleys in all directions. The poor guy from Time Mag. who was talking to me got drenched. We pulled back a bit and stood around for about a half hour. Speeches got made. But there was a lot of milling around. Then another of those water cannon vehicles appoached our group from the opposite direction and I was afraid we were really in for it. But soon, he backed off and left, and the march reversed its steps back to the train station. About that time the sun came out. After a few thrown snowballs at a line of police standing in front of a hotel, armed with guns and rattan shields, the protest group eventually disbursed. The trains and buses were stil not running by the time Roger and I rendez-vous'ed and headed out of town, but the police were starting to take down some of their blockades.

--

Major Human Rights and Free Speech Violations in Davos, Switzerland

AFP: Swiss Condemn Police Crackdown on Davos Protests - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0128-02.htm

"Police mobilization like in a dictatorship" ran the headline in the German-language weekly Sonntagsblick, the day after used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a demonstration in Zurich, and imposed tight security to prevent protests in Davos.

Among intellectuals, sociologist Jean Ziegler denounced in an open letter to the government "the shameful face of the Swiss," while the socialists took an even harder line.

"I wouldn't have believed that possible in Switzerland. The police have trampled on state law," Franco Cavalli, head of the Socialist Party in parliament, said in an interview in Sonntagsblick.

The police defended its actions, saying they used "moderate, exemplary intervention."

However, in a Sonntagsblick editorial, Frank Meyer blamed politicians: "The police would not have been able to play this game, if politicians respectful of democracy and their responsibilities had taken things in hand."

Meyer said "the police force coup had inflicted more damage on the global salon" of WEF founder Klaus Schwab than the anti-globalization protestors had dreamed of with their demonstrations.

"If it was damage to private party that one wanted to spare, I wonder: 3,000 men (police and army) during five days, that makes 10 million Swiss francs (six million euros, 5.5 million dollars), without counting additional expenses," wrote editorialist Gerard Delanoye.

------

NGOs threaten Forum withdrawal

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=1004&sid=557850

(This is from on of the heads of the World Economic Forum (WEF)) The managing director of the Forum, Claude Smadja, was at the briefing to answer its critics and said the organisation would not be pushed into giving any group equal representation.

"We invite whoever *we believe is relevant* to open dialogue. We are not the United Nations, we are a *private organisation*," Smadja said.

Smadja said the security operation had become a logistical nightmare in recent years and backed the Swiss governments decision to *ban demonstrations* for the Forums duration.

He said peaceful protesters had become a front for violence.

"Whatever their good intentions and good faith, they have become convenient covers for professional trouble-makers."

-

Condemnation of Swiss Police Pour in from Major Media, Civil Society

http://davos.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=1113

"Many people were shocked to learn that the police were planning to use *liquid manure* on protesters. In fact, the police were unable to obtain the substance - which could be classified as biological warfare material posing severe health hazards - because Swiss farmers would not give any to the police and criticezed the idea of using manure on protesters as crazy."

-

From an news release prior to Saturday's demonstrations

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010125/wl/forum_leadall_dc.html

``No decision has been made. Police are reviewing various means that could be used, for example rubber shotgun pellets or tear gas or water or manure,'' cantonal police spokesman Alois Hafner told Reuters. (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010125/wl/forum_leadall_dc.html)

---

sign-on: nukes/sustainability

Mon, 29 Jan 2001
"Abigail Singer" <abigailsinger@hotmail.com>

Dear Friend,

This April, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) will be meeting in New York to discuss the definition of sustainable energy technologies. A pre-meeting will be held in late February in NY. The nuclear power industry is, of course, attempting to get nuclear included in the list of "sustainable" energy technologies--although it may be the least sustainable technology available. Should the industry succeed, it will have a new marketing tool (official sanction by the U.N. as a sustainable source of energy) and may become eligible for different types of international credits. At the COP6 global warming conference in the Hague in November 200, nearly all the world's nations rejected nuclear power as eligible for "clean development" credits. If the atomic industry is successful at CSD9, that victory would be placed in jeopardy.

The following sign-on letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell provides more background on the issues. We encourage all U.S. groups and individuals to sign this letter. A separate petition, for both U.S. and international groups and individuals will be distributed soon for delivery to the CSD9 conference on Earth Day, April 22, at the UN.

Sign-ons for the following letter must be received by 9 am, February 15. To sign on, simply e-mail us your name, organization (if one), city and state. Please include this information and please don't assume we know who you are from your e-mail address. You may also fax this information to 202-462-2183.

Please distribute this letter widely.

Thanks!

Michael Mariotte Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Hon. Colin Powell Secretary of State United States Department of State

We are writing to encourage the Department of State to take a leading role in ensuring that nuclear power is rejected as a "sustainable technology" in the upcoming talks of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 9) in February and April. While CSD handles many sustainability issues, this year's talks will focus on sustainable energy technologies. Since the mandate of CSD is sustainable development, we feel that the Commission should discuss only truly sustainable energy technologies, and that the final recommendations of CSD 9 should reflect the fact that nuclear energy is non-sustainable.

The Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development defines sustainable development as follows: "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs." (WCED 1987) While every energy technology has some environmental ramification, nuclear power is particularly non-sustainable, even by this very broad and non-specific definition. Rather than use sustainability principles to promote technology and capital intensive, exclusive projects through the United Nations, CSD should ensure that they support economic development which benefits a broad base, especially small business. Nuclear technology compromises the ability of future generations to meet their needs for numerous reasons, among them:

Cost and scarcity of uranium

Nuclear power's fuel-uranium-is not sustainable. The more reactors that are in operation, the more uranium used. As is the case with other polluting fuels, such as oil and coal, the more uranium used, the less remains and the more expensive it becomes to obtain; eventually it runs out. The large amount of money invested in nuclear energy technology would be wasted because of the inevitable and not-so-distant exhaustion of its uranium fuel source. Reprocessing of atomic fuel has been rejected by the U.S. on both economic and proliferation grounds. Solar, wind and energy-efficiency investments would not waste money on fuel that will inevitably disappear. Instead, the more money invested in these technologies, the cheaper they become.

Proliferation concerns

Each year every 1000-megawatt reactor produces 40 bombs worth of plutonium, adding to the threat of nuclear proliferation. This is a critical concern given many countries' close links between the military and civil nuclear fuel cycle. We do not understand how a technology whose radioactive waste could be used to build a weapon of unthinkable destruction could be considered sustainable under any definition. Nuclear proliferation is destabilizing and threatens our national security.

Cross-boundary issues and radiation contamination

When one country chooses a nuclear reactor, it chooses it for the countries around it as well. Radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor explosion reached as far as California. Contamination also traveled over most of Europe, resulting in food restrictions and the wasteful slaughter of animals. In Belarus currently only 10% of the children are born healthy. The Chernobyl reactor was in neighboring Ukraine, but Belarus received most of the radioactive fallout.

It doesn't take an accident to spread radioactive pollution. As a matter of normal operation, reactors release radioactive substances to the air and water. Many human population studies demonstrate that additional, low, constant levels of radiation can cause cancer and genetic mutations in this and future generations. Subjects of these studies, often nuclear facility workers and communities, suffer higher rates of diseases than non-nuclear communities, even with apparent normal operation of these facilities.

The operation of nuclear power reactors currently is causing civil and national unrest between non-nuclear Austria and its nuclear neighbors, such as Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Austrian government and NGOs are rightly concerned that a nuclear accident outside Austria could pollute their country. A push for nuclear power in other countries in Africa or Asia for instance, may provoke hostilities in fragile political and economic systems already fraught with tension. This situation could draw the world into unnecessary conflict.

The nuclear industry argues that defining sustainability is a sovereign issue. But with nuclear power, everyone's sovereignty is at risk and the potential for national conflict increases.

Waste isolation

Nuclear power creates atomic waste. This radioactive waste cannot be isolated from the environment for its entire hazardous life (from thousands to millions of years). Consequently, and rightly so, no community (domestic or international) is willing to sacrifice itself for a waste dump-nor should they have to. Hence we are left with an intractable radioactive waste problem that gets larger the longer reactors operate.

Nuclear power not only compromises the ability of future generations to meet their needs, it does not even "meet the needs of the present" for the following reasons:

Enforcement of nuclear regulations

Effectively and responsibly enforcing regulation of nuclear power is costly and meets with limited success even in countries able to pay for it. Atomic power regulation and enforcement continues to be a controversial issue in terms of public safety margins versus corporate profit margins in a deregulating electricity market. The fact is, nuclear power cannot exist without heavy and continued subsidies from tax and ratepayers. It cannot survive on its own in a free market economy and must rely on subsidy to guarantee its existence. Meanwhile, the money invested in sustaining a profit for nuclear power generators could be invested in other societal needs; yet another reason why nuclear power could compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs while not giving the current generation what it needs: clean power that can eventually support itself without constant, exorbitant subsidies.

Generation costs and deregulation bail-outs

Nuclear power is the most expensive of all conventional energy sources and more expensive than almost all renewable energy. As proof of nuclear power's economic failure, no successful nuclear power reactor order has been placed in the U.S. since 1973. Ratepayers in the United States are bailing out nuclear reactors to the approximate tune of $200 billion dollars in the face of a deregulated market. Nuclear energy costs an average of 12 cents/kWh compared with 7.6-9.1 cents/kWh for solar thermal and 4-6 cents/kWh for wind. According to the Renewable Energy Policy Project, U.S. government subsidies have been highest for the nuclear power industry. It has received the majority (96.3%) of $150 billion in investments since 1947 when compared with wind and solar; that's $145 billion for nuclear reactors and $5 billion for wind and solar combined. Nuclear subsidies have cost the average household a total amount of $1,411 [1998 dollars] compared to $11 for wind.

Nuclear power is implicated in the deregulation boondoggle and rolling blackouts in California. Two California utilities on the verge of bankruptcy operate four large reactors in the state. Additionally, they are part-owners of three units outside the state. Under the 1996 deregulation agreement, these utilities can receive 28.5 billion dollars in stranded cost recovery. The largest part of this will most likely support their nuclear reactors which they felt could not survive in a deregulated market. The money that has been paid to the utilities so far was invested in a questionable fashion. Recently FERC ruled that this money is untouchable by the utilities' creditors.

Nuclear power, because of its failed and dangerous track record also faces deserved public and government opposition. Countries including Greece, Sweden, Austria, Nauru, and Ireland, conclude that nuclear power is not sustainable. Some nuclear countries, such as Germany, have begun nuclear phase-out programs, while some non-nuclear countries, such as Turkey, recently have decided they are better off not joining the nuclear club.

Nuclear Power and Kyoto

Other countries have also expressed dislike of nuclear power in international fora. Both the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and 12 Central and South American countries opposed giving nuclear power clean air credits under the Kyoto Protocol saying "it is simple colonialism to push nuclear power onto developing countries, leaving them with all the burdens that come with it" and "nuclear power" does not match "the environmental integrity principles that guide this group"

Additionally, Klaus Toepfer, the director of the United Nations Environment Programme is "utterly convinced that [nuclear energy] should not be included in any type of [global warming agreement]."

Finally, international banking institutions such as the World Bank and IMF do not officially subsidize nuclear projects.

Even though the Kyoto COP 6 talks concluded without a written and signed agreement, all countries-including the United States--with the exception of India, China and Japan agreed to language that would exclude nuclear power from receiving credit for reducing greenhouse gases through the Protocol.

CSD 9 should emphasize truly sustainable energy

Nuclear power does not contribute to the economic development of industrializing nations-indeed it is a drain on their resources while posing a risk of spillover from civilian to military use. In common with many heads of Government, citizens, and national delegations, we want to emphasize the reasons (radioactive pollution, lack of radioactive waste storage and nuclear weapons proliferation, among others) why nuclear power should never be considered sustainable. We expect any documents from the CSD 9 meetings to reflect this reality.

Sincerely,

------

Tell Citibank to End Predatory Lending!

Tue, 30 Jan 2001
"becky crooker" <redcrook@wildmail.com>
New Site www.tellcitibank.org makes it quick and easy...

Please forward this to other social justice activists. Tell Citibank to end practices that target the poor, elderly, and people of color

Just wanted to let all of you know that Co-op America and the Social Investment Forum, in conjunction with many community investing groups, have launched www.tellcitibank.org, to give Citibank customers and concerned citizens a quick and easy way to speak out against predatory lending by Citibank. Predatory lending--the practice of charging outrageously high fees, balloon payments, upfront single premium credit insurance, and constantly "flipping" loans into new loans in order to charge new loan fees--has stripped the wealth that many low-income, elderly, and minority communities have managed to build up over the years. Please take ONE MINUTE to click on the site and send a letter to Citigroup, telling the nation's largest financial institution to end their predatory lending practices, and stop targeting the elderly and minority communities! You can send a targeted letter from Citi student loan holders, credit card and account holders, Associates First Capital customers, or concerned citizens.

The groups working on this project are trying to get several thousand letters sent to Citi before a crucial meeting with the banking giant in February. Please forward this note to friends, family, and social justice activists. We need to act before February 10th!

Tracey Rembert Shareholder Action Network A Project of the Social Investment Forum

1612 K Street NW, Suite 650 Washington, DC 20006 (202)872-5313 www.shareholderaction.org

Social Investment Forum www.socialinvest.org

Care2 make the world greener! http://www.care2.com - Get your Free e-mail account that helps save Wildlife!

--

Hello,

The website of our NGO is now on-line at http://www.transnationale.org/anglais/ You will find:

_ reference articles on more than 40 essential topics, from GMO and baby milk to offshore banking, the world trade organization, privatization of education, retirement pension, human cloning and working conditions in the third world...

_ the profile of more than 6500 corporations with their brands and subsidiaries, top managers and shareholders, offshore and free zones locations, social policy, lobby memberships etc.

_ guides for a sustainable consumption.

_ a forum to share your opinion and NGO adresses to act.

The website is updated daily and now largely translated in french and spanish. Access to the entire website is free and unrestricted, a CD-Rom is available for offline browsing.

Sincerely,

The coordinator tech@transnationale.org

------

Announcing first Youth Organization Meeting for the WCAR:

January 29, 2001
AntiRacismNet News:
"becky crooker" <redcrook@wildmail.com>:
some interesting stuff in this weeks AntiRacismNet News!!!
http://www.igc.org/igc/gateway/arnindex.html

23 - 25 February in Chicago, Illinois. Participants will be developing an agenda of issues to be addressed, training groups who will be attending the remaining preparatory meetings and the WCAR itself, and also laying the foundation for a US Youth Organizational network. Contact Bomani Johnson at (773) 268-3110 or bomanij@yahoo.com for more information.

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Announcing the Fisk/White House Conference on Reparations

Public information about Reparations is often misleading, exaggerated and confusing. The Race Relations Institute at Fisk University is sponsoring a public information session on Reparations on February 23, 2001 at Fisk University. The conference is free and open to the public.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnalerts/980463024/index_html

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*Alert: Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System

The Sentencing Project has released the first blueprint to reduce racial disparity in the criminal justice system.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnalerts/980462655/index_html

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*Alert: Research On The Black Community: Call for Papers

It is clear that past approaches to black community issues are insufficient to address present and future realities. Accordingly, this volume will highlight innovative and multi-disciplinary research with an emphasis on policy implications.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnalerts/980462561/index_html

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Race Rules: Documents from Conference Now Available Online

On May 19-20, 2000 more than 200 organizers, researchers, lawyers, health workers, faith community leaders and others came together for Race Rules: Equity, Justice and Public Policy.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnalerts/980462090/index_html

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What major issues of concern to the Black community are not adequately covered?

KQED Media Salon Monday, February 12 from 7 to 9pm KQED Broadcast Center 2601 Mariposa St. San Francisco

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnalerts/980462236/index_html

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*Alert: Join the HOPE Leadership Institute Class of 2001

The goal of the HOPE Leadership Institute is to train Latinas through leadership, advocacy and education and develop a support system enabling them to create fundamental changes in health, education and economic development to foster viable and healthy communities statewide.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnalerts/980462840/index_html

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New Report Documents Environmental Racism and Injustice in Massachusetts

Confirming with hard numbers what residents of lower income communities and communities of color already know from daily experience, a report released today at the State House documents the unequal exposure of communities to environmental hazards.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980542424/index_html

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ADC Concerned by Stigma Against Arab-American Political Discourse

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the nation's largest Arab-American membership organization, is troubled by the delegitimization of Arab-American political discourse associated with the cancellation of a radio program in Washington, DC.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980542099/index_html

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Confederate flag supporters rally at Georgia Capitol

Organizers presented nearly 52,000 signatures in support of the flag, which features the Confederate battle emblem.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980541946/index_html

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A Day in the Life of a Bush Protester

An eyewitness account of the inaugural protests with a photo slide show by AntiRacismNet/IGC staff.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980445995/index_html

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: BIA recognizes Chinook

In an attempt to correct wrongs it believed were committed in the past, the BIA, through its federal acknowledgement process, has formally recognized the Chinook Tribe of Washington state.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980463474/index_html

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President's Advisory Commission Calls for Increased Cultural Competency and Protection of Civil Rights for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

The report is entitled "A People Looking Forward," and is the first of two reports to be submitted to the President.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980464716/index_html

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Black Capitalism

I keep hearing this garbage over the airwaves, in private conversations, and seeing it in books and the newspaper about Black capitalism going to "free us" Black folks.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980542221/index_html

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President Clinton Names Minidoka a National Monument

Designating the site as the "Minidoka Internment National Monument", the President's action today will protect historic structures and objects associated with the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980542588/index_html


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No Struggle, No Progress

The weapons at our disposal are numerous. The most important ammunition in our arsenal, however, is principle, vision, courage and commitment.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980542899/index_html

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Federal Repatriation Program Still Troubled

Now that the Bush administration is set to take over, Ayua says their first job is to educate the new Bush appointees, specifically the Interior secretary, in the hopes that re-delegation will finally become a reality.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980542751/index_html

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NAHJ Objects To Federal Court's Decision To Strike Down EE0 Rules

The court found that the new regulations "put official pressure upon broadcasters to recruit minority candidates, thus creating a race-based classification that is narrowly tailored to support a compelling governmental interest and is therefore unconstitutional."

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980543090/index_html

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Democrats Neglected Blacks And Other Minorities In Bid For White House

Former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, bidding for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), has told committee members the Democrats lost the presidential election because it neglected its base of Black constituents and other minorities.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980543239/index_html

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Feds charge Mississippi man with civil rights-era murder

Ernest H. Avants, 69, pleaded innocent Thursday to a federal murder charge. Avants is accused of killing Ben Chester White 34 years ago.

Read More at http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/arnheadlines/980543347/index_html

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IGC staff and volunteers choose to highlight items from members-only conferences and member submissions for their timeliness, relevance to progressive activism and social change, and to represent the diversity of opinions and interests of the IGC community.

Opinions expressed are those of the original author of each item, and do not represent the opinions of IGC or its networks, staff, volunteers, or agents. IGC cannot warrant or control the quality or accuracy of information posted to the IGC networks or website. Anyone using this information does so at their own risk and assumes all liabilities associated with use of these materials.

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Democracy Film Workshops

Tue, 30 Jan 2001
Walter Miale <wmiale@acbm.qc.ca>

Film clips featuring Noam Chomsky, Jane Goodall, Julia Butterfly Hill, Howard Lyman, Ralph Nader, Grace Paley, Peter Singer, David Suzuki, and Paul Watson will be presented by filmmaker Walter Miale in workshops that will give participants an opportunity to particpate in the development of the scenario of DEMOCRACY IS COMING TO THE USA, a film in progress, and to appear on camera in interactive cinema dialogue with each other and with accomplished activists and intellectual luminaries.

The subject matter will be wide ranging:

1) Institutional Violence; Corporate Power and Economic Justice; The Environmental Crisis; Factory Farming

2) Bringing your convictions to bear on the world; effective citizenship; the future of the prodemocracy movement; defining your role in the movement; civic and environmental careers

Walter Miale is the director of the Green World Center in Sutton, Quebec, and is the director/producer of multimedia presentations, including VISIONS OF PRIMEVAL NORTH AMERICA and HELLO HAITI, a photo essay that focuses on families of victims of death squads in Haiti. HIghlights of these presentations, and of DEMOCRACY IS COMING TO THE USA, can be seen at http://www.greenworldcenter.org

For further information or to book a workshop, phone, e-mail, or write:

Green World Center 889 Old Notch Road Sutton, Quebec CANADA J0E 2K0 phone: (450) 538-9955 or -9954 fax: (450) 538-9955 mailto:gwc@greenworldcenter.org on the Web: http://www.greenworldcenter.org

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To Fight Sect, China Publicizes a Public Burning

January 31, 2001
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/world/31CHIN.html?pagewanted=all

BEIJING, Jan. 30 - One week after five people described as Falun Gong members set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square, China finally informed its own people tonight. It broadcast grisly police videos of the burning believers as part of a newly intensified campaign to discredit the outlawed spiritual group.

Last Tuesday the government's foreign language news services, read by foreign reporters and people abroad, briefly announced that one man and four women, whom they described as Falun Gong adherents from the city of Kaifeng, had set themselves on fire in the square in central Beijing that day and that one woman had died.

But domestic television, radio and newspapers were not allowed to describe the events until this evening, when the authorities broadcast a graphic 20-minute television program about the incident and issued extensive new condemnations of the spiritual group for the Wednesday newspapers.

For the first time, the authorities said that one of the badly burned people was a 12-year-old girl, the daughter of the 36-year-old woman who died in the flames.

Clearly aiming to stir up public outrage against the tenacious spiritual group and its leader, Li Hongzhi, who lives in the United States, the television show included close-up film of the charred girl, a fifth-grader identified as Liu Siying, writhing on the marble surface of Tiananmen Square and crying "Mama, Mama!"

Later from the hospital, the child, who has severe burns on 40 percent of her body, was reported to have said that her mother had promised that the flames would transport them to paradise.

After the attempted immolations last week, at the beginning of the Lunar New Year, China's biggest holiday, leaders of Falun Gong abroad said they did not believe that the five were followers and said "Master Li" prohibits suicide.

Tonight, group spokesmen in New York again said that "there is no proof" that the people described in Chinese news media accounts were genuine Falun Gong practitioners.

The official accounts could not be independently verified, but they appeared to offer detailed evidence that the protest had been undertaken by ardent Falun Gong believers who had plotted it together.

The authorities provided the names and backgrounds of the five who burned themselves after dousing their clothes with gasoline carried in plastic Sprite bottles. They also provided details about two other people, not mentioned before, saying they had been stopped at the last minute from lighting themselves.

The carefully orchestrated official accounts released tonight emphasized what were portrayed as the irrational and cruel sides of Falun Gong and its leader. They marked a new phase in the government's almost frenetic battle to shape public opinion against a group that has refused to wither away since it was banned in July 1999 as an "evil cult" and many of its domestic organizers were arrested.

Like several other groups, Falun Gong promises its adherents health benefits and spiritual salvation through meditative exercises. It says it is nonpolitical.

In the effort to justify a crackdown that has sent thousands of formerly upright citizens to labor camps and led to more than 100 deaths in police hands, the government first labeled Falun Gong a fraud that misled sick people into forgoing needed medical care, supposedly resulting in more than 1,600 unnecessary deaths. Later it contended that the group had covert aims to overthrow the Communist Party.

More recently, officials have begun charging that the group is an instrument of hostile foreign powers and, as the program tonight did, that it causes followers to lose all sense of reality. As a case in point, one of the burn victims and his relatives were shown tonight persisting in their assertion that Falun Gong is the key to spiritual salvation.

In interviews, many citizens, while suspicious of Falun Gong's mystical claims and leader-worship, say that they have become weary of the government's incessant denunciations of a group that has attracted millions of followers, from small-town retirees to university scientists. Many people have said in private that the government created a problem for itself by demonizing the group.

But tonight's program clearly stunned many viewers and may have influenced some to harden their views against Falun Gong.

"Exercise for your health is one thing, but this is spoiling people's minds," said a 32-year-old shop owner who saw the program tonight.

Some Beijing residents saw fliers in their residences urging them to watch tonight's program, a special edition of a popular newsmagazine show, "Focus,"' which folows the evening news each day.

Started in 1992 by Mr. Li, a former government clerk, Falun Gong combines elements of Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese theories of qi, or cosmic energy forces. In Mr. Li's rendition, those who practice the right exercises activate an invisible wheel in the abdomen that sucks in good energy and expels bad forces, improving health and happiness. Mr. Li also attacked corruption in modern society. Those in advanced stages of practice, he wrote, may experience supernatural effects like flying or being in two places at once.

Tens of millions of Chinese, many of them middle-aged or elderly people worried about the high cost of medical care, were attracted to the clusters of Falun Gong followers who exercised in public parks.

But the government began planning to stamp out the group after 10,000 members staged an audacious, illegal demonstration in Beijing in April 1999, demanding recognition and an end to the mounting public criticism of the group.

Since the group was outlawed, a steady stream of believers has traveled to Beijing and demonstrated in Tiananmen Square, where they have been quickly detained and taken away in vans for shipment back to their local police and "re-education."

Official frustration with the continued defiance has been joined by fear that Falun Gong protests could mar the visit by the International Olympic Committee next month to inspect Beijing as a possible site for the 2008 Olympics.

The television special this evening showed a man identified as Wang Jindong, 51, of Kaifeng in the central province of Henan, engulfed in leaping flames as he sat cross-legged in the square. After the police doused him with fire extinguishers, the video showed, he continued to sit in the meditating position, his face and body blackened.

The program featured an interview with one of the women who failed to ignite herself, identified as Liu Baorong, 54. Ms. Liu, who was said to have traveled from Kaifeng with the group, said she had undergone a total change of heart after seeing the others enveloped in black smoke. She said she had expected the group to be shrouded in white smoke and feeling no pain as the members ascended to heaven.

But the authorities, in the television program and in articles released to the press this evening, especially featured the 12-year-old girl.

"She had been a lovely and pretty girl with a nickname of `happy- nut,' " stated the profile of Liu Siying by the New China News Agency. Her mother taught her to practice Falun Gong last March and brought her to Beijing with a promise that "the flame could not hurt you," the girl is reported as saying.

"It will only pass through your body and you will enter heaven in a twinkling," she reportedly was told by her mother.

"But now," the profile says, "her severely burned face and hands tell people that she may never be happy again."

The girl is reported as telling nurses that "Mom fooled me." But when she asked to see her mother, the article says, the nurses did not have the courage to tell her that her mother was dead.

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INDIAN LEADER HELD

January 31, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/world/31BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

THE AMERICAS

ECUADOR: In an effort to weaken growing protests organized by indigenous and labor groups against government price increases, the police have arrested Antonio Vargas, Ecuador's most prominent Indian leader. Mr. Vargas, who took part in a coup against President Jamil Mahuad last year, is to be charged with subversion, the Interior Ministry said. Other movement leaders say they will continue with the street protests. Larry Rohter (NYT)

BRAZIL: ORDERED OUT The French farm workers' leader José Bové, best known for vandalizing McDonald's restaurants to protest globalization, has been detained by the federal police and ordered to leave Brazil. The action came after Mr. Bové, at a forum in Pôrto Alegre held to counter a world leaders' meeting in Davos, Switzerland, joined Brazilian farmers in attacking a farm owned by the Monsanto Corporation, which grows genetically modified soybeans. Larry Rohter (NYT)

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STAR WARS LETTERS TO EDITOR

Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 10:57:14 -0500

Dear Friends:

Just below are several key media outlets and their e-mail addresses for Letters to the Editor. We urge you to write to them opposing U.S. plans for Star Wars.

Washington Post letters@washpost.com,
New York Times letters@nytimes.com,
CNN Community@cnn.com,
Time Magazine letters@time.com,
Newsweek letters@msnbc.com,
Guardian (UK) letters@guardian.co.uk,
USA Today editor@usatoday.com,
Wall Street Journal editors@interactive.wsj.com,
U.S. News & World Report letters@usnews.com,

Make your letters short and to the point. Here are a few key points to consider:

1) Deployment of "missile defense" will not make anyone more secure. A new global arms race will result.

2) Money wasted on Star Wars development (over $60 billion at the start) should be used for human needs and environmental clean-up.

3) Deployment of the "missile defense" system will violate the ABM Treaty with Russia. The U.S. should join Russia, China and the rest of the world in negotiating a global ban on weapons in space. At this time it is only the U.S. who is refusing to do so.

4) "Missile defense" is just the beginning. The Pentagon says they want to deploy the space-based laser as the early "folow-on" technology to missile defense. The space-based laser, the real Reagan Star Wars system, would be used to knock out other countries' satellites giving the U.S. Space Command "control and domination" of space.

Be sure to sign the letters with your full name and your complete regular mailing address otherwise they are unlikely to print them.

Thanks

Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, Fl. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com