------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
A Step Backward on Nuclear Cooperation
Only answer is atomic power
ATSDR discusses DU
Britain to screen military for depleted uranium
Gerald Brubaker, Arms Expert for U.N.
6 JCO officials to plead guilty to negligence charges
Russians and Germans Fail to Resolve Debt Issue
Fire At Ukraine NPP Shuts 2 Reactors
Physicists predict safety and stability of plutonium
"PLANNED DEATHS" By Nuclear Industry
Funding held flat for cleanup at Piketon
In the Budget Show, Congress Is Watching Favorite Programs
Nuclear waste convoy arrives in France
Nuclear-waste train reaches France
MILITARY
Arms race behind China impasse
Sandline choppers stored by RAAF
Mexico Seeks Closer Law Enforcement Ties With Wary U.S.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA PLAN BACKED
Drug criminals in Laos could face death penalty
States
U.N. Report Says U.S. Slowdown Is Damaging Other Economies
Sikorsky Supplier Settles Case Arising From Helicopter Crash
Gulf War Vets Have More Health Problems Than Others
OTHER
Japan power plant to be fueled by plastic waste
Fuel Cell Technology Update
Subject: misguided energy policy
Fuel Cells 2000's Fuel Cell Technology Update
Russia Seeks Aid to Destroy Weapons
Endangered Species Suits Targeted
Big Maker of Air-Conditioners Breaks Ranks on Energy Rule
Bush Seeking to Modify Pact on Trade With Jordan
Herd on the Street
SENATE PASSES MINERAL RIGHTS BILL
States
Japan will not join European Union on warming treaty
Beijing wins exemption to U.N. treaty
Deforestation in Liberia
Citigroup spoof website launched!
Clouds on the free trade horizon
Safe-food issue put on the table
When free trade isn't free
Our Towns: Get Verniero? Or Getting Nowhere?
Cincinnati Quiet After Nights of Riots
Clash in Cincinnati Over Shooting by Police
City's Liability Is Debated in Killing by Police Officer
Troopers Say Fellow Officers Still Harass Them Racially
NORTHERN IRELAND: OFFICER ARRESTED
MANHATTAN: DIALLO'S FATHER ENDORSES PLAN
Cincinnati quiet after riots
Rioting in Cincinatti After Police Shooting
STREET RIOTS TEAR CINCINNATI
D.C.
Detained Americans Interest Few on Hainan Island
Chinese State Media Cites Powell's 'Sorry'
U.S. Families Rejoice at End of Crisis
To Its People, China Depicts U.S. Letter as 'Form of Apology'
U.S. Air Crew Departs China, Ending 11-day Standoff
Standoff Over Plane Brings Calls to Boycott Chinese-Made Goods
China's Generals
U.S. Sends Beijing a Formal Statement Expressing Regret
Standoff Unlikely to Affect Beijing's Olympic Bid
To End the Impasse With Beijing
Bush says crew will be released
U.S. crew departs China
Jiang hints softening of demands
Yellow ribbons
Russian Hacker Rebuffs U.S.
Looking Ahead to the Winter Olympics
Bin Laden promotes readies activists for jihad
Travel warnings
ACTIVISTS
STUDENTS/CITIZENS DECLARE CITI CREDIT CARD BOYCOTT
German nuclear activists disrupt train to France
Plans for a CVS Draws Protest in Woodstock
Hundreds injured in Turkish protests
Still Seeking Signatures
Spectacle et cercle
Calendar of Anti-FTAA Events in Buffalo
De-Racializing Environmental Destruction
Corporate Polluters Ate GW Brain
BUFFALO CONVERGENCE SPACE OPEN!
STUDENTS SIT-IN FOR UNIVERSITY KYOTO COMPLIANCE
STUDENTS/CITIZENS DECLARE CITI CREDIT CARD BOYCOTT
Defense says international law backs priest in trespass case
-------- NUCLEAR
A Step Backward on Nuclear Cooperation
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By MICHAEL McFAUL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/opinion/11MCFA.html
CHICAGO - President Bush and his new foreign policy team have announced that they plan to undertake a full review of all aspects of American policy toward Russia on matters like economic assistance, NATO expansion and missile defense. There must be a new agenda, we are told, because the old approach of cooperation and engagement pursued by the Clinton administration has been ineffective. In hinting at the tone of their new policy, Bush administration officials have promised a realist approach, which would presumably include greater attention to Russia's international conduct and less to reforms within Russia.
Reviews are necessary and rethinking of policies prudent. But why, before the review is completed, has the administration already announced plans to cut cooperative nonproliferation programs between the United States and Russia? Perhaps, after a thorough reassessment, the Bush team could make the case that the cooperative programs that we now sponsor in Russia and other former Soviet republics do not serve American national security interests. Until such a case can be made, however, the proposal to cut these programs by $100 million, or more than 10 percent, from current financing levels is bad policy and worse as symbolism. True realism on the part of the Bush foreign policy team would mean increasing, not decreasing, the size of these efforts.
Even two decades ago, it would have been unthinkable for Country A to pay Country B to destroy its weapons. But that is precisely what American-Russian nonproliferation programs have achieved in the past several years. With the end of the cold war, Russian leaders - committed to greater cooperation with the West - allowed the United States to pursue our national security interests by new, nontraditional means. In 1991, the idea that we could pay the Russians to deactivate nuclear delivery systems, enhance the storage and security of nuclear materials and keep their nuclear scientists employed was radical. It showed real leadership that George H. W. Bush, who was then the president, embraced this new approach as part of a national security strategy.
A decade later, cooperative threat reduction is widely accepted. A bipartisan review commission headed by former Senator Howard Baker fully endorses the idea, and Democrats and Republicans vote year after year to finance these programs. And President Vladimir Putin and the Russian army continue to participate willingly in them. Indeed, Mr. Putin's recent firing of the conservative head of the Ministry of Atomic Energy suggests that he might be prepared to go even further to restructure the Russian nuclear complex.
Promoting nonproliferation programs in Russia, of course, directly benefits American national security. The fewer delivery systems of nuclear weapons there are in Russia, the better; the more securely and safely stored are those nuclear materials, the better. If the Bush administration is prepared to spend tens of billions of dollars on missile defense systems to protect Americans against potential threats in the future, it cannot justify cutting the already modest budget for nonproliferation programs that help diminish a real threat in existence today.
These programs are also crucial to maintaining open channels between the United States and Russia at a time when other opportunities for cooperation are disappearing. Without question, Mr. Putin's negative activities in other areas - whether stifling the independent press or trading weapons with Iran - will make it more difficult to have meaningful and positive relations. In fact, cuts in some assistance programs to the Russian state (though not to Russian civil society, as in programs that support the development of an independent press) may be appropriate. But reducing nonproliferation programs as a reaction to objectionable Russian behavior in other areas makes no sense and is contrary to American security interests.
Ten years after the Soviet Union's collapse, it is remarkable that the decaying Russian state has not allowed more weapons of mass destruction out of Russia and that there have not been more accidents with nuclear materials. Yet, these threats to American security must not be underestimated. We should in fact be accelerating aid to dismantle this threat, not reversing course. At a time when there appear to be growing strategic conflicts between the United States and Russia, we cannot afford to undercut the one area where there is agreement and cooperation.
Michael McFaul is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an assistant professor at Stanford University.
-------- canada
Only answer is atomic power
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday 11 April 2001
Fred Nagy
Dollard des Ormeaux
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010411/5071891.html
Letter to the Editor
The suggested solutions in your recent editorials about global warming entirely miss the mark.
One has to ask why there is global warming in the first place. It's the same reason there is widespread destruction of rain forests, desertification of once-fertile regions, accelerating extinction of species, destruction of coral reefs, widespread famine, global epidemics and so on.
The reason for all of the above is crystal clear. There are too many humans on the planet. The planet cannot now support the burden that 6 billion humans place upon it.
Human activities cause all of the above. This is clear and self-evident. Worse, the human burden is expected to grow to 9 billion in 50 years.
The challenge facing humanity is to reduce the burden of humans on this planet to a reasonable level - in the vicinity of 2 billion to 3 billion - and thereby allow the rainforests to clean our air, allow biodiversity to flourish once again and allow us to grow enough grain to feed the planet comfortably.
It is not by switching to wind power or geothermal power that global warming will be stopped.
If we want to eliminate the generation of even more greenhouse gases, there must be a 100-per-cent change to atomic energy, worldwide, which generates no greenhouse gasses. The radioactive wastes can safely be stored a mile down in the Canadian shield and elsewhere, or blasted into the sun. Research on controlled atomic fusion must be accelerated.
The world community must begin now to reduce the burden of humans on the planet by building thousands of atomic-power plants, as well as geothermal and wind power where feasible.
Coal-powered plants must be quickly phased out. Gasoline-powered vehicles must be quickly eliminated and switched to electric power derived from atomic energy.
Atomic energy is safe, and the alternative of merely continuing the way we are predictably means disaster for the human race.
-------- depleted uranium
ATSDR discusses DU
Federal Register: April 11, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 70)
Notices Page 18778-18779
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr11ap01-56]
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Community/Tribal Subcommittee and the Board of Scientific Counselors, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry: Meetings
In accordance with section 10(a)(2) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (P.L. 92-463), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) announces the following subcommittee and committee meetings.
Name: Community/Tribal Subcommittee.
Times and Dates: 9 a.m.-5:15 p.m., May 1, 2001, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., May 2, 2001.
Place: Atlanta Marriott Century Center Hotel, 2000 Century Boulevard, NE., Atlanta, Georgia 30345.
Status: Open to the public, limited by the available space. The meeting room accommodates approximately 50 people.
Purpose: This subcommittee brings to the Board advice, citizen input, and recommendations on community and tribal programs, practices, and policies of the Agency.
Matters To Be Discussed: Agenda items include an update on Action Items and Recommendations from previous meeting, review of Tracking System, and, selection of new tribal members to CTS; presentation by IHS; overview of DHEP community health education; presentation of NEJAC activities; update on Alaskan Native Subsistence and Dietary Contaminants Program; presentation of Disease Registry activities of ATSDR; review of Task Group progress report; discussion on health concerns of depleted uranium; and, a review of Federal Facilities Summary Documentation.
Name: Board of Scientific Counselors, ATSDR.
Times and Dates: 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., May 3, 2001, 8:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m., May 4, 2001.
Place: Atlanta Marriott Century Center Hotel, 2000 Century Boulevard, NE., Atlanta, Georgia 30345.
Status: Open to the public, limited by the available space. The meeting room accommodates approximately 50 people.
Purpose: The Board of Scientific Counselors, ATSDR, advises the Secretary; the Assistant Secretary for Health; and the Administrator, ATSDR, on ATSDR programs to ensure scientific quality, timeliness, utility, and dissemination of results. Specifically, the Board advises on the adequacy of science in ATSDR-supported research, emerging problems that require scientific investigations, accuracy and [[Page 18779]] currency of the science in ATSDR reports, and program areas to emphasize or de-emphasize. In addition, the Board recommends research programs and conference support for which the Agency awards grants to universities, colleges, research institutions, hospitals, and other public and private organizations.
Matters To Be Discussed: Agenda items will include a review of Action Items; ATSDR updates; review of Alaska Native Subsistence and Dietary Contaminants Program; update of health care provider education activities, accomplishments, and, strategy; update on ATSDR's Strategic Planning Process; review of the National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals; discussion on exposure investigations and biomarkers; update on new developments in Environmental Justice and Health Disparities; summary of Community/Tribal Subcommittee meeting, issues, and Recommendations; discussion of the Shared Vision of Environmental Health joint meeting of ATSDR and NCEH Boards, and, an update on PEW Commission activities and ATSDR involvement.
Written comments are welcomed and should be received by the contact person listed below prior to the opening of the meeting.
Agenda items are subject to change as priorities dictate.
Contact Person for More Information: Robert Spengler, Sc.D., Executive Secretary, BSC, ATSDR, M/S E-28, 1600 Clifton Road, NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30333, telephone 404/639-0708.
The Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, has been delegated the authority to sign Federal Register Notices pertaining to announcements of meetings and other committee management activities, for both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Dated: April 3, 2001.
Carolyn J. Russell, Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
FR Doc. 01-8882 Filed 4-10-01
-------
Britain to screen military for depleted uranium
Yahoo News
Wednesday April 11, 03:45 PM
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010411/80/bjyns.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has moved a step closer to screening military personnel exposed to depleted uranium.
In a second consultative document, the Ministry of Defence has included a plan to offer urine testing to assess past exposure to DU, which is used in armour-busting weapons.
Controversy over the use of DU weapons by NATO in the Balkans in 1999 erupted after reports from Italy that six of its soldiers died of leukaemia after Balkan peacekeeping duty.
But the United Nations Environmental Programme last month concluded in a report that health hazards from DU exposure "appeared minimal".
The screening tests will be made available on demand to British servicemen and MoD employees who served in the Gulf or the Balkans, the ministry said.
The ministry also called for an oversight board which would allow veterans to assist in developing an "effective and validated screening programme".
Once the results of the urine tests and study are available the ministry said, a permanent mass testing programme may be established as well as biological monitoring of those assessed at risk from DU exposure.
Minister for Veterans Lewis Moonie said the second phase of consultation underlined the government's commitment "to addressing the issues openly".
"We are using the best scientific and medical advice and techniques that are available to develop an appropriate test to address the concerns of our people and their families," Moonie said.
-------- iraq
Gerald Brubaker, Arms Expert for U.N., Dies at 60
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By PAUL LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/obituaries/11BRUB.html
Gerald L. Brubaker, an American weapons expert and arms inspector for the United Nations Special Commission charged with finding and destroying Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, died of cancer yesterday in the Hospice of Northern Virginia in Alexandria. He was 60.
Between 1994 and 1998, while at the Defense Department, Dr. Brubaker served as a liaison with the commission, providing the special equipment it needed to find and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
During 12 inspection visits to Iraq, he became particularly involved in the hunt for chemical and biological weapons. He took part in the examination and destruction of a major weapons factory, Al Muthanna State Establishment, and did work involving chemical plants in Falluja.
He helped the commission set up its own laboratory in Baghdad to test for dangerous substances and helped design and install monitoring devices that registered minute quantities of toxic chemicals in the air.
For his work with the commission, Dr. Brubaker received commendations from two defense secretaries, William J. Perry and William S. Cohen, and was awarded the Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Services.
Gerald Lee Brubaker was born on Aug. 5, 1940, in Bellaire, Ohio, and earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at Ohio State University. After service as an intelligence officer with the Navy, he joined the Council on Environmental Quality, where he helped organize the Ford and Carter administrations' successful efforts to block development of plutonium- burning civilian power reactors.
From 1981 to 1986 he worked for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, where he again successfully opposed the plutonium-burning Clinch River Breeder Reactor.
He then served as senior assistant for nonproliferation policy at the Pentagon, where he advocated export controls on items like supercomputers that could contribute to the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
In 1999 he moved to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, working on technologies to detect the development of chemical and biological weapons.
Dr. Brubaker, who never married, is survived by his mother, Kathryn Vnasdale, of Fort Myers, Fla.; his brother, James Brubaker, of Beverly Hills, Calif., and his twin sister, Judith Waugh, of Toledo, Ohio.
-------- japan
6 JCO officials to plead guilty to negligence charges
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
From: uranium@t-online.de (Peter Diehl)
MITO, Japan, April 11 (Kyodo) - Six employees of JCO Co., indicted on charges of negligence resulting in death over Japan's worst nuclear accident in 1999, plan to plead guilty in the first hearing of their case scheduled for April 23, sources close to the workers said Wednesday.
Kenzo Koshijima, 54, who headed the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, and the five other JCO workers will likely enter guilty pleas to most of the charges in the first hearing at the Mito District Court, the sources said.
The six allegedly allowed employees to make a uranium solution in the Sept. 30, 1999, accident at the plant, 120 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, following an unauthorized manual.
JCO, which has been indicted on charges of compiling the manual without reporting to the government, will also plead guilty to most of the charges in the hearing, the sources said.
The accident and the subsequent nuclear fission chain reaction occurred when workers poured an excessive amount of uranium solution into a processing tank using buckets, bypassing several required steps, prosecutors say.
Operators of nuclear facilities are required by law to obtain approval by the prime minister before changing production methods.
Two of the workers -- Hisashi Ouchi and Masato Shinohara -- died in December 1999 and April last year, respectively, from radiation sickness.
Defense lawyers are planning to argue in an attempt to seek leniency for the six workers that the defendants were not deeply involved in illegal procedures, the sources said.
The trial is expected to proceed at a fast pace, with the court likely to hand down rulings in a year, they said.
The lawyers are not planning to refer to possible negligence by the two workers killed in the accident, they said.
At least 439 people, including 207 residents of Tokaimura, were exposed to radiation mostly in minor doses as a result of the accident. The six workers were arrested in October last year.
-------- missile defense
On Last Day of Talks, Russians and Germans Fail to Resolve Debt Issue
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11RUSS.html
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, April 10 - Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany said here today that he and President Vladimir V. Putin had made little progress on plans to exchange part of Russia's Soviet-era debt for German investment in the Russian economy.
But on the final day of a meeting intended to bind Russian interests more closely to Europe, Mr. Schröder said he is willing to play a leading role in arguing Russia's case to Western creditors concerning its foreign debt. Russia is seeking a restructuring by 2003, when annual payments will surge from $14 billion to about $19 billion.
Though the meeting produced little in the way of concrete results, Mr. Schröder managed to convey to Mr. Putin a strong Western sentiment that Russia's integration with Europe requires that Moscow pay its debts, respect press freedom and take part constructively in the complex security debates that have arisen on the Continent since the Soviet Union disappeared.
Those include how Russia might cooperate with a new European security force and how Moscow reacts to the national aspirations of post- Soviet republics and its former Central European allies who want to enhance their own security by entering the European Union or NATO.
Like President Clinton last June, Mr. Schröder granted an interview to the popular Moscow radio station, Ekho Moskvy, in a clear gesture of support for freedom of the press. The station's owner, Media-Most, is under assault by Kremlin-backed forces that are taking control of the country's only independent television network, NTV.
But during the interview, Mr. Schröder declined to take sides in the takeover battle, and he identified himself with Mr. Putin's view that the fight for financial control of NTV is separate from the issue of guaranteeing press freedom.
"My understanding of a free press is that you have to separate property on one side and an understanding of journalism on the other," Mr. Schröder said. "I have always understood that journalism is the freedom, the democratic freedom, of a country and in that I agree with the president."
On Russia's relations with the United States, Mr. Schröder indicated that, for him at least, it remains an open question whether Russia might join in any missile defense system that is extended over Europe as part of the Bush administration's plans to erect not only a national shield, but also regional shields to protect its allies.
"I think that even in this question the American proposals are only in the very early stages," he said, adding that it is not yet known whether missile defenses are "possible technically and how much it will cost."
-------- ukraine
Fire At Ukraine NPP Shuts 2 Reactors
MSO [From Russell Hoffman]
Wed Apr 11 2001 17:08:46 ET
CRAC-2 Report: http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/crac.html
A fire at a Ukrainian nuclear power plant Wednesday led to the automatic shutdown of two reactors, but no radiation was released and the fire was extinguished, news reports said.
Ukraine's private One Plus One television and the ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the fire started when the boom of a crane fell on six electrical cables at the Rivne plant, at the site where the plant's No. 4 reactor is under construction.
The fire damaged two transformers and led to automatic safety systems shutting down reactors No. 2 and No. 3. Reactor No. 1 is under repairs.
No one was injured and there was no release of radiation, the reports said. Officials at the Emergencies Ministry and at the company that runs the power plants were not available.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Physicists predict safety and stability of plutonium
Apr 11 21:10:47 2001
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/04/11/plutonium010411
PISCATAWAY, NEW JERSEY - New methods to predict the physical properties of plutonium could help people handle and store nuclear weapons more safely.
Just as water has solid, liquid and gas phases, plutonium has two phases. One is stable and the other is unstable.
Until now, the phases of plutonium have been found through experimentation. Scientists at Rutgers University instead used analytical and computer calculations to predict changes in the structure of plutonium.
"This element is far too toxic for extensive experimental procedures in the laboratory, and the use of theoretical methods is mandatory if we are to deal with problems over long time scales," said Rutgers University Physics Prof. Gabriel Kotliar.
Kotliar says predicting the stability of plutonium is important because stockpiles of plutonium-based weapons worldwide could decompose and become unsafe.
Plutonium is an artificial element that was first made in 1940. The silvery-white chemical is one of the most mysterious, toxic and dangerous substances known.
It is dangerous to handle, and difficult to store and dispose of. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning it loses only half its radioactivity over that time.
The plutonium study appears in the April 12 issue of Nature.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
"PLANNED DEATHS" By Nuclear Industry-Court Testimony
By Dr John Gofman
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/chernobyl.html
ALARA stands for "As Low As Reasonably Achievable". It's definition is in part 20 of the U.S. code of Federal Regulation of the U. S. NRC for exposure to radiation. All ALARA means is that, depending on the amount of money that any nuclear industry wishes to spend on protection of the environment and people, and depending on available technology, that is what they can use! So if you say, as a nuclear producer, "I only intend to spend $10 on keeping emissions as low as reasonably achievable, and that's all the technology that is available" its OKAY!
Dr. John W. Gofman[http://www.ratical.org] has stated in front of federal judges in U.S. Federal courts that this constitutes "planned deaths":
Question by the court: "What does ALARA..."
Answer: "It permits deaths."
Question: "Permits human deaths?"
Answer: "Yes, because ALARA does not say -- see, the only way you could avoid deaths from the nuclear fuel cycle is to have zero releases. ALARA says keep the releases as low as you can reasonably achieve with the economics that you want to spend on it, and the equipment that you have available and so forth. So it is a planned emission of radioactivity, and that in effect means planned deaths." -- Dr. John Gofman, in conversation with the court, October 2nd, 1978, Jeannine Honicker versus the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Federal Court, Nashville, Tennessee, seeking an injunction to shut down the nuclear fuel cycle.
The judge found out that he had no jurisdiction and that it had to go instead in front of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission/NRC judges. The petition was denied. (It can be found in "Shut Down: Nuclear Power on Trial: Experts Testify in Federal Court" ISBN 0-913990-21-3, published in 1979 in the U. S. by The Book Publishing Company, 156 Drakes Lane, Summertown, Tennessee, 38483.)
-------- ohio
Funding held flat for cleanup at Piketon
Columbus Dispatch
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
http://www.dispatch.com/news/news01/apr01/656500.html
WASHINGTON -- Southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant ceases operations in June, but President Bush's proposed budget does not include an increase in cleanup funding.
The proposed 2002 budget released Monday makes good on Bush's promise of $125 million to begin putting the plant on standby mode after the Piketon facility is shut down by USEC, a privatized federal corporation.
Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, said he is pleased with the $125 million, but is seeking more money for both a long-term commitment to the standby operation and for cleanup efforts.
"The $125 million in the budget provides some short-term relief,'' Strickland said. "However, we in southern Ohio have not forgotten that we received a $630 million commitment that included (an advanced- technology project) at Piketon to secure the long-term future of the plant.''
After nearly 50 years of producing weapons-grade enriched uranium and commercial material for use as nuclear power plant fuel, the site must undergo years of costly cleanup.
Precise cleanup funding for the Piketon plant in the Bush budget was not clear yesterday, Capitol Hill staffers said. It also was unclear how many cleanup and standby-operation jobs would be available after the 1,700-worker plant ceases enrichment operations.
But Bush's budget appears to propose about $76 million for cleanup at the Piketon plant, roughly the same as this year.
Strickland said he is disappointed there isn't a "significant'' increase in cleanup funding. However, many such sites are facing cutbacks under the Bush budget. The closed Mound nuclear site near Dayton, for example, would receive $70.9 million, down from $90.5 million this year.
The overall national budget for cleanup efforts is slashed by the Bush budget. A fund designated for uranium facilities such as Portsmouth, for example, is cut to $363 million in 2002 from $393 million this year. Another cleanup budget pot, a former defense facilities closure fund, is cut to $1.05 billion from $1.08 billion.
Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said the administration is reviewing the cleanup program and considering ways to improve its efficiency. Abraham said the department's "environmental management mission assessment (is) to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used to achieve the overriding goals of a safer and speedier cleanup of our DOE weapons sites.''
Strickland and other lawmakers are expected to push for increased cleanup funding nationwide.
Meanwhile, the president's budget requests $153 million for a compensation program to aid Cold War- era nuclear workers sickened by radiation in the workplace. That amount -- $136 million for the Labor Department and $17 million for the Energy Department -- is up from the $60 million approved this year to get the program, due to start July 31, off the ground.
The budget largely places the program, which could benefit hundreds of workers at Piketon and other Ohio nuclear sites, under the auspices of the Labor Department. But it appears that no final decision has been made about whether the department will operate the program, which Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has said would be better run by the Justice Department.
jriskind@dispatch.com
-------- us nuc politics
In the Budget Show, Congress Is Watching Favorite Programs
Even GOP Members May Resist Elements of Bush's Plan
By Dan Morgan and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1716-2001Apr10?language=printer
Republican leaders in Congress strongly support President Bush's aim of limiting federal spending. But a day after the White House released its $2 trillion budget, some in the GOP said that should not extend to denying funds to the program that guarantees loans to buyers of U.S.-built ships.
The immediate protest -- including from such powerhouses as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Rep. W. J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), who represent Gulf Coast shipbuilders -- is a signal that Congress will fight for its spending prerogatives, even if it takes more money.
Such revolts even among the party faithful suggest the fight ahead as the administration seeks to limit spending to provide savings for other Bush priorities....
Democrats, as expected, were quick to criticize the administration's budget plan. "Cutting child care development block grants? Cutting pediatric hospitals? Cutting conservation programs in every department of government? These are compassionate cuts?" asked Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Spratt questioned Bush's decision to discontinue a program that has tried to curb drug dealing in public housing and to reduce subsidies for nuclear waste cleanup. He called such cuts "bewildering" and predicted even some Republicans will find them unacceptable....
------- u.s. nuc waste
Nuclear waste convoy arrives in France
USA Today
04/11/2001 - Updated 12:20 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-11-nukewaste.htm
VALOGNES, France (AP) - A train packed with 24 tons of German nuclear waste arrived in northern France on Wednesday, encountering only small protests a day after hundreds of activists were arrested for protesting the shipments in Germany.
The shipment to a reprocessing plant is the first of its kind in three years. Transport of nuclear waste from Germany to France was suspended in 1998 when radiation was found to be leaking from a container.
Some 150 riot police stood by as the train pulled into the station at Valognes, where the waste was to be inspected before being transported by truck to the plant in La Hague, about 25 miles away.
A dozen Greenpeace activists blocked the train in the northern city of Caen, and four protesters chained themselves to the tracks. Police quickly removed them.
Before dawn, as the train rumbled through the western Paris suburb of Yvelines, some 50 protesters blocked its path and caused an hour-long delay, LCI television reported.
The train, carrying five containers of radioactive waste, set out Tuesday from Woerth, in western Germany.
The small protests in France contrasted with those in Germany, where 2,000 police guarded one of the nuclear plants, at Philippsburg in Baden-Wuerttemberg state, and arrested hundreds of protesters.
Near the border crossing, several activists chained themselves to the rail, delaying the train by an hour.
Germany has traditionally sent spent nuclear fuel from its power plants to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the resultant waste.
Protesters say the shipments are unsafe and want Germany's nuclear plants shut down quickly. They aim to make the transports so expensive that the government and power companies will be forced to halt them.
The German government last year struck a deal to scrap the country's 19 nuclear plants, but the shutdown could still take over 20 years.
---
Nuclear-waste train reaches France
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/11/01
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001411215851.htm
FRANKFURT, Germany - A train carrying spent nuclear fuel from German power plants crossed the border to France yesterday after police cut free protesters who had chained themselves to the rails close to the frontier.
Police said the train was held up for an hour after a man and a woman evaded police posted along the route to attach themselves to the track near the town of Hagenbach.
The train, carrying five containers of radioactive waste, had started from the nearby station at Woerth, where it was assembled from wagons arriving from three German nuclear-power plants further west. It was bound for a reprocessing plant in the French port of La Hague.
-------- MILITARY
Arms race behind China impasse
Taiwan is all but certain to get some US arms.
But Bush must weigh how high-tech.
Christian Science Monitor
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2001
By John Dillin Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/04/11/fpcon-intl.shtml
WASHINGTON - Taiwan's military, though outdated, still bristles with power. It boasts 4,000 pieces of heavy armor, 593 combat aircraft, and a navy of four submarines, 16 destroyers, and 21 frigates.
Yet all that may not be nearly enough. Just across the Formosa Strait, communist China's military threat to the island democracy is growing. Every day, Taiwan becomes more vulnerable.
Now the Bush White House must decide whether the time has come to slow China's military gains by selling Taiwan advanced weapons out of America's high-tech arsenal.
It's a move that China adamantly opposes, but some help for Taiwan seems all but certain. Some China hands suggest a compromise: Give Taiwan some weaponry, but not enough to goad China into precipitous military action.
China has reasons of its own for concern about Taiwan. Not only does it claim that Taiwan is a breakaway province that belongs under the Chinese flag, it also worries that pro-independence sentiment on the island is growing, particularly among younger Taiwanese.
Any infusion of advanced American weapons could embolden Taiwan's elected leaders to move toward independence.
Experts say the situation is potentially explosive.
Defense analyst Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century is one of those who say that the current balance between China and Taiwan is now "tipping in favor of the mainland."
Mr. Donnelly, who spoke at a recent Cato Institute conference on Taiwan, says China's goals are clear. "[China] seeks to become the leading power in the region," he says. "They intend to displace us as the guarantor of the international order in East Asia."
Why all the worry?
Two near-term military threats to Taiwan are particularly worrisome for American planners.
The first involves missiles. China has installed more than 200 ballistic missiles capable of striking Taiwan. Fifty more are added every year. While the rockets are not very accurate, China could use them to terrorize and intimidate the Taiwanese.
Even more troublesome to Taiwan is China's modernizing Navy. The decline of the old Soviet military threat in Asia has given China the breathing room to upgrade its naval and air forces.
With its new quiet-running submarines and the use of sea mines, China could potentially throw a blockade around the island. An effective blockade would devastate Taiwan's thriving economy, which is almost totally dependent on imports and exports.
All this - plus the impasse over the 24 American aviators being held by the Chinese on Hainan Island - now presents the Bush White House with a torturous foreign policy decision.
Every April, as regularly as the cherry trees bloom, Washington debates Taiwan's annual requests for modern weapons. Taiwan is back this month with a new list.
A year ago, the Clinton administration looked at Taiwan's requests - and ducked. It delayed the prickliest decisions, such as the sale of attack submarines, P-3 surveillance airplanes, and Aegis-class destroyers.
It's doubtful that President Bush and Congress can defer such critical decisions for another year, though a delay of several months might be plausible.
David Shambaugh, director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at George Washington University, says that even without the Americans being held on Hainan, the arms decision this year would be "highly, highly momentous."
Dr. Shambaugh says that while the US may view the decision as primarily a military one, the Chinese will interpret it as a signal. They will judge the Bush action, he says, "as a sign of broad US intent toward China."
For that reason, Shambaugh is among those who suggests that the Bush administration delay - at least for awhile - the final decision on the most advanced weapons, such as new submarines or the Aegis. The situation now, he says, is simply "too supercharged."
A less-inflammatory option might be to sell Taiwan older Kidd-class destroyers. These would allow Taiwan to defend its fleet against air attacks, which pose a greater threat than China's land-based missiles. The more sophisticated Aegis destroyers could be offered later.
Backing away from China in the face of threats, however, would have serious long-term costs for the US, analysts say.
A weak US in the western Pacific puts at risk what Donnelly calls America's "de facto coalition" of democracies - including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia.
A US withdrawal in the face of Chinese assertion of power could be a "strategic catastrophe" for such nations, Donnelly says. They would have to begin hedging their bets as the US retreated.
China's calculations
Although China has lived unhappily with the Taiwan situation since 1950, several factors may be pushing it toward early action. China is worried about Taiwan's pro-independence movement, but it also is acutely aware of the island's potential to improve its war-fighting capability, says Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign-policy analyst at the Brookings Institution who recently wrote a study of US defense-policy options.
The possibility of war between Taiwan and China has been "grossly understudied" in recent years, Dr. O'Hanlon adds.
While China's leaders probably recognize the risk to foreign investment in their country in case of war, he says, that may not be a strong deterrent for them. "China may believe that Western countries are so focused on making money," O'Hanlon says, "that they would soon forgive and forget any war that had only limited direct effect on them."
-------- australia
Sandline choppers stored by RAAF
Australian News Network
11apr01
EXCLUSIVE By SEAN PARNELL
http://news.com.au/newspulse/pulseframe/0,4711,1885250^2,00.html
THE Defence Department is storing two combat helicopters on behalf of an international mercenary force which has not ruled out an involvement in regional conflicts.
The Courier-Mail has learned private military company Sandline International, which uses a Brisbane-based firm for legal advice, has retained ownership of two Mi-24 helicopters stored at the Tindal RAAF base near Darwin.
The helicopters were part of a shipment of military hardware diverted to Australia in 1997 after the Papua New Guinea government backed down on plans to use Sandline to end the Bougainville conflict.
Sandline commercial adviser Michael Grunberg said yesterday that the helicopters were "in storage" and the company intended to export them for use by a government not covered by trade sanctions.
Mr Grunberg said the PNG affair had not limited Sandline's availability in the South Pacific or South-East Asia, and at least one of Australia's neighbours had approached the company for work.
But Mr Grunberg refused to release any further details, saying only that "Sandline will undertake appropriate assignments for legitimate and internationally recognised governments and equivalent entities".
A spokesman for Defence Minister Peter Reith said last night that Sandline had not been asked to pay costs associated with the storage of the helicopters in a hanger at Tindal.
The Federal Government was obligated to store the helicopters under Customs regulations which restrict the export of military equipment, the spokesman said.
Documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation show the Federal Government allowed Sandline to export two green Mi-8 heavy-lift helicopters after accepting the company's advice that they "fell more into the category of utility helicopter than military helicopter".
-------- drug war
Mexico Seeks Closer Law Enforcement Ties With Wary U.S.
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By TIM WEINER and GINGER THOMPSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11MEXI.html
MEXICO CITY, April 10 - Mexico is asking the United States to share more intelligence and ideas for fighting criminal organizations smuggling guns, drugs and contraband on both sides of the border. If history is a guide, the United States may be wary.
Mexico wants broad cross-border cooperation in "a master plan for the fight against organized crime, drug trafficking and violence," said Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, the national security adviser to President Vicente Fox.
"President Fox convinced President Bush to try this" when they met at Mr. Fox's ranch on Feb. 16, Mr. Aguilar Zinser said.
He and several other ranking Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials are to meet on Wednesday in Washington with Attorney General John Ashcroft; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; and senior officials of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the Pentagon.
Those agencies have "typically treated the Mexican agencies as servants," said Sergio Aguayo, a professor at the Colegio de México. "Servants are not allowed to ask questions. They are only supposed to follow orders. That attitude has to change. But in order for it to change, there has to be radical improvement in the quality of the intelligence produced by the Mexican government."
What Mexico wants, Mr. Aguilar Zinser said, is for "those U.S. institutions to begin to trust" Mexico by sharing intelligence, and not to simply "expect us to be the recipient of unilateral demands."
But trust has been lacking. Establishing it will require a small revolution in the way American law enforcement and intelligence services regard Mexico. Time and again, American officials have worked with Mexican counterparts who turned out to be corrupt.
The most notorious example was the arrest in 1997 of the Mexican drug enforcement chief, who was being paid off by the country's biggest cocaine kingpin at the time.
In reaction, the United States clamped down on its procedures for sharing intelligence with Mexican law enforcement. At the same time, it helped set up a new Mexican organized-crime investigative unit, and it screened and helped train hundreds of Mexican drug enforcement agents.
What Mexico wants is something bigger, and far beyond drug enforcement: intelligence cooperation and joint operations against all forms of organized crime.
It is especially interested in the arrest and prosecution of American weapons dealers who are arming Mexican crime syndicates, and investigations of Asian businesses smuggling consumer goods from the United States into Mexico.
"Mexico is intensely affected by all kinds of things that are shipped into this country from the United States," Mr. Aguilar Zinser said.
But American officials, bitten more than once in dealing with Mexico, may shy away from closer cooperation, even if both presidents think it might be a good idea.
"This is not going to be a problem of politics," said Ana Maria Salazar, a former United States deputy assistant defense secretary, now teaching at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. "This is going to be a problem of trust."
And are Mexican institutions trustworthy today? "Not at all," Mr. Aguilar Zinser said, adding, "We do not expect the United States to begin sharing information" with them tomorrow.
Trust "is not built from day to night," he said. "It does not come from a series of well-intentioned speeches by public officials. Trust comes from deeds."
---
MEDICAL MARIJUANA PLAN BACKED
New York Times
April 11, 2001
National Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/national/11BRFS.html
COLORADO: A voter-approved medical marijuana plan was passed by the Colorado Senate on Monday, even though the Senate passed a resolution opposing the ballot initiative last year. Marijuana use and distribution for medicinal purposes is prohibited by the federal government, but lawmakers here said they had to pass the bill to conform with the State Constitution. The plan to allow patients to register for marijuana use with a qualifying illnesses and a doctor's permission was approved by voters in November. Mindy Sink (NYT)
---
Drug criminals in Laos could face death penalty
USA Today
04/11/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-11-opium.htm
VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) - Laos, one of the world's leading opium producers, will soon introduce the death penalty for serious drug offenses, an official newspaper reported Wednesday.
The National Assembly of the communist state approved an amendment to the penal code Tuesday before ending its current parliamentary session. Previously, serious drug trafficking and possession offenses carried a maximum 10-year jail sentence.
The tougher penalties are a way to "halt the potential danger to the youth in the future and to the safety and security of the country," said a parliamentary resolution quoted by Vientiane Mai newspaper.
The change in the law, expected to get final approval within the next month from the country's president, will bring it in line with strict anti-drug legislation in other Southeast Asian countries.
The death penalty will apply to offenders guilty of possession, use, sale or trafficking of more than 17.9 ounces of heroin, 6.6 pounds of amphetamines or 22 pounds of chemicals used to produce illegal drugs.
Possession of more than 22 pounds of marijuana or 11 pounds of opium - drugs which are both farmed extensively in Laos - will be punishable with life imprisonment.
Laos lies in Southeast Asia's drug-producing Golden Triangle and is the world's third largest producer of opium, the source of heroin. The government has resolved to eradicate opium - a cash crop for thousands of its poorest farmers - by 2006.
A Western diplomat based in Vientiane said it was still not clear when the new penalties would actually take effect, as the government plans first to disseminate information about the amended law to educate the public.
A wide range of offenses, including acts of rebellion, betraying state secrets, killing a state official and homicide carry the death penalty in Laos, though it is rarely applied.
---
USA Today
04/11/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Colorado
Golden - A six-month drug investigation has led to the arrest of 22 people in Jefferson County. Investigators say three loosely organized factions of teenagers and young adults were making and selling methamphetamine and distributing cocaine and marijuana.
Missouri
Jefferson City - The Senate gave initial approval to a measure that would limit purchases of over-the-counter cold medicines that can be used for methamphetamine production. Under the bill, for example, businesses that sell more than three packages of medicine containing ephedrine or pseudophedrine at one time could face felony charges. The measure requires a final Senate vote before moving to the House.
-------- u.n.
U.N. Report Says U.S. Slowdown Is Damaging Other Economies
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 10 - The American slowdown is damaging many other economies around the world, forecasters from more than 60 countries said in a report today.
Particularly vulnerable are Asian nations with high-technology industries that had just begun to recover from the 1997 regional crash. Mexico and Canada, however, are also paying the price of being closely linked to the United States in trade and investment, the experts said.
The report describes the spreading downturn as "an intended one, at least in its early stage, engineered by policy makers, in the first instance in the United States." The Federal Reserve's aim was to "put on the brakes" to head off inflation, said Lawrence R. Klein, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and leader of the forecasters' group.
"It looks as though they did it too hard and too long," said Mr. Klein, a Nobel laureate in economics who was an economic adviser to Jimmy Carter. He was speaking at a news conference here today.
Dozens of economists from around the world, meeting here this week, meshed findings from 79 national and economic models to arrive at global predictions. They said world economic growth is expected to slow this year to 2.4 percent from 4 percent in 2002.
Growth in the industrial market economies will slow, the experts said, especially in Japan, which can not be counted on for economic stimulus when other big economies lag. "One would have hoped that we would get some strength from the No. 2 economy in the world in terms of size of production, but Japan has a longstanding recessionary problem," Mr. Klein said. "The help is not coming there."
In the developing countries, already beset by rapid population growth, epidemic diseases and often weak economic bases, output growth is expected to decline to 4.4 percent from 5.7 percent last year. In the "economies in transition" from government control to a free market - mostly former Communist nations - the growth rate of 5.9 percent achieved in 2000 is "unsustainable," the report says. The rate will drop to 3.6 percent this year, it predicts.
Only countries rich in oil and gas can avoid serious problems, the experts said. They include Russia, the Middle Eastern petroleum exporters and some African and Latin American nations.
The report, the latest Global Economic Outlook, was prepared by economic experts working through Project Link, a joint program of the United Nations department of economic and social affairs, led by Josef M. van Brabant, chief of the economic assessment and outlook branch, and a research center at the University of Toronto headed by Peter H. Pauly, dean of the university's Rotman School of Management.
At the news conference, Mr. Pauly echoed Mr. Klein's concern about the loss of Japan as a compensating factor, and expressed concerns about disappointing trends for Europe.
"The European performance, while solid, is not apparently sufficient to counteract the effect of the U.S. slowdown on the world economy," he said, urging what he called decisive monetary policy in both the United States and Western Europe and fundamental structural change in Japan to prevent a longterm slide in growth.
One of the report's central findings is that the expansion of international trade is expected to reverse sharply, falling to 6 percent from the 12 percent recorded last year. That frequently reflects loss of trade with the United States, the experts said.
-------- u.s.
Sikorsky Supplier Settles Case Arising From Helicopter Crash
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By PAUL ZIELBAUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/nyregion/11COPT.html
NEW HAVEN, April 10 - A Michigan manufacturer of military helicopter parts that were considered the probable cause of a fatal crash in 1996 settled a federal investigation today by pleading guilty to two felony counts that it falsified inspection records and by agreeing to pay $7.5 million in fines.
In a settlement with the United States attorney's office that was closely monitored by the Defense Department, the company, Kaydon Corporation, agreed to pay a total of $1 million for falsely certifying ball bearings made between January 1995 and May 1996. The bearings are used in rotor assemblies of Navy helicopters made by Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, based in Stratford, Conn.
Kaydon, which remains Sikorsky's sole supplier of the bearings, also agreed to pay the government $6.5 million in civil fines.
In May 1996, a newly built Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion transport helicopter went down in flames on its first test flight in Sikorsky's Stratford airfield, killing four company employees. Sikorsky inspectors told the Navy that a Kaydon-made ball bearing was the probable cause of the crash.
Sikorsky and relatives of the four employees filed lawsuits against Kaydon, contending that it had knowingly shipped a defective product. The relatives demanded compensation for the deaths of the four crew members.
In 1998, Kaydon, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., paid an undisclosed cash sum to the relatives of the pilots, Yong Ho Lee and David A. Kish, both 39; the technician, Thomas L. Payne, 52; and the crew chief, Leonard R. Kuderna Jr., 47.
In September, Kaydon agreed to pay several million dollars to settle Sikorsky's suit.
After today's settlement was completed in Federal District Court here, lawyers for the United States attorney's office stressed that they had no evidence that Kaydon products were responsible for the crash, and that the penalties related only to ball bearings wrongly certified.
The fines approved today by Judge Peter C. Dorsey also put to rest claims that Kaydon's ball bearings may have caused another Sikorsky CH-53E military helicopter to malfunction after landing in New River, N.C., in October 1996. Lawyers for the company said Kaydon would pay the fines within three days.
Today, Kaydon's chief executive, Brian P. Campbell, said in a statement, "While we are confident that Kaydon manufactures the highest quality products, we regret that in this instance, our certification process failed to meet applicable inspection and reporting requirements."
The statement also said the company's ball bearings "have not been involved in any accident."
But the civil and criminal settlements still leave Kaydon open to other claims. For example, relatives of the employees could file suit against the government in the future, and the government in turn could seek to indemnify itself by filing a suit against Kaydon. The agreement also leaves Kaydon open to any claims resulting from a continuing investigation into a third crash of a CH-53E, in the Gulf of Mexico in August 2000. That crash killed four Navy crew members.
Both fatal crashes involving Sikorsky's CH-53E, a troop and heavy- equipment transport helicopter that is larger than any other in the military, forced Navy and Marine officials to ground hundreds of the aircraft temporarily. To reduce the chances of future crashes, Navy and Marine officials ordered all CH- 53E's to be equipped with sensors that monitor vibrations caused by the rotor assembly's ball bearings.
Sikorsky no longer makes the CH- 53E Super Stallions. The company delivered the last of the model to the military last year, a Sikorsky spokesman said.
The Defense Department took a keen interest in the government's settlement with Kaydon. Today, Robert J. Lieberman, the department's deputy inspector general, briefed Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on the settlement, federal officials said.
In September, Kaydon agreed to pay several million dollars to settle a Sikorsky suit. News of today's settlement had no immediate adverse effect on the company's stock price, which posted a 12-cent gain today to close at $26.56 a share.
--------
Gulf War Vets Have More Health Problems Than Others
Excite News
April 11, 2001
By Patricia Reaney
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010411/20/science-health-gulfwar-dc
LONDON (Reuters) - Veterans of the Gulf War have more health problems and illnesses than other men and women in the armed services, British doctors said on Thursday.
One of the largest studies done into "Gulf War Syndrome" also showed that the number of injections the veterans received during the 1991 conflict and the amount of time they spent handling pesticides were correlated with specific symptoms of the mysterious illness.
"There seems to be a definite shift toward ill health in those who went to the Gulf, with about 14 percent more than you would expect in the ill category," Dr. Nicola Cherry, a specialist in occupational and environmental health, told Reuters.
The study of more than 14,000 men and women showed that the 9,000 veterans of the Gulf War had many more health problems than their colleagues seven years after the war.
"There is strong evidence that people who went to the Gulf have had a change in their health in the wrong direction. They are less well than if they hadn't been (to the Gulf)," Cherry, of the University of Manchester, added.
The study reported in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a monthly medical journal, found that the number of inoculations or immunizations the veterans had received was proportional to their health problems.
Veterans who had handled pesticides also suffered more nerve damage.
MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS WITH VARIED SYMPTOMS
Gulf War Syndrome covers a variety of symptoms ranging from tiredness, convulsions and respiratory and digestive problems to nerve damage, pain, numbness and psychological difficulties.
The causes of the mysterious syndrome have been hotly debated and linked variously to the inoculations the veterans received, pesticides they handled, smoke from oil burning fires, stress and organophosphates -- chemicals that have been shown to affect the human nervous system.
But the study found no direct link between the symptoms and the suspected causes nor the mechanism by which they might be linked.
The veterans who took part in the study answered questions about 95 symptoms. Nerve damage and widespread pain were twice as common among the Gulf veterans as among their colleagues.
Inoculations were associated with more skin and muscle complaints. Although the researchers said the Gulf veterans showed a significant decline in health, the number of deaths or hospital admissions in the group was not higher than the other servicemen and women.
"In one of the biggest and most complete studies that has been done there is evidence that the people who went to the Gulf have more health concerns that those who didn't," said Cherry.
She and her colleagues called for more research in the impact of pesticides and inoculations on the health of veterans.
Nearly one million servicemen and women were deployed to the Gulf between August 1990 and February 1991 to oppose the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Within months of returning veterans started reporting health problems.
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Japan power plant to be fueled by plastic waste
JAPAN: April 11, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10466
TOKYO - Major Japanese pest control company Sanix Inc said yesterday it expects to be able to sell from August 2002 electricity generated from a 74,000 kilwatt (kW) thermal power plant that uses fuel produced from recycled waste plastic.
Company executives told a news conference that construction of the 10 billion yen ($79.82 million) power plant on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido will begin in May.
The company, based in the western main island of Kyushu, has built waste treatment plants nationwide.
Sanix said it will consume in-house about 15 percent of the electricity generated by the new power plant, with the remainder to be sold in Hokkaido to both commercial and industrial large-lot users.
Annual sales from the power generated by the plant in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, are expected to eventually reach about 5.5 billion yen.
The company is taking advantage of deregulation of the domestic power market that since March last year allows non-power utilities to supply electricity to large-lot consumers.
An official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Sanix is the first company among the new entrants to construct a power plant to sell electricity.
Other companies have chosen to buy surplus in-house generation capacity for resale.
Sanix said the power plant will be the world's first using recycled waste plastic as fuel.
Its president, Shinichi Munemasa, said it planned to build two more of the same thermal power plants by 2003, in the Kanto region, which also includes Tokyo, and in western Japan.
He said it was also thinking of building another three plants, but the locations had not been decided.
The fuel - which provides a means of recycling plastic waste - also emits about 15 to 20 percent less carbon dioxide than coal when burned, the company said.
The power plant will consume about 705 tonnes of the recycled fuel a day, all of which will be supplied by Sanix's plants.
Sanix currently operates eight plastic recycling plants.
It is also constructing three other recycling plants and has plans to build seven others nationwide.
----
Fuel Cell Technology Update
Fuel Cells 2000's
April 2001
For more information on any of the following stories, click on the provided links or contact Jennifer Gangi at <mailto:jennifer@fuelcells.org>, or at (202)785-4222.
STATIONARY POWER
Select Energy Wins State Contract for Largest U.S. Fuel Cell Installation To Date. The State of Connecticut has awarded a contract to Select Energy for the construction, operation, and maintenance of a state-of-the-art central energy plant to supply power to the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS). The proposal includes six International Fuel Cell 200 kW fuel cells connected in parallel to the region's electric power grid. http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=3Dp0327133.400&level3=3 D705& date=3D20010328
Hydro Environmental To Produce Fuel Cell. Hydro Environmental Resources has started production of a fuel cell that will produce 2.5 kW of electricity per hour in a self-contained unit. The system will generate hydrogen internally and will not require any outside power source. http://www.hydrogenerate.com
H Power and Fortum to Field Test Fuel Cell Unit, H Power to Develop Systems for Japanese Residential Market. H Power announced that Fortum Oy, a major international energy company based in Finland, has installed an H Power residential cogeneration fuel cell unit in a test house. The unit is fueled by hydrogen and will supply all the electricity and heat to the house and will be "net metered" to sell surplus electricity to the local electric utility. H Power will also develop a 500 W residential fuel cell system for Osaka Gas Co., Ltd, using Osaka Gas' compact fuel processor. http://www.hpower.com/NEWS_Fortum.html http://www.hpower.com/NEWS_Osaka.html
H Power Receives Order for 12,300 Small Fuel Cell Systems. H Power has received an $81 million contract with Energy Co-Opportunity, a consortium of rural electric cooperatives, to market its fuel cells exclusively through more than 900 cooperatives. ECO has agreed to buy 12,300 of H Power's 10-kilowatt fuel cells for $10,000 each, with installation to start in the second half of this year. http://www.newsobserver.com/ncwire/business/Story/314264p-311298c.html
H Power Joins Kurita for Purification Technology. H Power has formed a strategic alliance with Tokyo-based Kurita Water Industries, Ltd. to install Kurita's water purifier technology in 40 H Power residential fuel cell units that will be beta-tested at various customer sites. http://www.hpower.com/NEWSkurita.html
Plug Power and Vaillant GmbH Unveil FCHA System. Plug Power and Vaillant GmbH unveiled an operational fuel cell heating appliance (FCHA) that is fueled by natural gas. The FCHA is being developed for use in homes to generate the electricity and produce heat and hot water. http://www.plugpower.com/news/
Buderus and IFC to Market Fuel Cells In Europe. Buderus Heiztechnik GmbH, a German heating appliance manufacturer, and International Fuel Cells (IFC) will work together to develop and market fuel cell systems for small and medium size residential applications. Under terms of the agreement, Buderus will market the IFC fuel cell system in Europe. The two expect to test initial units in important European markets beginning mid 2003. http://www.internationalfuelcells.com/news/archive/032901.shtml
Hydrogenics Receives Project Funding from Canadian Government. Hydrogenics Corporation has received a CAN$2 million (US$1.26 million) contribution from the Government of Canada toward the development of a stationary fuel cell system capable of generating power for use in multi-dwelling clusters and small commercial buildings. The funding will aid Hydrogenics' development of its 50 kW fuel cell power generator fueled by natural gas.
TRANSPORTATION APPLICATIONS
Toyota Shows Fuel Cell Vehicle. Toyota displayed its new experimental fuel cell vehicle, the FCHV-3, which also has a battery for energy storage and increased system efficiency. The FCHV-3 features a hydrogen-absorbing alloy tank and has a highly efficient 90 kW fuel cell stack built by Toyota. http://www.toyota.com/html/about/news/archive/press_release/environment/d= oc s/2001/20010228fuelcell.jsp
DaimlerChrysler Sells First Fuel Cell Buses. DaimlerChrysler has sold its first fuel cell buses for trials in several European cities. Daimler will equip up to 30 of its Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses with new fuel cell engines, which will be supplied by XCELLSIS and feature Ballard Mark 900 series fuel cell stacks. The vehicles will be delivered from the end of 2002 through 2003. http://www.ballard.com/viewpressrelease.asp?sPrID=3D207
Thor Awarded US$740,000 For Fuel Cell Bus Venture. The U.S. Department of Transportation has committed $740,000 to ThunderPower, a joint venture between Thor Industries and ISE Research Corporation. The money will go towards the development of a 30-foot hydrogen fuel cell transit bus. QUANTUM Technologies will provide the hydrogen storage system, which will be mounted on the roof. http://38.144.115.20/eyeforenergy/index.asp?news=3D13891&nli=3Denergy
Iceland Plans for Fuel Cell Buses. Officials in Iceland unveiled plans for a fleet of fuel cell powered buses and a hydrogen fueling station. The four-year Ecological City Transport System (ECTOS) project is estimated to cost EURO7 million (US$6.2 million). < http://www.dwv-info.de/pm/pe0101.htm>
BP Amoco, Daimler Join for London Bus Project. BP Amoco and DaimlerChrysler will take part in a GBP3.5 million (US5 million) joint venture to bring hydrogen fuel cell buses to London. BP will fund the cost of developing the hydrogen fuel infrastructure and Daimler will provide three hydrogen-powered Citaro buses in 2003. http://www.bp.com/centres/press/p_r_detail.asp?id=3D758
Ballard Receives Orders from Honda and Nissan. Ballard Power Systems has signed a CAN25.9 million (US$16.5 million) supply agreement with Honda R&D Co., Ltd. For Mark 900 Series Fuel Cell Power Modules and support services. Ballard also received an order from Nissan Motor Company for CAN3.4 million (US$2.16 million) for the Mark 900 modules. http://www.ballard.com/viewpressrelease.asp?sPrID=3D210 http://www.ballard.com/viewpressrelease.asp?sPrID=3D208
Dalian Institute Develops New Fuel Cell Technology. Researchers from China's Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics have developed a new fuel cell for vehicular applications. The fuel cell was installed in a minibus and has completed a trial operation in the Hubei Province in central China. The fuel cell will also be used to power a robot to be used for remote seabed exploration. http://www.dicp.ac.cn/englishvers.index.htm
Two Fuel Cell Cars in Japan. Two fuel cell cars have obtained a road permit from the Japanese Ministry for Infrastructure and Transport. The NECAR 5 from DaimlerChrysler and the FC-EV from Mazda will undergo extensive tests on Japanese roads. http://www.hydrogen.org/News/gazette.html#Fuel cell cars in Japan mar 01 http://www.hydrogen.org/News/gazette.html
General Motors to Show Gasoline Fuel Cell Vehicle. General Motors has announced that it will show a gasoline fuel cell demonstration vehicle next year, and expects to offer a vehicle with a similar system for sale by the end of the decade. The automaker plans to use a version of its Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck. http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?T=3Dfiner99_auto.ht&s=3DAOrAHABUhR2V= uZXJh
Fuel Cell Technologies Updates ALTEX Power Project. Fuel Cell Technologies completed another successful test of its high-endurance aluminum hydrogen peroxide fuel cell power system that will power the ALTEX (Atlantic Layer Tracking Experiment) autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) under the Artic ice cap. This second underwater test confirmed system improvements and also tested system response at different power levels. http://www.newswire.ca/releases/March2001/29/c7912.html
Emerson to Develop Motors for Fuel Cell Vehicles. Ecostar Electric Powertrain and Power Conversion Systems has selected Emerson Motors to assist in the development of electric traction motors for fuel cell powered electric vehicles. Emerson and Ecostar will develop the primary drive unit, which consists of a traction inverter module and motor/transaxle. The traction drive unit completely replaces the internal combustion engine. http://evworld.com/databases/shownews.cfm?pageid=3Dnews260301-05
FUELS/REFORMERS/STORAGE
Exxon Mobil Joins Fuel Cell Partnership. Exxon Mobil has joined the California Fuel Cell Partnership, bringing its gasoline processor technology for use in fuel cell cars, buses and trucks. http://news.excite.com/news/r/010326/13/business-exxonmobil-fuelcells-dc
Dubai and BMW Join to Develop Hydrogen Fuel. United Arab Emirate member state Dubai could soon be producing hydrogen as a fuel in cooperation with BMW. Currently, Dubai and BMW are supporting a feasibility study at Munich's Technical University examining the production of hydrogen using solar energy and seawater in Dubai.
Startech Environmental Unveils First StarCell Hydrogen System. Startech Environmental Corporation unveiled its first commercially-sized StarCell(tm) system, which will produce about 30 cubic feet of hydrogen per minute. The unit can supply enough hydrogen to fuel about 400 cars each day. http://www.startech.net
HbT-Visteon Alliance Aims to Speed Fuel Cells to Market. Hydrogen Burner Technology (HbT) and Visteon Corporation have formed an exclusive engineering, development and manufacturing alliance to commercialize HbT's hydrogen fuel processors for use in PEM fuel cell systems. <http://www.hbti.net>
GM Report Examines Fuels for Fuel Cell Vehicles. General Motors (GM) released a study that found that gasoline-derived fuels and fuel cell vehicles present "the cleanest and most efficient combination of fuel and propulsion systems for the near term" and hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles offer the "best long-term solution." http://www.gm.com
Dynetek Fuel Storage System Receives Certification. Dynetek Industries' lightweight fuel storage system received further certification in Japan to Reijikiun Betlen-9 standard with approval by KHK. The 5,000 psi storage system has already received certification in Germany under TUEV and North America under NGV-2 98. http://www.dynetek.com
PORTABLE POWER
Nuvera Demonstrates Natural Gas Fuel Cell for Telecommunications. Nuvera Fuel Cells has successfully demonstrated a natural gas fuel cell powering a Verizon telecommunication system. The joint effort between Nuvera and Verizon, which will span a two-year period, includes the development, testing and evaluation of fuel cell powered demonstration units in the 5 kW range. http://www.newswire.ca/releases/March2001/05/c0781.html
GreenVolt Power to Unveil Commercial Fuel Cell. GreenVolt Power Corporation has introduced a portable fuel cell that utilizes an electrolyte composed of water and table salt to produce up to 10 amperes of current at 13.5 volts DC for 50 hours. The unit is expected to sell at $120 and weighs less than 5 pounds. http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010315/0057.html
Motorola Partners with Los Alamos National Laboratory. Motorola has moved a team of ten researchers into the new Los Alamos Research Park facility, partnering with Los Alamos National Laboratory for research on miniature direct methanol fuel cells, other energy technologies and biosciences. http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=3DMOT&script=3D410= &layou t=3D-6&item_id=3D156777
FUEL CELL COMPONENTS
SatCon Introduces Power Conversion Product Line. SatCon Technology Corporation has introduced three new standard power conversion products for the distributed power market. The systems convert DC electricity to AC electricity to enable efficient distributed power generation using fuel cells. http://www.satcon.com/news/pr/032701.html
SET Completes Testing of Power Inverter. Sustainable Energy Technologies (SET) has successfully completed initial testing of its power inverter. SET said that results from the tests show that the 4 kW DC to AC inverter has a peak efficiency of 96 percent at 20 percent of full load, exceeding industry standards to date.
Manhattan Scientifics Receives New Patent. Manhattan Scientifics has obtained a new U.S. patent for a large non-bipolar fuel cell stack configuration covering further applications of its MicroFuel Cell(tm) for portable electronic devices. The patent covers methods of stacking modules to obtain high current capacity. http://www.hawkasssociates.com/mhtx/mhtxpr35.htm
REPORTS/MARKET STUDIES
Stationary Fuel Cells. "Stationary Fuel Cells: US and Global Early Market Opportunities," a new study by Allied Business Intelligence (ABI) projects the overall fuel cell energy generating capacity will increase by a factor of 250, due to the global pressure for new energy sources. According to ABI's findings, the electricity generating capacity will jump to over 15,000 MW by 2011 from just 75 MW in 2001. http://www.alliedworld.com/energy/resource/FCM01PR.html
EIA Projects Rapid Growth for DG Fuel Cells. At the recent National Energy Modeling System/Annual Energy Outlook 2001 Conference, the Energy Information Administration presented data projecting that fuel cells will achieve the most rapid growth of distributed generation technologies in buildings by 2020. Results of modeling show an expected decline in fuel cell cost to $1,500/kW by 2015, and a best technology case projection that fuel cells will provide up to 3.25 billion kWh by 2020. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/conf/handouts.html
MISCELLANEOUS
DCH, INE, Skeljungur Launch Commercial Fuel Cells Initiative. DCH Technology has signed an agreement with Skeljungur Ltd. to distribute DCH fuel cells in Iceland as part of a six-month market opportunity assessment. DCH also signed an agreement with Icelandic New Energy (INE) to provide hydrogen fuel to users of DCH fuel cells from a hydrogen depot INE has constructed in Reykavik, Iceland. http://www.dchtechnology.com/press_releases/press_release.asp?release=3D2= 01&c aller=3Dnews Korean and U.S. Fuel Cell Venture. Korea's LG-Caltex Oil has formed a fuel cell manufacturing venture with Korean venture capital firm Advanced Business Link and Dais-Analytic Corporation. The new company will be known as Clean Energy Technologies and will focus on residential fuel cells and portable power applications.
ZeTek Opens German Fuel Cell Factory. ZeTek Power has opened a new alkaline fuel cell factory in Cologne, Germany. The company hopes to replicate the model for its Cologne factory around the world to mass-produce fuel cells. http://www.zetekpower.
Education Center Established. The University of California, Davis, in collaboration with the UC Office of the President, UC Merced, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has established an education center to provide opportunities for professional development for K-12 science teachers. http://www.gnet.org/Coldfusion/News_Page2.cfm?NewsID=3D15522
REQUESTS FOR PROPOSALS
Climate Change Fuel Cell Program. The U.S. Department of Defense, through DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), will provide grants to support the cost of stationary fuel cell demonstrations of US-manufactured fuel cell power plants, up to $1,000 per kilowatt. Purchased units must be equal to or greater than 3 kilowatts, and projects are anticipated to be less than 3 megawatts in size. http://www.netl.doe.gov/business/solicit/index.html
CERL BAA Issued for Residential PEM Fuel Cell Demonstrations. U.S. Army's Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) has issued a Broad Agency Announcement focusing on demonstrations of domestically produced residential PEM fuel cells in military facilities. http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/contract/other.asp
Biomass Research and Development. The Office of Biopower and Hydropower Technologies of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has issued a solicitation entitled "Biomass Research and Development: Advance Biomass Power Generation Technologies." These systems may incorporate related research in stationary fuel cell technology for production of electricity from biomass. http://www.netl.doe.gov/business.
Massachusetts Technology Park Seeking Applications for Fuel Cell Funding. The Massachusetts Technology Park Corporation (MTPC) is seeking applications for fuel cell projects under three solicitations. 1) Premium Power Planning Grants - Will provide up to $150,000 to examine the feasibility of using fuel cells to provide high quality power at various sites in the state. 2) Premium Power Installation Grants - Will provide grants to cover up to cover up to 25% of the total capital costs to purchase and install fuel cell power systems in the state, up to a maximum of $2 million per project. 3) Green Power Predevelopment Financing - Will provide up to $150,000 to organizations that are interested in developing grid-connected electric generating facilities (1 MW or greater) in New England that employ renewable energy technologies. http://www.mtpc.org/massrenew/fundingopps.htm
CONFERENCES/CALL FOR PAPERS
Small Fuel Cells. The 3rd Annual Small Fuel Cells and Battery Technologies for Portable Power Applications conference will be held at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, DC, on April 22-24, 2001. For more information, go to http://www.knowledgefoundation.com.
GasMart/Power 2001. GasMart/Power 2001 will be May 9-11, 2001, at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. For more information, go to www.gasmart.com.
World Fuels Europe 2001. Hart's World Fuels Europe 2001 conference, "The Key Role in Refining, Vehicles and Fuels in Shaping the Marketplace," is May 14-16, 2001, at the Sheraton Brussels Hotel and Towers, in Brussels, Belgium. For registration information, go to http://www.chemweek.com.
Well-to-Wheels 2001. "Well-to-Wheels 2001: Investing in Advanced Propulsion Systems and Fueling Infrastructure" will be May 14-16, 2001, at the Boscolo Hotel Plaza Concorde, in Nice, France. For more information, check out http://www.intertechusa.com.
Electrochemical Engineering Workshop. The 18th Annual Workshop on Electrochemical Engineering will be May 14-18, 2001, at Case Western University. For registration information, go to http://www.electrochem.cwru.edu.
Distributed Power 2001. "Distributed Power 2001: Turning the Vision into Reality" takes place May 16-18, 2001, at the Boscolo Hotel Plaza Concorde, in Nice, France. For more information, check out http://www.intertechusa.com.
F-Cells Week 2001. "F-Cells Week 2001" will be at the Palm Springs Marquis Resort in Palm Springs, California, on May 16-18, 2001. For details, go to http://www.f-cellsnetwork.com.
Early Markets for Stationary Fuel Cells. "The Early Markets for Stationary Fuel Cells" will be held in Seattle, Washington, on May 21-22, 2001. For more information, please go to http://www.srinstitute.com/cr197.
Designing Motors and Generators. "Designing Motors and Generators for Automotive Applications" will be May 22-23, 2001, at the Boscolo Hotel Plaza Concorde, in Nice, France. For more information, go to http://www.intertechusa.com.
Strategic Planning For Energy. "Strategic Planning for Energy: Defining and Valuing Your Business Through Competitive-Oriented Strategies" will be held June 5-6, 2001, at the Fairmont in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, please go to http://www.iqpc.com.
Nanostructured Materials 2001. "Nanostructured Materials 2001: Application and Commercialization" will be June 21-22, 2001, at the Courtyard Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. To register online, go to http://www.knowledgefoundation.com.
Fuel Cell 2001. Fuel Cell 2001, in conjunction with "The Fuel Cell Home" and the "1st European PEFC Forum" will be held July 2-6, 2001, in Lucerne, Switzerland. For more information, email info@efcf.com.
Fuel Cells For Transportation. "Fuel Cells for Transportation: Developing a Commercially Viable Fuel Cell Product and Hydrogen Infrastructure" will be July 16-17, 2001, at the Allerton Crowne Plaza in Chicago, Illinois. For details, go to http://www.iqpc.com.
EVAA Conference. "EVAA Electric Transportation Industry Conference: Battery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Technologies" is December 11-14, 2001, at the Sacramento Convention Center in Sacramento, California. Contact Pam Turner at (650) 365-2667 for more information.
####
Fuel cells generate electricity without combustion by harnessing the energy created when hydrogen and oxygen are chemically combined. Fuel Cells 2000 is an independent, nonprofit activity dedicated to the commercialization of fuel cell technologies.
http://www.fuelcells.org/
Fuel Cells 2000 is a non-profit, educational activity that seeks to promote the development, demonstration and commercialization of fuel cell technology.
Subject: misguided energy policy
From: "Scott D. Portzline" <sportzline@home.com>
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
This has been submitted to the Harrisburg Patriot News.
President Bush just slashed in half the renewable energy programs despite promising to make it a fundamental concern of his administration.
He is missing a perfect opportunity to jump start the US mass production of modern wind turbines and solar panels which are now in use globally. A concerted program would create jobs, decrease pollution, and relieve future generations from spending untold billions to maintain nuclear wastes.
How can anyone call for additional nuclear plants when the industry recently needed a $100 billion dollar bailout? Unlike nuclear power, solar and wind energies won't require a yearly $3 billion dollar subsidy or a federally funded catastrophic insurance.
Politicians who look backwards for solutions while modern technology has created a simple and cheap solution are missing the mark. It brings to mind President Reagan's removal of the White House solar panels during his first week in office.
There no longer exist any excuses for turning our backs on renewable technologies. It is the cleanest and most economic solution to our present and future needs.
Its a sad day when a US Department of Energy Environmental Management officer writes a long editorial for the Patriot News (4/8/01) calling for more nuclear plants without a mention of the successful renewable energy sources.
Scott D. Portzline Three Mile Island Alert
---
Fuel Cells 2000's Fuel Cell Technology Update - April 2001
Fuel cells, wind power, PV set to give nuclear power a challenge
From: magnu96196@aol.com
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
For more information on any of the following stories, click on the provided links or contact Jennifer Gangi at <mailto:jennifer@fuelcells.org>, or at (202)785-4222.
STATIONARY POWER
Select Energy Wins State Contract for Largest U.S. Fuel Cell Installation To Date. The State of Connecticut has awarded a contract to Select Energy for the construction, operation, and maintenance of a state-of-the-art central energy plant to supply power to the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS). The proposal includes six International Fuel Cell 200 kW fuel cells connected in parallel to the region's electric power grid.
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=3Dp0327133.400&level3=3 D= 705& date=3D20010328 =20
Hydro Environmental To Produce Fuel Cell. Hydro Environmental Resources has started production of a fuel cell that will produce 2.5 kW of electricity per hour in a self-contained unit. The system will generate hydrogen internally and will not require any outside power source.
http://www.hydrogenerate.com
H Power and Fortum to Field Test Fuel Cell Unit, H Power to Develop Systems for Japanese Residential Market. H Power announced that Fortum Oy, a major international energy company based in Finland, has installed an H Power residential cogeneration fuel cell unit in a test house. The unit is fueled by hydrogen and will supply all the electricity and heat to the house and will be "net metered" to sell surplus electricity.
-------- chemical weapons
Russia Seeks Aid to Destroy Weapons
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11WIRE-RUSS.html
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov affirmed Russia's commitment to destroy its massive stockpile of banned chemical weapons Wednesday, but said it needed international help to cover the huge costs.
``I have to tell you frankly that the acuteness of the problem of funding Russia's chemical weapons destruction is still present,'' Ivanov said in The Hague, Netherlands.
``Russia continues to have difficulty destroying in strict compliance with the convention,'' he said.
Ivanov described his talks Wednesday with Jose Bustani, director of the watchdog Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as ``substantive,'' but declined to disclose details.
The organization's officials said Ivanov's visit showed that Russia was determined to reduce stores of deadly chemicals, but they expressed disappointment that no concrete details were given about how and when it will achieve reduction targets. Russia -- which has the world's largest stockpile of chemical weapons -- agreed to do away with 20 percent of stores by April 2002.
But it is lagging far behind schedule. The OPCW has extended a deadline for destroying the first 1 percent of stockpiles to 2002, meaning Russia will almost certainly miss the 20 percent requirement.
Russia has said it needs international financing for the expensive destruction process, estimated to cost $7 billion. Russian experts say it could take 15 to 30 years to destroy the entire stockpile. Russia increased its 2001 budget for the project to $40 million -- mostly to build a destruction plant in the town of Gorny, in the Volga River region of Saratov, the OPCW said. Another $1 billion was needed to build another facility in Schuchye in the Kurgan region.
The Gorny plant, which has drawn some financial support from Europe, is being built to destroy blister agents, older weapons which are at the greatest risk of leakage because of poor storage facilities. The United States is more interested in Schuchye, where more advanced nerve gas weapons are kept.
Ivanov called for international support Wednesday, saying he was confident OPCW member states would ``take the necessary measures.''
``It is our common interest to destroy those masses of chemical weapons,'' he said.
Russia has about 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, compared with 30,000 for the United States. The volume of chemicals for weapons in those two countries alone surpasses that of the rest of the world, OPCW spokesman Peter Kaiser said.
Russia was one of the inaugural signers of a chemical weapons convention that was opened for signing in January 1993. The convention has been ratified by 143 countries, including Russia in 1997. Another 31 nations have signed, but not ratified the treaty.
-------- environment
Endangered Species Suits Targeted
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Endangered-Species.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats invoked the threat of a filibuster Wednesday as a possible way to defeat legislation sought by President Bush that would limit the ability of environmental groups to get rare plants and animals added to the government's list of endangered species.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said ``any and all'' legislative tactics are being considered to thwart the proposal outlined in Bush's budget submitted to Congress on Monday.
Filibusters have become the parliamentary tactic of choice in recent years because they require at least 60 votes in the Senate -- now divided 50-50 between the two parties -- to bring a measure to either final passage or rejection.
The budget provision proposed by Bush for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 still would permit citizens and environmental groups to bring the sort of lawsuits that have largely set the Interior Department's agenda in listing endangered and threatened species lists.
But it would cap at $8.46 million the department's budget for responding to those suits and give department officials more discretion in determining which species and ``critical habitat'' areas should be addressed first under the 1973 Endangered Species Act.
Now, there are 507 animals and 736 plants on the department's endangered list; a backlog of almost 250 candidate species is under review.
As of Friday, Fish and Wildlife Service officials were contending with 76 lawsuits focused on more than 400 species. They also have been served with notices of 95 more lawsuits affecting 600 species, agency spokesman Mitch Snow said.
``This is an effort to try to bring some balance back into our listing budget so we will be able to do high-priority listing actions,'' said Hugh Vickery, the agency's spokesman on the endangered species program.
Developers, industry and government agencies themselves long have complained that environmental groups use the endangered species law to tie up projects like dams and airport expansions in lengthy reviews.
Interior officials say their hand will be strengthened in court by being able to argue that Congress has given lower priority to designating ``critical habitats'' that effectively bar the areas from any development.
``We can't help the creatures that need the most help because we're busy responding to court orders,'' Interior spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna said. ``Is a judge the right one to decide, or a biologist?''
The department says in the budget request that it expects the situation to worsen next year and that the proposed language ``will assist in moving toward a rational system.''
The budget request would provide nearly $112 million for Fish and Wildlife endangered species programs, a cut of $9.1 million from last year.
---
Big Maker of Air-Conditioners Breaks Ranks on Energy Rule
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/politics/11STAN.html
WASHINGTON, April 10 - A review by Bush administration officials that could lead them to relax a new efficiency standard for central air-conditioners has been dealt a blow by an unlikely source: the nation's second-largest air-conditioner manufacturer.
The company, Goodman Manufacturing, which owns Amana and several less prominent brands, has sent a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham asking his department not to revise the standard, which was approved in the last days of the Clinton administration and would require new models to be 30 percent more efficient than the current minimum standard.
The industry's trade association, the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute, has asked that the efficiency increase be cut to 20 percent. But environmentalists are hoping to preserve the standard, and they have been joined by some industrialists.
The 30 percent improvement would be "a very cost-effective way to reduce harmful air emissions and energy requirements, which as we know from California and other places is a critical issue now," Ben D. Campbell, executive vice president and general counsel of Goodman, said in a telephone interview.
Houston, Goodman's home city, has air pollution problems, Mr. Campbell pointed out, and air-conditioners that require less electricity would help address those problems by reducing the need for fuel that is used to generate power.
Twenty-four House Democrats, led by Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, have signed a letter urging President Bush not to roll back the new standard on air-conditioners, or those also under review on clothes washers and water heaters. "If we are indeed in an `energy crisis,' as you suggest," they wrote, "then nothing could be more shortsighted or ill advised than to roll back appliance efficiency standards that reduce America's consumption of energy."
But at the Energy Department, one staff member said officials were researching precisely what legal steps were needed to rescind the new standards.
The air-conditioner trade group maintains that cutting the 30-percent improvement to 20 percent would be "a smarter way to encourage conservation of electricity while easing the burden on all consumers, particularly low- and fixed-income consumers." Thirty percent more efficiency would make the new air-conditioners so expensive that homeowners would keep older, less efficient models, the group says.
Further, said Ed Dooley, a spokesman for the trade association, to make the machines more efficient, manufacturers make them larger, with bigger heat-exchange surfaces. For the outdoor part of the air-conditioner, size is usually not a problem, Mr. Dooley said, but some houses put the indoor coil in a closet built around the unit.
"That will be a retrofit nightmare for some folks," he said.
Industry analysts say Goodman, which sells under its own name as well as the names Amana, Janitrol and GMC, makes a relatively large number of high-efficiency machines. But Mr. Campbell said the company was taking its position simply because "we feel this is the right thing to do."
Along with Goodman, second only to Carrier among makers of air- conditioners, some state regulators also favor the strict standard. One backer is Patrick Wood III, chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, whom Mr. Bush recently chose to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
---
Bush Seeking to Modify Pact on Trade With Jordan
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11PREX.html
WASHINGTON, April 10 - President Bush told King Abdullah II of Jordan today that enacting a free trade agreement between the United States and Jordan was one of the White House's top trade priorities. But he indicated that provisions negotiated by the Clinton administration to safeguard workers' rights and the environment might require readjustment.
During a meeting in the Oval Office, the two leaders devoted much of their discussion to the swelling violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. A senior administration official said Mr. Bush and King Abdullah had agreed that both sides needed to scale down the cycle of violence.
Still, the king was visiting in part to urge the United States to remain involved in Middle East peace negotiations and to convince Israel that a military response would not lead the Palestinians to the negotiating table.
"I look forward to working with you, sir, and with your administration to try and bring peace and stability to the Middle East," the king told the president.
Jordan, which borders Israel and the West Bank, has a population that is roughly half Palestinian. The country has long played a major role in promoting Middle East peace efforts, and American officials see the trade agreement as an important step in jump-starting the struggling economy of the region.
Trade between the two countries is tiny, in relative terms. The United States sells Jordan less than $300 million in goods each year. But the trade deal reached between Jordan and the Clinton administration, which would eliminate all tariffs on trade, is significant beyond the numbers.
It is the first American trade initiative that included labor and environmental standards as part of the main text, putting the rights of workers and the duty of companies not to pollute on the same plane with tariffs.
King Abdullah signed the agreement at a White House ceremony last October, as the Clinton administration was coming to a close. During the presidential campaign, Al Gore praised the labor and environmental agreements in the Jordan deal, but Mr. Bush expressed reservations.
It is not without precedent for a new administration to reopen a trade agreement signed by a predecessor.
Mr. Bush's father signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, with Canada and Mexico in the closing weeks of his administration. But his successor, Bill Clinton, pursued side agreements to address concerns of labor unions and environmental groups.
In a meeting much like the one that Mr. Bush held today with King Abdullah, Mr. Clinton reassured President Carlos Salinas of Mexico in 1993 that the United States would pursue Nafta, but only after additional negotiations.
In a brief appearance with reporters today, Mr. Bush did not detail his reservations about the deal reached by Mr. Clinton. But officials indicated that the White House was concerned about the precedent that the labor and environmental agreements might have on future trade agreements.
The officials said Robert Zoellick, Mr. Bush's trade representative, was pursuing a compromise that he hoped would get the pact through the closely divided House and Senate.
Not everybody believes that the deal struck by Mr. Clinton requires change. "This agreement is good, as is," said Mike Siegel, a spokesman for Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana. "There may be some who have expressed concern, but they don't have much traction right now."
In his meeting today, the president reassured the king that he intended to reach a deal. It was the king's father, King Hussein, who died in 1999, who first pressed for more open trade with the United States.
"We look forward to working to get an agreement, one way or the other, out of our Congress, that encourages free trade with Jordan," the president said at the start of the meeting. "We will be discussing strategies as how best to achieve that objective."
In a television interview on Monday night, the king described his country's economic woes as critical.
"For our country the priority is the economy - getting, as I've said from day one, food on the table," the king said on PBS. "We have problems with poverty. We have problems with unemployment. If we are going to progress, if we are going to move forward on political reforms and economic reforms, we have to make the economy of paramount importance."
---
Herd on the Street
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/opinion/11DOWD.html
No one wants to talk about ruminant fears in polite society. But abattoir bêtes noires lurk.
Will elegant Upper East Side socialites, lunching at Cipriani, suddenly start foaming at the mouth?
Will pouty young Gotham beauties, sipping sake-tinis at Nobu, begin running around in circles trying to bite their imaginary tails?
Will high-powered women in leather skirts and Holstein-patterned purses find themselves sidling up to the famous pool at the Four Seasons and slurping at it like a trough?
Will bee-stung actresses in New York and Hollywood drop their celery sticks and demand salt licks?
Now for another episode of "When Bad Things Happen to Rich People."
Fearing diseased livestock, Wall Street's erstwhile bulls may be giving up their two-week golf jaunts this spring to Scotland. But the more women hear about mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease, the more jittery they get.
Inside and out, women are putting on the cow. They inject buckets of bovine collagen into their lips and faces. They starve themselves on the Zone and Atkins diets, which entail massive infusions of red meat, cheese, butter and cream. They truss themselves up in leather. They slather on anti-aging creams featuring collagen. Not to mention the Ben & Jerry's they devour when depressed.
"Elsie did not die in vain; we're using every little bit of her," says Patricia Wexler, a New York dermatologist who is known as the Vermeer of fat injections.
It is telling that the latest chic table arrangement is a small plot of grass - perfect for grazing.
"Husbands have to start worrying now: if their wives are ranting and raving, is it menopause or is it mad cow disease?" Dr. Wexler says dryly.
British women are skittish. Andrew Markey, a London dermatologist, said many patients were switching from bovine collagen to hyaluronic acid, a line "filler" found in roosters' combs, even though his collagen comes from America. "It's not about science," he said. "It's an emotional response."
In America, vanity is still beating out health fears, according to Richard G. Glogau, a San Francisco dermatologist. "Most women would find the prospect of dying wrinkled a lot worse than the prospect of dying of dementia from collagen," he says. "As long as they don't drop dead 30 seconds later, they'll do it."
Dr. Wexler says vanity also trumps morality: "I've never had a patient ask about a kosher cow. I've never had a vegetarian model object to bovine collagen. I've never had an animal rights activist object to cows getting killed for collagen. When it comes to cosmetic matters, women have a `Don't ask, don't tell me, please!' policy."
The Queen of Fat injects herself with bovine collagen, and says she prefers the cow product to alternative fillers - including one drawn from human cadavers, which gets tested for H.I.V.
When her patients get antsy, she explains that the collagen comes from "a closed herd, a very elite club of cows. My patients want reassurance that they can go on guilt-free and wrinkle-free. They're not looking for written testimonials."
Some beauty-seekers are, however. "One woman wanted to visit the herd," says Arnold Klein, a Beverly Hills dermatologist.
Executives of the McGhan Medical Corporation, which supplies a large share of the world's collagen, say it has 2,000 cows, a "primary herd" and a "backup herd," on 2,000 acres on the California-Oregon border, that eat grain, breed with each other and are slaughtered on-site.
But McGhan also has a biogenetically engineered human collagen waiting for F.D.A. approval that may eventually supersede bovine collagen. The foreskin of one infant boy - the son of a company executive, according to Dr. Klein - will be engineered into a supply that will replicate endlessly and provide lips, etc., for women all over the world ad infinitum. A bris to remember.
But until women can start injecting infant-boy foreskin into their faces, they must confront the specter of being quarantined if they start drooling and slobbering.
Tina Alster, a Washington dermatologist who gives herself bovine collagen injections, is calm.
"I would rather be among the quarantined than on the outside of the ring," she says. "Let everyone else look horrible."
---
SENATE PASSES MINERAL RIGHTS BILL
New York Times
April 11, 2001
National Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/national/11BRFS.html
COLORADO: A bill intended to prevent disputes between property owners and the oil and gas industry has passed the State Senate. New homeowners in the West are sometimes surprised to learn that someone else owns the severed mineral rights under their land and can drill for oil or gas. The bill, which must go back to the House to consider Senate amendments, would require title companies to notify prospective buyers of mineral rights ownership on their land. Mindy Sink (NYT)
------
USA Today
04/11/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Alaska
Anchorage - The state said it has uncovered more than a dozen air pollution infractions at the world's largest zinc mine. The Canadian owner of the Red Dog mine in remote northwest Alaska said it takes the problems seriously and is working to correct them. Most of the problems involve emissions from six diesel generators at the mine, which also produces lead.
New Mexico
Albuquerque - The federal government has completed a land exchange in which it acquired 12,252 acres of private land in return for 11,319 acres in the Cibola National Forest. The Forest Service said it wanted the private land to consolidate its holdings in an area northeast of Mount Taylor, north of Grants.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma City - Oklahoma companies released fewer toxic chemicals and reused more during the latest year tracked by state environmental officials. Companies reported releasing 32.8 million pounds of toxic chemicals in 1999, almost 6 million pounds less than in 1998. Reuse, primarily recycling, increased by 6 million pounds to 69.5 million pounds, the environmental agency said.
Tennessee
Copperhill - A privately-funded environmental cleanup has begun in a region so depleted by decades of copper mining that state officials used to pitch it to moviemakers as a moonscape. The landowner struck a deal with federal and state environmental officials to spend tens of millions of dollars over at least four years to clean it up.
Wyoming
Casper - Comments on a proposed road-construction ban in national-forest roadless areas were 2 to 1 in favor of the ban, according to U.S. Forest Service totals the Sierra Club released. The proposal to halt the building of roads in roadless areas was issued at the end of the Clinton administration and is on hold until May 12 for a White House review.
---
Japan will not join European Union on warming treaty
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/11/01
Patrice Hill THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001411222334.htm
Japan is refusing to go along with the European Union's attempts to ratify the global-warming treaty without the United States, but European officials say that most other countries are sympathetic to their cause.
The treaty, which was drafted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, could go into effect if it is ratified by industrialized nations that produce 55 percent or more of the gases said to cause global warming. That threshold could not be met without either Japan or the United States. The United States alone reportedly produces one-quarter of all manmade greenhouse gases and Japan also is one of the top producers.
"At this moment, Japan is not thinking of ratifying the protocol without the United States," said Hakariko Ono, spokeswoman for a delegation of Japanese environment ministers that met with Bush officials here last week.
The Japanese delegation pressed the administration to reconsider its opposition to the treaty, and held out hope that the United States eventually will rejoin negotiations with the rest of the world.
Canada and Australia also are believed to be skeptical of the European proposal.
But European leaders, who yesterday wrapped up a global tour to push ratification without the United States, said they will continue to press their case and have been encouraged by the reception they've received from most nations other than Japan.
"We had quite a positive statement and quite a positive message from Iran [which represents a group of 77 developing nations], and also from Russia and China about going on even without the United States," said Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson. The current president of the 15-member European Union spoke at a press conference in Tokyo.
"I think we have very strong support [for the treaty] from all countries but the United States," he said, noting that even China has pledged to do all it can to curb its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The treaty does not impose the deep cuts below 1990 emissions levels on China that it imposes on the United States and other industrial nations. China, India and other potentially large emissions producers in the Third World are required to make only voluntary efforts to comply with the treaty.
It is the exemption of China and other developing countries that has most irritated the United States and led to the rejection of the treaty both in the Senate and by the Bush administration.
The Europeans are using both carrots and sticks to try to force the United States back to the negotiating table or, short of that, get an agreement without the United States.
Jon Pronk, the Dutch chairman of negotiations slated for Bonn in July, said he is working on a draft compromise document that would be more favorable to the United States than compromises discussed in negotiations at The Hague, which ended in collapse last year.
The latest proposal would allow the United States to rely on the carbon-absorbing powers of its forests and grasslands to achieve a larger portion of the treaty's emissions cuts than Europeans would agree to at The Hague talks, officials said.
U.S. farmers, ranchers and rural state Republicans in Congress support reliance on such carbon-absorbing "sinks."
But in another major area of contention the Europeans are making it clear the United States will lose out big-time if it doesn't sign onto the treaty because it will not be eligible to purchase emissions credits from other countries.
The credits were designed by the Clinton administration to make it easier and less costly to comply with the treaty championed by former Vice President Al Gore.
Russia and the East European countries have the most credits to sell under the Clinton scheme, since most of them are producing far less emissions than the treaty permits because of the collapse of their economies since 1990.
The ex-Soviet bloc countries actually could make money under the treaty if it were ratified today, with or without the United States, because of the scheme permitting them to sell credits to countries that are over their limits.
Europeans, in urging Japan and other nations to ratify the treaty without the United States, are pointing out that the credits would cost much less without the potentially enormous demand from U.S. businesses, making it easier for nations that ratify the treaty.
---
Beijing wins exemption to U.N. treaty
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/11/01
Betsy Pisik
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001411224157.htm
NEW YORK - Chinese negotiators, overriding U.S. objections, last month won an 11th-hour exemption to an international treaty that would require every firearms manufacturer to mark its weapons with a universally recognized code.
Under the U.N. protocol, firearms are to be permanently marked with a serial number that identifies every weapon, including its manufacturer and country of origin. Governments would then be required to keep track of subsequent sales in an effort curb the transport of illicit weapons into conflict zones around the world.
But a last-minute intervention by China would allow its manufacturers to use geometric symbols and Chinese characters instead of universally recognized letters and numbers.
The United States has formally objected.
"It seems to perpetuate a unique system of marking that . . . cannot be easily communicated by computer or even by phone," one U.S. official said this week. "We want law enforcement to recognize a number when they see it."
The American official noted that Russian and Egyptian manufacturers, among others, could also have demanded to use unique codes, including Cyrillic and Arabic symbols. However, Russia has indicated its willingness to use Western characters.
Final details of the protocol -which will come before the General Assembly for approval within the next few weeks - were negotiated in Vienna last month after years of preparatory work. It will take force when ratified by 40 countries.
The agreement is a part of the larger U.N. Transnational Organized Crime Convention, which the United States supports. The new protocol seeks to limit the scope of weapons trafficking by making it easier to trace firearms and limit the activities of weapons brokers, among other initiatives. It is legally binding on those nations that sign it.
A similar weapons agreement is now under discussion in New York, but that document would not be binding.
Although weapons of mass destruction get more headlines, disarmament officials say illicitly obtained small arms and light weapons kill more people every year. Easily transported, concealed and operated, weapons such as revolvers, rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades are amplifying and extending conflicts around the world. And there is big money to be made in their manufacture and movement.
The Chinese amendment was introduced just as the Vienna conference was breaking up, said participants, who noted that there wasn't even time for the new language to be printed and distributed.
"This happened at the 11th hour, and there was tumult in the hall," said one participant. "The interpreters were leaving, everyone was getting ready to go home."
Members of the European Union are also concernt away with everything."
Many of the same issues are under discussion in New York, where ministers will meet July 9 to 20 to finish a nonbinding agreement to prevent illicit trade in small arms and light weapons.
A final round of preparatory talks has just concluded in New York, with the participants still at odds over such fundamental points as which arms would be covered, how comprehensively to trace legal weapons shipments, and whether to prohibit the sale of arms to "non-state actors," such as resistance groups.
The French and Swiss have jointly introduced a proposal requiring that all weapons be subject to the same marking and tracking procedures, something the United States is unlikely to support because it would affect firearms used by American civilians.
"We think it's overkill," said one U.S. official.
-------
Deforestation in Liberia
From: Fitzhugh MacCrae <alaidh@yahoo.com>
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
FMC: A quick note here - the perminant seats on the UN Security Council are not assigned by population size but by who were the most powerful players (and the richest) at the time the UN was established. Racism has nothing to do with its composition unless you count the color green...if you ain't got it you don't get a perminant seat.
NPR reported today that the Oriental Timber Co. is removing quickly the last virgin rainforest in Liberia, with the help of its own militia whose CEO is also working in gun running and other weapons with President Charles Taylor, trading weapons for diamonds from Sierra Leone.
Archbishop Michael Francis, worldwide environmental groups, peace activists and the people of Liberia are opposed to the private violence of the corporate militia, the gun running, and the tree destruction.
Sanctions were sought by the UN, but vetoed by China and France which consume 40% of Liberia's virgin tree lumber. The UN's permanent 5 members include 4 white and 1 Asian country, no African, Arab or Latino countries. The inequity is further seen in the population of France and England, 58 million each, in comparison to India, 1 billion with no permanent seat, Nigeria 90 million with no permanent seat, Brazil, several hundred million and no permanent seat, Egypt, no permanent seat.
---
Citigroup spoof website launched!
From: "Patrick Reinsborough" <organize@ran.org>
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
As I type actions are going off across the world and Citigroup is feeling the heat!
Just got tipped off by a call from a reporter at American Banker that there is a Citigroup spoof website that was launched today in solidarity with the international day of action!
check it out!
http://www.citigroup-global-domination.com/
Whoever is responsible for this great work!
Good luck with the actions everyone and let us know how it goes!
NY - Beka Economopoulos beka@ran.org, 917-560-3609/888-840-6416 or SF - Patrick Reinsborough organize@ran.org, 415-398-4404/800-989-RAIN
-------- imf / world bank / ftaa
Clouds on the free trade horizon
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/11/01
Peter Hadekel
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010411-93659368.htm
The Summit of the Americas, to be held later this month in Quebec City, is an important opportunity for U.S. president George W. Bush to advance the goal of a hemispheric trade deal stretching from Alaska to Argentina. The rest of the hemisphere is waiting for U.S. leadership on the issue, but there hasn´t been much evidence of it so far.
A Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would include 800 million people from 34 nations, with a combined economic output of $11 trillion, creating what would be the largest regional trade bloc in the world. It would open important new markets for goods and services, helping many struggling nations liberalize their economies and speed their growth. It could also help secure and strengthen democracy in the hemisphere.
Negotiators are hoping to conclude a pact by 2005, but the bargaining is exceedingly difficult. One reason is that the FTAA aims to go much farther than NAFTA. Issues on the table include: agriculture, investment, services, government procurement, market access, competition policy, intellectual property rights, dispute settlement and common definitions of such things as subsidies, dumping and countervail.
Some progress has been made, but there are real dangers ahead. One is the fact that the Quebec City summit is gradually being hijacked by protest groups threatening another battle in Seattle. Canadian police and security forces anticipate up to 25,000 protesters at the April 20-22 meeting. Organizers are spending in excess of $20 million (U.S.) on security measures, including a 10-foot high, 2.5-mile fence that will protect the area where delegates meet. The unprecedented security may well succeed in saving the local McDonald´s from getting smashed. But it may not stop political leaders from caving in to demands that the trade deal include a grab-bag of measures to protect the environment, labor or human rights.
The risk here is obvious. Freighting the trade talks with issues that have nothing to do with trade could kill the FTAA negotiations, which are complex and sensitive enough. As one Canadian business executive put it: People are looking at trade deals as a Christmas tree that they want to hang every ornament on. If you do that, you´re going to break down the basis of what makes a trade deal work.
What´s needed now is a real demonstration of political will especially from the United States that free trade is a priority and that other issues in the hemisphere will be dealt with separately. Most of the calls for labor and environment clauses in the FTAA come from union groups and activists in North America, not to mention Democrats in Congress. The irony is that developing nations in Latin America and the Caribbean don´t want them. Spelling out labor and environmental standards in a trade deal (and imposing sanctions on countries whose standards may be lower than in the United States) is simply protectionism in another guise.
The issue could stall the trade talks at a critical point. The Quebec City summit needs to generate a renewed sense of momentum on the trade front. But, as the General Accounting Office warned last week in a pessimistic report, some FTAA participants believe the United States has been distracted from pursuing trade liberalization because it is without a domestic consensus on the benefits of trade and the way in which to handle the overlap between trade and labor rights and the environment.
Another danger as we approach Quebec City is the continued absence of fast-track negotiating authority in the White House. Fast track (now known as Trade Promotion Authority) would limit Congress to a yes or no vote on the whole deal. It was a key factor in the Clinton administration´s ability to get NAFTA through Congress without the deal being picked apart by special interests. Without fast track, developing countries will be reluctant to negotiate seriously. Their fear is that a carefully negotiated package of compromises might simply fall apart once Congress starts to add its own demands. Securing fast-track authority will send a key signal to all FTAA participants on the seriousness of U.S. intentions, says José Manuel Salazar, special trade adviser to Organization of American States.
The stakes for the United States should be obvious. As the GAO pointed out, a Free Trade Area of the Americas could provide significant economic and geopolitical benefits. The region purchases about 36 percent of U.S. exports and receives 23 percent of U.S. foreign direct investment. But U.S. products still face barriers to trade in the hemisphere, including average tariffs of 10 per cent in countries outside of NAFTA.
An FTAA would continue moves already underway in many countries to liberalize and privatize their economies. It´s no accident that increased economic openness over the last two decades has coincided with remarkable political change. As recently as 1975, there were 19 dictatorships in the hemisphere. Today, only Cuba remains outside the democratic family and therefore not invited to Quebec City.
While democracy is still fragile in countries such as Haiti, Colombia and Peru, it is beginning to take firmer root. What is clear is that without economic growth, trade and development, efforts to combat poverty and drug trafficking will suffer. And threats to democracy will persist.
It´s time for the Bush administration to get the Quebec summit on its radar screen and to send out the right signals on trade liberalization.
Peter Hadekel is the editorial page editor of the Gazette in Montreal, Quebec.
-------- genetics
Safe-food issue put on the table
Labels for genetically modified products debated as committee hearings wrap up
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday 11 April 2001
AARON DERFEL The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010411/5071566.html
Should genetically modified food be labeled as such?
That was the question yesterday when the Canadian Biotechnology
Advisory Committee ended its cross-country tour with a hearing in Montreal to consider labeling, among other issues. The committee is to submit its recommendations to Prime Minister Jean Chretien in June.
Consumer-rights groups and environmentalists are calling for mandatory labeling, arguing that the long-term health effects of genetically modified products are not known.
The food and agriculture industry, however, are generally opposed to labeling and will only agree to voluntary measures.
The committee heard presentations from more than a dozen people representing a cross-section of interests on the subject. The consultation was held behind closed doors at the Sheraton Hotel on Rene Levesque Blvd. but the committee allowed those who participated to speak to reporters.
Peter Phillips, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Saskatchewan, who is serving as committee co-chairman, said people on both sides of the debate share similar goals.
"Although there is a wide range of stakeholders in the room, there's a fairly common agreement on what the end goals should be, which are safe food and sustainable production," Phillips said.
"The question is how do you get there, and that's where the debate is."
Genetically modified foods are produced using recent advances in gene technology, including cloning, gene splicing and plant transformation. This is usually done to make a food like a tomato resistant to insects or herbicides or to improve ripening.
There's also a new trend: "nutriceuticals." These are foods that have been genetically modified to improve their nutritional value. For example, scientists in Switzerland are working on a type of rice that would be enhanced with Vitamin A to fight malnutrition in developing nations.
Claude Lapointe, Quebec sales representative for Syngenta Seeds, told the committee that the current regulations on food labeling work just fine. Syngenta produces corn seed that is modified with a transgene that makes the cornstalks resistant to insects.
"I think biotechnology can bring benefits to consumers, and the regulatory system we have in place now is adequate to provide safe food," he said.
Under the current system, labels are required to list the contents of a product. Nutritional labels are voluntary, Phillips said.
The United Kingdom and Japan have adopted mandatory labeling for genetically modified foods and a dozen other countries are considering following suit. In Canada, Liberal MP Charles Caccia has tabled a private member's bill calling for such labeling.
Phillips, however, said he's not convinced mandatory labeling works.
"The effect of those systems - the way they're structured in those countries - has been, for the most part, to drive out products that would provide some choice," he said, offering his personal opinion and not that of the committee.
"Some people are indifferent to what they eat. Some people have very specific concerns."
Joseph Caron, an analyst with the consumer-rights group Action Reseau Consommateur, argued that voluntary labels would not give people a clear choice.
"Voluntary labeling simply does not guarantee the choice I think should be given to consumers," he said.
He estimated that up to 70 per cent of food products contain ingredients that at some point in processing were genetically modified.
"As our government has accepted these products to be put on the market at this time, I think it's reasonable that the persons who don't want to consume them have the choice," Caron said. "The only way to do that is with obligatory labeling."
-------- imf / world bank
When free trade isn't free
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday 11 April 2001
DON MACDONALD The Gazette
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/pages/010411/5071315.html
Don't get him wrong. Frank Dottori supports free trade as much as the next Canadian businessman.
It's just that he doesn't like the way the Americans define free trade.
"They want our water. They want our energy. They want whatever they need. That's free trade," said Dottori, chief executive officer of forest-products company Tembec Inc. "But on the other hand, they won't take our potatoes. They won't take our tomatoes. And they won't take our lumber.
"So there's a fair amount of hypocrisy between what they say publicly and what they practice."
Right now, Dottori is in the thick of the most notorious of Canada-U.S. free-trade disputes - softwood lumber.
And he believes Canadian negotiators of the Free Trade Area of the Americas should focus their efforts on strengthening protection for Canadian business against unfair trade action by the United States. Leaders of 34 countries are to meet in Quebec City April 20-22 to discuss the proposed FTAA pact.
The FTAA negotiations are often touted as being aimed at opening a free-trade zone of 800 million people in countries with a combined domestic product of $10 trillion U.S.
But for the vast majority of Canadian businesses, the story remains access to the U.S. market.
Trade numbers tell the tale. Canada exported merchandise worth $358.9 billion to the United States last year. That's 87 per cent of our total exports.
By contrast, we exported just $6.3 billion to Latin America and the Caribbean. That's just 1.5 per cent of our total exports. Taken another way, we export more to the United States in a week than we do to all the rest of the FTAA countries in a year.
Latin America does represent a youthful and fast-growing market for Canadian business. But the experience of Canada's relationship with Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement doesn't suggest an export boom if an FTAA agreement comes into effect.
Federal trade officials like to focus on a 191-per-cent increase in exports between Canada and Mexico from 1993 to 2000 under NAFTA. But in dollar terms, the increase is just $1.6 billion.
Seven years after NAFTA took effect, Canada exports more to the United States in two days than it does to Mexico in a year.
Canada has enjoyed a more-than-fourfold surge in exports to the United States since the original free-trade agreement came into effect in 1989. And dozens of trade disputes have been successfully arbitrated between the two countries.
But the United States has, nevertheless, taken aggressive trade action against a series of Canadian products over the years, including steel, wheat, sugar, potatoes and, of course, softwood lumber.
Tembec and other Canadian lumber exporters are currently facing just the latest round in the seemingly endless trade war over softwood-lumber shipments to the United States . The U.S. industry is demanding tough duties on Canadian lumber even though international trade bodies have upheld Canada's timber policies three times in 20 years.
Trade expert Gordon Ritchie bluntly states that he believes Canadian business has little to gain in the FTAA.
"I don't believe there's anything that's going to be achieved," said Ritchie, a negotiator of the original Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement. "How would the FTAA put us in a better position relative to the U.S. than we are now?
"And I see some risks," Ritchie warned. The Americans "will probably want to further weaken the dispute (settlement) machinery, arguing that now it's going to be applied to all the Latin American countries and can't be binding."
Ritchie noted that Canadian companies have substantial investments in Latin America in such areas as mining, energy and telecommunications.
These investments, which total about $44 billion and are growing rapidly, may benefit from increased protection in the FTAA pact, he said.
But "we can achieve the real economic advantages, such as they are, from bilateral agreements."
Bill Dymond, another trade authority, said the eventual benefits of an FTAA pact "won't move mountains" in terms of Canada's trade picture, given the small size of our relationship with Latin America.
And on the more important issue of winning concessions on punitive U.S. anti-dumping and countervailing duty rules, it's far too early to tell whether any progress can be made in the FTAA round, said Dymond, executive director of the Centre for Trade Policy and Law in Ottawa.
We're still three years away from crunch time in the negotiations and progress will depend crucially on the U.S. administration winning fast-track negotiating authority from Congress, he said.
Dymond noted, however, that an agreement would be an important step forward for those Canadian companies that are active in Latin America.
One such company is Montreal's Positron Inc. Positron makes and sells 911 emergency-response telephone systems and this year expects to make about 10 per cent of its $250 million in sales in Latin America. The company's business in the region is growing fast.
"The elimination of duty would not only make us more competitive . . . but make our products more affordable to customers," Positron president Reg Weiser said.
Weiser added that a free-trade agreement would also open doors in Latin America for Canadian companies, helping them overcome a natural bias for customers to choose local suppliers over foreign companies.
Business, for the most part, is a big booster of the FTAA negotiations as it has been for earlier trade pacts. This month, close to 1,000 corporate representatives from all 34 countries met for two days in Buenos Aires to put together a set of recommendations for trade ministers.
Jayson Myers, chief economist at the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters alliance, said Canada needs to be at the table both for offensive reasons - to gain better access to Latin American markets - and for defensive reasons - to protect and, if possible, improve access to the U.S. market.
"We can't lose sight of the fact that these negotiations are very much about our economic relationship with the U.S. as much as it is with Latin America," Myers said. "And one of the biggest (objectives) is to ensure that whatever comes out of the FTAA agreement ... we don't see our free-trade agreement with the U.S. eroded or diluted in any way."
- Don Macdonald's E-mail address is dmacdonald@thegazette.southam.ca.
-------- police
Our Towns: Get Verniero? Or Getting Nowhere?
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By MATTHEW PURDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/nyregion/11TOWN.html
RENTON - A month of marathon hearings about racial profiling by the state police meandered to its close here last evening with uncertainty about everything, including whether the hearings were actually over.
Solutions for the long-running problem remain unclear. Culprits in the state police were never identified. Even the clearest outcome of the hearings was denied by one of the Senate Judiciary Committee members. "I hope the public is not getting the idea that we are out to get Peter Verniero," Senator Raymond Zane said yesterday.
But the committee was obviously gunning for Justice Verniero, the State Supreme Court judge whom committee members angrily accused of misleading them about racial profiling when he was attorney general under Christie Whitman.
After Justice Verniero gave 13 hours of often forgetful testimony two weeks ago, the committee and Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco called for his resignation, raising the possibility of impeachment by the General Assembly. This week, with Mr. Verniero's role fully aired, fewer senators came to hear testimony from victims of profiling and discrimination. The Senate committee chairman, William L. Gormley, said he intended to call yet another session.
But now that the Senate has filled the pot with water, heated it to a rolling boil and hoisted Justice Verniero over it, the tension is whether the Assembly will drop him in.
Informed betting is running against it. Many in the Assembly are said to view Justice Verniero as the Senate's business. Besides, an impeachment trial by the Republican-controlled Legislature of a former Republican attorney general would hardly help the party during next fall's gubernatorial election. New Jersey Republicans have turned into a dysfunctional family, but it's unlikely they'll actually torch their own house.
The state has more of an investment in whether the culture of the state police actually changes.
A moment last week perfectly captured the stubbornness of that culture. Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. told the committee that despite administrative changes, records show that racial bias continues in stops and searches on the New Jersey Turnpike. In response, Ed Lennon, the head of the state troopers' union, said he knew there was no such problem because no trooper had been pulled off the road or disciplined.
Mr. Lennon was not advocating disciplining anyone. He was simply taking the time- honored racial-profiling stance: the problem must not exist because no one is addressing it.
If the Senate Judiciary hearings exposed anything, it was the mostly white state leadership's official denial of a burning issue among minorities.
Senator Wayne R. Bryant, testifying yesterday as a member of the Legislative Black and Latino Caucus, reminded the all- white committee that minority legislators requested hearings on racial profiling in 1998 and 1999 and that legislative leaders turned them down. When caucus members held their own hearings in 1999, legislative leaders denied them staff assistance. Caucus members personally paid for a stenographer, he said.
None of the 20 laws proposed by the caucus has come up for a hearing or a vote in the Legislature. "Sometimes you wonder if it was because it's African-American and Latino legislators," said Assemblyman LeRoy J. Jones, a caucus member. Mr. Gormley reminded Mr. Jones that he, too, held a racial-profiling hearing that same year, but "no one came."
With the political climate altered, everyone came to this year's hearings. That included black state troopers who first raised the issue of racial profiling and discrimination nearly a decade ago, only, they say, to be ostracized and harassed by the department. They brought along racially insulting material used as nasty pranks by fellow officers - some from as recently as a few months ago.
They were pained at how little the culture of the department seemed to have changed. One of the troopers, Gregory Sanders, said that without holding anyone in the department responsible for the racial profiling, "you don't send a message that what you did was wrong."
Col. Carson Dunbar, the state police superintendent, said the difficulty of rooting out racial profilers was in "proving intent" - understanding what was motivating the trooper.
At the close of the racial-profiling hearings, with Justice Verniero's future uncertain and with state police still living in the past, the intent of the Legislature is also an open question, yet to be proven.
---
Cincinnati Quiet After Nights of Riots
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Shooting-Protest.html
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Religious leaders called for calm Wednesday among city residents outraged at the police shooting of an unarmed black man but said blacks have legitimate fears that must be addressed.
Fifteen black men have died at the hands of police since 1995, including four since November. Canon Vicar Kwasi Thornell, an Episcopal clergyman at Christ Church Cathedral, said police must be brought under control.
``If they don't see that, they're missing the boat,'' said Thornell, who is black. ``The young people in the street, nobody is listening to them.''
Other clergy joined Thornell in calling for an end to violence that followed the death of Timothy Thomas, who was shot Saturday while fleeing a white police officer. Thomas, 19, was wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants.
Over-the-Rhine, the mostly black and poor neighborhood just north of downtown that had two nights of disturbances, was mostly peaceful Wednesday as youths on spring break gathered in the streets.
Groups of young men had roved through the area Tuesday night, setting fires, looting stores and beating motorists. Police arrested at least 66 people on charges including disorderly conduct, criminal rioting, obstruction, felony assault, theft and breaking and entering.
Some residents who complain that police often harass young black men said they were as overzealous as usual Tuesday.
Ayanna Greer, a 26-year-old teacher aide, said she saw officers use their shields to push a man out of the street even though he offered no resistance. She said she worries about her 5-year-old son's future in the neighborhood.
``I want a change. I don't want to lose my son in the streets,'' said Greer, who is black. ``I don't want anyone else killed -- black or white.''
Police said they used as much restraint as possible as property damage and assaults mounted. Mayor Charles Luken said he had heard complaints about rough treatment by police, but said officers had handled a volatile situation professionally.
Luken and other city officials also talked with residents. On Tuesday afternoon, officers with helmets and shields set up protective rings around City Hall and police headquarters and fired bean bags and rubber bullets at about 50 demonstrators who roamed downtown throwing rocks, cans and bottles.
Officers remained posted in groups Wednesday on street corners between Over-the-Rhine and downtown.
Workers boarded up smashed windows in stores next to a police substation, where windows weren't touched. Around the corner, workers were cleaning up fire and water damage in a store set ablaze Tuesday night.
The shooting of Thomas is only part of the reason for blacks' anger, said Steve Reece, a black businessman. He said blacks, who account for 43 percent of Cincinnati's population after years of white flight to distant suburbs, feel economically left behind as millions of dollars are pumped into riverfront and downtown construction.
Jim Tarbell, a white restaurateur who joined the City Council three years ago, said Cincinnati has failed for decades to develop Vine Street, which runs through the heart of downtown and Over-the-Rhine. He said the neighborhood has dozens of vacant buildings but no housing that could attract new residents and investment.
Police union president Keith Fangman said the officer, Steve Roach, thought Thomas had a gun and feared for his life. Roach was placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure after police shootings.
The U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney's office in Cincinnati joined the FBI in a federal investigation of the shooting Wednesday.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Michael Allen said he probably would present the case to a grand jury sometime after a new jury is sworn in Monday. Allen said he would also look at surveillance tapes from downtown stores to identify looters.
---
Clash in Cincinnati Over Shooting by Police
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/national/11CINC.html
CINCINNATI, April 10 - The police fired bean bags and rubber bullets today at demonstrators who broke windows downtown in a protest over the police killing of an unarmed black man early Saturday.
It was the second day that protesters had run through the streets and police officers had formed protective cordons around City Hall and nearby police headquarters.
At least 20 people were arrested on charges that included rioting and disorderly conduct, Lt. Ray Ruberg of the police said.
As darkness fell, violence spread into the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood north of downtown, where the police reported scattered incidents of looting, setting fires and attacks in which bricks were thrown into cars and the drivers assaulted.
Paramedics took about 25 people to hospitals and treated 40 others at the scene, Lieutenant Ruberg said. The injured included people hurt in the attacks and by bean bags or rubber bullets.
Mayor Charles Luken appealed for calm tonight in a news conference at City Hall, where riot-clad police guarded the front door. He called for a public dialogue to replace violence.
"If we can't do that," Mayor Luken said, "then I'm not optimistic that the future will be that much better than the past."
The confrontation came three days after Timothy Thomas, 19, was fatally shot as he ran from a police officer trying to arrest him on 14 warrants. Mr. Thomas, who lived in Cincinnati, had been wanted for misdemeanors and traffic violations.
The F.B.I. opened a civil rights investigation today. And, a Hamilton County grand jury is investigating the shooting, which came at a time of tension between the Cincinnati Police Department and black residents. Four black men have been killed by officers since November.
---
City's Liability Is Debated in Killing by Police Officer
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By MONTE WILLIAMS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/nyregion/11DOBB.html
A lawyer argued yesterday in federal court that the City of New York should not be held liable for the fatal shooting of a man in a Westchester parking lot simply because the killer was an off-duty New York police officer.
The family of the dead man, Charles Campbell, has sued the city, as well as the officer and several of his relatives. In opening statements of the trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the city's lawyer, Andrea Moss, said yesterday that the gunman, Richard D. DiGuglielmo, was "not acting as a police officer" but as a private citizen when he, his father and his brother-in-law got into a scuffle with Mr. Campbell over a parking space outside the DiGuglielmo family's delicatessen in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., on Oct. 3, 1996. Mr. DiGuglielmo was later convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
"It was a ridiculous personal fight over a deli parking spot," Ms. Moss said. "Nothing about what he did that day made him a police officer."
Addressing a jury of five men and three women, she added that Mr. DiGuglielmo "never said, `I'm a police officer, don't move.' " The city, she said, "does not belong here."
But a lawyer for the family of Mr. Campbell, 37, a White Plains sanitation worker, maintained yesterday that the city was liable because the officer "acted within the scope of his employment." The lawyer, Randolph M. McLaughlin, said the fact that Mr. DiGuglielmo was off duty "is of no moment." The city, he said, teaches its officers that "you're a cop 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
The suit seeks unspecified damages from the former officer; his father, Richard B. DiGuglielmo; his brother-in-law Robert W. Errico; the family businesses; and the city.
The incident in Dobbs Ferry began when Mr. Campbell refused to move his black Corvette from a space in front of the Venice Deli, which is run by the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo and his wife, Rosemarie.
Mr. Campbell did not enter the deli, but went across the street for pizza and, according to law enforcement officials, became angry when he saw the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo placing a "No Parking" sticker on his car window. Mr. Campbell ran back across the street and was confronted by the two DiGuglielmos and Mr. Errico, said Mr. McLaughlin.
Mr. Campbell, an amateur boxer, at first fought the men, but was tackled. When the three men let him up, Mr. Campbell got a baseball bat from his car and struck the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo on the leg. After a brawl that lasted several minutes, the son went into the deli, grabbed his father's .32-caliber Colt automatic and fired it at Mr. Campbell.
The elder Mr. DiGuglielmo had a 20-year history of cursing, choking and spitting at people who parked in front of the deli but did not patronize the store, said Mr. McLaughlin, the Campbell family's lawyer. There have been 21 cases of such actions by DiGuglielmo family members reported to the Dobbs Ferry police, said a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Several people testified yesterday that the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo assaulted them when they parked in front of his store. Richard Bullen of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., who works for a software company, said that on June 15, 1985, he parked his car in front of the deli, intending to go across the street to buy pizza.
"He said I wasn't supposed to park there," Mr. Bullen said of the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo. "He grabbed my neck and tried to strangle me."
Thomas Meenan of Mount Vernon, N.Y., said he had also parked in front of the deli to buy pizza when the elder Mr. DiGuglielmo accosted him. "He reached in the window, smacked me and spat on me," Mr. Meenan said.
He added that although he called the police, he did not press charges. "I just wanted to scare him a little bit," he said.
---
Troopers Say Fellow Officers Still Harass Them Racially
April 11, 2001
New York Times
By LAURA MANSNERUS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/nyregion/11TROO.html
TRENTON, April 10 - New Jersey state troopers testifying before a legislative committee today recounted racial harassment by fellow troopers in station houses and on the road, which they said was still condoned by superiors.
"I can tell you about being profiled within the state police," Yusuf el- Amin, a trooper for 22 years, told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Trooper el-Amin and other minority troopers said harassment still continued, and they showed posters and T-shirts bearing racist caricatures that they said were taken from police stations.
The state police superintendent, Col. Carson Dunbar, also testified today, and pointed out that the minority troopers had all filed lawsuits against the agency. "There's a certain amount of litigation going on in testimony," said Colonel Dunbar, who maintained that a small number of officers were responsible for the agency's racial problems.
As he spoke, however, the reporters and the battery of cameras that have recorded the committee's four weeks of hearings on racial profiling drifted to a news conference at the State House to hear Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. announce that he was joining the legal team for 13 minority troopers who are suing the agency.
Mr. Cochran, who complained that the troopers "are an afterthought in these hearings," was followed by several plaintiffs. One of them, Trooper el-Amin, said that humiliations were "more subtle now" but that "the people who did things 10 years ago when I was a road trooper are now in supervisory positions."
The Judiciary Committee heard the troopers and five black and Latino legislators on the last scheduled day of hearings. The first three weeks focused on what Peter G. Verniero, now a State Supreme Court justice, knew about evidence of discrimination by the state police when he was attorney general from 1996 to 1999.
And as the hearings drew to a close, the committee sent a report to the Assembly speaker, Jack Collins, outlining its findings. The chairman of the committee, William L. Gormley, said the report would be released after Mr. Collins had reviewed it.
Some legislators have called for Mr. Verniero's impeachment, but Mr. Collins, who has been in a meeting room in Princeton working on redistricting, has not said what his intentions are, and he had no immediate response.
Mr. Gormley said there would be at least one more hearing, outside Trenton, where expert testimony would be presented. The committee has promised legislation to correct the disparate treatment of white and minority drivers, most recently documented by the statistics from last year, in traffic stops and searches.
The troopers who testified today said they were under pressure to stop minority drivers. Emblez Longoria, who has been a trooper for 13 years, said some troopers in the unit where he started would stop only black and Hispanic drivers. He said he also had to participate in "ghost stops," often involving searches, which were never recorded.
Trooper Longoria, who is Hispanic, said his protests about racial profiling and later about "the racist atmosphere" made him a target for harassment and a punitive transfer.
Several troopers also described harassment, including racist comments posted on their mailboxes, uniforms and hat badges stolen and threats posted on a Web site for troopers. They said the threats came from someone called the Phantom and, in the South Jersey barracks, from a group called the Lords of Discipline. Recent posters and T- shirts available in the stations proclaim "the 10 percenters," referring to Colonel Dunbar's assertion that the blame for profiling rests with 10 percent of the troopers.
Colonel Dunbar said he was not aware of the posters and T-shirts, but he said he had always recognized the need for changes in "the culture of the state police."
Earlier, the committee heard from five members of the Legislative Black and Latino Caucus, all of whom said that their request for hearings two years ago was ignored and that all of the bills the caucus introduced to correct racial profiling had languished since 1999.
While the current hearings have been presented as a bipartisan effort, Senator Wayne R. Bryant, a Camden Democrat, accused the Republicans of burying the problem until they had seated Mr. Verniero on the Supreme Court.
Senator Gormley, who as committee chairman was a principal advocate of Mr. Verniero's nomination, noted that the committee had held hearings on racial profiling while Mr. Verniero was attorney general, but had no evidence then that his office had ignored or withheld any information. Mr. Bryant chided the committee for approving Mr. Verniero's nomination and said later, "The minority community will not feel vindicated until he is removed."
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NORTHERN IRELAND: OFFICER ARRESTED
New York Times
April 11, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11BRIE.html
A Royal Ulster Constabulary officer was one of seven people held for questioning in the killing of a Catholic man kicked to death in 1997 by a Protestant mob. The case has aroused Catholic fury because of allegations that constables in a nearby patrol car witnessed the killing but did not intervene. The arrests were the first ordered by Nuala O'Loan, who was appointed Northern Ireland's police ombudsman, a new post, in November. Warren Hoge (NYT)
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MANHATTAN: DIALLO'S FATHER ENDORSES PLAN
New York Times
April 11, 2001
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/nyregion/11MBRF.html
Saikou Diallo, the father of Amadou Diallo, who was shot and killed by New York police officers, yesterday endorsed a plan by Public Advocate Mark Green to revamp the way the city handles allegations of police misconduct. Mr. Diallo, who stood alongside Mr. Green at a news conference outside City Hall, said he was not prepared to endorse Mr. Green as a candidate for mayor. But he said that he liked some of the Mr. Green's ideas for how to prevent police misconduct, or if necessary, hand out punishment for it. Eric Lipton (NYT)
---
Cincinnati quiet after riots
USA Today
04/11/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-04-11-protests.htm
CINCINNATI (AP) - About a dozen downtown businesses were boarded up Wednesday and glass littered sidewalks following two nights of protests over the police shooting of an unarmed black man. There were few people on the streets as the Cincinnati archdiocese canceled classes at two inner-city Roman Catholic schools and police urged curiosity-seekers to stay out of the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. On Tuesday, gangs of roving youths looted stores, set fires and attacked motorists with bricks, forcing residents to lock themselves indoors while clergy members and politicians appealed for calm. The rioting was sparked by the killing of Timothy Thomas, 19, who was shot while fleeing a white police officer. Thomas, 19, wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants, was the fourth black man killed by police since November.
Police Spc. Scott Johnson had urged people not to go into the streets Tuesday night for their own safety.
''There is fear everywhere,'' said Johnson, head of the Sentinel Police Association, a black officer's group. ''There is fear in the police and on the other side, and people are not distinguishing between those who are causing trouble and those who are bringing peace.''
Earlier Tuesday, officers clad in helmets and shields set up protective rings around City Hall and police headquarters and fired bean bags and rubber bullets at about 50 demonstrators who roamed downtown streets throwing rocks, cans and bottles.
Police on horseback, accompanied by shotgun-armed foot patrols, arrested 66 people on rioting, disorderly conduct and other charges.
Fire department paramedics took about 25 people to hospitals and treated about 40 others on the streets, said police Lt. Ray Ruberg.
The injured included people hit by police with rubber bullets.
The City Council canceled its Wednesday meeting because of the unrest.
Mayor Charles Luken appealed for calm discussion and an end to the violence during a news conference. ''If we can't do that, then I'm not optimistic that the future will be that much better than the past,'' Luken said. Rev. Damon Lynch III, pastor of New Prospect Baptist Church, also urged peace.
''There has to be another voice out there saying we understand your pain and we are with you, but violence is not the answer,'' Lynch, leader of Cincinnati Black United Front, told a meeting of about 150 people.
Churchgoers who'd planned a peaceful march to a nearby park were turned back as police cordoned off the area.
Police Chief Thomas Streicher Jr. on Monday offered condolences to Thomas' family.
Police union president Keith Fangman said the officer, Steve Roach, thought Thomas had a gun and feared for his life.
Roach was placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure after police shootings.
The FBI is investigating whether police violated federal civil rights law in the shooting.
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Rioting in Cincinatti After Police Shooting
Blacks Riot After Neighborhood Youth Shot
From: Fitzhugh MacCrae <alaidh@yahoo.com>
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
AM LSN Staff
Cincinatti, Ohio -- At least one hundred individuals involved in a protest against police brutality rioted in Cincinatti, Ohio last night, overturning cars and looting local businesses, after Cincanatti police officer Steve Roach shot and killed neighborhood youth Timothy Thomas, 19.
Thomas had fourteen arrest warrants at the time of the shooting, though twelve of them were for traffic violations such as failure to wear a seatbelt, and two were for minor misdemeanors.
The rioters, all black, can be seen rioting in these pictures: http://www.usnewscast.com/us/cinci_riot.html
It appears Roach shot Thomas as Thomas tried to escape from arrest on unspecified charges.
Roach's home address and phone number were posted on an internet news site earlier today. They are:
Steve Sandy Roach 4875 Beaver Ct Hamilton, OH 45011-5279 (513)737-9075
Libertarian Socialist News Post Office Box 12244 Silver Spring, MD 20908 lsn@libertariansocialist.com http://www.libertariansocialist.com
---
STREET RIOTS TEAR CINCINNATI
Morrock News, Weds., Apr. 11, 2001
WEDNESDAY :: APRIL 11, 2001 :: EMAIL EDITION
http://morrock.com
Angry crowds rampaged in the streets of Cincinnati after a white policeman allegedly shot and killed an unarmed 19-year-old black man. Scores of people were injured in the rioting, which left the streets in a wide downtown area covered with broken glass and refuse.
---
USA Today
04/11/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
D.C.
The District's police department is offering weekly walk-in testing to attract applicants. Officials want to increase the force from 3,560 to 3,800 beginning Oct. 1 and make up for retirements and resignations. Applicants must be high school graduates and at least 21 years old. Starting salary is about $35,000 per year.
Maryland
Baltimore - A city police officer was indicted on a first-degree murder charge for shooting his wife's lover while she begged for her life, prosecutors said. Rodney Price, 34, is accused of repeatedly shooting Tristin Little, 24, last month after Price spotted them leaving Little's home. His wife wasn't injured.
Montana
Butte - Seven people have joined a federal class-action lawsuit accusing Anaconda police officers of making unnecessary and inappropriate strip searches. The suit says 16 plaintiffs, including women, were searched in view of male inmates and that the searches were videotaped and circulated by department employees. Anaconda and Deer Lodge County officials say the lawsuit contains blatant falsehoods.
-------- spying
Detained Americans Interest Few on Hainan Island
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11CREW.html
HAIKOU, China, April 10 - The 24 unwanted guests staying down the street are no secret to Zhao Ling, proprietor of the Shamelessly Lingering bar, outside which two young women sat tonight, beckoning to passers-by.
"We know they're there, but we've never seen them," Mr. Zhao said, sweating in the torrid air.
A moment later, a black Toyota Crown sedan bearing Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock of the United States Army and an American consul, Ted Gong, left a 40-minute meeting with the 24 crew members of the now famously crippled EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane at a military hostel a few doors from Mr. Zhao's bar.
While the plainclothes and uniformed police officers swarm around the hostel's simple steel-bar gate for the hour surrounding each meeting, security the rest of the time appears remarkably relaxed on this stretch of Airport Road, given that the state of one of the world's most important bilateral relationships turns on the fate of the people held inside.
"It's called `neijin, waisong,' which means, `internally you are tight, externally you are relaxed,' " James Lilley, a former American ambassador to China, said in a telephone interview. "What you do is give the impression on the surface that things are quite relaxed, but the security is there in these plainclothesmen, and there's no chance for the crew to get out."
There are no armed or uniformed guards in front of the hostel's main building, a plain white, five-story structure with brown-tinted windows. A smaller two-story building sits beside it in the small concrete compound, which is hemmed in by other compounds. Some of them, like that of the hostel, belong to the Chinese Navy's South Sea Fleet Air Force, at one of whose airfields the EP-3E landed after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet on April 1.
While no officials will confirm that the crew is living in either building, they are reportedly staying in the same place where they periodically meet with General Sealock and Mr. Gong. And reporters staking out the hostel and the hotel where the American officials are staying have seen the general's car leave the hotel and enter the hostel compound for the last few meetings, identifying it by its license plate.
General Sealock reported after the meeting on Monday that the crew had been given increased freedom inside the building where they are being held, and that they are allowed to exercise, though it is not clear where.
Few Chinese along the street want to discuss geopolitics or seem even remotely interested in the crew. Across the street from the hostel, motorcycles and scooters crowd the sidewalk and shirtless men lounge on folding chairs in front of a row of open-air shops.
"That's the government's problem," said one young man. "We're just ordinary people."
Overdressed young women occasionally stroll by, ready to strike up a conversation with any man who so much as raises an eyebrow at them or smiles. Few are interested in talking about the crew, though.
"I don't know anything about that," said one dark-lipped woman in a sheer maroon sheath, when asked about the diplomatic standoff.
Back at the Shamelessly Lingering bar, the girls were gone but Mr. Zhao was still waiting. He said he did not expect the government to release the crew members until the search has been called off for Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot who collided with the American plane.
After discussing the various fates that might have befallen Mr. Wang, Mr. Zhao paused and asked his guest, "Do you want a girl?"
---
Chinese State Media Cites Powell's 'Sorry'
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11BEIJ.html
BEIJING, Wednesday, April 11 - The state news media today provided hints of progress toward resolution of the impasse over the American spy plane and its crew now detained on Hainan island, prominently publicizing the use of the word "sorry" by Secretary of State Colin Powell on a television show on Sunday and his admission that the damaged plane entered Chinese airspace without permission as it made an emergency landing. In the account of Mr. Powell's remarks put out by the New China News Agency, which was published in today's issue of the People's Daily, featured prominently in more popular newspapers and repeated on the television news, Mr. Powell is quoted as saying, "We do acknowledge that we violated their airspace," and saying the United States was "sorry" for that. It also quotes him as saying "sorry" in relation to the apparent death of the missing Chinese pilot.
The Chinese word used in translating his "sorry" is a stronger one than the rendition used this week for "regret." It is weaker than the word for `'apologize" that officials have been demanding from the United States, but today's reports gave less prominence to that demand.
The news agency account, filed from Washington yesterday, noted that Mr. Powell, while expressing regret for the violation of Chinese airspace, had said that it happened during an emergency, but some media accounts here have left the impression of a more unqualified expression of remorse, or even that Mr. Powell was admitting that the spy flight itself was a territorial violation, which he actually did not say. With public emotions here running high, diplomats hope that such obfuscations may provide a face-saving way for each side to say it has resolved the dispute honorably.
The media also appeared to be preparing the way for an announcement that the widespread search for the downed pilot may be ending.
Some papers have reported the visit of a senior naval officer to the missing pilot's wife yesterday, where he reportedly told her that "his chances of being alive are diminishing." The pilot has not been seen since he parachuted into the sea on April 1, but the continued search has been highly publicized by the authorities.
---
U.S. Families Rejoice at End of Crisis
New York Times
April 11, 2001 Filed at 3:35 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/11WIRE-FAMI.html
CHICAGO, April 11 (Reuters) - Tension and fear dissolved into rejoicing and hopes for Easter weekend reunions on Wednesday with word that the crew of the U.S. Navy plane locked for 11 days in an international standoff would be coming home from China.
In Florida, television cameras caught Sandy Guidry as she uncorked a bottle of champagne at her kitchen sink, poured a toast into a plastic cup and said, ``Thank you Mr. Bush, whatever it took.'' Her son Scott was among the 24 men and women on board the surveillance plane.
Word that China had accepted expressions of sorrow from President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, over the death of a Chinese pilot in the collision between the U.S. plane and a Chinese fighter jet and an apology for landing the U.S. aircraft in China without permission, hit at dawn across the United States. Some family members got their first word from news media wake-up calls.
In Norfolk, Nebraska, Bill Osborn said, ``We're excited. We've been going through a week or two of not knowing what was going to happen.'' The retired automotive dealer's nephew, Shane Osborn, is one of the crew.
``If our leaders or their leaders had handled this badly they (crew) could have been over there for months. I think they (our leaders) did a good job. We are just happy what we hear on the news this morning,'' he said.
'TRYING TIME'
At Katy, Texas, Tilda Young, whose son Rodney was a technician on the flight, said, ``It's been a trying time ... we're just relieved that it's over.''
At his home in northern Illinois Tom Crandall said he was in ``shock, disbelief'' that son Jeremy would be freed, but said he had received a note from him through the Navy the day before with a request for something whenever he did get home -- a ticket to a Chicago Cubs baseball game.
``We're just real happy he's getting home,'' said Brenda Payne, who was at her home in Pampa, Texas, waiting for a call from son Richard. People across the country shared some of the same relief.
``We don't want the Cold War scenario to keep going,'' said Abdurezak Omer, 39, who operates a corner grocery store in Minneapolis. ``We should focus on the economy. We should cooperate instead of confronting each other.''
``I'm certainly happy,'' said Tim Lauer, 45, general manager of the Coastal Seafoods store in the same city. ``It seemed like it was difficult to tell who was responsible for what.''
Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican who chairs the House International Relations Committee, said, ``I'm delighted. I think the White House handled it wonderfully ... the art of diplomacy worked well. There couldn't be a better result.''
NO END OF SURVEILLANCE FLIGHTS
But Hyde, who had earlier suggested sanctions against China if the standoff had continued, said China should not expect an end to the surveillance flights that led to the collision.
At Union Station in Chicago where the news greeted commuters on television monitors, ski shop operator Ron Frake of suburban Glenview said he thought the United States handled the crisis well and that there was no long-term damage to Sino-U.S. relations.
But James Matthews, a rail clerk at the station, said, ``I don't think we should have been there in the first place.''
In New York, where officials plan to light the Empire State Building in the colors of the U.S. and Chinese flags when the U.S. crew is back home, the outcome was greeted in Chinatown as a fair one.
``Our troops are coming back safely and China got to hear the words 'very sorry' from the United States. It is a pretty good deal for both sides,'' said newsstand operator Alex Li.
Li, an immigrant from mainland China and a customer from Taiwan who buys his papers at the stand often do not see eye to eye on some issues, but they were both pleased that the tense situation was heading toward a peaceful resolution.
``Americans should not think too much about the words,'' the customer from Taiwan said. ``It is kind of like a Chinese philosophy that if you hit someone, you say you are sorry -- even if you don't really mean it.''
The editor of the St. Louis Chinese American News, a Chinese language newspaper, said the relief was shared generally by his community. As the two countries know, he said, ``the sooner to resolve this incident the better. So both countries take one step backward.''
---
To Its People, China Depicts U.S. Letter as 'Form of Apology'
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11CND-BEIJING.html
BEIJING, April 11 - Hoping to head off a possible public backlash, the Chinese government told its people today that the United States had offered "a form of apology" for the collision of its spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet that cost the life of the Chinese pilot and led to the detention of the American crew for 10 days.
After demanding for more than a week an official apology and admission of full responsibility for the incident, the Chinese leaders settled for less - a public letter in which the United States said it was "very sorry" to the Chinese people and the family of the lost pilot and was "very sorry" that the crippled aircraft landed in China without permission.
Chinese officials presented today's agreement as a victory for Chinese dignity and world stability. As they announced the imminent release of the 24-member crew, the officials implied they had gained an apology. And they emphasized that "the battle is not over," restating demands that the United States end its offshore spy flights and explain its actions - apparently a topic for future talks. They also vowed to continue "investigating" the damaged aircraft, which was equipped with advanced electronic eavesdropping equipment.
. In meetings today with Communist Party organizations and newspaper, radio and television editors to set the tone for public discussion, party leaders announced that the United States had agreed to "a form of apology" for the incident, without providing the exact language.
In those meetings and in an editorial to appear in tomorrow's issue of the flagship newspaper, The People's Daily, the Chinese leaders exhorted citizens to "turn patriotic zeal into energy for a strong country" by rallying around President Jiang Zemin's leadership and working hard at jobs or studies, rather than second-guessing today's agreement.
The word "apology" did not appear in the English version of the letter released by the United States embassy or in its Chinese translation . But Chinese officials and news writers, in describing the agreement, used various Chinese terms for "sorry" and "regret" without providing the full text of the letter, in an apparent effort to spread the impression among Chinese that the United States had backed down.
There were no published Chinese claims that the United States actually used the word for a full apology, "daoqian," which China originally demanded. The official New China News Agency translated the term as "very sorry," using an another term, "shenbiao qianyi." which can imply some culpability as well as regret.
This term literally means to express regrets or an apology. It did not appear in the Chinese text of the letter prepared by the United States embassy. But the official news agency put it in quotation marks, as though it came directly from the letter. And the foreign ministry spokesman repeatedly used the term in describing the American letter at a news conference tonight.
The letter was tortuously crafted during intensive talks in Beijing and Washington and was hand-delivered by the United States ambassador, Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, to the Chinese foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan.
The English version of the letter released by the embassy, conveyed the United States' "sincere regret" over the missing pilot and aircraft and, speaking of the loss of the pilot, said, "we are very sorry." .
In a nod to China's extreme sensitivity about territorial infringements, the letter also said "we are very sorry" that "the entering of China's airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance." The point was important for China - and fairly easy for the United States to concede since it was technically true.
But the letter also said the Americans understood that the plane had complied with standard emergency procedures in making the hasty landing on a Chinese air base, and added that the United States government was "very pleased the crew landed safely."
Just how the agreement will play among ordinary Chinese may not be evident for days, until the actual terms of the letter become more widely understood. Initial reactions ranged from happiness at what some took to be an American flinch to skepticism about the leadership's resolve.
"This will add to the people's existing image of Jiang Zemin - that he talks big but is inconsistent," one editor of a Communist Party magazine said.
Random interviews in the streets elicited a diversity of views, with many Chinese expressing anger toward the United States over the incident and disdain for the Chinese leadership.
"This Government is so weak," said a 20-year-old bartender named Jiao. "The United States thinks it can do anything it wants to us."
A 38-year-old delivery man named Wu said: "Saying you're sorry isn't good enough. Americans need to know we aren't afraid of their bullying."
Supporting the government's decision to release the crew, a Mr. Zhang, 28, who develops computer software, said: "We want to continue developing and working together with other countries in a stable environment. Our relations with America are extremely complex."
A party official said the real test would come in the next few months, as the United States determines what kinds of weapons to sell to Taiwan despite Chinese objections, and as Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics is decided.
"That's when people will look back and either say, `They were right,' to make this compromise, or "That shows why they can't lead," the official said.
Many Chinese people had felt that the United States, in its initial reaction to the accident, had acted arrogant and insensitive.. In brief comments in front of the embassy, Ambassador Prueher, who as the former commander of the Pacific fleet had directed earlier such spy flights, made a point of extending sympathy to the family of the lost pilot, Wang Wei, referring to him as "a husband, a father and a fellow aviator."
Today, a foreign ministry spokesman, Sun Yuxi, made it clear that the spy plane would not be returned soon, emphasizing China's legal right to investigate the collision that caused the Chinese jet fighter to crash and and the American plane to land in China.
An editorial in Thursday's issue of The People's Daily, which was released to the news media tonight, spelled out the public reaction that the leadership wants to see. The editorial describes the last 10 days as "a staunch struggle with America's high-handed conduct, forcing the American Government to shift from its initial hard-line, peremptory attitude and to say sorry to the Chinese people."
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U.S. Air Crew Departs China, Ending 11-day Standoff
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11CND-CHINA.html
HAIKOU, China, Thursday, April 12 - Twenty-one men and three women boarded a Continental Airlines plane this morning for the first leg of their trip home, ending 11 days in Chinese custody that began when their spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet and made an emergency landing on Hainan island.
They lifted off at 7:29 a.m. from this city's Meilan-Haikou International Airport for Guam.
Word spread early Wednesday that the American crew would be released after journalists across the country who are mid-ranking Communist Party members and above were called to attend secret meetings at which they were ordered to stick to official New China News Agency accounts when reporting the news. The message, according to people who attended one meeting, was that America should be blamed for the incident and that the struggle would continue because the American surveillance aircraft will remain on Chinese soil.
The $100 million EP-3E Aries II, which was heavily damaged in the collision with the Chinese F-8 that was tailing it, is sitting on the airstrip where the American crew's pilot brought it to rest after a harrowing 15-minute ride that aviators describe as just short of miraculous.
The Chinese announced late Wednesday afternoon that the crew would be released, and broadcast the word nationally at about 7 p.m. The Continental plane that will bring the crew back left Guam this afternoon with a team of military officials. There were also doctors and psychologists on board who will conduct preliminary examinations of the crew. A chartered commercial airliner was used because the Chinese insisted that no military aircraft be used to pick up the crew, government officials said.
Once the plane returns to Guam, a military C-17 cargo aircraft is to take the crew to the Hickham Air Force Base near Honolulu. The Pentagon planned to keep the 24 crew members at Hickham for more thorough examinations and debriefings on the flight and the crew's detention.
The Pentagon hopes to learn more about the collision itself, the crew's success in destroying sensitive intelligence equipment and codes aboard and the degree to which the Chinese questioned the crew.
``It's like a crime scene,'' one government official said in Washington. ``You want access to them as quickly as possible while their memory is still fresh.''
President Bush himself ordered the crew members to be back home by Easter, forcing officials at the United States Pacific Command in Hawaii to curtail the crew's stay in Honolulu and prepare to fly the crew members more quickly, the officials said.
The decision to release the crew came after delivery of a diplomatic letter to China's Foreign Minister, Tang Jiaxuan, from United States Ambassador Joseph W. Prueher that contained carefully parsed words meant to allow both sides to claim victory in resolving the diplomatic impasse over the crew and plane. The letter was the culmination of more than a week of near round-the-clock negotiations between the two capitals during which both sides blamed the other. China demanded an apology and an admission of responsibility from the United States.
State media began preparing the nation for the crew members' release by announcing Tuesday evening that hope was dwindling that a maritime search here would turn up the missing pilot of the Chinese jet that crashed after the collision on April 1.
The search, already the largest and longest in Chinese naval history, has not been called off, however. As of Wednesday evening, 95 ships, 107 planes, more than 1,000 helicopters and 56,000 people were involved in the search for the pilot, Wang Wei, according to state media.
In the hours after the government's announcement, a crowd of 60 or 70 angry people gathered in a light rain across from the military hostel where the Americans were housed. Loud debates rose and fell among the crowd as they waited to see the Americans, whom many people blame for the loss of the Chinese pilot and see as representatives of American aggression.
``We're not satisfied,'' said a shirtless man who identified himself as Wang Min. People pressed around him agreed. Like many Chinese, he asked why the Americans should be allowed to go free if they were spying on China, as the media here has charged.
``America came and struck us on our doorstep, but we can't strike back,'' complained Mao Yunzao, 32, a laborer who spoke with the staccato accent of Mao Zedong's native Hunan province. ``If Mao were still around there'd be a war.''
One man at a sign shop opposite the hostel's gate wrote in large characters in red ink on a plywood board, ``We Oppose Hegemony, Give Us Back Wang Wei,'' a reference to the missing pilot. He carried it across the street and set it up in front of the hostel gate where a small crowd gathered around it before plainclothesmen carried the sign into the hostel compound.
Another sign bearing the same message, this time in black ink, was soon lifted above the crowd in front of the sign shop before a plainclothesman pulled it down, and another sign was soon made to replace it.
When asked if the sign makers weren't afraid of trouble with the police, one man replied, ``China is now a free country, we have human rights.''
But again a plainclothesman took the sign away and soon an official arrived to order all of the shops along the street to close and pull down their metal gates.
``The government should wait until we find Wang Wei before they let the Americans go,'' cried another man. When yet another called for America to pay damages, he shouted back, ``Compensation is no use. We lost a man. Can money repay the loss of a life?''
Zhao Ling, who owns a neighboring bar and who wrote one of the signs, drew applause from a small crowd when he declared, ``China is too tolerant of America.''
Shortly before dawn, the steel-bar gate to the small concrete compound opened to allow in a convoy that included two mini-buses with darken windows. About 5:45 a.m., the buses pulled out onto Airport Road, carrying the crewmembers.
A group of journalists keeping vigil across the road scrambled for taxis to follow the bus to the airport, where a Continental Micronesia jet was waiting to start the crew's journey home.
The crew were kept incommunicado for three days after their plane landed at a military base on the south end of Hainan Island. Finally, they were moved to the island's capital, Haikou, where they were allowed to meet for 40 minutes with two American officials, U.S. Army Brig. Gen Neal Sealock, the United States' defense attache in China, and Ted Gong, a senior consular official from Guangzhou.
The two officials met with some or all of the crew four more times over the following two weeks, providing them with underwear and books, snacks and e-mails from home while their detention ballooned into an international crisis between Washington and Beijing.
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Standoff Over Plane Brings Calls to Boycott Chinese-Made Goods
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11TRAD.html
WASHINGTON, April 10 - Kmart has received thousands of calls and e-mail messages from customers urging the discount retailer to stop buying so many of its shoes, fishing rods, T-shirts and stereos from China, prompting the company to warn Chinese diplomats that it will seek new suppliers unless the crew of an American surveillance aircraft is released promptly, company executives said today.
The complaints that have streamed into Kmart's customer service line in Troy, Mich., in recent days were an unprecedented and apparently spontaneous response to the overseas crisis, the executives said. Store managers have also telephoned headquarters to relay concerns that customers were annoyed that the stores stocked so many "made in China" goods when American military personnel were being held in that country against their will, they said.
"Our customers are telling us to quit doing business in China - that they're not going to buy things made there anymore," said Dale Apley, Kmart's vice president for public policy. "These are just the people taking time out of their schedule to contact us. How many other people out there are thinking the same thing?"
The outpouring of anger may indicate that the continuing standoff may have started to shake one of the foundations of the United States-China relationship: the partnership of trade and investment that has grown rapidly despite regular disruptions in bilateral ties during the last decade and a half.
Unlike China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in 1989 or its efforts to intimidate Taiwan by lobbing missiles off that island's coast five years ago, the current impasse directly affects United States military personnel. Business leaders said that made this crisis uniquely sensitive because the public put the safety of the crew above abstract notions of geopolitical stability or human rights for Chinese citizens.
Like Wal-Mart, Target and other discount leaders, Kmart sells billions of dollars of Chinese-manufactured consumer goods each year. Total trade volumes have soared, and often, from month to month, the United States trade deficit with China tops the one with Japan. The most recent Commerce Department statistics showed that the United States trade deficit with China increased 19.3 percent in January, rising to $7.2 billion, while the deficit with Japan narrowed slightly, to $5.9 billion, the lowest in 13 months.
Mr. Apley said Kmart had no plans to pull Chinese goods off its shelves and would like to continue to do business with factories there. But he said the customer response had prompted executives to put Chinese business contacts on notice that Kmart would have no choice but to "diversify its suppliers" unless the matter was resolved quickly.
"We can't ignore what our customers are telling us," he said.
At Target Stores, based in Minneapolis, Patty Morris, a spokeswoman, said the company had decided not to answer media questions about customer complaints or product sourcing policies. She said the company might have received a few calls related to the China standoff, but that the volume "was not alarming to us and does not warrant getting involved in the dialogue."
Most corporate executives who have worked for years to cultivate cordial ties with Chinese officials are reluctant to say anything about the crisis in public, hoping that a low-key approach will encourage a speedy resolution that leaves few scars. United States companies accounted for almost half of the $40 billion in foreign investment in China last year, and many of the largest - Boeing, Motorola and General Motors - have declined comment or said negotiations should be left to diplomats.
But some business leaders in Washington share Kmart's alarm. Lobbyists here say they worry that the detention of the crew will make it hard to hold back a tide of anti-China sentiment.
"We have been the most vocal advocates of open and expanded trade with China," said Thomas Donohue, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. "But we are going to support these young men and women being held over there. If this goes on much longer, the economic advances are going to be hard to sustain."
The crisis is sensitive enough that some Chinese-American business leaders have expressed rare public opposition to China's diplomatic behavior.
Susan Au Allen, head of the United States Pan-Asian Chamber of Commerce, a group of Asian-American business executives, said she wrote a letter to the Chinese Embassy today saying her group had decided to cancel a May meeting with Chinese trade officials in Washington, where they had planned to discuss investment opportunities.
"There is a glaring difference between this crisis and all the other issues with China because they are holding Americans against their will," said Ms. Allen, who was born in Guangzhou. "China does not need any more excuses. They have to grow up and act like big boys."
Unlike the fight in Congress last year over whether to grant China permanent normal trade relations, when the battle resonated only lightly outside the capital, the current standoff appears to have set off a grass-roots response that could affect the way Washington reacts.
Recent polls have found that a majority of people consider the military detainees to be hostages, though the Bush administration has not used that term. The polls also show that a majority do not want the administration to apologize for the incident.
Mr. Apley of Kmart said the company at first suspected that the volume of complaints indicated that an anti-China group had begun an organized campaign, but company officials found no evidence of that.
Still, some unions that have opposed expanding trade ties with China are using this as an opportunity to drive home their message. China's effort to enter the World Trade Organization has been advancing only slowly in negotiations in Geneva, and Congress must vote again this year on whether to extend the nation's trading rights for another year.
The United Association of Union Plumbers, Pipefitters and Sprinkler Fitters has devoted $500,000 to buy radio advertisements during baseball games around the country urging people to boycott Chinese-made goods. "The crew of an American plane, forced to make an emergency landing in China, is held hostage by the Chinese government," the commercial says. "Think about that. And vow to buy no Chinese products until the servicemen and women are released."
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China's Generals
New York Times
April 11, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/opinion/11WED2.html
The unyielding insistence on an American apology in the spy plane affair provides a revealing and disturbing picture of high-level decision-making in Beijing. China's actions betray not only a profound misreading of American politics, which might be understandable, but also a heavy reliance on the advice of Chinese military commanders, exactly the wrong group to shape the handling of this unfortunate incident. Despite yesterday's formal statement of regret by President Bush, the influence of the military leadership could delay a speedy resolution of the affair and distort the future course of relations between the United States and China.
The deliberations of China's leaders remain shielded from view at home and abroad, but the events since the midair collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet 10 days ago offer important clues about the formulation of Beijing's response. The stamp of an assertive military seems evident in the rush to assign blame for the collision before the facts are established, the detention of the 24 American crew members and the stubborn effort to extract an apology from Washington when a reasonable diplomatic resolution is within reach.
Identifying a clear fault line between political and military leaders in Beijing in this case is impossible, and President Jiang Zemin has himself called for an apology. But China's military commanders in recent years have displayed a more distrustful and even hostile attitude toward the United States than the civilian leadership.
In the current crisis, top military leaders may have found ready allies in the heads of the internal security agencies and some of the more ideologically conservative civilian party leaders. Public opinion, so far as it can be accurately measured in a totalitarian country, has also taken a strongly nationalist and anti-American tack.
Defense officials and army newspapers have been uncompromising in their denunciations of Washington and their demands for an American apology. They have also insisted on an end to American reconnaissance flights near China's coasts. Military commanders may have sought to prolong the stalemate to allow time to dismantle and study the sophisticated American spy plane. That now appears to have been accomplished. But some military leaders want to go further, arguing that Washington's statements of regret for the loss of the Chinese airman have been insufficient.
Recent Chinese Communist history has left Beijing's military commanders as powerful political actors. Military leaders helped rescue China from the political and economic chaos of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960's. In 1989 they were called in again to help crush the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Partly as a result, the military has remained a significant political force.
Mr. Jiang, his top diplomat, Qian Qichen, both now traveling in Latin America, and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji all understand that a prolonged impasse with Washington would hinder China's prospects for trade and economic development. Mr. Jiang said yesterday that the two sides needed to "find an adequate solution to this problem." Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, told CNN this week that on a visit to China just days before the midair collision he found the top political leaders eager to improve relations with the United States. Those aspirations can be realized if this dispute is quickly brought to a fair conclusion. That is a job for China's diplomats, not its generals.
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U.S. Sends Beijing a Formal Statement Expressing Regret
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER and JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/world/11PLAN.html
WASHINGTON, April 10 - Senior administration officials said today that after days of negotiations with Beijing, the United States had submitted a formal statement of regret to the Chinese government and was waiting for China's leaders to say whether they would accept it and release the crew of an American spy plane.
"The fact is that we think we have done as much as we can possibly do," a senior Administration official said this evening.
The American statement, the culmination of six days of talks and exchanges of drafts with the Chinese Foreign Ministry, expresses regret for the April 1 collision between the American plane and a Chinese fighter jet, in which a Chinese pilot was lost. But "there is no apology," a senior administration official insisted. The statement also proposes a joint investigation of the collision and bilateral discussions over how to avoid similar incidents.
Officials involved in the talks said it was not clear who among China's leaders would make the decision, or when.
President Jiang Zemin was in Uruguay today as part of a 12-day tour of Latin America. He commented only briefly on the diplomatic standoff, saying he trusted in "the ability of both countries to resolve the issue."
Today for the first time President Bush called the situation a "stalemate," apparently to prepare the public for what could be a protracted effort to win the release of the crew of the plane, an EP-3E electronic surveillance aircraft. There were no talks today in Beijing or in Washington, and none are scheduled for Wednesday.
"Diplomacy sometimes takes a little longer than people would like," said Mr. Bush, who first demanded the release of the crew a week ago. "I am making it clear to the Chinese that it's in their nation's interests to end this situation as quickly as possible."
It was unclear when the statement was delivered to the Chinese, Monday or today. But officials said it amplified language that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell first uttered on Sunday when he used the word "sorrow" to describe his feelings about the loss of the Chinese jet pilot at sea.
"We do acknowledge that we violated their airspace," General Powell added, speaking of the plane's emergency landing on Hainan island, not of its position when the collision occurred, which Washington says was in international airspace.
"But look at the emergency circumstances that that pilot was facing," General Powell added in an interview on "Face the Nation" on CBS, referring to the American. "And we regret that. We've expressed sorrow for it, and we're sorry that that happened. But it can't be seen as an apology - accepting responsibility."
In Beijing today, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Sun Yuxi, called Mr. Powell's words "a step in the right direction," but restated the Chinese position: "The U.S. side should assume full responsibility and apologize."
Tonight White House and State Department officials said President Jiang could accept today's statement and release the crew. Or he could call it progress and raise new issues, including the frequency and routes of American reconnaissance flights.
Several officials say they worry that while Chinese diplomats may be satisfied with the American statement, the military may demand more. "We'll see whether they say `fine,' " a senior Administration official said, while adding that such a scenario seemed unlikely.
Administration officials repeated today that they would not bargain away their right to run spy flights in international airspace. "Those flights are important not just to us, but to allies to whom we have significant responsibilities in the region," one said.
Soon, however, Mr. Bush will face the decision of when and how to resume the flights. Military officials in Hawaii, who plan and oversee operations over the Pacific, know that resumption of the flights could be provocative and delay the release of the crew. So far they have not asked permission to send another flight aloft.
But not resuming the flights would play into the central demand by China: that the United States stop close air surveillance of its military.
At the Pentagon, officials went to lengths to avoid worsening what has remained a diplomatic confrontation. The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk left port in Thailand today and moved through the South China Sea toward Guam. But the carrier followed a southerly route intended to ensure it went nowhere near Hainan.
The Pentagon's spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, also pointedly refused to refer to the crew members as hostages or prisoners, but rather as detainees.
In private, however, other Pentagon officials spoke with growing frustration and anger over China's refusal to let the crew members go, and over their treatment. "They should have been back the day after they arrived," one senior officer said. "They're not being treated as tourists on Hainan, that's for sure."
That was in sharp contrast to the way the White House and the State Department were stressing the crew's comfortable surroundings.
Officials across the administration said the United States had done all it could to meet Chinese demands on a document, demands that have been negotiated since last week between the American ambassador in Beijing, Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
But the officials seemed very uncertain about when the standoff, which showed promise of ending last weekend, would be over. There seemed to be growing concern that the confrontation could intensify if Beijing decided to press for more concessions.
The question of responsibility is a sensitive one. While the statement today calls for a joint investigation of the collision, officials at the Pentagon insisted that there was little doubt that the pilot of the Chinese fighter jet had caused it.
A senior military officer briefed on discussions with the detained crew members and intelligence reports gave new details today, saying the spy plane had been flying on auto- pilot, straight and flat, when the Chinese jet approached rapidly from underneath. The jet's tail clipped the EP-3E's left propeller, the official said, sending the fighter plunging into the South China Sea.
"They have taken a story which is at odds with common sense and the truth and insisted that we apologize," the officer said, referring to the Chinese assertion that the American aircraft veered sharply into the jet's path.
Mr. Bush, looking tired, wavered today between urging Americans to be patient and urging China to act quickly.
He also reiterated, though in tempered language, the potential of long- lasting damage to Chinese-American relations. "The longer this goes, the more likely it is that it could - could - jeopardize relations, and we certainly don't want that to happen," he said.
The new nervousness about resolving the crisis promptly appeared to be driven, in part, by the near silence of China's officials today. That was a sign, American officials said, that today's document - dealing with each side's explanations of the collision and the question of an apology - had gone to the top leadership, probably to Mr. Jiang.
But the unease was also driven by confusion over how to read two conflicting strands of the Chinese approach. On one hand, a senior administration official said, the Chinese were preparing their public for release of the crew by saying in the official press that Secretary Powell's statement of sorrow represented progress. But on the other, Chinese negotiators at the Foreign Ministry are still holding out for further concessions, he said.
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Standoff Unlikely to Affect Beijing's Olympic Bid
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By JERE LONGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/sports/11OLYM.html
The spy-plane stalemate between the United States and China is not expected to have an effect on Beijing's bid to play host to the 2008 Summer Olympics, especially if the incident is resolved quickly, interviews with influential members of the International Olympic Committee indicate.
"To many I.O.C. members, especially in Europe, it is a U.S.-China issue," said Kim Un Yong, a powerful member from South Korea who is seeking to succeed Juan Antonio Samaranch as president of the International Olympic Committee. "The I.O.C. is not in politics, and for the moment, it will not affect the Olympic decision."
Of course, politics have often intruded upon the Olympic Games, leading to boycotts in the 1970's and 1980's. Other elements, including China's human-rights issue and the strong candidacy of Paris, could undermine Beijing's bid.
But even if the spy-plane deadlock escalates, it remains unclear how much impact this standoff would have on the I.O.C.'s vote, which will be held July 13. Beijing is favored over Paris, Toronto, Osaka and Istanbul.
Jacques Rogge, a Belgian member who is also seeking the Olympic presidency, said that he expected the spy-plane stalemate to end long before the vote on a site and that it would "not play a role whatsoever."
"We are voting from the perspective of seven years," Rogge said. Speaking of the presidents of China and the United States, he added, "Jiang Zemin and perhaps George Bush are not going to be in place in 2008. There will be new political leaders."
The standoff has not really registered in any compelling way yet on the I.O.C. radar, said Dick Pound of Canada, another powerful member who is also seeking to replace Samaranch in a vote to be held three days after the 2008 siting vote.
"If the matter does drag on, we've got to see what happens," Pound said. "I don't think an international organization, dealing with an international event, is going to base its decision on a bilateral issue."
A Chinese military jet collided with an American reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea on April 1 and the 24 American crew members were detained on Hainan Island. The Chinese military pilot was lost at sea. The Bush administration said Monday that it had, for now, decided against attempting to undercut Beijing's Olympic bid as one possible method to pressure the release of the American crew members. In truth, such an attempt to sabotage Beijing's candidacy would not likely gather much support at this point from international sports and governmental officials. And the United States holds only four voting positions among the 120 members of the International Olympic Committee, which Europe dominates.
Currently, there is much anti- American sentiment within the committee, stemming from what members believe was excessive criticism from the American government, sponsors and the news media in connection with the Salt Lake City bribery scandal. Committee members have also been offended by what they perceived to be arrogant American remarks about insufficient international determination to catch athletes who cheat by using performance-enhancing drugs. Any attempt to scuttle Beijing's chances for the Olympics might, in turn, threaten future American attempts.
"I think at this point in its history, the U.S. should be fairly cautious with what it does with the Olympics," Pound said, "particularly if it is going to have a candidate in the field for 2012."
Last month, the International Relations Committee of the United States House of Representatives approved a nonbinding resolution saying that Beijing should not play host to the 2008 Olympic Games unless it releases all political prisoners and improves its record on human rights.
However, any attempt by Congress as a whole to instruct American and international members of the I.O.C. not to vote for Beijing would be viewed as self-serving and chauvinistic by some members, said John MacAloon, an Olympic historian at the University of Chicago.
"The U.S. Congress is not in position to instruct the I.O.C. about a decision that has to do with the interest of the entire world," MacAloon said.
Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, who is seeking to become the first woman to head the Olympic movement, declined in a conference call yesterday to comment on the spy- plane incident. But when asked what her response would be to a Congressional resolution not to vote for Beijing, she said: "I certainly respect the advice of the U.S. Congress, but I would certainly wish to remind them that my vote is by secret ballot."
The Bush administration has made no suggestion of a potential American boycott of a Beijing Olympics. The boycotts of the 1970's and 1980's are generally considered to have been failures, and any movement in that direction would be met with vocal opposition from DeFrantz, the most powerful American on the Olympic committee. A former Olympic rower, DeFrantz campaigned vehemently against the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. "I have been a strong advocate of the athletes' right to compete," she said.
James Easton, another member from the United States, said a boycott would only hurt the athletes who could not compete. "The rest of the world might like it," he said. "They can win more medals."
On purely athletic terms, the United States and China have long enjoyed a good working relationship. A month after the American bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, China sent its national soccer team to the United States to participate in the 1999 Women's World Cup. The committee organizing Beijing's Olympic bid is now asking for the same reciprocal separation of sport from geopolitics.
Any attempt to hinder Beijing's bid for political reasons "doesn't conform with the spirit of the Olympics and is also unfair," the bid committee said in recent days.
Beijing is considered the favorite, but not a lock. Paris is a great attraction, and many international sports organizations are headquartered in Western Europe. The human-rights debate about Beijing centers on whether China can best be encouraged to change by gaining or losing the Olympics, said Craig Reedie, a member from Scotland.
In 1993, four years after the Communist leadership put down the student-led democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, Beijing lost by only two votes to Sydney to host the 2000 Olympic Games.
As the human rights debate stirs again, Pound said, it may assume the same tone that it did when Seoul, South Korea, was granted the 1988 Olympic Games, ushering it into the international community after a period of military dictatorship.
"The kind of attention they will get and the desire to make the Games work will push them faster in the direction of reform, and rejection might drive them back to a more internalized view," Pound said of the mind-set that might prevail regarding Beijing. "Who's to say?"
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To End the Impasse With Beijing
Looking at China Through Blinders
New York Times
April 11, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/opinion/L11CHIN.html
To the Editor:
Re "U.S. Shies Away From Threats in Plane Standoff With China" (front page, April 10):
China says it wants to be our friend. All it really wants is access to our technology and our trade dollars.
Would a friendly country hold our service members hostage? I think not. China is behaving like the cold- war-era Soviet Union.
What puzzles me is why we are constantly bending over backward to accommodate China. Let's not forget that China needs our trade dollars a lot more than we need the cheap goods that we import from China. Perhaps once soft-money contributions are banned, politicians will be able to see more clearly.
DAVE ERIQAT
San Francisco, April 10, 2001
•To the Editor:
Re "China's Costly Rigidity" (editorial, April 9):
The incident involving the United States spy plane and the detention of its crew serves for nothing more than stirring up the nationalist fervor of a people so that they will be distracted from the real source of China's problems: its corrupt ruling clique.
Beset from within by failures in its economy, growing discontent at its suppression of basic civil and religious rights and greater and more vocal international support for the people of Tibet and East Turkestan, China's Communist regime is, after more than 50 years, coming to the end of its life.
This standoff is about a regime desperately trying to create conditions for its survival.
WILLIAM F. HEWITT New York, April 9, 2001
•To the Editor:
Re "China's Costly Rigidity" (editorial, April 9):
If America is so strong and secure, what would it lose by apologizing? Why is Chinese pride more irrational than American pride?
If all the Chinese government wants is an apology, what could be less onerous?
MARC B. EDWARDS Houston, April 9, 2001
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Bush says crew will be released
USA Today
04/11/2001 - Updated 08:03 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/washphoto.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Wednesday he looks forward to welcoming home the crew of an American spy plane and said the 11-day standoff with China had been "a difficult situation for both our countries." With plans under way for the crew's release, Bush said, "We are working on arrangements to pick them up and bring them home." A senior administration official said the White House expected the crew to be released late Wednesday, noting that it would take several hours to get a U.S. plane to the island, the crew boarded and aircraft fueled.
Bush came to the White House briefing room after China and the United States announced a deal for the release of the American crew, who have been held on a Chinese island since the collision of their spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet.
In a carefully negotiated statement, the United States said it was "very sorry" that the U.S. plane was forced to land in Chinese territory. Stopping short of the full apology demanded by Beijing, the statement twice used the words "very sorry."
Bush told reporters that the Chinese government had assured U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher "that the crew would leave promptly."
"This has been a difficult situation for both our countries," the president said. "I know the American people join me in expressing sorrow for the loss of life of a Chinese pilot. Our prayers are with his wife and his child."
Bush said that the American people and the relatives of the men and women who were detained "are proud of our crew and we look forward to welcoming them home."
The president spoke very briefly and did not respond to reporters' questions.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said U.S. officials were working with China on arrangements for the crew's departure.
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U.S. crew departs China
USA Today
04/11/2001 - Updated 08:02 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-11-china-crisis.htm
HAIKOU, China (AP) - An airliner carrying 24 crew members of a U.S. spy plane held for 12 days in China took off Thursday, ending an intense standoff between Washington and Beijing. The chartered Continental Boeing 737 took off at about 7:30 a.m. local time from the civilian airport at Haikou, the capital of Hainan island. It quickly disappeared into the cloudy sky. U.S. officials said the plane will take the crew to the U.S. territory of Guam, where it will refuel before going on to Hawaii. The airliner had taken off from Guam for China hours earlier to retrieve the 21 men and three women, who landed their damaged U.S. Navy EP-3E on Hainan after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet on April 1 over the South China Sea. After announcing it would release the crew, the Chinese government said it would keep their surveillance plane until it could hold more talks with the United States starting April 18.
The release of the spy plane crew came after President Bush agreed to say the United States was "very sorry" for a Chinese pilot's death and the U.S. plane's landing without permission.
Wednesday's delicate, carefully worded compromise - characterized immediately by Chinese officials as an apology - capped days of tortuous linguistic negotiation over the release of the air crew and the in-flight collision that has threatened U.S.-China relations.
It offered a tolerable way out for the governments of two powerful, deeply intertwined nations that, in public, had maintained intractable positions. The United States evaded the full apology demanded by China, which nevertheless extracted an intricate series of expressions of sorrow from Washington.
Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said China had agreed to release the crew on "humanitarian grounds."
------
Jiang hints softening of demands
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/11/01
Bill Sammon and Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001411235929.htm
Chinese President Jiang Zemin yesterday reiterated his demand for a full apology for the collision of a U.S. EP-3E surveillance plane and a Chinese jet fighter, saying China's position was "sufficiently clear," but seemed to offer the first softening of the Chinese position at a news conference in Uruguay.
"Taking into account the important role of the two countries, we have to find an adequate solution," Mr. Jiang said. "I trust in the ability of both countries to resolve this issue."
President Bush called the 10-day-old hostage incident a "stalemate" and shrugged off the Rev. Jesse Jackson's offer to negotiate the release of 24 Americans, who are now getting a few more creature comforts in captivity.
"Diplomacy sometimes takes a little longer than people would like," Mr. Bush told reporters in the Oval Office. "This administration is doing everything we can to end the stalemate in an efficient way."
Analysts view Mr. Jiang's tour of South America as one reason for the lull in U.S.-China negotiations. As head of state and Communist Party general secretary, his presence is likely required in China before the incident can be resolved.
Yesterday, a senior administration official said the stalemate is the result of the U.S. proposal "working its way through the Chinese decision-making system."
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration has presented China's foreign ministry with a "road map" designed to end the impasse.
But it is hard to gauge where in China's communist system U.S. proposals are. "We are still working through the Chinese Foreign Ministry, but I can't judge what the Foreign Ministry is doing with its leadership," the official said.
U.S. diplomats held their fifth meeting with the crew members, who are virtual prisoners in the officers' quarters of a military base on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.
The 21 men and three women have been held against their will since making an emergency landing of their surveillance plane after colliding with a Chinese F-8 interceptor March 31.
A new poll shows that most Americans consider the crew hostages, despite the administration's insistence they are "detainees." Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, Pentagon spokesman, yesterday argued the word "hostages" should be used only if the crew is mistreated and denied visits by U.S. officials.
"You don't have access to hostages; they are kept from you," Adm. Quigley said. "And in the case of our air crew, we have had several - five now - meetings with the air crew over a period of days. We think that's great."
He added: "You also don't see hostages generally treated very well. And our 24 air crew are being treated very well by the Chinese. So the term that we think is important is 'detainees.'"
The crew has been given printouts of e-mail messages from family and allowed to relay verbal replies through the U.S. officials during visits. The crew can exercise and move about their building with more freedom than before.
Thus, Adm. Quigley said, they are not prisoners because when "I think of a prisoner, I think of somebody behind bars. I think of someone charged with a crime. Those circumstances are not present."
The administration spent much of yesterday reacting to Mr. Jackson's offer to negotiate the release of the Americans. The civil rights leader has freed Americans from Cuba, Syria and Yugoslavia.
Mr. Jackson's re-emergence on the international stage allows him to distance himself from scandals that have plagued him in recent months. His stature took a beating when it was revealed he had a mistress and an out-of-wedlock child.
The Washington Times first contacted Mr. Jackson's office Thursday and asked whether he was thinking about wading into the hostage standoff.
"I don't think that he's given it all too much thought because he's been, you know, entrenched in his own matters," spokeswoman Keiana Peyton said after conferring with Mr. Jackson. "He's just kind of, at this point, open to whatever."
But the next morning, Mr. Jackson left a phone message for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who did not return his call. Yesterday, he called another top black member of the administration's national security team, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who did return the call.
"The secretary expressed his thanks for Mr. Jackson's concern, told him about the intensive diplomacy that's going on and said we would continue to use that channel," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "There's no plan to use Mr. Jackson as a mediator or special envoy on this issue."
Mr. Jackson is apparently not the only freelancer who is offering to help. Fox News Channel reported yesterday that former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot is working behind the scenes to find an end to the impasse.
According to sources close to the Chinese Embassy, China's state-run media are reporting that remarks by Mr. Powell expressing sorrow for the incident are a blanket apology for the entire affair.
The Chinese government has signaled that if this interpretation of Mr. Powell's remarks is not publicly and directly contradicted by the Bush administration, then the crew will be released before Easter Sunday and before Congress returns from a two-week recess.
The two sides are engaged in a semantic minuet on a possible joint statement that might let both sides claim victory.
"It would be an expression of regret and sorrow that they were not able to [request permission before landing] but it was an in extremis situation," a senior administration official told Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity.
"What the Chinese will choose to characterize as an apology, we would probably choose to characterize as an expression of regret or sorrow."
Pro-China officials in the Bush administration also are using the incident to highlight the need for continued military exchanges with China, a program under review by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
The official strategy of the Bush administration so far calls for holding discussions under the 1998 U.S.-China military maritime commission, a senior administration official said.
The commission was set up to avoid mishaps like the EP-3E incident. The agreement calls for annual meetings and for called meetings to handle specific issues.
"The idea is to use the military maritime commission for both sides to discuss what happened in the accident and possibly discuss ways to avoid future accidents," the official said.
Asked if U.S. surveillance flights are open to negotiation with the Chinese, the senior official said: "American reconnaissance activities are part of a broad U.S. national security strategy. We believe it is important to security in the region and those flights are important not just to us but for allies whom we have considerable responsibility to keep peace and security in the region, and we do not believe that that is what is at issue."
The senior administration source also dismissed the notion that careful linguistic phrasing of a statement will resolve the issue.
"We're obviously looking for the right phrase that is responsive to the concerns of both sides," the senior official said. "But the United States' position is and continues to be this is not an issue of 'accepting responsibility' because this was an accident."
The official also said diplomatic efforts are not stalled, although "obviously there's a stalemate in that it hasn't been resolved."
"But we are currently at a stalemate because they have not decided to move forward and there's been no resolution," the official said. "We continue down this road with this road map and we continue discussions with the Chinese and our great desire is to get this over as quickly as possible."
Asked if the Bush team fears the standoff will become a repeat of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, the senior official said: "We are not concerned about anything except the fact that it is really time to bring this situation to a resolution.
"There is no doubt that the longer that this goes on, the more damaging it's going to be to U.S.-China relations."
---
Yellow ribbons
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/11/01
Helle Bering THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010411-901294.htm
Yellow ribbons, those dreaded yellow ribbons. If there is one thing the Bush administration wants to avoid it is the trappings a hostage drama with China and the rhetoric that goes with it. In Oak Harbor, Wash. home of the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and of the crew of the EP-3E surveillance plane at the center of the Chinese-American standoff residents have tied yellow ribbons around every tree, shrub, street sign and lamp post. The church bells toll at noon every day, a token of solidarity with the 24-member crew being held in China.
But held as what? Hostages, prisoners, detainees, guests? Just as the words "regret," "sorrow," and "apology" are being endlessly parsed today, the semantics of the crew´s imprisonment are crucial. The incident that caused a Chinese F-8 fighter to crash on April 1 and the American plane to effect an emergency landing on Hainan Island has the real potential to cripple the Bush administration the way the Iran hostage crisis crippled the Carter White House. This thought must surely cause cold sweat among presidential advisers on Pennsylvania Avenue. It would be one heck of a way to start a presidency the same way Jimmy Carter ended his, in utter defeat.
While overblown rhetoric will do no good, the question is at what point the White House will be perceived to be in a state of denial. The time will come when the president has to turn up the heat to impress upon the Chinese leaders the seriousness of the situation. You do not hold Americans, hostage or otherwise, free of cost. Mr. Bush inched slightly closer to that point on Monday when he warned, "there is a point the longer it goes there´s a point at which our relations with China become damaged."
For now, however, the comparison between the Iran-hostage crisis and the Chinese-U.S. standoff is not borne out, yellow ribbons notwithstanding. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter´s national security adviser, and someone with firsthand knowledge of hostage-takers, rejects the comparison for now. "We are not there yet," he says.
At the White House, understandably, they are trying very hard to keep the level of public anger down. The president has warned that diplomacy may take time and has asked Americans to be patient. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been all but invisible, as one of the more hawkish members of the administration. Instead, we have seen Secretary of State Powell describe the condition of the crew as "excellent" and their "morale high." By now the entire White House team is on message and the operative word is definitely "low key."
On Sunday, administration officials found themselves in a bit of a scramble to counter the full-throated editorial in the Weekly Standard, where editors had decided to declare the impasse a national crisis and brought out words like "national humiliation," and accused the president of "revealing weakness and fear."
"The American capitulation will also embolden others around the world who have watched this crisis carefully to see the new administration´s mettle," so write William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Now the Weekly Standard specializes in a level of rhetoric just short of hysteria, but this is certainly premature, possibly even irresponsible. "With friends like these. . ." Mr. Bush must be thinking.
According to Mr. Brzezinski, major distinctions exist between the current situation and the Iran hostage crisis. No one wants to see a confrontation between China and the United States, unless perhaps it be Russia. Further, he says, "I assume the Chinese government is still capable of rational decisions." In the case of Iran, it was very different. There was a Khomeini government, but the rabid, radical students who held the Americans for 444 days were only under semi-control of the government.
Just as the Americans have been keen to avoid using the word "hostages," so have the Chinese, says Mr. Brzezinski, which is worth noting. The Chinese clearly strive to create the impression they are giving the Americans decent, even privileged treatment with visits, exercise, and housing in officers quarters. Not that these symbols will mean much if this drama is prolonged indefinitely.
Still, there are lessons that can be learned from the Iran-hostage crisis. One of them is that the U.S. government must not give the impression of being overly eager, which will raise the stakes. Mr. Bush´s personal letter to the widow of the Chinese pilot, after the insulting letter dispatched by Chinese Vice Premier Qian Quichen to American officials on Friday, was probably a mistake.
For now, going easy on the melodrama, but being very clear about the consequences for Chinese-American relations, is the best the administration can do. If indeed the Chinese leaders are capable of rational decisions, they ought to be having second thoughts about the collision course they are on.
Email: hbering@washingtontimes.com.
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Russian Hacker Rebuffs U.S.
by Michelle Delio
9:00 a.m. April 11, 2001 PDT
Diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tried to hire a Russian hacker to break into Russia's Federal Security Service's network, according to a report published in the a Russian newspaper Wednesday.
The 20-year-old hacker, identified only as "Vers," said he was asked to hack into the Federal Security Service's network to copy, alter and delete files. Vers claims that four officials at the U.S. Embassy offered him $10,000 for the job.
According to the Moscow Times, a spokesman from the Federal Security Service has officially confirmed the story that was reported in Moskovsky Komsomolets.
The Times is also reporting that the U.S. Embassy in Russia has refused to comment on the case.
The story appeared on the front page of Moskovsky Komsomolets, along with photos of the diplomats accused of trying to hire the hacker.
Moskovsky Komsomolets identified the diplomats as Gary Dickson, John Connors, Bart Gorman and Michael Pyszczymuka. It is believed that they are among the 50 diplomats ordered out of Russia in March in response to the U.S.'s expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats after the Feb. 18 arrest of FBI officer Robert Hanssen for espionage.
Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that Vers was going to accept the offer, but then became frightened after considering it further, and instead went to the FSS and told officials about the embassy's offer.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets article taunted the American diplomats for having to rely on Russian hackers to crack into Russian government networks.
Igor Kovalyev, a self-described hacker who lives in Moscow, said that he has spoken to Vers both before and after he received the offer from the U.S. embassy.
"Vers said that it started when he became acquainted with a retired high-ranking Air Force officer over the Internet, and that this officer then got a job in the Moscow U.S. Embassy's threat-reduction office," Kovalyev said.
"Vers said he sent a lot of e-mail back and forth to the officer. He told him that he was a hacker, and that he had been able to crack many sites, including the U.S.'s Federal Bureau of Investigation and IBM. I know he e-mailed the officer. I don't know if his hacking claims are true, but I know he's skilled, so maybe it's the truth," Kovalyev said.
Kovalyev said Vers lost his job at the end of December, and he told the officer he wanted to move to America and look for work there in a computer security firm. But before he could start his new life he first needed to find a fast way to make a significant amount of money quickly.
"Vers told me that he was told to contact specific people at the U.S. embassy, and he said had four meetings with them during the week of Jan. 15.
"He was told that they would pay him $10,000 if he would crack into the FSS' network, copy some files and delete other files. He was given a list of these files. He was also told that he would be given a visa if he did the job," Kovalyev said
Vers was also asked to recruit other hackers and was told that he would get more money for each hacker that he recruited, Kovalyev said. He claims that he was approached by Vers as a possible recruit.
"I told him no, that it was too dangerous, that the government here is really paying attention to such things now after the American was arrested for spying. I told him it was not a good time to be a spy," Kovalyev said.
Alexei Badkhen, a 32-year-old Moscow resident who describes himself as a "secret security guy," said that Vers did ask several other hackers if they would like to make "fast, big money."
Badkhen said that many warned Vers about the possible consequences, and he feels that local hackers' concern over Vers' plans was what convinced Vers to turn himself in.
"It's not so much the idea of hacking against your country that disturbed us, although some said that it was evil to go against your own country. But mostly people just did not want to get caught doing it," Badkhen said.
Russian media is reporting that FSS released Vers after questioning him because they are not required to file espionage charges against would-be spies who confess before they are caught.
-------- terrorism
Looking Ahead to the Winter Olympics, a Terrorist Response Team Trains
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/national/11TERR.html
SALT LAKE CITY - The training script went like this: A terrorist bomb exploded at the airport. The military, at the request of the local authorities, rushed a convoy to the scene with supplies. But one of the trucks hit a boy, provoking an angry mob. What were the troops to do?
In another country, perhaps, the soldiers might have tried to fight their way past a violent crowd of civilians. But these were fellow Americans. So Lt. Col. Steve Bullimore, seated behind a computer screen inside a makeshift command post, turned to the man whose expertise seemed most pertinent, a military lawyer. His advice? Call the police.
These events unfolded in a four- day training exercise here to prepare the Pentagon's newest terrorism response team, the Joint Task Force Civil Support, for next year's Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
But beyond working out the bugs in their software or the kinks in their command structure, this exercise had the additional goal of training globe-trotting warriors to behave more like local firefighters: helpful, courteous and, above all, nothing like an invading army.
"We don't want to take over," said Col. Richard C. Roten, deputy commander of the task force. "We only want to be there as long as we are needed."
The task force is at the center of an emerging debate over the military's role, if any, in responding to major terrorist attacks inside the nation's borders, a threat that many experts consider all but inevitable.
Many people in Congress, the Pentagon and local government argue that it would be unconscionable not to exploit the military's immense resources - from tents and helicopters to medics and chemical detection teams - during a nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attack against the nation.
"They have all the resources we don't," said Gary W. Peyton, deputy fire chief in Aurora, Colo., which participated in a terrorism training exercise with the military last year.
But the idea has drawn sharp opposition from many civil libertarians who argue that soldiers trained for fighting wars are more likely to injure or kill civilians - or violate civil rights - than are civil authorities.
The critics warn that once the armed forces are deployed domestically, they will come under intense pressure to engage in law enforcement activities, like detaining looters, questioning suspects or seizing property. Although federal law sharply restricts such activities by the military, the temptation will be to suspend those rules in times of crisis, the critics say.
"When it faces conflict, the military engages in mission creep," said Gregory T. Nojeim, chief legal counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If sent in to shuffle petri dishes and deliver cots, the mission may evolve into more law-enforcement-type work when circumstances change. And everyone knows that circumstances will change."
One indication of Washington's ambivalence on the issue was a bill introduced last month by Representative William M. Thornberry, Republican of Texas, that would create the National Homeland Security Agency to coordinate more than 40 federal agencies in preventing and responding to domestic terrorism. Notably absent from the legislation was any mention of the Department of Defense, whose role Mr. Thornberry says he is struggling to define.
"We have to be careful," Mr. Thornberry said in an interview. "We do not want the military to serve as law enforcement officers. And yet that line between military threats and law enforcement threats is blurry when you talk about terrorists sneaking nuclear or biological weapons into the country."
Created in 1999, the Joint Task Force Civil Support has already been involved in security preparations for last year's political conventions and this year's presidential inauguration. With 82 members and an annual budget of $8.7 million, it is expected to grow to 121 people by 2003.
Based at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., as part of the United States Joint Forces Command, the task force's job is to locate and coordinate military resources to help in the aftermath of major terrorist attacks. It can be deployed only at the request of local or state civilian authorities, and it takes its directions from federal civilian agencies. In most situations, that would be the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In many ways, it has been structured to convey the Pentagon's concerns about civil liberties. Its commander, Maj. Gen. Bruce M. Lawlor, is a Vermont lawyer who comes from the National Guard, having never served on active duty before joining the task force. That experience has given him more contact with local and state civil officials than many military commanders.
"We are strictly the guests, if you will, of state and local authorities," General Lawlor said.
Moreover, task force members do not carry weapons. They have considered not wearing uniforms. And each member carries a "rules on the use of force" card stating they must not arrest anyone, seize property or use force, except in self-defense.
"My mission is to provide assistance to state and local civil authorities to save lives, prevent injury and restore critical infrastructure," the card says. "In executing my mission, I will treat all persons with dignity and respect."
The Salt Lake City exercises, conducted indoors at a National Guard base outside town, did not involve actual troops or military equipment. Instead, it tried to test the decision- making skills of task force members inside a command post during a series of simulated terrorist attacks on the Olympics.
The scenario involved Latin American terrorists exploding bombs filled with radioactive material outside a crowded sports arena, at the airport and in a hospital. Overwhelmed by the dead and injured, the local authorities request federal assistance. That is where the task force's work begins.
Throughout the exercise, task force commanders were peppered with requests from local authorities played by federal officials. One was for help screening people for radiation sickness. Another was to test drinking water. Others were for tents, trucks and medical supplies.
Later, the task force was asked to help decontaminate and store 1,400 bodies. Members immediately huddled to discuss the problem. Where could they obtain that many body bags? Should they fly in refrigerator trucks? How would they deal with the burial customs of 60 nations?
Even the task force's public affairs office was thrown a few curveballs. On the second day, one of the officers was handed news reports depicting soldiers "standing idly by" while looters plundered businesses. She fired off a statement under General Lawlor's name saying that the troops were prohibited from making arrests under the Posse Comitatus Act and were busy "saving as many lives as we can."
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the armed forces from engaging in police activities within the United States without authorization from Congress or the president. The law has been revised to allow the military to perform such functions after nuclear, chemical or biological attacks, but only with the concurrence of the attorney general.
For all its efforts to simulate actual situations, the exercise could not re-create the blinding confusion, physical stress and sheer panic that would accompany a major terrorist attack. And those are the forces, civil libertarians warn, that lead to unintended abuses.
What would happen, for instance, if the military were asked to quarantine an area after a biological or nuclear attack? Might a panicky soldier shoot a fleeing civilian suspected of carrying a deadly virus? Or forcibly block a frightened crowd from entering a contaminated airport?
"It's a sticky situation," Colonel Bullimore said. "If we cordon off - that would be the wrong word - if we set up monitor sites around the airport, we cannot forcibly prevent anybody from going in there. We would need martial law before we did any of that."
Task force members say they try hard not to think in traditional military terms, though it can be difficult. During a briefing on the size of the task force, Col. Bill Sick, the chief of staff, said, "This is what we go to war with."
Colonel Sick paused and smiled. "Let me think how I said that," he continued. "Think of this as the war we fight. This is our nation, our culture. These are the things we can bring to help."
---
Bin Laden promotes readies activists for jihad
USA Today
04/11/2001 - Updated 05:55 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-11-binladen.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Osama bin Laden, a Saudi dissident wanted by the United States on terrorism charges, urged hard-line Islamic activists Wednesday to prepare the next generation for jihad, or holy war.
Bin Laden's statement was issued during a convention where some 200,000 students from Muslim nations worldwide celebrated the teaching of an Islamic school that inspired Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia.
Dar-ul-Uloom, the 143-year-old school in Deoband, India, is the ideological inspiration of the Taliban, as well as most hard-line Islamic groups in Pakistan, including the conference organizers, Jamiat-e-Ulema or Organization of Islamic clerics.
Bin Laden urged wealthy Muslims to support the Taliban with money to be used to rebuild their war-shattered nation. His statement, which was not read aloud at the convention, also urged the new generation to train for holy war.
"Issue a call to the young generation to get ready for the holy war and to prepare for that in Afghanistan because jihad in this time of crisis for Muslims is an obligation of all Muslims," he said in the Arabic-language statement. "I appeal to you to teach Muslims that there is no honor except in jihad in the way of God."
Successive speakers at the conference were sharply critical of the United States and the United Nations, and loudly denounced sanctions against the Taliban.
The three-day convention ended Wednesday with resolutions calling for Muslim unity against "anti-Islamic forces," as well as the closure of foreign-funded aid organizations accused of corrupting society.
The sanctions, imposed in January, were an attempt to press the Taliban to hand over bin Laden for trial either in the United States or in a third country on charges that he masterminded the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa.
The Taliban say it would betray Islamic tenets to hand over bin Laden to a non-Muslim country for trial. They also say the United States has not provided proof of bin Laden's involvement in terrorism.
In a taped address played Wednesday at the convention, the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, called the United Nations a tool of Washington, which wants to see the destruction of Muslims worldwide.
He also chastised Muslim countries for staying in the United Nations, saying the global body had nothing to offer Muslims.
"The infidels don't want a true Islamic system and are working against Muslims. The United Nations has failed to solve even a single problem related to Muslims," Omar said in his speech, carried on the Taliban-run Radio Shariat.
Washington has accused bin Laden of using Afghanistan as a staging arena to wage terrorist attacks against U.S. interests around the world. Bin Laden's Al Qaida group is said to be operating several military training camps inside Afghanistan.
However, the Taliban rulers say bin Laden is living as a refugee in their country and they deny the existence of military camps.
In addition to sanctions, Afghanistan has been battered by civil war, drought and famine.
On Wednesday, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said he met with Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil to offer a peace plan to end more than two decades of fighting. He called Muttawakil's response "thoughtful and inquisitive" but did not elaborate on his proposal.
The Taliban's strict interpretation of Islam has come under widespread criticism by human rights organizations as well as several Islamic countries.
The latest expression of outrage came in February when Omar issued an edict ordering the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, including two mammoth mountain carvings hewn from a Bamiyan cliff face in the third and fifth centuries. He declared the statues idolatrous and offensive to Islam, which outlaws images.
In his statement, Bin Laden praised Omar's edict, calling it a "great Islamic decision."
---
Travel warnings
The Washington Times www.washtimes.com
Published 4/11/01
Embassy Row James Morrison THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-200141121563.htm
The State Department is warning Americans to be extremely cautious when traveling to Fiji and Malaysia.
Fiji is still politically unstable from a coup last year, while Malaysia has been targeted by a Philippines-based terrorist group.
"U.S. citizens are advised to exercise caution, keep a low profile, avoid large gatherings and potential demonstration sites" in Fiji, the department said.
Americans traveling in the Malaysian state of Sabah "should be aware of the persistence of threats from the Abu Sayyaf group," it added in warnings released Monday.
U.S. citizens should register with the American embassies in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia or in Suva in Fiji after they arrive in those countries.
-------- activists
STUDENTS/CITIZENS DECLARE CITI CREDIT CARD BOYCOTT
From: Eric Romann <coachric1@yahoo.com>
Press Releases--Anti-Racist Message
April 11, 2001
Sandra Citizen, (301) 983-2222
Jimmy Junior, (301) 444-1818 cell
Activists Around the Globe Tell the #1 Bank in Global Racism:
"NOT WITH MY MONEY!"
City, State --- Flanked by a 20 foot banner with the words "Not With My Money!" students and community members from (Your University and Town) cut up their credit cards in protest of Citigroup's leading role in financing environmentally and socially destructive projects and perpetuating institutional racism around the globe. Today's actions are part of an international day of protests that included demonstrations in more than 50 cities across the world, in places as far as Ecuador and Ireland, as part of a global campaign to transform Citigroup's funding practices.
"From destroying Redwood forests and pollution production to redlining in African-American and Latino communities and funding prisons to lock up those same communities, Citigroup is living richly off of racist socially destructive and environmentally devastating activities around the world," explained Sandra Citizen of Your Town. "Citizens are outraged that Citigroup is using our money in an irresponsible fashion."
Brandishing scissors and Citibank credit cards and applications, demonstrators drew attention to Citigroup's role in exploiting low-incomes, including Black and Latino communities. Citigroup plays a cruel shell game with these communities: on the one hand, they're America's worst "predatory lending" and on the other they deny these communities access to traditional banking services and loans through the practice of "redlining." Activists are also highlighting the company's connection to egregious projects that exploit communities of color in Asia, Africa and Latin America while contributing to massive environmental destruction. These include the controversial Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, China's Three Gorges Dam which will displace 2 million people, and the destruction of orangutan rainforest habitat in Indonesian for palm plantations. At the same the corporation's sale of World Bank Bonds these same communities in developing nations with increasing debt.
Emboldened by the WTO protests in Seattle, students, environmentalists, human rights activists and economic justice advocates who have been at the forefront of the growing, non-violent movement protesting corporate-led globalization are now turning their attention towards the corporate financial sector, in particular Citigroup. Consumers today are increasingly demanding social and environmental responsibility from their banks.
Citigroup is America's largest financial institution. Critics contend that the corporation operates with no regard for racial justice, social justice, and environmental protection. Concerned citizens from (Your Town) alongside activists around the world are calling on Citigroup to serve rather than exploit historically marginalized communities of color. They are demanding the corporation stop funding destruction and start investing in a sustainable economy.
"Student consumers are the bread and butter of Citigroup's banking operations," says Jimmy Junior. "We won't allow our money to be used for amoral and destructive practices and projects. Building on a tradition of student activism from the 60's to Apartheid to sweatshops, we plan to hold Citigroup accountable by saying "not with my money!"
"We are demanding a global economy that puts principles ahead of short term profits," stated Sandra Citizen.
For more information on STARC, please see www.corpreform.org. For more information on the campaign to transform Citigroup please see www.ran.org, www.innercitypress.org/citi.html, and www.citiaction.org.
MEDIA ADVISORY For Immediate Release! Contacts: Sandra Citizen, (301) 983-2222 Jimmy Junior, (301) 444-1818 cell Date: April 11, 2001
STUDENTS/CITIZENS DECLARE CITI CREDIT CARD BOYCOTT
Activists Around the Globe Tell the #1 Bank in Global Racism: "NOT WITH MY MONEY!"
Who: Community members/students from (Your Group, Your Town/University), in solidarity with more than 50 cities across the world.
What: A demonstration including speakers, theater and ceremonial credit card cutting protesting Citigroup's leading role in financing environmentally and socially destructive projects around the globe.
When: Wednesday, April 11th, 12:00 p.m.
Where: City, State-Local Citi branch
Why: Citigroup is using clients' money to perpetuate institutional racism and fund environmentally and socially destructive activities around the world. Citibank, the world's most destructive bank, has funded everything from clearcutting Redwood forests to redlining in inner cities. Students, environmentalists, human rights activists and economic justice advocates will join in an international day of protest as part of a global campaign to hold Citigroup accountable for its destructive activities. Campus/Community groups across the United States are pushing their university administrations/City Councils and faculty to divest from the destructive bank. On the International Day of Action, students at (Your University) will cut up their Citibank credit cards and applications to send a strong message to Citi that they must stop funding destruction.
GREAT VISUALS INCLUDING A 20' BANNER, COLORFUL COSTUMES AND STUDENTS CUTTING UP THEIR CREDIT CARDS!
For more information, contact Sandra Student at (301) 983-2222 or see www.corpreform.org
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German nuclear activists disrupt train to France
Planet Ark
GERMANY: April 11, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10472
SENNFELD, Germany - German anti-nuclear activists disrupted a shipment of spent nuclear fuel to France yesterday by chaining themselves to the rails near a nuclear power plant in the southern state of Bavaria.
Police said four Greenpeace activists who chained themselves to the tracks near Sennfeld and four others hanging from ropes from a pedestrian bridge were delaying the transport of the first waste Germany was sending to France for reprocessing in four years.
Police said they were using special welding equipment to free the demonstrators.
"It will probably take a while for us to clear the tracks," a spokesman said. Six demonstrators have been taken into custody, police said.
Protesters were trying to stop a container carrying nuclear waste from a power plant in Bavaria that began its journey to a waste reprocessing centre in France. The container was first transported by truck and accompanied by a police escort from the Grafenrheinfeld power plant to a rail station in Gochsheim.
Several hundred anti-nuclear activists stood by at the train station where the container was transferred to the rails amid a police presence of hundreds of German police. But they were unable to stop the demonstrators in the nearby town of Sennfeld.
Three further containers carrying spent nuclear fuel from the Philipsburg power plant in Baden-Wuerttemberg and another container from the Biblis plant in Hesse were due to join the rail transport in Woerth in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate before it heads for the French reprocessing plant in La Hague.
Authorities said the Philipsburg and Biblis plants had nearly exhausted their temporary storage capacity and would be forced to shut down soon if the waste was not removed.
Anti-nuclear demonstrators had clashed with police two weeks ago when Germany took back the first cargo of reprocessed waste from France since the German government banned the shipments in 1998 over concerns about radioactive leaks and huge anti-nuclear protests.
Authorities employed 20,000 police costing the state around $50 million to protect the shipment on its way from France back to a storage facility in the northern German town of Gorleben. Protesters briefly halted the train by chaining themselves to the tracks.
German anti-nuclear activists have announced they will try to block the train coming from Philippsburg in southwestern Germany before it crosses into France yesterday evening.
The train carrying nuclear waste from Germany to a reprocessing plant in northern France this week will pass through the suburbs of Paris, French anti-nuclear groups said.
The train, due to traverse France in the early hours of Wednesday, will pass through Bobigny, a suburb so close to the capital that it is on the Paris metro network, they said.
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Plans for a CVS Draws Protest in Woodstock
New York Times
April 11, 2001
By DAVID W. CHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/nyregion/11WOOD.html
WOODSTOCK, N.Y., April 9 - Grand Union, sí. CVS, no.
It does not have quite the ring of an epochal battle cry of the counterculture. But here in America's living monument to the glory days of the 1960's, a proposal to close the town's beloved supermarket and replace it with a sprawling, franchise drugstore has graying veterans taking to the streets, pledging to block traffic with human chains and summoning the great proletarian struggles of the past.
The issue has become the most visceral one here in many years, partly because Grand Union, though indisputably corporate, was both a community gathering spot and a lifeline for the disadvantaged.
More fundamentally, the situation has raised the specter that as Grand Union goes, so, too, might go the neighborhood, rendering this quirky and anti- establishment stronghold indistinguishable from other homogenized and corporate-flavored suburbs.
"I can't think of something offhand that has shocked and convulsed us as much as this," said Jeremy Wilber, the town supervisor. "I think someone would have to propose straightening the streets of Greenwich Village to get the same response at a town meeting in New York."
Part of the reason people have been so irked is that they feel they have been betrayed since the Grand Union's parent company, based in Wayne, N.J., filed for bankruptcy last October, and sold most of its supermarkets to its main supplier, C&S Wholesale Grocers, of Brattleboro, Vt.
Despite assurances that the supermarket, which had been profitable, would remain open, town officials learned in February that CVS had purchased the lease and would open a drugstore - meaning that the nearest supermarket would be about a 20-minute drive away. So officials organized an emergency meeting that, in less than 24 hours, attracted an overflow crowd of more than 150 people - or almost 150 more than normal.
Businesses worried about the loss of the anchor of the pedestrian-oriented downtown. Residents seethed that a village that used to have two supermarkets would now have none, but two chain pharmacies, CVS and a small Eckerd's across the street that about four years ago took over the space that had been occupied by a family- owned drugstore.
Some said the dispute goes to the heart of Woodstock's identity.
"The people that live here, many of whom are my age - 40's and 50's - they don't think the 60's ever stopped," said Jeff Cohen, a Woodstock resident and founder of a media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "If Woodstock isn't a town that can keep a supermarket, and prevent an unneeded chain store that no one wants, what is Woodstock about?"
For decades, Woodstock has been famous as a hub for artists, writers and musicians. And though the eponymous music festival of 1969 actually took place 60 miles away in Bethel, N.Y., a hippie aura has always shrouded this progressive-leaning town, as manifested now by a flowering of crafts shops, Buddhist-themed stores and yoga classes.
There are no fast-food restaurants here. No motel chains. No cellular- phone towers. No big-box bookstores or home-improvement behemoths.
The only franchises are the small Eckerd's, a Fleet Bank and a Cumberland Farms convenience store. And the longtime residents and Manhattan weekenders here want to preserve that atmosphere. In fact, opponents have collected more than 2,000 signatures protesting the proposed CVS from this hilly Catskills town of 6,241 and the surrounding areas, said Brian Shapiro, a town councilman.
Of course, saying no to drugs has not always been a dominant theme here. But in the case of CVS, even Chamber of Commerce members urge passing drivers to honk in solidarity with signs like "Food, Not Drugs" and "Community Need, Not Corporate Greed." And by now almost everyone feels as if they're a cog in something turning.
"When corporations come to Woodstock, they have to play by our rules," said Alan Shapiro, father of Brian, the town councilman, who, with his peace button and faded army jacket, looks every bit like the antiwar, no-nukes, civil rights protester that he was a generation ago.
A few weeks ago, the Grand Union stopped receiving fresh food deliveries, and those not boycotting began depleting the shelves. Today, an auction selling the remaining equipment cleaned out the vestiges of the 15,600- square-foot space.
Outside the store, a boisterous crowd included one protester who wore a hat crowned by empty drug vials. Inside, TB Auctions, of Rutledge, Ga., presided over an event which, with its melodically urgent Southern timbre, seemed very un- Woodstock.
CVS has not yet established a timetable for opening the Woodstock store. But, in a rare departure, CVS is considering subleasing to a local grocer to provide perishables like milk, bread and eggs.
"We can understand that people don't want to lose their supermarket," said Todd Andrews, a CVS spokesman. "We're moving forward in earnest to reach some kind of accommodation."
Officially, the town is optimistic that a compromise can be reached. But the town is also prepared to declare eminent domain if the community's welfare is deemed to be threatened.
"This is not anti-CVS; this is pro- supermarket," Mr. Wilber said. "But Woodstock cannot be crucified on the cross of CVS."
In a place where many people patronize gourmet groceries and natural food markets, the Grand Union was often criticized as being unkempt and having inconsistent service. Still, the supermarket was a place where community groups held raffles, where Girl Scouts sold cookies, where neighbors bumped into neighbors and glanced at the community bulletin board.
It was also indispensable to the elderly and people without cars. Hilda Hortens Rovere, 88, a ceramicist who moved here in 1976 from Manhattan, lives with her two cats across the street from the Grand Union, and has never learned to drive. Without a supermarket, she will have to lean on friends for transportation to a store elsewhere.
Woodstock also has its share of mentally unstable or indigent people who used to recycle bottles or buy canned goods at Grand Union. They, too, have begun to feel the pinch, said the Rev. Sonja Tillberg, the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church, which runs a pantry and a soup kitchen.
"I don't have a clue what I'll do," said Dava Sawa, a former Brooklyn resident, over a dinner of potato, vegetable and rice soup today at the church. Mr. Sawa, a 37-year-old on disability, used to eat his Grand Union soups out of the can, since his trailer has no plumbing or no cooking equipment.
To help, the Ulster County Department of Transportation has added a bus line between Woodstock and a shopping center in Ulster. The Hurley Ridge Market, a nearby family grocery, has offered free delivery, and has been contacted by CVS to share the Grand Union space.
Even so, veteran activists, wary of corporate assurances, expect a protracted fight. "You always have to fight for ideas, and when big business takes over, it's very scary," said Rosalyn Clark, 78, a painter, photographer and former organic farmer. "I definitely will boycott the CVS, because it'll change our quaint, small village. I only wish I was 20 years younger."
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Hundreds injured in Turkish protests
USA Today
04/11/2001 - Updated 02:00 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-04-11-turkprotests.htm
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Thousands of Turks clashed with police Wednesday and more than 200 were injured in a protest demanding the resignation of the government amid a crippling financial crisis.
Police fired in the air and used water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd of more than 70,000 after demonstrators threw stones, bricks and pieces of wood at police in downtown Ankara, the capital. The protesters were demanding to be allowed to walk to the parliament building.
Scores of demonstrators, policemen and journalists were injured by flying objects, and many officers were forced to hide behind armored vehicles to protect themselves.
At least 202 people, including 137 police officers, were treated in hospitals, the Anatolia news agency reported. Three people, including one policeman, were reported in serious condition.
A group of demonstrators, most of them shop owners, used a truck to ram into a police armored personnel carrier. Paramilitary police wearing bulletproof vests were called in as reinforcements but were later pulled back.
Demonstrators tore large stones from sidewalks and set up barricades before police finally succeeded in forcing the protesters out of a large square in central Ankara.
Groups of protesters smashed shop windows around Ankara's main square. Scores were being detained by police, who beat demonstrators with nightsticks.
Interior Minister Sadettin Tantan condemned the violence, saying that illegal groups may have infiltrated the demonstration, private television NTV reported. He did not specify which groups, but officials had earlier accused Islamic groups of trying to take advantage of the protests.
Wednesday was the largest protest since the latest economic crisis that has seen the lira fall by more than 40%, interest rates skyrocket and a half-million layoffs.
Critics have pointed to the government's reluctance to carry out structural reforms, including restructuring the banking sector and swiftly privatizing key state companies, as the main cause of the crisis.
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said Wednesday his government had no plans to leave office.
"If they are shouting 'resign,"' Ecevit said, "they also have to provide an alternative. I am not glued to my chair."
"I do not believe that the search for a new government would help the country, therefore I am staying at my post, and will stay," Ecevit said.
Within the current parliament, there are few alternatives to Ecevit's three-party coalition government.
At least 40,000 people marched in the Aegean port city of Izmir, where shopkeepers refused to open their shops. Another 20,000 people marched through the central Anatolian city of Konya.
The demonstrations followed Tuesday's call by Turkey's biggest business group for the government to resign over its handling of a financial crisis.
The Turkish Union of Chambers, an umbrella group representing companies, said in a statement that the government had lost the trust and confidence of the people.
Small businesses are struggling after the lira's fall. High interests rates have also made it more difficult for companies to pay their debts.
One demonstrator in Ankara, Salih Erdogu, a shop owner, said he was forced to declare bankruptcy because of the latest crisis.
"I had five workers with me. They are all jobless now and so am I. I am ashamed of this," Erdogu said, tears rolling down his face.
Turkish officials opened talks with an International Monetary Fund delegation Sunday on the details of a recovery program. They are looking for $10 billion to $12 billion in foreign loans. The IMF has already promised to move forward $6.25 billion in loans that have been previously pledged.
The military announced Wednesday it was postponing 32 projects worth $19.5 billion due to the economic crisis. It did not specify which projects would be postponed.
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Still Seeking Signatures
Join Over 400 NGOs and MPs saying No to Star Wars
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
IN ORDER TO SIGN THIS LETTER email nonukes@foesyd.org.au, stating your name, position, name of organisation, and location INCLUDING COUNTRY.
Over 400 organisations and parliamentarians have signed this letter.
Has yours signed yet??
If you or your organisation think that Missile defence/Star Wars is likely to lead to another arms race, and you haven't yet signed this letter you are urged to do so.
If you have already signed and are getting this for the umpteenth time, our apologies - though you may like to ensure your signature is OK.
IN ORDER TO SIGN THIS LETTER email nonukes@foesyd.org.au, stating your name, position, name of organisation, and location INCLUDING COUNTRY.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, 1-202-456-2461, 1-202-456-2883,
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN, +7-095-205-4330, +7-095-206-5173, +7-095-205-4219, FOREIGN MINISTER OF RUSSIA IGOR IVANOV, +7-095-247-2722, +7-095-293-3323,
PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR, 44-207-925-0918, ROBIN COOK, UK MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, +44-207-829-2417, +44-207-270-2833,
PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC, +33-147-42-2465, PRIME MINISTER LIONEL JOSPIN +33-142-34-2677 HUBERT VEDRINE, MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF FRANCE, +33-1-4317-5203,
GERMAN PRESIDENT, JOHANNES RAU, +49-030-20-00-19-99,
CHANCELLOR GERHARD SCHROEDER, +49-228-56-2357, +49-30-4000-2357,
JOSCHKA FISCHER, FOREIGN MINISTER OF GERMANY +49-228-168-6662, +49-1888-171-928, +49-228-173-402, +49-30-201-861-924,
YOHEI KONO, MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF JAPAN, +81-3-3581-9675
JEAN CHRETIEN, PRIME MINISTER, CANADA, +1-613-941-6900,
JOHN MANLEY, MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, CANADA, +1-613-952-3904, +1-613-996-3546, +1-613 996 3443.
POUL NYRUP RASMUSSEN, PRIME MINISTER OF DENMARK, +45-33-11-1665
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF DENMARK +45 3154 0533
JENS STOLTENBERG, PRIME MINISTER OF NORWAY +47-22249500
THORBJORN JAGLAND, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, NORWAY +47-22833934
BJORN TORE GODAL, MINISTER OF DEFENCE, NORWAY +47-23092010
CC
US SECRETARY OF STATE GENERAL COLIN POWELL, +1-202-647-6047,
US SECRETARY FOR DEFENCE, DONALD C. RUMSFELD, +1-703-695-1149,
THE HON. ALEXANDER DOWNER, MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS AUSTRALIA +61-2-6273-4112, 08-8370-8166
THE HON. PETER REITH, MINISTER FOR DEFENCE OF AUSTRALIA +61-2-6273-4115, 03-5979-3034
Dear Presidents, Prime Ministers, Secretaries and Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence:
We, the undersigned organisations, representing millions of people world-wide, write to express our opposition to current US plans to deploy a national ballistic missile defence network.
We urge instead that the United States proceed with deep cuts to the US arsenal and de-alerting of nuclear weapons -- promised by President George W. Bush during his campaign -- in order to move toward the total and unequivocal elimination of nuclear arsenals, to which the United States, Russia, and other nuclear weapons states are obligated under binding and repeated international commitments.
The deployment of missile defence will undercut these measures, making the fulfillment of those commitments more difficult.
In our view, the deployment of a National Missile Defence (NMD) network is deeply-flawed and reckless, decreasing rather than increasing overall international security.
President Bush says that the United States will propose modifications to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for US national missile defences. If Russia does not agree to the US proposals, the Bush Administration has said the United States is prepared to withdraw from the ABM treaty. President Bush may decide as soon as this year whether to begin construction of a key NMD radar site in Alaska, which could violate the treaty.
Russia has stated clearly in the recent session of the Conference on Disarmament that its offer of deep reductions in warhead numbers is conditional on the integrity of the ABM treaty. Russia's ratification of START-II was also conditional on the maintenance of the integrity of the ABM treaty, and therefore the non-deployment of US missile defences.
It is our strong view that the deployment of even so-called limited missile defences will undercut the possibility of deep reductions in US and Russian nuclear weaponry, and could foreclose the possibility of removing US and Russian missiles from their current, dangerous hair-trigger alert status.
Military planners react to capabilities rather than intentions. The deployment of even limited missile defences could lead to Russian re-deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and multiple warhead missiles. It also may accelerate a Chinese build-up of strategic nuclear weapons, which could include deployment of multiple nuclear warheads on long-range missiles, and a dramatic increase in the now limited number of those missiles.
A Chinese build-up could easily result in a dangerous acceleration of Indian, and in turn, Pakistani nuclear weapons deployments. This escalation of offensive capabilities is likely to lead to nuclear arsenals poised at even higher levels of alert.
Furthermore, missile defence systems, particularly the NMD network now being contemplated by the United States, are extraordinarily expensive and have not been proven to work in an operational environment.
No NMD system, even a limited one, can be deployed for at least six to 10 years. Two out of three US NMD flight tests so far have failed, yet in order to be effective, NMD (or TMD) must intercept incoming nuclear warheads with close to 100% reliability.
Even if an NMD system could be designed to defeat countermeasures, could be engineered to be operationally effective, and would not prompt a state to build additional offensive missiles to over-saturate missile defences, neither NMD nor TMD can guard against less sophisticated and more reliable means of delivering weapons of mass destruction.
Likewise, various systems of proposed Theatre Missile Defence, possibly to be deployed in Taiwan, Japan, Europe or the Middle East, suffer from many of the same technical problems, and may have the same effect as NMD in creating a dangerous action-reaction cycle leading to offensive missile build-ups.
The deployment of missile defence/TMD in Taiwan is particularly likely to result in a Chinese build-up.
The problems associated with missile defences require that the international community work together to make effective use of diplomacy, trade and assistance, and new mechanisms to control and reduce existing and potential ballistic missile proliferation. Near-term efforts should befocused on securing a lasting and enforceable framework agreement freezing the North Korean missile program.
Further efforts to enforce and strengthen the Missile Technology Control Regime, and control and reduce missile stockpiles on a global and regional basis, should be pursued on an urgent basis.
In light of the above:
--We respectfully urge the United States not to seek to deploy such missile defences, and to support more effective methods to prevent missile proliferation.
--We urge governments of NATO and other US allies not to enable US deployment of such missile defence systems by allowing the upgrading of joint facilities at Menwith Hill, Fylingdales, Pine Gap, Thule, or elsewhere, for NMD- or TMD-related purposes, and to use their diplomatic influence to continue to dissuade the US government from the pursuit of missile defence.
To address the most immediate and dire missile threat:
--We urge that the United States and Russia remove all nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert as part of a policy of eliminating launch-on-warning from their strategic war plans. This will serve as the most immediate step to increase global security and stability, and reduce the risk of unintended nuclear attack.
--We urge the United States and Russia, with the support of other states, to proceed toward immediate, verifiable and irreversible reductions of strategic and tactical nuclear stockpiles to less than 1,500 warheads each through implementation of START-II, START-III, and/or by other means.
The above measures would help fulfill their solemn commitments as expressed in the final declaration of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Review Conference to "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all states parties are committed under Article VI."
The undersigned organisations believe that these measures, and not the deployment of missile defence, constitute the way forward to the elimination of nuclear arsenals to which the nuclear weapons powers are committed, and which the overwhelming majority of the world's peoples and governments expect.
(Signed)
INTERNATIONAL GROUPS
Carah Lyn Ong, Coordinator, Abolition-2000, Santa Barbara, Calif, USA, Mary-Wynne Ashford, Co-President, John Loretz, Program Director, Michael Christ, Exec. Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Cambridge, Mass, William Peden, Greenpeace International, Lond, UK, Dan Plesch, Director, British American Security Information Council (BASIC), London, UK, and Washington, USA, Bruce K. Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Florida, USA, John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP), NY, USA, Pamela A. Jordan, Executive Director, United Nations NGO Committee on Disarmament, UN Plaza, NY, USA, Pol D'Huyvetter, For Mother Earth International(FME), Ghent, Belgium, Peer De Rijk, World Information Service on Energy (WISE-International), Amsterdam, Neth, Colin Archer, International Peace Bureau (IPB), Geneva, Switz, Cora Weiss, Hague Appeal for Peace (HAP), Neth, Alfred A. Marder, Vice Pres, International Association of Peace Messenger Cities, Pamela S. Meidell, USA, Janet Bloomfield UK, Atomic Mirror, Calif USA and Saffron Walden UK, Rosalie Bertell, Jean Rajotte, International Institute of Concern for Public Health, Toronto, Cn, Ak Malten, Global Anti-Nuclear Alliance, The Hague, Neth, Charles Mercieia, President, International Association of Educators for World Peace, Douglas Mattern, President, Association of World Citizens, San Fran, USA, Kevin Sanders, War and Peace Foundation UN Bureau, USA, Armin Tenner, Chair, International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES), Dortmund, Germany/Neth,
MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
Maj-Britt Theorin MEP, Social-Democrats, Sweden, Jill Evans MEP, Plaid Cymru, Cardiff, Wales, Joost Lagendijk MEP, Vice Pres., Green Group (Neth), Dr Caroline Lucas, MEP Greens, SE England, Nuala Ahern, MEP Greens, Ireland, Hiltrud Breyer, MEP Greens, Germany, Heidi Hautala, MEP, Co-President, Greens/EFA Group, European Parliament, Paul Lannoye, MEP, Co-President, Greens/EFA Group, European Parliament, Patricia Mc Kenna, MEP Greens Ireland, Elizabeth Schroedter, MEP, Greens, Germany, Marianne Eriksson MEP, Greens/NGL, Sweden, Per Gahrton MEP Greens, Sweden, Sylviane Ainardi, MEP GUE/NGL, France,
FRENCH GROUPS Bruno Barrilot, Director, Centre de Documentation et de Rechereche sur la Paix et les Conflits, Lyons, France, Jean-Marie Matagne, Action Des Citoyens Pour le Desarmement Nucleaire,(ACDN) France, Dominique Lalanne, Stop-Essais, Linear Accellerator, Orsay, France, Daniel Durand, Arielle Denis, Mouvement de la Paix, St-Ouen, France, Roland Nivet, Mouvement de la Paix Brittany, France, Jacques Chery, Mouvement de la Paix Montpelier, Montpelier, France, Pierre Oliva, Comite de Paix de Ciotat, France, Solange Fernex, Ligue Internationale des Femmes pour la Paix et la Liberte, Paris, France,
NORWEGIAN GROUPS
Prof. Bent Natvig, Chairman, Norwegian Pugwash Committee, Oslo, Norway, Prof Bjorn Hilt/Kirsten Osen, Norwegian Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons (IPPNW-Norway) Edel Havin Beukes, Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Norway, Oslo, Norway, Olav Stoylen, Chemical Workers Union of Norway, Oslo, Norway,
Thor Magnusson, Peace-2000 Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland, Finn Ekman, Liason Committee for Peace and Security, Denmark, Poul Eck Sorenson, Peace Movement of Esbjerg, Esbjerg, Denmark,
SWEDISH GROUPS
Jorma Kahanpaa, Swedish Anti-Nuclear Movement, Agneta Norberg, Women for Peace, Sweden, Gunnar Westberg, SLMK (Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War), Goteborg, Sweden, Stefan Bjornsson, Chair, Swedish Engineers and Scientists Against Nuclear Arms, Malla Kantola, Secy General, Committee of 100, Helsinki, Finland, Ulla Lehtinen, First Peoples, Finland,
GERMAN GROUPS
Regina Hagen, Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Darmstadt/Germany Hans-Peter Richter, German Peace Council, Germany, Horst Hohmier, Anti-Atom Plenum, Ruhrgebiet, Germany, Dr Margit Hoepfler, NGO Shalom, School Sisters of Notre Dame, Amberg, Germany, Dr Sebastian Pflugbiel, German Society for Radiation Protection, Berlin, Dr Matthias Engelke, Evang. Standortpfarrer, Idar-Oberstien, Germany, Roland Blach, Coordinator, Non-Violent Action to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Kornwesthiem, Germany,
AUSTRIAN GROUPS
Andreas Pecha, Secy, Austrian Peace Council, Vienna, Anti-Atom International (AAI), Vienna, Austria, Mattias Reichl, Centre for Encounters and Active Non-Violence, Bad-Ischl, Austria, Czech Peace Society, Praha, Czech Republic, Frauen Fur Den Frieden, Basel, Switz,
NETHERLANDS GROUPS
Martin Broek, Campagne Tegen Wapenhandel, Amsterdam, Neth, Frank Van Schaik, Chair, ASEED-Europe, Amsterdam, Neth, Monique de Nijs, Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, Neth, Transnational Institute Asia Program, Amsterdam, Neth, Louis Bertholet, Stichting Onderzoeksgroep Vliegramp Bijlmermeer (SOVB), Neth, Carolien Van De Stadt, WILPF-Netherlands, Utrecht, Neth,
BELGIAN GROUPS
Isabel Vertried MP Greens, Belgium, Eloi Glorieux MP Greens, Belgium, Lode Vanoost MP Greens (AGALEV) Brussels, Belgium, Forum Voor Vredesaktie, Belgium, George Spriet, Secy, VREDE, Ghent, Belgium,
SPANISH GROUPS
OSPAAAL-Solidaridad, Madrid, Spain, Dr Josep Puig, Scientists and Technicians for a Nuclear-free Future, Barcelona, Spain, Jordi Armadans, Director, Foundation for Peace, Barcelona, Spain, Catherine Arata, SHALOM, School Sisters of Notre Dame, Italy, Georgio Nebbia, (former Senator) Faculty of Economics, University of Bari, Aurel Duta, Mama Terra/For Mother Earth Romania, Bucharest, Romania, Constantin S. Lacatus, People of Sibiu for Peace, Sibiu, Romania, Cornel Radu, Aer Pur, Romania, Zoran Siriski, Growing Earths Apprentices, Serbia, Ilya Trombitsky, BIOTICA Ecological Society, Moldova, Prof Vladimir Koklyukhin, Belarussian Association for Political Science, Brest, Belarus, Serghiy Fedorychnyk, Zelenyi Zvit, (Green World) Kiev, Ukraine, Manana Kochladze, Green Alternative, Tblisi, Georgia,
RUSSIAN GROUPS
Prof Alexi B. Yablokov, Centre for Russian Environmental Policy, Moscow, Russia, Vladimir Slivyak, Co-Chair, ECODEFENSE, Kaliningrad, Russia, Alisa Nikoulina, Coordinator, Antinuclear Campaign of the Social-Ecological Union, Moscow, Russia, Alexandra Koroleva, Chair, Public Committee on Environmental Education, Kaliningrad Regional Duma, Russia, Galina Ragouzhina, WISE-Kaliningrad, Russia, Pavel Malyshev, AVA, Kaliningrad, Russia, Alexey Kozlov, ECODEFENSE, Voronezh, Russia, Oleg Bodrov, 'Green World', Sosnovy Bor (St Petersburg) Russia, Andrei Laletin, Chairman, Friends of the Siberian Forests, Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Nikolai Zubov, Director, Social-Ecological Union, Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Alla Yaroshinskaya, President, Ecological Fund, Russia, Alexis Karpov, International Association of Peace Foundations of Russia, Russia, Adi Roche, Executive Director, Chernobyl Childrens Project, Ireland, Dr John de Courcy Ireland, Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Ireland,
UK GROUPS
David Drew MP, UK., Lynne Jones MP,Birmingham-Selly Oak, UK, Alice Mahon,MP, UK, Christine Mc Cafferty MP, UK, Frank Cook MP Stockton North, UK, Penny Kemp, Chair, Green Party of England and Wales, Commander Robert Green, George Farebrother, World Court Project, Peter Nicholls, Chair, Abolition2000 UK, London, UK, Lindis Percy and Anni Rainbow, Co-Coordinators, Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) Dave Knight, Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), UK., David Webb, Yorkshire CND, UK., Greater Manchester and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Manchester, UK., Jenny Maxwell, Treasurer, West Midlands Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Birmingham, UK., Janet Laycock, Wallasey CND, Merseyside, UK, Paul Maurins, CND-Bolton, UK, Sarah Lazenby, CND-Oxford, UK, Anna Cheetham, Chair, CND-Leicester, Ralph Say, Woking CND, Surrey, UK, Patricia Pullman, Christian CND, London, UK, Margaret Turner, British Section WILPF, Croydon, UK, Gillian Reeve, Assistant Director, MECACT (IPPNW-UK) Angie Zelter, Reforest The Earth, Norfolk, UK, J. E. Mabbit, Socialist Workers Party, Sheffield, UK, Anna Jane, Cymdiethas y Cymod yng Nghymru, Wales, UK, Pat Gaffney, Pax Christi UK, Denis Beaumont, Chair, Fellowship of Reconciliation, UK,
JAPANESE GROUPS
Satomi Oba, Plutonium Action Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan, Hiromichi Umebayashi, International Coordinator, Pacific Campaign for Disarmament and Security (PCDS), Sachiyo Oki, Japanese Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (JPPNW), Hiroshima, Japan, Sadao Kamata, Nagasaki Peace Institute, Nagasaki, Japan, Yumi Kikuchi, Founder, Monkey Bay Wildlife Fund, Chiba, Japan,
KOREAN GROUPS
Kho Dae Sung MP, National Assembly of Korea, Gyun Lan Jung, Women Making Peace, Seoul, S. Korea, Changsoo Kim, Korean National Congress for Reunification, Seung Kuk Kim, SPARK, S. Korea, Lee Taeho, Peoples Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, S. Korea, Jeong Yu Jin, National Campaign for Eradication of Crime by US Troops in S. Korea, Choi Jung Min/Eong Young Sun, Solidarity for Peace and Human Rights, Yoon Jung-Suk, Women Link, S. Korea,
Thanassis Pafilis, Exec Secy, World Peace Council, Greece, Thanassis Pafilis, Greek Committee for International Detente and Peace (EDEYE), Greece, Cyprus Peace Council,Cyprus, Abdul H. Nayyar, Pakistan Peace Coalition, Islamabad, Pk, Dr Kamrul, Bangladesh Medical Association, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Ron Mc Coy, Malaysian Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, Corazon Valdes-Fabros, Nuclear-Free Phillipines Coalition, Kilsung Mayo Uno, Phillipines, Losena Tubanavau-Salabula, Pacific Concerns Research Centre, Suva, Fiji, Luis-Guttierez Esparza, President, Latin-American Circle for International Studies, Mexico City, Mexico, Jean Patterson, LIMPAL Disarmament Group, Costa-Rica, Christopher Clark, President, Associao Amazonia, Manaus, Brasil, Dina Lida Kinoshita, CONDEPAZ, Brasil, Grace de Haro, Human Rights Organisation, Rio Negro, Patagonia, Argentina, FUNAM- Foundation for Defenceof the Environment, Rio Negro, Patagonia, Argentina, Lazaro Pary, Coordinator, Indian Movement Tupaj-Amaru (Peru/Bolivia) Alfredo Felix Perez Aruazo, Environmental Strategic Research Council, Uruguay, Dr Salavador Maria Lozada, President, International Association for Constitutional Law, Uruguay, Mr Percy S. Ngonyama, Organiser, Ceasefire Campaign, Johannesburg, SA, Prof Denis Brutus, Jubilee South Africa, Edward Appiah, Green Earth Organisation, Accra, Ghana,
EGYPTIAN GROUPS
Bahig Nassar, Coordinator, Arab Coordination Centre of NGOs, Egypt, Dr Murad Ghaleb, President, Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisation, Egypt, Khalid Mahi-Aldin, Member of Egyptian Parliament, Elbadr Farghali, Member of Egyptian Parliament, Dr Refat El Said, Member of Egyptian Parliament, Marii Sbdul Rahman, Palestinian Peace and Solidarity Committee, Essan Makhloul, Member of the Knessett, Israel, Evan Razgour, Green Action, Tel-Aviv, Israel,
UNITED STATES GROUPS
NATIONAL GROUPS US
Martin Butcher, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), Washington, USA, Helen Caldicott MD, Founding President, PSR, Marylia Kelly, Executive Director, Tri-Valley CARES, Livermore, CA, USA, Arjun Makhijani, President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), Md, USA, Alice Slater, Global Resource Action Centre for the Environment (GRACE), NY, USA, David Krieger, Nuclear-Age Peace Foundation,(NAPF), Santa Barbara, USA, Sally Light, Executive Director, Nevada Desert Experience (NDE), Nevada, USA, Susi Snyder, Shundahai Network, Nevada, USA, Ellen Thomas, Proposition-One Committee, Washington DC, USA, Carol Rosin, Founder, Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space (ISCOS), Anthony Guarisco,Director, Alliance of Atomic Veterans, Ariz,USA, Rear-Admiral Eugene C. Carroll (USN-Retd) (Vice President, Centre for Defence Information) Peter Deccy, Fabian Giatti, Peace Action, Wash DC, USA
LOCAL GROUPS US
Bill Smirnow, Nuclear-Free New York, NY, USA, Deb Katz, Citizens Awareness Network (CAN), Ma, USA, Donald and Janet Axman, Peoples Action for Clean Energy, Ct, USA, Vivian Stockman, Concerned Citizens Coalition, West Virginia, USA, Bonnie Urfer/John Lafarge, Nukewatch, USA, Paloma Galindo, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Oak Ridge, Tenn, USA, Sherry Larsen-Beville, Livermore Conversion Project, Oakland, Calif, Citizens Protecting Ohio, Bexley, Ohio, USA, Bill Sulzman, Citizens for Peace in Space, Colo, USA, Rochelle Becker, Liz Apfelberg, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Calif, USA, Lewis E. Patrie MD, President, North Carolina Chapter, PSR, NC, USA, Melanie Canon, PSR-New York, NY, USA, Bruce A. Drew, Prairie Island Coalition, Minn, USA, Michael J. Keegan, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, Michigan, USA, Corrine Carey, Don't Waste Michigan, Mich, USA, Ellen & Paul Connett, Waste Not, NY, USA, Kieth Gunter, Citizens Resistance at Fermi-2, Susan V. Walker, President, Action for Nuclear Disarmament, Cape Cod, USA, Jonathan Mark, No Flyby, Ma, USA, Ernest Goeitien, Coordinator, Californians for Radioactive Safeguards, Atherton, Calif, Martha O. Vinick, West Hartford Abolition 2000, Stacey Fritz, Coordinator, Alaskans and Arctic Peoples Against Missile Defence, Fairbanks, Alaska, Steven W. Malkus, Project Catalyst, Ma, USA, Stacey Studebaker, Kodiak Rocket Launch Information Group, Kodiak, Ala, USA, Alaska Action Centre, Anchorage, Alaska, USA, Pamela K. Miller, Program Director, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Ala, USA, Andrew J. Hund, Coordinator, Alaska Arctic Environmental Defence Fund, Kevin Martin, Project Abolition, Goshen, Indiana, USA, Robert M. Gould, MD, President, Physicians for Social Responsibility, San Fran/Bay Area Chapter, Pat Birnie, Organiser, GE Stockholders Alliance, Betty Schroeder, Arizona Safe Energy Coalition, Tucson Ariz, USA, Alice Swift, Franklin/Hampshire Chapter, CPPAX Nuclear Weapons Abolition Taskforce, MA, USA, Mel Hunt, Vice-Chair, City of Arcata Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Commission, Calif, USA, Janet D. Sherman MD, Radiation and Public Health Project, USA,
WOMENS GROUPS US
Phyllis S. Yingling, Chair, Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) USA Section, Pa, USA, Bernice Fischer, Penninsula Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Calif, USA, Pat Sordill, Chair, WILPF Northern New Jersey, USA, Susan Shaer, Director, Womens Action for New Directions (WAND), Wash DC, USA, Jen Kato, Atlanta Womens Action for New Directions (WAND), Atlanta, USA, Judy Gallo, Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice, USA, Women Against Military Madness, (WAMM), Minn, USA,
PEACE AND JUSTICE GROUPS US
James K. Galbraith, Lucy Webster, Robert J. Schwartz, Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, (ECAAR) NY, USA, William D. Hartung,Director, Arms Trade Resource Center, World Policy Institute, NY,USA, Karen Talbot, International Centre for Peace and Justice, USA, Harry Rodgers, Carolina Peace Resource Centre, Columbia, SC, USA, Barbara Weidner, Grandmothers for Peace International, Calif, USA, Rev. Robert Moore, Coalition for Peace Action, Princeton, NJ, USA, Rosalie Tyler-Paul,chair, Peace Action Maine, Maine, USA, Elen R.Robinson, Peace Action New Mexico, NM, USA, Sonya Ostrom, Peace Action, PA, USA, Francis Chiappa, Cleveland Peace Action, Ohio USA, Madelyn Hoffman, Peggy Monges, New Jersey Peace Action, NJ, USA, Tom Seery, Program Director, Peace Action Wisconsin, Wisc, USA, Peter Ferenbach, Executive Director, California Peace Action, USA, Alfred A. Marder, United States Peace Council, USA, Mark Haim, Director, Mid-Missouri Peace Works, USA, Jean Coster, Director, South Dakota Peace and Justice Centre,USA, Luisa Brown, North Dakota Peace Coalition, USA, Barry Reisch, President, Veterans for Peace, Washington DC, USA, Bill Warwick MD, Gainville Florida Veterans for Peace, Fl, USA, Carol Mosely, Kelli Sebastian, Coordinator, Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, Florida, USA, Paul George, Peninsula Peace and Justice Centre, Palo Alto, Calif, USA, Ellen Kahler, Peace and Justice Centre, Burlington, Vt, USA, Phyllis W. Stanley, President, Environmental and Peace Education Centre, Florida, USA, Anabel Dwyer, Peace Education Centre, East Lansing, Michigan, USA, Mavis Belisle, Peace Farm, Texas, USA, Phil Weaver, Eugene Peaceworks, Oregon, USA, Amy Bannon, Volunteers for Peace, USA, Alan D, Moore, Fine Artists for World Peace, Berkley, Calif,
MISC US GROUPS
Adele Kushner, Action for a Clean Environment, Georgia, USA, Justine Cooper, Native Forest Council, Oregon, USA. Krista Leeraas, Alliance for Sustainability, Mn, USA, Frances Fox, Global Resource Bank, USA, Alan D. Moore, Butterfly Gardeners Association, Berkley, Calif, George B. Hug, President, Northwest Builders Network, USA, George Croker, Director, North American Water Office, USA, Mark Ritchie, Institute For Agriculture and Trade Policy, Mitch Hall, President, 'Checkmate' Non-Violence Group, Vermont, USA, Ground Zero Centre for Nonviolent Action, Washington, USA, Pablo Paster, Clayton Whitt, Cal-Poly Progressive Student Alliance, San Luis Obispo, Calif, USA, James K. Wyerman, 20/20 Vision, Washington DC, USA, James V. Albertini, President, Malu 'Aina, Hawaii, Pete Shimazaki Doktor, Hawaii-Okinawa Network, Honululu, Hawaii, USA, Ohana Foley, Student Peace Action Network Hawaii, Richard N. Salvador, Hague Appeal for Peace Pacific Forum, Honululu, Hawaii, USA, Fredrique Apfel-Marglin, Smith College, Northampton, Mass, USA, John Witeck, Phillipine Workers Support Committee, USA, Dae Jung Moon, Young Koreans United of USA, LA, Calif, Human Rights Project, Birmingham, Alabama, USA, Glenn Van Haitsma, Waukesha County Chapter United Nations Association, USA, Jenifer Olaranna Viereck, Director, HOME, Tecopa, Ca, USA, Elise Brion, People over Profit, St Louis, Miss, USA, Scott Chaplin, Mountain Folks for Global Justice, USA, Peggy Macintyre, Coordinator, Grandparents for Peace, Fl, USA, David L. Marks, The Giving Web, NY, USA, Denise Nelson, Director, SERV, USA, Carol Brouillet, The Who's Counting Project, Palo Alto, Calif, USA, Dana Williams, Students Taking Action for a New Democracy (STAND), Akron, Ohio, USA, June Zeitlin, Womens Environmental and Developmental Organisation (WEDO), NY, USA, Alyson Ewald, Sacred Earth Network, Petersham, Mass, USA, Dr Kathleen Sullivan, Project EDNA, Brooklyn, NY, USA, Kenneth Pollinger, New Age Centre, NY, USA, Don Brook, Centre for Research and Education, Calif, USA,
RELIGIOUS GROUPS - US
Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, President, Pax Christi USA, Bishop C. Dale White, Margaret Darlene Ehinger, Pax Christi Huntsville, Ala, USA, Mary Ellen Mc Nish, General Secy, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Joe Franko, American Friends Service Committee Southwest Regional Office, Kyle Kajiro, American Friends Service Committee Hawaii Area Program, Rev. Thomas I. Warren, Chair, Just Peace Committee, United Church of Christ, New Orleans, USA, Patricia A. Stalder, Immaculate Conception Gospel Justice Committee, Calif, USA, David Joslin, Capitol Region Conference of Churches, USA, Maryellen Haydon, Thomas Merton Centre, Pittsburgh, USA, Sister Ardeth Platte, Jonah House, Baltimore, USA, Sister Ardeth Platte, Sacred Earth and Space Ploughshares, Colo, USA, Toni Flynn, High Desert Catholic Worker Community, Ca, USA, Robert M. Smith, Brandywine Peace Community, Pace e Bene Franciscan Nonviolence Centre, USA, Jennifer Reese, PhD, The Community Church, Sonora, Ca, USA, Peggy Harrington, Interfaith Centre of NY, Edgar P. Lucas, Renacer Westside Community Network, Chicago, Ill, USA, Alice Swift, Clerk, Mt Toby Friends Meeting, Leverett, MA, USA, Rose Marie Franklin, Maryknoll Sisters Korea Global Concerns, Maryknoll Sisters, USA, Rev William J. Morton, SSC, Columban Mission Office, El Paso, Texas, USA, Bonita Chang, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Hawaii Area Program, Honululu, Hawaii, Henriette Groot, Clerk, Central Coast Preparative Meeting, Society of Friends, Calif, USA,
CANADIAN GROUPS
The Hon. Senator Douglas Roche OC, Canadian Senate, Ottawa, Canada, Pat Martin, MP (NDP) Winnipeg Centre, Manitoba, Cn, Alexa Mc Donough, MP for Halifax, Leader, NDP, Cn, Svend-Robinson MP (NDP) Barnaby-Douglas, BC, Can, Libby Davies MP Vancouver East, Ottawa, Canada, Niel Arya,, President, Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), Ottawa, Canada, Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), Montreal, Quebec, Helmut (Ken) Burkhardt President, Science for Peace, Toronto, Canada, David Morgan, President, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, (VANA), Vancouver, BC., Canada, Desmond Berghofer, Institute for Ethical Leadership, Vancouver, BC, Joan Russow, Global Compliance Project, Canada, Kira Van Deusen, Foundation for Indigenous Siberian Culture, Seattle, Canada, Betty Brightwell, Raging Grannies, Victoria, BC, Canada, Joyce Lydiard, Rainforest Raging Grannies, Vancouver, Canada, Carolyn Bassett, Coordinator, Canadian Peace Alliance, Canada, Ivan Bulic, Society Promoting Environmental Conservation (SPEC), Vancouver BC, Canada, Dr Jennifer-Anne Simons, Simons Foundation, Vancouver BC, Canada, Kris Mansfield, Coordinator, Conscience Canada, Victoria, BC, Canada, Sue Frazer, Secy, Vancouver Island Network for Disarmament, BC, Canada, Rose-Marie Whalley, Voice of Women, Quebec, Canada, Rose-Marie Whalley, National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canada, Prof. Douglas A. Ross, Dept Political Science, Simon Frazer University, BC, Canada, Marieka Arnold, Project Coordinator, Falls Brook Centre, NB, Canada, Jacques Boucher, Gerry Pascal, Centre de Ressources sur la Non-Violence, Montreal, Canada, Linda Murphy, President, Inter-Church Uranium Committee (ICUC), Sask, Canada, Niel Sinclair, New Green Alliance, Sask, Canada, Dave Greenfield, Who on Earth Music and Art Collective, Sask, Canada, Elizabeth Mc Laughlin, People Against Nuclear Energy, NB, Canada, Rev Jeanette Liberty-Duns, President, Project Ploughshares Saskatoon, Canada, Dr John Bury, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms Saskatchewan, Sask, Canada,
AOTEAROA/NZ GROUPS
Keith Locke MP, Green Party of Aotearoa/NZ, Kate Dewes, President, Disarmament and Security Centre(DSC), Christchurch, NZ, Marion Hancock, Peace Foundation Aotearoa/NZ, Auckland, Aotearoa/NZ, CND NZ, Wellington, NZ, Helen Kingston, Golden Bay Peace Group, Aotearoa/NZ, Megan Hutching, WILPF-Aotearoa, Aotearoa/NZ, Dame Laurie Salas, Abolition2000-Aotearoa/NZ, Wellington, Aotearoa/NZ, John Urlich, President, Peace Council of Aotearoa/NZ, Des Brough Chair, Dame Laurie Salas Vice-Chair, National Consultative Committee on Disarmament, Aotearoa/NZ, R.E. White, Centre for Peace Studies, University of Auckland, Aotearoa/NZ, David Menkes, Dr Margot Parkes, Med Eco New Zealand, Wellington Aotearoa/NZ, Carol Anne Bradford, New Zealand Coalition for Gun Control, Aotearoa/NZ, Larry Ross, Secy, New Zealand Nuclear-Free Peacemaking Association, Christchurch, Aotearoa/NZ, John La Roche, President, Engineers for Social Responsibility, Auckland, NZ, Prof. Dr Klaus Bosselman, Director, New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law, Auckland NZ, Simon Reeves, Vice President, United Nations Association of NZ,
AUSTRALIAN GROUPS
Senator Vicky Bourne, Australian Democrats Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Defence, Senator for NSW, Senator Andrew Bartlett, Australian Democrats Spokesperson on the Environment, Qld, Tanya Plibersek MP ALP Federal Member for Sydney, NSW, Collin Hollis MP ALP Federal Member for Throsby, NSW, Jill Hall, MP ALP Federal Member for Shortland, NSW, Kelly Hoare MP, ALP Federal Member for Charlton, NSW, Jann Mc Farlane MP, ALP Member for Stirling, W.A., Cheryl Kernot MP, ALP Member for Dickson, Qld, Daryl Melham, MP, ALP Member for Banks, NSW, Harry Jenkins MP, ALP Member for Scullin, Vic, Aust, Senator Chris Schacht, ALP Senator for South Australia, Robin Chapple MLC, Greens Member-Elect for Mining and Pastoral Region, W.A., Lee Rhiannon MLC, Greens, NSW, Sandra Kank MLC-SA, Australian Democrats, SA, Catherine Moore, Convenor, Australian Greens, Irene Gale AM and Ron Gray, Australian Peace Committee, Adelaide, SA, Aust, Pauline Mitchell, CICD, Melbourne, Vic, Aust, Michelle Matthews, Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), Fitzroy, Vic, Kirsten Blair/Mark Wakeham, Environment Centre of the Northern Territory (ECNT), Darwin, NT, Aust, Glenn Marshall, Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC), Alice Springs, NT. Chris White, United trades and Labor Council, South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Aust, Julius Rowe, President, Amalagamated Metal Workers Union, Aust, Dr Susan Wareham, President, Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) Australia, Canberra, ACT, Judy Blyth, Medical Association for the Prevention of War WA (MAPWA), Perth, WA, Aust, Rowena, Environment Centre of Western Australia(ECWA), Perth, W.A., Aust, Graham Daniell, People for Nuclear Disarmament W.A., (PND-WA), Perth, W.A., Aust, Rob Gulley, Community Anti-Nuclear Network of Western Australia, Perth, W.A., Irina Reykhtman, Gaia Foundation, Perth, W.A., Margaret Reynolds, President, United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA), Ryan Heath, Pres, NSW Branch, National Union of Students (NUS), Doreen Mackman, People Against Uranium, Geraldton W.A., Joan Shears, Secy/Coordinator, Rally for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Brisbane, Qld, Aust, Beryl Miller, Secy, Union of Australian Women, (SA), Yvonne Francis, Save The Otways, Yvonne Francis, Nuclear Disarmament Party, Rev. Ray Richmond, Wayside Chapel, Kings Cross, NSW, Greg Thompson, Pastor, St John's Darlinghurst Anglican Church, NSW.,
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH GROUPS
Ricardo Navarro, Chair, Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) Salvador/Amsterdam Ricardo Navarro, Friends of the Earth El Salvador, Bo Normander, Friends of the Earth Denmark, Anastasia Laitilia, Maan Ystävät Ry/Friends of the Earth Finland, Friends of the Earth Cyprus, Julian Manduca, Friends of the Earth Malta/Moviment Ghall-Ambjent, Viktor Khazan MP, Friends of the Earth Ukraine(Zeleny Zvit), Dniepropetrovsk, Ukraine, Rusudan Simonidze, Jimi Dabrundashvili, Friends of the Earth Georgia/Greens Movement of Georgia, Tbilsi, Georgia, Natalia Arias, Pres, Accion Ecologica (Friends of the Earth Ecuador), Quito, Ecuador, Nnimmo Bassey, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Benin City, Nigeria, Istvan Farkas, Director, Friends of the Earth Hungary, Daniel Sanchez, Amigos de la Tierra Espana (Friends of the Earth Spain), Madrid, Sp, Bob Taitt, Coordinator, Friends of the Earth New Zealand, John Hallam, Friends of the Earth Australia
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Spectacle et cercle
Organization: Community Network
From: "Edward Pickersgill" <Lab@assets.net>
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
HAND IN HAND FOR OUR LAND
During the summit of the Americas, at 7 o'clock each night, April 16 - 21, and once more at noon on April 22 - Earth Day, thousands of people near the security zone will be invited by volunteers to circulate around the fence.
WE WILL FORM A MASSIVE AND IMPENETRABLE HUMAN CHAIN
A human circle will be formed at a secure distance from the fence. Therefore, all those who do not wish to confront the police force will participate in this symbolic circle.
The circle is the symbol of the Earth, the sun, and the universe; it represents wholeness and peace, according to North American First Nations. The human circle will symbolise our diversity and solidarity in opposition to the capitalist values that dominate globalisation. This symbol also represents the One, the individual, with no distinction made between sex, race, age, nationality or religion.
To participate in the organisation of the circle or to become a volunteer from 5 PM to 8 PM on the 20th and 21st of April, or to help with the final Earth Day circle (A22) contact us:
(514) 273-1083 sosgaia@naga.qc.ca www.naga.qc.ca/sosgaia
Please distribute this information as largely as possible This flyer is also available on our web page
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Calendar of Anti-FTAA Events in Buffalo, NY April 20-22nd
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
From: cestpodge@aol.com
Friday April 20th
12pm Funeral for Jobs & the Environment City Hall
1pm Privatization of Prisons Teach-In at Statler Towers
3:30pm Sodexho Marriot Rally against private prisons and for a fair living wage at City Hall
5 pm Human Power Not Corporate Power Bike Ride to the Peace Bridge meet at City Hall
6pm-9pm Affinity Group Spokescouncil Meeting, Location TBA
6pm (or so)Dinner (served by Food Not Bombs) at El Buen Amigo
7pm-8pm Legal/medic training at El Buen Amigo
8pm-9pm Medic/legal training at El Buen Amigo
8pm Screening at Squeaky Wheel: Corrections (on Prisons)
Saturday April 21
10am Dupont Rally
12pm Lunch (served by Food Not Bombs) at Pilgrim St. Luke's (Richmond and Utica)
12pm-2pm Legal and medical training at Pilgrim St. Luke's
1pm-3pm Sweatshop media event, Location TBA
4pm-6pm Media training at Pilgrim St. Luke's Church
6pm-9pm Affinity Group Spokescouncil Meeting, Location TBA
6pm-9pm Non-violent Civil Disobedience Training
7:00pm Rock the FTAA Benefit Show Pearl Street Brewery.
Sunday April 22
11am Globalize Liberation Rally Speakers, bands, and more! Front Park
Civil Disobedience Actions
3:30pm Obey Little, Resist Much march to Tri-Co and Reinhabit the downtown area
For more Information Contact the Buffalo Activist Network 716-881-7023 buffaloactivist@yahoo.com www.a22buffalo.org
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De-Racializing Environmental Destruction
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
From: "Christopher Day" <chrisday@onebox.com>
Some Thoughts on Biocentrism and Anti-Racism
RAN's decision, however tentative, to grapple with the question of racism should be applauded. The questions raised are complicated ones and they're not going to be figured out in a day, a month or a year. The important thing right now is to be having the discussion and to continually try to incorporate an anti-racist politic into the work. It's to be expected that the results will be uneven and at times clumsy. This is not the sort of thing white folks embark on for immediate rewards. On the contrary taking up the issue of racism generally has the paradoxical effect of exposing you to more, not less frequent, accusations of racism. It can all be challenging and painful. We do it because its right and - as I will argue - because it is strategically necessary if we want to build movements that can win radical change.
A historical understanding of ecological destruction.
At Ruckus Camp I made a comment to the effect that "You start out wanting to save the rainforest and you discover that behind its destruction are some really bad corporations. As you fight the corporations you discover that the problem is not this or that corporation, but actually capitalism as a system. Accordingly you take on institutions that are at the center of the workings of global capitalism like the WTO, the IMF and Citibank, only to discover that capitalism is built on 500 years of white supremacy." This is the central idea that needs to be developed in this discussion.
Sometime in the past 500 years a handful of countries in Western Europe accumulated a sufficient concentration of capital - surplus wealth that could be reinvested to produce even more wealth - to enable what economists call "capitalist take off," the point where the generation of profits consistently outstrips the periodic exhaustion of wealth reserves through famine, epidemics, wars, etc... This wealth was not internally generated by the European economies. Rather it was extracted through the most violent means from the peoples of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Marx paints a very vivid picture of this process of "primitive accumulation of capital" in Capital. Capitalist take off was made possible by the extermination and expropriation of indigenous peoples and their lands, by the mass enslavement of the sons and daughters of Africa, and by the conquest of Asia. In his book Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams meticulously demonstrates how the fortunes accumulated on the plantations of the West Indies financed the initial rounds of the Industrial revolution in England. (Similarly, the shipping industry of New England that denuded the forests of that region to build the ships that carried slaves, sugar, and cotton in the triangle trade, financed the construction of the first factories in the U.S..)
As we also know capitalist take off had and continues to have an enormous ecological price: the extinction of countless species, the disruption of local ecosystems through the introduction of foreign species, the exhaustion of the soil by destructive agricultural practices, the whittling away of the rainforests and so on. The growth imperative of capitalism only ensures that such destruction gets worse and worse.
Capitalist take off did not mark the beginning of either ecological destruction or human exploitation, but it did mark a dramatic acceleration of both as a result of capitalism's unique logic of unimpeded growth. This logic also makes crises, both economic and ecological, inevitable.
The often genocidal forms of labor exploitation and wealth extraction progressively gave rise to a system of global white supremacy under which the peoples of Africa, Asia and the Americas were systematically socially subordinated to the peoples of Europe (and later North America and Japan). This system is complex and always evolving. It employs ideological indoctrination, psychological and material privileges (to buy off various strata), and brute force in different measures to maintain itself. What is crucial for us to understand is that without the system of white supremacy capitalism would not have been able to achieve take-off, let alone its incredible subsequent expansion. The ecological implications of this fact should be clear.
Traditionally, Eurocentric Marxists have regarded the violent process of primitive accumulation of capital as an opening chapter in the history of capitalism after which it became a self-sustaining enterprise. In contrast, Rosa Luxemburg (in The Accumulation of Capital) and Maria Mies (in Patriarchy and Accumulation on a Global Scale) have argued that it is in fact a constant feature of capitalism that it must destructively loot those who fall outside it in order to bail it out of its periodic crises. Capitalism is constantly in search of frontiers and bonanzas where the rules of capitalist legality (formulated to regulate the relations between capitalists) don't apply and naked robbery is allowed. Taking this view we can see that white supremacy continues to be vital to the continued functioning of capitalism. If we consider some of the issues you are involved in today - the defense of U'wa lands, the Three Gorges Dams, the Chad/Cameroon pipeline - it is clear that this is so. Each of these horrendous developments is made possible by the political disempowerment of the affected peoples as a consequence of their place within the global system of white supremacy.
A strategic understanding of white supremacy.
I believe that the issues of environmental destruction are the most pressing issues of the day. I believe that this is an objective and demonstrable fact. We are after all talking at the very least about the survival of humanity. How can the struggle this or that section of humanity take precedence over matters involving all of our survival (leaving aside for the moment the biocentric perspective)? And yet I have prioritized the fight against white supremacy in my own work. Why?
Quite simply because I do not believe that any sort of meaningful change in the area of our environmental practices can be won within the framework of the current global dispensation of power. Environmentally destructive practices as a whole (as opposed to this or that particular practice) will not end so long as those who profit from them are making all the decisions. A radical democratization of society is a necessary condition for winning those kinds of changes. (Incidentally, this is NOT an argument for abandoning struggles around immediate reforms.)
I believe that the battle lines in the fight for the democratization of this society are fundamentally economic - that it is the area of economic decisions more than any other sort that people are deprived of meaningful control over the decisions that affect their lives. (I don't want to minimize the importance of the arenas of sexuality or culture, but even those are increasingly questions of economic power.) On one side are the owners and executives of the major corporations and banks and their friends in state power. On the other are the people whose labor produces the wealth of the world - the peasants and workers and their families who are the vast majority of humanity.
There are many obstacles to the unity of the oppressed majority of humanity, but I would argue that the most fundamental one is the system of white supremacy. Certainly in the history of social struggles in the United States, white supremacy has been the obstacle that has most consistently stood in the way of building broad and powerful radical mass movements. Robert Allen's Reluctant Reformers tells the painful story of how white folks in the Populist movement, the Women's movement, the Labor movement, as well as the Socialist and Communist movements, have each in their turn sacrificed their larger objectives by refusing to take a principled stand against white power and privilege at the moment it was necessary to forge a broader unity. Democracy is not meaningful so long as racial power and privilege are allowed to continue. But when push has come to shove white activists and organizers have all too consistently sided with the maintenance of their own racially privileged status at the expense of genuine democracy. This is the log jam that I believe more than any other holds up the development of a genuinely global movement for real democracy.
Re-thinking Biocentrism
So what does all this mean to people who claim a bio-centric perspective? Before we can really examine the fuller implications of an anti-racist politics on the ecological struggle we need to take a step back and contemplate what it means for us to claim a bio-centric position. Before going further I should say I'm sure that some of these issues haven already been debated out much more thoroughly than I am aware and I ask that people who are better read point me in the direction of the relevant books and articles. That said I have some tentative thoughts.
Biocentrism is a human ideology. While it stakes out positions on the relations between people and the rest of nature, like all ideology it is fundamentally about relations between people. It argues that people are responsible for constraining the ecologically destructive practices of other people and reorganizing human society accordingly. Like all other great religious or political ideologies it invokes an external or higher authority (god, history, nature) and an ethical framework that derives from that authority. I have no problem with this.
What I have a problem with is an ethics that imagines itself above politics. The ethics we construct we construct within particular political realities. They are either able to inspire us to act in ways that actually transform society or they aren't. What I am saying here is that ethics without strategy are unethical. One can assume a posture of only acting in a biocentric manner, but if it doesn't actually save the planet from ecological destruction, it's an act of self-indulgence.
Like all ideologies biocentrism has a social base in the real world. From what I've seen, that base is overwhelmingly white middle class environmentalists who live in the richest countries on earth. Of course one can articulate an expansive definition of the ideology and thereby co-opt other social bases, indigenous peoples being an obvious target. But this is really an evasion of a serious examination of why biocentrism commands the support of who it does. There are, I would suggest, two possible explanations: First, privileged white people have a unique love for the planet that enables them to see things in a more enlightened way than other people.
Second, privileged white people are almost the only people on earth who are so alienated both from the natural world and from each other that they don't experience the defense of the planet as inextricably bound up in their own struggle for dignity, cultural survival, and political self-determination as a people.
I think the second explanation is the correct one. I want to be absolutely clear here that identifying the actual social base of biocentrism or tracing it to our alienated existences doesn't mean that it's wrong. Nor do I want to suggest that people of color are automatic bearers of ecological wisdom. On the contrary I think the determination to put the fate of the rest of the planet first is basically a healthy and constructive attempt to overcome the alienation of our lives. I also believe that, white or not, it is important to fight tenaciously for ecological values without shame.
What I want to critique is the tendency of white people to universalize from their own experiences and to arrogantly claim possession of universal knowledge and values. As people who have been the main beneficiaries of 500 years of racism and ecological destruction we need to be very very careful about claiming to speak for the planet. As the logic of the system we are fighting leads us into coalitions and alliances with communities of color in the U.S. and around the world we are bound to have disputes and disagreements with coalition partners. In such disputes I think every care should be taken not to ever appear to be saying "I'm taking this position because, unlike you, I prioritize defense of the planet." Building the kind of broad movement that is necessary to constrain, let alone bring down, global capitalism demands a kind of humility for which white Americans are not generally socialized.
In the encounter between biocentrism and anti-racism, each has things to learn. But these ideas are not encountering each other in some disembodied form. They are each borne by peoples with long histories of experience with each other. I'm not really in the best position to be proposing slogans for the Citibank campaign so I don't know whether or not my suggestions are realistic. But I do know that if there is going to be forward progress on this stuff, white organizers are going to have to be ruthlessly self-critical and this means untangling the often hidden or unstated motivations behind our decisions.
There are many reasons not to put racism up front in a slogan or a press release. In some cases it's really just not appropriate. But more generally its something white people do to avoid breaking the gentleman's agreement that ties us to a white supremacist power structure. Talking about racism might upset the membership or the funding base or turn off carefully cultivated relations with reporters or other environmental organizations. At the very least it's likely to be personally awkward and uncomfortable. The canned responses to questions won't come so easily. And of course there is always the chance that a person of color will say you did it wrong (which rarely happens if you don't talk about it at all). Rather than tease out what all these things mean it can seem easier to trace ones motives to questions of high philosophical principle. This isn't to suggest that such questions aren't operative, but rather that they shouldn't be the first place we look if we want to break out of the ways that our political practice has been unconsciously shaped by white supremacy. And the harder we look at ourselves the more we come to see those principles from different angles and come to appreciate what it means to apply them in a well-rounded way.
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Corporate Polluters Ate GW Brain
Don't Let Him Eat Yours! Take Back Earth Day!
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
STOP THE BUSH ASSAULT ON THE ENVIRONMENT - TAKE BACK EARTH DAY!
Don't let corporate polluters eat your brains
As you are aware, Bush and his lackeys have delivered some major blows to the environment - drastically lowering arsenic standards in our water, pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol Global Warming Agreement, and halting the protection of 60 million acres of public forest land. To top it off, the Bush administration is going to attempt a green spin on these moves this Earth Day, April 22 by mouthing some empty "green" slogans while sustaining their attempts to drill for oil in national monuments, open wilderness areas to exploitation, and slash funding for environmental protection. Let's stop them and use this opportunity to publicize Bush's ecological atrocities - we'll turn the Bush Greenwashing Effort into a real Bush-bashing Earth Day.
What you can do on your campus to stop Bush's Earth Day Greenwashing:
Hold a call in day to President Bush as part of your earth day events on Wednesday, April 18 - Call the White House switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell the president to protect the planet, not the polluters.
Contact Greenpeace at jen.anaya@wdc.greenpeace.org or 1-888-363-9197 to have materials sent to your campus including "George Bush: Corporate Polluters Ate My Brain" t-shirts and posters.
Send a free fax to President Bush about this at the link http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/takeaction
Organize some theater or a rally on campus to expose Bush's horrific record.
Let us know what you have planned! - Rob Fish ecology12@yahoo.com
These campus earth day activities are supported by Greenpeace, Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC), Sierra Student Coalition, Free the Planet!, Campus PIRGs, the Earth Day Network, and the Center for Environmental Citizenship.
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BUFFALO CONVERGENCE SPACE OPEN!
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
From: "eric bebernitz" <erb87@hotmail.com>
www.a22buffalo.org buffaloactivist@yahoo.com
Beginning Monday April 16th the convergence space for the anti-FTAA/corporate globalization activities in Buffalo will be opening its doors. The space will be the welcome center for traveling activists, supporters, or folks passing thru to Quebec City. It will also be the central hub of communications for the week of events where anyone can get information, network and relax. You can also come and grab a bite to eat, take in a few workshops on media training, non-violent civil disobedience, puppet and banner making. Plus get hooked into the spokes council gatherings and all of the involved affinity groups.
The convergence center is also providing DLS Internet access and a Free Speech TV viewing station will be open with its radical media fare playing non-stop. So here are the details (spell-checked too ;D):
Where is it?
Squeaky Wheel 175 Elmwood Ave Buffalo, NY 14201 www.squeaky.org 716.884.7172
The hours of operation will be:
Monday 16th 12pm-5pm Tuesday 17th - Thursday 19th 12pm-7pm Friday 20th - Sunday 22nd 9am-9pm
Parking:
There is street parking around the convergence space. Folks running the space will be able to direct people to additional spaces around the downtown. So please check inside.
Directions from the thruway:
From the south:
From I-90 bear right on ramp at sign reading "Exit 53 I-190 to Downtown Buffalo / Canada" and go North for 0.5 miles. Continue on New York State Thwy,Gov Thomas E Dewey Thwy,I-190 and go West for 6 miles. Bear right on ramp at sign reading "Exit 8 RT-266 Niagara St" and go Northeast for 0.4 miles. Turn left on Niagara St,RT-266 and go Northwest for 0.7 miles. Turn right on Porter Ave and go East for 0.6 miles. Continue on North St and go East for 0.2 miles. Turn right on Elmwood Ave and go South for 300 feet to 175 Elmwood Ave.
From the west:
From I-90 bear right on ramp at sign reading "Exit 51W RT-33 W to Buffalo" and go Southwest for 0.4 miles. Turn right on RT-33,Kensington Expy and go Southwest for 6 miles. Bear right on ramp at sign reading "Goodell St and RT-33 W" and go West for 700 feet. Continue on Goodell St and go West for 0.3 miles. Turn right on Main St,RT-5 and go North for 0.3 miles. Turn left on Allen St and go West for 0.4 miles. Turn right on Elmwood Ave and go North for 800 feet to 174 Elmwood Ave
From Canada (good luck):
From the QEW take the Peace Bridge. PEACE BRIDGE becomes MOORE DR..Turn SLIGHT RIGHT. Turn LEFT onto BAIRD DR. Turn LEFT onto PORTER AVE. PORTER AVE becomes NORTH ST. Turn RIGHT onto ELMWOOD AVE.
See you then!
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STUDENTS SIT-IN FOR UNIVERSITY KYOTO COMPLIANCE!!!!
Wed, 11 Apr 2001
From: Dana Brown <dmb50@cornell.edu>
dear friends,
today 7 brave cornell university students took over day hall (our administration building) in response to the university's unwillingness to commit to the kyoto protocol.
the students are currently locked in the building, where they will remain until the university makes a public commitment to greenhouse gas emission reduction.
just before the building was locked this afternoon, the 7 sit-in participants asked the administration for bathroom rights and access to food and water during the sit-in--all of which were denied.
support the cornell greens! demand kyoto now!!
you can contact our favorite cornell administrator, Hal Craft, and let him know how you feel. Hal Craft:phone 255-4618, e-mail: hdc3@cornell.edu
thanks so much for your support!! dana brown
press release
Cornell Students Sit-in For University Kyoto Compliance!
Ithaca, NY
Seven Cornell students are holding a sit-in to pressure Cornell University to commit to meeting the standards of the Kyoto Protocol on campus. The students, located in the administrative building, are demanding a commitment by the administration to reducing university greenhouse gas emissions by 7% below 1990 levels by 2004.
"Global climate change is a pressing human rights and environmental issue that can no longer be ignored," said Doug Krisch. "We must act now!"
The students, members of the Cornell Greens, have been working with the administration on the Kyoto Now! campaign, and are prepared to maintain the sit-in until a public announcement of commitment is made by the university.
The Kyoto Now! campaign, a nationwide call for universities to adhere to Kyoto Protocol standards of emission reductions, was undertaken in response to United States' inaction and unwillingness to commit on a national level to greenhouse gas reductions.
"We believe that Cornell, as a pace-setting institution, has an ethical obligation to address this imminent global issue and set a national precedent for action," said Frankie Lind. "The Bush administration has taken a giant step in a backwards direction. It is up to us to call for action. If not us, who? If not now, when?"
The students' sit-in and demands are in response to the statement the university released today announcing that Cornell is presently unwilling to comply with Kyoto Now! greenhouse gas reductions.
"Their failure to commit has fallen far short of their responsibility towards global climate change mitigation," said Jennie Heinlein. "The university has the ability to set an example and lead the nation in the necessary efforts to protect our planet."
"The university has made much progress in protecting the environment and we applaud their efforts," said Lindsey Saunders,"however, the university must commit to making Kyoto emission standards a guideline for future university policy decisions."
Contacts:
Frankie Lind 607.227.3294 Lindsey Saunders 607.592.5840
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STUDENTS/CITIZENS DECLARE CITI CREDIT CARD BOYCOTT
April 11, 2001
Sandra Citizen, (301) 983-2222
Jimmy Junior, (301) 444-1818 cell
Activists Around the Globe Tell the #1 Bank in Global Racism:
"NOT WITH MY MONEY!"
City, State --- Flanked by a 20 foot banner with the words "Not With My Money!" students and community members from (Your University and Town) cut up their credit cards in protest of Citigroup's leading role in financing environmentally and socially destructive projects and perpetuating institutional racism around the globe. Today's actions are part of an international day of protests that included demonstrations in more than 50 cities across the world, in places as far as Ecuador and Ireland, as part of a global campaign to transform >Citigroup's funding practices. >
"From destroying Redwood forests and pollution production to redlining in African-American and Latino communities and funding prisons to lock up those same communities, Citigroup is living richly off of racist socially destructive and environmentally devastating activities around the world," explained Sandra Citizen of Your Town. "Citizens are outraged that Citigroup is using our money in an irresponsible fashion."
Brandishing scissors and Citibank credit cards and applications, demonstrators drew attention to Citigroup's role in exploiting low-incomes, including Black and Latino communities. Citigroup plays a cruel shell game with these communities: on the one hand, they're America's worst "predatory lending" and on the other they deny these communities access to traditional banking services and loans through the practice of "redlining." Activists are also highlighting the company's connection to egregious projects that exploit communities of color in Asia, Africa and Latin America while contributing to massive environmental destruction. These include the controversial Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, China's Three Gorges Dam which will displace 2 million people, and the destruction of orangutan rainforest habitat in Indonesian for palm plantations. At the same the corporation's sale of World Bank Bonds these same communities in developing nations with increasing debt.
Emboldened by the WTO protests in Seattle, students, environmentalists, human rights activists and economic justice advocates who have been at the forefront of the growing, non-violent movement protesting corporate-led globalization are now turning their attention towards the corporate financial sector, in particular Citigroup. Consumers today are increasingly demanding social and environmental responsibility from their banks.
Citigroup is America's largest financial institution. Critics contend that the corporation operates with no regard for racial justice, social justice, and environmental protection. Concerned citizens from (Your Town) alongside activists around the world are calling on Citigroup to serve rather than exploit historically marginalized communities of color. They are demanding the corporation stop funding destruction and start investing in a sustainable economy.
"Student consumers are the bread and butter of Citigroup's banking operations," says Jimmy Junior. "We won't allow our money to be used for amoral and destructive practices and projects. Building on a tradition of student activism from the 60's to Apartheid to sweatshops, we plan to hold Citigroup accountable by saying "not with my money!"
"We are demanding a global economy that puts principles ahead of short term profits," stated Sandra Citizen.
For more information on STARC, please see www.corpreform.org. For more information on the campaign to transform Citigroup please see www.ran.org, www.innercitypress.org/citi.html, and www.citiaction.org.
###
MEDIA ADVISORY For Immediate Release! Contacts: Sandra Citizen, (301) 983-2222 Jimmy Junior, (301) 444-1818 cell Date: April 11, 2001
STUDENTS/CITIZENS DECLARE CITI CREDIT CARD BOYCOTT
Activists Around the Globe Tell the #1 Bank in Global Racism: "NOT WITH MY MONEY!"
Who: Community members/students from (Your Group, Your Town/University), in solidarity with more than 50 cities across the world.
What: A demonstration including speakers, theater and ceremonial credit card cutting protesting Citigroup's leading role in financing environmentally and socially destructive projects around the globe.
When: Wednesday, April 11th, 12:00 p.m.
Where: City, State-Local Citi branch
Why: Citigroup is using clients' money to perpetuate institutional racism and fund environmentally and socially destructive activities around the world. Citibank, the world's most destructive bank, has funded everything from clearcutting Redwood forests to redlining in inner cities. Students, environmentalists, human rights activists and economic justice advocates will join in an international day of protest as part of a global campaign to hold Citigroup accountable for its destructive activities. Campus/Community groups across the United States are pushing their university administrations/City Councils and faculty to divest from the destructive bank. On the International Day of Action, students at (Your University) will cut up their Citibank credit cards and applications to send a strong message to Citi that they must stop funding destruction.
GREAT VISUALS INCLUDING A 20' BANNER, COLORFUL COSTUMES AND STUDENTS CUTTING UP THEIR CREDIT CARDS!
For more information, contact Sandra Student at (301) 983-2222 or see www.corpreform.org
=====
Eric Romann 755 54th Street Oakland, CA 94609 510/420-1248 coachric1@yahoo.com
CitiDayofActionPressAdvisory--Revised4.9.01.doc CitiDayofActionPressRelease-Revised4.9.01.doc
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Defense says international law backs priest in trespass case
Prosecutors reject claim of legal right to enter missile silo for peace protest
April 11, 2001
By The Associated Press
From: Sally Light <sallight1@earthlink.net>
Lawyers argued Monday that a trespassing case against a self-proclaimed "fool for Christ" who donned a clown suit and scaled a fence at a missile silo should be dismissed because of international law. The Rev. Carl Kabat, 67, who has spent more than a decade in prison for peace protests, appeared in federal court in Denver for the pretrial motions hearing on the trespassing charge.
On Aug. 6, 2000, 55 years after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Roman Catholic priest climbed the fence at a Minuteman III missile site about 80 miles northeast of Denver.
He put bread, wine and a hammer on top of a silo and prayed.
Denver lawyer Walter Gerash, representing Kabat for free, argued he was protesting an illegal site because a 1996 World Court ruling said countries should not use weapons of excessive force.
Defense witness Ved Nanda, a professor at the University of Denver and an expert on international law, testified that under the Nuremberg Charter, established after World War II, civilians have a right to protest weapons of mass destruction that can be used for genocide.
Prosecutor George Gill argued that the 1996 ruling was an advisory opinion, not a binding opinion.
"The U.S. Constitution is the law of the land, and not the Nuremberg Charter," he said.
The defense also argued that Kabat was acting on First Amendment rights.
"His symbolic communication of free speech was turned into a crime," Gerash said.
Prosecutors maintained that Kabat was trespassing because a posted sign says no civilians are allowed into the site without the commanding officer's permission.
If convicted, Kabat could spend a year in prison.
Kabat had been living at a home for Oblate priests in Belleville, Ill., when he drove to Colorado for the protest. Though he left without permission, he was not dismissed from the priesthood.
His peace activism began in 1976, when he was jailed for four days after protesting in Plains, Ga., home of President-elect Jimmy Carter.
He served prison terms ranging from six to 18 months for a series of peace protests from 1979 to 1982.
Then, in the early 1980s, Kabat and three others damaged a missile silo outside Kansas City, Mo. He spent seven years in prison for the attack, going free in 1991.
On Good Friday in 1994, Kabat dressed in a clown suit, declared himself "a fool for Christ" and pounded on a missile silo in North Dakota with a sledgehammer. After 4
more years in prison, he went to the Illinois home, where he stayed until driving to Colorado for the August protest.
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