NUCLEAR
Franco Rasetti Dies; Physicist At Johns Hopkins
Nuke bunker is Christmas hide-out for new Scrooge
Lessons From Down Below
Boeing missile development miracle & DU in Afghanistan
DU propaganda paper
Israel reveals secrets of how it gained bomb
Good News on Nukes
Terrorist Targets
For the Record
ARMAGEDDON AGAIN
MILITARY
List of 2001 World Conflicts
Bases, bases everywhere
Taliban prisoners plead for food
Karzai Begins Task of Rebuilding Afghanistan
Terror threat promotes European unity
India Weighs Using Troops in Kashmir
India - Pakistan Tensions Escalate
Tensions Rise as Pakistan and India Send Troops to Border
In Bethlehem, the Silent Nights Are Eerie
As the Battlefield Changes, So Does the War Itself
Russian spy chief urges data exchange
CIA Paid Afghans To Track Bin Laden
POLICE / PRISONERS
Travel Tips
In Salt Lake, Security Is an Olympic Task
Walter Reed cops protest gun policy
Microchips Under the Skin Offer ID, Raise Questions
Explosive Substance Confirmed in Suspect's Shoes
ENERGY AND OTHER
Gene Experiment Comes Close to Crossing Ethicists' Line
Briefly: IMF / France
ACTIVISTS
29 Homeless Deaths 29 Too Many
Homeless articles
Rudolph the Red Cell Terrorist
-------- NUCLEAR
Franco Rasetti Dies; Physicist At Johns Hopkins
By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page C06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17685-2001Dec22?language=printer
Franco Rasetti, 100, a former professor at Johns Hopkins University who was known for his refusal to work on the atom bomb as well as for his accomplishments in disciplines as disparate as nuclear physics and paleontology, died Dec. 5 at a retirement home in Belgium. The cause of death was not reported.
Dr. Rasetti, a native of Italy, was regarded as a legend at Baltimore's Hopkins, where he held a chair of physics from 1947 to 1967, and was known for contributions in areas that included cosmic ray research and the study of positrons -- the positively charged counterparts of electrons.
As evidence of the breadth and depth of his scientific interests, the National Academy of Sciences gave him the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal in 1952 for contributions to the paleontology of the Cambrian period, part of a prehistoric era that began 570 million years ago.
A man of unusual intellectual gifts, Dr. Rasetti was a longtime friend and colleague Enrico Fermi, the great nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner, and associates who knew them both said they were men of similar brainpower.
Dr. Rasetti joined Fermi in making pioneering discoveries about nuclear physics in Rome in the years before World War II.
One of their most significant studies involved the bombardment of atomic nuclei with neutrons, which in the proper circumstances leads to nuclear fission.
Dr. Rasetti was particularly skilled as an experimenter. He could do research on a shoestring, building sophisticated equipment from bits and pieces of homely hardware.
"He did not buy things," a former graduate student wrote of him. "He made them."
World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, and the maneuvering that brought the anti-fascist Dr. Rasetti to Canada had a cloak-and-dagger flavor.
Cyrias Ouellet, of Quebec's Laval University, who went to Rome to recruit Dr. Rasetti, recalled pretending that he was going to visit a member of a religious order. In the Italian capital in the heyday of fascism, "we made our arrangements during walks through the Roman streets, far from indiscreet ears," he recalled.
But after going to Canada, Dr. Rasetti declined an invitation to join in the research that led to the atom bomb.
Larkin Kerwin, a former head of Canada's National Research Council who studied under Dr. Rasetti, was quoted as explaining Dr. Rasetti's position this way:
"He was not a pacifist in the usual sense of the word. He simply considered war to be stupid and did not wish to be involved with stupid things."
A book about him was published last year in Canada, "Franco Rasetti, Physicist and Naturalist (He Said No to the Bomb)," and a reviewer attributed Dr. Rasetti's decision to his view of the responsibility of science to humanity.
Dr. Rasetti himself once wrote that "discovering the secrets of nature is among the most fascinating things that one can do, but I must say that the most fascinating is also the most perilous." He added that "men have to ask themselves about their motivations in their hearts. And scientists don't do that very often."
Dr. Rasetti was born in Umbria in the province of Perugia. He and Fermi, both born in 1901, became friends while studying in Pisa. Fermi persuaded Dr. Rasetti to enter physics and later brought him to Rome to work jointly.
Dr. Rasetti established himself in molecular spectroscopy and held a chair at the University of Rome.
In Europe, Dr. Rasetti enjoyed climbing in the Alps and demonstrated a passion for the natural world: insects, butterflies, flowers and fossils.
In Canada, the author of "Elements of Nuclear Physics," one of the first texts in the field, took a keen interest in the natural history of his new environment. In addition to carrying out cosmic ray research, Dr. Rasetti soon became an expert on trilobites, a class of extinct marine animals with jointed limbs that thrived in the Paleozoic era.
In commenting on his work in paleontology, he said, "At least there, one doesn't run the risk of killing anyone."
In reporting his death, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica described him in a headline as "the physicist who hated the bomb" and called him a man with an "18th-century mentality" for whom knowledge, not wealth or military might, was the only goal of science.
Survivors include his wife, Madeline.
-------- conversion
[Now here's a creative conversion project! et]
Nuke bunker is Christmas hide-out for new Scrooge
December 23, 2001
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011223-93438150.htm
LONDON - A latter-day Scrooge who says he hates Christmas is paying $435 for the privilege of spending two weeks of the yuletide in an underground nuclear bunker with a copy of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."
As he prepared to descend nearly 100 feet into the concrete chamber, a remnant from the Cold War days of 1952, Colin Wood told the British Broadcasting Corp. he just wanted to "get away from it all."
Mr. Wood said he was fed up with Christmas, a season that always found him bickering with his family.
His brother gave him the Dickens book - the classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge. In addition to the company of his fictional kindred spirit, Mr. Wood will have a Christmas dinner of cold baked beans, cold Spam and a glass of water.
He won the privilege of spending the festive season thus in a bidding contest with 49 others equally eager for more humdrum and less ho-ho-ho.
What he got for his money were the keys to the Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker, in southeast England.
The bunker is more than 90 feet underground and has 10-foot-thick walls of reinforced concrete and blast doors made from tank metal, all guaranteed against nuclear and biological attack and visits by Santa Claus.
Michael Parrish, who owns the bunker, told the BBC he has spent the occasional night in it and predicts Mr. Wood may get more than he has bargained for.
"If you are on your own and 30 meters underground, it is pretty dark and quiet. It does play on your mind."
Still, he insisted, the bunker "is nice and warm, permanently 60 degrees, and not uncomfortable."
While it doesn't have a shower, it does have a supply of government-issue toilet paper, although the rolls read: "Use both sides."
----
Lessons From Down Below
Whatever Happened to All Those Bomb Shelters We Built The Last Time We Felt Full of Fear?
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page F01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12569-2001Dec21?language=printer
When, at last, you eat the Cold War-era fallout shelter survival biscuit, it isn't what you expect. You're thinking "biscuit," so you expect a flaky, greasy mass of dough, as if the U.S. government would've stocked civil defense shelters with those Southern-style things you get at Popeyes. As if there even was a Popeyes in the early '60s. Anyway, that's not what this biscuit looks like.
It is disappointingly flat, the cracker version of biscuit, and indented with the word SUNSHINE. It looks old. It looks like a piece of history. Which is appropriate, because here, in a barn at a sheep farm in Baltimore County, it's as if the Cold War never ended. Below ground is a fallout shelter built in 1962 to protect against Soviet missiles that never came. Above ground, Edward "Ned" Murray, 80, who once headed Maryland civil defense and who built the shelter (he still thinks it's "just a matter of time"), is handing you a biscuit. It is freshly removed from waxed paper, freshly removed from a tin, freshly removed from a cardboard box that's been sealed for, um, 38 years.
You take it. You look at it. It is older than you. Murray eats his biscuit. You eat yours.
It is slightly nutty and very dry. It turns to powder in your mouth.
Munch, munch.
History, you realize, is not for the delicate palate.
"Long as the seal hasn't been broken, the crackers are perfectly good," says Murray, munching.
Once, these wafers had a lofty purpose. They were part of our nation's plan to survive a nuclear apocalypse. They -- together with supplies of water and the thick concrete of underground shelters -- were going to save the lives of resourceful American families. Even now, these shelter biscuits represent something. They are our link between two very scary times: the new-millennium fears of terrorists and rogue nations, and the mid-century fear of the Red Menace. They are our reminder that we've weathered storms before. They are the dry, crumbly symbol of historical perspective.
And they are also terribly handy to have around a farm.
"The sheep love 'em," Murray says.
Whatever happened to fallout shelters?
Walking around Washington, you still see those signs once in a while: three yellow triangles on a black circle. You call the city's Emergency Management Agency, where a spokeswoman informs you that fallout shelters no longer constitute a part of Washington's "emergency operations plan." But the post-Sept. 11 talk of "dirty bombs," of missing nuclear supplies, of chemical and biological attacks, makes you edgy. You think, just in case we ever need them again, what state are the shelters in now? Do they still exist?
You see a shelter sign outside the Department of Veterans Affairs just north of the White House, so you call the agency's office of public affairs. Fran Heimrich answers.
Excuse me, did you know you have a fallout shelter sign up outside the building?
"It's news to me," says Heimrich. She hangs up, calls back. "We don't have a fallout shelter," she reports.
You hear there used to be one at the Westchester apartment building on Cathedral Avenue, a grand shelter fit for many people (some public shelters could accommodate thousands). You speak to a woman named Pat, who says, "Are you sure? In the '50s? Isn't that odd. I've never heard about it."
You call Capitol Plaza Apartments on Capitol Hill, whose shelter, according to an old newspaper article, was still stocked with supplies as late as 1982. Anything left?
"That's been gone years," says Robert Juhans, 76, the building's porter, who has been working there four decades. "Maybe 15."
You visit Holy Name Catholic Church in Northeast, near Gallaudet University, where a shelter sign is still attached to the 109-year-old rectory. Pastor Everett Pearson greets you at the door, then pads down to the cellar in Redskins slippers, and leads you through a series of subterranean chambers in what can only be described as a revelatory process. "Wow!" he says at one point. "The light works!"
At the bottom of a stairway there's another shelter sign, with arrows pointing to the right and the left, as if to say, This is it, baby. You are giddy with excitement.
"They used to have town meetings down here," Pearson says. "As you can see, they never cleaned up."
There are boxes and boxes. There's an old yellow oven, an old vacuum, an old freezer that still works, and an old clothing press.
"This became the storing ground for everything," Pearson says.
Everything, that is, but shelter supplies. There is stuff here that seems at least as old as the Cold War, but no boxes of biscuits, no cans of water, no drums labeled "Sanitation Kit" that are really just pots to you-know-what in.
The search carries on.
The fallout shelter wasn't always a running gag. By the early 1960s -- during the Berlin crisis and the Cuban missile crisis -- it represented safety, security, peace of mind.
By the mid-'60s, according to retired Washington lawyer Steuart L. Pittman, who was the nation's civil defense chief in the Kennedy administration, federal and local agencies had provided shelter space for two-thirds of the national population. Washington had about 1,300 public shelters for over a million people, according to officials who headed the D.C. civil defense agency -- enough to house the city's entire population, with room to spare for tourists and city workers. This isn't counting the private shelters that homeowners built.
D.C.'s public shelters were not built expressly to be shelters. They were simply the basements of apartment houses, churches, schools and public buildings, basements whose thick concrete was supposed to provide protection from radiation. In a herculean effort, engineers surveyed thousands of buildings, selected the shelters, and then those basements were stocked with food and medical supplies. Nearly all federal buildings were stocked.
It was a strange time, a time -- like right now -- when worst-case scenarios seemed entirely possible, when trouble could strike at any time. Every day, says George Rodericks, 85, who was director of D.C.'s Office of Civil Defense from 1958 to 1978, his office plotted how long it would take fallout from a nuclear explosion to reach Washington.
"We would plot it from the major cities west of us," says Rodericks. "How much time we had . . . based on the prevailing winds that day."
Rodericks says every public shelter had a shelter manager -- someone responsible for taking charge in a nuclear emergency. When the managers came for training at Howard University, they had to spend three nights in an above-ground corrugated metal shelter to see what it was like.
"It was really just a glorified Quonset hut," says John Colbert, 72, who worked for Rodericks's office, later called the Emergency Management Agency, from 1961 to 1989. "They had to eat the food -- they called 'em biscuits -- and drink the water that was in the shelter . . . And use the old-fashioned sanitation kit."
"Some reports said it was unpleasant odors in the shelter," says Rodericks.
Yes, a very strange time. "Every publication from Yale Review to Successful Farming had articles on fallout shelters," says Kenneth D. Rose, a historian at California State University-Chico and author of a new book on Cold War shelters.
Shelters were -- for a brief time -- kindatrendy. One company, Shelters for Living, retained the services of a psychiatrist and a Washington interior designer to create a family shelter that would be psychologically reassuring. "The white fur rug gives feelings of warmth," reads the company's typewritten press release. "The beige chair, right, and orange and beige convertible sofa are relaxing yet buoyant colors to lift mood."
In 1965 the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda issued the U.S. Navy Fallout and Blast Shelter National Naval Medical Center Survival Trial Study. It was based on a 1963 experiment in which 34 naval reserve officers were put in a prototype fallout shelter in Bethesda for 4 1/2 days and fed survival biscuits, tomato soup and peanut butter and jelly. Among the results:
The men lost an average of 2.36 pounds. They were moody; some reacted good-naturedly but others became angry or withdrawn. The steroid levels in their urine rose, the report said, possibly due to "mild emotional stress." Also "19 were flatulent, complained of unusual amounts of gas," and "11 were severely constipated."
But controversies were emerging, and not just about shelter diets. As the U.S. and the Soviet Union built up their nuclear arsenals, as their weapons -- and the damage they could inflict -- got bigger, serious questions were raised about the practicality of burrowing underground. Was two weeks in a shelter enough to outlast lethal radiation? Would people want to rejoin the world after an attack, anyway?
Anti-nuclear activists had an entirely different question."Where is the best place for people to channel their energies?" asks Paul Boyer, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. "Is it to spend the money and the time in building and stocking a fallout shelter or is it to become engaged in a political way to try and reduce the danger of nuclear war?"
It was in that spirit that Bob Dylan wrote a song, "Let Me Die in My Footsteps," criticizing the climate of fear that caused people to dig their own metaphoric graves: "And some people thinkin' that the end is close by / 'Stead of learnin' to live they are learning to die."
As the crises of the early '60s passed, and the tectonic plates of culture and belief shifted, the nuclear fallout shelter slowly became a quaint relic. Nowadays, the conventional wisdom has changed from going underground in a nuclear attack to getting out.
"The consensus opinion of all the experts is, you want to save the most people in the quickest amount of time? Evacuation," says FEMA spokesman John Czwartacki. Evacuation, he says, is more efficient, gives people maximum mobility and doesn't make them dependent on a dwindling supply of resources.
But some still mourn the passing of the fallout shelter -- especially now. Says former civil defense chief Pittman: "I don't think that there's very much doubt that a technically qualified terrorist group could create fallout conditions -- 'dirty bomb' conditions." Of the network of Cold War shelters he helped build, Pittman says, "It seems like it was a terrible waste to have built this thing up and then let it go when we didn't know what the future held."
In any case, reminders of that network linger. Old-timers Rodericks and Colbert say the city never really had a formal program for destocking the public shelters. In time, medicines in the first aid kits -- including penicillin and phenobarbital, Colbert recalls -- started expiring. And going missing.
"We had stocked, like, 100-and-some schools with these medical kits," Colbert says, "and we started getting calls from the principals that someone had broken into the kits and that stuff was missing." Colbert suspects kids were selling it.
By the '70s, the city's civil defense office was getting calls from building managers, asking it to remove supplies. "The Cold War threat was diminished," says Rodericks. "Vietnam was over and, especially in the private buildings, they needed the space for commercial purposes."
He says he "donated hundreds of cartons" of biscuits to the needy. "We used to visit them and the homeless enjoyed them with coffee," he says.
And, says Ned Murray, "a lot of 'em were sold for pigs' feed."
Here's the funny thing, though. Not all of the shelters were cleared out.
Rocking Horse Road Elementary -- a one-level brick building in Rockville -- incorporated a shelter into its design in 1963 by building classrooms underground. At the time, Steuart Pittman praised Montgomery County for, as this newspaper phrased it, "showing the Nation the way to safety in the nuclear age."
Now it's Rocking Horse Road Center, an administrative building. The basement classrooms are locked up, off-limits. There's no power down there and asbestos is in the ceiling tiles. Sometime within the last two decades, homeless people started wandering in.
One recent afternoon, building services manager Bill Young and bilingual programs director Maria Helena Malagon kindly agree to venture down for the sake of historical inquiry.
Young unlocks a metal folding gate at the top of forbidding stairs. "I'm telling you," he warns, "this place is hairy. Hairy."
"It's kind of moldy and gross," says Malagon.
Young double-fists two flashlights like guns and heads down, past peeling paint and broken glass.
Malagon follows. "As long as there are no mice down here," she says.
None, Young assures her.
The classrooms are big, with cinder block walls painted orange. On a chalkboard is scrawled, "Today is the first day of the rest of your Wife." But it's the storage rooms that hold the real relics.
On one wall is a generator and a water tank. The corners of the room are filled with boxes bearing the civil defense logo (a "CD" inside a triangle inside a circle), labeled BISCUIT, SURVIVAL, ALL PURPOSE. There are heavy-duty plastic bags filled with water labeled "pasteurized water pouring pak."
"Look at all this stuff," Malagon says with wonder.
She starts digging through the rubble of damp cardboard and junk on the ground and uncovers a rusty can. It is labeled "SK IV Sanitation kit supplies 50 persons." On the label is a black line marked "sanitary fill line." The can is empty, but there is a label: "toilet tissue: 10. can opener: 1. commode liner, polyethylene: 1. sanitary napkins: 60. hand cleaner: 1." Malagon digs around some more, finds coffee cup lids. And plastic gloves, to be used by "latrine orderlies." She starts excitedly throwing things into the can to take up to the contemporary world. Little relics of the past!
Young lingers by the door, looking uncomfortable.
"He wants to leave," Malagon says. "I'm getting into this." She rummages. "Here's a can opener!"
Next she sees a black plastic doughnut that looked curiously like a toilet seat. That's because -- she realizes -- it is a toilet seat, to be placed on top of the sanitation can when in use.
"Ah," Malagon says. Then, "Ewww!"
The twosome venture to another storage room. More boxes. More biscuits. Someone had posted a handwritten sign. How old? Maybe 37 years?
The writing is not faded, but there's no sunlight down here. The sign reads:
Food and Water for 2 weeks
8 biscuits breakfast 1 cup (6 oz.)
8 biscuits lunch 1 cup
10 biscuits dinner 1 cup
11. . . bedtime 1 cup
Someone had forgotten to write in the last "biscuits." Or perhaps they figured the shelter inhabitants would deduce it by process of elimination.
Ned Murray's 160-acre farm near Towson is a place that never consented to modernity. Parts of his home are at least 200 years old. Murray can trace his forebears back to the Calvert family; in his sitting room is the portrait of an ancestor who lived two centuries ago. He peppers his stories with references to Napoleon, the Battle of Bladensburg and Rubens.
Despite his age, Murray is garrulous and energetic. The tongues on his dusty loafers are worn clean off. Now he heads out across his front yard in lively fashion, talking all the way.
He fought in World War II, he says, and drew on his wartime experiences when he decided to build a shelter in the early '60s.
"I had been in the military and had studied a lot about weapons and it was very obvious to me that in the next war the casualties would be in the civilian population," Murray says. When it comes to nuclear war, a shelter "doesn't guarantee you'll survive but it increases your chances tremendously."
He arrives at a tenant house that dates to 1920, unlocks a back door that leads into the basement, and walks to a four-foot-high doorway in the wall. This is it.
Feeling like Alice, you duck into this doorway, then crawl along a dirt tunnel on your hands and knees into a tiny spherical concrete womb.
You stand, brush your hands clean and look around.
It is only 11 feet across, and the floor curves. It is designed for six, but one person could easily feel claustrophobic. Two pipes descend from the ceiling: one for intake and one for exhaust. A circular "escape hatch" is cut into one wall. Used to be, this room had a hand-cranked blower to evacuate stale air, Murray says, but the darn thing rusted out. Wooden benches hugged the room, but they got damp and disintegrated about 20 years ago. The door had asbestos, so it had to be removed.
Murray says all of this from the other side of the dirt tunnel, where he's hunched over so he can see you in your Lilliputian hideaway. He says he's too stiff now to get through.
"Now it's used as a kids' playpen," he says. Relatives live in the house above, and the children love to come down here. The last time Murray crawled in here, he says, was about a year ago to fix it up for them, and "getting in was not easy. And the electrician complained bitterly when we had them put the light in."
The only evidence of the children is a little pile of sticks in the middle of the shelter floor. It seems they've been pretending to make a fire. They, too, are learning survival.
-------- depleted uranium
Boeing missile development miracle & DU in Afghanistan
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001
From: "Dai Williams" <eosuk@btinternet.com>
"U.S. Is Developing Powerful Weapons to Pierce the Deepest Sites" (Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times Service, Tuesday, December 4, 2001) reads:
"Another combat-ready weapon is the AGM-86D, a refurbished deep-penetrating version of the U.S. Air Force's aircraft-launched cruise missile. Last Thursday [29 Nov 2001], the contractor, Boeing, said a missile launched from a B-52 over the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, had successfully struck 'a hardened, buried target complex' and detonated inside.
"The U.S. Air Force has already received part of an order of 50 of the missiles, on which nuclear warheads had been replaced with a slender, heavy conventional warhead that can drive deep into the earth. A variant of this earth-piercing warhead was used in a small number of bombs dropped in Kosovo in 1999, defense documents say. Other weapons designed for destroying deep targets are to be test-fired at tunnel systems being built at the old Nevada Test Site, once used for studying nuclear weapon blasts underground." http://www.iht.com/articles/40871.html
Boeing's miracle is reported in the Center for Defence Information's latest Action Update (Dec 17) for the week Dec 9-15. "Weaponry used" in Afghanistan in the last week included:
"AGM-86 D, a penetrating cruise missile that carries a warhead that doubles the penetrating capability of earlier munitions, equipped with a fuse that can count the number of concrete floors it penetrates before it detonates." http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/actionupdate.cfm
The Pentagon's report of 4 Dec seemed intended to indicate that a new generation of hard target weapons is in the early stages of development - to distract attention from their actual use in Afghanistan in the last two months. But according to the FAS website the new generation was planned in 1997. Prototypes of the AGM-86D plus other hard target systems like the GBU-24 and 28 were used in the Balkans War. Hundreds of hard target guided weapons have been used in Afghanistan.
The key feature common to this new generation of warheads upgrading existing systems is their ability to double the penetration effect of earlier versions of the same weight. This is achieved by using "dense metal ballast" or "dense metal penetrators" refer the 1997 mission plan at http://fas.org/man/dod-101/usaf/docs/mast/annex_f/part26.htm. (see several of the proposals from WPNS 104 to 510).
By doubling the overall density of the warhead, its cross section area can be reduced by 50%. The new warheads are contained inside old outer casings so that they fit existing delivery systems. The smart bombs still carry their old designations e.g. GBU-24, GBU-28 etc. Upgraded hard target missile systems are identified by their version number e.g. AGM-86D, AGM-154C etc.
The vital question I have asked DU-list (and the UK Government and media) to investigate is this: What is the mystery "dense metal" used in these systems? The UK government say they don't know. To double the density of earlier steel warheads it has to be either DU or Tungsten. According to the GBU-28 Bunker Buster animation on USA Today the warhead is "classified". See http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gbuster/frame.htm
(Interestingly, Gold is about the same density as Uranium and Tungsten. But even at Christmas it seems unlikely that the DoD would be showering Taliban caves with hundreds of tons of precious metal. Even Tungsten could offer a valuable trade for Afghan scrap metal businesses recycling shrapnel).
But the nature of US hard target weapons in Afghanistan is no laughing matter. Common sense, basic physics and economics indicate a high probability that they have been using DU. From CDI reports on the scale of the bombing between 500-1000 tons of DU smart bombs and cruise missiles have probably been dumped on Afghanistan. Heavily bombed hard target zones like Tora Bora may now be heavily contaminated with DU oxide. The potential health risks to US and Afghan troops being sent to check out bombed cave systems are horrendous unless they are using full NBC protection. But even more serious are the risks in heavily populated target zones like Kabul - where DU oxide is likely to contaminate soil, buildings and water and be suspended in the Kabul "haze" seen in several media reports.
The US Government has decided that other countries should do the clean-up in Afghanistan. How long will it be before European, Australian, Turkish and other governments insist on independent environmental monitoring and DU safety precautions for troops and civilians being sent there now? However most of these countries have been supplied with hard target bombs or missiles by US manufacturers. They are probably under severe pressure not to question or disclose the "mystery metal" (DU?) that is involved.
American lawyers must be looking forward to big fees for defending the massive compensation claims likely to hit the US government if these weapons are DU based. I wonder how Nato will survive if the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and other governments discover that leukaemia deaths after the Balkans War were due to exposure to DU bomb and missile targets in the Balkans? Their military advisers must know the truth by now. Their politicians are probably frightened into silence for failing to realise that they have been deceived by military and commercial DU propaganda. Amazingly I have still not seen a single question in the European or American media about the use of Depleted Uranium in Afghanistan.
The suspected use of DU in large warheads (up to 2 tons in Bunker Busters) and suspected massive use in Afghanistan must hit the fan soon. Has the DU disclosure bill in the US Congress got any results yet?
These are sad questions to ask at any time, especially at Christmas. But they are vitally urgent for civilians and troops in Afghanistan. The only positive outcome is that if the US have used DU bombs in Afghanistan the consequences will be overwhelming evidence that DU munitions are weapons of indiscriminate effect. International outrage should ensure a global ban on all DU weapons within the next 12 months.
Dai Williams, UK eosuk@btinternet.com
----
DU propaganda paper
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001
A paper by Piotr Bein and Pedja Zoric titled "Propaganda for Depleted Uranium: A Crime against Humankind" was prepared for "Facts about Depleted Uranium" conference that was held in Prague, Czech Republic, November 24-25, 2001.
The text can be found at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/files/DUPraha.doc
Below is a summary and a recent correction of a section titled "Not Good at Math ...or Geography".
Piotr Bein
===
Summary
Based on material in the public domain, the paper considers the structure, strategy and tactics of military Information Operations concerning depleted uranium (DU). The analysis reveals a deep involvement of US and other NATO country governments in misinformation and cover-ups of horrible effects of DU. Nuclear and DU weapon industries, as well as media are intimately woven into the misinformation operations, so it is logical to refer to government-military-industry-media complex.
DU facts have been clear for at least two decades, according to NATO countries military and government documents. The truth is tragic and incriminating, but the perpetrators chose to cover their deeds up and misinform the public, instead of helping the civilian and military victims, and cleaning up the contaminated environment. While Middle East, Gulf and Balkan DU victims still remain neglected, a new DU war is in the making in Afghanistan, possibly with the largest DU bombs ever, to "neutralize bin Laden".
NATO misinformation on the effects of DU weapons targets foreign and domestic public, governments, and intelligence, in order to influence their perceptions and actions in support of national and strategic goals. Propaganda at first justified that DU ammunition provides "military advantage" over the enemy without own losses. In the last decade, fatal consequences of DU emerged on a mass scale in veterans of DU battles and in civilians whom NATO terrorized with toxic-radioactive DU weapons.
Consequently, propaganda for DU evolved to save face and skin of the guilty. It is driven by the fear of multi-billion dollar litigation, and by the attempts to escape responsibility for crimes against humanity. Cleanups of DU battlefields, shooting ranges, and DU storage sites around the world would also be extremely costly. The military, the government and the defense industry continue misinformation operations which have expanded from US and UK to all NATO allies and candidates, including CEE. DU cover-ups evolved into manipulations of inquiries of international health and safety organizations: WHO, UNEP, ICRP, IAEA. Institutions, individuals in high positions and their "reports" on DU became a laughing stock. Special operations reminiscent of the Stalinist era are employed -- sometimes in an absurd and grotesque way, in relation to the clarity of DU facts that incriminate NATO.
US and NATO DU propaganda strategy proved counterproductive. DU ammunition was not advantageous in Kosovo against Yugoslav armour, but contaminated the region. Desperate, angry victims left without medical care and material help grow into generations harbouring resentments against US and NATO. The public has little doubt about the risks of DU weapons and who the perpetrators are. Moral credit of the USA and NATO was tarnished everywhere. People in former Soviet block who invested hopes for a better world led by US and NATO are disappointed and angry. USA is harming its own national long-term interests. CEE nations are very concerned that DU weapons could move into their military ranges, after being expelled from the West by domestic protests..
DU is in ammunition, and in armour as in Leopard II tanks, but also in the ballast of cruise missiles, flying bombs and military and civilian aircraft. Apache AH-64 (two crashed in Poland during exercises in October 2001) has 100 kg of DU in its rotor blades. It is not clear yet how much DU was in the planes that rammed into WTC and Pentagon. The "WTC cough" might be a symptom of DU dust inhalation.
The public must take a vigorous stand to protect present and future generations from DU. Propaganda is a weak point of the military-government-industry complex. However, the public does not question mainstream media and does not have capacity to seek and understand information about DU, so alternative information is generally rejected. Biased messages from the government-military-industry information warriors undermine freedom of opinion and the right to know the truth. Covering up information regarding DU crimes against humanity are crimes themselves. The public's self-preservation instinct emerged during successful protests against nuclear mania, and gives hope for countering DU propaganda and cover-ups.
[...]
Not good at math ...or geography
Pentagon admitted in May 1999 that it used DU ammunition in Kosovo, but US Army assistant secretary Dr. Bernard Rostker said he did not see any reason why the US should tell anyone where DU was used. After much maneuvering, 19.5 months after the refugees started returning to Kosovo after NATO bombing, and several years after Bosnia war, NATO reluctantly published the Kosovo and Bosnia DU sites on www.nato.int/du/ at the end of 2000. Lists of coordinates accompanied the maps, but the data was useless: the coordinates for Kosovo were given in cryptic military convention, while the map files could not be down-loaded even from our powerful PCs. Was it intended by the NATO webmaster? When Peda Zoric finally managed to open the map files, he saw site location numbers written in by hand, hardly legible in some cases. Is this how our tax money is spent by a professional military?
Repeated by NATO propaganda, "31 thousand DU bullets" were only at the Kosovo sites with records. Many entries in the list of DU sites indicated "unknown number" of bullets. Probably Yugoslav and Russian army estimate of 50 thousand bullets in the Kosovo campaign was closer to the truth. Zoric [7] analyzed NATO Kosovo list. Out of 112 sites, NATO knew DU quantities for only 89 sites. The rest was "unknown". The known number was 30 523 DU bullets, which represented a total mass of about 9 metric tons. One 30 mm bullet contains just under 0.3 kg of DU metal.
Using an average from the sites with known quantities, Zoric estimated 7 888 additional DU rounds at the "unknown" sites, adding up to a total of 38 411 [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/files/nato%20du%20kosovo.xls]. The number might be higher still, if NATO used large or very large quantities at some sites. This could be the reason NATO hid true quantity from the start, with a view on belittling the problem through propaganda. It is unclear why the quantities appear counted precisely only in a few cases. The rest appear rounded up or down to tens and hundreds.
Zoric also discovered that majority of rounds were fired at the very end of the aggression. In June's 11 days of attacks, some 20 000 rounds were fired, and from May 29 to the end -- some 23 500. Yugoslavia accepted the "peace deal" on June 3, and the war officially ended 7 days later. Yet NATO records show that DU was still fired on June 11. Out of 3 270 DU bullets fired in Serbia outside of Kosovo and Metohija, almost 2 000 were shot in June. At Plackavica near Vranje, A-10 shot at a rock -- for exercise or nuclear-toxic terrorism?
A comical situation arose when Zoric pointed out to UNEP that sites they tested for a major report were not on official list of NATO DU sites. UNEP answered: "Some of the coordinates given on the website are effectively wrong, but we can assure you that our teams went to the sites mentioned on the NATO table. You can check this from the sample coordinates that the teams went through large areas surrounding the NATO given coordinate. The coordinates given in the website will be corrected immediately." [9] This statement alone is proof that UNEP did not measure at NATO given locations, but in the surrounding areas.
UNEP confusion might stem from typing mistakes and sloppiness in the NATO data. The number of digits in the coordinates varies between four and ten, i mplying a very wide range of precision in reporting the locations. Zoric discovered that location #39 on the NATO map does not match NATO coordinates 34TEN209103 (south-west from the capital of FYR Macedonia, Skoplje). Coordinates for location #101 look like for 2 locations. Location #59 has an odd number of digits, whereas in the UTM system there must be an even number of digits right of the last letter. The site is shown on NATO map between locations #68 and #94. Locations #11 and #61 are given in a longitude-latitude system, perhaps because British aircraft were involved. We were unable to check 2 locations in Montenegro. A clarification from NATO of the above points would be welcome.
On NATO list of Bosnia DU sites, out of 19 cases, 8 locations are not precisely known, and in 6 instances number of DU rounds are not known. All coordinates are given as longitude-latitude, except several in the vicinity of Sarajevo were not specified. Out of a total of 19 sites, 6 locations have unknown number of bullets. Zoric's method of averages yields an estimate of total of 9909 bullets. NATO admitted 10,000 bullets, total mass 3 t.
-------- israel
Israel reveals secrets of how it gained bomb
By Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem
23/12/2001
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$5FSLNUQAAAHH5QFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F12%2F23%2Fwnuke23.xml
A TELEVISION documentary in which Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign minister, discloses for the first time details about Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons is to be broadcast in the Arab world. It is intended, at a time of rising tensions, as a warning.
In the documentary, Mr Peres goes further than any other Israeli official in confirming that the Jewish state has a nuclear capability. He and former French government officials give details about co-operation between Israel and France in launching Israel's nuclear programme.
The film, made by a leading Israeli documentary team, is a sign that the government may be finally relaxing its rule of absolute silence on its nuclear programme. Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona nuclear facility, is serving an 18-year jail sentence for revealing in 1986 that Israel had a nuclear programme and more than 100 warheads.
The documentary, The Bomb in the Basement: Israel's Nuclear Option, was shown in Israel last month and is being sold to leading Arabic television stations including Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel.
The makers of the film believe that the government's co-operation in speaking about the origins of its nuclear capability was prompted by concerns over international terrorism and the expectation that Iran will have a nuclear capability within a few years.
The documentary's Israeli director, Michael Karpin, who previously made a controversial film about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, said he was not sure until a few weeks ago whether military censors would allow the programme to be broadcast.
"It could be that after September 11 they [the government] decided that perhaps the time had come to reveal a little bit more about the Israeli nuclear project," Mr Karpin said. "I think the decision to let it go ahead has to do with the idea of wanting to tell the Arab world: 'Listen we have it'."
The film reveals how France helped Israel on its nuclear programme in exchange for support in the Suez War. In the mid-1950s, relations between the two countries were warming because of their shared anxiety over burgeoning nationalist movements in North Africa.
Israel feared that the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would embolden an already formidable foe, while France faced an Arab insurrection in Algeria, one of its last colonies. Their interests converged in 1956 when Israel agreed to team up with France and Britain in a war to punish Nasser for nationalising the Suez Canal.
At the end of September 1956, in Sevres near Paris, Mr Peres, then a 30-year-old Defence Ministry official, accompanied David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, to a meeting with French and British delegations about the Suez crisis. The Israelis waited for the British delegation to leave before approaching the French on the matter of its nuclear project.
Mr Peres said: "In Sevres, when it was all over, I told Ben-Gurion, 'There's one piece of unfinished business: the nuclear issue. Before you agree, let me finish that.' Of the four countries which at that time had a nuclear capacity - the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France - only France was willing to help us."
Mr Peres is asked in the documentary whether Israel requested a nuclear reactor. He replies: "I asked for more than that. I asked for other things, too; the uranium and those things. I went up to Ben-Gurion and said, 'It's settled.' That's how it was."
Mr Ben-Gurion approved Israel's participation in the Suez campaign. On October 29, 1956, 400 Israeli paratroopers were dropped in western Sinai in the first phase of the attack on Egypt.
The agreement with France was unprecedented. Until then, no country had supplied another with the means for developing a nuclear capability. Mr Karpin believes that Mr Peres may have been motivated to speak on the subject because he hopes that it will help to secure his place in history.
In Paris, Jean-Francois Daguzan, the deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, said that France's deal with Israel had been kept a secret for almost 30 years. "It was well known in military and political circles but it didn't become public knowledge until the mid-1980s after a book was published about that era and the agreement was mentioned.
"There was no suggestion that France had given Israel its nuclear capacity but it had certainly helped the country acquire it."
Israel still officially neither confirms nor denies making nuclear weapons at the plant near Dimona. The country's journalists use coded language, never stating unequivocally that Israel has the bomb. The policy of ambiguity was crafted to deter Arabs from attacking Israel while avoiding the political fallout of becoming an acknowledged nuclear power.
The documentary marks the first time that the Israeli broadcasting media has dealt with the issue candidly. Some commentators are surprised that the censors allowed Mr Karpin such leeway as in the past six months Israel has detained an academic over a book he wrote on the country's nuclear capacity and jailed Yitzhak Yaakov, a retired general, for talking to a journalists on the subject.
---
Related stories:
US backs Israel's nuclear arsenal
Monday July 15 1996, Issue 427, UK Telegraph http://news.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml;$sessionid$5FSLNUQAAAHH5QFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?html=/archive/1996/07/15/wis115.html
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has won backing from President Clinton for the retention of Israel's nuclear arsenal, it was reported yesterday, writes David Sapsted in New York.
Mr Netanyahu appears to have got the US to agree to block Egyptian-led attempts to get Israel to dismantle its atomic weapons. According to the New York Post, which usually has reliable Israeli sources, the weapons issue was central to the Netanyahu-Clinton talks in Washington.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
[Please send feedback to the Washington Post: mailto:OPED@washpost.com]
Good News on Nukes
By David S. Broder
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15222-2001Dec21?language=printer
Put whiskers and a red suit on him, and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham would make a passable Santa Claus. What Abraham brought home from his recent trip to Moscow and his negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), plus what others have accomplished on Capitol Hill, are some of the best Christmas presents anyone could have hoped to find under the tree.
In sum, the path has been opened to greater progress in the new year on securing Russian nuclear materials and decreasing the chances that terrorists will be able to obtain the ingredients for suitcase nuclear bombs or other weapons of mass destruction.
Here is the story, as gleaned from interviews with Abraham, members of Congress and others in the Bush administration.
First, the final appropriations bill of 2001 contained virtually all the money that proponents had been seeking in vain all year to safeguard the atomic materials loosely stored and casually guarded at Russian sites. As readers of previous columns on this subject know, the green-eyeshade people in President Bush's OMB had inexplicably decided earlier this year that this was a place to save money, despite the fact that Bush had heartily endorsed the program during the campaign and since taking office.
Bush's first budget cut the money for the Nunn-Lugar program, the 10-year-old bipartisan effort sponsored by former senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana -- two of the nation's most farsighted national security experts -- to lock up those loose nukes and provide work for Russian nuclear scientists left unemployed by the breakup of the Soviet Union.
But now Congress has boosted the appropriation by $120 million, just $11 million less than the sum that a strong backer of the program, Texas Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards, had been seeking. Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, the senior Democrat on Appropriations, led the fight to restore the money.
Lugar told me the outcome was "very good news" and said he appreciated "the very strong bipartisan support" for the program.
But more good news is in store. Abraham has become a real advocate of the Nunn-Lugar program and said in an interview he is committed to "expanding and accelerating" it in coming months and years.
The former Michigan senator spent two days in Moscow last month with his counterpart, Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev, and with officials of the Russian navy, another partner in the project. They agreed to "establish a formal process to monitor progress" in "improving measures on nuclear materials physical protection, control and accounting, as well as preventing illegal trafficking and handling of nuclear and radioactive materials."
Beyond those formal words, Abraham said, there was a clear recognition on both sides of the central importance of such controls in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He and Rumyantsev agreed to set up their own direct communications link, so if any bureaucratic barriers appear, they can deal with them directly and quickly. "This has become one of my top priorities," Abraham said.
At the same time Abraham was holding these meetings in Moscow, the National Security Council was removing its hold on plans for disposing of Russian and American plutonium -- a principal ingredient of nuclear weapons -- through a process that converts it into a form safe to use in generating electricity. Some Bush aides had questioned the cost and complexity of the process, but they have now agreed that the disposal process can proceed, with adequate funding next year.
Finally, Bush has signaled that money for safeguarding nuclear materials and blocking proliferation of nuclear weapons will be increased in future years. In a Dec. 11 speech at The Citadel, Bush called this "a vital mission." And, congressional sources tell me, his budgeteers actually have increased fiscal 2003 money for this program beyond the Energy Department's request -- a real rarity these days.
The effort to safeguard nuclear material likely will expand beyond Russia. Abraham visited the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to promise joint U.S.-Russian initiatives to strengthen controls on cross-border movements of this lethal stuff. Lugar has talked with Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice about his vision of developing similar programs for India and Pakistan, and eventually even for Iran and Iraq.
Having previously criticized the Bush administration and some in Congress for shortsighted economies in this area, it is a pleasure now to commend them for this Christmas gift to the nation -- and to the world.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
Terrorist Targets
Southern Maryland Letters to the Editor
Sunday, December 23, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15187-2001Dec21?language=printer
Thank you for forcing the federal government to consider this issue publicly prior to finalizing permits for the operation of this energy facility.
A portable missile could penetrate a tanker, releasing the frigid liquid and setting it aflame. Since it is lighter than water, it would burst out over the water, absorbing heat from the water, adding more gas to the inferno. The on-land storage tanks could be reached. The main features can be computer modeled.
The missile could first hit the on-land tanks, causing a somewhat different catastrophe, due to the contours of the land and because the liquid would not be heated by the water, but only by the fire itself. The inferno could flow downhill and out over the water to engulf an unloading tanker. In either scenario, it might reach the nuclear plant three miles away.
Please request the feds to model these scenarios, and to publicly discuss them, before issuing permits. No matter how important these facilities may be to the economy of the region, and therefore inevitable, we have a right to understand, if only to best plan.
When the permit for Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant was recently renewed, we tried in vain to raise the issue of terrorism there. Federal law prevented it from being included in the public review process, but a terrorist knows what to hit. Such laws do not apply to the liquefied gas facility.
To his credit, state Sen. Roy P. Dyson has questioned the vulnerability of the nuclear reactor, and possibly of the nuclear waste stored on site, to attack by a fully fueled jetliner. But he now seems to have fallen back in line -- [concluding] that the storage vessel is thick enough, and that damage to the stored waste could be controlled. Congressman Steny H. Hoyer visited Calvert Nuclear after Sept. 11, and the press merely reports his impression that security there is good.
It takes the December issue of Physics Today to report that containment vessels for existing nuclear reactors were not even designed to withstand the direct crash of a fully fueled 180-ton jetliner, and that this will change in the future. It reports the conclusion of an association of German electric utilities that: "No power plant in the world could withstand an airborne terror attack like the one on Sept. 11"; and of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, D.C., that: "The possibility of an unmitigated loss-of-coolant accident and the release of radiation into the environment is a very real one."
These could also be modeled, and should, and the results made public. Federal law should not forbid this. A facility for civilian purposes should not be built, if its potential danger cannot be publicly evaluated, such as for education and mitigation.
Bill Johnston
Huntingtown
-------- us politics
For the Record
Sunday, December 23, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15227-2001Dec21?language=printer
Here's how some major bills fared recently in Congress and how local congressional members voted, as provided by Thomas's Roll Call Report Syndicate.
HOUSE VOTES
FOREIGN AID
For: 357 / Against: 66
The House approved the conference report on a bill (HR 2506) providing $15.4 billion in foreign aid for fiscal 2002. The bill contributes $34 million to United Nations population control programs and funds an array of countries and international organizations, with Israel ($2.7 billion) and Egypt ($1.96 billion) the leading recipients among nations. The bill provides $898 million for the World Bank; $784 million to bolster Russia's nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals; $660 million for helping Colombia and other Andean nations combat illegal drugs; $484 million for fighting HIV and AIDS; $275 million for the Peace Corps; and $39 million for the Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC), which insures private capital invested in politically unstable areas of the world. A yes vote was to pass the bill....
ANTI-TERRORISM TREATIES
For: 381 / Against: 3 6
The House passed a bill (HR 3275) to conform U.S. law with two international treaties against terrorism to which the United States is a signatory. Both were in the works long before the events of Sept. 11 but were not ratified by the Senate until Dec. 5. They impose binding obligations on participating countries regarding the prosecution and extradition of those suspected of committing or financing international terrorism. Critics said the bill needlessly repeats existing law, promotes the death penalty too aggressively and changes the U.S. code in areas not required by the two treaties. A yes vote was to pass the bill....
DEFENSE BUDGET
For: 40 8 / Against: 6
The House approved the conference report on a bill (HR 3338) appropriating $317.5 billion for the Department of Defense in fiscal 2002, 6.3 percent above the 2001 level. The bill also provides $20 billion in response to the Sept. 11 attacks (Senate issue, below). The largest defense categories are $105 billion for operations and maintenance; $82 billion for personnel; $61 billion for weapons procurement; and $49 billion for research and development. The bill funds a 4.6 percent military pay raise and provides $7.8 billion for the National Missile Defense. It supports 1.39 million active duty personnel and nearly 865,000 reserve and National Guard personnel. A yes vote was to approve the defense budget....
IRAQI WEAPONS SEARCH
For: 392 / Against: 12
The House called for immediate United Nations access to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction under terms of a Security Council resolution adopted in 1991 at the close of the Gulf War. A GOP leadership description of the measure (HJ Res 75) said "the U.S. and U.N. should insist that Iraq permit weapons inspectors immediately, unconditionally." A yes vote urged an immediate U.N. search of Iraqi weapons sites....
FARM EXPORTS TO CUBA
For: 61 / Against: 33
The Senate upheld language in S 1731 (above) to resume U.S. farm exports to Cuba. This killed an amendment to block exports unless the president certifies Cuba is not engaged in international terrorism. It is listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism along with Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya and the Sudan. A yes vote backed farm exports to Cuba....
DEFENSE BUDGET
For: 94 / Against: 2
The Senate approved the conference report on a $317.5 billion defense appropriations bill (HR 3338) for fiscal 2002. The measure also provides $20 billion in response to the events of Sept. 11, including $2.5 billion for equipping the public health system to deal with bioterrorism; $2 billion-plus for New York City; $745 million for the FBI; $550 million for the Immigration and Naturalization Service; $500 million for the U.S. Postal Service; $305 million for the U.S. Customs Service; $256 million for legislative branch security; $120 million for securing nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union; and an unspecified sum for rebuilding the Pentagon. A yes vote was to send the bill to President Bush.
--------
ARMAGEDDON AGAIN
Fear in the 50's and Now
New York Times
December 23, 2001
PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/weekinreview/23BROW.html
ALTHOUGH some nervous sorts may be whiling away the Yule hours in a bunker, most Americans are still exhibiting ambivalence over how much daily life should be subsumed by threat. Nonetheless, just as in the cold war, when Americans flirted with fallout shelters as a modern and patriotic alternative to nuclear obliteration, so the threat of terrorism has unleashed contradictory - and in some cases wacky - cultural reflexes.
Add to those time-honored mirrors of American culture - sports, television, Barbie - the American response to a threat.
In the 1960's, the threat of annihilation was a family affair, as door-to-door salesmen hawked fallout shelters in the same way today's anxiety entrepreneurs have peddled gas masks and Cipro. "The fantasy about the perfect shelter was the fantasy of the perfect family," said Al Filreis, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, who pointed out that the term "nuclear family" was apt. "The world might be dead and the landscape wiped out, but at least you were together," he said.
Imaginings of doom and suspicions that the neighbors could be Commies led to some seriously strange ideas. Among them was a 1962 handbook on nuclear survival issued by the Stanford Research Institute, which, among other ideas, suggested the "car body shelter" (bury a car in the backyard and put a plywood entry into one of the windows, a setup akin to a weeklong nonstop car trip with children).
But long before President Kennedy began advocating the shelter concept in the 1960's, a grisly sub-genre of nuclear-apocalyptic fiction was flourishing. As Kenneth D. Rose writes in his new book "One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture," the Federal Civil Defense Administration encouraged the new literature, which included phony newspaper front pages and whole magazines devoted to describing a fictional post-apocalyptic world - in deeply purple prose.
"The entire business district raged in a bonfire," reads a description of a war-ravished post-World War III Washington from Colliers magazine. "It cracked like a million cattle stampeding in a field of potato chips."
The nation's children were lured into cold- war culture by Bert the Turtle, the government-issue cartoon character who encouraged youngsters to "Duck and Cover." And the women of America were enjoined to keep the fallout shelter stocked with canned peas and other survival staples in the manner of grandma's pantry. Like casseroles and waxy build-up, nuclear war was a wifely issue, "no different than any other domestic problem" that the woman of the house was expected to handle, said Dr. Rose, a professor at California State University at Chico.
Today, anxiety knows no gender, as magazines like Men's Health and even Stuff offer how-to's on combating terror. In a manly echo of Cosmo, a recent issue of Men's Health offers the "25 Best Ways" for men to protect their families, including "leveling with them" and fending off a paunch because "a fit man evacuates his family faster from a burning house." Meanwhile, over at Ladies' Home Journal, daydreaming about revenge has replaced sex as the focus of reader polls post Sept. 11; 26 percent said they did it at least once a day.
Those seeking antiterrorism coping tools from the government can turn to Tom Ridge and the newly minted Office of Homeland Security, which plans to issue citizen guidelines that will help Americans prepare for possible terrorist attacks at home, work, school and church. And those who can't wait can look to the Web site of the state department's "Rewards For Justice" program (www.rewardsforjustice.org), where, among other nuggets of information about scoping out neighborhood terrorists, citizens are encouraged to remember that children of terrorists "often enroll in schools in the middle of the year and may leave prior to the end with little or no notice."
To be sure, there are some profound differences between then and now. Back then, nuclear anxiety penetrated the culture and civil defense was about anticipating war, not fighting it. Now, the unimaginable threat of devastation on American soil is real.
Americans today are also much savvier about breathless messages of doom, whether from the media or government officials.
"In the 1950's and 60's, folks felt what they were told about nuclear testing and other matters was true," said Dr. Filreis. "In the post-Watergate era, we don't have those expectations. We're suspicious of someone sitting behind a desk telling us something."
OF course, that didn't keep gun sales from increasing after Sept. 11. But it's worth noting that, for the most part, Americans - both then and now - tend to reject hysteria. Back in the 1950's, despite government scare tactics and heavy propaganda, the fallout shelter was a miserable failure, with only one in 100,000 people building one. And today, after an initial flurry of worry and hype, there are indications that Americans are again refusing to allow threats to transform daily life. Sales of nouveau shelters are on the wane, and having now stashed away drinking water and duct tape, Americans appear to be overcoming their jitters and, lured by bargain fares, are beginning to fly again.
As The Economist noted recently, "a country that specializes in junk television and risible lawsuits is proving that, when it comes to serious matters, it is quite capable of being grown up."
And no one has proposed the contemporary equivalent of "Bert the Turtle" - yet.
-------- MILITARY
List of 2001 World Conflicts
December 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Conflicts-List.html
The National Defense Council Foundation's list of the 59 countries found to have endured serious conflicts this year:
-- Afghanistan: Continuing civil war between northern alliance and Taliban forces; the U.S. military campaign against terrorism; one of the world's leading sources for opium trafficking.
-- Algeria: Internal strife and terror attacks caused by Islamic extremists (such as the Armed Islamic Group and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) and Berber secessionists in the Kabylie region.
-- Angola: Rebellion by UNITA.
-- Bangladesh: Violence surrounding the election.
-- Bolivia: Clash between government troops and coca farmers; Charges of government using paramilitary forces.
-- Burundi: Rebellion by FNL (Hutus) against Tutsi-dominated government.
-- Cameroon: Secessionist protests turned violent, army called out; border dispute with Central African Republic flared up.
-- Central African Republic: Failed coup against President Felix Patasse; Rebels under former Army Chief General Francois Bozize fighting the government forces, which are backed by Libyan forces. New to list.
-- Chad: Rebel group in North (MDJT) fighting government forces, want President Idriss Deby to resign.
-- China: Uighur Muslim separatists in Xinjiang province; violent suppression of Falun Gong movement.
-- Colombia: Drug war; rebel groups against government forces and paramilitaries.
-- Comoros: Violent coup on island of Anjouan, which declared independence four years ago.
-- Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire): Assassination of President Laurent Kabila; civil war featuring government forces (joined by forces from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe) against MLC rebel forces (backed by Uganda and Rwanda, who believe Congo was a breeding ground for rebels in their own countries.)
-- East Timor: Militia violence; election violence; religious violence (Muslims vs. Christians).
-- Gambia: Violence preceding the re-election of President Yahya Jammeh; Senegalese separatists in Casamance may also be operating there. New to list.
-- Georgia: Chechen separatists in Abkhazia.
-- Ghana: Ethnic and political fighting between the Mamprusi and Kusasi in Northeast; excessive violent crime. New to list.
-- Guinea: Cross-border attacks by RUF rebels from Sierra Leone backed by Liberia; refugee crisis.
-- Guinea-Bissau: Government forces fight with Senegalese Casamance rebels that crossed the border.
-- Haiti: Attempted coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and government raids in response; political violence; labor unrest.
-- India: Dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir; separatists in caste province of Assam.
-- Indonesia: Separatists in Aceh; ethnic violence on Borneo between Madurese and Dayak; political violence in East Java; religious violence on Sulawesi Island blamed on Laskar Jihad.
-- Iran: People's Mujahideen continue violence; drug trafficking and related violence; political unrest due to war in Afghanistan.
-- Iraq: Air strikes by U.S. and allied aircraft enforcing no-fly zones.
-- Israel: The new intifada and the Israeli response to it; crackdown on terrorist organizations.
-- Ivory Coast: Attempted coup against President Laurent Gbagbo; attempted countercoup; mutiny within the army; violent election followed by political and ethnic violence.
-- Jamaica: Political related gang warfare in Kingston; army accused of instigating further violence when called out. New to list.
-- Kenya: Ethnic violence in Nairobi slums between Nubian landlords and Luo tenants. New to list.
-- Kosovo: Continued interethnic violence; drug trafficking; organized crime.
-- Kyrgystan: Kidnapping and murder by Uighur militants from Xinjiang province of China.
-- Lebanon: Israel strikes a radar station, shoots down a light plane, strikes Hezbollah operating in Lebanon.
-- Liberia: Dissidents of the United Liberation Movement fighting the government in North.
-- Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Ethnic fighting between Macedonians and Albanian National Liberation Army; organized crime. New to list.
-- Malawi: Political violence preceding election. New to list.
-- Malaysia: Ethnic violence between Malays and Indians; drug and gang violence. New to list.
-- Myanmar (Burma): Fighting between government forces and the Shan State Army, a guerrilla group seeking independence for the Shan ethnic minority.
-- Nepal: Maoist insurgency; murder of royal family.
-- Nigeria: Religious fighting between Christians and Muslims; ethnic fighting between Egon and Tiv groups.
-- Pakistan: Dispute with India over Kashmir; terror attacks/bombings.
-- Papua New Guinea: Mutiny by soldiers over army downsizing; violent protests over economic reforms. New to list.
-- Philippines: Muslim separatists; election violence.
-- Russian Federation: Chechnya conflict.
-- Senegal: Secessionist rebels continuing 18-year struggle in Casamance province.
-- Sierra Leone: RUF rebels and pro-government militias fight in the North; Guinea conducting anti-RUF airstrikes.
-- Somalia: Warlords undermining transitional government; possible terrorist haven.
-- Spain: Continuing terror attacks by Basque separatists.
-- Sri Lanka: Tamil Tiger separatist rebels; election violence.
-- Sudan: Christians and animists (SPLA) fighting Muslim-dominated government.
-- Tajikistan: Russian border guards skirmish with Afghans.
-- Tanzania: Political violence surrounding disputed election; separatist violence by Civic United Front in Zanzibar. New to list.
-- Thailand: Fighting in Myanmar has spilled over; terror bombings.
-- Turkey: Underground militant groups; ambush of soldiers; prison riots and related demonstrations; terror bombings; Kurdish rebels resume fight with army.
-- Uganda: Election violence; rural crime.
-- United Kingdom: Renewed violence in Northern Ireland.
-- United States of America: Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. New to list.
-- Uzbekistan: Repeated terrorist incidents, ambushes, narcotics trafficking. Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan associated with al Qaeda.
-- Yemen: Violence surrounding constitutional referendum; small arms proliferation; hotbed of Islamic militant extremism.
-- Yugoslavia: Ethnic Albanian secessionists in Presevo; narcotics trafficking; organized crime.
-- Zimbabwe: Violent land reform; election violence; violence against journalists; political fighting.
-------
Bases, bases everywhere
By Martin Walker
Chief International Correspondent
UPI
December 23, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/19122001-014544-8646r.htm
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 -- Since Saddam Hussein was not toppled, a historian might say that the most important outcome of the 1991 Gulf War was to establish a long-term United States military presence in the Arabian peninsula and to turn the Persian Gulf into an American lake. The same historian could now also argue that the most significant result of the Taliban war will be to establish a similarly prolonged U.S. military presence in Central Asia -- which we now know rivals the Gulf in oil and gas reserves.
Last week, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn said that President Pervez Musharraf had agreed to an American request to prolong its stay at the Jacobabad air base for the foreseeable future.
The article quoted local military sources and went into considerable detail: "The Americans had asked for 40,000 metric tons of concrete to renovate the base in Jacobabad, according to an aviation source. U.S. officials have asked that a wall surrounding the base be raised four feet, and they want to construct air-conditioned barracks for U.S. troops in time for summer."
Air conditioning and barracks, and 40,000 metric tons of concrete (which means a bigger, stronger runway) suggests that the U.S. is settling in for a considerable period, and that the military personnel will not be restricted to pilots and flight crews. There has been no clarification from the Pentagon about the expected tour of duty in Jacobabad. (God help the troops stationed there. Jacobabad is one of the hottest places on earth, with summer temperatures soaring to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and local says one of the few pleasures is watching the scorpions die of heat.)
So far, there has been no equivalent reporting of plans for extended stays in Uzbekistan or Tadjikistan, where temporary U.S. air bases have been established for the Taliban war. Nor is there any suggestion that the airmen or the troops of the 10th Mountain Division are preparing to pack up and go home.
There are obviously very good reasons the U.S. established temporary bases in the countries around Afghanistan while the war against al Qaida and the Taliban was under way. There are similarly good reasons to stay on as the hunt for Osama bin laden continues and as the international community seeks to restore stability to the battered people and fabric of Afghanistan.
But at some point the question will be raised in the congress, which must vote the funds to pay for it, how long should this American presence be maintained. And one factor that should figure in their deliberations is that however useful in military and geopolitical terms, American bases can impose some sobering costs.
Take, for example, the bases established since the Gulf War. The headquarters of the Fifth Fleet are in Bahrein. There are two big US air bases in Kuwait, at Ali Salem and Ahmed al Jaber, and some 5,000 US troops at Camp Doha. In Saudi Arabia, another 5,000 troops are at the Prince Sultan airbase at al-Kharj, just south of Riyadh.
We know why they are there. It's a dangerous neighborhood, with Saddam Hussein just the most immediately threatening factor. The U.S. bases have helped stabilize the region, safeguard the strategic asset of oil, and -- to put it charitably -- bought time for the less than democratic local regimes to broaden their political base.
At the same time, the U.S. bases have become a target. Remember the 19 U.S. troops killed in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia. And recall that in his fatwas, Osama bin Laden always put top of his complaints list the presence of the infidel Crusader troops on Islam's holy peninsula.
This is not just an Islamic phenomenon. This week saw riots in the South Korean capital of Seoul over the continued American presence at a military base in the heart of the city. The American bases at Okinawa are a constant irritant, however welcome the broader American security umbrella has been to Japan as a whole.
The presence of American troops and airmen in Central Asia came with a conditional Russian approval, which seems to have included an understanding on the Russian side that these would be temporary postings. Maybe the Russians would welcome an extension, if the current NATO-Russian courtship prospers. Maybe.
But two big questions remain. The first is the reaction of Beijing, which now sees American bases to the West, in Japan and South Korea, and now to the East, in Pakistan and Central Asia. Whatever may be the Chinese word for encirclement, they are probably using it in the Peoples Liberation Army HQ these days.
The second question may be more immediate. Last week's attack on the India parliament in New Delhi, and India's blame of Pakistan, has revived the worries about relations between those two nuclear-armed neighbors. Not that the presence of the American air base at Jacobabad guarantees any kind of U.S. protection or involvement, and it may even help to cool the situation. But it certainly exposes American troops to a highly dangerous situation, before Congress or public opinion has had much chance to think about the implications.
-------- afghanistan
Taliban prisoners plead for food
Ananova,
Sunday 23rd December 2001
Taliban prisoners of war claim they are being mistreated.
Three thousand captured fighters at Shibergan prison, about 75 miles from the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, are jammed into a facility meant to hold 200 prisoners.
About 30 inmates are packed into each 6ft by 9ft cell.
There are no beds and so little room that prisoners have to sleep sitting on the concrete floor. Rooves have holes in them and leak freezing water when it rains. Many prisoners have no shoes. Toilets at the back of each cellblock emptied directly into huge, open-air swamps.
"Everyone's ill. Everyone's got diarrhoea," said Omer Niseer, a 20-year-old Pakistani, who has been at the prison for a month.
Omer Niseer, and several others, complained they get only one tiny meal a day, usually some bread that has had to split with three other inmates.
Fellow prisoner Hafiz Ihsan Saeed pointed to the untreated, infected shrapnel wound in his chest, his bare feet on the freezing concrete floor and his empty stomach and pleaded for help on behalf of all the Taliban inmates at prison.
"We have not eaten in 22 hours," he said. "We have a lot of weakness. Just standing I feel dizzy."
General Bek Gorabic, the prison warden, insists there is plenty of food and the inmates were served two large meals a day. He then showed off seven huge vats of cooking rice.
The prisoners said they only eat well when Red Cross officials were visiting.
----
Karzai Begins Task of Rebuilding Afghanistan
December 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-attack-afghan.html
KABUL (Reuters) - After a day of fanfare and hugs, new Afghan leader Hamid Karzai began on Sunday the job of rebuilding his shattered land with a cabinet meeting dominated by security issues, and by saying foreign forces were needed.
``Excellent, excellent. Absolutely perfect,'' a beaming Karzai told reporters in a courtyard of the presidential palace after the meeting when asked to describe the atmosphere at the talks.
``The main theme was security in Afghanistan,'' he said.
Security is a prerequisite for a government that must urgently grow food in a land ravaged by three years of drought, where women have no jobs, children barely receive an education, 16 out of every 100 babies die at birth and life expectancy is just 43.
One of Karzai's first jobs will involve the war still being waged in Afghanistan with a possible erroneous attack by U.S. forces on guests bound for his inauguration ceremony marring his first day in office.
And while Kabul, patrolled by mujahideen fighters of the Northern Alliance and a swelling foreign security force, may be under Karzai's control, there remain pockets of resistance, hideouts of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda, and the Taliban.
Asked by CNN if bin Laden was still alive in his country, Karzai said he did not know.
``I have no information about that. If he has been killed then it is good news for people all over world to know that a menace is no longer there,'' he said in an interview.
He said he had received information two days earlier on the possible whereabouts of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, and said he would be brought to justice if captured.
``He has no protection whatsoever,'' he said.
FOREIGN TROOPS NEEDED, KARZAI SAYS
But there may be delays in bringing in the foreign security forces for which many Afghans yearn to ensure peace.
Foreign troops could begin arriving in the Afghan capital next week but the bulk of the multinational force could take up to four weeks to deploy, a senior military source said.
Karzai said U.S. forces would be welcome to stay.
Asked by CNN how long U.S. forces would stay in Afghanistan, Karzai said: ``As long as there are these terrorist elements hiding out in Afghanistan and remnants of those forces.''
The U.N.-mandated security force should also stay.
``As soon as we have the means to protect our citizens ourselves and to bring security to the whole county then there will be no need for those forces,'' he said.
In a sign of the need for security, Interior Minister Yunis Qanuni arrived at the cabinet meeting in a red pick-up truck -- the transport of choice for both the vanquished Taliban and the Northern Alliance that defeated it -- accompanied by about six bodyguards armed with Kalashnikov rifles.
At the meeting, the 30 new cabinet members, many of whom only returned to the country from exile to attend their inauguration on Saturday, also discussed the re-establishment of a civil service in the whole of the country, Karzai said.
He was sworn in a day earlier, embracing foes and friends in a ceremony packed with turbaned tribal elders, soldiers in camouflage and Western-suited diplomats and the uniformed U.S. general commanding the war, Tommy Franks.
CONVOY BOMBING RAID
U.S. warplanes still patrolled Afghan skies, although they found few targets. One bombing raid last week, however, may have been a mistake.
Local Afghans have contested U.S. assertions that its aircraft had attacked a convoy of al Qaeda leaders, telling Reuters at the scene on Saturday that the dozens of dead were innocent villagers and tribal elders.
Residents of Asmani Kilai in eastern Paktia province said the strikes, lasting seven hours from Thursday night, killed 50 to 60 people and destroyed 15 vehicles from a convoy of tribal elders bound for Kabul for Karzai's swearing-in.
The dead included local residents, villagers told Reuters Television in the first independent account of the bombing.
``All in the convoy were supporters of the new administration,'' Haji Yaqub Khan Tanaiwal, 65, one of the few survivors, told Reuters in a hospital in Pakistan.
``We also support America because America supported our jihad (holy war) in the last 20 years,'' said the mujahideen (holy warrior) commander.
``Those who reported on the convoy must have had a grudge against someone in the vehicles.'' he said, urging a U.S. investigation into the strikes.
He was among some 15 people wounded in the attack. He estimated about 40 people survived.
The United States has said it is investigating the attack but its initial findings were that the dead were members of the ousted Taliban or fighters from bin Laden's al Qaeda.
A U.S. diplomat in Kabul said the convoy carried al Qaeda members and had opened fire on the U.S. aircraft.
REBUILDING A FAILED STATE
Soft-spoken aristocrat Karzai has pledged to begin swiftly the task of rebuilding his failed state. He took the oath of office with a vow to rule in line with Islamic principles and to ensure respect for women during his six-month term.
A Loya Jirga, or grand council, will then be called to decide a government for the next two years that is intended to lead to elections.
Karzai's estimated 25 million people, including five million refugees abroad, will be looking to him to enforce peace among warlords after years of fighting, and to end hunger as the harsh winter sets in with crops destroyed by drought.
He acknowledged that his government must deliver, and soon.
He appealed for billions of dollars in aid to rebuild the war-torn nation, warning that his historic inauguration -- the first peaceful and undisputed transfer of power in decades --- would be worthless if his government failed.
``If we deliver to the Afghan people what we promised, this will be a great day,'' he told a news conference. ``If we don't deliver, this will go into oblivion.''
Reminders of war were not far away.
British Royal Marines took up positions -- answering a popular call for outside security to ensure Afghan leaders do not return to the bloody civil strife that killed 50,000 people in Kabul in the early 1990s.
The precise role and size of the main force, which some estimates have said could be up to 5,000 strong, have yet to be finalized in talks with the new post-Taliban authorities.
The senior military source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Britain planned to send in a so-called ''enabling team'' of up to 200 military personnel including air traffic controllers later this week to prepare for the full deployment.
-------- europe
Terror threat promotes European unity
December 23, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011223-526261.htm
ANTALYA, Turkey - Defense ministers from southeastern Europe pledged stronger cooperation against terrorism and voiced their support for the U.S.-fight against terror last week as tensions simmered under the polite surface.
The moves came at a meeting of Balkan and southeast European defense ministers here to discuss the war on terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and border security. The ministers agreed to set up a working group on combating terrorism.
The ministers also decided to strengthen a multinational force that will conduct peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. The countries initiated the project in May, but the force has not yet been deployed.
"Defense ministers fully agreed on the fact that terrorist activities cannot be accepted in any way," they said in a joint statement supporting the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign launched after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
Turkey's defense minister, Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, said the attacks served as a "severe warning" to European countries.
Turkey has fully backed the U.S.-led campaign and was the first Muslim country to offer troops for Afghanistan, though it remains deeply concerned over suggestions that the war could spread to its southern neighbor, Iraq. Turkey served as the launching pad for attacks against Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Mr. Cakmakoglu said the issue was not discussed during Thursday's meeting.
Jack D. Crouch, assistant U.S. secretary of defense for international security affairs, stressed Washington's objectives are centered on the elimination of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.
Meanwhile, Balkan leaders said they were disturbed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's proposal on Tuesday that NATO cut its forces in Bosnia by up to a third.
Countries such as Macedonia fear the new U.S. policy could hurt long-term stability in the region. NATO is leading nearly 60,000 troops in three separate military operations, in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
Mr. Crouch said NATO has yet to decide on Mr. Rumsfeld's proposals.
"We reiterate our position that we will go in together and out together; consequently, the decision will be taken by NATO," Mr. Crouch said.
Among those at the meeting were defense ministers and representatives from Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia.
At the same meeting, Greece refused to change its mind on its decision to block a key military cooperation agreement between the European Union and NATO.
"Greece will not agree to any arrangements which violate its principles," Greek Defense Minister Yannos Papantoniou said.
Athens blocked the EU-NATO agreement at a summit of European leaders last weekend in Laeken, Belgium, threatening to hobble the European Union's future security and defense ambitions.
Greece's initial objections were vague, saying only that "very important issues" were involved. But EU observers have pointed to the country's long-running feud with Turkey over the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
Turkey invaded the island in 1974 in response to an Athens-engineered military coup seeking to unite Cyprus with Greece.
Both countries are members of NATO. Turkey, however, is not a member of the European Union but wants to be.
The accord is vital to the EU's fledgling defense force because it would allow access to NATO's huge strategic and logistical resources, including radar planes and planning teams, essential to long-range, long-term missions.
The deal had, in fact, previously been blocked by Turkey for more than a year. Ankara, fearing it was being sidelined from EU defense plans, had been using its NATO veto to block alliance support for the European force.
Turkey ended its objections after hammering out a compromise with the European Union this month, obtaining assurances from the 15-member bloc that the group would not involve itself in possible disputes between two NATO countries - a reference to Turkey and Greece.
But Athens then said it did not agree with the compromise and wanted it amended. Mr. Papantoniou repeated Greek objections to the deal on Thursday: "The arrangements should not affect the exercise of sovereign rights by any state."
He did, however, claim the problem was not one between Greece and Turkey: "It's a question related to the functioning of the EU. It's a completely European matter."
-------- india
INTERNATIONAL
India Weighs Using Troops in Kashmir
New York Times
December 23, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/international/asia/23INDI.html?pagewanted=all
NEW DELHI, Dec. 22 - A senior official said today that India was seriously considering military action if diplomatic pressure fails to convince Pakistan to crack down on Pakistan-based groups that India has accused of attacking Parliament on Dec. 13.
On Friday, India recalled its envoy to Pakistan for the first time in 30 years and ended bus and train service between the two nations in a strategy to ratchet up pressure on Pakistan to act against the groups India blames for the attack.
The senior official said India has told the United States, Britain and the European Union that India has not ruled out crossing the so-called line of control into the portion of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan, where the militant Islamic groups that India wants banned have training camps and bases of operation.
"Whatever action we take across the line of control, if it comes to that, will be after full preparation and in the expectation that it will lead to a large-scale conflict," he said.
Up to now officials have hinted at such steps but not stated them unambiguously. Today, Home Minister L. K. Advani would only say in an interview, "We are watching the situation. No one would like a war."
The United States is fearful that the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan could turn into an armed conflict that would undermine its efforts to capture Al Qaeda and Taliban members fleeing from Afghanistan into Pakistan.
Pakistani forces guarding the Afghan border would likely be shifted to defend the border and the line of control if war broke out.
In an effort to respond to India's concerns, President Bush on Thursday denounced one of the groups India blames for the Dec. 13 attack as a terrorist group and froze its assets. On Friday he called on Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to shut down the two groups that carry out most of the anti-India violence in Kashmir, a land that both India and Pakistan claim and that has inspired two of their three wars.
Indian officials are pleased with Mr. Bush's actions. But they want to see results in Pakistan. Here in the capital are retired generals and defense analysts who say the country has no good military options against Pakistan, which like India has a formidable army and nuclear arsenal.
But asked if India is bluffing about pursuing a military option, the senior official said, "This time we are determined to put an end to terrorism."
There is now a significant troop buildup along the line of control in Kashmir. Indian officials estimate that as many as 20,000 Pakistani troops who should have fallen back after winter exercises are stationed near the line. They say India has answered by moving in troops and aircraft of its own. Pakistan's Foreign Office says India started the buildup and it only responded.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India told Parliament last week that he hopes diplomacy can convince Pakistan to act. If recalling the envoy and restricting travel between the countries does not work, India still has nonmilitary means in its arsenal.
It can shrink the size of its diplomatic missions and those of Pakistan, and take steps to reduce further the already minimal trade between the two countries and close Indian airspace to Pakistani commercial flights, among other things.
Today Gen. Musharraf, on a state visit to China, ruled out recalling Pakistan's envoy from India to mirror India's action after the suicide attack, but he said, "We regret the very arrogant and knee-jerk response of the Indian government."
But tensions are clearly rising. When the capital's political elite - ministers, members of Parliament, the prime minister himself - talk about the five-man suicide squad that nearly shot its way into the halls of Parliament, they talk like people who have had a near-death experience.
It was mostly luck that saved them from gunmen with dozens of grenades, plastic explosives and AK- 47's.
Muhammad Afzal, a suspect traced through phone numbers in the slain attackers' cellphones, said in interviews with reporters last week that he was supposed to watch all- news television the morning of the attack and tell the squad when important ministers arrived.
But in that quintessentially New Delhi experience, his power went out and his television went dead. He could not tell them that Parliament had adjourned five minutes after it opened and that the prime minister was staying home as a result. An infuriated member of the suicide squad yelled at him over the mobile phone, then led the charge on Parliament anyway, Mr. Afzal said.
The second piece of luck happened when the suicide squad's white Ambassador car with the V.I.P. red flashing beacon on the roof crashed into a car in front of the entrance used by members of the Senate.
There an unarmed guard - even after he was shot - managed to close the huge carved wooden door and raise the alarm on his wireless. Quickly, doors to the other 11 entrances into the mammoth circular building slammed shut. The guard and 13 others died, including the five attackers.
What has compounded the sense of danger was a similar Oct. 1 attack on the legislative assembly in Srinagar. The suicide squad there, believed to be from Jaish-e-Muhammad, the same group that has been accused of attacking Parliament, rushed into the building calling for the chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, but went to a legislative office instead of the place where the lawmakers gather.
Senior officials say India cannot afford to wait for a third attack that succeeds. Mr. Advani told Parliament last week that Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e- Taiba, at the behest of Pakistan's intelligence agency, were trying to kill India's political leadership.
The major leaders of India's government - who come from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been known for a harder line on national security issues - are feeling intense pressure to act, much of it from their own ranks, though there is little, if any, public war hysteria here.
"Our decision is that this time we must put an end to this problem," the senior official said. "As the prime minister said, we will try all diplomatic means, but we will not close other options."
Asked if this included military options, he exclaimed, "Of course."
Through an unusual confluence of factors, India has unparalleled leverage with the United States now. The Americans need the Pakistan Army to guard the border with Afghanistan and apprehend members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda trying to escape into Pakistan's tribal regions.
But if India and Pakistan go to war, virtually all those troops are likely to rush from the eastern border with Afghanistan to the western border with India, leaving the Afghan border thinly guarded.
Some experts here say that this may have been a prime motivation behind the attack on Parliament. Jaish-e-Muhammad has the closest links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda of any of the militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, Indian intelligence sources say.
Its leader, Masood Azhar, was educated in an Islamic seminary in Karachi and followed the same Deobandi school of Islamic thinking as the Taliban. When he was a young man, he was recruited to the anti- Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and went for training there, according to confidential reports of his interrogations while he was in Indian jails. (He told his interrogators he was sent home after only a week to be a propagandist and fund-raiser because he was too fat for the rigorous physical demands of training.)
Mr. Azhar, held for six years under India's draconian antiterror law, was freed two years ago by the Indians to fulfill a demand of hijackers, who took an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar and threatened to kill all 155 passengers if Mr. Azhar and two others were not released. It is now believed that the Taliban were in cahoots with the hijackers, who were likely Pakistani militants.
Indian officials, who have felt in recent months that the United States did not care enough about India's bitter experience with terrorism, are pressing hard for the United States and other rich, developed nations to pressure Pakistan to shut down Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
These two groups alone are responsible for about 70 percent of the anti-India violence in Kashmir, according to Indian and Pakistani intelligence officials.
India's strategy has combined with the Bush administration's antiterrorism stance to yield results. Despite the fact that the United States needs Pakistan's help to catch the Al Qaeda leaders, American officials are pushing General Musharraf to shut down these two groups - a politically difficult thing for him to do in a country where the Kashmir cause is still popular.
President Bush on Thursday added Lashkar-e-Taiba to a list of terrorist organizations whose financial assets are to be frozen - a list that already includes Jaish-e-Muhammad.
On Friday, Mr. Bush satisfied another of India's wishes: he publicly asked General Musharraf to act against the groups. Indian officials had a copy of the news release this morning.
"I call upon President Musharraf to take decisive action against Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and other terrorist organizations, their leaders, finances and activities," Mr. Bush said in the statement.
Savoring the president's statement, the senior Indian official said this morning, "So far, so good."
--------
India - Pakistan Tensions Escalate
December 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Elite Indian strike forces have moved closer to the Pakistani border amid escalating tensions following a suicide attack on India's Parliament, the defense minister said Sunday. The neighbors traded heavy fire along the border in Kashmir, and India said two of its soldiers were killed.
Defense Minister George Fernandes said Indian troops were in a state of ``very high alert,'' the Press Trust of India reported. He said part of the Strike Corps -- trained to swiftly penetrate enemy territory with tanks and armored vehicles before a full-fledged infantry attack -- had moved nearer the frontier in Punjab and Rajasthan states.
His comments were the latest sign of a military buildup after the Dec. 13 attack on Parliament, which India blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic militants it claims are sponsored by the government.
Pakistan has also put its troops on high alert, and Fernandes said India's moves were in response to troop movements on the Pakistani side of the border. ``It now came to such a point that India had to take notice,'' he was quoted as saying.
In Kashmir, India said its troops shelled Pakistani positions in two border areas.
Cross-border skirmishes are common in Kashmir, but shelling had not been reported since the Parliament attack.
Indian military officials said Indian forces retaliated to heavy Pakistani shelling in Bain Galahar, 25 miles southwest of Jammu, the winter capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir. They said up to three Pakistani army bunkers were destroyed and some villagers were fleeing their homes.
The Indian officials said Pakistani forces began shelling hours after Pakistani troops opened fire on a patrol near an Indian border post, killing the two soldiers -- the first such deaths reported since the Parliament attack -- and wounding three.
However, a Pakistani army spokesman said Indian forces fired first and Pakistani border guards retaliated.
Indian artillery also destroyed three Pakistani army bunkers and damaged three others in the Poonch sector, apparently inflicting several casualties, an Indian army official said.
Pakistan's military said it destroyed four Indian bunkers and hit an ammunition stockpile in a heavy exchange of artillery fire, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
The military said it retaliated after India targeted villages 100 miles south of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir. Police said a Pakistani civilian was wounded and homes damaged.
India and Muslim Pakistan have fought two wars in half a century over Kashmir, a mostly Muslim region that is divided between them but claimed by both. Both countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
While Indian officials have hinted repeatedly at a possible military response to the Parliament attack, which killed 14 people including the five attackers, they have emphasized that war with Pakistan would be a last resort if diplomatic efforts to achieve their goals fail.
India has demanded that Pakistan freeze the assets of the two militant groups it blames for the attack and arrest and extradite their leaders. It has recalled its ambassador in Pakistan and is moving to shut down rail and road links.
President Bush added one of the groups India accused in the parliament attack, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, to the U.S. list of terror sponsors last week and called on Pakistan to take action against the group. Pakistan denies India's claims that it funds and trains the militants.
Pakistan is a key partner in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism because of its ties to another neighbor, Afghanistan. But the campaign has put a spotlight on Pakistan-based militants that have been fighting since 1989 to separate Kashmir from India.
There are half a million Indian troops in the region, and the fighting has killed more than 30,000 people.
Also Sunday, Indian police said they arrested an official of its Parliament Secretariat on Saturday for allegedly passing classified documents to Mohammad Sharif Khan, an official in the Pakistan High Commission. Police also questioned Khan, who allegedly received a bag containing documents related to defense, nuclear research, railroad security and ship designing. Khan was released after questioning, police said.
However, in Pakistan, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement accusing Indian security agencies of kidnapping and torturing the Pakistani official.
The statement said Khan was seized Saturday by Indian intelligence officials, severely beaten and forced to sign a statement saying he was involved in espionage.
``This is false and baseless,'' said ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao
--------
INTERNATIONAL
Tensions Rise as Pakistan and India Send Troops to Border
December 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-india-pakistan.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India and Pakistan rushed troops and military hardware on Sunday to the tense frontier where at least three people were reported killed in the latest exchanges of fire between South Asia's nuclear rivals.
Islamabad and New Delhi each said they were responding to a build-up of forces by the other as tension mounted following a guerrilla attack on its parliament on December 13 that India has blamed on Islamist militant groups based in Muslim Pakistan.
Both countries have rallied behind the United States' war on terrorism and President Bush said on Friday he was ``very much involved'' in cooling tensions between the two, which have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947 and each tested nuclear weapons three years ago.
Indian officials said two Indian paramilitary border guards were killed and three wounded when Pakistani troops opened fire on the border of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
Pakistani officials said Indian shooting at various points along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir killed one civilian and wounded eight on the Pakistani side on Sunday.
The two sides exchanged heavy machinegun and mortar fire at several places along the mountain frontier created in 1948 by a cease-fire in the first of two wars over Kashmir.
India, which accuses Pakistan of fomenting a decade-old revolt in mainly Muslim Kashmir, recalled its envoy from Islamabad on Friday, accusing Pakistan of failing to act against terrorism. It is also cutting cross-border bus and rail links.
On Saturday, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf called the move a ``very arrogant and knee-jerk'' response, prompting India to describe his remarks on Sunday as ``extremely regrettable.''
TROOPS DEPLOYED
Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said India had moved strike troops to the border states of Rajasthan and Punjab, on the plains south of Kashmir, but added that Pakistan's troops had ``not taken up any battle position.''
``It now came to a point that India had to take notice,'' he told the Press Trust of India. ``This is when India had to bring its forces closer to the border in both Punjab and Rajasthan.
``These include movement of some formation of strike forces.''
PTI said tanks and artillery were among the strike forces.
Pakistani army spokesman Brigadier Saulat Raza said: ''Pakistan is taking appropriate measures to strengthen its defense along the Line of Control and the international border.''
He told Reuters India had initiated attacks on Pakistani positions on the Siachin glacier -- the world's highest battlefield -- over the past few days and Pakistan responded.
An Indian resident living near the Wagah border crossing in Punjab, between Lahore in Pakistan and AmriCzar in India, told Reuters he had seen several Indian army trucks and artillery pieces moving toward the frontier.
``People from Khalra -- a village some 2 km (1 mile) from Wagah -- have started moving their families to safer areas,'' said Vijay Kumar, a resident of Bhikhiwind near Wagah.
He added that he had seen similar movements in 1965 and 1971, when India and Pakistan went to war with each other.
HOT PURSUIT?
Although Islamabad denies providing bases for Muslim militants in Kashmir and says it offers them only moral support, some New Delhi politicians have been demanding that Indian troops pursue guerrillas across the frontier into Pakistan.
Indian Home (interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani said on Sunday that strikes on guerrilla camps in Pakistan in response to the suicide attack on parliament would be legitimate.
``Party members have not asked for war but hot pursuit. What is wrong with that? It is legitimate under international law,'' Advani told the Hindustan Times newspaper.
Advani said the Indian government was weighing all options and nothing had been ruled out as it considered how to respond.
India has blamed the parliament attack on two Pakistan-based groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and has demanded that Pakistan close them down and arrest their leaders.
Pakistan has denied involvement and condemned the attack.
The Indian army said on Sunday a senior member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba had been killed by its forces in Kashmir.
In another mark of sour relations between the neighbors, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry accused Indian intelligence agents on Sunday of detaining and beating up a member of staff from its New Delhi embassy and called for a thorough investigation.
-------- israel / palestine
In Bethlehem, the Silent Nights Are Eerie
Tourists Flee City of Peace As Conflict Saps Spirits
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17739-2001Dec22?language=printer
BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- In any other December, a pilgrim would recognize the road to the traditional birthplace of Jesus by its sparkle and cheer: white angels floating above the treetops, cab drivers in Santa Claus suits.
This year, the only objects festooning the road are an upended patio chair and a few crushed soda cans. Where the roadside is lit, it is in the style of a ghost town: a neon "Bienvenue" sign with most of the letters blown out, leftover posters trumpeting "Christmas 2000."
Since Israeli troops occupied this Palestinian-controlled town on the West Bank for 11 days in October, residents have lost their holiday spirit. The city of peace has become the city of eerie quiet, with most of its stores boarded up, its hotels empty and not a Christian pilgrim in sight.
In better times, managing the crush of tourists was the one activity that Israelis and Palestinians could plan together. This year, even Christmas festivities have been overshadowed by the ongoing conflict.
Under pressure from around the world to regain order, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat commanded the town to get back its postcard Christmas cheer. He asked the municipality to remove the ubiquitous pictures of "martyrs," the 75 Bethlehem residents killed since the current Palestinian uprising began in September 2000. He ordered the youth marching bands to get ready for the famous annual Christmas Eve procession of the Latin Patriarch from Jerusalem into the city.
The Bethlehem Peace Center printed brochures promising "yuletide goodies." The busted millennium countdown clock was replaced by a new sign in Manger Square welcoming "His Excellency, President Yasser Arafat and His Esteemed Guests."
Late Saturday, Israel's inner security cabinet voted not to allow Arafat to travel to Bethlehem until he arrested the remaining two alleged killers of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, who was assassinated in October. Israel controls the roads in and out of Bethlehem, and Arafat has been effectively confined to the city of Ramallah since Israel destroyed his helicopters at the beginning of the month.
Arafat had requested that two Jordanian helicopters be allowed to transport him. Arafat said Saturday that he intended to make his annual Christmas visit to Bethlehem, with or without Israel's permission. "I will go, even walking," he told the Associated Press. Arafat has been going to Bethlehem for Christmas celebrations every year since the town came under Palestinian control in 1995.
If Arafat does come to Bethlehem, he will find not a single hotel open. But three days before Christmas there was one exception -- the Casa Nova, a hospice attached to Church of the Nativity. The receptionist had gotten a call from three Italians who wanted to come that night, but just in case they never showed up, he kept all the lights off.
"The approach of the holiday season will once again focus world attention on the birthplace of Jesus," said a news release issued Friday by the Arab Hotel Association. "This year, the humble Bethlehem Inn is available only as an eyesore to pilgrims and visitors," as if there were any.
Stores on Manger Street still have signs reading "Welcome!" "Best creche here!" or "Mary, Mother of Pearl! Lowest Price Here!," but their shutters are closed. Suddenly, shop owner jealousy has been reversed; it used to be that the shopkeepers who sold groceries to the locals and ignored the tourist jackpot were seen as the town fools. Now, they seem like the lucky ones, said Nader Hayoush, who three years ago traded his fruit stand for a fancy cafe.
Along Manger Square, only one of the tourist shops selling olive wood creches and mother-of-pearl statues was open. "Just to clean up," explained owner Nadia Hazman, adding, without prompting, "I hate the Americans. It is their fault, what is happening to my people."
What about the American tourists who buy all her goods?
"I hate them too. I don't want them to buy anything anymore," she said, and returned to her sweeping.
Even the Jumana Gift Center, with its giant inflatable Santa outside and shelves stocked with Christmas kitsch, lacked holiday cheer. "I don't really feel like Christmas this year," said owner Victor Housh, as he wrapped some lights for his only customer.
If there is any pretext of celebration, it's "just for the kids," said Hilda Bishara, the customer.
So when her two children ask why there are so few decorations this year, Bishara answers vaguely. And, for now at least, her unemployed husband agrees to pretend that he's home with the kids all day, every day, because he wants to be.
Indeed, the children provide the city's only genuine holiday spirit. Creaky singing cheers up the Bethlehem Peace Center, as kids from a local youth center stage their annual pageant. Their teacher, Iskandor Andan, said the children have remained largely oblivious to the recent fighting, or perhaps their awareness shows up only in oblique ways. One 5-year-old drew himself as a soldier, towering over the city. Many have asked for plastic guns and masks for Christmas.
And everyone asks about Johnny.
Even before his picture was plastered on posters all over the city, the name "Johnny" was hard to miss. Johnny Thalgieh, who was 17 at his death, liked to write his name everywhere -- on his dresser drawer, the door of his house, the walls of the city. In black marker and a child's crooked English, he wrote: JOHN or JO or JOHNNNNNY.
He grew up a few yards from Manger Square, and until he was shot there by an Israeli sniper on Oct. 20, it was his neighborhood playground. On the family's kitchen table sits a pile of photos showing Johnny throwing his first snowball there, sporting his first pair of baggy jeans.
According to an Internet statement put out by his family, on the day he was shot Johnny was on his way home from church, "standing and playing with his cousin, the baby 'Issa' " -- Arabic for Jesus. Relatives previously said the baby's name was Michael, and he was 4 years old.
"We hope Johnny will bring peace unto this Earth, to all the families who have lost a loved one, including even the Israelis," said his Uncle Ilia.
Just then, Johnny's mother, Victoria, walked in from another funeral. "The Israelis?" she repeated, incredulous. "The Israelis? I want nothing for them. They did not even apologize to me." She threw down her black purse and walked out of the room.
Johnny's sister Alice, 7, hopes only for child-size Christmas miracles. For the year before he was shot, Johnny was the only one in the family working, as a clerk in his uncle's store. As such, he was the one to give out the allowances. So for Christmas, Alice wants the candy she can no longer afford.
-------- pakistan
As the Battlefield Changes, So Does the War Itself
New York Times
December 23, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/weekinreview/23SANG.html
WASHINGTON - NO one knew last week whether Osama bin Laden had moved to Pakistan; he hadn't sent out change-of- address cards. But the war certainly began to shift there - to a country where the terrain is more hospitable than Tora Bora, but the politics are a lot less forgiving for Americans.
It is, President Bush's aides acknowledge, a taste of what's to come in Phase 2 of the war on terror. Distinctions between friend and foe will be a lot harder to make than they were just weeks ago in Afghanistan.
From here on, the war seems certain to become increasingly uncomfortable for some of Washington's allies - notably Pakistan, where the military government has an unpleasant recent history of making covert use of its terrorist friends in the battle to control Kashmir. In Mr. Bush's terms, the Pakistani-based terrorist group he placed under sanctions on Thursday for planning the deadly attack on India's parliament may be "evil-doers." But to supporters of Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, they are freedom fighters.
So some of the president's aides admit privately that they are seeking some fresh thinking about how to define the next few acts of the war. "There's a lot up in the air," one senior foreign policy adviser said. "Everyone around the world wants to use the war on terrorism to settle some kind of old grudge." He cited the battles over Kashmir, a Palestinian state and Chechnya - and, at home, the debate over whether this is the moment to topple Saddam Hussein. "It's dangerous territory," he said, "because it's easy to lose focus on your main goal."
Mr. Bush, for one, says the goal is straightforward. A week after the Sept. 11 attacks, in his speech to Congress, he vowed to take the war to all terrorists who could harm America or its allies, and to not stop with the crippling of Al Qaeda. Marking the 100th day of the war on Thursday, he reminded Americans that he was just beginning. "American power will be used against all terrorists of global reach," he repeated. Patience will be needed, he said Friday: "I understand the degree of difficulty has increased significantly."
At first hearing, Mr. Bush's war aim sounds like the kind of sweeping goal that has, in the past, made for great presidencies. He clearly sees this battle as his generation's answer to his father's generation's battle against fascism.
IN fact, Mr. bin Laden's undisguised malevolence gave Phase 1 a World War II-like clarity, and holding the coalition together proved far easier than many had thought. But in Phase 2 the dividing lines are likely to be blurrier.
Unlike Mr. bin Laden, who had no discernible program beyond ousting infidels, the terrorists Mr. Bush is beginning to take on are players in a host of other struggles, old and new, with broader political appeal. Many of the struggles are territorial or religious. All require Mr. Bush to take sides, often creating problems in countries he has massaged into joining his coalition.
"The problem the Bush people have now is a definitional one," said James Steinberg of the Brookings Institution, who was President Clinton's deputy national security adviser. "So far they have not defined their goals and their priorities beyond pursuing the Al Qaeda. And you have to do that to make the case to the rest of the world."
Consider Pakistan. The fate of Kashmir resonates with 140 million Muslims there. So when Mr. Bush cracks down, as he did Thursday, on a Pakistani-based group suspected in the India attack, many Pakistanis see him undercutting a group devoted to driving India out of Kashmir, and thus siding with Pakistan's enemy.
And by punishing a charity run by former Pakistani nuclear scientists who met with Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan, he is all but accusing General Musharraf's government of lying when they said the scientists were just trying to help Afghanistan's poor.
Mr. Bush's top advisers acknowledge the risk they are taking, but say there is no choice. "We've said that there aren't good terrorists and bad terrorists," one of the most senior aides insisted last week.
Invoking the anti-terrorism cause works both ways. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has seized on the Bush doctrine - equating terrorists with those who harbor them - to justify counterattacks on the Palestinian Authority; this ratchets up Israel's conflict with Yasir Arafat at a time when Mr. Bush is trying to defuse it. Similarly, India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, is under pressure to launch cross-border attacks under the same doctrine - exactly the response Washington wants to prevent.
The sanctions on groups close to two causes deeply identified with Mr. Musharraf - ridding Kashmir of Indian control and advancing Pakistan's nuclear weapons program - prove that Mr. Bush is determined, the official said. To ease the pain, the White House argued that the attack on India was also an attack on Mr. Musharraf's authority, skipping past the fact that Mr. Musharraf's own intelligence service is widely believed to have used the terrorist groups as surrogates. (Similarly, Mr. Bush argued that Hamas's attacks in Israel were a threat to Yasir Arafat's authority.)
BUT the real definitional challenge will come as Mr. Bush expands the war to deal with states that may not be sponsoring terrorism, but are developing nuclear and biological weapons that could fall into the hands of terrorists. Iraq and North Korea come to mind.
For several months the C.I.A. and others did their best to link Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks, and then to the mailing of anthrax spores. So far, evidence has been scant at best. So now some of Mr. Bush's aides push a different argument: Countries that posed a threat before Sept. 11 pose an even bigger one now, because they may team up with terrorists.
This argument has growing appeal in Washington: Sept. 11 revealed America's vulnerability and its slowness to recognize the depth of the threat.
But few of America's allies are ready to define the goals that broadly. European and Arab ambassadors commonly ask whether Mr. Bush is looking to use the battle against terrorism to settle old scores.
And then there is Vladimir V. Putin, whom the White House sees as Mr. Bush's partner. The Russian president suggested last week that when it comes to Phase 2: "Primarily we should talk about ways to block the financing of terrorist activities. And so far I have no confirmation, no evidence that Iraq is financing the terrorists that we are fighting against."
Defining Phase 2 could take a while.
-------- spy agencies
Russian spy chief urges data exchange
Briefly
December 23, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011223-336687.htm
MOSCOW - Russia's top spy said in a rare interview published last week that global intelligence agencies must draw lessons from September 11 and share information even after the Afghan campaign comes to an end.
"The priority today is very close cooperation in the fight against international terrorism. The details [of such information-sharing] are so serious that I have no right to disclose them," Foreign Intelligence Service director Sergei Lebedev told the daily Trud.
"But what worries me is that once the Afghan operation ends, once they find bin Laden, everyone will walk their own way again," said Mr. Lebedev.
----
CIA Paid Afghans To Track Bin Laden
Team of 15 Recruits Operated Since 1998
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17770-2001Dec22.html
For four years prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the CIA paid a team of about 15 recruited Afghan agents to regularly track Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to well-placed sources.
The team had mixed results, ranging from excellent to total failure. Once every month or so, the team pinpointed bin Laden's presence in a specific building, compound or training camp, and that location was then confirmed by the CIA through communications intelligence or satellite overhead photography. On two occasions, the team reported firing on bin Laden's caravan, though the agency could not independently validate this.
On some rare days, the team provided a specific location, and the CIA was able to obtain three or four verifications from other intelligence sources, confirming bin Laden's whereabouts. For other periods, the team would lose track of him. "There would be a week or two when he [bin Laden] would be out of pocket," said one person with firsthand knowledge of the team's work.
The existence of the tracking team was one of the most tightly held secrets in the CIA over the past several years and suggests that the U.S. search for bin Laden in Afghanistan was more concentrated and aggressive than previously disclosed.
However, the United States never launched an attack on bin Laden based on information provided by the tracking team. Bin Laden remains at large despite the collapse of the Taliban regime that harbored him and the presence of hundreds of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. U.S. officials say they do not know where he is.
The creation of the tracking team was part of a covert CIA operation to capture or kill bin Laden launched first by the Clinton administration and continued under President Bush. In fact, Bush was considering an even more ambitious plan to destroy bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in the summer before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, well-placed sources said.
The National Security Council drafted a proposal for a new CIA covert action program that would have cost as much as $200 million a year. It would have had two main components. First, the CIA would have been authorized to destabilize the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan. Second, the CIA would have launched a program to destroy bin Laden's organization worldwide.
The plan was almost ready to be presented to Bush when the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, officials said.
Since the attacks, Bush has authorized a much more sweeping and lethal CIA program against bin Laden. The cost will be more than $1 billion, most of it for covert action in Afghanistan and around the world.
Bin Laden is one of the most elusive figures in modern history, and the frustration felt by hundreds of U.S. soldiers and intelligence operatives scouring the mountains in eastern Afghanistan is familiar to top U.S. policymakers. In the past four years, bin Laden moved about Afghanistan at irregular times, suddenly departing at night and not keeping to a travel pattern or schedule. There was evidence of decoy caravans, and bin Laden may have used disguises and even traveled at times in an ambulance. He stayed mostly in the Kandahar and Jalalabad areas.
The terrorist leader was tracked during much of that time by the special CIA-organized team, which still has a classified code word name. Sources declined to offer many details about the identity of the Afghan operatives, though they indicated some were part of the same family.
One key source said that the team had information about bin Laden's location a majority of the time: "Bottom line: We had eyes on him most of the time."
Some officials in the CIA, White House and Pentagon were skeptical of the team reports because much of the time there was no independent verification and at times other intelligence contradicted the team's reports.
"Though they provided 'eyes on' the target," a senior Bush administration official said, "the weakness was that they were not American 'eyes on' the target so there was never the necessary high level of confidence" about their information without confirmation from other intelligence.
A key problem was translating information provided by the trackers into action. Before Sept. 11, U.S. policy in the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration required confirmation that bin Laden would be in a specific location six to 10 hours in the future -- the minimum time required to fire a Tomahawk cruise missile from a Navy ship or submarine nearly 1,000 miles away in the Arabian Sea.
"We never could say where he would be in the future so an attack could be launched," said an intelligence operative. "It was a maddening chase."
Added another person with firsthand knowledge of the dilemma: "Who could say which hut or which tent he might be in in 10 hours? . . . [Bin Laden] might go for a walk or out, or have a meeting away or suddenly pull up at the oddest times for no apparent reason.
"We just could not anticipate his whereabouts and give the decision-makers a level of confidence that if they shot missiles he would be there," this source added.
Said a former senior Clinton administration official about any possible attack on bin Laden, "We did not want to rely on one source."
Indeed, the most public U.S. effort to kill bin Laden apparently did not involve intelligence from the tracking team. In August 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered a Tomahawk missile attack on bin Laden, sending at least 70 missiles into the Khost camp near the Pakistan border where bin Laden was supposed to be attending a conference or meeting of his al Qaeda network. Bin Laden left the camp one or more hours before the missiles landed.
The intelligence for the attack came chiefly from communications showing that bin Laden had ordered a gathering of his operatives on that date at Khost.
Despite the failure to get bin Laden, the tracking team functioned from early 1998 to this Sept. 11 as one of the CIA's most valued intelligence assets. The team reports were "the spine" of the intelligence gathering on bin Laden, a key source said.
"It was the best game in town," another source said. CIA Director George J. Tenet often told senior government officials only that he had "eyes on the ground" reports about bin Laden but did not provide precise details about the source.
The team of about 15, which could break into smaller tracking units, had the capability of providing daily reports to a special CIA unit, called the "bin Laden station," created to monitor bin Laden and his network.
The members were paid less than $1,000 a month, the sources said. Technically, the team members were a category of human intelligence, or HUMINT, but because of the low cost -- several hundred thousand dollars a year, less expenses and equipment -- one source called it "cheap intelligence," or CHEAPINT.
"These guys were often daring, taking all the risk themselves," the source said. "We never knew the full story about motive and reliability, but we loved them."
Opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden became increasingly difficult over the years, especially after the 1998 Tomahawk missile attack. And neither the Clinton nor the early Bush administration would authorize a larger, riskier operation such as sending a Special Forces unit into Afghanistan to attack him.
"He was always surrounded by Taliban as a first layer of defense," a source said, "and then he would have al Qaeda fighters providing security so there was a high risk if we sent a Special Forces team in -- a prohibitively high risk."
Just before or after Sept. 11, the team members lost track of bin Laden but stayed in Afghanistan. "They are now fighters," an official said. "The irony has not been lost. . . . Instead of the 15, there are literally thousands looking for the same guy."
Researcher Jeff Himmelman contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Travel Tips
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page A17
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17852-2001Dec22?language=printer
Dan Boelsche is the former Dulles International Airport supervisor for Argenbright Security Inc. Here are his tips, plus a few gleaned from visiting airports, for coping with new security requirements and making the holiday travel experience a little less stressful:
• Do not bring wrapped gifts. If you are carrying wrapped packages, they will almost certainly be unwrapped by guards. And if you are picked for a search of checked bags, gifts in there will be unwrapped, too. Mail the packages ahead.
• Do not wear clothing items that will set off metal detectors. For men, dress shoes are a major offender because they often have metal shanks in the soles. Wear tennis shoes. For women, do not wear underwire bras. If you wear one, do not be surprised if you get a pat-down search.
• If you are subjected to a pat-down search, you can request that it be performed by a guard of your gender. You also can request that the search be done in private if you are shy, or in public if you are suspicious.
• If you have to travel with knives, firearms or ammunition, they can be put in checked baggage under certain rules. Call your carrier to find out the requirements.
• Do not put aerosol bottles in your checked bags. They can show up as suspicious items on the X-ray scanner and provoke a bag search.
• Do not put film in checked luggage. If your bag goes through one of the new bomb scanning machines, the film could be ruined.
• Remember that baggage check-in is likely to close 20 minutes before departure to allow time for matching bags with passengers who actually board the flight.
-- Greg Schneider
----
In Salt Lake, Security Is an Olympic Task
By Amy Shipley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15597-2001Dec22?language=printer
SALT LAKE CITY -- At the 2002 Winter Games, Secret Service agents will patrol on skis and in snowmobiles. Ticket holders will attend events in venues surrounded by 10-foot razor-wire fences, monitored by motion detectors, manned by rifle-carrying National Guardsmen and entered through metal detectors. They will occasionally notice the skies above Salt Lake City cleared of all air traffic -- except for the stray fighter jet.
Salt Lake Olympic Committee officials have warned ticket holders to anticipate waits of more than an hour at heavily guarded access points to all venues, even traditionally accessible ones like the downtown medals plaza. There will be no equivalent to Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park at the 1996 Olympic Games, the open-to-the-public, jam-packed, rollicking gathering square that was the site of a pipe bomb explosion that killed one person.
The most significant international event on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Feb. 8-24 Olympics will be blanketed with a strange mix of streamers and security, excitement and apprehension. Sept. 11 did not awaken Olympic officials to the threat of terrorism, or significantly alter security plans; it merely expanded their list of acts to guard against, and intensified already rigorous efforts. Since the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, when Palestinian extremists stormed the athletes' village and killed 11 Israeli coaches and athletes, the Olympics have been draped in heavy, highly visible security. In fact, during the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, the International Olympic Committee members' hotel was guarded by a massive tank and soldiers in bulletproof vests.
These Games will consist of the customary clampdown, along with a tightening here and an innovation there in response both to the Atlanta bombing and the recent tragedy.
Perhaps the biggest change is a fundamental one: the Olympic Games, in 1998 designated a National Special Security Event, are the first to fall under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service, FBI and Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"If there is a place that is going to be safe during those 17 days -- or at least well-protected -- this is the one," Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt said during a recent interview at the State Capitol. After Sept. 11, "there was an instant willingness to assure that the Games were secure and an acknowledgment of the importance to the civilized world of being able to conduct these kinds of activities."
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the heads of the agencies entrusted with security at the Games -- including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, Secret Service Director Brian L. Stafford, Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White and Utah U.S. Attorney Paul Warner -- assembled on Capitol Hill. They requested, and received, an additional $35 to $40 million for manpower and equipment, pushing the federal contribution to Olympic security to about $240 million. (For security at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the federal government contributed $68 million; for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the tally was $96 million.)
Among other post-Sept. 11 measures: Leavitt authorized the call-up of 2,000 Utah National Guardsmen and requested increased airspace restrictions during the Games. Security leadership borrowed high-tech air filters that can detect the presence of harmful toxins and hazardous chemicals. Olympic officials decided to restrict mail almost completely within the athletes' village. Supplies of the anti-anthrax drug Cipro, and other nerve agents and antitoxins, have been stockpiled in case of outbreaks among the 82,500 athletes and visitors expected in Salt Lake City.
"Since Sept. 11, security has occupied the largest portion of my time," said Mitt Romney, the president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. "It's important to me that I'm personally convinced that every possible course of threat has been considered and planned for."
Before the tragedy at the Munich Games, security at the Olympics had been almost nonexistent. "In '68, you could enter the Olympic village if you were young enough to pretend to be an athlete," said IOC President Jacques Rogge, who competed in sailing at those Games.
After Munich, Rogge said, security became the IOC's greatest concern. The only other deadly Olympic security incident occurred during the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.
The explosion of a pipe bomb in a paper bag late on a festive evening in the Centennial Olympic Park -- just 10 days after the explosion of TWA Flight 800 -- cast a pall over the Games. At the Closing Ceremonies, then-IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch stunned observers when he refused to call the Games the greatest ever held, the traditional compliment levied on the host city by the IOC president.
In Atlanta, the security efforts, which were by all accounts extensive, also were famously disjointed, as major federal, state and local agencies worked in separate offices and with sparse communication. Salt Lake officials, awarded their bid a year before the Atlanta Games, paid close attention to the problems and snags there. So, too, did the federal government. Two years later -- just months before the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya -- the Olympics were designated a National Special Security Event subject to the protections described in the classified Presidential Decision Directive-62, as well as an earlier counterterrorism directive, PDD-39.
The directives for the first time clearly defined the federal agencies' roles in Olympic security. The Secret Service was charged with planning and executing a security plan for the Games; the FBI, with crisis management; and FEMA, consequence management. In contrast to Atlanta, security planning for the Salt Lake Games was a cooperative effort almost from the start.
In 1996, the Secret Service sent personnel to the Atlanta Games solely to protect dignitaries. In Salt Lake, the Secret Service has the additional -- and enormous -- task of sealing the perimeters of every Olympic venue. At a cost of more than $60 million, the Treasury Department law enforcement operation will utilize more than 1,000 Secret Service agents and an additional 600 personnel from 12 outside agencies.
"It is starkly different from Atlanta in the way the Secret Service operates," said Mark Camillo, the Olympic coordinator for the Secret Service. "Our role, as critical as it was, was limited to those we were responsible to protect, the president, vice president and other principals. The Winter Olympics is a more venue-driven security requirement. The venues themselves are what we protect."
That will be accomplished with physical barricades in some cases, and with roving -- or skiing or snowmobiling -- agents in others. The FBI, meantime, will employ some 1,000 agents in its intelligence-gathering and crisis-management role. FEMA has prepared response teams for potential disasters ranging from the natural -- such as a massive earthquake -- to the biological, such as an anthrax epidemic. Local law enforcement officials retain jurisdiction over day-to-day incidents in their areas.
To facilitate communication between the various agencies managing security, the Utah legislature in 1998 created the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command, which includes some 50 members of public safety bodies and is headed by Utah Public Safety Commissioner Robert L. Flowers. The agency has by all accounts helped unite the various bodies responsible for security at the 20 Olympic venues over a 6,000 square-mile area.
All told, about 11,000 law enforcement, fire, emergency medical, emergency management, health and public works professionals from more than 80 federal, state and local agencies are part of the operation, according to David Tubbs, the security coordinator at UOPSC. The breakdown works out to about 1,800 state and local law enforcement officials; 700 volunteer law enforcement officials from outside the state; about 3,200 National Guardsmen and other military personnel; about 2,000 Treasury Department agents; about 1,000 FBI personnel and about 2,500 emergency personnel.
Three years ago, the FBI entered into a multiyear lease to create office space for the Olympic security command center for the Games. That center, located just blocks from the Olympic medals plaza and just down the hill from the State Capitol, includes a communications room with more than 40 computer terminals and 12 television monitors. Representatives from most of the participating security agencies will assemble there, 24 hours a day, during the 17-day Games.
In Atlanta, the various agencies worked miles apart.
"With the storied past of interagency jealousies and lack of respect of the feds by the state, or locals by the state, and so forth, I have seen absolutely none of that in Salt Lake," Romney said. "The ability of these people to work collaboratively, to have fashioned something without gaps, where every single feature is discussed and somebody is given responsibility for it, I've really never encountered anything like this. It's really an extraordinary process."
Even concerned citizens outside the Olympic umbrella have been invited to share information via a special-access computer system. A couple dozen owners of businesses or attractions in the Salt Lake area have been given passwords for the system, allowing varying levels of access to security plans and information.
"The way they have gone about communicating, we think it's been exceptional," said Presiding Bishop H. David Burton of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, who is in charge of facilities management.
If the Sept. 11 attacks did not precipitate an overhaul of the Olympic security plan, they awakened -- and frightened -- the Salt Lake community. Residents and business owners wondered if their city would become a bull's-eye for terrorists during the Games.
"After Sept. 11, there was a lot of concern," said Marc Huntington, the general manager of the Red Rock Brewing Company, a business just down the street from the medals plaza. "People weren't even sure there would be an Olympics. They were expressing concerns: We're right in the middle of it, near the medals plaza."
Certain local outfits outside the official Olympic security net decided to take action. Burton said the Mormon church has leased 70 metal detectors and hired a security staff for the Games to protect various entrances on its three-block Temple Square campus. Officials at the Capitol, which is perched on a hillside above the downtown area, are installing key card readers at customarily open entrances and arranging for metal detectors at others. Security officials at the University of Utah, the site of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the athletes' village, will increase staff and overtime during the Olympics.
"We're going to take it to a higher level," said Ben Lemmon, the director of public safety and chief of police at the University of Utah. "A lot of people won't get as much sleep as they're accustomed to."
Employees at the Red Rock Brewing Company are, for the first time, learning and practicing emergency techniques, such as evacuation procedures in the event of a bomb scare. The downtown Marriott hotel across from the Salt Lake Ice Center decided to close its doors to the public, issuing guests ID cards that will allow them to get through hotel security, according to Chad Callaghan, the vice president of loss prevention for Marriott. The property will also ban self-parking, and sell food and souvenirs on carts outside the hotel.
Olympic security officials have been elated at actions like these, which they say will help fill the gaps in a security plan that could never be quite broad enough.
"A dilemma of homeland security generally is there is no way to cover every possible sinister threat," Leavitt said. "You can't fence off a whole city. You can't fence off a whole world."
----
Walter Reed cops protest gun policy -
By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 22, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011222-6643745.htm
Police officers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center say their lives will be endangered under a soon-to-be-enforced regulation that would have them carry their semiautomatic weapons without a live round in the chamber.
In violent situations, officers often have no time to load a round in their 9 mm Beretta handguns, said Officer Patrick Hayes, vice chairman of the Walter Reed Fraternal Order of Police labor committee.
"What will happen is you'll draw your weapon, you have to remove the safety, then cock the chamber and by that time you're dead or getting your head bashed," Officer Hayes said.
"This is dangerous for us. Why would you even have a police force if you restrict them like this?" he said, adding that carrying fully loaded weapons is standard practice among military police.
Army officials at Walter Reed said the regulation most likely will take effect in the next few weeks. Officials e-mailed officers Dec. 7 to alert them that the regulation will be enforced and to allow them to voice any concerns about the same.
"It is an Army regulation - No. 190-14," said Jim Stueve, spokesman for Walter Reed Provost Marshal William J. Bolduc.
The regulation states that an Army law enforcement and security officer will be armed with a loaded weapon, but the weapon must have the safety on and there will not be a round in the firing chamber.
"It has always been that way, but the chief's predecessors chose not to enforce the policy," Mr. Stueve said.
Chief Bolduc's enforcement of the regulation follows his recent reduction of law enforcement powers among the Army hospital's police force.
Chief Bolduc has ruled that Walter Reed's 60 police officers are Army personnel who are bound by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The act bans members of the U.S. armed services from enforcing laws on civilians.
Chief Bolduc's decision ended a 1997 agreement between Walter Reed and the Metropolitan Police Department that allowed the hospital's police to detain civilians suspected of misdemeanors and minor felonies on the medical center's grounds.
The Washington Times first reported the reduction of powers last week.
The Department of Defense only recognizes those officers working as Defense Protective Service at the Pentagon as Defense Department police officers, said Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood.
"We don't have any Defense Protective Service officers at Walter Reed," Mr. Flood said. "Those guys are under Army jurisdiction."
Defense Department police officers are allowed to exercise law-enforcement powers similar to those of civilian police.
Officer Hayes said police officers have been assaulted at Walter Reed and often must forcibly apprehend persons on the Army hospital's property.
He noted that Officer Albee Forney was fatally shot by a mentally disturbed patient in one of the hospital's dormitories in 1991.
But Mr. Stueve said forcible apprehensions and situations in which officers have to draw their weapons are rare at Walter Reed.
["Why would you even have a police force" if you don't want guns - now, there's a novel idea. What changes would need to occur to make such an idea work? Write and let us know if you know. mailto:prop1@prop1.org - et]
--------
Microchips Under the Skin Offer ID, Raise Questions
December 22, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-bizchips.html
LOS ANGELES - Picture a chip the size of a grain of rice that can be injected into your body and give detailed information about you to anyone with the right scanning equipment.
A scene from a bad science fiction film? A radical research project in some secret government laboratory?
The chip is neither fiction nor obscure science, but instead it is a soon-to-be-marketed product ready to make its way to customers in the year ahead. The use of high-powered chips melded to the body has been a recurrent theme of sci-fi from the 1984 cyberpunk novel ''Neuromancer'' to the 1999 blockbuster film ``The Matrix,'' but the announcement of a commercial-ready product by Applied Digital Solutions (news/quote) (ADSX.O) this week will focus real-world attention on the potential and risks of such technology, experts said.
Designed to store critical personal medical data, the chip could mark the start of a more urgent debate about potential privacy invasions at a time when privacy advocates are on the defensive over anti-terror initiatives after Sept. 11.
``It's certainly going to raise issues that we haven't dealt with before,'' said Stephen Keating, executive director of the Denver-based Privacy Foundation.
Such radio-activated chips are already used to track cattle, house pets and salmon.
But this would mark the first attempt to apply the technology to human beings, offering a potentially controversial means for hospitals to ``scan'' patients in emergency rooms and for governments to pick out convicted criminals.
Applied Digital said Wednesday it would begin marketing its implantable VeriChip in South America and Europe, initially as a means to convey information about medical devices to doctors who need a quick way to find out how and where patients with pacemakers, artificial joints and other surgically implanted devices have been treated.
When activated by a radio scanner, the chip would emit a radio signal of its own from under the skin that would transmit stored data to a nearby Internet-equipped computer or via the telephone, the company said.
The chip itself could be implanted in a doctor's office with a local anesthesia and the site of the injection could be closed without stitches, it said.
But the company already has its sights on more ambitious applications for the chips, which are currently capable of carrying the equivalent of about 6 lines of text. Future versions could emit a tracking beacon or serve as a form of personal identification, an executive said.
``There are enough benefits that outweigh the concerns people have about privacy,'' said Applied Digital Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Sullivan.
Other experts remain skeptical, citing immediate practical problems, such as the need to set standards that would make such chips more universally readable, and longer-term concerns over civil liberties.
Even so, such implants are certain to become more widespread, said technology forecaster Paul Saffo.
``Of course, we will do this,'' said Saffo of the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future ``And it won't be just for the functionality. It will also be for fashion. You've got a generation that's already piercing themselves. Of course, they're going to put electronics under their skin.''
TOUCHED BY A DIGITAL ANGEL
Applied Digital, which has a $95-million market value and has been scarcely followed on Wall Street, plans to file an application with the Food and Drug Administration in January to market the chip in the United States, a process that could take another year to 18 months, Sullivan said.
The Federal Communications Commission has already licensed the chip's use of radio frequencies because of an existing version used to track runaway pets, said Sullivan.
The Palm Beach, Fla.-based company is just coming through a two-year-long restructuring, reorganizing a far-flung telecommunications business around a patent it acquired in December 1999 for a transmitter that could be implanted in the body and powered by muscle movements.
The first related commercial application was a remote-monitoring device called Digital Angel, introduced at the end of November, which combines a wristwatch-like sensor linked to a wireless transmitter and a global positioning system.
The device can transmit information on body temperature, pulse and location and has been sold as a way to track Alzheimer's patients and children who might wander from home.
The company has also won a three-year trial contract with California to supply a version of the product that would track paroled prisoners in Los Angeles and alert authorities when they had violated the terms of their parole by leaving a set area.
Sales of the new implanted chip could total $2.5 million to $5 million in 2002, Sullivan estimated, a small fraction of a potential market the company has projected could be worth $70 billion or more.
Wall Street is excited about the chip. Applied Digital, which saw its stock rise 18 percent to 45 cents on the Nasdaq on its initial product announcement on Wednesday, is in talks with major pacemaker manufacturers about a joint-marketing plan that would see the VeriChip implanted at the same time as the heart-regulating devices, he said.
Some see new opportunities for high-tech security after the hijacking attacks on New York and the Pentagon killed nearly 3,300 on Sept. 11. The attacks brought new support for the use of such technology by government and more interest in its future commercial applications, Sullivan said.
``People are becoming less concerned about what information is out there,'' he said.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a civil rights expert and law professor at the University of Southern California, conceded that the public mood has shifted, but said: ``It all depends on how this is used ... when the government is invading the body there are always special privacy concerns.''
``This is rightly going to prompt debate, as you can imagine, but the good news is that we'll have years to figure it out,'' said futurist Saffo.
-------- terrorism
Explosive Substance Confirmed in Suspect's Shoes
December 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Flight-Diverted.html
BOSTON (AP) -- A preliminary test Sunday found explosives in the sneakers of a passenger whose attempts to ignite one of the shoes forced a Miami-bound jetliner to land in Boston, The Associated Press has learned.
American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris landed safely Saturday afternoon after flight attendants and fellow passengers subdued the man. The Boeing 767 jetliner with 185 passengers and 12 crew members on board was escorted by military jets to Boston's Logan International Airport.
The suspect, taken into custody by the FBI, was to be charged with interfering with a flight crew, according to a law enforcement official in Boston who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said a preliminary test of a substance in the man's shoes was positive for explosives. ``There will be further tests to determine exactly what he had,'' the official said Sunday.
French police identified the suspect as Tariq Raja, 28, a Sri Lankan national, and said he boarded the flight using a British passport under the name Richard Colvin Reid.
A French Border Police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his agency learned of Raja's identity and nationality from sources in the United States. He would not say whether the information came from U.S. law enforcement authorities, government aviation officials or American Airlines.
In Washington, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the FBI told him in a briefing Sunday there were explosives in the suspect's shoes.
``This is taken very, very seriously,'' Shelby said on CBS-TV's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``From what I've observed, this man was trying to blow himself up, blow the plane up. Is this part of a widespread deal or is this guy acting alone? We don't know yet.''
About two hours before the flight landed in Boston, the suspect, who was sitting behind the wing in the coach section, tried to light a fuse protruding from his shoe, according to American Airlines spokesman Al Becker. A flight attendant intervened and the 6-foot-4 suspect resisted and bit her, authorities said.
Passengers subdued the man, some taking off their own belts to secure him into his seat, officials said. Two doctors used the airplane's onboard medical kit to sedate him, and the man's shoe was removed.
``When he was attempted to be subdued, he said he was wired,'' said Thomas Kinton, interim executive director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs the airport.
Passenger Eric Debry, 42, of Paris, said he reached over the seat and pulled Reid's arms back. ``I jumped on his shoulder. Two other guys came and took his legs,'' said Debry.
Reid was held down for 10 minutes while others collected about 20 leather belts to restrain him, Debry said.
``I was there in five seconds, and there were already two or three guys on him. It was like everybody knew what they needed to do,'' said passenger Thierry Dugeon, 36, of Paris. He described the shoes as hightop-type basketball sneakers.
Philippe Acas, 39, of St. Quentin Enyvelines, France, said the passengers also found two audio tapes in his possession and turned them over to the pilot.
The incident, just three days before Christmas, increased anxiety among some airline passengers, many of whom have been reluctant to fly since the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings.
``It's like playing Russian roulette. You just don't know where the next event's going to happen,'' said Blossom Hoag of Boston, who was at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., on Sunday.
The government and airlines have taken steps to tighten security aboard planes since suicide hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, including banning knives or other blades and increasing the number of passengers whose luggage is searched.
Two of the four hijacked jetliners took off from Logan Airport, resulting in a shake-up at Massport, the agency that oversees the airport.
Passengers on one of the hijacked jets, United Flight 93, are believed to have fought their hijackers and caused the jetliner to crash into a Pennsylvania field instead of an apparent Washington target.
Since Sept. 11, some pilots have urged passengers to attack anyone who attempts to interfere with the operation of a plane.
On Dec. 11, the Federal Aviation Administration warned airlines of the possibility of terrorist hijackings in the United States and Europe during the holidays, and cautioned that hijackers could conceal weapons in their shoes, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. The sources did not say what intelligence prompted the warning.
Two F-15 fighter jets escorted Flight 63 to Logan, where it landed at 12:50 p.m. with police, fire and bomb squads standing by.
``They X-rayed the shoe and found that in the heel, there were holes drilled, and there looked to be a detonator wire, and the substances consistent with (the explosive) C-4,'' said Massport spokeswoman Laura White.
The shoe was rendered harmless and taken to an FBI lab, along with the man's other shoe, officials said.
C-4 is a military plastic explosive. Its main ingredient is RDX, which is also used in fireworks. The whitish, puttylike substance can be easily molded by hand. Although large amounts of C-4 can explode if they are burned, small amounts are unlikely to be detonated without a blasting cap.
The explosive was used in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors and wounding 39.
Associated Press reporters John Solomon in Washington and Pamela Sampson in Paris contributed to this report.
-------- OTHER
-------- genetics
Gene Experiment Comes Close to Crossing Ethicists' Line
December 23, 2001
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/science/23GENE.html
In the experimental field of gene therapy, scientists have worked carefully to avoid the momentous step of making a genetic alteration that could be passed along to future generations. But now it appears that one experiment may inadvertently have come close to breaking that barrier.
The gene therapy trial, halted when the risk was first noticed, has been allowed to resume, even though the possibility of risk has not yet been dispelled.
The trial, conducted by Avigen Inc. of Alameda, Calif., is designed to insert a corrective gene into the liver of patients with hemophilia B, the less common of two forms of hemophilia.
Two federal agencies that monitor gene therapy trials, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, wish to ensure that corrective genes are not allowed to enter patients' eggs or sperm, known as germline cells.
Even though the genes might prevent the patients' disease from recurring in the next generation, the agencies consider alteration of the human germline so profound a step that it should not be tried without further public discussion.
Companies conducting gene therapy trials are thus required to monitor where in the body the new genes are inserted. In October, Avigen said it had put its hemophilia trial on hold because it had detected the presence of the gene's vector in a patient's seminal fluid.
A vector is the disabled virus used by gene therapists to insert corrective genes into human cells. Gaining entry into the nucleus of human cells is a technically difficult trick that certain viruses have acquired over the course of evolution.
In the hemophilia B trial, the vector carries the correct version of the human gene for Factor IX, one of the many proteins involved in making blood clot.
It was a surprise to find the vector even in seminal fluid because experiments with dogs, in which the therapy was validated, showed no sign of this. But there was no evidence that the vector had penetrated the sperm, said Dr. Elliott Grossbard, Avigen's vice president for clinical affairs.
The company sought guidance this month from a National Institutes of Health panel, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, which oversees gene therapy issues. Dr. Amy Patterson, who runs the committee, said its members recommended that the trial resume but that researchers also try to determine whether the vector was reaching the sperm.
The Food and Drug Administration accepted the committee's advice and Avigen said on Thursday that it had received clearance to proceed with the trial. The one patient who has been enrolled in the trial will be required to wear a condom to avoid the possibility of fathering a genetically altered child.
Dr. Philip Noguchi, the F.D.A. official who oversees gene therapy trials, described the rationale for the agency's decision. A gene therapy treatment for hemophilia B might be of great benefit, he said, and would need to be weighed against the risks, including that of inadvertently modifying the human germline. But unless the trial proceeds, the agency cannot gauge the possible benefit, Dr. Noguchi said.
"Our overall plan is to allow the trial to proceed in cautious fashion while monitoring the potentially adverse finding of vector sequence in the seminal fluid and at the end of the study to bring it back to public discussion," Dr. Noguchi said.
Not everyone is happy with this approach. Dr. Eric Juengst, an ethicist at Case Western Reserve University and a member of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, said critics might view the policy as a step down a slippery slope. If the hemophilia treatment is proved to work, but brings with it unavoidable changes to the germline, then germline gene therapy might sneak into public acceptance by a side door.
"If by chance one of these accidents did effect a germline cure, it would be an awfully powerful selling point for those who say we should be taking that position from the beginning," Dr. Juengst said.
Though most of the many trials of gene therapy have been disappointing, Avigen is using a new and more promising vector called adeno associated virus. Hemophilia is also a good candidate disease for gene therapy because only tiny amounts of normal Factor IX can do a lot of good.
Besides the human Factor IX gene, the Avigen virus carries a piece of DNA that signals the cell to activate the gene and make its product. This signal is recognized only by liver cells, so that Factor IX gets made only in the liver.
Adding the vector to sperm might prevent hemophilia in a patient's descendants, but there is also a hazard: if the vector were to land somewhere in the 3 percent of the genome that contains the genes, it could disrupt a gene and cause disease.
-------- imf / world bank
Briefly: IMF / France
December 23, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011223-336687.htm
Maverick leftist French politician Jean-Pierre Chevenement, seen as a potential spoiler in next year's presidential elections, last week blamed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the crisis in Argentina. Said the head of the Movement of Citizens party: "Determined to defend financial globalization, the IMF has become a major element of destabilization in international relations."
-------- activists
29 Homeless Deaths 29 Too Many
by Becky Johnson <Becky_Johnson@sbcglobal.net>
Homeless People's Network <hpn.projects.is.asu.edu>
Sun, 23 Dec 2001
Santa Cruz participates in the National Day of Remembrance and the reading of the names of the homeless people who have died in the past year
Santa Cruz, Ca. -- A rare break between rain storms allowed an outdoor gathering at the Homeless Services Center without ponchos and umbrellas. The event, though sunny, was far from this season's holiday cheer -- The annual event of reading the names of those who died while they were homeless, led by Homeless Services Center Executive Director Ken Cole.
The Homeless Persons Health Project documented homeless deaths throughout the year, and provided additional data on the deaths. There were fewer than last year. 26 officially, but the names of three more were added in making the list for this past year of 29 deaths. 29 people whose lives were filled with fear, lack of privacy, lack of sleep, cold, often hungry, and treated like refuse. 29 people whose shelter emergency is over forever. 29 more homeless people the merchants and the westsiders living in $500,000 homes won't have to look at anymore.
Two were in there '80s. One woman was 86. That an 86-yr-old woman should have to live on the streets homeless is shocking in itself. Surely in a country as rich and powerful as America, and in a City as smuggly elite and as wealthy as Santa Cruz is, surely we would not allow an elderly woman to spend her last dying days out on our streets? But there it was. The name was read, the age was read. She's gone forever. Our shame will be with us forever as well.
Ten were confirmed deaths out of doors or in a vehicle. Twelve died in some sort of medical facility so that, at least, they were able to lie in a bed at the end. Only one was taken in by someone who cared so they were able to die in a private home where they had a little chance to do it in dignity and privacy. One died in jail.
Homeless deaths are predominantly male and this year was no exception. But 26% were women. A total of 7 women died homeless in Santa Cruz County this year. Acute drug overdose remained the biggest single cause of death: 7 Heroin is rampant in Santa Cruz and the swath it is cutting through the population is truly frightening. Heroin is a very good pain killer. When you are homeless, you are in pain a lot. It almost seems like the natural thing to do for awhile. A chance to step out of the pain, the fear, and the stress of being homeless that just runs you down and makes you just hurt all the time. Heroin is like a little vacation from it all. Nothing hurts.
One death was a suicide. Why should they think its going to end? We don't even have a way for a homeless person who is really trying to end their homelessness to be able to do so. Why should they go on living? What do they have to look forward to?
One death was a homicide. Did you read about it in the paper? Me neither. Usually the homicide angle is enough for reporters to play up the sensational angle of a story. But you're expected to die when you're homeless. Its so normal its not news, even when its murder. In fact, we can even blame it on the homeless. Don't they know how dangerous it is to live out of doors? What ever were they thinking deciding to move under a bridge to live? Too cheap to pay rent?
The causes of death, in descending order were Acute Overdose -7 Cancer-5 Trauma -3 Liver disease-2 Stroke-2 Infection-2 GI bleeding -1 Homicide -1 Suicide-1 unknown-1.
We had no homeless deaths under age 21. Most deaths were in the 31 - 50 age range.
Mayor Christopher Krohn and his mother attended the ceremony and read a prepared statement. They left quickly, even before the reading of the names. No other member of the Santa Cruz City Council attended.
Last year, 41 names were read. The year before it was 19.
The overdoses, homicides, and suicides are all preventable causes of death. This year we had 9 preventable deaths, for which if services had been adequate to their needs, they might still be alive.
When does the crisis of homelessness just in itself trigger for us, as a society, to act to end that emergency. Just as the Red Cross refused to come to the aid of Camp Paradise when the flood waters were rising and washing out their meager homes, we are failing to respond to the crisis these 29 people had on our very doorstep.
We, as a society, must pay for housing for all of our elderly. We, as a society, must pay for housing for anyone who is in the final stages of the ravages of disease, so they can have proper nursing care during their last days. We, as a society must pay for housing for anyone who is so disabled they cannot work. We, as a society must pay for the drug and rehabilitation facilities to aid addicted people to clean up. They can't clean up while still on the street or its very likely they will relapse.
Why hasn't the Santa Cruz County Department of Health declared a public health emergency caused by homelessness? We have more than enough statistical evidence to declare one. If it were deaths from Anthrax poisoning we would get excited. We would do something.
For more information contact HUFF, Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom (831) 423-HUFF 24-hr voicemail and regularly updated message on homelessness in Santa Cruz
This article may be reprinted at no cost by non-profit or not-for-profit papers which work for social justice To contact Becky Johnson e-mail at becky_johnson@sbcglobal.net
Next HUFF meeting December 26, 2001 8:30 AM Bakers Square Restaurant, Ocean St. Santa Cruz, Ca.
---
Homeless articles:
Homeless Surge In N.Y. Symbol Of New Crisis By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 23, 2001; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17779-2001Dec22.htm>
About 29,400 homeless live in city shelters and hot-plate hotel rooms each night, including 12,500 children. They are the face of a poor New York that supposedly vanished after the early 1990s. Now they are everywhere.
=
Service remembers homeless By Vic Ryckaert vic.ryckaert@indystar.com Saturday, December 22, 2001 Indianapolis Star <http://www.starnews.com> [Indiana] http://www.starnews.com/article.php?homeless22.html
Hundreds gather at Circle in prayer, song for 22 who had lived on the city's streets.
=
Vigil held for metro area's dead homeless Friday, December 21, 2001 Rocky Mountain News <http://www.rockymountainnews.com> [Denver, Colorado] By Hector Gutierrez, Local News Staff Writer http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_916318,00.html
Advocates of homeless people held a candlelight vigil Thursday night for 67 downtrodden men and women who died or were killed in the metro area this year. City officials promise to seek solutions for conditions.
----
[Pass on if you don't want a rare chuckle. et]
Rudolph the Red Cell Terrorist:
Mysterious White-Bearded "Bomber" Downed by US Air Force Over the Dakotas
UPYRS Wire
The Texas Mercury,
December 23, 2001
http://www.thetexasmercury.com/articles/satire/UP20011223.html
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, Air Force officials working out of the Cheyenne Mountain facility confirmed today that American F-15E fighters engaged and shot down a suspected terrorist aircraft. Powered by eight reindeer, the sled-like contraption entered American airspace via Canada, and refused to flash its IFF code, a radio signal that identifies aircraft to ground controllers.
"It was a tough call," Air Force Colonel and F-15 pilot John Maser said while describing what happened. "There we were: an unidentified flying object had entered our defense zone, and upon closer inspection, the craft's pilot turned out to be a bearded man of foreign origin. We couldn't be sure of his intent, so we initially withheld fire. But, once he began what looked like suicidal dive for a house's chimney, we felt we had no other choice but to bring him down."
The pilot of the mysterious craft survived and was quickly arrested by local officials in North Dakota, but he then escaped and is now at large.
"I thought our security was airtight," explained Sioux County Sheriff John Jacob Jinglehammer. "We took extra precautions with this particular prisoner because he was a real troublemaker. Kept threatening us with coal. He really pissed off my secretary when he referred to her, not once, not twice, but three times as 'ho.'"
"We're still trying to figure out how he got out," the Sheriff continued. "From what my officers told me, he put a finger on his nose, wriggled it and in a twinkling he was gone, right up the heating vent, just like that."
The FBI has begun a massive manhunt in the region around Fargo, North Dakota. The fugitive, federal officials report, is a short, fat Caucasian man with a long white beard. He can be easily spotted, they say, because he's dressed all in red. They also say that he answers to the name 'Kris', but they're not sure if that is his real name or just an alias.
In this effort, the FBI has also turned to some outside help. The ADL, the ACLU and the People for the American Way have all sent experts to assist in the capture of the white-bearded fugitive. Said Abe Foxman, chairman of the ADL, "We have a unique talent for hunting down figures just like the suspect, especially around this time of year, and seeing to it that they're put away, well out of the public's eye. This guy's no different. If he's out there, we'll find him and bring'em down."
Foxman later addressed his troops, telling them, "Your fugitive's name is Kris Kringle. What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard target search of every classroom, office building, public park, schoolhouse, courthouse, outhouse and doghouse in this area."
Other groups, however, are not being so cooperative. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a protest with the Defense Department. A PETA spokesperson claimed the organization was deeply offended by the Air Force's destruction of the sled's reindeer. Said spokesperson Lola Flufflebeam: "Obviously, the paramount tragedy in this whole incident are the reindeer. Did they have to die? Flying reindeer are a rarity. Their deaths cannot be undone."
Also reported dead are fifteen children who were crushed in an orphanage by the falling reindeer carcasses. Ms. Flufflebeam declined to officially comment on this, saying her organization needed to investigate the matter more fully before expressing regret. She did say on the side, though, that it was a pity, because one would think that a child's body should provide enough cushion to break a reindeer's fall.
Finally, the PETA representative chided the Air Force for their mistreatment of the reindeers' remains: "We are aghast that the Air Force would so disrespectfully give the carcasses to homeless people in exchange for their 'squeegeeing' aircraft windshields. Have they no shame?"
Air Force spokesman Lt. John Schaeffer later confirmed that, indeed, they have no shame. This is particularly true, he added, when they are on leave in the Philippines. He also issued an apology to the family of Bill Winnamaker, one of the aforementioned homeless persons who fell asleep in the intake of the F-15 he was cleaning. Apparently, the start-up was a bit rougher than normal, but the sterno in Winnamaker's carcass made for excellent engine performance later. Defense Department officials are now investigating the possibilities of developing a new 'after-bummer' fighter, and New York City Mayor Rudolph Guliani promises his city can provide all fuel supplies the Air Force would need.
Schaeffer also allayed earlier concerns about the alleged terrorist being armed with nuclear material. There were fears that the bearded figure had a "dirty bomb" because his lead reindeer's nose was glowing red. Schaeffer now reports that the glowing effect is not from an excess of plutonium, but rather rum-laden eggnog.
President Bush later issued a statement about the shoot-down through his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, which read: "I've been informed about the incident, and I hear that the perpetrator was a jolly, old elf. I urge all Americans in this time of crisis to unite, and I urge them to fight bigotry. This is not about elves; elves are a good and peaceful race of mythological creatures. Be tolerant of your pointy-eared neighbors, even if they don't exist."
Most Americans have heeded the president's call, but one hate crime has occurred. A surly mob of neocons severely pencil-whipped a Mr. Puck outside the offices of the Weekly Standard.
"Morons!" exploded the excitable Mr. Puck. "You would think they could tell by my wings that I'm a fairy, not an elf."
Later, New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan retracted his condemnation of the Weekly Standard for gay-bashing after he was informed that Mr. Puck was not that kind of a fairy. Said Sullivan, "Oh, sorry then, Bill [Kristol]. Give'im a whack for me too, would you?"
[Merry Christmas. et]
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!