Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Dirty nukes
Russia Launches Space Vehicle
Russia Vows to Recover Nuclear Fuel
Entergy Mulling Vt. Nuke Deal
Speeding Nuclear Cleanup Is Seen as a Way to Reduce Work
Lawmakers question speedier nuclear waste cleanups
Panel: Toughen China Policy
MILITARY
Bird's-eye view
Afghans Look to Control U.S. Moves
The Anthrax Files
Polio-Causing Virus Created in N.Y. Lab
IN BRIEF
China Trade Poses Security Threat to U.S., Panel Says
Report: China moving away from military strategy on Taiwan
China encirclement
China Could Hit Taiwan Rapidly, Pentagon Says
Israel credits occupation for lull in attacks
Sudan, Syria in Terror Crossroads
Army movements
UN Council Approves Deal on War Crime Court
Elite U.S. unit keeps heat on terrorists
Use of Pilotless Spy Plane Suspended
Hackers Hit USA Today Web Site
POLICE / PRISONERS
Judge: U.S. May Jail Material Witnesses
Bomb Suspect Attacks Tactics of Government
States Address Death Penalty Laws
Al Qaeda remains a silent menace in U.S., senators say
ENERGY AND OTHER
Solar-Powered Spacecraft Tested
Germany wants to double renewable power - minister
The Other Harken Energy Scandal
Shrimps and seawater make Eritrean desert bloom
Colorado Hazwaste Dumping Brings Record Sentence
ACTIVISTS
Iranian youth fight for social freedom
Update on imprisoned objectors [Israel]
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
"Don't panic," writes the nuclear-trained official, suggesting what the warning should say. "Tie a bandanna or large handkerchief over your nose and mouth. Seek shelter, preferably in an environment where the ventilation system is on recirc. Those of us who are nuclear-trained know the above by instinct. The public deserves to learn about them through mass media bombardment."
-------- russia
Russia Launches Space Vehicle
By Angela Charlton
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002; 1:58 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61244-2002Jul12?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Russia-Solar-Sail.html
MOSCOW -- A Russian nuclear submarine on Friday launched a prototype of a European-Russian inflatable space vehicle that could be used to bring payloads or people back to Earth from space, its designers said.
The Demonstrator-2 blasted off from underwater, aboard the Ryazan submarine in the Barents Sea, into orbit on a converted Volna SS-N-18 intercontinental ballistic missile, the Russian navy said in a statement. The project was a joint effort among Russian space officials, the European Space Agency and Germany-based Astrium, a unit of European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., according to Russia's Babakin Space Center, which designed the craft.
"According to the telemetric flight data, the experiment to send the Demonstrator-2 into orbit and return it to the atmosphere went successfully," the navy said.
Babakin spokeswoman Lidia Avdeyeva said a search was under way for the craft around the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific Coast.
The test model was a 2.6-foot diameter sphere launched atop the ICBM, Avdeyeva said. Upon release, its two sail-like panels - one 7.6 feet high, the other 12.5 feet high - inflated one inside the other and then drifted back to Earth.
"I'm very excited about this technology, for using it as an emergency bailout or for unloading cargo from space stations," said James Oberg, a Houston, Texas-based space industry expert.
He said the European Space Agency has been particularly interested in developing such an inflatable recovery vehicle to more quickly retrieve its experiments from the international space station.
The Babakin Space Center is also designing a solar sail with the Planetary Society, a Pasadena, Calif.-based group founded by visionary astronomer Carl Sagan. The group sent up a prototype from a Russian submarine last July, but it did not achieve enough thrust during the third stage of its launch, and the payload containing the spacecraft did not separate from the booster, organizers said.
----
Russia Vows to Recover Nuclear Fuel
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 12, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Iran-Nuclear.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Trying to soothe U.S. fears of Iran developing nuclear weapons, the atomic energy minister said Friday that Moscow would take back spent nuclear fuel from a Russian-built nuclear power station in Iran.
Russia is helping Iran build a 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactor at Bushehr in a deal worth $800 million. U.S. officials fear spent fuel from the project could provide Iran with weapons-grade radioactive material and boost its efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said Russia worked out a protocol with Iran in November 1998 specifying that Russia would take back the spent nuclear fuel from Bushehr. But because Russia at the time didn't have a law allowing the import of such material, it could not be put into force, he said.
Now that the Russian parliament passed a law last year allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel, Russia and Iran will formally sign the protocol in September or October of this year -- paving the way for the spent fuel to be returned to Russia, Rumyantsev said.
``We'll provide them with fresh fuel and take back the spent'' material, Rumyantsev said, adding that Russia would not provide any fuel at all ``until the signed regulations are in place.''
The Bushehr project remains a major irritant in U.S.-Russian relations, despite the overall spirit of cooperation between Moscow and Washington in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Russia has brushed off U.S. complaints, saying the Iranian reactor can only be used for civilian purposes and will remain under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Bushehr reactor is due to be completed by December 2003 and ready for operation by 2005, Russian officials have said. Rumyantsev said work at the plant is moving ahead.
``Construction of the first power unit is nearing completion,'' he said. ``Heavy equipment is being supplied, along with the reactor's body, pipes and pumping equipment. In August, a turbine will be delivered.''
Rumyantsev said that along with Iran, Russia is actively cooperating with China in building nuclear power plants. Russia is also preparing to import spent nuclear fuel from other countries in November, in line with the new law.
The law allows Russia to accept nuclear waste from abroad for storage and reprocessing, a measure that proponents say will bring in billions of dollars in revenue -- money that could be used to clean up decades of past radioactive contamination in Russia. Environmental groups and other critics say that Russia does not have enough facilities to store the waste safely and that the law could turn Russia into the world's nuclear dumping ground.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
Entergy Mulling Vt. Nuke Deal
July 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Nuke-Sale.html or
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61556-2002Jul12.html
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Entergy Corp. said Friday that it was deciding whether to back out of its $180 million purchase of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, a day after the Vermont Public Service Board refused to change a key condition of the sale.
Mississippi-based Entergy Nuclear, a subsidiary of New Orleans-based Entergy, had asked the Vermont board to drop a requirement that all the extra money in the plant's decommissioning fund be returned to ratepayers.
While Thursday's order denied that request in principal, the board included in it a ``clarification,'' which could end up giving Entergy at least part of what it wanted.
``Our holding that Entergy must return all excess money in the decommissioning fund after the completion of decommissioning to ratepayers is limited to contributions, and growth from contributions, made by Vermont ratepayers,'' the board said.
In other words, if Entergy puts more money into the decommissioning fund between the date of the sale and the plant's final shutdown, any excess money attributable to those contributions won't have to be returned to ratepayers, under the board's order.
On Friday, Entergy said it was re-evaluating the deal, saying the Public Service Board order dealing with excess decommissioning funds ``differed materially'' from a memorandum agreed to by Entergy, Vermont Yankee and the state Department of Public Service.
Entergy said that memo stipulated that Entergy would retain any excess funds if the plant was decommissioned prior to 2022, and would split the funds equally with Vermont Yankee if the plant was decommissioned after 2022.
On the Net:
Entergy Corp.: http://www.entergycom
-------- us nuc waste
Speeding Nuclear Cleanup Is Seen as a Way to Reduce Work
New York Times
July 12, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/12/politics/12NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, July 11 - The Bush administration plan to clean up highly radioactive military wastes more quickly may actually be an effort to reduce the government's work sharply, two senators and the attorney general of Washington State said today at a Senate hearing.
A top Energy Department official did not contradict them.
Under the plan, the administration offered an extra $800 million in cleanup money for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 to states that could reach agreement by Aug. 1 on how to spend it. Some officials in Washington State fear that the plan would violate a longstanding agreement to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation in Richland.
Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, said today that the money could be seen as an incentive to states to lower their environmental standards in exchange for a larger share of the cleanup budget.
The Energy Department, Ms. Cantwell said at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was telling the states, in effect, "if they'll agree to a change, they'll get X number of dollars for cleanup."
Senator Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who is chairman of the committee, also said the $800 million could be seen as an incentive to relax standards.
Ms. Cantwell was addressing Jessie H. Roberson, assistant secretary for environmental management in the Energy Department, who said the department would live up to an 1989 agreement to clean up the Hanford site.
The department has more than 53 million gallons of military radioactive sludge and salts in aging tanks at Hanford, where some waste has leaked into the Columbia River.
In 1989, the department reached an accord with the Environmental Protection Agency and Washington to empty the tanks of at least 99 percent of their contents and embed the wastes in glass, a process called vitrification.
Those glass logs, in steel containers, are supposed to be buried, possibly at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where nuclear wastes from civilian reactors are also supposed to go.
But in 1999, the department published a rule to let it redefine some wastes so they would not have to be vitrified. This year, it proposed to build just one vitrification plant instead of two and finish the work more quickly.
The department has decided against completely emptying similar tanks at its Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., and to leave some waste in place, mixed with concrete.
That has caused "terrible consternation," Attorney General Christine O. Gregoire of Washington told the energy panel today.
Ms. Gregoire, who in 1989 was head of her state's Ecology Department and helped negotiate the pact that year, said she would refuse to sign further agreements with the Energy Department until the issue was clarified.
Asked repeatedly whether the department planned to redefine the wastes at Hanford, Ms. Roberson refused to promise that it would not do so.
"It's not our intent to avoid compliance with any of our regulatory agreements," she said.
The policy of allowing the redefinition of the wastes is the subject of a suit against the Energy Department by the Yakima Indian Nation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Oral argument is scheduled for July 22 in Federal District Court in Boise, Idaho.
Ms. Gregoire said Washington would try to enter the suit on Monday as a friend of the court.
Even the accelerated cleanup would be lengthy, lasting 35 years instead of 70. The wastes are left from the production of plutonium, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1990's.
--------
Lawmakers question whether speedier nuclear waste cleanups would leave contamination
Friday, July 12, 2002
By H. Josef Hebert,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/07/07122002/ap_47844.asp
WASHINGTON - Senators and several state officials said Thursday they fear an Energy Department attempt to speed the cleanup of waste from decades of nuclear weapons production may leave the sites still contaminated.
The Bush administration, in an attempt to accelerate and cut the cost of such cleanups, announced earlier this year it would give preference in distributing money to locations that agree to commit to a quicker cleanup.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham wants to use $800 million of the $6.7 billion annual cleanup budget as incentive for these accelerated programs. Critics have voiced concern that while some facilities will get more money, others will see money siphoned away.
But at a Senate hearing Thursday, state officials from Washington, New Mexico, and Idaho expressed another worry: The incentive to push for faster cleanup may leave some sites less clean in violation of long-standing agreements with state and local authorities. "It's not cleanup to leave waste behind," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told Energy Department officials at a hearing by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the plan.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the panel's chairman, said the administration approach "could be viewed as an incentive to encourage state regulators to relax site cleanup standards."
Jesse Roberson, the DOE's assistant secretary for environmental management, testified that the new approach is an effort to give priority to the most high-risk environmental problems and deal with them faster and at less cost. "It's not our intent to avoid compliance with any of our regulatory agreements," said Roberson.
Nowhere is the waste problem more challenging than the Energy Department's Hanford reservation in central Washington state, where there are 177 underground tanks - some of them leaking an unknown mix of radioactive material - threatening to contaminate the nearby Columbia River. About half of the special $800 million fund has been earmarked for Hanford.
But Christine Gregoire, Washington state's attorney general, told the committee she is concerned that along with a speedier cleanup, the Energy Department will renege on past promises to remove from the site at least 99 percent of the tank waste. "We want it all out," she said.
Despite DOE assurances, Gregoire said there have been ominous signs that under the accelerated cleanup plan, the department will reclassify some of the tank waste as something less than "high-level" waste, meaning they will not have to remove it. She said the DOE also has decided to build only one, instead of two, plants to solidify the waste in glass, suggesting the department may now be planning to remove less waste.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., tried to press Roberson on the issue, asking that she give assurances that 99 percent of the waste in the Hanford tanks be removed and that wastes not be reclassified.
"We have a commitment to move as much waste as feasible," said Roberson, refusing to be pinned down on a percentage.
Kathleen Trever of the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, also expressed concern about whether the program will mean more pollution being left behind at the DOE's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
Peter Maggiore, head of New Mexico's environment department, said the program will mean more money for cleanup at the Sandia and Los Alamos weapons research labs. While he said he doesn't think it will mean less cleanup at those two sites, Maggiore acknowledged some uncertainty. "It is imperative that accelerated cleanup not be interpreted to mean less cleanup," he testified.
An environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, is arguing before a federal court in Idaho that the Energy Department plans to reclassify waste now held in tanks not only at Hanford but also at the Idaho facility and at the Savannah River complex in South Carolina.
Geoff Fettus, an NRDC attorney, said the suit charges that such a reclassification would violate federal law because this waste comes from nuclear reprocessing in past weapons production and therefore must be treated as high-level waste. Under the law, any high-level waste must be put into a deep geological repository, presumably the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada that has yet to be built.
-------- us politics
Panel: Toughen China Policy
Beijing Makes Manufacturing Gains, Sees U.S. as Vulnerable
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002; Page A18
A bipartisan congressional commission warns that China is making dramatic economic and strategic advances against the United States, requiring a much tougher response to ensure compliance with trade laws and to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
A 200-page report from the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, scheduled for release Monday, is noteworthy for its skeptical view of Chinese intentions and the near-unanimous endorsement of that view by members of the panel.
The report asserts that the Chinese leadership often portrays the United States as a "powerful protagonist and overbearing bully" but also views the United States as a declining power with exploitable military vulnerabilities. The report concludes that, despite the advent of China's entry into the World Trade Organization, the U.S. trade deficit with China will continue to worsen.
The report also determined that despite the popular perception of China as mostly a manufacturer of toys and other simple products, the Chinese have made huge strides in the production of advanced goods. The United States runs a trade deficit with China in a majority of the items on the Commerce Department's advanced technology product list, the report said, warning that a growing reliance on Chinese imports might eventually "undermine the U.S. defense industrial base."
The commission also warns that China is one of the world's leading sources for missile-related technology and nuclear materials for terrorist-sponsoring nations, presenting "an increasing threat to U.S. security interests, in the Middle East and Asia in particular." While China has made numerous multilateral and bilateral commitments to stop proliferation, "despite repeated promises [it] has not kept its word," the report said.
The report, the product of nine public hearings involving 115 witnesses, was the first produced by the commission, which was evenly divided among Democrats and Republicans. It was adopted 11 to 1. A copy of the report was obtained yesterday.
The report has stirred concern among business executives, who fear it could spur congressional efforts to limit business investment and trade with China. The lone dissenter, William A. Reinsch, a Clinton administration undersecretary of commerce, noted: "The commission majority has bent over backwards to avoid describing the Chinese as a 'threat;' yet the belief that they are permeates every chapter."
Congress created the commission at the end of 2000, when U.S.-China relations were at a low point. In the past year, especially after Sept. 11, relations have improved, and it is unclear if the report will generate renewed furor about Chinese intentions.
The report urges an "immediate review and overhaul" of U.S. sanction policies, including giving the president authorization to invoke economic sanctions against foreign nations that proliferate weapons of mass destruction or related technologies. The report also recommends the use of financial sanctions, such as denial of access to U.S. capital markets to companies involved in proliferation.
"The toolbox of incentives and disincentives needs to be broadened," said commission Chairman C. Richard D'Amato. "Quite clearly, jawboning does not work in this area."
The report notes that the Chinese government and state-owned enterprises have raised more than $40 billion in the international capital markets in the past decade, including $14 billion in the United States in the past three years. But the report said the U.S. government lacks ways to monitor national security concerns raised by this development, requiring beefed-up disclosure and reporting requirements for Chinese companies at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The commission was formed in part to provide a congressional imprimatur to U.S.-China policy, which many lawmakers believed has been dominated by the White House since Henry A. Kissinger, as national security adviser, secretly traveled to Beijing in 1972 to reopen relations. "We hope to build some kind of common ground in the Congress as we go forward," said D'Amato, a former foreign policy aide to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who had pushed for the commission's creation.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Bird's-eye view
July 12, 2002
Inside the Ring,
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020712-17039606.htm
The investigation into the July 1 killing of Afghan civilians in Uruzgan province should be aided by clear video from the AC-130 gun camera. Any anti-aircraft fire directed at the lumbering four-engine gunship should show up on the tape and vindicate the air crew.
"AC-130s have a battle-damage assessment videotape recorder tied to the firing circuit of the guns so that any time the guns fire, you record the video from the selected firing sensor," an Air Force source told us. "That should show what the target was that was being fired on for the investigation."
During the air war against the Taliban last year, The Washington Times obtained a tape of an AC-130 aircraft attacking a Taliban vehicle. After cannon fire landed all around the vehicle, Taliban fighters stopped, got out and started running for cover.
At this point, the gunners switched to machine gun fire that appeared to kill all those running away. The taping system's quality appears sufficient to record any anti-aircraft fire, such as the Pentagon says occurred July 1.
----
Afghans Look to Control U.S. Moves
July 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan.html
AROQ, Afghanistan (AP) -- Six Afghan governors are demanding the United States obtain their permission before conducting military operations in their provinces, one of them said Friday -- another sign of fallout after a U.S. airstrike reportedly killed 48 civilians.
The governors also plan to organize a regional military force to hunt for Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives and to police international borders independently of the central government in Kabul, Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha said.
Agha told The Associated Press he would inform President Bush of the requirement to obtain their permission for combat operations when he visits Washington next week.
``We have already decided the matter,'' Agha said. ``In the future, the Americans cannot conduct their operations without the approval of the council,'' meaning the six governors or their representatives.
Agha's comments followed the July 1 airstrike by a U.S. AC-130 gunship on villages in Uruzgan province in which Afghans said 48 civilians were killed and 117 wounded.
Late Thursday, a U.S. special forces compound came under grenade and small arms fire near where the airstrike killed civilians, U.S. officials said.
There were no casualties in the attack near Tarin Kot, capital of Uruzgan province, U.S. military spokesman Col. Roger King said Friday. Afghan soldiers working alongside special forces returned fire after the brief attack, King added.
U.S. officials acknowledge civilians were killed in the airstrike but said they could not confirm the casualty toll. The commander of coalition forces, Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, has ordered an inquiry.
Also Friday, McNeill told AP in an interview that coalition forces had largely routed al-Qaida from its Afghan hide-outs and that he did not expect any more large-scale battles. However, he would not say how long he expected the military campaign here to continue.
``I think the enemy we're going against is not likely to present itself in great mass numbers as we have seen in the past,'' McNeill said. ``I think the numbers will be smaller but they are likely to pop up in a lot more places.''
President Hamid Karzai's government or the five other governors could not be reached for comment about Agha's statements. Friday is the Islamic day of prayer and government offices are closed. Agha said Karzai was aware of the plans, but he did not indicate the president's reaction.
``The Americans made a very bad mistake in Uruzgan,'' Agha said during an interview in a mud brick hut where he was visiting tribal elders in the desert outside Kandahar.
``But we do not want the Americans to leave until we are prepared,'' he said. ``The whole world knows that they are here to crush the terrorists, who are the enemies of all people.''
It was unclear how the order would impact on U.S. combat operations in the six provinces -- Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, Farah, Zabul and Nimroz. Afghan fighters usually accompany U.S. special forces during operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., Maj. Ralph Mills, said the United States will continue close cooperation with the Afghan government. However, he said the Afghans will not be allowed to control operations. ``We have coordinated with the Afghan government over and over again and will continue to do so -- this doesn't really change anything,'' Mills said. ``However, if it's a situation of imminent danger, we are going to continue to do what we believe is right and take action appropriately.''
Agha also said the six governors would establish a 500-man rapid deployment force to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban holdouts and a 3,000-man force to guard parts of the borders with Iran and Pakistan.
The units will help prepare Afghanistan for the eventual departure of 7,000 U.S. troops and would operate largely independent of the central government in Kabul, Agha said.
Agha said he wasn't sure when the Afghans would be ready to take on al-Qaida and the Taliban without American help but said he may be able to make an assessment in about a month.
The moves announced by Agha appeared aimed bolstering the power of the ethnic Pashtun leadership in the south, the homeland of the ousted Taliban regime. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan but have complained that they are underrepresented in the Kabul government, which they consider heavily weighted toward ethnic Tajiks from the north.
The United States and its allies are trying to create an ethnically mixed national army to assume security responsibilities and help breach ethnic divisions worsened by 23 years of war. The Afghan Defense Ministry is controlled by ethnic Tajiks.
Agha said a council made up of leaders of the six provinces will also oversee intelligence sharing with U.S. troops and work to disarm civilians in the south.
The council's first meeting is scheduled for Sunday, but Agha said the decision to require Americans to seek approval before strikes is effective immediately.
-------- biological weapons
The Anthrax Files
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
July 12, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/12/opinion/12KRIS.html?ei=1&en=f51d30b7025b283c&ex=1027487750&pagewanted=print&position=top
When someone expert in bio-warfare mailed anthrax last fall, it may not have been the first time he had struck.
So while the F.B.I. has been unbelievably lethargic in its investigation so far, any year now it will re-examine the package that arrived on April 24, 1997, at the B'nai B'rith headquarters in Washington D.C. The package contained a petri dish mislabeled "anthracks."
The dish did not contain anthrax. But a Navy lab determined that it was bacillus cereus, a very close, non-toxic cousin of anthrax used by the U.S. Defense Department.
Anybody able to obtain bacillus cereus knew how to spell "anthrax." An echo of that deliberate misspelling came last fall when the anthrax letters suggested taking "penacilin."
The choice of B'nai B'rith probably was meant to suggest Arab terrorists, because the building had once been the target of an assault by Muslim gunmen. In the same way, F.B.I. profilers are convinced that the real anthrax attacks last year were conducted by an American scientist trying to pin the blame on Arabs.
In a column on July 2 I wrote about "Mr. Z," an American bio-defense insider who intrigues investigators and whose career has been spent in the shadowy world of counterterror and intelligence. He denies any involvement in the anthrax attacks.
On the date that the perpetrator chose for the B'nai B'rith attack, a terrorism seminar was under way in the Washington area and Mr. Z seemed peeved that neither he nor any other bio-defense expert had been included as a speaker. The next day, Mr. Z sent a letter to the organizer saying that he was "rather concerned" at the omission and added: "As was evidenced in downtown Washington D.C. a few hours later, this topic is vital to the security of the United States. I am tremendously interested in becoming more involved in this area. . . ."
Over the next couple of years, Mr. Z used the B'nai B'rith attack to underscore the importance of his field and his own status within it. "Remember B'nai B'rith," he noted at one point. In examples he gave of how anthrax attacks might happen, he had a penchant for dropping Arab names.
The F.B.I. must be on top of the B'nai B'rith episode, right? Well, it was told about it months ago. But B'nai B'rith says it hasn't been asked about the incident by the F.B.I.
The authorities seem equally oblivious to another round of intriguing anthrax hoaxes in February 1999. As with last fall's anthrax letters, a handful of envelopes with almost identical messages were sent to a combination of media and government targets including The Washington Post, NBC's Atlanta office, a post office in Columbus, Ga. (next to Fort Benning, an Army base), and the Old Executive Office Building in Washington (where Mr. Z had given a briefing three months earlier).
I found a local policeman in Columbus willing to dig out his file on that 1999 anthrax hoax. There are several similarities with last fall's mailing. For example, one page of the 1999 letter says, in big, bold capitals: "WARNING: THIS BUILDING AND EVERYTHING IN IT HAS BEEN EXPOSED TO ANTHRAX. CALL 911 NOW AND SECURE THE BUILDING. OTHERWISE THE GERM WILL SPREAD."
Last fall's letters are also in bold capitals and use similar language patterns.
In contrast to the 1997 package with fake anthrax gelatin, the 1999 letters each contained a teaspoon of fake anthrax powder (roughly the same amount as of real anthrax in 2001). That's interesting because as of 1997, U.S. bio-defense scientists were working basically only with wet anthrax, while by 1999 some had experimented with making powders.
For example, Mr. Z apparently learned about powders during those two years. His 1999 résumé adds something missing from the 1997 version: "working knowledge of wet and dry BW [biological warfare] agents, large-scale production of bacterial, rickettsial and viral BW pathogens and toxins."
Two outside consultants used by the F.B.I. to examine documents in the anthrax case, Don Foster and Mark Smith, both say they have not been shown the 1997 or 1999 hoax letters. The 1999 envelopes carried stamps, which may have been licked.
It would be fascinating to know whose DNA that is. Perhaps when the F.B.I. is finished defending itself from charges of lethargy, it will check.
----
Polio-Causing Virus Created in N.Y. Lab
Made-From-Scratch Pathogen Prompts Concerns About Bioethics, Terrorism
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58070-2002Jul11?language=printer
Researchers in New York have created infectious polioviruses from ordinary, inert chemicals they obtained from a scientific mail-order house, marking the first time a functional virus has been made from scratch and raising a host of new scientific and ethical concerns.
The laboratory-synthesized viruses are virtually identical to the naturally occurring viruses that cause polio, a paralyzing neurological disease. The new viruses proliferated in test tubes and caused polio when injected into mice, according to a report published yesterday.
A massive vaccination program sponsored by the World Health Organization aims to rid the world of polio by 2005 and has already eliminated the disease from all but a few countries. But the new work indicates that polio and perhaps other viral ailments -- including some with bioterror potential such as smallpox -- can be manufactured from raw materials and so may never be eliminated with total assurance.
"What they've done is demonstrate a potential that's very alarming," said Scott Peterson, a molecular biologist at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville. "It really challenges the notion of what 'extinct' means."
Others went further, suggesting that the work should not have been done or that the results, which some called a blueprint for making a biological weapon, might best have been left unpublished.
"Everyone wants free inquiry and exchange of ideas, but putting the formula up for making dangerous microbes and viruses is a questionable thing to be doing in this day and age," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Caplan was a member of an expert panel that two years ago studied the ethics of creating new life forms from scratch. It concluded that such work was not inherently unethical but posed profound questions of scientific responsibility.
Eckard Wimmer, the scientist who led the poliovirus effort at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said yesterday he did the experiment to verify that the published version of the virus's genetic code was correct, and to offer graphic proof that bioterror agents can be made without a terrorist ever having access to dangerous microbes themselves.
"Our argument is that we have to put the society on notice that this is possible," he said.
Wimmer said the danger was minimal because most of the world has been vaccinated against polio. Indeed, he said, his technique might someday prove useful as a way to make weakened viruses that could serve as vaccines themselves.
Wimmer also took issue with those who might accuse him of "playing God" by creating life. For one thing, he said, many scientists -- including himself -- do not consider viruses to be alive, since viruses are so dependent on host organisms for their survival.
"We want to make a distinction between us and the Creator," Wimmer said in an interview.
Scientists generally reserve the term "alive" for entities that can respire, reproduce and grow on their own. The first conglomeration of chemicals into free-living, microscopic membrane-bound packets worthy of being called living cells occurred about 3.5 billion years ago. Viruses, which appeared later, are chemical entities that can replicate only by hijacking the molecular machinery inside cells.
In their report, published in the online journal Science Express, Wimmer and co-workers Jeronimo Cello and Aniko Paul call poliovirus "a chemical with a life cycle."
More precisely, a poliovirus is a microscopic protein shell containing ribonucleic acid, or RNA, a chemical cousin of DNA, the key genetic material found in human cells. The Stony Brook team started with nothing more than a written copy of the virus's RNA code, a string of 7,741 molecular "letters" that tell the virus how to function.
The first task was to construct a strand of RNA that reflected that written blueprint. But since RNA is relatively unstable in the laboratory, the team first made a DNA version of the virus's code by ordering customized pieces of DNA from an Iowa-based company that sells made-to-order snippets of genetic material. The team assembled the molecules into a DNA equivalent of the full-length polio genome, then used an enzyme that turns DNA into RNA to make a working copy of the poliovirus's natural RNA core.
When placed in a tube filled with appropriate chemicals and enzymes, those pieces of RNA did what they do in nature: They copied themselves and started producing proteins, including protein shells into which newly made pieces of RNA were spontaneously packaged.
The result was countless functional polioviruses.
"This shows it's now possible to go from data printed on a piece of paper or stored in a computer and, without the organism itself. . . . reconstruct a life form," said John La Montagne, deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
Craig Venter, president of the Center for the Advancement of Genomics in Rockville, was one of several scientists yesterday who played down the achievement as a minor advance over previous work while saying it posed unjustifiable risks.
"I'd go so far as to say I see it as irresponsible science," Venter said. "They could have demonstrated their prowess with a [harmless] bacterial virus, but making a human pathogen deliberately and giving the instructions of how to do it, I see no valid reason for doing it."
Other experts said that although the task is complicated, it is within the skill range of many molecular biologists today and could be done with perhaps as little as $10,000 worth of equipment and reagents.
That doesn't necessarily mean that rogue scientists could build larger and more deadly viruses from scratch. Scientists said it would be far more difficult to make a more complicated virus such as smallpox, which has 200,000 molecular letters in its code. But several said they would no longer say it is impossible.
Even for polio alone, La Montagne said, the advance has enormous implications for public health policy, including "whether we can ever stop using polio vaccine."
Katrina L. Kelner, deputy managing editor for biological sciences at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science Express, said the organization is deciding whether it needs a formal policy on how to deal with potentially dangerous reports, but defended the decision to post the polio research.
-------- business
IN BRIEF
Friday, July 12, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58428-2002Jul11?language=printer
• Orbital Sciences, a Dulles satellite equipment company, said it was awarded two contracts worth a total of $46.4 million. Under a four-year, $39 million contract with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Orbital will design, manufacture and provide support services for a new NASA atmospheric science satellite, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. The satellite will produce high-resolution maps of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations worldwide. Under a $7.4 million deal with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Orbital will integrate a rocket motor with avionics, guidance and other electronic systems for a target vehicle to be used in testing defensive missile systems....
• Veridian, an Arlington company that provides information technology and services, said it was awarded a $1.3 million contract from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation. Veridian will provide security risk assessments for 10 dams and water treatment facilities....
-------- china
China Trade Poses Security Threat to U.S., Panel Says
Asia: A report to Congress calls for increased scrutiny of corporate activities and stronger penalties for arms control violations.
By EVELYN IRITANI
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER
July 12 2002
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2Dfi%2Dchina12jul12005053
The United States is underestimating the threat to its security, jobs and technological competitiveness caused by exploding trade and financial relations with China, according to a fact-finding report to be sent to Congress on Monday.
The 209-page document, prepared by the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, shows skepticism of China's attempts to open to the West and warns of the dangers posed to the U.S. The 12-member bipartisan panel of businesspeople and experts was set up by Congress in 2000 to be a permanent watchdog on relations between the countries after the bruising battle over extending permanent trade status to China.
The report is the latest congressional effort to define the issues that have dogged U.S.-China relations for years. It calls for increased scrutiny of U.S. corporate activities in China to prevent the erosion of the U.S. industrial base, stronger penalties for violating arms control agreements and greater protection for industries such as steel that face stiff competition from China. The commissioners took particular aim at the potential harm created by the rapidly deepening economic ties between the two countries, a move that has special significance for trade-dependent California. They maintained that China, through its trade and access to more than $14 billion raised in U.S. capital markets, was able to modernize its military and expand its influence in Asia at the expense of the U.S. The report also blamed the rush of multinationals to China for aggravating the U.S. trade imbalance, which has ballooned to $87 billion.
"This kind of behavior is not trade; this is global manipulation by companies for their own bottom line," said Richard D'Amato, a Democratic state lawmaker from Maryland and chairman of the commission.
Though acknowledging China's dramatic economic achievements, the commission contended that Communist leaders had made little progress toward granting Chinese political and religious freedom, protecting human and labor rights and stopping illegal weapons sales.
The report described the Chinese government as a suspicious and often hostile force that viewed the U.S. as a "unilateralist" superpower intent on imposing its values on other nations. Opening the economy to free-market forces could lead to widespread domestic upheaval or the creation of a wealthy dictatorship, neither of which would be good for the U.S.
Even before it hit the printing press, the report touched off controversy in the U.S. business community. Commission member William Reinsch, the head of the National Foreign Trade Council, a business lobbying group, refused to support the findings, saying they were a simplistic effort to blame China for "virtually every economic problem the U.S. has." His was the only dissenting vote on the commission, which was heavily weighted toward military experts.
"The truth is our bilateral relationship is doomed to be difficult," Reinsch said in his statement. "We vie for influence in the region. This is neither unnatural nor unusual and should not be justification for demonizing China and turning our relationship into a struggle for good and evil."
Trying to turn Washington's attention to a complex matter such as China relations could prove to be a challenge, given the distractions of unfolding corporate scandals, tensions in the Middle East, the war on terrorism and the November elections, so the fate of the recommendations is unclear.
U.S.-China relations have warmed in recent months, helped along by China's entry in the World Trade Organization and the government's support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign.
"I think people's security fears in Washington right now are pretty close to home," said Edward Gresser, a former Clinton administration trade official now at the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, who was not on the panel. "People remain well aware of the problems in our relationship and are unsure of the future direction China will take, but the image of China has generally improved during the course of this terrorist campaign."
The emotions surrounding U.S.-China relations reflect the challenges of balancing economic and military interests in a world in which a free flow of capital, goods and people has blurred the lines between friend and foe.
Proponents of closer economic ties with China say the $121 billion in two-way trade will lead to warmer political ties and foster a more democratic, prosperous country capable of buying American airplanes, wheat and pharmaceuticals. But skeptics worry that the U.S. is blindly sacrificing manufacturing jobs, technology and military security in the pursuit of a quick buck.
"We do not claim that all is sweetness and light," said Robert Kapp, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, a Washington trade group. "We do not claim there is no potential for conflict between these two great nations. But we do believe much progress has been made and the way forward lies in closer engagement and better communication."
No place has more of a stake in this new chapter of globalization than California, the portal last year for more than $341 billion in international trade. A leading entryway for Asian commerce and immigration for more than a century, California is home to some of the country's largest China traders and nearly 1 million people of Chinese descent, many of whom have played a key role in that nation's economic rise.
Supporters of strengthened economic ties with China embraced some aspects of the report, including its finding that U.S. understanding of China's worldview and political actions is woefully inadequate and contributes to misunderstanding and conflict. The report urged Congress to beef up funding for Chinese language and study programs and to resume the military-to-military programs disrupted by last year's EP-3 spy plane incident.
Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Brookings Institution, agreed with the commission that the U.S. should carefully monitor China's adherence to market- opening measures under the WTO. He said China had a mixed record, moving quickly to lower tariffs and quotas but proceeding with caution in areas such as developing a new policy on genetically modified organisms in food imports.
But Lardy said commission recommendations to consider closing U.S. markets to Chinese imports--such as textiles or steel--would threaten China's economic stability and hurt U.S. consumers.
"We have a long list of goods we think are competitive and we should sell more," he said. "We don't want to talk about or face up to the fact that China is also competitive in some sectors."
In the area of arms control, the commission already has strong support from its chief backer, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who has been an outspoken critic of China's alleged role in the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Though Beijing has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it has denied knowledge of illegal weapons transfers by Chinese companies. In November 2000, China promised it would stop helping Pakistan and other countries to develop ballistic missiles, but that export control system has not yet been implemented, according to the commission.
Byrd already has endorsed one of the commission's recommendations, which would dramatically expand the penalties the White House can impose for illegal weapons sales. It would give the president the authority to sanction offending governments, as well as companies, for illegal weapons transfers and impose a wide range of economic penalties, including restrictions on trade and investment and access to U.S. capital markets.
The commission also urged the U.S. to continue the Tiananmen Square sanctions denying export licenses for satellite launches in China until Beijing fully complies with its agreement to draw up and publish its export control regulations.
Commission Chairman D'Amato said several recommendations already were being considered by Congress. Those include legislation that would require an annual report on science and technology transfer to China and increased funding for the U.S. Customs Service to enforce an agreement with China aimed at stopping the flow of prison-made goods to the U.S.
----
Report: China moving away from military strategy on Taiwan
July 12, 2002
From Barbara Starr
CNN Pentagon
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/07/12/china.taiwan/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- China may be engaging in a new strategy of intimidating Taiwan rather than trying to achieve an outright military victory, according to the Pentagon.
A new United States Defense Department report on China's military modernization says Beijing now has a "coercive strategy" to intimidate Taiwan into reaching a settlement with China.
Taiwan, an island off the Chinese coast, has claimed independence from the Chinese government since the communists took control of the mainland in 1949. China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, intends to one day reunify the island with the mainland.
This report on China to Congress -- the first one of an expected annual series from the Bush administration -- offers little new information about China's military efforts, but comes to a different conclusion about Beijing's approach from that found in reports submitted during the Clinton administration.
Under the Clinton administration, the Pentagon regularly assessed China's military assets and concluded that it did not have enough military might to seize control of Taiwan and hold the territory. China has always lacked key capabilities such as modern command and control and the amphibious capability to cross the Taiwan Strait and achieve victory against Taiwan, according to previous assessments.
According to Pentagon officials, the new report does not focus on China's weapons inventory per se, but instead focuses on three military modernization trends that underscore the conclusion about China's coercive intentions.
Those trends are:
China continues to place a growing number of medium-range ballistic missiles along its Taiwan Strait coastline. China's goal is to have 600 missiles by 2005; there are about 300 to 350 missiles there now. Ballistic missiles are unguided, and not aimed at specific targets. Therefore they essentially function as weapons of terror against population centers.
China continues to acquire submarines that would be capable of establishing a naval blockade against Taiwan's ports, leading to a potential economic stranglehold.
China's acquisition of Russian Sovremenny Class destroyers equipped with Sunburn surface-to-surface missiles could prevent U.S. aircraft carriers and other coalition naval assets from coming to Taiwan's assistance. The Sunburn has a 75-mile range.
The report also expresses concern about China's improvements to its military communications capability, which has always been seen as a shortfall in any Taiwan campaign.
----
China encirclement
July 12, 2002
Inside the Ring,
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020712-17039606.htm
The Chinese government is continuing its global effort to secure a commercial-strategic foothold on some of the world's most vital naval choke points. U.S. intelligence officials tell us the latest move involves Hong Kong magnate Li Kashing.
Mr. Li and his Hutchison Whampoa company want to build a large port facility in Iran, north of the major Iranian naval base of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports. The port would sit a few miles from the Strait of Hormuz, where a good portion of the world's oil passes.
Other intelligence reports indicate China also wants to set up port facilities in Malta, located strategically in the Mediterranean Sea.
The U.S. Southern Command wrote a classified intelligence estimate several years ago stating that China is seeking to set up a commercial presence around the world at strategic choke points.
Officials believe the commercial outposts could be used by China in the event of a world crisis or conflict as a base for military operations to disrupt international shipping.
Mr. Li has been identified by U.S. intelligence agencies as having close ties to senior Chinese Communist Party leaders. He was behind China's successful bid to win long-term leases for two ports located at either end of the Panama Canal for companies linked to Mr. Li's Hutchison Whampoa conglomerate. Panama is a key strategic waterway for the U.S. military, which would use the canal as part of a supply line in the event of a conflict in Asia.
Hutchison has secured port facilities in the Bahamas, and as we reported in March, also is vying to purchase a major port facility in Tampa, Fla., home to the U.S. Central Command, which is a key command in the war against terrorism.
Unfortunately, pro-China officials in the U.S. government have sought to dismiss the strategic encirclement. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told a congressional hearing last year that he sees no danger to China's presence near the canal.
A declassified Army intelligence report from 1998 stated that Mr. Li was "planning to take control of Panama Canal operations when the U.S. transfers it to Panama in Dec. 99," and noted that Mr. Li "is directly connected to Beijing and is willing to use his business influence to further the aims of the Chinese government."
----
China Could Hit Taiwan Rapidly, Pentagon Says
July 12, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is honing ``credible options'' to attack Taiwan and could move with scant warning against what it views as a U.S.-backed rogue province, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Beijing feared Taiwan's permanent separation from the mainland could give a strategic foothold to the United States, the Defense Department said in a report to Congress.
Winning control over the self-governing island of 23 million people would let China move outward its defensive perimeter -- a bulwark against what Beijing fears are U.S. plans to divide and Westernize it, the report said.
Beijing considers Taiwan occupied by Nationalist forces who lost China's civil war to the Communists in 1949. Beijing says it must be united with the mainland, by force if necessary.
``China's doctrine is moving toward the goal of surprise, deception and shock effect in the opening phase of a campaign,'' said the Pentagon report. ``China is exploring coercive strategies designed to bring Taipei to terms quickly.''
Such options include possible air and missile campaigns or a naval blockade.
``With little warning, Beijing may choose to seize quickly a limited number of key facilities on Taiwan using amphibious or airborne forces as means to compel political capitulation,'' the Pentagon said.
Thanks largely to Russian arms supplies, Beijing was gaining ``an increasing number of credible options to intimidate or actually attack Taiwan,'' it said.
China's growing clout also presented challenges to ``other potential adversaries, such as the Philippines and Japan,'' the report said. China is at odds with the Philippines and others over boundaries in the South China Sea, and Beijing opposes any expansion of Japanese power in the region.
While seeking stable relations with Washington, Beijing will keep trying to curb Washington's influence in Asia and to prevent a ``rebirth of Japanese militarism,'' the report said.
PREPARING FOR CONFLICT
Preparing for a potential conflict in the 100-mile wide Taiwan Strait is the ``primary driver'' for China's accelerating military modernization, it said.
In March, Beijing announced a 17.6 percent, or $3 billion, increase in spending, bringing the publicly reported total to $20 billion. But total military spending in fact is closer to $65 billion, and annual spending could increase in real terms three- to four-fold by 2020, the Pentagon said.
President Bush has proposed a $45 billion jump in U.S. military spending to $396.1 billion for fiscal 2003.
China's ballistic missile arsenal opposite Taiwan, is ``ready for immediate application should the People's Liberation Army be called on to conduct war before its modernization aspirations are fully realized,'' the report said.
China has deployed bout 350 short-range ballistic missiles, growing at about 50 missiles per year, it said, adding, ``The accuracy and lethality of this force also are increasing.''
China, which strongly opposes Bush's plans to build a multilayered missile shield, currently fields about 20 missiles capable of hitting the United States -- a number that will rise to about 30 by 2005 and may reach 60 by 2010, the report said.
Kurt Campbell, the Pentagon's top policymaker on China under former President Bill Clinton, said in an interview the real worry for some U.S. officials was not the declining Russian arsenal ``but the rising Chinese one.''
The report is the first comprehensive U.S. look at Chinese military trends since Bush took power in January 2001.
``The report is factual and sober,'' said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.
Under Clinton, the annual assessments of Chinese military power emphasized China's inability to take and hold Taiwan by conventional force such as an amphibious invasion.
Bush's Pentagon, on the other hand, said China's submarine force gave it the potential to blockade Taiwan while using Russian-built SS-N-22/Sunburn anti-ship missiles deployed on Sovremenny-class destroyers to deter any U.S. response.
In 1996, Clinton sent two U.S. carrier battle groups to the region to signal support for Taiwan after China fired missiles into the sea off Taiwan's two main ports.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel credits occupation for lull in attacks
July 12, 2002
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020712-59551.htm
Israeli officials say the lack of suicide attacks in the past three weeks means its renewed occupation of the West Bank is working.
But Palestinians say that, whatever the reason for the pause in the violence, the Israeli occupation will lead to more suicide bombings.
"Since we entered Palestinian territories and occupied Palestinian towns, there are no suicide bombers," said a senior Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"The ability of terror groups to enter our borders has been reduced significantly. Security is improved now, and there is no credit due to [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat. He has said nothing to his people to stop violence."
A U.S. State Department official said Mr. Arafat's recent Cabinet reforms are a sign of progress toward improved security over terrorism but agreed that the Israeli military moves are the primary reason for the lack of suicide attacks.
"I'm sure Israel's security operations contribute to a calming of the environment," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The question is ,how long it will be sustained? What happens when [military incursions] cease? Does the bombing start up again?"
The last Palestinian suicide bombings took place June 18 in Jerusalem when a Hamas bomber killed 19 on a bus and an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade bomber killed seven Israelis at a bus stop.
Three days later, the Israeli Cabinet approved the military takeover of most Palestinian cities, which remain under strict curfews except for three hours a day when people may shop for food.
"I don't know why [the suicide bombing] stopped, but I am glad it stopped, period, regardless of the reason," said the Washington representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hassan Abdel Rahman.
However he predicted that the Israeli occupation would push Palestinians to resume suicide bombings.
"Israeli occupation creates hopelessness; Israeli pressure on the Palestinian people causes continued hardships that are a cause of violence," he said in an interview yesterday.
Although suicide bombings have stopped and violence is reduced, Israeli forces shot and wounded two Palestinian news photographers in Jenin and an Israeli officer was fatally shot in the Gaza Strip yesterday.
Israeli military and intelligence forces controlling the West Bank have ripped up many of the militant networks behind the suicide bombings - arresting many suspects, killing others and destroying bomb and arms factories and stockpiles.
But the hardships caused by the occupation create greater motivation among Palestinians for future attacks on Israeli civilians, said Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor at the University of Maryland.
He predicted that as soon as the Israelis ease up - and even if they remain in place on the West Bank - militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will resume their attacks and in even more-lethal ways.
"Planning and organization are disrupted [by the Israeli military incursion] but motivation is increased," he said. "It's wrong to think it worked. It may work in the short term and buy a few weeks. But this situation is not over."
-------- mideast
Sudan, Syria in Terror Crossroads
By Sonya Ross
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002; 2:37 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58972-2002Jul12.html
WASHINGTON -- Two countries the United States accuses of sponsoring terrorists now have a toehold in the anti-terror circle, thanks to the help they gave America after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But relationships with nations such as Sudan and Syria are tricky for the United States. It wants to work with them when they offer help in hunting down al-Qaida terrorists. Yet it still mistrusts them.
In turn, Sudan and Syria, like many Arab nations, realize they must stand closer to the United States than their Islamic base might wish, to gain protection against the hostility of Osama bin Laden.
"Al-Qaida is not just against the United States," said Miriam Reich Kumar, a South Asia and Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They know they are just as much a target, especially the countries in the Middle East."
Earlier this year, the Bush administration adjusted the list of seven terror-sponsoring states and put Iran, part of President Bush's "axis of evil," at the top. Sudan and Syria, while still on the list, were praised for taking steps to break their ties to terrorism.
Sudan expelled bin Laden in 1996; he moved on to Afghanistan. It looked into allegations that bin Laden was a shareholder in a Sudanese bank and froze the accounts of those suspected of terrorist involvement. Sudanese officials gave U.S. counterparts information on terror suspects and adopted new procedures to keep them from entering Sudan. It has asked for help in training a new counterterrorism unit.
Syria, meanwhile, provided intelligence this spring about an al-Qaida operation that helped save American lives in Afghanistan, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said last month.
But those actions were not enough to get Sudan and Syria off the terrorism list altogether.
"Sudan still has a way to go" before it can be removed from the list, Secretary of State Colin Powell said recently. "If they want to move forward, they do have to work with us against terrorism."
To keep its distance from what many consider a Western assault on Muslims, Sudan has refused to confirm U.S. claims that it took suspected Islamic militants into custody after Sept. 11. It believes its positive efforts haven't been met halfway.
"We know that there are still American pockets of hostility toward Sudan," Information Minister Mahdi Ibrahim told a pan-Islamic conference in Khartoum. "The Muslim nation is the real victim of terrorism and is terrorized every single day. It's bombed from the air sometimes, placed on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism at other times, and has its assets frozen on other occasions."
Sudan was a target in August 1998 when President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against a factory suspected of making chemical weapons. Clinton alleged it had links to bin Laden, suspected in the bombings two weeks earlier of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Syria, despite its desire to help stop al-Qaida, remains a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. It draws distinctions between the acts of terrorism practiced by al-Qaida and Palestinian resistance in Israel, which it supports.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, for example, vowed recently to keep supporting Hezbollah, a militant Lebanese group, in "liberating" Arab lands from Israeli occupation. He resisted U.S. calls to cut ties to the group, reiterated by a recent visiting U.S. delegation.
"There's no sign that they're going to change that, and I'm not encouraged by that," Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said after he and fellow lawmakers returned.
A leader of the congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., went further, saying the United States should learn from past mistakes and consider airstrikes if pressure on Syria to shut down terrorist camps doesn't work.
Yet Syria also has pledged to remain steadfast in its anti-terror effort. Al-Sharaa said Syria gave U.S. officials the intelligence on the al-Qaida plot in Afghanistan "because this is a matter of principle."
In Sudan, President Omar el-Bashir says his country and other Islamic nations know they must bridge differences with the developed world to ensure brighter economic prospects.
"If we fail to do so, we will become even more neglected and marginalized than we are at present," el-Bashir told the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference last month.
Even then, traces of resistance remain.
"We must listen to the voice of the contemporary world and adjust to whatever it has to offer that's beneficial," said OIC secretary-general Abdelouahed Belkziz, a Moroccan. "But we shouldn't, as we try to adjust, abandon our faith and Islamic civilization."
-------- puerto rico
Army movements
July 12, 2002
Inside the Ring,
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020712-17039606.htm
The Army is moving its U.S. southern headquarters from Puerto Rico to the continental United States.
Not everyone in Congress is happy about the move. They don't blame the Army for wanting to vacate Puerto Rico. Soldiers have complained about low living standards.
What some staffers question is the choice of a new home: Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The aides say the Army already has plenty of political support inside the Texas delegation.
They say the Army should have picked another Southern state, where it can pick up a few new votes, especially at a time when the Army's future weapons and very size is being challenged by civilian policy-makers inside the Pentagon.
The Mississippi and Georgia delegations are particularly upset.
-------- un
UN Council Approves Deal on War Crime Court
July 12, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-un-court-council.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to exempt American peacekeepers from prosecution by the new global war crimes court for a year, a deal that ends U.S. threats to U.N. missions around the world.
After a firestorm of protests against the Bush administration's stance, the 15-member council on Friday approved a revised resolution on the International Criminal Court following agreement from Mexico, the last hold out.
``It offers us a degree of protection for the coming year,'' U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said after the vote. But he warned countries -- in effect Washington's closest allies -- they could expect ``serious consequences'' if any American were ever detained by the court.
The council's vote culminated weeks of bitterness between the United States and its allies. But many supporters of the court, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, were satisfied the resolution did not violate a treaty setting up the tribunal, considered a landmark in international law.
The resolution asks the tribunal to allow a 12-month grace period before investigating or prosecuting U.N. peacekeepers from countries that do not support the court ``if a case arises'' and ``unless the Security Council decides otherwise.''
It expresses the council's intention to renew the resolution in a year but does not commit it to do so, as Washington had wanted in its search for cast-iron guarantees.
Following fierce objections from allies that included the 15 European Union members, Canada, Mexico and others, the United States backed away from seeking permanent immunity for its soldiers and civilians.
BALKANS MISSIONS EXTENDED
As soon as the resolution was adopted, the logjam was broken and the council extended the U.N. police training mission in Bosnia and a smaller one in the nearby Prevlaka Peninsula. Both were in danger of being terminated on Monday by a U.S. veto if the court dispute were not settled.
The International Criminal Court was set up to try individuals for the world's most heinous atrocities: genocide, war crimes and gross human rights abuses. It is a belated effort to fulfill the promise of the Nuremberg trials 56 years ago in which Nazi leaders were prosecuted for new categories of human rights and war crimes.
Opposed to the court as an affront to U.S. sovereignty, the United States also fears frivolous complaints against soldiers and officials.
After declaring he was pleased with the vote, Negroponte, warned there would be consequences if any American was brought before the tribunal.
``No nation should underestimate our commitment to protect our citizens,'' he told reporters after the vote, a reference to pending U.S. legislation to rescue any American that would come before the court in The Hague, Netherlands.
Negroponte said the United States would ``never'' ratify the 1998 Rome treaty establishing the tribunal and repeated his threat to put all U.N. peacekeeping missions at risk ``throughout the globe'' had the resolution not been adopted.
NO BLANKET IMMUNITY
But British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who negotiated the compromise, said the resolution was less sweeping that it appeared. ``There is no mention of blanket immunity. What is being provided is a 'time out.'''
France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, who submitted many of the amendments to the original U.S. text, said he was satisfied. ``For us what was paramount was the authority of the newborn International Criminal Court,'' he said.
``There is no blanket immunity given to peacekeepers or soldiers participating in operations authorized by the Security Council. There is no preventive, permanent and general immunity and this for us is what is most important,'' Levitte said.''
Most council members believed the issue was ideological and that U.S. worries its soldiers or civilians could come to the court for systematic atrocities were illusory. The court, for example, only steps in when countries are unable or unwilling to prosecute mass murderers or other systematic abuses.
Some supporters of the court, however, believe the resolution amends a 1998 treaty establishing the tribunal through the back door.
``We think it is a sad day for the United Nations. We are extremely disappointed with the outcome,'' said Canadian Ambassador Paul Heinbecker, who organized dozens of countries to speak out publicly against the U.S. stance.
``We don't think it is in the mandate of the council to interpret treaties that are negotiated somewhere else.
He said the court's statutes required a threat to international peace and security before the Security Council could act and ``we don't think (that) had been established.''
The deal was difficult to reach in negotiations that stretched over three weeks. Even after the United States agreed to a 12-month exemption at least seven council members, led by France, refused to vote for the resolution and obtained further last-minute changes.
Some 76 nations have ratified the 1998 Rome treaty, creating the court, and 139 have signed it.
-------- us
Elite U.S. unit keeps heat on terrorists
July 12, 2002
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020712-43606132.htm
The United States set up a unit of its most elite special-operations troops early in the war on terrorism with the prime mission of hunting down senior members of the Taliban regime and al Qaeda network, including Osama bin Laden.
Named Task Force 11, the unit comprises several hundred Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Command in North Carolina. The command is a base for the nation's most skilled covert warriors, whose anti-terrorism training and tactics are highly classified.
As al Qaeda and Taliban forces have ceased massing after their disastrous defeat in Operation Anaconda in March, the role of Task Force 11 has grown in importance. The fighters still loyal to the ousted Taliban regime are attempting to disappear in the villages and mountains of south-central Afghanistan near Kandahar. Members of the al Qaeda network, bin Laden's terror group, have largely left Afghanistan to roam in small groups in Pakistan. It is Task Force 11's job to attack them on the ground.
"They are the best," said one U.S. official, who discussed the unit in general terms on the condition of anonymity. "They are going after high-value targets."
Asked at the White House yesterday about this stage of the war in Afghanistan, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "There remains danger in Afghanistan. And as the president said at the very beginning of this battle last October, this will be a war that's going to go in various phases, some of which will be visible; some will not."
In Afghanistan, Task Force 11 tries to be invisible, working in small units, and also with other larger forces, to conduct reconnaissance and raids on Taliban hide-outs. The group has had successes and some failures.
The military's first raid on Oct. 19 on the compound of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar involved elements of Task Force 11. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior Pentagon officials say U.S. forces did not expect to find Mullah Omar, who remains at large in Afghanistan today.
But senior military officers say privately that intelligence information had placed Mullah Omar at the compound and that there was an expectation he would be there during the time of the raid. He was not.
Elements of Task Force 11 are currently in south-central Afghanistan, where the last senior leaders of the former Taliban regime are believed to be in hiding.
The United States began a substantial operation last month to find a top Taliban military leader north of Kandahar in Uruzgan province. The mission was marred July 1 when an AC-130 gunship fired on anti-aircraft artillery positions and accidentally killed civilians. The Taliban officer eluded capture.
Task Force 11 also has helped Pakistani troops conduct raids in the western part of the country, a generally lawless area where members of the al Qaeda network, including bin Laden, are believed to be hiding.
Sources were not clear on whether the task force has taken a direct role in any raids in Pakistan. But they say the unit has provided support in such areas as tactics and intelligence collection.
The task force includes commandos who specialize in monitoring enemy communications at close range. They have passed the information on to the Pakistanis to help them identify villages and compounds that hold al Qaeda members.
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) oversees the supersecret Delta Force and SEAL Team Six from a walled-off compound at Pope Air Force Base, which borders Fort Bragg, N.C., home of Army Special Operations Command and the Green Berets.
JSOC is under the command of Army Maj. Gen. Del Dailey, an ex-member of the 800-strong Delta Force. Gen. Dailey personally briefed President Bush on JSOC missions in Afghanistan before the war began Oct. 7. The two-star general has split his time between Pope and the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater.
Within JSOC, the commandos work in special-missions units. They train for a wide variety of scenarios, including securing nuclear weapons in a foreign land and rescuing hostages.
They train for strike operations, reconnaissance missions in enemy territory and intelligence collection.
Military officials say it is likely that JSOC is training to insert commandos inside Iraq to seize its chemical and biological weapons before they could be used on American troops.
--------
Use of Pilotless Spy Plane Suspended
July 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Global-Hawk.html
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Air Force officials have grounded the Global Hawk spy plane pending an investigation into this week's crash of one of the unmanned aircraft in Pakistan.
The Global Hawk will undergo no further operations testing at Edwards Air Force Base until more can be learned about what caused Wednesday's crash, according to an Air Force statement issued Friday to the defense contractor.
Pentagon officials have attributed the crash to engine failure.
The 44-foot-long Global Hawk is designed for long-range, high-altitude flights, largely to locate targets for U.S. strike aircraft. It is equipped with still-image cameras and sophisticated radar, and can fly continuously for up to 35 hours.
The Pentagon decided to rush it into use following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks even though normal developmental tests had not been completed. Only about a half-dozen of the aircraft were made available.
Wednesday's crash was the second loss of a Global Hawk: The first occurred in late December near Afghanistan.
The Global Hawk, with a wingspan of 116 feet, is expected to replace the Air Force's U-2 spy plane, which has been in use for 50 years.
A spokeswoman for Northrop Grumman, which makes the pilotless plane, said they cannot say how development will be affected until the remains of the craft are examined.
Northrop Grumman placed a similar hold on Global Hawk operations following the first crash. An Air Force investigation blamed that crash on a structural failure, resulting from an improperly installed bolt.
The craft is controlled by an onboard computer that is programmed in advance and guides the Global Hawk during its mission, including takeoff and landing.
On the Net:
http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/global.html
-------- propaganda wars
Hackers Hit USA Today Web Site
By Jim Krane
AP Technology Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002; 4:42 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62151-2002Jul12.html
NEW YORK -- Hackers broke into USA Today's Web site and replaced legitimate news stories with phony articles, lampooning newsmakers and religions but also claiming Israel was under missile attack.
The bogus pages were viewable to USAToday.com readers for about 15 minutes Thursday night before being discovered at 11:05 p.m. EDT and taken offline, said company spokesman Steve Anderson.
The entire site was shut down for three hours to upgrade security, he said, adding that the intruders appeared to have penetrated the Web server computers from outside company firewalls.
All the bogus stories - on seven pages including the site's home page - were falsely identified as having been written by The Associated Press.
The sham missile attack report, linked from the home page, said "unconfirmed reports" from Israel cited "missiles exploding above the city" and speculation Iraq was responsible.
The other fake stories were obvious hoaxes. One claimed President Bush had named a propaganda minister, another quoted the Vatican as claiming the Bible was an "April Fool's joke."
"The pages were very prankish and immature," said Anderson. "They were very poorly written, obviously phony news reports."
There was no overt claim of responsibility, but at the end of one fake story the intruder indicated he or she planned to attend the H2K2 hacker convention in New York City that runs through Sunday.
USA Today said it reported the incident to police in Fairfax County, Va., where the company's offices are located. An FBI spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., Deborah Weierman, said the bureau was "assessing the situation."
While USAToday.com's defacement appears to have been a prank, security experts say subtle manipulation of online news reports has the potential to create havoc.
"What we're scared about is not defacing the page so it's obvious, but putting in small changes that are hard to notice," said Chris Wysopal of (at)stake, a computer security consulting group in Cambridge, Mass.
Information warfare experts say a carefully managed disinformation campaign could trigger economic or public panic, as well as undermine trust in all Internet news sources.
USAToday.com is one of the Internet's most frequented news sites, with nine million monthly visits, Anderson said.
Media-owned Web sites with heavily trafficked news pages are prime targets for publicity-seeking hackers, security experts say.
In previous incidents, hackers have penetrated sites owned by The New York Times and Yahoo!, in the Yahoo case altering content.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Judge: U.S. May Jail Material Witnesses
N.Y. Ruling Conflicts With Decision In Prior Case in Same Federal District
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58450-2002Jul11?language=printer
NEW YORK, July 11 -- The government may forcibly detain witnesses to gather evidence in its nationwide terrorism investigation, a federal judge ruled today, rejecting as "flawed" a previous federal ruling that the tactic is unconstitutional.
The judge, Michael B. Mukasey, ruled that the Justice Department has legally imprisoned as "material witnesses" dozens of men authorities believe may be able to provide important information to grand juries investigating terrorism. He refused to grant the deportation of an unnamed immigrant who argued he had been illegally jailed.
On April 30, Shira A. Scheindlin, who like Mukasey presides in New York's Southern District, dismissed perjury charges against a Jordanian college student who had been "unlawfully detained," ruling that "since 1789, no Congress has granted the government the authority to imprison an innocent person" to testify before a grand jury.
In a 37-page opinion, Mukasey rejected Scheindlin's ruling, saying that her interpretation that material witnesses should be excluded from grand jury proceedings is "to perceive something that is not there."
The government has appealed Scheindlin's ruling to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Neil S. Cartusciello, who represented the "John Doe" material witness before Mukasey, said tonight that he was "disappointed in the outcome" but needed to read the decision and consult with his client before deciding whether to appeal.
Legal experts said the constitutionality of the government's use of the material witness statute is likely to be decided in the higher courts. "It's not surprising on an issue like this -- which in Judge Scheindlin's case was a very new and different kind of an issue -- that there would be a difference of interpretations," said Neal R. Sonnett, a former assistant U.S. attorney now in private practice in Miami.
The government's use of the material witness statute has been perhaps the most controversial tactic to detain suspects in the terrorism investigation. The statute was last updated by Congress in 1984. It is designed to allow authorities to detain an individual believed to hold information critical to a "criminal proceeding" if the person cannot be compelled to testify in any other way.
Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the statute had been invoked rarely, usually in cases where a person presented a flight risk. However, the government appears to have detained as material witnesses people it believes may be terrorism suspects or who may be able to appear before a grand jury to testify about evidence critical to the investigation.
Osama Awadallah, the Jordanian student covered by Scheindlin's ruling, was arrested as a material witness after authorities discovered his old phone number on a slip of paper in a car left by some of the Sept. 11 hijackers at Dulles International Airport. Awadallah attorney Randall B. Hamud said he was not surprised that Mukasey, who signed Awadallah's arrest warrant, "is singing the government's song."
However, he said it was unlikely to affect Awadallah's case.
----
Bomb Suspect Attacks Tactics of Government
New York Times
July 12, 2002
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/12/national/12BOMB.html
Lawyers for Jose Padilla, the former Chicago gang member accused of plotting to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States, said yesterday that prosecutors were engaged in improper legal tactics to move his case from New York to South Carolina, where courts are thought to be more favorable to the government.
They noted that the government was also bringing cases against Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in Minnesota, and John Walker Lindh, who was caught in Afghanistan, in federal court in Virginia, part of the same federal appellate circuit as South Carolina.
"The government has engaged in impermissible forum shopping," Mr. Padilla's lawyers said in a filing in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The lawyers, saying Mr. Padilla's rights have been violated, are asking that a federal judge in Manhattan review the legality of his detention so he can be released.
Mr. Padilla, who has not been charged, was initially detained in Chicago in May, and was then brought to New York where, on June 9, he was transferred to military custody. He was moved to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., where he is being held as an enemy combatant.
Federal prosecutors have asked that Judge Michael B. Mukasey dismiss the petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed on behalf of Mr. Padilla, saying he lacks jurisdiction.
They say that Mr. Padilla, who is also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, is being held "consistent with the laws and customs of war."
But Mr. Padilla's lawyers, Donna R. Newman and Andrew G. Patel, emphasized the broad power of the writ of habeas corpus and "its ability to cut through barriers of form and procedural mazes," as they quoted one former Supreme Court justice.
They disputed the government's contention that the petition must be brought, if at all, in South Carolina, saying the choice of that location was "orchestrated by the government."
"To deny this court jurisdiction," they told the New York judge, "would encourage the government to continue in their machinations."
A spokesman for James B. Comey, the United States attorney in Manhattan, had no comment.
Mr. Padilla's lawyers also contended that their petition was properly filed against President Bush, in his role as commander in chief of the armed forces, among others.
-------- death penalty
States Address Death Penalty Laws
July 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Death-Penalty.html
DENVER (AP) -- With Colorado taking a leading role, some states have begun amending their death penalty laws to bring them in line with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said it is up to juries, not judges, to decide whether a killer should live or die.
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens on Friday signed a revised law enacted during a special session that was called primarily to take up the death penalty. Lawmakers in Arizona, where the Supreme Court case originated, plan a special session next month to take similar action.
``Time after time when we've done what we are convinced is constitutional, we find that a court says it isn't. What I want to make sure we have is a constitutional death penalty statute, and I'm convinced that we have that at this point in time,'' Owens said Thursday.
Under the new Colorado legislation, juries would have sole responsibility for deciding whether a killer should die.
Other states with laws that could come under question have begun considering action, such as seeking a state high court ruling on the constitutionality of their laws.
Legal analysts and death penalty opponents believe states should take quick, clear action to avoid a legal morass, not only with inmates on death row but those whom Denver defense attorney Scott Robinson calls ``the gappers'' -- inmates sentenced after the June 24 ruling but before any change in state law.
``I think the smarter states will do what Colorado is doing and return it to the juries,'' said Chris Adams, a death penalty specialist with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling directly affected laws in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska, where judges alone decide whether to impose the death penalty.
Montana and Nebraska plan to consider changes to their laws next year.
Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg has told prosecutors to ask jurors to decide whether the crime merits the death penalty; then the judge could sentence a defendant based on the jury's findings.
Idaho has taken no direct action, but a prosecutor reached a plea bargain in a murder case this week in part because of uncertainty over the law.
The ruling could also ultimately affect Florida, Alabama, Indiana and Delaware, where juries recommend sentences but judges have the final say.
Executions in Alabama and Florida are on hold while those states' high courts consider whether their death penalty laws are constitutional in light of the ruling.
Even before the ruling, Indiana changed its law to require judges to follow a jury's recommendation. The previous law gave judges authority to impose the death penalty even if the jury recommended against it.
After the ruling, Delaware late last month passed a bill that says a judge cannot sentence someone to die unless the jury unanimously decides the inmate is eligible for the death penalty. The previous law allowed judges to impose the death penalty even if the jury found no grounds for such a sentence.
The high court ruling threw into doubt death sentences handed out to 168 killers in the five states. Among them are three inmates in Colorado. In all nine states, there are 785 inmates on death row, though not all would be affected by the court ruling.
Nationwide, about 3,700 inmates await execution in the 38 states that allow capital punishment.
Then there are the ``gappers'' like Randy Canister, who was on trial in a triple slaying in Colorado when the court decision came down. After he was convicted, the judge scheduled a hearing in August to determine whether prosecutors can seek the death penalty.
The worst punishment Canister can face is life in prison, contended defense attorney David Lane, who represents one of Canister's co-defendants.
In 1995, Colorado lawmakers turned death penalty decisions over to three-judge panels. Lawmakers mandated that if the law were found to be unconstitutional, inmates should receive life sentences.
``It shows how random the death penalty is and how unfair it can be,'' said Lane, a well-known death penalty opponent. ``Canister, who pulled the trigger, lucked into a life sentence.''
-------- terrorism
Al Qaeda remains a silent menace in U.S., senators say
July 12, 2002
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020712-43133056.htm
The al Qaeda terrorist group is regrouping and is working secretly inside the United States, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said yesterday.
"I don't know about numbers," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and vice chairman of the committee.
"There are a lot of potential or maybe active al Qaeda agents in the U.S. They don't have, I believe, at the moment the central command they did with Osama bin Laden, but they're well-trained, and I think you have to recognize they're dangerous," he said.
Both Mr. Shelby and Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat and the committee's chairman, said they could not provide a specific number of al Qaeda members in the United States when asked to respond to a report in The Washington Times yesterday that said up to 5,000 were under surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies.
"But we do know that for a period of five or six years, when the training camps were in operation in Afghanistan, there was an average of 5,000 to 6,000 people trained per year," Mr. Graham said. "Those people are somewhere. And there's no expectation other than that some of them are in the United States."
The terrorist infrastructure in the United States is not limited to al Qaeda, he said. Other groups with representatives here include pro-Iran terrorist group Hezbollah, or Party of God, he added.
The figure of 5,000 was contained in classified intelligence reports and represented an increase from earlier estimates of more than 100 active al Qaeda members and hundreds of sympathizers. U.S. intelligence officials said the figure included hard-core members and sympathizers who could be called on to support terrorist actions.
Mr. Graham said U.S. intelligence has indicated for several months that al Qaeda leader bin Laden is alive and probably hiding somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The senator also said al Qaeda appears to be regrouping after the disruption of its operations in Afghanistan by U.S. military strikes.
"We also know that al Qaeda is attempting to regroup, and there are evidences of it having done so," he said, noting the recent bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia.
Al Qaeda terrorist cells in Hamburg, Germany, also are "becoming more active," he said.
"And we've had this series of al Qaeda threats about actions inside the United States."
The senators met reporters to discuss the joint House-Senate oversight committee probe into the intelligence failures of September 11.
The committee will meet next week to hear testimony on U.S. spying technology, Mr. Graham said, and in two weeks will hear testimony on tracking of terrorist finances.
"I think we are making good progress," he said.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a House hearing yesterday that al Qaeda remained a threat inside the country.
"There remain sleeper terrorists and their supporters in the United States who have not yet been identified in a way that will allow us to take pre-emptive action against them," he said. "And as we limit the access of foreign terrorists to our country, we recognize that the terrorists' response will be to recruit United States citizens and permanent residents to carry out their attacks."
The attorney general told the Select Committee on Homeland Security that al Qaeda "maintains a hidden but active presence in the United States waiting to strike again."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Solar-Powered Spacecraft Tested
By Angela Charlton
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002; 12:30 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60877-2002Jul12?language=printer
MOSCOW -- A prototype of a European-Russian spacecraft that sails on the sun's rays smoothly completed a 30-minute test run Friday, the Russian navy said.
The Demonstrator-2 blasted off from the Ryazan nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea.
"According to the telemetric flight data, the experiment to send the Demonstrator-2 into orbit and return it to the atmosphere went successfully," the navy said.
The Babakin Space Center, which made the spacecraft, said a search for the craft was underway around the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific Coast.
An effort to launch a similar, U.S.-sponsored prototype from a Russian submarine last year failed.
The experimental Demonstrator-2 contains a cone-shaped sail made of lightweight blades that would be pushed through space by the steady pressure of photons hitting it, like a sailboat powered by wind.
Solar-driven spacecraft, which have intrigued space enthusiasts for years, would be slow to accelerate but with time should reach velocities that would make travel across great distances possible.
The Demonstrator-2 test model was folded to less than a 3-foot diameter and tucked inside a converted intercontinental ballistic missile, Babakin spokeswoman Lidia Avdeyeva said.
After the launch, its two sail-like panels - one almost 8 feet high and the other almost 13 feet high - unfolded into a cone shape, one wrapped around the other. It was to land in its unfolded form.
The project was a joint effort among Russian space officials, the European Space Agency and Germany-based Astrium, a unit of European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co.
The Planetary Society, a Pasadena, Calif.-based group founded by the late astronomer Carl Sagan, launched a prototype from a Russian submarine in July 2001, but it did not achieve enough thrust and the payload containing the spacecraft did not separate from the booster, organizers said.
The Planetary Society Web site says several tests are planned this summer to prepare for the launch of the solar-powered Cosmos 1, which would be visible from Earth and would travel in space for weeks or months.
Internet and entertainment company Cosmos Studios and the A&E cable television network are underwriting the $4 million cost of that project.
NASA is interested in solar sailing and is working on the technology, agency officials have said.
--------
Germany wants to double renewable power - minister
REUTERS GERMANY:
July 12, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16814/newsDate/12-Jul-2002/story.htm
BERLIN - German Economy Minister Werner Mueller said this week the government wanted to double the amount of electricity produced from renewable sources by 2010.
Speaking at a news conference to present the findings of a report into the impact Germany's renewable energy act has had on supply and demand, Mueller said he would like to see renewables share rise to 20 percent from around eight percent today.
Renewables share of primary energy consumption should rise to five from two percent. "Building up renewables is a very important part of my energy policy," Mueller, a former conventional power industry executive, said.
Germany holds a general election on September 22. The opposition conservatives, currently ahead in opinion polls, have hinted they will roll back subsidies for renewables if elected.
The renewable energy act, which came into force on April 1 2000, has had a clear impact, Mueller said, raising renewables share from around six percent at end-1999 to an expected eight percent at the end of 2002.
Some 18 billion kilowatt hours (KwH)of electricity was produced from renewables in 2001. That would rise this year to around 21 billion KwH, he said.
Mueller attributed the rise mainly to the boom in windpower, saying Germany with an installed base of some 10,000 MegaWatts was leading the world in this area.
-------- energy
The Other Harken Energy Scandal
Oil, Death Squads and Corruption in Colombia
by Sean Donahue
July 12, 2002
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/donahue0712.html
Financial irregularities at Harken Energy during President Bush's tenure at the Texas oil company have dominated headlines in recent days. But the press has ignored a much bigger scandal: how Harken Energy has benefited from war and terror in Colombia.
George W. Bush went to work for Harken Energy in 1986 when the company bought out Spectrum 7, a company that had earlier purchased Bush's failed Arbusto oil company. Harken gave Bush $2 million in stock options, a $122,000 consulting job, and a seat on its board of directors.
While Bush was working for Harken, Rodrigo Villamizar, an old friend Bush had met at a fraternity party in 1972, became director of Colombia's bureau of Mines and Minerals, the ministry that oversees the sale of oil concessions by the state oil company, Ecopetrol. According to a December 2001 report in Counterpunch,, Bush had helped Villamizar out in the '70's by getting him first a job with the Texas state senate's Economic Development committee, and then a seat on the state Public Utilities Commission. Toward the end of Bush's tenure at Harken, Villamizar returned the favor by granting Harken a series of oil contracts in Colombia.
The bulk of the oil contracts were in the Magdalena Valley where military officers, drug traffickers, and cattle ranchers had come together to form right wing paramilitary groups that fought guerillas, assassinated union leaders and human rights activists, and terrorized peasants in order to force them off coveted land. Most of the oil companies doing business in the region either tacitly accepted or actively sought out the protection of these death squads. A 1996 Human Rights Watch report documents the fact that the Colombian military armed and assisted these groups and, under the guidance of the CIA, integrated them into its intelligence networks. The close cooperation between the military and the paramilitaries continues today - and tends to be most rampant in areas where there is a lot of oil production. The State Department has listed the paramilitaries as terrorist organizations, but has looked the other way as the <U.S.-funded> Colombian army has continued to rely on them to do its dirty work in its war against dissidents. Harken is still doing business in the Magdalena Valley, thanks in part to funding from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, and paramilitaries continue to terrorize anyone who threatens corporate interests in the region.
Noone is alleging that President Bush personally ordered paramilitaries to kill peasants and intimidate union leaders in order to improve Harken's bottom line. But at the same time, given his close ties to Villamizar, and the fact that his father was President at the time, its highly unlikely that Bush was ignorant of the human rights issues involved in oil drilling in Colombia.
All of this has a very immediate relevance today because Villamizar, who left Colombia to escape corruption charges and is now a covicted felon and fugitive from justice, drafted the Colombia policy for the Bush campaign in 2000, and still maintains close ties to the President. Counterpunch reports that Villamizar, who should be serving four years in a Colombian prison, was Bush's first choice to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, but turned down the appointment.
Villamizar's recommendations on expanding U.S. military aid to Colombia have been largely accepted by the Bush administration, and a new President in Colombia with links to the death squads is poised to use expanded U.S. aid to dramatically escalate the country's forty year civil war against leftist guerillas. Hundreds of U.S. military advisors are on the ground in Colombia today. Officially they have no combat role, but that is likely to change when the guerillas begin treating the advisors as military targets. Colin Powell's old doctrine of making sure the U.S. has clear military goals and a viable exit strategy before getting involved in a war seems to have been completely forgotten.
The cornerstone of Bush's new military aid package is a $98 million grant to help the Colombian government establish a new battalion of its army's 18th Brigade to protect an oil pipeline against guerilla attacks. The 18th Brigade has a long history of ties to the paramilitaries, and its own history of attacks on civilians - earlier this year soldiers killed a teenage boy for walking too close to the pipeline. Ironically the first beneficiary of this program will be Occidental Petroleum, the company that helped the Gore family make its fortune. But U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson has said that in the long run the Pentagon is eyeing similar programs for other key economic assets in Colombia. These would likely include pipelines maintained by Harken's subsidiary, Global Energy Development, , a natural gas pipeline operated by Enron, and projects involving Dick Cheney's old company, Haliburton, as well as assets owned or used by Texaco, Exxon-Mobil, and BP.
The Bush administration's conflicts of interest in Colombia need to be investigated, exposed, and thoroughly examined before the U.S. gets drawn deeper into Colombia's bloody war.
Sean Donahue is co-director of New Hampshire Peace Action and has written and spoken extensively on U.S. policy toward Colombia. He is available for interviews and speaking engagements and can be reached at wrldhealer@yahoo.com.
-------- environment
Shrimps and seawater make Eritrean desert bloom
Story by Matthew Green
REUTERS ERITREA:
July 11, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16794/newsDate/11-Jul-2002/story.htm
MASSAWA, Eritrea - What makes the desert bloom, lures investment to Africa, and tastes delicious in fried breadcrumbs?
The answer, on Eritrea's Red Sea coast, is the humble shrimp.
U.S. entrepreneurs have set up a sea water farm they say could serve as a model of environmentally-friendly and profitable business in a continent gasping for foreign investment.
"The idea of the farm is to green the desert coasts of the world and give Eritreans a chance," said Peter Woods, general manager. "We've got a wonderful idea. Once we can prove it will work, it will be an easy sell."
The project fuses two resources that Eritrea and many other African countries have in abundance but have done little to exploit - arid land and sea water.
Shrimps are fattened in briny water pumped from the sea, which is then used to nourish rubbery Salicornia plants which can thrive in salty conditions. The plants, one of a type known as halophytes, grow in spiky dark-green rows on the otherwise parched coastal plain.
For African leaders struggling to whip up foreign investment seen as vital to breaking the continent's cycle of poverty, the project could prove that even in a country struggling with hunger and the legacy of war, there is money to be made.
DESERT BLOOMS
Recycling water laden with shrimp excreta might not sound like the most romantic way of saving the environment, but the farm is literally making the desert bloom.
Sea water gushes into round concrete tanks teeming with finger-sized shrimps, which occasionally make a futile attempt to escape by leaping en masse out of the water only to be tossed back by attendants.
The Salicornia thrives in the salt water pumped into the fields, providing an edible plant which the owners hope to export to Europe and the United States for use in gourmet salads or to make high-class cosmetics.
If left to grow to maturity, Salicornia produces a seed that provides a valuable vegetable oil or high-protein meal.
For Eritrean workers at the farm, the fields have symbolic value, lying bang on the site of a major battle in Eritrea's 30-year liberation struggle against Ethiopia, which led to Eritrean independence in 1993.
"The path that we're taking is constructive, instead of war and destruction," said project coordinator Samuel Negassi, after surveying the wreckage of a Soviet-built tank lying half submerged in one of the fields.
"We have the sea, we have the desert land. The combination of the two can generate wealth, you can't have a more typically Eritrean project than this," he said.
The park founders say the farm has wider environmental significance, contributing in its own small way to combating problems like desertification and global warming by planting Salicornia and mangroves in what was a barren plain.
Flamingos, sacred ibis, pelicans and herons swoop through wetlands created near the farm as a conservation site designed to attract tourists.
BUSINESS SENSE
Seawater Farms Eritrea stresses its environmental credentials, but its shareholders also have an eye on profit.
The farm says it has already begun exporting shrimps to Europe and the United States using a cargo service provided by the German airline Lufthansa from the Eritrean capital Asmara.
It has not been easy. The project was started in 1998, when Eritrea and Ethiopia began a two year border war that devastated Eritrea's economy, pushing up costs.
Construction at the farm is behind schedule, but workers are aiming to raise production to an annual 300 tonnes of shrimps by the middle of next year, breaking even around the same time.
Managers talk of expanding the project to other sites along the coast - even across the region.
The shrimps, which sell for about $8 to $15 a kilo (2.2lb), could provide a major foreign exchange earner for countries like poverty-stricken Eritrea, whose government is a 50 percent partner.
"We can make a lot of money from this project," said Gherie Sebhatu, 25, an Eritrean student working as a pond manager. "Just like all Eritreans, I want Eritrea to develop," he said, scooping up a net of shrimps flashing silver in the sun.
Perhaps most importantly for the 340 staff - many of whom are students working for the government for nothing - the farm provides experience in a country lagging far behind in technology considered basic in the West.
"I can be a professional," said Yonas Redae, 25, supervising the shrimp hatchery. "If someone asks me what my profession is, I can say 'aquaculturalist'. I'm not embarrassed."
--------
Colorado Hazwaste Dumping Brings Record Sentence
July 12, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2002/2002-07-12-06.asp
DENVER, Colorado, A California business man has been handed the longest jail sentence in Colorado history for an environmental crime. Hormoz Pourat was sentenced to spend 17 years in jail and pay a $100,000 fine for violating Colorado's Organized Crime Control Act by illegally disposing of hazardous wastes from a dry cleaning business.
Pourat is one of the principal managers and owners of a hazardous waste management company known as AAD, which operated in Colorado and California. AAD accepted waste perchloroethylene dry cleaning solvent from dry cleaners in nine states throughout the western United States, promising to incinerate the wastes at licensed hazardous waste disposal sites.
Instead, the wastes ended up buried illegally in landfills or stored in rented facilities.
Pourat's sentence was based on a grand jury indictment in the state's first ever environmental case charging criminal racketeering.
Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar (Photo courtesy Office of the Attorney General)
"This is a landmark environmental crime case in which the defendants operated a criminal enterprise in flaunting our environmental laws, perpetrating a scam on victim businesses, and despoiling our environment," said Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar. "This prosecution and this sentence sends a message that we will prosecute those illegitimate businesses that use our environmental laws to perpetrate scams on businesses seeking to comply with environmental laws."
Hormoz Pourat, his brother Hormayoun (Harry) Pourat, and two corporations operated by them called AAD Disposal and AAD Distributors and Dry Cleaning Service were indicted in March 2001. AAD operated a hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facility in Vernon, California, and a transfer facility in Lakewood, Colorado, which also received waste from California and repackaged it for shipment to hazardous waste landfills in Idaho and Nevada.
Between February 1996 and March 2001, the Pourats and their businesses contracted with the dry cleaners to collect hazardous waste generated by the cleaners for treatment, storage and/or disposal, promising to conform to all state and federal laws and regulations. The waste picked up from the cleaners by AAD included both liquid perchloroethlyne wastes (PERC) - a chlorinated solvent also known as tetrachoroethylene -and filters or other solid material contaminated with PERC.
PERC is a central nervous system depressant and is known to cause liver and kidney damage. PERC has also been shown to be carcinogenic in animal studies and may cause mutations in unborn children.
PERC is listed as a hazardous waste because of its toxic properties as well as its potential to migrate into groundwater in harmful quantities when improperly disposed.
The state of Colorado charged the Pourats and their fellow defendants with a systematic criminal endeavor, charging hundreds of dry cleaners with fees for the collection and disposal of their hazardous waste.
Perchloroethylene is so toxic that many former dry cleaning shops, like this one in Jackson County, Michigan, become hazardous waste sites requiring special cleanup. (Photo courtesy U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
Hormoz Pourat admitted that AAD Colorado picked up both solid waste and liquid PERC waste from its client dry cleaners, and charged them fees to legally dispose of the wastes. The waste was then consolidated into drums at the Denver and Lakewood facilities, and much of the waste was then shipped to their California facility.
On many occasions, however, the California facility would simply falsify manifests and ship the drums of untreated waste back to Colorado, where the hazardous waste would be repackaged into cubic yard boxes. The boxes were then mislabeled and shipped for illegal disposal at hazardous waste landfills in Idaho and Nevada.
AAD's waste handling activities resulted in the illegal storage of hundreds of drums of wastes, many containing hazardous PERC waste, in Lakewood, Colorado. This waste's disposal ultimately fell to the landowner of the rented AAD facility.
Pourat also pleaded guilty to having made false descriptions of shipments of untreated wastes in order to have the waste illegally buried in Idaho and Nevada.
Hormoz Pourat pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering, a class 2 felony. Besides the criminal fine and jail sentence, Pourat was also ordered to pay for any necessary cleanup and for the investigative costs of Colorado's Jefferson County District Court.
Four AAD employees were also charged with various offenses. Two AAD Colorado managers, Robert Hearsch and Aaron Rios, pled guilty to violations of the Colorado Hazardous Waste Act and were sentenced to probation, community service, and assessed fines and costs.
Some dry cleaners, like Cleaning Concepts, Inc.'s Cleaner by Nature stores, have eliminated the use of toxic perchloroethylene in their cleaning processes. (Photo courtesy Cleaning Concepts Inc.)
Defendant Patricia Hajduch, another AAD Colorado manager, was convicted at trial on May 31, 2002 of violations of the Colorado Hazardous Waste Act and conspiracy to commit violations of the Waste Act and was sentenced to three years probation, community service, and ordered to pay about $80,000 in restitution.
The other principal owner of the companies, Harry Pourat, is believed to have fled the country to avoid prosecution, perhaps to his native country of Iran.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Iranian youth fight for social freedom
July 12, 2002
By Borzou Daragahi
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020712-26509382.htm
TEHRAN - Iranian authorities have begun cracking down again on signs of Western influence after years of relaxation of the Islamic republic's infamous social restrictions.
But as the gulf widens between the hard-liners and the rest of Iran, the young people - who form about 60 percent of Iran's population - have begun to defy and even fight back against the restrictions.
Semiofficial Islamic fundamentalist morality enforcers, who answer only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, have redeployed on the streets of this city of 12 million over the past two or three months, witnesses say.
Tehran Police Chief Morteza Talaei told reporters last month that "not dealing with social disorders would be an insult to the youth." Such "disorders" include everything from armed robbery to playing loud music to using tinted car windows.
In Tehran's Pasdaran Square one recent night, the rough, bearded men of the moral police, known as the Basiji militia, were out in full force, looking inside cars for unmarried couples.
In Vanak Square, a popular hangout for young people as well as prostitutes and their customers, police began roughing up youngsters and women and loading them into police vehicles. This time the youths, in greater numbers, fought back with their fists, and a near-riot ensued.
"It was crazy," said Saeed, a 24-year-old gypsy cabdriver who came upon the scene. "I thought to myself, 'It's going to be a long summer.'"
As the temperatures rise, newscasters have been warning women to dress more modestly, a message to young women who wear skimpier headscarves and overcoats with each passing day.
Once again, authorities have begun stopping cars and questioning young people. Once again, they have begun breaking up parties in private homes.
Mohammed Khordadian, a popular Los Angeles-based Iranian-American dancer, has been locked up in prison for three weeks after he was arrested in the airport on his way back to the United States. He was charged with "inciting and encouraging corruption among young people," according to media reports.
The police have even confiscated Barbie dolls from toy stores.
Some Iranians say the crackdown is connected to the third anniversary this week of the July 8, 1999, student uprising in which security forces cracked down violently on students protesting the closure of newspapers.
"Every time summer begins, they start to crack down," said the editor of a reformist newspaper.
But this summer, the discontent of the Iranians is growing more apparent.
A young man took a break last week from putting up banners on streetlights bearing pictures of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and an exhortation that Israel "must be eliminated."
"Look at what a sad shape I'm in that I have to put up these posters to make a living," said the man, who asked to be identified only as Koochaki. "The thing is, I happen to believe Israel is in the right."
Despite a ban on alcohol and threat of a whipping for all those caught with liquor, beer lovers continue to buy cans of decent ale at many grocery stores. Despite the ban on men and women dancing together, wild parties abound. And every Thursday night, at the beginning of the Iranian weekend, the streets of Tehran are alive with music and the tooting of car horns.
One recent evening on chic Jordan Street - officially called Africa Boulevard - young people cruised for members of the opposite sex, chatting with friends and blasting pop music as police and security forces pulled people out of cars, took names and issued summonses.
Sahel, a 24-year-old sociology student driving along the street, said he wasn't afraid of being arrested. "What have I got to lose?"
-----
Update on imprisoned objectors [Israel]
From: New Profile <lotahn@yahoo.com>
PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY
7 July 2002
Dear friends,
To the best of our knowledge, there are six objectors currently held in the military prisons of Israel. One of them, Ilan Windholtz, is serving his fourth prison term in a row (which requires especially massive pressure in his case).
This update contains an important novelty: letter of support sent to the prison address of the objector do not always reach their destination. The prison authorities do not always bother to distribute mail to prisoners, especially if there is a lot of mail to distribute. The novelty is that from now on you can send mail to the prisoners not only through the prison, but also in more reliable ways. See full details in the Recommended Action section below.
The rest of the update is divided, as usual, into three sections: information about objectors released from prison since the last update, information about imprisoned objectors and recommended action.
RELEASED PRISONERS
All the objectors whose cases we have reported in our last update were released from prison. Two of them (Ilan
Windholtz and Victor Sabransky) were imprisoned again (for the fourth and third time in a row respectively - see further details below). Objectors Rabia` Jihad Saad, Denis Ruttenburgh and Daniel Weinbach are not in prison right now, but might be imprisoned in the near future.
A special case is that of David Sonnschein. As you might recall from the previous update, Sonnschein, one of the originators of the "Letter of the Combatants" and a key figure in Courage to Refuse, was sentenced in a disciplinary procedure to 35 days in prison for his refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories. Sonnschein appealed to the High Court of Justice asking to be brought before a full military tribunal. The High Court of Justice announced that its final decision on the case will be given at a later date, but ordered that in the meanwhile Sonnschein should be released from prison. Thus, David Sonnschein has been released, at least for the time being, before his original release date.
R. B. N., an objector who wished to remain anonymous, and whose case was not reporter in our last update, finished serving 14 days in prison for his refusal to serve in reserves in the Occupied Territories several days ago. Another objector, Amit Bar-Tzedek, was sentenced a few weeks ago to 21 days of confinement to base due to his refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories. Amit is an activist of the Yesh-Gvul movement. He has already been imprisoned once for his refusal in early 2001. To the best of our knowledge, Amit's confinement term is over by now. He can be reached by e-mail at mailto:amitbt@zahav.net.il.
PRISONER REPORTS
This section contains information about all declared objectors we know to be held in prison at the moment. The information on the objectors is sorted according to the date on which the objector was arrested, with the most recent cases placed first. As usual, thanks to Yesh-Gvul and to Courage to Refuse for providing much of the information contained in this report.
1. Ilan Windholtz - 4th Imprisonment
Objector Ilan Windholtz, aged 18, was sentenced on July 2nd to 28 days in prison. This is his fourth consecutive prison term. In a brief statement he prepared for the occasion of his first imprisonment he wrote:
"I, Ilan Windholtz, hereby declare that I am unwilling to serve in any military unit, combatant or non-combatant, which fortifies our control over the Territories and/or the Palestinian people, and protects and strengthens the settlements and the occupation. I therefore request to be exempted from service in the Israeli army on grounds of conscience and ideology - an ideology opposed to the conceptions held by the Israel Defence Forces and the governments of the State of Israel since 1967. I am willing to bear the consequences of my stand, imprisonment included".
Ilan is due to be released from prison on July 27th. It is possible that he will be imprisoned again afterwards. His prison address is:
Ilan Windholtz
Military ID 7265473
Company A
Military Prison 4
Military Postal code 02507, IDF
Israel
Letters to Ilan can also be sent by e-mail to mailto:kesherq@bezeqint.net.
2. Plato Malinowsky Plato Malinowsky, a 30-year-old anthropology student from Jerusalem, was sentenced on July 1st to 28 days in prison for his refusal to perform reserves service in the Occupied Territories. He is due to be released on July 26th. His prison address is:
Plato Malinowsky
Officers' company
Military Prison 6
Military Postal code 01860, IDF
Israel
3. B. Z.
Objector B. Z. has requested that no details will be published regarding his case. He is currently held in Military Prison 6.
4. Gadi Sprukt
Gadi Sprukt, a philosophy student from Tel-Aviv, was sentenced on June 24th to 28 days in prison for his refusal to perform reserves service in the occupied territories. Gadi is due to be released on July 17th. His prison address is:
Gadi Sprukt
Military ID 5225917
Reserves company
Military Prison 6
Military Postal code 01860, IDF
Israel
Today (7 July) is Gadi's 25th birthday. He can be reached by calling the payphone in his prison ward. The number is ++972(0)4-954-20-09.
5. Udy Orr
Udy Orr, a 29-year-old geography student from Jerusalem, was sentenced on June 24th to 28 days in prison for his refusal to perform reserves service in the occupied territories. Udy is due to be released on July 17th. His prison address is:
Lieut. Udy Orr
Military ID 5107996
Officers' company
Military Prison No. 6
Military postal code 01860, IDF
Israel
Letters to Udy can also be sent by e-mail to mailto:udyor@lycos.com.
6. Victor Sabransky - 3rd Imprisonment
Victor Sabransky, an 18-year-old draft resister from Haifa, was sentenced on 23 June to 28 days in prison. This is his third prison term in a row. In a letter to the Minister of Defence announcing his objection Victor wrote:
"I was raised on democratic values... I believe in full equality among people... I am sure the main reason I have not yet declared refusal is the fear... and the social pressure applied... by the Israeli society to enlist in the State's military forces... I am not a soldier at all, I am still a boy and I was born into this world to live and not to die in the Territories for the misguided policy of the State and the Military..."
Victor should to be released from prison on 18 July. His prison address is:
Victor Sabransky
Military ID 7312440
Military Prison 4
Military Postal code 02507, IDF
Israel
7. Guy Rosin
Guy Rosin, 37 years old, married and father of two daughters, was sentenced on June 16th to 28 days in Prison for refusing to serve in the occupied territories. Guy is supposed to be released on July 11th. His Military Prison Address is:
Guy Rosin
Military ID 3777618
Reserves company
Military Prison No. 6
Military postal code 01860, IDF
Israel.
Letters to Guy can also be sent by e-mail to mailto:daphna_r@zahav.net.il.
RECOMMENDED ACTION
First of all, please circulate this message and the information contained in it as widely as possible, not only through e-mail, but also on websites, conventional media, by word of mouth, etc.
Please send the prisoners your messages of support to the addresses above.
Adi Leibovici, an activist of Courage to Refuse, has started an important new initiative. She opened a mailbox through which you can send letters of support to all imprisoned objectors. This way of sending letters is definitely more reliable than sending letters to the objector's prison address. The prison authorities do not always pass the mail on to the prisoners (especially when they receive a lot of it). The letters sent to the new mailbox, on the other hand, will be given to the objectors by their family members on visits and in other similar ways. It is thus almost certain that they will reach their destination.
Another important advantage of this way of sending letters to objectors lies in the fact that you can now also send letters of support to prisoners who wished to remain anonymous.
Letters should be sent with the prisoner's name in the "To:" field, to:
POB 16238
Tel-Aviv
Israel.
When possible, please send your letters of support to objectors to both addresses. Letters sent to prison do not always reach their final destination, but they certainly apply pressure to the prison authorities, even if they are just piled up somewhere in the prison.
In addition, please send letters of protest on behalf of the objectors to:
Mr. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer,
Minister of Defence,
Ministry of Defence,
37 Kaplan St.,
Tel-Aviv 61909,
Israel.
E-mail: mailto:sar@mod.gov.il or mailto:pniot@mod.gov.il
Fax: ++972-3-696-27-57 / ++972-3-691-69-40 / ++972-3-691-79-15
Copies can be sent to the commanders of the prisons at:
Commander of Military Prison No. 6,
Military Prison No. 6,
Military postal number 01860,
IDF
Israel.
Fax: ++972-4-869-28-84
Commander of Military Prison No. 4,
Military Prison No. 4,
Military postal number 02507,
IDF
Israel.
Fax: ++972-3-957-52-76
Another useful address for sending copies would be the Military Attorney General:
Brig. Gen. Menachem Finklestein
Chief Military Attorney
Military postal code 9605
IDF
Israel
Fax: ++972-3-569-43-70
In the cases of draft resisters (Victor Sabransky and Ilan Windholtz) it would be especially useful to send your appeals to the Commander of the Induction Base in Tel-Hashomer. It is this officer that ultimately decides whether a draft resister is to be exempted from military service or sent to another round in prison:
Commander of Induction Base, Tel-Hashomer
Military Postal Code 02718, IDF
Israel.
Fax: ++972-3-737-60-52
Copies of appeals in the cases of Ilan Windholtz and Victor Sabransky can also be sent to:
Head of Incompatibles Unit
Induction Base (Baqum)
Tel-Hashomer
Fax: ++972-3-737-67-05.
Addresses of additional military and government officials, as well as those of some Israeli media, to which you can send copies of your appeals, can be found at this web address: http://www.newprofile.org/english/Summery_CO_01.html (see the bottom of the page).
Please be aware that writing to the media at this time is more important than ever.
A standard sample letter is available at the bottom of the same web page (http://www.newprofile.org/english/Summery_CO_01.html#sample). However it would be advisable to adjust your letter to the particular circumstances of the case.
In the cases of Victor Sabransky and Ilan Windholtz it is important to raise the legal argument that a person may not be sentenced more than once for the same offence.
Of course, many other things can be done. Any form of public support for objectors and public denouncing of war crimes is welcome, be it in the form of holding vigils, painting graffiti on walls or whatever comes to your minds.
Finally, Yesh-Gvul issued a call for groups to "adopt" objectors. For further information on this initiative, please contact
mailto:peretz@yesh-gvul.org.
All the best and thanks,
Amir Givol and Sergeiy Sandler - New Profile.
PS: For those among you who got this message forwarded or read it on a website - you can receive updates and information about imprisoned objectors directly by subscribing to a mailing list especially dedicated to this subject. To subscribe, send a blank message to: mailto:NewProfileCO-subscribe@topica.com.
New Profile - Movement for the Civil-ization of Israeli Society POB 48005, Tel-Aviv 61480, Israel E-mail: mailto:newprofile@speedy.co.il Voice box: ++972-(0)3-516-01-19 Website: http://www.newprofile.org/
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.