Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Australian Nuclear Probe Combats Acid Mine Waste, Salinity
Israeli DU against Egyptian tanks
U.N. Inspectors Arrive in Iraq
The inspectors' arsenal
Safety fears over Japan spent nuclear fuel plant
CIA says North Korea could produce more nuclear arms
President Bush Signs Homeland Security Act
Bush is calm and in charge
MILITARY
Wishful Thinking on Afghanistan
Kenya's Peace Dividends
China denies transferring Ukraine radar systems to Iraq
Blair Faces Dissent Over Possible Iraq War
Iran's reform leaders may quit
ALLIANCES U.S. Is Wooing a Shiite Exile to Rattle Iraq
Groups Begin Plans to Clean Up Vieques
CIA agents try to buy intelligence
Unexploded Arms Require Big Cleanup At 16,000 U.S. Sites
Pentagon's exercises help journalists
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
The Price of Paranoia
Big Brother Is Back
Bush Signs Bill for New Agency;
Homeland Security to Overhaul U.S. Government
Bin Laden 'letter' threatens civilians
Panel Calls for High-Tech Warning System
ENERGY AND OTHER
US gov't, industry see no alternative for oil soon
Honda to market fuel cell car from Dec 2
BP Solar to Cut Va. Jobs
US renewable energy use falls to 12-year low
Wind farms may make UK overcapacity worse
UK wants offshore wind farms focused, costs cut
Subsidies boost German solar energy industry - study
U.S. SECRETLY LOADS UP ON OIL IN CASE OF WAR
ACTIVISTS
Berrigan still rails against war
Russian Anti-Nuclear Groups Under Close Scrutiny
Greenpeace wins right to challenge UK nuclear aid
S.Korean Students Firebomb U.S. Base in Protest
nationwide petition for a full and public investigation into 9-11
PROTESTING WAR WITH IRAQ
Pentagon Papers' Ellsberg Sees Deja Vu in Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- australia
Australian Nuclear Probe Combats Acid Mine Waste, Salinity
November 25, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-25-19.asp#anchor5
SYDNEY, Australia, A nuclear probe developed for minerals exploration and mining by the government research organization CSIRO may soon be used to combat some of the world's biggest environmental problems - acid rain, acid mine drainage, and excess salinity.
"Acid rain is caused when high sulphur fossil fuels are burnt," says Dr. Mihai Borsaru, a nuclear physicist at CSIRO Exploration and Mining. "Australian coal is low in sulphur, but some coal extracted from Europe and North America is not. Armed with data from the probe, companies will be able to leave high sulphur coals in the ground."
Initially designed for the mining industry, the probe is being evaluated for its potential as an environmental management tool.
The probe centres on neutron capture in a technique called prompt gamma neutron activation analysis.
Neutrons emitted by a source, the artificial isotope californium-252, hit the rock and are captured by the nuclei of atoms in it. The nuclei are now slightly heavier and in an excited state. They relax by ejecting gamma rays, the energy of which shows the identity of the elements.
The probe complements chemical analysis, and CSIRO scientists say that since it investigates bulk properties, it generates data that is more representative than chemical data.
"Sulphur is the bane of the mining industry," said Dr. Borsaru. "High concentrations in waste rock, cause acid mine drainage. The sulphur oxidizes and combines with water to form sulphuric acid, which, in high volumes, wreaks havoc on the environment."
He told the Industrial Radioisotopes and Radiation Measurement Applications conference in Bologna, Italy recently that the probe would optimize the management of waste rock.
"It will provide mining companies with accurate sulphur readings in boreholes," he said.
Overseas the probe could help prevent acid rain, and CSIRO also hopes to use the probe to measure salt concentrations in soil as part of its fight against dryland salinity.
-------- depleted uranium
Israeli DU against Egyptian tanks
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002
From: "Piotr Bein" piotr.bein@imag.net
According to the first chapter of Meissonnier and Trilling's book, "Uranium appaucri: la guerre invisible", Editions Robert Laffont, 2001, the Israeli forces used DU bullets against Egyptian tanks in the 1970's.
I do not read French, could anybody add details, please.
Was the information checked and is it trustworthy?
Piotr Bein
-------- inspections
U.N. Inspectors Arrive in Iraq
November 25, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/international/25CND-IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - The campaign to eliminate Iraq's most deadly weapons officially began today, as the first United Nations inspectors arrived in Baghdad toting thick dossiers on hundreds of potential weapons sites, from warehouses to clinics to breweries to petrochemical plants.
The team plans to make its first inspection on Wednesday, when it will scour an undisclosed site for tell-tale equipment, chemicals and documents that could provide clues that Iraq has rekindled covert biological, chemical and nuclear programs since 1998, when United Nations inspectors last withdrew.
The initial searches will probably involve well-known sites long associated with Iraq's weapons programs, and are expected to be essentially warm-up exercises unlikely to produce confrontations or much evidence, according to United Nations officials and other arms control experts.
But in the coming weeks, the inspections will become increasingly aggressive and less predictable as the team gains experience, expands its fleet of jeeps and German helicopters and grows to its full size: 80 to 100 people by the end of the year.
A United Nations plane landed at Saddam International Airport in Baghdad in the late afternoon Iraqi time carrying the team of 17 inspectors, who earlier gathered at a United Nations base in Cyprus.
The team is led by Hans Blix, an experienced veteran of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but includes many people with less experience, including some who have never been to Iraq before.
"I think Blix is under immense, quiet pressure from the United States," said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"If he doesn't go to core inspection areas quickly, he understands he will be in a quiet confrontation with the United States," Mr. Cordesman said. What concerns American and United Nations officials most are two potential Iraqi innovations for hiding weapons: mobile biological weapons labs and underground or urban facilities for chemical and nuclear weapons.
Weapons experts say the new urban sites are probably housed in ordinary-looking warehouses and commercial buildings in densely populated areas, where they would be harder to detect by spy satellites and somewhat shielded from American bombs.
"It would be like something from `The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,' where you go in a plain storefront and suddenly find yourself in a weapons lab," said David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, referring to the 1960's television spy series.
The inspectors will be following a three-part strategy, former inspectors and United Nations officials say. First, they will search for clear evidence of weapons production that could lead directly to charges that Iraq is in "material breach" of United Nations Resolution 1441 requiring it to disarm.
But given President Saddam Hussein's expertise at hiding weapons, officials say it is more likely that violations will be documented incrementally, through painstaking detective work that could take months.
To that end, inspectors will be meticulously documenting two other types of evidence: patterns of deceit and attempts to obstruct inspections. These could range from disabling jeeps to destroying documents to refusing to account for weapons materials that inspectors are certain exist.
"The strategy is to come up with a dossier of deception," said Dr. Raymond A. Zilinskas, a former United Nations weapons inspector who is now with the Monterey Institute for International Studies in California.
A crucial point will come on Dec. 8, when Iraq is required to produce a comprehensive list of all its weapons sites and dual-use installations: industrial plants, agricultural sites, medical labs and research centers that could have both civilian and military uses. Iraq has hundreds, possibly thousands, of such sites.
The declaration must also account for weapons materials that inspectors had documented before 1998: hundreds of artillery shells potentially filled with mustard gas, Scud missiles capable of carrying chemical or biological warheads, hundreds of tons of poison gases, and seed stock for biological agents like anthrax or botulinum toxin.
"The declaration will be huge," said Gustavo Zlauvinen, the New York representative of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will handle the nuclear weapons inspections. "It will take weeks to get through."
The declaration will immediately be sent to New York, where a team of 17 analysts will begin checking it against a vast archive containing a million pages of procurement records, blueprints, satellite photos and intelligence cables compiled over the last decade.
"If the declaration is patently false and everybody can see it," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Thursday, "if he does not let the inspectors do their job, then the president is fully ready to take the necessary step, which is military force."
Another important task for the inspectors will be to interview Iraqi scientists and search for defectors. One such defector helped inspectors discover and nearly dismantle Iraq's nuclear weapons program in 1991. Many experts say the more bellicose the United States is about an invasion, the greater the likelihood of high-level defections.
"I don't think the inspectors have an idea where to look for these things," said Kelly Motz, editor of Iraq Watch, an arms control group.
"Predators and satellites are great," Ms. Motz said, referring to pilotless drones, "but you need people inside buildings."
With an economy that is heavily reliant on the petrochemical industry, Iraq has a large number of dual-use plants that could be involved in manufacturing chemical weapons. Typical of them is Fallujah II, a major producer of precursor agents for blister and nerve gases before the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The plant, northwest of Baghdad, has been upgraded in the last two years and production of chlorine and phenol, which also have civilian uses, has increased, Western intelligence officials say.
Tracking Iraq's nuclear weapons sites is considered less complicated because of the radioactivity they emit and because the United Nations compiled a detailed picture of Iraq's program in the early 1990's. Since then, Western intelligence agencies believe that Iraq has reconstituted its program and tried to purchase specialized aluminum tubes that could be used for enriching uranium. Some experts, however, think the tubes are for benign purposes. Inspectors are likely to check nuclear research centers at Tuwaitha and Al Furat, where construction work has been detected and which might be hiding gas centrifuge equipment for enriching uranium, Western officials assert. They will also inspect nuclear medicine clinics to account for radioactive materials that could be used in dirty bombs.
"It's much easier to detect nuclear signatures," said Mr. Zlauvinen of the atomic energy agency.
Biological weapons materials are another matter, because they can be smaller, harder to detect and easier to move. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld warned this year that Iraq had created mobile biological labs that would be difficult to bomb.
Major sites historically involved in biological weapons production include Al Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Facility, which was recently renovated, and the castor oil production plant at Fallujah III, which can be used to produce ricin toxin.
Western intelligence officials also say Iraq's efforts to develop missiles capable of traveling from 600 to 1,000 kilometers, or about 400 to 600 miles, have been reinvigorated. Under previous United Nations resolutions, Iraq is only allowed missiles with ranges under 150 kilometers, or about 90 miles.
British and American intelligence agencies have recently released satellite photos showing construction at two sites that might be used for building and testing longer range missiles: Al Mamoun solid rocket motor production plant and Al Rafah/Shahiyat liquid propellant test site. At some point, the inspectors will also try to search eight so-called presidential palaces. Iraq had placed restrictions on the inspectors' access to the palaces. These are huge complexes, each with official residences, Republican Guard barracks and dozens, even hundreds, of support buildings. Mr. Hussein also has direct control of dozens of smaller office buildings and complexes that are on the inspectors' list. Many experts said they would be surprised if inspectors found much clear evidence of prohibited activity at these or other well-known weapons sites - precisely because they are well known.
But the mere effort to gain access to the palaces could create confrontations that would fuel the Bush administration's argument for military action. Iraq has suggested in letters to the United Nations that it expects inspectors to show respect for its "security, independence and sovereignty," which some experts consider code words for restricting access to the palaces.
"This was never about purely marble palaces," said Ewen Buchanan, the spokesman for the United Nations inspection team. "It is about Iraq trying to put sites out of bounds. But there are no sanctuaries in Iraq. All of Iraq is open to inspections."
----
The inspectors' arsenal
By Jim Krane
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 25, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20021125-52292877.htm
NEW YORK - Advances in technology have given inspectors from the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency the ability to quickly sniff out telltale microbes or molecules that could signify chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq.
"Sensors have gotten much more sensitive over the last four years," said Ewen Buchanan, chief spokesman for the inspection team, which is to return to Iraq Wednesday after being ousted in 1998. "A lot of equipment that might've required a whole room has been shrunk and is more usable in the field."
In the 1990s, U.N. inspectors dismantled Iraq's nuclear program and destroyed stocks of chemical and biological weapons and longer-range missiles forbidden by postwar U.N. resolutions.
But some weapons are believed to have survived - or been rebuilt.
The 100 or so inspectors - backed by a tough U.N. Security Council resolution - plan to ferret out any remaining arms by draping Iraq in a surveillance net that knits together particle detectors, satellite imagery, ground-penetrating radar, sensors and cameras that beam live video back to Vienna, Austria.
Most important, analysts say, is knowing where to point the gadgets.
Inspectors will need a detective's intuition, prescient intelligence and tips from Iraqi scientists and defectors. They also will need to be able to recognize what, say, a Scud missile's turbo pump looks like, Mr. Buchanan said.
"We can assume Iraqis have moved all sensitive pieces of evidence," said former U.N. inspector Victor Mizin. "Without some data provided by the [Iraqi] government, the inspections won't find anything meaningful."
Still, inspectors are bringing in plenty of high-tech sleuthing gear, all funded - like the entire inspection process - by the sale of Iraqi oil, Mr. Buchanan said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency's 20 nuclear weapons inspectors will scout sites with gamma radiation detectors mounted on helicopters or held in the hand, spokesman Peter Rickwood said.
The agency owns more than 100 analyzers like the FieldSpec by Germany's Target Systemelectronic, a hand-held scanner that can detect radioactive isotopes.
Atomic energy agency inspectors also will wield a portable sensor known as the Ranger, developed by Quantrad Sensors of Madison, Wis. It uses X-ray fluorescence to pick out alloys useful in nuclear weapons.
The agency will install as many as 700 digital cameras in suspected weapons factories that will beam real-time video to the agency's headquarters. It also will install water sensors in 50 places and air sensors in others, Mr. Rickwood said.
While the agency tracks nuclear items, the U.N. inspectors will seek banned missile components and the remnants of leader Saddam Hussein's biological arsenal - including anthrax and botulinum toxin - and chemical agents sarin, VX and mustard gas.
Ground-penetrating radar - perhaps mounted on a helicopter or unmanned drone - may be used to reveal buried weapons and underground bunkers, officials said.
One hand-held scanner that probably will find its way into Iraq is the $9,000 Chemical Agent Monitor, or CAM, made by Smiths Detection, a British defense contractor. The 4-pound device uses ion mobility spectrometry, the same technology used in airports to find traces of explosives or drugs on luggage.
Others available for use in Iraq are the Handheld Advanced Nucleic Acid Analyzer (HANAA) and Chemlab hand-held detectors built at the Department of Energy.
Inspectors seeking pathogens probably will use portable detectors like Idaho Technology's $55,000 Ruggedized Advanced Pathogen Identification Device (RAPID). The company donated a pair of the scanners to the United Nations and was training inspectors in their use last week, said Kim Woodhouse, the Salt Lake City company's marketing manager.
The machines can detect nine bioweapons in about 20 minutes by using a polymerase chain reaction, which immerses a sample in a chemical bath designed to identify the agent.
The machines are so sensitive that they can detect pathogens if a suspected bioweapons lab has been cleaned up. All they need is one microorganism, live or dead. said Rocco Casagrande, a U.N. weapons inspector. Mr. Casa-grande is a scientist with Surface Logix, a Boston biotech firm.
"You look for places that haven't been cleaned very well - any kind of crack or crevice that it could be hiding in," he said.
If Iraq is determined to conceal some of its weapons, inspectors will have a tougher time finding some programs - like a biological weapons lab - than, say, a nuclear weapons program for enriching uranium.
Further complicating the search, raw materials for the world's most lethal weapons have vital civilian uses in medicine, pesticides and vaccines. Some, like anthrax, occur in nature.
-------- japan
Safety fears over Japan spent nuclear fuel plant
REUTERS JAPAN:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18749/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
TOKYO - A Japanese nuclear fuel reprocessing plant due to open in 2005 will pump out massive amounts of radioactive gas, threatening health and the environment, and should be scrapped, activists said.
The plant at Rokkasho on the windswept northern tip of Japan's main island, Honshu, would be Japan's first commercial plant for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. Its opening has already been delayed twice.
Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said the plant would release into the atmosphere massive amounts of radioactive Krypton-85 gas, which has the potential to cause cancer.
"For the sake of the environment, human health and non-proliferation, this facility has to be scrapped before one gram of nuclear material is introduced," Kazue Suzuki, nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace Japan, said in a statement.
Japan's nuclear industry is under harsh scrutiny following a scandal at Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) , the country's biggest power utility, which admitted it had falsified nuclear safety records.
The Rokkasho plant is a key link in resource-poor Japan's ambitions to create a domestic nuclear fuel chain in which uranium recycled from spent fuel would be used repeatedly at nuclear power plants, the source of roughly a third of the domestic power supply.
When completed, the plant will be capable of reprocessing 800 tonnes of the roughly 900 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel that pour out of Japan's nuclear power plants every year.
Greenpeace said that that the United States and Germany had both changed plans to build similar plants because of the potential emission of radioactive Krypton-85.
"High levels of krypton will be detected not only around the plant, but also throughout Japan, in many cases hundreds and thousands of times stronger than regular background levels," Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International told Reuters.
"It makes no economic sense, no environmental sense, and no health sense."
An official at the division in Japan's Trade Ministry concerned with nuclear safety said that the government had investigated and was sure that all precautions would be taken.
"We cannot say that the amount of radioactive gas to be released will be exactly zero, but it will not be in any amounts that are detrimental to health," the official said.
Intermittent problems in Japan's nuclear industry have fanned safety concerns, most recently in September, when TEPCO said it had failed to accurately report cracks in the structure of nuclear reactors found during safety checks in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Japan's worst nuclear accident took place at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, in September 1999, exposing hundreds of nearby residents, plant workers and emergency personnel to radiation.
Two of the plant workers later died.
-------- korea
CIA says North Korea could produce more nuclear arms
REUTERS USA:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18747/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
WASHINGTON - North Korea is building a plant that by the middle of the decade could produce enough uranium for two or more nuclear weapons a year, a CIA analysis said.
"We recently learned that the North is constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational - which could be as soon as mid-decade," the unclassified analysis said.
The CIA previously estimated that North Korea had one or two nuclear weapons using plutonium produced before 1992. The recent analysis was sent to Congress and obtained by Reuters.
North Korea stopped plutonium production in 1994 under the terms of an agreement with the United States.
"We have assessed, however, that despite the freeze at Yongbyon, the North has continued its nuclear weapons program," the CIA analysis said, referring to the site of a plutonium reprocessing plant.
Under the 1994 pact, North Korea agreed to freeze nuclear weapon activities in return for a $5 billion package that included two light-water nuclear power reactors and 500,000 tonnes annually of heavy fuel oil.
But a revelation in recent months that North Korea was pursuing a program to produce highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, prompted a U.S. decision to suspend fuel oil shipments in an effort to force the North Koreans to abandon their nuclear arms program.
If North Korea abandoned the 1994 agreement it could resume production of plutonium. Reprocessing spent reactor fuel in storage at Yongbyon "would recover enough plutonium for several more weapons," the analysis said.
"The United States has been suspicious that North Korea has been working on uranium enrichment for several years. However, we did not obtain clear evidence indicating the North had begun constructing a centrifuge facility until recently," it said.
"We assess that North Korea embarked on the effort to develop a centrifuge-based uranium enrichment program about two years ago," the CIA analysis said.
North Korea began seeking centrifuge-related materials "in large quantities" last year, and obtained equipment that could be used in uranium feed and withdrawal systems, the analysis said.
-------- us politics
President Bush Signs Homeland Security Act
White House,
November 25, 2002
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/11/20021125-6.html
Remarks by the President at the Signing of H.R. 5005 the Homeland Security Act of 2002 The East Room 1:30 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thanks for coming. Thanks for the warm welcome, and welcome to the White House.
Today, we are taking historic action to defend the United States and protect our citizens against the dangers of a new era. With my signature, this act of Congress will create a new Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that our efforts to defend this country are comprehensive and united.
The new department will analyze threats, will guard our borders and airports, protect our critical infrastructure, and coordinate the response of our nation for future emergencies. The Department of Homeland Security will focus the full resources of the American government on the safety of the American people. This essential reform was carefully considered by Congress and enacted with strong bipartisan majorities.
I want to thank Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security Advisor, for his hard work on this initiative. I want to thank all the members of my Cabinet who are here for their work. I want to thank the members of Congress who are with us today, particularly those members of Congress who were essential to the passage, many of whom stand up here on the stage with me. One member not with us is our mutual friend from Texas, Phil Gramm. I appreciate his hard work. I thank the work of Senator Fred Thompson and Senator Joe Lieberman. I appreciate Zell Miller and Don Nickles' hard work as well. We've got a lot of members from the House here and I want to thank you all for coming. I particularly want to pay homage to Dick Armey, who shepherded the bill to the floor of the House of Representatives. I'll miss him -- I'm not so sure everybody will. (Laughter and applause.)
President George W. Bush addresses the media during the signing of the Homeland Security Act in the East Room Monday, Nov. 25. White House photo by Paul Morse. I thank Tom DeLay for making sure the bill got passed. I thank Rob Portman for his hard work. And I want to thank Ellen Tauscher as well for her leadership on this issue.
I appreciate Kay James of the Office of Personnel Management who worked so hard to make sure this effort was understood by everybody in our government, and I want to thank the other administration officials who are here, many of whom are going to be responsible for seeing to it this new department functions well.
I want to thank all the local and state officials who are here with us today. I see governors and county judges, mayors for coming. My own mayor -- the Mayor of Washington, D.C., I appreciate you coming, Mr. Mayor.
I want to thank the local and state law enforcement officials who are here, the chiefs of police and fire chiefs who are with us today. I see the chief of my city now is here as well. Thank you, Mr. Chief, for coming.
I want to thank the union representatives who are here. We look forward to working with you to make sure that your people are treated fairly in this new department. I want to thank the federal workers who are here. You're charged with being on the front line of protecting America. I understand your job, we look forward to working with you to make sure you get your job done. I want to thank the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council as well. And thank you all for coming.
From the morning of September the 11th, 2001, to this hour, America has been engaged in an unprecedented effort to defend our freedom and our security. We're fighting a war against terror with all our resources, and we're determined to win.
With the help of many nations, with the help of 90 nations, we're tracking terrorist activity, we're freezing terrorist finances, we're disrupting terrorist plots, we're shutting down terrorist camps, we're on the hunt one person at a time. Many terrorists are now being interrogated. Many terrorists have been killed. We've liberated a country.
We recognize our greatest security is found in the relentless pursuit of these cold-blooded killers. Yet, because terrorists are targeting America, the front of the new war is here in America. Our life changed and changed in dramatic fashion on September the 11th, 2001.
In the last 14 months, every level of our government has taken steps to be better prepared against a terrorist attack. We understand the nature of the enemy. We understand they hate us because of what we love. We're doing everything we can to enhance security at our airports and power plants and border crossings. We've deployed detection equipment to look for weapons of mass destruction. We've given law enforcement better tools to detect and disrupt terrorist cells which might be hiding in our own country.
And through separate legislation I signed earlier today, we will strengthen security at our nation's 361 seaports, adding port security agents, requiring ships to provide more information about the cargo, crew and passengers they carry. And I want to thank the members of Congress for working hard on this important piece of legislation as well.
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 takes the next critical steps in defending our country. The continuing threat of terrorism, the threat of mass murder on our own soil will be met with a unified, effective response.
Dozens of agencies charged with homeland security will now be located within one Cabinet department with the mandate and legal authority to protect our people. America will be better able to respond to any future attacks, to reduce our vulnerability and, most important, prevent the terrorists from taking innocent American lives.
The Department of Homeland Security will have nearly 170,000 employees, dedicated professionals who will wake up each morning with the overriding duty of protecting their fellow citizens. As federal workers, they have rights, and those rights will be fully protected. And I'm grateful that the Congress listened to my concerns and retained the authority of the President to put the right people in the right place at the right time in the defense of our country.
I've great confidence in the men and women who will serve in this department and in the man I've asked to lead it. As I prepare to sign this bill into law, I am pleased to announce that I will nominate Governor Tom Ridge as our nation's first Secretary of Homeland Security. (Applause.)
Americans know Tom as an experienced public servant and as the leader of our homeland security efforts since last year. Tom accepted that assignment in urgent circumstances, resigning as the governor of Pennsylvania to organize the White House Office of Homeland Security and to develop a comprehensive strategy to protect the American people. He's done a superb job. He's the right man for this new and great responsibility. (Applause.)
We're going to put together a fine team to work with Tom. The Secretary of the Navy, Gordon England, will be nominated for the post of Deputy Secretary. (Applause.)
And Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, now the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, will be nominated to serve as Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security. (Applause.)
The Secretary-designate and his team have an immense task ahead of them. Setting up the Department of Homeland Security will involve the most extensive reorganization of the federal government since Harry Truman signed the National Security Act. To succeed in their mission, leaders of the new department must change the culture of many diverse agencies -- directing all of them toward the principal objective of protecting the American people. The effort will take time, and focus, and steady resolve. It will also require full support from both the administration and the Congress. Adjustments will be needed along the way. Yet this is pressing business, and the hard work of building a new department begins today.
When the Department of Homeland Security is fully operational, it will enhance the safety of our people in very practical ways.
First, this new department will analyze intelligence information on terror threats collected by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and others. The department will match this intelligence against the nation's vulnerabilities -- and work with other agencies, and the private sector, and state and local governments to harden America's defenses against terror.
Second, the department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism, and the even worse danger of nuclear, chemical, and biological terrorism. This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack.
Third, state and local governments will be able to turn for help and information to one federal domestic security agency, instead of more than 20 agencies that currently divide these responsibilities. This will help our local governments work in concert with the federal government for the sake of all the people of America.
Fourth, the new department will bring together the agencies responsible for border, coastline, and transportation security. There will be a coordinated effort to safeguard our transportation systems and to secure the border so that we're better able to protect our citizens and welcome our friends.
Fifth, the department will work with state and local officials to prepare our response to any future terrorist attack that may come. We have found that the first hours and even the first minutes after the attack can be crucial in saving lives, and our first responders need the carefully planned and drilled strategies that will make their work effective.
The Department of Homeland Security will also end a great deal of duplication and overlapping responsibilities. Our objective is to spend less on administrators in offices and more on working agents in the field -- less on overhead and more on protecting our neighborhoods and borders and waters and skies from terrorists.
With a vast nation to defend, we can neither predict nor prevent every conceivable attack. And in a free and open society, no department of government can completely guarantee our safety against ruthless killers, who move and plot in shadows. Yet our government will take every possible measure to safeguard our country and our people.
We're fighting a new kind of war against determined enemies. And public servants long into the future will bear the responsibility to defend Americans against terror. This administration and this Congress have the duty of putting that system into place. We will fulfill that duty. With the Homeland Security Act, we're doing everything we can to protect America. We're showing the resolve of this great nation to defend our freedom, our security and our way of life.
It's now my privilege to sign the Homeland Security Act of 2002. (Applause.)
(The bill is signed.)
END 1:46 P.M. EST
----
Bush is calm and in charge
November 25, 2002
BY ROBERT NOVAK,
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak25.html
On the plane ride to Prague for last week's NATO summit, President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell sat side by side for hours talking about the confrontation with Iraq. When he reached the Czech capital, Powell called his friend and alter ego, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, to describe the president's mood of calm deliberation.
Yet, addressing students in Prague last Wednesday, the president's saber-rattling speech spawned headlines worldwide. He made the Dec. 8 deadline, imposed by the United Nations for Saddam Hussein to inventory weapons of mass destruction, sound like an ultimatum. ''Should he again deny that this arsenal exists,'' said Bush, ''he will have entered his final stage with a lie.'' The president implied that, without waiting for the verdict of UN weapons inspectors just arrived back in Baghdad, the Iraqi dictator would suffer ''the severest consequences.''
How does this fierce public rhetoric square with the president's private restraint? To one of Powell's associates, Bush was just cooling off ''the red-meat eaters at the Pentagon.'' Knowledgeable senators agree that the president is in control, taking a measured course toward Saddam that is far removed from unilateral attacks. It may end in war, but that is no longer Bush's goal, if it ever was. In Prague, he never returned to his abandoned goal of ''regime change'' in Baghdad.
The president is dealing with no mere disagreement inside his administration over tactics but a debate over the U.S. role in the Middle East and the world. Bush has gone well beyond what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and their non-government advisers always have opposed. They did not want UN involvement, weapons inspectors, coalition building or even an active role by Colin Powell. Until Bush accepted Powell's advice on returning UN weapons inspectors, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld publicly dismissed renewed inspections as a waste of time.
Once it became clear that Saddam would agree to inspectors, Richard Perle--chairman of the Defense Policy Board--attacked the credibility of Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix. By the time he arrived in Baghdad last week, Blix had been a dartboard for advocates of attack-Iraq-now.
In a CNN interview with Rumsfeld from Prague last Thursday, I asked about Perle's criticism. ''Mr. Perle is speaking for himself and not speaking as an official of the U.S. government,'' he said, but hardly delivered a ringing endorsement of the Swedish diplomat. ''I don't know Mr. Blix,'' he told me, then sounded skeptical about ''any inspector'' being successful in Iraq. That contrasts with the hero's welcome that Bush gave Blix at the White House after he pressed the Security Council for adoption of the Iraq resolution.
Beyond inspections, Powell stands athwart an Israel-centric policy in the Middle East that would reshape the region's balance of power to U.S.-Israeli specifications. The world's staunchest advocate of direct action against Iraq has been Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who continues to make clear, privately and publicly, that Saddam's removal from power would deliver a devastating blow to Palestinian terrorists.
According to the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz strategic thinking, the change of regime in oil-rich Iraq would enable an end to traditional U.S. energy dependence on and military alliance with Saudi Arabia. In contrast, Powell is still seeking a resolution of Iraq's fate under which the Saudi royal regime would remain allied with Washington.
These deep disagreements within the administration were exacerbated last week when the Washington Post published excerpts of Bob Woodward's new book, Bush at War, which certainly came off more favorable to Powell than Rumsfeld. Complaints have flowed from Powell's critics that the secretary of state opened up to the author to help himself and damage his adversaries. In truth, the president directed White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to instruct all officials to cooperate fully with Woodward.
Aggravation about the Woodward book is a symbol of deeper concerns by the administration's hawks. If Saddam opposes or stalls the inspectors, he surely faces multinational military action to seal his fate. But what if he cooperates and no cache of weapons is found? The calm and collected George W. Bush who talked with Powell on the way to Prague seems ready to accept that outcome.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Wishful Thinking on Afghanistan
By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, November 25, 2002
Washington Post; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34770-2002Nov24?language=printer
Major General Akin Zorlu, commander of the international peacekeepers in Afghanistan, is not a swashbuckling, charge-right-at-'em sort. He speaks steadily, fingering a pen with elegant gold trimmings; his spectacles give him a studious appearance. If you ask him about U.S. policy, he's politely diplomatic. But if you listen between the lines of his pronouncements, you get a different message.
The message is that Pentagon and NATO strategy is hopelessly wishful. At the Prague summit last Thursday, NATO's leaders declared that "responsibility for providing security and law and order throughout Afghanistan resides with the Afghans themselves."
Which Afghans, precisely, are supposed to play this role?
Perhaps NATO's leaders were alluding to Afghan police forces. Here's Zorlu's description of that option. "If you visit any police station you see that they have 50 police officers or soldiers but only two very primitive guns and two bicycles. No radio assets, no vehicles, nothing.
"In Afghanistan, everywhere is full of weapons -- ammunition, mines, explosive materials, missiles, rockets," Zorlu continues, before telling about how people show up outside his headquarters offering to sell missiles by the truckload. What's more, the police officers you find in those police stations aren't necessarily doing police work. Many haven't been paid, even though their salaries amount to $24 monthly. This has two consequences. "First, they do not work," Zorlu says. "Second, they do work their own businesses by using their guns to rob the people to feed their families."
So much for Afghanistan's police providing law and order.
Okay, so perhaps NATO's leaders were looking to the Afghan army to guarantee security. In that case, which army? Afghanistan has dozens of armies, each answerable to its own warlord; the warlords promote security sometimes and other times mayhem. Right, so what about the national army? The one answerable to Hamid Karzai, the good-guy president?
The Pentagon has spent much of the past year deflecting calls for expanded peacekeeping by promising to train an Afghan national army. Training has duly begun.
But it's a painfully slow process. So far between 2,000 and 3,000 troops have passed through training, a miniscule number in a country of 22 million where most males have access to weapons. What's more, simply training people turns out to be less than totally effective. The first battalion to complete training was 600-strong at the outset. Now, says Zorlu, it's down to 300.
Where did the rest go? Well, they had been recruited from all of Afghanistan's provinces because they were supposed to form the nucleus of a truly national army. But this meant that they harbored loyalties to their local warlords. A few months of training failed to conjure up a new sense of fealty to the central government. And so, once the training was completed, many returned to serve the warlords in their home regions. Some continue to report to barracks, Zorlu acknowledges. But only on payday.
The truth is that Afghanistan doesn't have an army that can create security, any more than it has a working police force. What's more, there's no prospect of creating an effective army in a short period. As Zorlu's story of defections illustrates, you can't build national armies in a vacuum. You must bring about a sense of national identity. You must demobilize provincial armies and so eliminate rival military employers.
Whatever the rhetoric from NATO last week, Afghanistan will cry out for foreign peacekeepers for the foreseeable future. It makes no sense that they be limited, as they have been so far, to the country's capital.
Moreover, peacekeepers may offer the best hope of delivering the training that the Pentagon says it wants. Zorlu's men take Afghan police out on patrol with them; the aim is to teach the basics of community relations -- "how to behave, how to be polite to people," as Zorlu puts it. Equally, Zorlu has taught leaders of Kabul's various armed authorities the importance of intelligence sharing. Before, tribal rivalries prevented them from communicating. Now Zorlu has used his status as an impartial outsider to set up a process for pooling information on potential terrorist attacks.
Zorlu says he's optimistic about Afghanistan's future. His troops have gradually brightened the climate in the capital; despite some continued violence, security has improved enough to allow for the lifting of the 23-year-old curfew. But he doesn't think the peacekeepers' work is anywhere near ended, and he fears the consequences of fading commitment.
"Maybe it takes some years, 10 years, 15 years," he confesses. "If you do not want to see again the Sept. 11 attacks," he declares finally, "we should continue helping them."
-------- africa
Kenya's Peace Dividends
Monday, November 25, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34765-2002Nov24?language=printer
It was with great surprise and dismay that I read Emily Wax's Nov. 19 news story "As Moi Prepares to Leave, Many Kenyans Dare to Dream."
After serving as president for 24 years, President Daniel arap Moi is stepping down due to the constitutional limits on his presidency. His successor will be selected in Kenya's third multiparty election in 10 years. This is President Moi's legacy: a thriving democracy with more than 10 million citizens registered to vote and a vigorous free press that covers political events with candor and criticism.
While our neighbors have been immersed in conflict for much of the past several decades, Kenya has remained at peace. President Moi has served as one of Africa's few elder statesmen, brokering peace in Somalia, the Sudan and in the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Kenya's "peace dividend" has included greater educational opportunities for all Kenyans. There has been a particularly dramatic increase in opportunities for women and girls in education and political life.
To belittle this diversity as a political spoils system indicates a lack of understanding of the challenges and benefits inherent in the creation of a multi-ethnic government and society. If schools and hospitals are named after the president, it is hardly surprising, given the commitment he has made throughout his administration to advancing the education, health and prosperity of the people of Kenya.
Ms. Wax also insinuated that the Moi Girls' School in Nairobi is well funded because of tribal affiliations of its principal and teachers and that the majority of its students are Kalenjin. All are welcome to visit our schools and witness the national composition of the staff and students.
Finally, President Moi's personal modest residence in Kibera is not a mansion but a house he lived in even before he became president.
YUSUF A. NZIBO Ambassador
Embassy of the Republic of Kenya Washington
-------- arms sales
China denies transferring Ukraine radar systems to Iraq
By Audra Ang,
Associated Press,
11/26/2002
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/330/world/China_denies_transferring_Ukra%3A.shtml
BEIJING (AP) China denied involvement Tuesday in an alleged transfer of sophisticated radar systems from Ukraine to Iraq, responding to U.S. and British investigators who cited a ''credible possibility'' that a transaction took place through an intermediary.
The sale of the Kolchuha radar systems, which can be used to track Western aircraft in Baghdad's no-fly zones, would violate U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
''There is no such question of China transferring radar systems to Iraq,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told reporters at a regularly scheduled briefing. ''The Chinese government has strictly implemented the relevant sanctions by the U.N. on Iraq.''
Kong added that cooperation between China and Ukraine in various areas including the military is in accord with international conventions.
The United States has not said which country it believes acted as an intermediary in the alleged weapons transfer.
But the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual, said Tuesday that China was of ''special concern'' to the investigators.
Ukrainian officials told the investigators that they sold four Kolchuha radar systems to China and, at the request of the Chinese, modified a standard clause prohibiting third-party transfers.
Ukraine declined to provide a copy of the Chinese sales contract or other documents that might confirm whether the systems remain in China, according to the inspectors' report.
Kong declined to say whether China in fact bought the radar systems, and Ukraine has sought to downplay the entire issue.
''Don't make an elephant out of a fly,'' Ukraine foreign ministry spokesman Serhiy Borodenkov said. ''We are totally open.''
Pascual said the United States has provided the U.N. Security Council's Iraq sanctions committee with a copy of a report by the team of 13 American and British experts. The report was released Monday by the U.S. Embassy in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.
In the report, the investigators said they were unable to prove Ukraine transferred radar systems to Iraq ''under openly declared contracts,'' but said that ''covert or illegal arms transfers, particularly with the complicity of third parties, remain a credible possibility.''
The investigators spent a week in Ukraine last month looking into whether the country sent any Kolchuha radar systems to Baghdad in violation of U.N. sanctions.
The investigation came after the U.S. State Department said it had verified the authenticity of a July 2000 recording in which Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma is allegedly heard approving the sale of a Kolchuha system to Iraq for $100 million. Kuchma has denied the allegations.
-------- britain
Blair Faces Dissent Over Possible Iraq War
November 25, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-britain.html
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair faces a serious rebellion from his ruling Labor Party Monday when MPs vote on whether to support this month's U.N. resolution on Iraqi weapons inspections.
The vote was due on the day a group of United Nations inspectors arrived in Baghdad to resume weapons inspections in Iraq for the first time in four years.
Just before the inspectors touched down on Iraqi soil, Blair warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein not to play ``hide and seek'' in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
``We can avoid conflict but we can only avoid it on the basis of Saddam Hussein disarming Iraq of all chemical, biological and potentially nuclear weapons programs,'' Blair told reporters.
He said a false declaration from Saddam, denying he had any weapons, would constitute a ``material breach'' of Resolution 1441 -- widely understood as a trigger for military action -- but that it was up to the weapons inspectors to pass judgment.
Monday's vote in parliament, expected after 2200 GMT, centered on a bland motion supporting Resolution 1441.
But an amendment stating that no military action should be launched without a full vote in parliament is likely to attract dozens of Labor rebels, eager to express their deep unease about following President Bush into war.
MAJOR REBELLION?
Blair's huge parliamentary majority -- and the promised support of opposition Conservatives -- means the dissidents can at best only register a symbolic protest.
But one Labor MP forecast that up to 100 members of Blair's party could defy him by voting for the amendment -- a serious slap in the face for the prime minister.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Britain would prefer to see a new United Nations Security Council resolution to cover possible military action against Iraq but would not be pinned down. He also promised only to offer parliament a say on military action after it had begun.
British forces on such a mission could well require an element of surprise, Straw told parliament.
``In those circumstances it would be utterly irresponsible to come to the House beforehand,'' he said.
U.N. Resolution 1441, passed unanimously earlier this month, warned Iraq of ``serious consequences'' unless it complied with the inspectors, tasked with hunting down and destroying any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs.
The United States and Britain have warned Saddam he faces war unless he complies with the resolution, but wide swathes of Blair's Labor Party are deeply opposed to the possibility of military action without explicit U.N. backing.
In October, the U.S. Congress granted Bush the authorization he sought to wage war if necessary when the Senate joined the House of Representatives in giving him overwhelming support, even though some senators had expressed doubts before the vote.
In a boost for Blair, Bush's closest ally, an opinion poll published Monday showed support for military strikes on Iraq among UK voters has risen to 39 from 32 percent in recent weeks.
But a slightly larger 40 percent remains opposed to action to forcibly remove Saddam, an ICM survey showed. That figure has stayed roughly the same since the summer.
Stepping up the battle for hearts and minds for possible war, officials said a diplomat was being sent to Jordan to act as a UK spokesman in the region -- echoing a similar exercise in Islamabad during U.S.-led attacks in Afghanistan.
-------- iran
Iran's reform leaders may quit
The Scotsman,
November 25, 2002
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1311432002
IRAN'S top reform leaders yesterday threatened to walk out of government if hard-liners continue to thwart the political and social reforms of Mohammad Khatami, the president.
"We would not hesitate for a moment to quit the establishment if we lose all hope of carrying out the demands for which people voted," said Mohammad Reza Khatami, leader of Iran's largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front.
Mr Khatami, who is the president's younger brother and parliament's vice-speaker, said continued judiciary blocking of freedom of expression will either "lead to total chaos or a black dictatorship in Iran".
He cited a death sentence issued against Hashem Aghajari, a university professor accused of insulting Islam and questioning hard-line clerics, and the detention of several key reformers.
-------- iraq
ALLIANCES U.S. Is Wooing a Shiite Exile to Rattle Iraq
November 25, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/international/middleeast/25AYAT.html
KUWAIT, Nov. 22 - An Iranian-backed ayatollah may seem an unlikely ally for the Bush administration. But consider Ayatollah Muhammad Bakir al-Hakim.
The ayatollah is an Iraqi Shiite who has been living in Tehran for more than two decades. He is backed by the Iranian government, the one that President Bush has derided as part of an "axis of evil." His father once gave sanctuary to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the fiery anti-American cleric who later rose to power in Iran's 1979 revolution.
Still, the United States and the Shiite cleric are in the process of forging a political alliance of convenience. It is an arrangement that is strongly supported by Kuwait, Washington's staunchest Arab ally in its campaign to dislodge President Saddam Hussein.
The alliance is also quietly backed by Tehran, a subtle signal that Iran seems prepared to offer a modicum of cooperation if the Bush administration mounts a military campaign in Iraq.
"Our job right now is to change the current regime," Ayatollah Hakim said in an interview here. "It is very important that there be an understanding between the Iraqi opposition and the United States."
The Bush administration appears to agree. The ayatollah received a letter this week from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and three other ranking Bush administration officials asking him to send a representative to a Dec. 10 meeting of Iraqi opposition leaders in London.
The purpose of the session is to endorse a set of democratic principles for governing Iraq if Mr. Hussein is deposed, and to commit the successor government to destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Opposition leaders would also be asked to reaffirm Iraq's territorial integrity.
The reason the Bush administration would like Shiites at that meeting is clear. While Iraq has been dominated by the Sunni Muslim minority, an estimated 55 percent of Iraqis are Shiites.
The Bush administration not only wants to demonstrate that it has broad support among Iraq's diverse array of opposition groups, but also wants to encourage a new governing structure: a system in which Shiites would be represented but in which fundamentalist Islam would not become the dominant ideology.
Advertising Washington's concern for Iraq's Shiites could also facilitate an American military intervention as well. Much of Baghdad is populated by Shiites, and they also dominate southern Iraq, the principal invasion route that American forces would take if they moved on the capital.
Ayatollah Hakim was one of nine Iraqi opposition leaders who received the letter from the Bush team and one of two Shiites. The other Shiite is Mohammed Bahr al-Eloom, a moderate cleric based in London.
The ayatollah's movement is called the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Resolution in Iraq. Aides said the organization planned to open an office in Washington soon.
Even so, there seem to be strains between Ayatollah Hakim and the Americans that he does not seem at pains to hide. The Bush administration, for example, is eager to obtain the ayatollah's political support but, he noted, has not indicated any interest in forging a military alliance with the Badr brigade, the ayatollah's guerrilla army, numbering several thousand. Experts say it is trained, equipped and influenced by the Revolutionary Guard of Iran.
The ayatollah seems prepared to work with Washington if an American invasion enables him to secure a place in a new power structure in Iraq, but he would like to see American forces leave as soon as possible.
"Iraqis are able to manage their own lives," Ayatollah Hakim said. "I see no need for American forces to remain in Iraq because no external forces threaten Iraq."
Ayatollah Hakim is the son of one of Iraq's great Shiite religious leaders, the late grand ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim, and used to live in Najaf, a city in southern Iraq. His following was brutally suppressed by Mr. Hussein and more than two dozen family members were killed. The cleric fled to Syria and, eventually, to Iran.
The ayatollah is a cordial host with a gentle smile. But he still is bitter about the first President Bush's decision not to come to the aid of the Shiites after the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
When the Iraqi Army was routed, the Shiites in the south rebelled. But President George Bush decided not to intervene.
A difficult situation became worse when, as part of the cease-fire arrangements, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf acceded to the Iraqi military's request that their pilots be allowed to operate helicopters. The Iraqi military later used helicopters to attack and kill Shiites.
General Schwarzkopf complained that he had been duped, but Washington did not impose a no-flight zone in southern Iraq for more than a year. While many American experts see the episode as unfortunate case of postwar policy confusion, Ayatollah Hakim sees it as a dark conspiracy to keep the Shiites in their place.
The Americans, he said, "helped the current regime against us."
After the gulf war, there were occasional contacts between the ayatollah's movement and the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Iraqi opposition figures, but no real cooperation. That began to change as American policy shifted from containing Mr. Hussein's government to making military plans to destroy it.
Still, the relationship has not developed easily. After the current Bush administration invited the ayatollah to join other Iraqi opposition figures in Washington for a meeting in August, he initially demurred.
Just days before that meeting, Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of opposition leaders, flew to Tehran to persuade the ayatollah to send a representative. The ayatollah sent his brother, who gave the Pentagon a report detailing what were said to be Iraqi plans to use poison gas to suppress Shiite rebellions.
A big question is just how much influence the ayatollah still has in Iraq and how much independence he has from the Iranian government. Ayatollah Hakim asserted that he did not coordinate his strategy with Tehran and that his main interest was protecting the rights of the Shiites in a new and democratic Iraq.
That claim is viewed skeptically by some experts. "He is representing fundamentalist Islam, which does not allow any democracy," said Amatzia Baram, an expert on Iraq at the University of Haifa in Israel. "And he is representing Iranian interests. Still, he should be included. Lots of people in Iraq know of him."
Some experts say the ayatollah's Iran connection has a benefit. It gives Iran a stake in a future Iraqi government and helps encourage its neutrality or even cooperation if the United States attacks Iraq, said David Mack, a former State Department official. There have been other signs of Iranian cooperation, including moves by the Iranian Navy to close its territorial waters to smugglers going to and from Iraq.
In addition to the two Shiite leaders it asked to attend the London session, the Bush administration also sent messages to Mr. Chalabi; the Iraqi National Accord, an organization that includes former Baath Party members; a group that wants to restore the monarchy; the two leading Kurdish groups; and organizations that represent the Turkoman and Assyrian minorities in Iraq.
Kuwait, for its part, has encouraged the Bush administration to work with the ayatollah, who is a regular visitor to Kuwait.
Dr. Muhammad al-Sabah, Kuwait's minister of state for foreign affairs, said in an interview that Mr. Hussein's government cannot be reformed but that Washington would be wise to have a channel of communication with the Iraqi Shiite opposition groups and with Iran.
"We talked about the future of Kuwait and Iraq and how to bring back close relations," Dr. Sabah said after a recent meeting with the ayatollah here. "He is a welcome personality in Kuwait."
-------- puerto rico
Groups Begin Plans to Clean Up Vieques
November 25, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-25-09.asp#anchor4
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico, Several Puerto Rican groups met Sunday to develop strategies for decontaminating the island of Vieques, a U.S. Navy training site.
Representatives of several Vieques organizations, including the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, the Vieques Women´s Alliance and the Milivy Camp, met with members of environmental groups from the main island of Puerto Rico to discuss strategies for cleaning up the contamination caused by decades of military activities.
In 1938, the Navy began using Vieques, which lies off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, for military practices. In 1947, the Navy began expropriating land on the island, about 16 miles long and four miles wide, eventually confiscating two-thirds of it for military installations and a target range.
The Navy now controls the eastern and western ends of the island, while the island's population of 9,400 lives in the middle section of the island. Live fire shelling occurs on the eastern tip of Vieques, 11 miles from the main town.
Medical tests have shown that Vieques residents have a higher than normal rate of heart damage that may be related to sudden loud noises. Local fishers say they cannot make a living in peace, and the tourism potential of the island cannot be developed as long as the military exercises continue.
The island and offshore sea floor are littered with unexploded ordnance and leaking containers of toxic chemicals.
The groups were motivated by a lack of action on the part of the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments, and want government agencies to include community participation in cleanup planning. The groups plan to petition the Puerto Rican governor, the Environmental Quality Board and other pertinent agencies to hand over to community organizations all documentation related to conversations, meetings or negotiations with the Navy or other federal agencies that have to do with the cessation of bombing, return of lands and environmental cleanup on Vieques.
Environmental participants at the meeting included lawyer Pedro Saadé, veteran of the environmental legal battle on Vieques, and two students from the University of Puerto Rico´s Environmental Law Clinic; environmental scientists and community consultants, Jorge Fernández Porto and Lirio Márquez and Wanda Colón, Coordinator of the Caribbean Project for Peace and Justice.
The group took the first steps toward creating an advisory committee on environmental affairs to orient the Vieques organizations that work for cleanup. This team of scientists and environmental lawyers will help the community work for and demand a clean Vieques for future generations.
One strategy discussed will be to seek help from experts in the United States who work with communities affected by military contamination, and others that have worked in Panama, Hawaii and the Phillipines. Among the entities with experience in this field that have worked with Vieques are the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, Arc Ecology, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Military Toxics Project.
-------- spy agencies
CIA agents try to buy intelligence
By John Donnelly in Washington
November 25 2002
The Boston Globe, The New York Times
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/10376979
The CIA has handed out tens of millions of dollars in unmarked bills in recent months to foreign intelligence contacts in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders, US officials and former CIA members say.
Just as the CIA gave several hundred million dollars in $US100 bills to warlords to help motivate and arm ground forces in the war in Afghanistan, agents have been given stacks of US currency to spend in Yemen, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia the Philippines and elsewhere.
Some intelligence specialists applaud the return to the aggressive development of local spies - known as assets - as a long-overdue revitalisation of a global operation that had become complacent and unwilling to take risks. However, the practice is also creating great tension with some host governments, which say it could undermine their own efforts as well as cause dissension in their intelligence ranks.
CIA agents are covertly giving the cash to members of foreign intelligence services either to pay for information or to be passed on in recruiting other sources.
"They have received tremendous co-operation from the intel services in those countries," a former CIA member said. "The incident in Yemen is a direct result from the co-operation of the Yemeni intelligence service."
On November5 a CIA drone fired a missile at a vehicle carrying six suspected al-Qaeda members in Yemen, killing all of them.
The CIA agents are carrying the currency in denominations of $20, $50, and $100 bills, two intelligence officials confirmed. The bills are neither crisp nor in sequence, so the money cannot be traced to the US Government.
Last week's disclosure that the US had Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, described as the head of al-Qaeda's Arabian Peninsula operations, in custody was seen as evidence by some analysts that the intelligence agencies were tightening the circle around the terrorist network's top operators.
Investigators believe that a computer and mobile phone that were in al-Nashiri's possession contain clues that may help the US thwart a new wave of attacks.
While al-Nashiri's arrest could pay dividends through interrogation, about 80per cent of the al-Qaeda leadership remains unaccounted for. Intelligence officials believe the freer flow of cash to informers and agents may help capture these elusive leaders.
Some people believe Pakistani intelligence may be hiding bin Laden and his close advisers somewhere in the vast lawless regions along the Afghan border.
Offering multi-million-dollar public rewards for bin Laden has not worked. Now, the CIA hopes, furtive payments of a few hundred dollars to the right local agents will.
-------- us
Unexploded Arms Require Big Cleanup At 16,000 U.S. Sites
EPA Papers Note Major Health Risks
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 25, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34776-2002Nov24?language=printer
Unexploded munitions at 16,000 inactive military ranges, including chemical and biological weapons, pose "imminent and substantial" public health risks and could require the largest environmental cleanup program ever implemented by the U.S. government, according to newly released Environmental Protection Agency documents.
The documents, made available by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a Washington-based advocacy group that advises environmental whistle-blowers, also state that EPA officials are concerned by the Pentagon's refusal to abide by EPA regulations when cleaning up the sites.
One of the documents, a briefing paper written this summer for the EPA's head enforcement officer, cites a "disturbing trend" by the military services and the Army Corps of Engineers to limit their cleanup activities or "take ill-advised short-cuts to limit costs."
The EPA documents released by PEER indicate the potential of far greater and costlier cleanup problems associated with unexploded ordnance than previously acknowledged by government officials.
Jeff Ruch, PEER's executive director, said his organization obtained the documents confidentially from an EPA whistle-blower who believes the EPA and the Defense Department are failing to adequately address groundwater and soil contamination caused by unexploded munitions on inactive ranges across 30 million to 40 million acres, an area roughly the size of the state of Florida.
Cleaning up the unexploded munitions, Ruch said Friday in an interview, "may be as large as the effort to clean up the military's nuclear weapons programs. But what is striking about this is how little is known" about contamination related to unexploded munitions, "and there are studious efforts being made to ensure that it remains terra incognita."
One contaminated site now being cleaned up by the Army Corps of Engineers is in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest Washington near American University, where the military experimented with chemical weapons in World War I. Property in the area has elevated levels of arsenic and there is evidence of buried munitions.
Other inactive ranges in the region with unexploded munitions include the Aberdeen Proving Ground and Fort Ritchie Army Garrison in Maryland and numerous sites in Virginia, including the former Nansemond Ordnance Depot, Fort Pickett and the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Dahlgren, according to PEER.
Raymond F. DuBois, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, acknowledged that cleaning up unexploded ordnance could cost anywhere from $14 billion to "several times" that much, depending upon the eventual use of the land.
But DuBois denied that the Defense Department has attempted to conceal to magnitude of the problem and said that the Bush administration has pledged to fully cooperate with the EPA and other federal and state agencies in an aggressive cleanup effort.
"No one could deny that this is a long-term, large problem. We have never hidden it. We don't intend to," DuBois said.
The problems uncovered in Washington's Spring Valley neighborhood, he said, "came to me as a shock, but there are probably other Spring Valleys in the country, and that's why we are doing everything we can to identify them and characterize them. When a situation [like Spring Valley] is appropriately elevated to [top priority status], we will reprogram dollars in the middle of the fiscal year to address the problem immediately."
DuBois said his staff is working to complete an inventory by next spring of unexploded ordnance on 15 million acres of former military land and 25 million acres still in the Pentagon's possession.
One senior EPA official, whose office produced two of the documents made public by PEER, said both those documents are more than two years old and cite problems related to Pentagon cleanup practices that have since been rectified.
"I think [Pentagon officials] have come a long way in recognizing the problem and I think we're working together fairly well," the official said.
The official said he disagreed "on all accounts" with conclusions in a more recent internal EPA document written this summer as a briefing paper for the agency's enforcement director, John Suarez.
That document says EPA is "concerned" over the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers and the military services to comply with EPA regulations and "adequately coordinate with federal, state and tribal regulatory agencies."
"Cleanup of [unexploded ordnance] on military ranges has the potential to be the largest environmental cleanup program ever to be implemented in the United States," the document begins. "Some ranges each cover 100 to 500 square miles. Many of these properties are Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) where the military has relinquished control and are now being utilized for purposes other than a military range yet still contain" unexploded ordnance.
Most unexploded ordnance, the document says, contains chemicals defined as "hazardous" under federal law. But the cleanup process is complicated even further by "the potential presence of explosives."
"Defining the true nature of the explosives or [unexploded ordnance] threats must be addressed first, before standard investigative activities are undertaken to define the extent of hazardous chemical contamination," the document states.
The other two documents made public by PEER are reports written in 2000 summarizing the results of a survey conducted by EPA officials of 61 current and former military facilities containing 203 ranges that were either inactive, closed or transferred to other owners.
One of the documents, an interim report dated April 2000 but never made public, states that over 50 percent of the survey respondents reported that "chemical or biological weapons were found or suspected on their ranges."
The interim report also says that respondents reported nine "explosions of military munitions, six of which involved fatalities."
The interim report concluded: "Many aspects of [the Defense Department's] responses to the immense challenges of clearing and transferring ranges have been called into question by EPA. The results of this survey also highlight many situations in which [EPA regional offices] are not satisfied with [the Defense Department's] handling of the complex policy, technical and regulatory issues" involving inactive and transferred ranges.
None of those points, however, were included in the final report.
-------- propaganda wars
Pentagon's exercises help journalists
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 25, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20021125-85229672.htm
Journalists participating in the Pentagon's weeklong "media boot camp," which ended over the weekend, watched Marines storm through burned-out buildings on the base in Quantico, Va., as part of a series of urban combat exercises.
The Marines are perfecting a technique that includes breaching and searching inner-city areas room by room before going building by building and eventually block by block.
With a war looming in Iraq, where U.S. ground troops may be forced to stage a siege on Baghdad, the training exercises have taken on a new degree of relevance.
"Fighting in the city is the wave of the future," Marine Capt. Eric Reid said.
Reporters and photographers, wearing bulletproof vests and combat helmets, were encouraged to practice taking cover while still being able to witness and photograph the urban combat exercises. The training included the use of M-16 rifles and grenades with live paint-pellet ammunition.
Nearly 60 reporters and photographers wandered freely through the Marine base's urban combat training campus, watching troops sweep through rooms and buildings in a mock search for enemy combatants.
"Everybody's figured out that fighting the U.S. in the open field is a bad idea, so now they're trying to draw us into the city," Capt. Reid said.
He added that the world's growing population will only enhance that phenomenon in future conflicts.
Urban combat results in a much higher risk of casualties than open-field combat and in recent conflicts has been carried out mainly by U.S. Special Forces.
Tactical missions in cities require considerably larger numbers of troops than are needed to execute more traditional field operations.
The media boot camp, organized by the Pentagon to "raise the comfort level of journalists" vying for placement with U.S. troops during a war, included instruction on basic first aid, land-mine recognition, how to use gas masks, how to safely ride on helicopters into combat areas, and how to take cover from direct and indirect fire.
One Russian news-service reporter and one television reporter from the United Arab Emirates were among the 58 journalists from 31 news organizations, including The Washington Times, that participated.
Journalists were given military-issue masks and full-body toxic-waste suits to train for surviving a nuclear-, chemical- or biological-weapon attack. The training included exposure to tear gas inside Quantico's gas chamber. Journalists felt the burn of the gas on their faces, and in their eyes, ears and throats, when instructors encouraged them to briefly remove their masks inside the chamber.
The goal of the exercise was to make journalist feel confident that the masks work, instructors explained.
Outside the gas chamber, officers, and enlisted men and women from the Army and Marines periodically surprised the journalists by screaming "Gas, gas, gas" The journalists were given 10 seconds to secure the masks to their faces. "Ten seconds is all it takes and then you're dead," one instructor explained.
In another exercise, journalists were flown in CH-53 Echo Super Sea Stallion and CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, both of which are used mainly for transporting troops and cargo. At one point the helicopters landed in a simulated "hot landing zone" where loud explosions and machine-gun fire forced the group to take cover.
Throughout the media boot camp, military officials encouraged a conversational atmosphere between the journalists, and their Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine instructors. The result was a mainly positive series of impromptu question-and-answer sessions.
Asked during one session by a reporter with The Times whether morale in the military is higher than it was at the start of the Persian Gulf war, Lt. General Edward Hanlon, the highest-ranking officer at Quantico, said: "I don't know that in my 35 years of active duty that the morale in the Marine Corps has been as high as it is today."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
The Price of Paranoia
The Myriad Costs of Homeland Security
by Christopher Deliso in Skopje
November 25, 2002
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso61.html
It is both amusing and frightening to European allies, and also bringing a collective unease to American citizens. This (largely) unknown commodity? Nothing other than Washington's increasingly bizarre strategy for defending the motherland.
In short, the "war on terror" is being fueled by paranoia - and that is precisely why it is being lost.
Quite Reasonably, Fears Are Rising
Undoubtedly, terrorism is a serious threat to the United States and many other countries. Bin Laden is back, and now seems more dangerous than ever. However, the US government's plan for dealing with that threat - to proliferate bureaucracy and infrastructure (through the Homeland Security bill) and to develop a massive database for tracking the purchases of every American (TIA) - has raised more fears than it has assuaged.
Civil libertarians question the implications of secret courts, non-accountable and unknown government agencies, all-seeing computers, and unwanted invasions of privacy. And even "ordinary Americans" who never considered themselves libertarians (civil or otherwise) are starting to get nervous, as the SF Chronicle's witty Rob Morse points out in an article called "Fighting terror by terrorizing US citizens."
Ignorance Plus Fear Equals Poor Judgment
And that's pretty much it. To take a populace already frazzled by constant security alerts, and then throw in the idea of having the government track one's every move - well, it can't possibly do much to raise collective spirits. Attorney General John Ashcroft's previous brilliant ideas - to monitor all the potential dangers lurking in America's public libraries, and to turn every citizen into an informer - exemplify all that is wrong with the government's paranoid approach to combating terrorism.
Apparently, the fearmongers don't want citizens to arm themselves with knowledge that could help in understanding the world's turbulent, rapidly-changing events. And apparently, they don't want the people to exercise the right to free speech and debate that have made possible so many of America's great innovations and achievements (like, say, the Constitution).
Paranoia is more easily sustained when wedded with ignorance, and the fearmongers in government are doing their share to help. Even if Ashcroft's TIPS informant proposal got the chop, the fact that it was even seriously considered is a troubling sign, a manifestation of that tyranny which can rule only by perpetuating fear, and a symptom of the government's "insatiable appetite for surveillance."
One must think twice, I guess, about criticizing US policy; you might end up like that guy in the San Francisco gym, getting a rap on the door from the Feds. Or, like the olive-skinned fellow I saw a few months ago, randomly stopped by police in the airport. Or, like the hapless crew from Global Exchange, detained amidst suspicions of "making anti-American statements."
It seems that it hasn't dawned on the authorities yet, but there is only one category of people certain to never attract attention by publicly criticizing the government - the would-be terrorists, of course!
Forgetting the lessons of September 11th
For a solipsistic and insular county, last year's rude awakening brought up many troubling questions. First of all were the many speculations that sought to link the US' belligerence in the Middle East (as well as its unfailing support of Israel) with the arrival of Islamic terrorism on American soil. The tacit role of the government in training, arming and indoctrinating the Taliban came as further tragic confirmation of the "blowback" phenomenon.
Yet leaving aside all the nagging doubts about the connection between terrorism and America's foreign policy, one irrefutable lesson was learned: that terrorism is generally a poor man's game, and so is played according to his rules. Commentators have long picked up on the fact that exceedingly low-tech weapons, such as box-cutters, were used to help turn a common airplane into a guided missile. On one day in September, all of America's imposing and expensive technology - not to mention its vast intelligence capabilities - proved useless against a handful of poorly-armed (but clever) terrorists.
The Pentagon: Not A Quick Study
The only ones, it seems, who haven't learned this lesson are those in charge in Washington. Unfortunately, the Pentagon's huge new budget increase will mostly be wasted. Using those extra billions to upgrade America's armed forces is an unfortunate, highly questionable tactic: after all, what country would be suicidal enough to engage the United States in open warfare? The War Party, it seems, is not taking any chances.
Or so it would seem. This paranoia may just be staged - as critics have repeatedly said, it provides an ideal cover for rushing through all kinds of "improvements" long-dreamt of by military planners. And the highly questionable element here is not long in coming.
Paranoia's Beneficiaries
While the total costs are not clearly known - and perhaps never will be - what is fairly certain is that the billions of taxpayer dollars needed for funding defense and the Homeland Security monstrosity will be funneled directly back to those huge corporations who can successfully lobby for and win the lucrative contracts that have multiplied in the wake of September 11th. This does little for the average American (especially when many of the companies, like Germany's Siemens, are foreign), but it does perpetuate the mentality of "Wall St. Socialism" currently visible in the Beltway. And the interested parties aren't being shy about it, either:
"Walter White of the Dutko Group lobbying firm is trying to help at least eight companies win domestic security contracts. With few specifics on what the federal government, including the upcoming Homeland Security Department, will be spending, White said he advises company executives to focus on building relationships so they can win contracts when more anti-terrorism money starts to flow."
The "anti-terrorism money" in question, of course, can only be generated so long as the public believe in terrorism as a facet of life that, like death and taxes, can't be avoided. Unsurprisingly, many of the same companies that see a gold mine in anti-terror contracts also see a bonanza in perpetuating endless war - soon, they hope, in Iraq. In the end, the funds for defense and other contractors can flow only so long as the levels of war and terrorism hysteria are cranked up across the country.
Explaining Failure
But that's not even the worst thing. Should America suffer another major terrorist attack in the near future, the immediate explanation will be that not enough money had been spent, not enough liberties had been curtailed, and not enough surveillance had been installed. The blame will never fall - at least, as far as White House policy makers are concerned - on the drawbacks inherent to some of the brave new plans that Washington is making to eliminate the terrorist threat. The belief that total information access will result in a totally safe country is, at best, naïve. At worst, the desire for absolute control manifested in TIA is, as Justin Raimondo aptly put it, "the impossible dream of tyrants."
Totally Useless Information Awareness
The implications of this quixotic plan were roasted, I might add, by many other editorialists from all across the land. TIA is being run by an appropriately sketchy character - convicted felon John Poindexter. In case anyone out there may have missed the salient details - and also because they are so entertaining - we will print Fox's coverage again:
"Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of Acquisitions and Technology, told reporters that the Pentagon is developing a prototype database to seek "patterns indicative of terrorist activity." Aldridge said the database would collect and use software to analyze consumer purchases in hopes of catching terrorists before it's too late. "The bottom line is this is an important research project to determine the feasibility of using certain transactions and events to discover and respond to terrorists before they act," he said.
Aldridge said the database, which he called another "tool" in the war on terror, would look for telltale signs of suspicious consumer behavior. Examples he cited were: sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms, chemicals or agents that could be used to produce biological or chemical weapons."
This scenario has endless comic applications, some of which Raimondo points out in the article cited above. To those I might add the college student draining his funds before spring break, the woman who must rent a car while hers is in the shop, that Iowa farmer buying (conceivably explosive) fertilizer... the list goes on. The frazzled Feds, apparently, just want everything "normalized" so that their work will go smoother. For these discriminating thinkers, variant and unpredictable human behavior just does not compute - despite the fact that life is unpredictable, and always will be.
Freeing Government From That Cumbersome Accountability Thing
That said, other potential dangers lurk underneath the new cloak of secrecy implicit in DARPA and the increasingly powerful Ashcroftian secret courts. An article in the Christian Science Monitor outlines all of the ways in which one's life can be affected by the new policies. One troubling example is the possibility of future forced vaccination programs. Under new laws, drug companies may not even be accountable for the vaccines they produce - even if they are defective and cause health problems.
Now, American democracy thrives because the citizenry has (or should have) oversight over governmental decisions. Yet over the past 14 months, the trend in "homeland security" has been to remove that very government from civilian oversight. To be sure, there exists some sensitive, security-related information that the government cannot and should not share publicly. However, in its quasi-socialistic desire to protect both itself and its corporate partners from being accountable, the Bush administration has taken things too far. For indeed, high-level protectionism - the kind that allowed Enron (and perhaps now, Halliburton) to live on imaginary funds - is just as much a part of "homeland security" as is the fight against terrorism.
You're Needed In Aisle 6, Comrade
The idea of a supercomputer capable of databasing the output of every American - bank histories, emails, medical records, all purchases, etc. - conjures up some very bizarre images. One is instantly reminded of those enormous proto-computers that whirred, hummed, and took up entire rooms in films of the 1950's. There are also, of course, the Orwellian overtones. The conceivers of TIA have wedded the ideas of technological progress and benevolent surveillance to arrive at the conclusion that father (i.e., the state) knows best - a sinister idea more evocative of Soviet Russia.
But at least the Russians had style. Indeed, the cigarette smoke rising in the darkness, the half-empty vodka bottles and Kalashnikovs stacked at that frigid Siberian outpost, only serve to enhance the thickly-accented "we'd like to ask you some questions, comrade." In contrast, these latter-day, would-be omniscients (in their infantile, agitated paranoia) come across as thoroughly unconvincing, and completely unable to control the situation.
In short, the desperation of the War Party is evidenced by this belief that technology - and not human intelligence - will save the day.
Looking In All The Wrong Places
It's not just that TIA (and other ventures like it) would be rendered unusable by being overloaded with irrelevant data. The system itself is prone to abuse - and not only from prying officials.
For example, just think of the internet - both indispensable to almost everyone, and a shadowy refuge conducive to anonymity. Here, one can easily imagine how some computer-savvy nine year-old prankster could paralyze the country, by sending "actionable intelligence" (as Aldridge like to call it) to the credulous analysts in Washington.
The answer to this "glitch in the system," however, is not to curtail liberties, destroy rights of privacy, and shine a light on that anonymity. To "smoke the terrorists out of their holes," as President Bush once put it, should not mean smoking the rest of us out as well. Indeed, for the Homeland Security crew, doing so will only mean getting smoke in their own eyes.
No, more and more the answer to America's security problem is pointing away from the giant toys of technology and weaponry that the grown-up children of the War Party seem to love so much. The real way to defeat terrorism - aside from changing foreign policy, which is a separate topic in itself - is to fight it as it is fought, mono e mono. For at the end of the day, only the common sense and cleverness of real live humans will be able to counter the efforts of their terrorist adversaries.
The first step here is to stop looking in the wrong places. A sure sign of state paranoia is unthinking, undiscerning action on the parts of those charged with promoting security. Should airport security detain that little old lady who forgot to leave her sewing needle at home? And should the FBI question some Berkeley hippie for attending the meetings of a pro-peace group? Indeed, should intelligence-gatherers waste ten minutes of valuable time looking in vain for "anti-American statements" in articles such as this?
The Rights Of The People
One thing is clear from all of the current confusion, and that is that the American people deserve to have a say in how the homeland should be secured. But their opinions have not been asked. Precisely now are being made enormous, far-reaching decisions, ones which will set the precedent for America's future path. It is especially important now for common citizens to think, debate and suggest - not to obediently shut their mouths out of fear, trusting that father knows best. Now more than ever, the country needs an intellectual ferment.
The disturbing direction that "homeland security" is taking shows this clearly. Simply put, the future cannot be left up to those who would generate paranoia and ignorance in order to make a profit, or to destroy the civil liberties upon which America was founded. Otherwise, there will not be much of a homeland left to secure.
----
Big Brother Is Back
The Pentagon's plan to eyeball America's databases is drawing fire-as is its controversial salesman
By John Barry
NEWSWEEK
Online November 25, 2002
http://www.msnbc.com/news/839248.asp
The official logo of the Information Awareness Office, the Pentagon's secretive new terrorist-detection experiment, isn't subtle.
A PICTURE OF THE GLOBE, under the watchful gaze of that spooky pyramid on the dollar bill, the one with the all-seeing eye of God at the top. Underlining that, the project's motto: SCIENTIA EST POTENTIA (Knowledge Is Power).
All in all, not a bad description of the office's lofty-and controversial-ambitions. Quietly created after the September 11 attacks, the office's Total Information Awareness project aims to enable federal investigators to engage in a kind of super "data mining"-inventing software to trawl through commercial and government computer databases in search of suspicious patterns that might indicate terror plans.
The 9-11 hijackers, for instance, enrolled in flight schools, rented apartments, used credit cards and bought airline tickets together. The details of all these transactions were routinely stored in various companies' computers. The Feds argue that if they had had the ability to scan the computers that logged the terrorists' movements and purchases, they might have been able to connect the dots between the men.
INTENSE SUSPICION
Yet from the day the research program was launched at the start of the year, it has been the target of intense suspicion, from both right and left. In order to identify possibly conspiratorial behavior by a few individuals, the computers would have to sift through the personal information of millions of innocent people-without their knowledge or consent. Potentially, the government could keep track of what you buy, whom you call, where you travel-just by tapping into the files that various businesses already keep on you. Advocates insist safeguards will be built into any search system, but critics are not reassured. "Put the pieces together, and you could build a capability to track the city-to-city movements of any citizen," says the ACLU's Katie Corrigan.
The project's PR hasn't been helped by the fact that its leader is retired Navy Adm. John Poindexter, best known for his part in the Iran-contra affair. Poindexter was convicted of lying to Congress about the Reagan administration's plan to divert profits from Iranian arms sales to fund the Nicaraguan rebels. His conviction was later overturned, but that doesn't mollify those worried about his return to power at the helm of such a sweeping program.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brusquely waved off the criticism. "I would recommend people take a nice deep breath," he said. "Nothing terrible is going to happen." But on Capitol Hill, Democrats and some Republicans-including retiring House Majority Leader Dick Armey-are concerned that the project is part of a wider White House strategy to erode civil liberties in pursuit of security. (A court recently granted the government expanded surveillance powers.) They are especially irritated that they knew nothing about the $10 million experiment, since the Pentagon quietly buried it under "technology development" in the Defense bill. Now they're demanding greater scrutiny. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she wants to freeze the program's funding until Congress can hold hearings. Poindexter may not be able to ignore the rumblings. "He forgot the question you always ask," says one Pentagon official. "How would this look on the front page tomorrow?"
-------- homeland security
Bush Signs Bill for New Agency;
Ridge Nominated as Its Secretary
November 25, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/politics/25CND-BUSH.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - President Bush signed a bill today creating a Department of Homeland Security, a Cabinet-level agency whose 170,000 employees will be responsible for protecting the country from terrorists, and he nominated Tom Ridge, his homeland security adviser, as its first secretary.
"Today we're taking historic action to defend the United States," Mr. Bush said at a White House ceremony. His announcement that Mr. Ridge is his choice to head the agency, which had been viewed as all but certain in recent weeks, brought applause.
With his pen, Mr. Bush set in motion the final steps toward creation of the department, a process that is sure to take many months, if not years. The bill will consolidate all or part of 22 federal agencies in one umbrella department whose mission will be to guard the nation's borders against danger amid a flood of visitors, immigrants, ships, trucks and planes.
"The front of the new war is here in America," Mr. Bush said.
The president called Mr. Ridge, who has been the White House homeland security adviser since just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, "the right man for this new and great responsibility."
Mr. Bush also announced that he was nominating Navy Secretary Gordon England as Mr. Ridge's deputy and Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas congressman and currently head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as under secretary for border and transportation security in the new department.
The nominations are subject to Senate confirmation. But given the Republican majority in the new Senate - plus Mr. Ridge's standing as the current homeland security adviser, as well as being a former congressman and governor of Pennsylvania - the nominations are not expected to stir great controversy.
Mr. Bush said he envisioned a Homeland Security Department that would bring about a cultural change in the bureaucracies it will take over, one in which administration and overhead would not be allowed to slow the work of agents in the field.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency - two huge entrenched agencies that have been criticized since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for not connecting bits of information that might have alerted them to the presence of terrorists - will not be part of the new department. But Mr. Bush said the new agency would make the best use of data gathered by the F.B.I. and C.I.A.
Creation of the Department of Homeland Security was debated extensively in the House of Representatives and the Senate before the final differences were bridged near the end of the 107th Congress. One sticking point was how much authority the president would have to hire, fire and transfer employees in the new agency. Mr. Bush the flexibility he said he needed to run the department without burdensome red tape.
The president acknowledged those disputes today, albeit indirectly.
He did it when he thanked Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the retiring Republican House majority leader, for his work. "I'll miss him," Mr. Bush said. "I'm not so sure everyone will."
And he did it when he recognized union representatives present in the East Room ceremony. "We look forward to working with you to be sure that people are treated fairly in the new department," he said.
Mr. Bush looked fit and rested, with no effect of jet lag from his just-completed trip to Europe for the NATO summit meeting last week.
While the mood in the White House was cheerful, today's signing was against a backdrop of heightened concerns over new terrorist attacks.
"The hard work of building a new department begins today," the president said.
--------
Homeland Security to Overhaul U.S. Government
November 25, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-homeland-factbox.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, signed into law on Monday, will fold together 22 agencies in the most radical overhaul of the federal government in more than 50 years.
Designed to streamline America's defenses against a terror attack, the new department absorbs responsibilities from 22 agencies including the U.S. Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and Secret Service.
Its 170,000 employees will work alongside existing agencies, with remit over four areas -- border and transport security, emergency preparedness, countermeasures against attacks, and intelligence gathering.
Analysts say adding the new government branch constitutes the biggest federal reorganization since 1947, when President Harry Truman merged the War and Navy departments into the Department of Defense, now based at the Pentagon.
Following is a description of the basic components of the Department of Homeland Security, and how it fits into the existing federal government structure:
OVERVIEW
The head of the Department of Homeland Security, the secretary of Homeland Security, will form part of the executive branch and report directly to the president.
Four sections, outlined below, pull together functions once run by other departments.
The FBI and CIA do not fall under the Homeland Security umbrella. The legislation calls for little change in the agencies, but requires them to submit intelligence information to the new department for analysis.
BORDER AND TRANSPORTATION SECURITY
Subsumes the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs Service, Coast Guard, Federal Protective Service, Transportation Security Administration and part of the Animal and Plant Inspection Service.
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE
Trains police officers, firefighters and health officers on how to detect and react to an attack. Coordinates government-led disaster response.
Reporting agencies include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Nuclear Incident Response, Domestic Emergency Support Team, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, National Domestic Preparedness Office and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Response Assets.
COUNTERMEASURES
Leads preparation for threats involving weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks.
New umbrella for Civilian Biodefense Research Programs, National BW Defense Analysis Center, Plum Island Animal Defense Center, and part of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
INFORMATION ANALYSIS AND INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION
Coordinates intelligence-gathering from agencies including the Critical Information Assurance Office, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, the National Communications System, the National Infrastructure Protection Center, and the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center.
OTHER
The Secret Service and the Coast Guard report directly to the secretary of homeland security, remaining wholly intact with operations unchanged.
-------- terrorism
Bin Laden 'letter' threatens civilians
November 25 2002
AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697992664.html
A 4,000-word letter, purportedly from Osama bin Laden, is being circulated on the Internet containing threats of attacks on civilian targets, the Observer newspaper reported yesterday.
It said the letter had been posted on Islamist websites, and sent to an email list run by Mohammed al-Massari, a British-based Saudi dissident who heads the Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights.
"Anyone who tries to destroy our villages and cities, then we are going to destroy their villages and cities," the al-Qaeda leader was reported to have written in the letter, which was translated from Arabic into English.
"Anyone who steals our fortunes, then we must destroy their economy. Anyone who kills our civilians, then we are going to kill their civilians," the letter added.
The Observer said much of the letter comprised "a lengthy list of grievances against the West," and included criticism by bin Laden - blamed for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon last year - of the "immorality" of the West.
The newspaper said there was no way to confirm the letter's authenticity, but quoted al-Massari as denying on Saturday that he supported terrorism.
Last Monday, US intelligence officials concluded that a voice on an audio tape aired on November 12 by the Arabic all-news television network al-Jazeera was "almost certainly" that of bin Laden.
-------
Panel Calls for High-Tech Warning System
November 25, 2002
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/national/25WARN.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 - An expert panel that includes some of the government's leading emergency managers has recommended the creation of a high-technology national warning system that would alert the public to emergencies, including terrorist attacks and other crises.
In a report scheduled to be made public on Monday, the group said that the government's current emergency warning systems were inefficient and outdated, and that a new integrated system should be the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.
While the group did not call for the end of the color-coded terrorism alert system created in March by the White House, it did note that there was widespread public confusion over the system.
The group, which calls itself the Partnership for Public Warning and includes representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the American Red Cross, said the current hodgepodge of emergency warning systems "do not reach most of the people at risk."
"We believe that the new Department of Homeland Security should take responsibility for leading development of a national all-hazard public warning architecture," the group said. "The need for such a system is considered extremely compelling."
President Bush is scheduled on Monday to sign the bill creating the Department of Homeland Security and to announce that he will nominate Tom Ridge, now the White House domestic security adviser, to be the department's first secretary. The department would formally open its doors in late January.
A spokesman for Mr. Ridge, Gordon Johndroe, said today that the administration was already studying the nation's emergency warning systems.
"Since Sept. 11, we've been looking at the most effective ways to alert people to the terrorism threat," Mr. Johndroe said. "We are in the process of working with a variety of industries, their associations, as well as media organizations and government entities."
The group's report, which grew out of a conference among the emergency managers last June, noted that the federal warning system known as the Emergency Alert System was a vestige of the cold war and had been "designed to allow the president to warn the entire nation of major events such as an incoming enemy missile with a nuclear warhead."
The group suggested that a new system could allow the government to issue warnings of terrorist attacks and other threats via telephone, cellphone, television and radio, possibly through computer chips embedded in the devices.
"Warnings about events seconds, minutes or hours away need to be disseminated rapidly through special warning systems," the group said. "At 2 a.m., traditional communications channels are simply ineffective."
The chairman of the panel, Peter Ward, a retired seismologist with the United States Geological Survey, said in an interview that much of the technology needed to create a national alert system already existed. "We're not talking about big money; we're not talking about big government," Mr. Ward said.
He said the need for the system had grown immensely since the Sept. 11 attacks and that the government needed to find a way on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, even person-by-person, basis to alert the public to imminent threats.
"Our vision down the road is that every person at risk from natural disaster, an accident or terrorism would get a heads-up," he said. "Every piece of electronics you own - be it a cellphone, a car phone, a computer, a radio, a television - should have the ability of giving you that heads-up."
He said the possibility that terrorists might use weapons of mass destruction on American soil should increase the urgency to create a technically advanced system.
"It's not hard to think of many scenarios with weapons of mass destruction where, if you can get to people right away and tell them to get out of harm's way, you can save thousands of lives," he said. "Our ability to do that at the moment is almost nonexistent. What worries me is that one of these days, an event like that will happen and thousands of people will die, and they didn't need to."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
US gov't, industry see no alternative for oil soon
REUTERS USA:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18755/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
HOUSTON - No single renewable energy product can immediately replace oil, but a combination of hydrogen, wind and agricultural by-products may be able to cut U.S. dependence on one of the nation's most-coveted resources in the next 10 to 20 years, government and industry officials said.
Speaking at a conference on voluntary steps the oil industry can take to reduce climate change, the officials and executives said a mix of non-renewable and renewable energy products may begin to reduce the use of oil and its resultant pollution.
Renewable energy products are proven to reduce pollution and would help the United States reduce its dependence on foreign oil.
The conference comes amid a new report by the U.S. government that U.S. consumption last year of energy produced by solar, wind and other renewable sources fell to its lowest level in 12 years.
The U.S. government is spending $77 million a year for research on a hydrogen fuel cell to power cars, said Robert Dixon, U.S. assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
"We're rather bullish on the prospect for a move to a hydrogen economy," Dixon said.
In addition to hydrogen from such products as natural gas to replace gasoline and other fuels, Dixon said U.S. government agencies are spending $100 million per year into research to develop fuels from "biomass," which is the waste produced from harvesting grains.
A mix of other energy products including solar and nuclear power will also be needed to replace oil as a source of energy, he said.
Shell Oil Co. sees natural gas as the most likely bridge fuel over the next 30 years while technology is developed to better exploit renewable resources, said Roxanne Decyk, Shell's vice president for corporate affairs and human resources.
Shell, the U.S. unit of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, has invested $500 million over the past four years to develop renewable energy sources, Decyk said.
"The U.S. wind market is one of the most attractive markets to Shell," she said.
----
Honda to market fuel cell car from Dec 2
REUTERS JAPAN:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18750/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
TOKYO - Honda Motor Co said last week it had won Japanese government approval to market fuel cell cars and would start marketing the environmentally friendly vehicles from December 2, the same day as Toyota Motor Corp.
Fuel cell vehicles are touted as the car of the future since they cause virtually no harm to the environment, emitting only heat and pure water as by-products.
Japan's top two automakers will become the first in the world to put the zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road, but full commercialisation is still years away.
Toyota and Honda lead the world in ecologically friendly technology, and are currently the only sellers of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles.
But commercialisation of fuel cell cars is expected to take at least 10 years since they require massive spending on infrastructure to build hydrogen fuelling stations.
Japan at present has only three such stations.
Honda said it would also deliver five of its "FCX" fuel cell vehicles to the city of Los Angeles on December 2.
In July, Honda became the first automaker to be certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board (CARB) to market the cars.
Toyota said this week it planned to deliver its "FCHV" fuel cell vehicles to two universities in California on December 2.
A spokesman said the automaker expects CARB approval by the end of this month.
Honda plans to release about 30 of its four-seater FCX cars in Japan and the United States over the next two or three years.
In Japan it will begin leasing the FCX to the Cabinet Office for 800,000 yen ($6,522) a month over a year.
The leasing cost in the United States will be announced on December 2, at a delivery ceremony to be held in Los Angeles and attended by the mayor and Honda President Hiroyuki Yoshino.
Toyota will charge 1.2 million yen ($9,784) for its five-seater FCHV in Japan under a 30-month contract with four ministries initially.
----
BP Solar to Cut Va. Jobs
Monday, November 25, 2002
Washington Post; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34806-2002Nov24?language=printer
BP Solar will eliminate 160 jobs in Toano, Va., east of Richmond, by selling or closing a factory that makes thin film used in solar panels, the company said. The shutdown follows last month's closing of the John Deere plant in James City County, Va. The two plants ranked among the top industries in a region that has grown rapidly in recent years.
"The closings will have a lot of impact on jobs, on charities and the trickle-down effects to businesses as far as employee spending," said Jim Kennedy, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.
Employees losing their jobs will receive a severance package, said Harry Shimp, BP Solar president.
BP Solar, based in Linthicum, Md., started manufacturing in Toano in 1996. The company also will eliminate 100 jobs in California.
----
US renewable energy use falls to 12-year low
Story by Tom Doggett
REUTERS USA:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18752/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
WASHINGTON - U.S. consumption of energy produced by solar, wind and other renewable sources last year hit its lowest level in 12 years, supporting the Bush administration's claims that America can't rely on such sources for a big chunk of its energy supplies for a long time.
Renewable use fell 12 percent as its share of U.S. energy consumption dropped to 6 percent, mainly because of a 23 percent decline in hydropower, according to a new report from the Energy Information Administration.
Hydropower was down due to a steep drop in snowpack levels and rainfall in the West.
"Consumption of all principal renewable energy resources decreased in 2001, except for wind," said the Energy Department's independent analytical arm.
Environmentalists have criticized the Bush administration for not doing enough to promote renewable energy sources in the White House's national energy plan.
While the administration encouraged more renewable energy production in its plan, it said the United States realistically will have to depend on traditional sources like oil and natural gas to fill most of its energy needs for the foreseeable future.
The latest renewable energy consumption assessment from the EIA appears to back the administration's position.
Oil accounted for 39 percent of U.S. energy use last year, while natural gas represented 24 percent, coal 23 percent and nuclear power 8 percent, EIA said.
For renewable energy use, biomass (ethanol, wood waste, garbage and landfill gas) had the largest share at 50 percent, followed by hydropower at 42 percent and geothermal at 6 percent. Wind and solar each accounted for 1 percent of total renewable energy consumption.
Fifty-three percent of renewable energy use came from the power sector to produce electricity.
The amount of electricity generated from renewable sources increased modestly in 2001 from the year before, rising 1,803 megawatts to 96,741 megawatts. Wind power accounted for most of that increase. One megawatt can power about 1,000 homes
The five leading states for renewable electric generation were Washington, California, Oregon, New York and Idaho.
Non-electric use of renewable energy decreased nearly 3 percent between 2000 and 2001, with 96 percent of that non-electric renewable energy consumption coming from biomass.
----
Wind farms may make UK overcapacity worse
Story by Margaret Orgill
REUTERS UK:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18753/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
LONDON - Britain's push to to build new wind farms could exacerbate current problems of overcapacity in the electricity industry, energy regulator Callum McCarthy said.
The crisis in the sector, triggered by low power prices, sent TXU Europe - once one of the UK's main electricity suppliers - into administration on Tuesday and has left nuclear generator British Energy on the verge of bankruptcy.
"The outlook is for the capacity surplus to grow as more wind and CHP (combined heat and power) plant is connected in response to the government's incentives for renewable energy sources," McCarthy, chief executive of Ofgem told a Standard and Poor's seminar on the power industry this week.
Ofgem's calculations show that if the government's targets to expand renewable energy are met and all existing power stations run to the end of their projected lives, then the surplus capacity would grow to around 60 percent in 2010.
"That is a simplistic calculation, which I doubt many would expect to happen in reality. But the probability of continuing spare capacity is one that seems very high,", said McCarthy.
A rush to build new power stations in the 1990s when electricity prices were much higher, has left Britain's generators struggling with a capacity surplus of 25 percent of peak demand compared with a more usual level of 15 percent.
Now companies are gearing up to build dozens of wind farms, encouraged by the government which has a target of boosting renewables to 10 percent of the UK's electricity supplies by 2010 from three percent of presently.
The government is to publish its white paper on energy policy early next year which is expected to underline the need to encourage renewables as part of its stategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
PLANTS MOTHBALLED, LITTLE EFFECT ON PRICES
Cash-strapped generators have mothballed traditional power stations with two gigawatts of capacity but this has made little difference to prices levels.
UK electricity prices have fallen 40 percent over the last four years in the build-up to and after the launch of a more competitive trading market last year.
According to Standard & Poor's, it could take up to a decade for prices to start rising as it will be years before older power stations are closed down and demand is growing slowly at between one and two percent a year.
Ofgem plans to extend the new power trading market, which only covers England and Wales, to Scotland which will also help keep power prices depressed.
(Additional reporting by Stuart Penson).
---
UK wants offshore wind farms focused, costs cut
Story by Margaret Orgill
REUTERS UK:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18754/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
LONDON - Energy companies should concentrate on building offshore wind farms in three areas off the English and Welsh coasts to cut costs and kickstart the renewable energy sector, the government said last week.
Launching a consultation on the government's new offshore wind strategy, Energy Minister Brian Wilson said the proposals should allow firms to build much bigger schemes than those approved in the first round of offshore projects last year.
"The new framework will enable developers to think big. I expect much larger proposals to come forward than the 30 turbine (75 megawatt) projects leased in the first round," Wilson said in a statement.
Powergen has said it is looking at plans for a 500 megawatt project in the outer Thames Estuary near London, one of the areas pinpointed by the government with best potential for wind power.
The two other zones selected are the Greater Wash area off Lincolnshire in eastern England and the coastline from the Solway Firth on the England/Scotland border to North Wales.
"As the wind farms will be closer together, it means developers can share their resources and help bring down the cost of this abundant source of energy," Wilson said.
Companies say these three areas are the most suitable as they have shallow sandy seabeds which make installing turbines easier as well as good grid connections.
In Scotland, building offshore wind farms is more expensive because of its rocky seabed and more limited grid links.
Although offshore wind is more expensive to tap than onshore, local resistance to the noise and the sight of tall land-based turbines has made it attractive to energy companies and the government.
Last year Britain granted the first licences to build offshore wind farms at 13 sites which will involve an investment of 1.6 billion pounds ($2.53 billion) and supply about one percent of the UK's power needs by 2004-2005.
The government sees offshore wind power as key to its strategy to increase the contribution of renewable energy to 10 percent of electricity supplies by 2010 from just under three percent currently.
The proposals were welcomed by the wind power industry and environmentalists who say the wind blowing around Britain's shores could supply the island's electricity needs three times over.
"It's fantastic news. The government is recognising the potential for a huge amount of energy from offshore wind," Matthew Spencer, campaign director for Greenpeace, said.
Wilson said strategic environmental assessments of the three areas will be carried out before the Crown Estate, which manages Britain's territorial waters, grants the next round of site licences which is expected in April 2003.
New exploration licences will also be granted for sites beyond Britain's 12 mile territorial limit but this could require new legislation.
--------
Subsidies boost German solar energy industry - study
REUTERS GERMANY:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18748/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
FRANKFURT - Germany's solar energy equipment industry will have received private sector investment totalling $1 billion in 1998-2004, raising sales in the industry five times from 2001 levels, a study showed.
International energy majors such as Shell , RWE and Vattenfall have solar energy-related production ventures in Germany, taking advantage of state subsidies aimed at boosting alternative sources of energy.
"These extensive investments are mainly due to the German (government) subsidies, which have created a significant sales market in Germany," said the report commissioned by country's leading solar industry association UVS.
The study showed that sales in the so-called photovoltaics industry, which includes the production of solar cells and wavers, should rise to $1.6 billion by 2004 from about $320 million in 2001.
Despite booming investment and sales in the equipment industry, solar energy itself still contributes very little to total power generation in Germany.
"Last year solar power had a 0.03 percent share in overall electricity production in Germany and it is expected to remain below one percent in 2002," an UVS spokesman told Reuters.
Installed solar power in Germany in 2001 stood at 200 megawatt (MW), again trailing behind Japan which had over 400 MW put into place. The U.S. came third with about 175 MW of installed capacity.
-------- energy
U.S. SECRETLY LOADS UP ON OIL IN CASE OF WAR
By VINCENT MORRIS,
November 25, 2002
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/62840.htm
WASHINGTON - With weapons inspectors due to arrive in Iraq today, America has quietly stockpiled a historic quantity of oil - readying itself in case a war disrupts the supply.
The country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, stored in Texas and Louisiana, holds an estimated 600 million barrels of oil, enough to offset the loss of Iraq's oil if inspections lead to war.
President Bush has authorized the transfer of 150,000 barrels of oil a day into the reserve. He could release 4 million barrels a day for 20 weeks if war interrupts the flow.
The record stockpile, reported by Time magazine this week, allows Bush to avoid the shortages that plagued his father's administration during the previous Bush war with Iraq in 1991.
With 18 U.N. inspectors arriving today, lawmakers yesterday were not optimistic that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will cooperate; several predicted that America will be at war as early as this winter.
Although some in the Bush administration have hoped that Iraqis would rise up against Saddam once it becomes clear that the United States wants to make war, several lawmakers say it won't happen.
"That's unlikely," said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) agreed that a coup is unlikely, although both men said they expect war with Iraq soon.
"There's a 70 percent chance that we will be at war with Iraq this winter," said Graham, who as chairman of the committee has access to far more classified military information than all but a handful of members of Congress.
Meanwhile, Iraq is again complaining that the inspection process is designed to give the White House an excuse to attack.
"There is premeditation to target Iraq, whatever the pretext," said Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Bush has said he may take on Iraq if the country frustrates inspectors. U.S. officials are confident that other countries will back America if Bush does go to war.
"We have the world community with us. We have the force of the United Nations with us. It's now up to Saddam Hussein," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) on CNN.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Berrigan still rails against war
As anti-war activist Phillip Berrigan approaches the end of his battle, his conscience remains as clear as his mission.
By Carl Schoettler,
Baltimore Sun Staff
November 25, 2002
http://www.sunspot.net/features/bal-to.berrigan25nov25,0,653126.story?coll=bal-features-headlines
Philip Berrigan uses a walker to hobble slowly to the lectern in the library at West Chester University in southeastern Pennsylvania. He seems frail, but perhaps that's because he's always been so robust.
He's lost weight and his hair is white and his voice soft and hollow when he begins to speak. Thinness has given his face a craggy, monumental look. His deep-set eyes are shadowed by the overhead lights in this elegant, wood-paneled library room. At 78, he has perhaps earned the face he deserves. He reads a bit haltingly from a paper on his unwavering opposition to war and nuclear weapons. But his talk flashes with the old fire and wit as he warms to his task, echoing the strength of the past.
"For a long time I've been astonished by the fact that the human family has not caught on, not caught on at all, to the bankruptcy of violence and killing," he says. "Violence is, was, always will be, bankrupt, anti-human, criminal - always!"
He's been preaching that sermon for nearly half a lifetime. He's the patriarch of the Catholic anti-war movement and he's paid for his right to speak with hard time in jail. He figures he's spent 11 of the last 35 or 40 years behind bars. His last stretch ended just about a year ago. He'd been inside since December 1999 after banging on some A-10 Warthog warplanes in an anti-war protest at the Middle River Air National Guard base. Jim Smith, the judge who sentenced him for the Middle River action, has just been elected Baltimore County executive.
"Poor man," Berrigan says, not without a certain irony. "Catholic judge of the year."
Berrigan's had increasingly bad health problems during this last year out of jail. He broke his arm in April, which postponed a hip replacement operation until mid-summer. Then his recovery from hip surgery was very slow.
"So I checked into Sinai for tests to find out what was wrong and they discovered this cancer of the liver."
He's scheduled for his first chemotherapy session at Johns Hopkins Hospital on the morning after his West Chester talk.
The audience, 150 or so people who have come out on a nasty, rainy night for the university's Activist Days, listen with reverent respect to Berrigan and his wife, Elizabeth McAlister, who gives her own tough speech. They're treated like village elders passing on hard-won wisdom. They autograph lots of books and posters before driving home to Baltimore.
A few days after the chemotherapy, Berrigan sits in the living room of Jonah House. Sun streams through the windows overlooking the old cemetery of St. Peter the Apostle Church. The buzz of lawn mowers filters in. McAlister and Susan Crane, another member of the community, are cutting the grass. St. Peter's, closed now, once served Irish and Italian communities in Southwest Baltimore. The graveyard was rundown and overrun with trees and underbrush before Jonah House took over its care in exchange for being able to live there.
"Well, I've had my first bout with chemotherapy," Berrigan says. "No nausea. No diarrhea. It didn't hit me hard at all."
No pain so far?
"Your liver is down there on the right side and I have a little twinge down there," he says.
Always in touch
"I was answering letters when you arrived," he tells a visitor. "Some days I get eight or 10. Not as many [as in jail], but a good number. Once they learn about this cancer, they say they're praying for me. They start talking about involvement, what they've been doing against [President] Bush's policies." Berrigan, predictably enough, finds himself totally opposed to the Bush administration. He talks about the powerful with harsh hyperbole.
"Beginning with the stolen election in Florida," he says, "then the hardening of his campaign promises. And then adhering to a paper that was written about 10 years ago and was edited by his chief aides, like [Vice President Dick] Cheney and [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz ... , which went beyond the war in Afghanistan - which, of course, was an enormous swindle in itself - to Iraq and the invasion there and the control of the Middle East and its oil. And to do this with military might and then to leapfrog around the planet ...
"And all of this is enforced by our military," he says. "We say to people, 'If you don't like it, what are you going to do about it?' They're talking about Pax Americana. The most flagrant type of imperialism."
Earlier in the day, John Pilger, a British journalist and filmmaker, sent Berrigan an e-mail about demonstrations spreading across America. Later on, Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general who is now an anti-war and human rights activist, calls with an extended conversation.
Berrigan answers all his calls and letters. "That used to be a rule with Gandhi," he says. "Everyone who wrote him would get an answer. And he had many more letters to answer than I ever have."
He still writes inmates he met in jail. He's got a couple of letters in today's mail that he has to answer.
"They ask me for money," he says. "If I can spare any I send some on. I used to help a lot of guys. Because friends would send in a lot of money, I had a good healthy commissary account. I used to shop for them. You'd go to the commissary and you'd buy them cigarettes. You'd buy them coffee. You'd buy them a little candy every now and then, hard candy. Things like that. And it makes a hell of a difference in their lives. Some of them are flat broke."
You're never conned?
"Oh, yeah. All the time," he says, matter-of-factly. "You are conned. And you better accept that. Oh, sure."
He laughs.
"You can't tell and you're not going to do a lot of detective work. What's the difference. But not always. Very often there's real need. The only thing that irritates me is they'll [get] stuff from me and then they'll trade it with other prisoners and make a little profit sometimes."
Berrigan seemed to use a lot of Biblical references in his West Chester talk. Does he think he's more or less religious these days?
"You know you learn all the time," he says. "We get up in the morning here and we go through the day's scripture. Now in the Catholic church they have different scriptural readings from the Old and New Testament every day. So we read two of them and then we meditate and discuss those readings and their contemporary application. ... Then we do a lot of prayer on our own the rest of the day. All of us do."
So you find justification in the Bible for your activism?
"Oh, very definitely," he says. "I don't think I'd be anywhere as an activist if I didn't get authority from the Bible. No, I wouldn't be doing it."
He claims Biblical authority even for such things as his action in disabling aircraft at Middle River.
"Oh, sure," he says. "I was going over the prophecy of Isaiah, in the second chapter. ... He speaks of beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. That's the word of God spoken to us. He says the time of peace will come where the nations, everybody, will be doing this, destroying the implements of war and we won't train for war again.
"That's your authority. We're bringing that to pass right now because those planes - once you've disarmed them, they can't fly until they repair them. So we're bringing that to pass ... and that's what we're commanded to do."
How long have you been doing this kind of stuff?
"Since 1966," he says. He was arrested for pouring blood on draft files at the U.S. Customs House in a protest against the war in Vietnam. And, of course, he was one of the Catonsville Nine who burned files at a draft board in one of the more famous actions of that era. "Well, before that I was breaking the law in the civil rights struggle. I was arrested down in Selma, Ala., and that would be 1962 or 1963."
He was ordained as a Josephite priest in 1955. Josephites have a special mission to serve African-Americans. He was assigned to teach in New Orleans, where he got caught up in the civil rights movement.
"Then Martin Luther King began to evolve his own philosophy of resistance [from] Jesus and Gandhi. He was a Gandhian. I used to attend all those sessions and I joined all those folks and they had a considerable influence on me because they taught me something I didn't know at all and that was non-violence.
"And then I saw it practiced down there. ... There were the Freedom Riders. People were killed. People were going to jail. That [had] a tremendous influence on me."
Wartime experience
So did his service in World War II.
"I was an infantry platoon officer," he says. "I know how to handle small arms. I was an experienced marksman, all of that. See, I'm a violent person. I came out of that war a good killer. I was an accomplished killer."
He went overseas as a noncommissioned officer in an artillery battalion that started out in Normandy and Brittany and crossed France into Belgium and the Netherlands. He crossed into Germany as an infantry officer. During the Battle of the Bulge he was sent to infantry officers training school at Fontainebleau, near Paris.
"So I saw normal action as an artillery man, but not too much as an infantry platoon officer. God spared me from that. That's a rough way to go."
New second lieutenants had a high mortality rate, which is why the Army set up the school at Fontainebleau, he says. The infantry school at Fort Benning in Georgia couldn't supply them fast enough.
"You were out there living with the men," he says. "Your life expectancy in combat was about two minutes before you were knocked out, either wounded or else killed."
When he came home from the war he finished up work he needed for his degree at Holy Cross College. Then he entered the Josephite seminary in Washington.
"I attended the seminary with a lot of black seminarians from our missions in the South. They were black Southerners and they taught me a lot."
He says he moved step by step to nonviolence.
You don't ever get discouraged?
"No," he says, quietly. "One of the strengths of community is that you have around you people who fight discouragement just like you do. And if we start to feel sorry for ourselves there is always another person to help with that and give reasons why we shouldn't be sorry for ourselves."
So what has been the effect of these 40 years of resistance?
"I don't know. It's had all sorts of effect for me, that's for sure."
Long stretches in jail, for example.
"Then, too, I think I have helped quite a number of people, both abroad in Western Europe and in Australia and here, to see what's coming down. Modestly I can say that. You can't make any great claims. I've helped a great deal with this Plowshares disarmament thing. I've done a lot of work on that."
And he has a full schedule of work yet to do.
"I have to go to the University of Missouri at Columbia soon. I have to go to Kentucky in January to conduct an activist retreat and I have two places in California to go to in the spring. Yeah, they keep me running."
But he recently had to cancel an engagement in Milwaukee.
"I just wasn't up it."
The buzz of the lawn mowers stops and McAlister and Crane come in for lunch. Willa Bickham and Brendan Walsh have brought a big pan of eggplant lasagna from their Viva House Catholic Worker center and everybody sits down to eat.
After lunch McAlister helps her husband down the back steps to the cemetery. He climbs laboriously onto a power mower seat and he sets off to do his part for the Jonah House community by cutting his share of the grass on the old burial ground.
----
Russian Anti-Nuclear Groups Under Close Scrutiny
November 25, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-25-19.asp#anchor1
IRKUTSK, Siberia, Russia, Members of the environmental group Baikal Environmental Wave are breathing easier today after the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) searched their offices Friday as part of a criminal investigation over suspected disclosure of state secrets. The FSB confiscated 15 of BEW's 18 computers.
But on Sunday the authorities said they will not charge the environmental group with disclosing state secrets, according to the FSB press service in Irkutsk. Some of the confiscated computers will be returned, the FSB said.
"Criminal charges will be made not over activities of environmental group, but over activities of people who offered state' secrets to environmental activists," an FSB official told the NTV television company.
Last year, the group began to monitor radioactive contamination near Angarsk Combine (AEHK). According to the official AEHK website, it "produces and enriches uranium hexafluoride which used to produce nuclear fuel."
The BEW project included the production and publication of a map that shows radioactive pollution near the facility. The map was produced nearly 10 month ago and then mailed out to local authorities and federal agencies.
BEW ordered this map officialy from a state owned company of local geologists, Sosnov-Geologia, which has official license to produce similar maps. The geologists said they did not monitor any secret facilities or areas and conducted all of their activities with official permission.
According to Russian legislation, said BEW, information on radioactive contamination cannot be kept secret. But according to the FSB, the map contains state secrets.
"In Russia, people working to protect [the] right for healthy environment, especially if this work [is] related to facilities of Ministry of Atomic Power, often get under pressure from FSB," said BEW in a statement.
In the past few years "environmental groups in Russia works under heavy pressure from FSB," said Vladimir Slivyak of Ecodefense in an interview with the political news agency POLIT.RU.
"According to Russian legislation, information about radioactive contamination in Russia can not be secret," said Alexandr Nikitin of Bellona Saint Peterburg. "But I'm not surprised. In Russia environmental activists have to expect such attacks. The only question is who's next," Nikitin said in interwiev with the radio program "Echo of Moscow."
In Moscow on November 21, the authorities limited a demonstration against the import of Bulgarian spent nuclear fuel by the Russian nuclear industry. The authorities permitted no more than 15 participants for this action. Never before have such demands been made of any other action organizers, said Slivyak.
----
Greenpeace wins right to challenge UK nuclear aid
Story by F. Brinley Bruton and David Lawsky
REUTERS UK:
November 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18743/newsDate/25-Nov-2002/story.htm
LONDON/BRUSSELS - Environmental group Greenpeace won the right to challenge state aid for stricken nuclear generator British Energy Plc last week, but the case may be undermined by a European move to approve the bailout.
Britain's High Court granted leave for a judicial review of the emergency state loan to the privatised power generator that produces a fifth of Britain's power.
The ruling offers Greenpeace and its ally in the court case, renewable energy firm Ecotricity, a high-profile platform to argue that nuclear power is uneconomic, dangerous and should face an orderly shutdown.
British Energy hit problems this year as wholesale UK electricity prices fell below its cost of production. It begged for help from the government, which gave it a 650 million pound ($1 billion) loan, maturing next Friday.
The European Commission, in its role as Europe's over-arching industry regulator, has described the handout as technically "unlawful" because it was provided without its permission. This is the basis of Greenpeace's case.
But commission officials say they could still approve the aid despite the technical breach. Last week, sources close to the commission said it would approve the aid retrospectively by the end of December, overcoming the UK government's legal problems and raising doubts over Greenpeace's case.
Under EU rules, state financial help deemed to be "rescue aid" can run for six months. The government first gave aid to British Energy in September.
The government's Department of Trade and Industry could not be reached immediately for comment.
Greenpeace was adamant it would press ahead. "EU clearance doesn't necessarily stop our case," said a spokesman. "Either the aid is unlawful or it isn't."
Greenpeace's first hearing is not due until January 27, and the legal wrangling is likely to fade into the background as the government's loan repayment deadline approaches.
"They (Greenpeace and others) can argue all they like in British or EU courts," said an industry analyst. "By the time any ruling is made, a restructuring could be done and dusted."
The government has already extended the loan once, but sources say Friday's deadline should bring with it some indication of what the government plans to do for the long term.
The company's board and the government are locked in talks that could lead to a debt restructuring and/or changes to the structure of the UK's electricity market, to allow the business to emerge as a solvent power provider.
British Energy shareholders have already seen their one-time blue chip holding become a penny stock, and bondholders expect to suffer too in any restructuring. The firm's bond prices trade below 50 percent of face value.
VARIABLE REPROCESSING CHARGE?
Sources close to the situation said the government was looking at how it could benefit from any recovery in British Energy's fortunes in return for continued financial support.
One source said there were talks about the government receiving preferred, non-voting equity in the company, but that now it was most likely to opt for a plan that could cut the amount it pays state-owned BNFL to reprocess nuclear fuel.
Under the plan, BNFL's reprocessing fee would be tied to wholesale electricity prices. This would enable BNFL to cut its charges when British Energy is finding times tough, but raise them when power prices recover.
The current fixed-price charge costs British Energy about 300 million pounds a year. It makes BNFL, and therefore the government, one of British Energy's biggest creditors.
The sources said the government had ruled out taking a substantial equity stake in British Energy directly, or indirectly through state-owned BNFL - something that had been on the table in the early stages of the crisis.
"Any sort of substantial equity involvement would clearly cause quite a lot of problems associated with state aid," said one source involved in the talks. (Additional reporting by Tom Bergin and Andrew Callus).
----
S.Korean Students Firebomb U.S. Base in Protest
November 25, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-usa.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean student protesters threw firebombs at a U.S. military base in Seoul on Monday in a fresh protest against the acquittal last week of two U.S. soldiers involved in an accident that killed two girls.
Some 20 students tossed 15 home-made Molotov cocktails at Camp Gray, a small storage facility several kilometersfrom the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) headquarters, local police and U.S. military officials said.
In separate U.S. court-martial trials last week, the driver and navigator of a U.S. armored vehicle were found not guilty of negligent homicide in a June accident in which two 13-year-old schoolgirls were crushed while walking on a village road.
The emotive case was tried as South Korea and the United States were struggling to maintain a united stance in dealing with North Korea's nuclear arms program, which was revealed last month and has put a damper on improving North-South ties.
The acquittals angered local activists and sparked anti-U.S. rallies by opponents of the presence of 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. On Saturday, 500 people demonstrated outside the USFK headquarters in central Seoul.
The firebomb attacks early on Monday morning ignited a small fire near the gate of Camp Gray. The fire was quickly extinguished without causing damage or injuries, U.S. Eighth Army spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Boylan said.
The students spread leaflets describing themselves as Korean Students Seeking Punishment for the Murderous American Soldiers, Boylan said.
The United States maintains nearly 100 military installations in South Korea as a deterrent against the communist North.
The United States and South Korea are formal military allies. But pollution, noise and traffic from the U.S. bases and occasional crimes by American troops have been a source of friction with communities near U.S. facilities.
Protesters have insisted the soldiers be tried in South Korean courts, opposing a bilateral treaty granting the U.S. military jurisdiction in cases involving soldiers on duty.
South Korea's main political parties have seized upon the verdicts to demand revision of an agreement on the treaty governing the legal status of U.S. troops in South Korea.
----
Please consider signing on to this nationwide petition calling for a full and public investigation into 9-11
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002
From: John Judge, 911 Emergency Response Network copa@tidalwave.net
http://www.911nationalnetwork.org/petition/
----
PROTESTING WAR WITH IRAQ
November 25, 2002
PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec02/antiwar_11-25.html
As the possibility of war with Iraq looms, an anti-war movement is developing in the United States.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Last week some 350 people gathered in downtown Chicago for a peace rally. Most were high school and college students, like 20-year- old Gimena Gordilla, who is passionately opposed to war with Iraq.
GIMENA GORDILLA, College Student: I'm against the war, because I don't believe that all possible non-military measures have been exhausted. I feel like Bush won't take yes as an answer from the inspectors, and he won't take no to war as an answer. A growing anti-war movement
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: While polls show that a majority of Americans do support the President, anti-war sentiment has been growing around the country. Tens of thousands turned out for anti-war demonstrations last month in cities like Washington, San Francisco and Seattle. [Demonstration]
While the rally behind me in Chicago is the most visible sign of the new anti-war movement, there's also a lot going on in smaller venues: Teach-ins at universities and high schools, strategy sessions, and educational meetings in churches, community centers, and homes across the country.
In this home in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood, a group organized by the community organization Acorn met to decide whether opposition to war in Iraq should be on their agenda.
DENISE DIXON, Community Activist: As a community organization, I know we work on different things. Does this seem like an issue that we need to be putting our fingers in? I mean, because these are our children that they're talking about sending over there and shedding their blood, and these are our dollars that they're taking out of our community, and our programs are going to be cut. So is this something as a community organization we should be doing?
CURTIS FOULKS, Community Activist: It's something every community organization should be doing, because it not only affects our children now, but it affects the way they perceive the world as it is, the way that they relate to, you know, the international scene, the way that they relate to each other.
If I don't like what you're doing, if I don't like because you're a leader, then what I do is go to your country and kill you. What does that say to the average person on the street or our children? You know, if I don't like what you're doing, I'm going to go out here and kill you.
What do you think these gangs are doing -- the same thing; where do you think they learned it from? They learned it from the war mongers that are in this country, that lead this country. If we don't like what somebody's doing, we're going to go over and kill them.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Across town in an affluent suburb, these high school students at Loyola Academy were asking questions about Saddam Hussein and the possibility of war.
Student SpeakingSTUDENT: I'm curious, what should we do if just -- I mean, he does this all the time, he refuses to disarm, and he kicks the inspectors out? I mean, I don't want a war either, because, I mean, that's just going to set off all sorts of things; it's going to be god awful. But I think we need to have some way of sort of, if you will, forcing him to actually disarm, because, I mean, he has proven that he will use these weapons on anyone.
JEFF GUNTZEL, Voices in the Wilderness: We know Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, against his neighbors, so I'm not here to deny any of those facts. I think Saddam Hussein's behavior is unacceptable; it's an understatement. I also think that our own government's response is unacceptable. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. Getting organized
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Jeff Guntzel has talked to thousands of students and adults, and has made eight trips to Iraq as part of his role as an organizer with Voices in the Wilderness, a group first formed to oppose sanctions against Iraq, sanctions they say hurt innocent civilians and not Saddam Hussein. Voices now focuses on opposing a war as well.
JEFF GUNTZEL: I find an overwhelming amount of people coming out who in the past were not active, who were not coming to talks, who are coming to listen to this message and just try to come to some sort of conclusion, hopefully other than what the Bush administration is telling them to come to, based on facts, based on real reflection.
DemonstrationELIZABETH BRACKETT: Even in Chicago's nasty weather, small demonstrations are being held almost every day, while behind the scenes, organizations are getting together to plan large anti-war events to be held during the upcoming holiday season.
Leaders of faith-based organizations talked strategy and logistics in the offices of the American Friends Service Committee.
MICHAEL McCONNELL, American Friends Services Committee: We need to begin brainstorming some of the elements of the 15th. I think we wanted an interfaith service. We did not want a lot of speaking, but we definitely wanted to say this is an event against the war.
RICK PETERSON, United Church of Christ: Part of what I was thinking is that we'd start by going north and going by water tower and then going down Michigan Avenue and ending at the river, but if that's too long, especially on December 15, maybe we need to consider shortening the route.
KEVIN McDERMOTT, Oak Park Coalition for Truth & Justice: I think the visibility of going down the major shopping area in Chicago, the Magnificent Mile... I mean, it's called the Magnificent Mile. To do a mile procession along the Magnificent Mile, the symbolism of that just seems to me to be so strong, and then going down to the river to lay down our arms. I would hate to give that up. I just think that's so powerful.
CALVIN MORRIS, Community Renewal Society: Of course, when we get to the river, we'll going to sing, "I'm going to lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside." So I mean, I think there are a lot of things both in the singing and in the kind of call and response that we can do.
DEMONSTRATORS: One, two, three four, Tricky Dick, stop the war!
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Although some of the chants from the protests against the war in Vietnam may echo today...
DEMONSTRATORS: One, two, three, four, we don't want your endless war! Comparing today's protesters to those in the 1960s
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: ...And although some of the protesters may be the same, Vietnam-era organizers say there is a difference in how a movement is organized today. The Internet and e-mail have made it much easier to build organizations quickly and turn out crowds, says public relations executive Marilyn Katz. She relied on some of her old contacts she met organizing anti-war demonstrations for Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s, when she put together a new organization this fall: Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq.
MARILYN KATZ, Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq: What really prompted my re-involvement was the sense that the Bush administration was going to rush to war with Iraq, and that there didn't seem to be a clear oppositional force. It was a month and a half before the election. And I could see the Democratic Party kind of reading the polls and figuring out where to position themselves. It seemed to me that it was critical that we open up a space for dissent.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Using new e-mail lists plus old contacts the new group quickly gathered 300 names, raised $20,000 and placed this anti-war ad in the "Chicago Tribune." Katz sensed a different attitude from the young people she worked with.
MARILYN KATZ: They are less angry I think in some ways than we were, and partly it is because some people are listening. To me what happened in the '60s is really that nobody would listen, and you felt that you were speaking to blank wall. And it created great rage by '69/70.
ProtestorsELIZABETH BRACKETT: Anti-war protesters say the response they get from the public is also very different from the Vietnam era, when rocks and cans were often thrown at demonstrators.
KEVIN McDERMOTT: It's been great. As you can hear, we get honks all the time we're out here for the entire time -- you can hear -- we get honk after honk. And occasionally we'll get someone who will be opposed to our position. But we're getting probably 99-1 in favor of what we're saying here. So that's really very gratifying.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Methodist bishop Joseph Sprague, who also protested the Vietnam War, sees other differences this time. For one thing, the protests have started even before a war has begun.
BISHOP C. JOSEPH SPRAGUE, United Methodist Church: In some ways we're more advanced this time, in that Vietnam incrementally evolved as a war, and so did the opposition, whereas now, the administration has been very clear about what it intends, if indeed world opinion is there. And hence, there has been a clarion call, if one is opposed to it or if a group is opposed to it, to be so and to do so.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Many of those opposing a war with Iraq were not part of any earlier peace movements. University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer graduated from West Point at the height of the Vietnam War. He never served in Vietnam, but he did not oppose the war. He supported the Bush administration in the war in Afghanistan, but sees war in Iraq is not necessary.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER, University of Chicago: The first reason is that we can contain Saddam Hussein, we can contain Saddam Hussein even if he has nuclear weapons. Second reason is that I think a war against Iraq would be very detrimental for the war on terrorism.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mearsheimer organized a group of fellow academics, who sponsored this anti-war ad in the New York Times.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: So these were not, say, the usual suspects in terms of being an anti-war constituency?
John MearsheimerJOHN MEARSHEIMER: Not at all. You are talking about academics who are relatively senior. Everyone has tenure on that list of 33, and everyone is deeply appreciative of the fact that it is sometimes necessary to go to war for the national interest. But all of the people who signed the ad felt that in the case of Iraq, it's not in their national interest to fight at this point in time.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mearsheimer thinks the growing anti-war movement seems to have had an impact on Bush administration policy in Iraq.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think that two things have happened to the Bush administration over the past few months. One is, I think they've become more aware of the down-side risks of attacking Iraq. And secondly, I think they are aware that there is a lot of opposition in this country to a war against Iraq. And as a result, the Bush administration appears to be willing to let the U.N. inspections regime work, and then maybe declare victory and avoid a war.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But these protesters fear that war with Iraq is inevitable, and that fear, they say, will continue to fuel their protest.
----
Pentagon Papers' Ellsberg Sees Deja Vu in Iraq
Monday November 25, 2002
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021124/44/350cn.html
When Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg wrote a new memoir chronicling his decision to leak secret U.S. military documents exposing official lies about the Vietnam War, he had no inkling the United States could soon be at war with Iraq.
A week after the October release of his book, "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers," Congress authorized President Bush ( news - web sites) to wage war if necessary to disarm Baghdad.
Ellsberg is busy doing what he wishes he had done earlier during the Vietnam War -- sounding the alarm.
"I would give anything that is mine to give to avert this war, anything truthful and nonviolent to avert this war, which I think will be a catastrophe, and it will usher in an age of catastrophes," Ellsberg told Reuters during a weekend visit to the Miami Book Fair.
"The future is bleak but not hopeless. I am trying to do what I can to at least warn people. The risks are too great."
Ellsberg's view of the probable future is bleak indeed.
If Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network launches a "spectacular" terrorist attack on the United States as the FBI ( news - web sites) has warned, it will trigger a U.S. invasion of Iraq even if Baghdad is not involved, he predicts.
If there is no attack soon, the United States will provoke Iraq into shooting down one of its aircraft in the "no-fly" zones in southern and northern Iraq, he said.
"If Saddam doesn't manage to shoot down one of our planes, our planes will fly lower and lower," Ellsberg said. "We're going to be at war with Iraq well before Christmas."
Saddam would then use poison gas against U.S. troops, triggering a retaliatory U.S. attack on his bunkers with earth-penetrating nuclear weapons that would inadvertently cause mass civilian deaths and "create hundreds of thousands of new recruits for suicide training," he said.
"I believe they (the U.S. government) are very smart. They would have to be very stupid to believe that this would reduce the chances of terrorism. It will increase it sharply."
Saddam would make his weapons of mass destruction available to al Qaeda, allowing them to stage attacks that will wipe out Israel and many of its neighbors and prompt armies sympathetic to Islamist causes to take over Pakistan and Indonesia and set off a grab for Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
A NEW AGE OF BARBARISM?
"It will make it impossible for these countries whose cooperation in hunting for al Qaeda cells is absolutely essential," Ellsberg said. "We will no longer be able to reduce al Qaeda's strength. ... Osama will be a hero for the Muslim world for the next thousand years."
End result: A new age of barbarism, he said. "The world is going to look eventually like Afghanistan ( news - web sites) outside of Kabul."
Others have posed such doomsday scenarios, but in the case of Iraq, the United States' military superiority has grown so overwhelming since the 1991 Gulf war ( news - web sites) that even NATO ( news - web sites) has been left behind. Iraq's military is much smaller than it was. U.S. officials have said they have no intention of using nuclear weapons against Saddam, but have warned that if he unleashes biological or chemical agents, all bets are off.
In making his predictions, Ellsberg does have unique credentials, albeit from a different age and a different conflict.
The former Marine and ex-Pentagon official was part of a defense think tank that wrote a secret study of U.S. policy in Vietnam. The 7,000-page study, which became known as the Pentagon Papers, revealed that four presidents had steadily lied to the public and Congress about the U.S. war in Southeast Asia.
Disillusioned, Ellsberg leaked it to newspapers in 1971, setting off a furor that helped pave the way for the U.S. pull-out from Vietnam.
Ellsberg was imprisoned on espionage charges that were thrown out in 1973 and says he regrets only that he did not blow the whistle sooner.
"The worst thing I ever did was help get the bombing started" in Vietnam, he said.
He wrote his book, he said, because it holds timeless lessons on "the folly of self-delusion."
It opens with Ellsberg's discovery that the supposed North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. Navy ( news - web sites) ship in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 probably never happened and that President Lyndon Johnson knew it when he used the purported attack to persuade Congress to authorize U.S. military force in the region.
Ellsberg calls the Iraq war authorization "Tonkin Gulf II," adding: "I've studied this government's decision-making for 44 years. I don't know these specific individuals but I know some of their advisors. I understand that thinking.
"This war will look very, very bad within months after it starts," he said. "This war is an abomination that must not happen."
-------
------- 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.