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NUCLEAR
The Almanac
U.S. Officials Try to Trace Illegal Sale of Nuclear Technology
Taiwan softens referendum on China's missiles
Isotope analysis shows exposure to depleted uranium in Gulf War veterans
Suspect Dutch Material Said to Be Uranium
U.S.-South Korea agree to pull U.S. troops out of Seoul
Libya's black market deals shock nuclear inspectors
U.S. and Allies Hold Maritime WMD Drill
Bad Days at Indian Point
Indian Pt. Talks Falter on Eve of Strike Deadline
Y-12 medical director resigns
Ohio doesn't want waste from New Mexico plant
Bush Bypasses Senate On Judge
REALITY vs. FANTASY
MILITARY
Japanese Army Team Leaves for Iraq Mission
U.S. Troops to Relocate From Seoul
I believe in conspiracies
Halliburton Gets More Iraq Work
Halliburton wins big Iraqi contract
Taiwan's Leader Tones Down Referendum Opposed by Beijing
Taiwan Alters Arms Referendum Language
U.S. Willing to Alter Steps to Iraqi Self-Rule, Bremer Says
Crackdown on soldiers questioning occupation
We can share shrine with three faiths, says Wailing Wall liberator
Aide Says Israel Will Step Up Efforts to Kill Hamas Founder
'Marked' Founder of Hamas Vows More Attacks
Pakistani President Heckled in Speech to Parliament
Inquiry Ordered Into Reports of Prisoner Abuse
Relying on the word of 'little birds'
U.N. Support Crucial in Iraq, U.S. Says
Families stunned, angered by units' deployment extension past one year
300 years for cleanup?
Are You Going To Get Mad?
French Minister Blasts Certain U.S. Ideas
Indian Filmmakers Feel Sting of Censorship
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Rumsfeld asks Supreme Court to overturn "enemy combatant" ruling
Scalia and Opus Dei - Radicals on the High Court
High Court to Consider Detention Case
Court May Hear Case of Terror Suspect
Secret policing
Justices to Rule on Holding Illegal Immigrants
Bush Seeks Quick Ruling on U.S. Detainees
ACTIVISTS
Thousands march in Paris anti-nuclear protest
War protesters proud they got to jeer Bush
Protests Held Against French Headscarf Ban
Myanmar Releases 26 Opposition Prisoners
Clerics Urge Shiites to Protest
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
The Almanac
January 17, 2004
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040114-092603-1006r.htm
Today is Saturday, Jan. 17, the 17th day of 2004 with 349 to follow....
In 1966, a U.S. B52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs collided with its refueling plane over Palomares, Spain, scattering radioactive plutonium over the area....
-------- arms
U.S. Officials Try to Trace Illegal Sale of Nuclear Technology
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
January 17, 2004
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/international/asia/17NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - American law enforcement officials said Friday that they were trying to determine whether the Pakistani government was involved in a plot by a South African businessman to export trigger devices that could be used for nuclear weapons.
"That's one possibility that we're investigating," said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We know these devices went to Pakistan. What we're still investigating is where exactly they ended up and who was behind it."
Asher Karni, an Israeli who lives in South Africa, was arrested in Denver earlier this month on charges that he had illegally exported the devices to Pakistan without a license. In court documents, the American authorities charge that Mr. Karni, 50, was at the center of a global operation that used front companies and false billing records to route the trigger devices from a private manufacturer in Salem, Mass., to South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and ultimately Pakistan.
The devices, high-speed electrical switches called triggered spark gaps, are typically used in hospitals to break apart kidney stones. But hospitals usually keep only a few on hand - not the 200 that Mr. Karni is accused of ordering from an American supplier, PerkinElmer Optoelectronics, of Salem.
A Pakistani diplomat in Washington said Pakistan would cooperate in the investigation, and that it had no knowledge of the plot that American authorities laid out.
Mr. Karni remains in federal custody in Denver. On Monday, United States Magistrate Judge Michael Watanabe agreed to free him on $75,000 bond and confine him to the home of a rabbi in Potomac, Md., pending his trial.
But the Justice Department objected, saying Mr. Karni is "an extreme flight risk," and the judge agreed to delay his release until a hearing is held next week. Mr. Karni's attorney could not be reached Friday.
"We are not involved in any proliferation activity," said the Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There's no basis for this, no question about it."
But American officials said they had come to focus on the possibility that the Pakistani government was involved for several reasons, beginning with the large number of devices that Mr. Karni ordered.
In addition to that, a Pakistani businessman named Humayn Khan who received the trigger devices had ties to the Pakistani military and appears to have been involved in jet fighter production, American officials said.
"This case represents one of the most serious types of export violations imaginable," federal prosecutors said earlier this week in a court filing in Denver. "Karni has exported goods that are capable of detonating nuclear weapons to a person he knows has ties to the Pakistani military."
The government's filing said: "Although Pakistan's current leadership has vowed to curb the spread of this technology, that region of the world remains volatile, and Islamic militants in the area have made no secret of their desire to obtain nuclear weapons. The threat that Karni's conduct posed was real."
The government's investigation appears to have begun last summer, when investigators with the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement received information from an anonymous source in South Africa about the possible diversion of American equipment to Pakistan and India, according to court papers.
In an affidavit filed in the case, James R. Brigham, an agent with the Commerce Department, said Mr. Karni tried to buy up to 400 of the trigger devices.
Investigators learned that Mr. Karni, working through a New Jersey contact, placed an order last year with PerkinElmer for 200 triggers at a cost of $89,400, Mr. Brigham said. Mr. Karni told the manufacturer the devices were to be used at a South African hospital, but officials at PerkinElmer said most hospitals would need no more than five or six, Mr. Brigham said.
Working with government officials, the company agreed secretly to disable the first shipment of 66 triggers by closing off the gas in-take lines, the government's affidavit said. But officials said it was not known if Mr. Karni had succeeded in exporting any other working triggers to Pakistan.
Earlier, Mr. Karni tried to buy triggers in France and have them sent directly to Pakistan, American officials said. But that effort failed when the sales agent told Mr. Karni that he would have to get an American export license, officials said.
-------- china
Taiwan softens referendum on China's missiles
January 17, 2004
By William Foreman and Joe McDonald
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040116-112752-3936r.htm
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan's leader, pressured by the United States, yesterday significantly watered down the language of a March 20 referendum on how the island should deal with the threat of hundreds of Chinese missiles.
President Chen Shui-bian had pushed for a China-bashing vote that demanded the communist giant remove the missiles. Now he says the vote will focus on whether Taiwan should step up its anti-missile defenses if the threat continues.
China, meanwhile, fired a public relations blast at Taiwan yesterday, displaying before reporters in four cities a group of suspected spies, some of whom expressed dismay at having served the island government.
Taiwan dismissed the event as a ploy to influence the island's upcoming presidential election.
In an address on the referendum televised in prime time, Mr. Chen announced that voters would be asked to decide whether Taiwan should purchase more advanced anti-missile weapons if China doesn't stop pointing nearly 500 missiles at the island and renounce its threats to attack the island. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949.
Mr. Chen also said voters would decide whether the Taiwanese government should begin negotiating with China "to build consensus and for the welfare of the peoples on both sides."
The softer language and tone marked an apparent attempt by Mr. Chen to shed his recent image as an unpredictable, reckless leader looking to pick a fight with China. The conventional wisdom was that Mr. Chen thought standing up to China's bullying would help his re-election bid March 20 - the same day as the referendum.
But Mr. Chen couldn't afford to ruffle relations with America too much because valued moderate voters consider warm U.S. relations key to stability and economic prosperity on the island.
Mr. Chen's closest advisers told reporters a week ago they had to address U.S. worries the referendum might lead to even more provocative moves that could upset the delicate status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan has never dared hold an islandwide referendum. The longtime fear has been that such a vote would spark a war with China, which claims the island is a sacred piece of the motherland that must rejoin eventually.
The United States has insisted China refrain from using force to settle the Taiwan issue. But America has also warned Taiwan against unilateral moves toward a permanent split.
Last month, President Bush told Mr. Chen that the United States opposed unilateral moves to change the status quo. High-ranking U.S. officials also criticized the referendum as unnecessary and a new source of tension.
Yesterday, the White House welcomed the new, toned-down language.
"We certainly welcome any statements that confirm Taiwan's commitment to the status quo now and in the years ahead," Press Secretary Scott McClellan said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he was examining Mr. Chen's statements and could not say whether he was satisfied with them.
But he said: "I think President Chen has shown a little flexibility in the way those two questions have been worded."
All along, Mr. Chen has argued that the referendum wouldn't affect the status quo. He insisted China was the one trying to unilaterally change things by deploying missiles and threatening Taiwan.
He made that argument again yesterday, saying: "China's purpose is unquestionably obvious. They aim to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait through undemocratic, unpeaceful means."
China has not commented on the new ballot language.
However, the extraordinary exhibit of purported spies appeared to be aimed personally at Mr. Chen as he prepares for the referendum and re-election bid.
"Chen Shui-bian is really a bad guy," one detainee, Fu Hung-chang, told reporters at a detention center in Guangzhou, China's southern business capital near Hong Kong. "He used us and then abandoned us."
The suspects appeared before selected Taiwanese, Hong Kong, foreign and mainland Chinese journalists two days after Beijing announced the arrests of seven more suspected spies linked to Taiwan.
Footage of the suspects was splashed across Taiwanese television as some broke down in tears and apologized.
China and Taiwan have no official ties but are believed to spy on each other.
Taiwan's government has said the men were innocent.
"We have reason to believe this is one way the authorities in communist China are trying to influence our domestic affairs and meddle with Taiwan's election," Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.
China denied it was trying to sway public opinion.
"These activities today were arranged not for the government's benefit, but to meet the requests of Taiwanese and Hong Kong journalists," said a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing.
Three prisoners - all crewcut, middle-aged men dressed in blue sweat pants and slip-on athletic shoes - were ushered into a conference room one by one for a 20-minute appearance in Guangzhou before about 40 reporters.
Similar events were held in the provinces of Anhui in China's east and Fujian and Hainan in the south. All have large Taiwanese business communities.
The suspects appeared physically well but said little.
"I want the Taiwan authorities to take responsibility for me," said Tung Tai-ping, who described the Chinese government as "magnanimous."
-------- depleted uranium
Isotope analysis shows exposure to depleted uranium in Gulf War veterans
By Tim Stephens
January 17, 2004
http://currents.ucsc.edu/03-04/01-19/uranium.html
U.S. veterans who were exposed to depleted uranium during the 1991 Gulf War have continued to excrete the potentially harmful chemical in their urine for years after their exposure, according to a new study published in the journal Health Physics.
These 30mm munitions (jackets and penetrators) are made with depleted uranium. Photo courtesy of the United Nations Environment Program
The study indicates that soldiers may absorb depleted uranium particles through inhalation, ingestion, or wound contamination, said Roberto Gwiazda, an environmental toxicologist at UCSC and lead author of the study.
Fine particles of depleted uranium are created when munitions made with the material strike a target. The new study did not address the health effects of exposure to depleted uranium, a subject of ongoing debate, but focused on a technique for detecting past exposure.
Low concentrations of uranium in the urine are normal due to ingestion of naturally occuring uranium in food and water. Depleted uranium is a by-product of the enrichment process used to make nuclear fuel, in which one isotope of uranium (235U) is extracted, leaving behind material depleted in that isotope. Depleted uranium is still weakly radioactive and, like other heavy metals, can be toxic in high doses. Because of its high density and other properties, it has been used in armor-piercing ammunition and in armor for fighting vehicles.
Gwiazda and Donald Smith, professor of environmental toxicology, developed a sensitive analytical technique to detect depleted uranium in urine samples. By measuring the relative abundances of different isotopes of uranium in the urine samples, the researchers were able to distinguish between natural and depleted uranium.
"This is the only unambiguous way to determine past exposure and uptake of depleted uranium," Gwiazda said.
The analysis of samples from Gulf War veterans was performed in collaboration with the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Depleted Uranium Follow-up Program, which is assessing, treating, and monitoring veterans who may have been exposed to depleted uranium during the war.
The researchers applied their technique to three different groups of Gulf War veterans. The first group of soldiers had shrapnel in their bodies as a result of "friendly fire" incidents in which their tanks or armored vehicles were hit by munitions containing depleted uranium. The second group consisted of soldiers who did not have shrapnel in them but were involved in the friendly fire incidents to different degrees, either because they were in the vehicles that were hit or because they participated in recovery operations. The third group was a reference group and consisted of soldiers who participated in the war but not in combat operations.
As expected, the soldiers with embedded shrapnel had high concentrations of uranium in their urine, and the isotope analysis showed that it was depleted uranium, presumably being released into their bodies from the shrapnel.
A more striking finding was the presence of depleted uranium in the urine of a significant number of soldiers in the second group, without embedded shrapnel but with potential exposure through inhalation, ingestion, or wound contamination. The uranium concentrations detected in this group were, on average, six times higher than in the reference group, but were still within the normal range for the U.S. population. Nevertheless, Gwiazda said, it was remarkable that the signature of depleted uranium could still be detected so many years after the exposure.
"These samples were taken six to eight years later," he said. The Veterans Affairs (VA) monitoring program has not reported any findings of clinically significant health effects related to exposure to depleted uranium, even in the highly exposed soldiers with embedded shrapnel.
Any health effects of exposure to depleted uranium may not be detectable without studying a large number of exposed individuals. The technique developed at UCSC could be used to screen a large number of people to identify those with past exposure to depleted uranium.
In addition to possible health effects in soldiers exposed during combat, concerns about depleted uranium include environmental contamination of battlefield sites. Civilian populations may be exposed through contact with depleted uranium fragments and dust left in the soil or with contaminated military equipment left behind after a conflict.
"We don't know if that kind of exposure will have any health effects. But now we have a technique that enables us to detect past exposure to depleted uranium," Gwiazda said.
The paper was published in the January issue of Health Physics. The authors include Katherine Squibb and Melissa McDiarmid of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in addition to Gwiazda and Smith.
-------- europe
Suspect Dutch Material Said to Be Uranium
January 17, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/international/europe/17YELL.html?pagewanted=all
NIJMEGEN, the Netherlands, Jan. 16 - Nuclear experts said Friday that preliminary tests on a small amount of low-level radioactive material discovered in a Rotterdam shipping container from the Middle East indicated it was natural uranium in the very early stages of refinement. They said the material could have come from Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was in the process of comparing the material to laboratory samples taken from a former Iraqi uranium processing plant that was dismantled in the 1990's.
Investigators suspect that the Rotterdam material - too little and too unrefined for use in a nuclear weapon - was overlooked in the cleanup of the Iraqi plant.
The uranium was discovered inside a shipment of scrap metal. Dutch officials said this week that the material was uranium oxide, or yellowcake. But the agency said initial tests indicated that it was in a "pre-yellowcake" stage.
-------- korea
U.S.-South Korea agree to pull U.S. troops out of Seoul
(Reuters)
17 Jan 2004 07:31
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:4008e5ae:e94b6914bbb38db0?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4151428
SEOUL - South Korea and the United States have agreed to pull out all American troops from Seoul as part of a global realignment plan of the U.S. forces, South Korea's defence ministry said on Saturday.
The decision to move U.S. troops south, away from the border with North Korea, was taken on a request by Washington and after a meeting between the two sides in Hawaii, a ministry spokesman said.
The U.S. military presence in the centre of the South Korean capital over the past 50 years has been a constant source of anti-U.S. sentiment in South Korea.
The ministry did not disclose details of the plan, which came a day after South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun named his foreign policy adviser and seasoned diplomat Ban Ki-moon as foreign minister.
Ban's predecessor, criticised by some officials as being too pro-American, quit on Thursday in a dispute pitting pro-U.S. ministry officials against left-leaning presidential aides over South Korea's policy towards the United States and North Korea.
South Korea's military had wanted to keep some American troops in Seoul on security concerns, while anti-U.S. protesters demanded a withdrawal of all 37,000 U.S. troops from the country.
The U.S. troops have been stationed in South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean conflict.
The Korea Times newspaper said there would likely be only about 50 U.S. soldiers at a liason office adjacent to South Korea's defence ministry building in central Seoul.
The land occupied by the U.S. forces would be returned to the Seoul metropolitan government, it said.
"We will make efforts to come up with steps in order for our people not to feel uneasy," said Assistant Defence Minister Cha Young-koo, the chief delegate for South Korea, in a local YTN television news.
-------- mideast
Libya's black market deals shock nuclear inspectors
Ian Traynor in Vienna
Saturday January 17, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/libya/story/0,14139,1125310,00.html
Colonel Muammar Gadafy of Libya has been buying complete sets of uranium enrichment centrifuges on the international black market as the central element in his secret nuclear bomb programme, according to United Nations nuclear inspectors.
The ease with which the complex bomb-making equipment was acquired has stunned experienced international inspectors. The scale and the sophistication of the networks supplying so-called rogue states seeking nuclear weapons are considerably more extensive than previously believed.
The purchase of full centrifuges, either assembled or in parts, marks a radical departure in what is on offer on the black market, sources said. While it is not yet clear where Col Gadafy obtained the centrifuge systems, at least 1,000 machines, believed to have been made in Malaysia, were seized last October by the Italian authorities on a German ship bound for Libya.
Diplomatic sources familiar with the results of a recent visit to Libya by nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the Gadafy bomb programme differed in crucial respects from nuclear projects in Iran, Iraq or North Korea.
"What was found in Libya marks a new stage in proliferation," said one knowledgeable source. "Libya was buying what was available. And what is available, the centrifuges, are close to turnkey facilities. That's a new challenge. Libya was buying something that's ready to wear."
As the climax to nine months of secret negotiations with British and US intelligence, Col Gadafy announced last month that he was renouncing his weapons of mass destruction programmes after purchasing what sources said were "a few thousand" centrifuges for enriching uranium to weapons grade.
Another well-placed source said: "We all now realise there is this extraordinarily developed and sophisticated market out there enabling anyone to get this centrifuge equipment."
Mohammed El Baradei, the IAEA chief, visited Libya a couple of weeks ago to view the Libyan equipment and take charge of the upcoming effort to dismantle the Libyan bomb programme. He described the experience as "an eye-opener".
A centrifuge is made up of hundreds of separate components. Typically, a country covertly seeking the uranium enrichment technology will seek to cover its tracks by obtaining a design blueprint and then purchasing the varied components separately from different suppliers.
The German ship was seized by Italians after a tip-off from the CIA. Knowledgeable sources said the centrifuges on board were "made-to-order" in Malaysia for Libya, based on designs directly or indirectly from Pakistan.
While US government sources have claimed that the seizure persuaded Col Gadafy to do his deal with Washington and London, diplomats and analysts closely following the nuclear trade are convinced that the ship was impounded because of information provided by the Libyans.
According to this version circulating in Vienna, headquarters of the IAEA, Col Gadafy told the CIA about the shipment as a goodwill gesture to convince the Americans and the British that he was committed to the deal being negotiated.
A Finnish expert leading the IAEA investigations into the Libyan and Iranian nuclear projects has so far been denied access to the equipment impounded by the Italians, apparently because of the tug-of-war between the Americans and the Vienna agency over how to dismantle the Libyan programme.
Senior US and British officials are due in Vienna on Monday to negotiate with Dr El Baradei over how to proceed in Tripoli. The Americans will be led by John Bolton, the hawk in charge of nuclear proliferation issues at the State Department. He has a reputation for scorning the UN agencies and his officials disparaged the El Baradei trip to Tripoli as a publicity stunt.
-------- terrorism
U.S. and Allies Hold Maritime WMD Drill
January 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Gulf-Weapons-Drill.html
ABOARD THE USNS SATURN (AP) -- Masked U.S. Marines and their Spanish counterparts streamed out of military helicopters and stormed a naval vessel Saturday, part of a drill in halting traffic in weapons of mass destruction.
In minutes, the 26 U.S. Marines and 15 Spanish commandos were in full control of the USNS Saturn, a U.S. supply ship that was outfitted to mimic a merchant ship carrying concealed chemical and biological weapons.
More than a dozen Saturn crew were bound with plastic handcuffs. A search team of experts draped in yellow protective suits and armed with high-tech gadgetry screened the shipment for weapons of mass destruction. The troops were equipped with 70 pounds of gear, including bulletproof vests, machine guns, pistols and communication equipment.
``There is no doubt in my mind that we could stop trafficking (of weapons of mass destruction) anytime, anywhere,'' said Expeditionary Strike Group One commander Rear Adm. Bob Conway.
``It looked like a ballet to me. ... It was just superb,'' said Conway, who watched the drill from the USS Peleliu amphibious assault ship.
Conway, who is the commander of a seven-warship battle group and led the weeklong Sea Saber 2004 joint exercises in the Arabian Sea, spoke to reporters after the drill aboard the USS Peleliu.
``What I think is going to happen is more and more nations will join this coalition effort ... and the more and more this happens, that in itself is a deterrent,'' said Conway.
Spanish military observer Lt. Cmdr. Angel Gamboa agreed, saying ``I think we are already sending a strong signal to those trying to trade or acquire WMD, and if more nations join us, these elements will face a strong opposition.''
The drill is the fifth and largest in a series of maritime, air and land interdiction training exercises by 16 nations as part of the Proliferation Security Initiative.
The exercises are part of a U.S. administration effort to block shipments of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the material and equipment needed to make them and missiles that could be used to carry them.
The United States, France, Singapore, Spain, Britain, Australia and Italy contributed equipment or observers to the Sea Saber drill. Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Turkey participated as observers.
The drill took place in the north Arabian Sea, near where a North Korean Scud missile shipment to Yemen was captured and later released in 2002.
Spanish forces acting on U.S. intelligence seized the ship and found 15 missiles and other military gear. They turned the ship over to American forces, who released it after several days when Yemen said it had bought the weapons and promised not to sell them to anyone else.
The temporary seizure was an embarrassment for the U.S. administration and highlighted the need for better cooperation.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Bad Days at Indian Point
Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Power Plant
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
January 17 / 18, 2004
CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair01172004.html
These are desperate days for Entergy, the big Arkansas-based power conglomerate that owns the frail Indian Point nuclear plant, located on the east bank of the Hudson River outside Buchanan, New York-just 22 miles from Manhattan.
First, a scathing report by a nuclear engineer fingered Indian Point as one of five worst nuclear plants in the United States and predicted that its emergency cooling system "is virtually certain to fail."
This damning disclosure was hotly followed by the release of a study conducted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which ominously concluded that the chances of a reactor meltdown increase by nearly a factor of 100 at Indian Point because the plant's drainage pits (also known as containment sumps) are "almost certain" to be blocked with debris during an accident.
"The NRC has known about the containment sump problem at Indian Point since September 1996, but currently plans to fix it only by March 2007," says David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists who. "The NRC cannot take more than a decade to fix a safety problem that places millions of Americans at undue risk."
Entergy and the NRC both downplayed the meltdown scenario and defended the leisurely pace of the planned repairs, which won't start until 2007. Entergy says that there's no rush to fix the problems with the emergency system because a breakdown isn't likely in the first place.
But that's flirting with almost certain disaster. Entergy and the NRC are staking the lives of millions on odds of a single water pipe not breaking under pressure. The problem is that these very kinds of pipes have corroded and been breached at other nuclear plants featuring similar pressurized water design. At the Davis-Bessie plant near Toledo, Ohio, a vessel head on one of the cooling water pipes had been nearly corroded away by acid and was dangerously close to rupturing.
The cooling water in these pipes is kept at a pressure of 2,200 pounds per square inch. If a pipe breaks, the 500-degree water would blow off as steam, tearing off plant insulation and coatings. The escaped water will pour into the plant's basement, where sump pumps are meant to draw the water back into the reactor core. But the Los Alamos tests showed that the cooling water would collect debris along the way that will clog up the mesh screens on the pipes leading back into the reactor. If this happens, the cooling of the reactor fuel would stop, the radioactive core would start to melt and the plant will belch a radioactive plume that will threaten millions downwind.
All this would happen very fast. The Indian Point 2 reactor would exhaust all of its cooling water in less than 23 minutes, while the number 3 reactor would consume all of its water in only 14 minutes. Try getting a nuclear plumber that quickly.
Yes, it sounds trite, but that's essentially what Entergy proposes as its quick fix to the meltdown scenario. Jim Steets, Entergy's spokesman on Indian Point matters, told the New York Times last month that the company was training its workers to scour the plant for flaking paint and potential debris and that if an accident occurred they would pump the water into the core more slowly, a plan that would buy plant managers and executives a few more minutes to flee the scene.
Where people would go and how they would get there in the event of a nuclear meltdown or other radioactive release at Indian Point is unclear. In September 2002, New York Governor George Pataki commissioned a report on Indian Point's evacuation plan. He picked James Lee Witt, the former Rose Law Firm attorney who served as head of FEMA during the Clinton administration, to oversee the investigation. At the time, Pataki said that he would support closure of the plant if Witt's report revealed that communities near the plant could not be safely evacuated.
Witt submitted his report on January 10, 2003. While somewhat timid and cautious, Witt concluded that Entergy's off-site evacuation plans for Indian Point were woefully inadequate.
Witt wrote: "It is our conclusion that the current radiological response system and capabilities are not adequate to overcome their combined weight and protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation in the event of a release from Indian Point, especially if the release is faster or larger than the design basis release."
In the end, Witt concluded that it was not possible to fix the evacuation plan, given the problems at the plant, the density of the nearby communities and looming security threats.
This sobering scenario was followed by news that a review of the company's security record revealed that Entergy, in cahoots with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, faked a test designed to determine whether the plant is vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
In an August letter, the NRC assured members of Congress that Entergy had developed a "strong defensive strategy and capability" for the plant and passed with flying colors a so-called "force-on-force" test, a mock assault.
In turns out, however, that the NRC gave Entergy officials months of advance warning about the test and then, as the Indian Point team cribbed for the exam, dumbed down the assault to ensure that they would pass.
Most assessments by the CIA and other intelligence agencies suggest that an assault on a nuclear plant would require a squad-sized force of between 12 and 14 attackers, who would assault the plant by night, armed with explosives, machine guns with armor-penetrating bullets, and rocket-propelled grenades.
This isn't the attack that was repelled by the Entergy security team. Instead, Entergy's men battled off a squad of 4 mock terrorists, armed only with hunting rifles, who assaulted the plant in broad daylight. Moreover, the attacking squad weren't former Delta Force operatives trained in terrorist tactics, but security officers from a nearby nuclear plant who assault the plant from only one point after crossing open fields in plain view of Indian Point's security guards.
Just to make sure that there were no surprises, the Entergy security team, which consisted largely of guards hired only for the test, was warned that a mock attack would take place sometime within the next hour. Even under these rigged conditions, Entergy barely passed the security test.
Environmentalists and anti-nuke activists living near the plant hoped this would be the final straw for the aging reactor. They marshaled their evidence of safety violations, inept evacuation plans and lax security and headed off to offices of the most powerful Democrat in America, Hillary Clinton.
But Hillary has remained about reserved as Pataki on Indian Point, issuing robotic requests for more studies but refusing to call for the plant's closure. Not that her words mean much. Last month, she pledged to filibuster the nomination of Utah governor Mike Leavitt for director of the EPA. She ended up voting to confirm his nomination.
Of course, Hillary's ties to Entergy are almost primal. The Little Rock-based Entergy Corporation, which once employed John Huang, the infamous conduit to the Lippo Group, was one of Bill Clinton's main political sponsors, shoveling more than $100,000 into his political coffers from 1992 to 1996.
The more plaintive the cries for Indian Point's closure, the more money Entergy spreads around to politicians with reputation for flexibility in these matters. Already this year, Entergy's New York Political Action Committee-ENPAC New York-has doled out more than $25,000 to New York politicians alone. Everyone got into the act from Pataki and Clinton to Democratic congressman Eliot Engel to lowlier footsoldiers for the nuclear plant, including two state assemblymen, commissioners from Westchester and Orange counties, Bronx Borough president Adolfo Carrion and state comptroller Alan Hevesi, whose election campaign was endorsed by the Sierra Club.
Political money isn't the only tool in Entergy's bag of tricks. In late October, community activists in the Bronx reported that emissaries from Entergy were canvassing black and Hispanic neighborhoods in New York City and Westchester County with an ominous warning: if Indian Point closes, air quality in urban areas will deteriorate and more blacks and Hispanics will develop respiratory illnesses. The Entergy reps told people that new coal-fired power plants would be built in their neighborhoods and urged them to sign a petition.
"In recent years, nearly all proposals for new power plants in New York state have been in or adjacent to areas with high concentrations of people of African descent and Latinos," a memo handed out at the door warns. There is, naturally, much truth to this claim. and Entergy is in a unique position to know. since throughout the southeast it has targeted its power plants in black neighborhoods, where it has heralded them as bringing economic engines for impoverished communities.
The canvassers also carried cellphones as they went from door to door. They hit the speed dial number of a local legislator, handed the phone to the resident and then prompted them on how to express their concerns about the possible closure of Indian Point.
The petition drive, which discreetly by-passed the 13 predominately white districts in Westchester County, was run by a group calling itself by the lofty-sounding name: the Campaign for Affordable Energy, Environmental & Economic Justice. The group was supposedly based in Manhattan. In fact, it was created and wholly funded by Entergy.
"This is a sham front group fabricated by the nuclear industry to scare black and low income people," says Susan Tolchin, a staffer for Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, who supports closing the Indian Point plant. "It's an outrageous and disgusting attempt to exploit the minority community for corporate greed."
--------
Indian Pt. Talks Falter on Eve of Strike Deadline
January 17, 2004
By DEBRA WEST
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/nyregion/17nuke.html
Negotiations between the union for workers at the Indian Point 3 nuclear power plant in Westchester County and its owners broke down last night, increasing the likelihood of a strike tonight, the union's president said.
Manny Hellen, the president of Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers Union of America, said a federal mediator had been called in to bring both sides back to the negotiating table.
Entergy, Indian Point's owner, "unfortunately has proven to be an arrogant union-busting company that doesn't care about the work force, the community or the safety of Indian Point," Mr. Hellen said in a telephone call from the Ramada Plaza Hotel in New Rochelle, where round-the-clock talks had been taking place since Monday. He said union representatives had walked out of the bargaining session because of disagreement over health benefits.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, said he expected talks to begin again this morning with a mediator present. "A federal mediator would be welcome," he said. "An awful lot has been accomplished to this point. Our goals will be to agree to terms that are acceptable to everyone."
The contract for the 276 union workers at Indian Point 3 will expire at 11:59 tonight. It covers technicians, control room operators, maintenance crews and other workers, but does not include the plant's security staff or workers at the Indian Point 2 reactor. The union has said it will go on strike if a new agreement is not reached by the deadline.
Until Entergy bought Indian Point 3 in 2000 and Indian Point 2 in 2001, the plants were owned and run by two separate entities, each with its own pay scale, rules and workplace culture. The company is seeking to meld two separate work forces into one, Mr. Steets said.
Con Edison owned Indian Point 2, and the New York Power Authority owned Indian Point 3. State law had prevented workers at Indian Point 3 from striking, but workers at Indian Point 2 went on strike against Con Edison for nine weeks in 1983. The plant, in Buchanan, 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, remained open.
Mr. Hellen said workplace conditions in 1983 should not be compared with today's. "The N.R.C.'s requirements are much stricter now than they were 21 years ago," he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission studied Entergy's contingency plans to see how the company would handle emergencies, security, maintenance and testing of equipment during a strike and found them acceptable, said Neil A. Sheehan, a commission spokesman. It verified the qualifications of the people who will run the control room, he said.
Entergy will staff the control room with licensed operators who are either managers who have come up through the ranks at Indian Point 3 or operators from the adjacent Indian Point 2. The N.R.C. will increase the number of inspectors on site if the workers go on strike, and if problems occur, it can impose any action, including closing the plant.
Although some local politicians have said the plant should shut down if there is a strike, Gov. George E. Pataki has not joined the call.
-------- tennessee
Y-12 medical director resigns
Philosophical conflict with management cited as reason for departure
By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com
January 17, 2004
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_2583527,00.html
OAK RIDGE - Dr. David J. Wehrly, medical director at the Y-12 National Security Complex, resigned last week because of philosophical differences with management.
Wehrly said he hopes his departure will serve as a wakeup call to the U.S. Department of Energy and BWXT, the federal contractor at Y-12, to modernize their approach to maintaining a healthy work force.
"I want to make it clear that I don't believe the company or DOE was failing to do anything that had to be done" to comply with laws or regulations, said Wehrly, who came to Oak Ridge 31/2 years ago following a distinguished career in the U.S. Army.
"I don't think they were doing anything illegal, unethical or immoral," he said in an interview.
But Wehrly said much more could be accomplished at Y-12 if budget and program barriers were to be removed, allowing a coordinated program for health and wellness.
BWXT was unwilling to make what Wehrly described as a "fairly radical culture change," and he said there really wasn't an incentive for the federal contractor to support the effort. The company's contract with the government doesn't include fee rewards tied to important health issues, although much attention is paid to safety milestones, he said.
Bill Wilburn, a BWXT spokesman, said the company had no comment on Wehrly's departure or the concerns he raised.
About 4,800 people work at the warhead-manufacturing facility in Oak Ridge.
Wehrly said he's not angry but frustrated that he couldn't enact changes. The 54-year-old physician plans to join Covenant Health in Oak Ridge next week and help create a regional occupational-health program there.
Y-12 is in the midst of a hiring campaign to add youth to a graying workforce, and Wehrly said this transition period is an important time to address overall health issues.
The younger generation of workers in Oak Ridge reflects the nation's population as a whole, with the emergence of new health concerns, Wehrly said. Borderline high blood pressure, obesity and other conditions once associated with late middle age are now becoming prevalent in workers in their 20s and 30s, he said.
If this problem isn't addressed through lifestyle changes and other efforts - at work and away from work - it could have a significant impact on the plant's future viability and productivity, Wehrly warned.
Health-related programs, ranging from worker's compensation and medical insurance to preventive health care and non-occupational illness, need to be managed as a whole, Wehrly said. At Y-12 and other DOE facilities, these programs are segmented into different "silos," both from a funding and management perspective.
"If you spend money in one silo, you don't necessarily see a gain in another, and you may have duplication of services," Wehrly said.
Y-12 gets a lot of scrutiny for radiological and chemical hazards associated with its national-security missions. But Wehrly said many of the health concerns at the Oak Ridge plant are the same ones faced by business and industry throughout the United States.
Nearly all lost workdays among Y-12 workers are due to non-occupational illnesses, he said, citing recent statistics that support that statement. Yet the off-the-job factors don't receive enough attention, he said.
Wehrly said he was shocked when he arrived to learn that Y-12 did not have physical-fitness standards for its firefighters, a common requirement at fire units around the country. Two firefighters had to be barred from driving the fire truck because of their severe obesity, he said.
Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, the previous contractor at Y-12, hired Wehrly to direct its occupational health program in mid-2000. Support for his ideas dwindled, however, following the change of contractors later that year, he said.
One of the root problems, Wehrly said, is that DOE does not have a "corporate medical director" to serve as an advocate for health professionals at sites around the United States.
Dr. Bill Brady, medical director at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and chair of DOE's national steering committee on occupational health, said several committee members have raised the same concern. Without an advocate in Washington, "sometimes the voice in the field isn't heard," Brady said.
Jeff Sherwood, a spokesman at DOE headquarters, said agency officials were surprised to hear of Wehrly's resignation and "sorry to lose his expertise."
Sherwood provided a response to some of Wehrly's concerns, including the lack of a corporate medical director. He said Dr. George Gebus serves as the agency's "medical officer" and advises DOE on matters related to occupational medicine.
Wehrly, however, said Gebus' role had been "marginalized" by DOE and that Gebus has had little, if any, impact on medical and health affairs.
Sherwood said DOE agreed with Wehrly's concerns about obesity and other non-workplace health factors, but he said those are the responsibility of the contractor or the individual employee.
"While wellness programs are shown to be effective resources, the decision to support those programs is made by the contractor," the DOE spokesman said.
Sherwood also said DOE's creation of a physicians working group was a positive step. "These physicians are encouraged to provide advice or seek assistance from the department," he said.
Wehrly said he doesn't think the committee has any effect on DOE policy. Brady, who heads the physicians group, said it might be too early to draw conclusions because the committee has only been in existence a couple of years.
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
-------- us nuc waste
Ohio doesn't want waste from New Mexico plant
Jan 17 (AP)
From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
EUNICE, N.M. _ The list of potential disposal sites for waste from a proposed uranium enrichment plant here appears to be shrinking.
A new waste processing plant to be built in Ohio was one potential destination for waste.
But a letter from Ohio Gov. Bob Taft on Thursday to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission suggests that Ohio doesn't want it.
Taft's letter suggests significant hurdles stand in the way of sending the waste there.
The letter is the latest waste-related problem for international nuclear consortium LES, which wants to build a nuclear fuel plant.
LES filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month for a license to build and operate the plant, which would process uranium so it can be used in nuclear power plant fuel. The project's critics have focused primarily on unanswered questions about what will happen to the factory's radioactive waste.
While state officials here have generally endorsed the project, Gov. Bill Richardson has in recent months raised pointed questions about what the company will do with its waste.
Richardson said last month he would withdraw his support of the Louisiana Energy Services plant unless Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., inserted language in a federal appropriations bill requiring DOE to remove waste from New Mexico.
Chris Gallegos, a spokesman for Domenici, said this week the senator is looking for appropriate legislation to carry the language specifying that DOE could not leave waste in the state.
In its NRC application, LES spells out several ``plausible'' disposal plans ranging from dragging it a few miles across the state line to Texas to shipping it to Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Union. The group says it will honor a commitment to Richardson to get the waste out of New Mexico by the end of the plant's 30-year lifespan.
But in its license application the company declines to commit to a specific waste disposal strategy.
Waste from the plant will be in a form that requires chemical processing before it can be legally disposed of as low-level radioactive waste. Because no such plant exists in the United States, more than 700,000 tons of similar waste is sitting at three U.S. government sites where uranium processing was done in the past.
LES officials say they would prefer to work with a private company to set up a new plant to process the waste. As no such private-sector plant exists in the United States, another option the company discusses in its NRC application is turning the waste over to the federal government for processing.
The government is building two plants to process old waste from previous U.S. government nuclear factory operations, and under the law LES has the legal right to pay the government to take its waste as well.
That is the option that worries Taft, because one of those government waste processing plants is being built in Ohio.
Ohio is already home to a large quantity of similar nuclear waste, and sending more ``would raise significant environmental and public safety issues that would need to be resolved,'' Taft wrote.
LES spokesman Marshall Cohen said Taft's letter does not concern the company, because their preferred option _ waste processing by a private company _ is unaffected.
LES officials say they expect the French energy giant Cogema to pursue plans to build a private deconversion plant in the United States.
Nuclear-watchdog groups warn that waste from a planned private uranium-enrichment plant will probably never leave New Mexico if the federal government allows production to start here.
-------- us politics
Bush Bypasses Senate On Judge
Pickering Named To Appeals Court During Recess
By Mike Allen and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23668-2004Jan16.html
President Bush bypassed senators yesterday and installed Charles W. Pickering Sr. as an appeals court judge, ending a three-year battle over a Mississippian viewed by Democrats as hostile to civil rights.
Republican officials called the decision a calculated escalation by Bush in his standoff with Democrats over their use of delaying tactics to stall several of his most conservative nominees for lifetime seats on the federal bench. The move threatened to poison White House relations with Democrats further at the start of an election year.
Bush used his recess-appointment powers to seat Pickering, 66, a federal district judge in Hattiesburg, Miss., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, based in New Orleans. Pickering was sworn in last night at the U.S. District Courthouse in Jackson, Miss., the state capital, less than three hours after Bush's announcement.
Such appointments, which the president can make when lawmakers are out of session, last until the next Congress takes office -- in this case, next January.
Senate records show the power, usually exercised with lower-profile nominees, has been used to elevate judges only a handful of times in the past 30 years. Less than a month before leaving office, President Bill Clinton used the mechanism to install Roger L. Gregory as the first black judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which includes Maryland and Virginia. Bush renominated Gregory, who was confirmed for life.
Pickering was challenged by Democrats over his 1994 actions from the bench to reduce the sentence of a man convicted of burning a cross near the home of an interracial couple. Republicans contend Pickering was motivated by concern over the fairness of sentences meted out in the case.
Democrats also raised questions about Pickering's contacts as a state senator in the 1970s with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, which worked to preserve segregation. Bush has called Pickering "an advocate of civil rights" and pointed to a large number of African American leaders in Mississippi who came forward to declare their support for him.
Bush, in a written statement issued after he had departed for Camp David yesterday afternoon, asserted that a bipartisan majority of senators supports Pickering and that "if he were given a vote, he would be confirmed."
"But a minority of Democratic Senators has been using unprecedented obstructionist tactics to prevent him and other qualified individuals from receiving up-or-down votes," he said. "Their tactics are inconsistent with the Senate's constitutional responsibility and are hurting our judicial system."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a Judiciary Committee member, said he took the appointment as "a finger in the eye."
A Senate Republican leadership aide said the appointment was intended as a "shot across the bow" to Democrats after the White House decided they were paying too small a price for filibustering the nominations of Pickering and five other appeals court nominees, several of whom Bush sees as potential Supreme Court picks. But the aide said Bush was "taking a chance," because Democrats might retaliate on other nominees they might otherwise have allowed to be confirmed.
Both parties are likely to make Pickering an issue in November's election as an engine for motivating core supporters. Within hours of Bush's decision, Democrats were charging that the appointment shows his reelection could threaten reproductive and civil rights. Republicans were arguing that Pickering's dilemma shows why Bush needs more Republicans in the Senate, where the split is 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent.
Nominated by Bush soon after he took office in 2001, Pickering was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee when Democrats controlled the chamber in 2002. Bush renominated him last year as soon as Republicans regained control of the chamber. The nomination stalled after a furor over racially inflammatory remarks by then-Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), his main patron, who subsequently resigned from his leadership post.
Pickering and his allies continued to try to build support for the nomination. He was later approved by the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, setting the stage for a showdown fight on the Senate floor last fall.
As they had done with several other Bush nominees, Democrats filibustered Pickering's nomination. On a vote of 54 to 43 in Pickering's favor, the judge's backers fell six votes short of the 60 needed to end the stalling tactics and bring the nomination to a final vote. Bush called the action "a disgrace."
Democrats condemned Bush's decision, announced at the start of a holiday weekend.
Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said it shows Bush "has no interest in working in a bipartisan manner to appoint moderate judges who will uphold the law." And Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, called Bush's move a "cynical, divisive appointment that will further politicize the federal judiciary."
Several leading Democratic senators juxtaposed the appointment of Pickering with Bush's wreath-laying in Atlanta on Thursday at the grave of Martin Luther King Jr., on what would have been the slain civil rights leader's 75th birthday. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) called the appointment "an insult to Dr. King, an insult to every African American" and said it "serves only to emphasize again this administration's shameful opposition to civil rights."
Campaigning in Iowa, several of the Democratic presidential candidates decried the decision. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean called the appointment, after the King visit, "an ultimate hypocrisy." Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said Bush is "threatening civil rights on behalf of right-wing ideologues."
On the Republican side, Lott said Pickering's nomination had been "stifled by special interests who have unfairly smeared the reputation of a good man."
Republicans said Pickering is likely to retire when his recess appointment expires -- unless he is confirmed, which the GOP concedes is unlikely.
----
REALITY vs. FANTASY
Posted by Kevin Drum,
January 17, 2004
http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003061.html
I just finished reading Charlie Wilson's War, a terrific book about the covert CIA war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s that I'll have more to say about later. For now, though, I just want to share an excerpt from the book that's both timely and enlightening.
First some background. Richard Perle is one of the most hawkish neocons around, part of the group that seemed to think that we could waltz into Iraq, be greeted as liberators, and then turn the whole thing over to their favorite exiles within a few months.
It's a crazy idea on its face, and it makes you wonder what kind of people could believe something so transparently out of touch with reality. Well, here's a hint: they believe stuff like this because they are out of touch with reality.
As you read this anecdote, keep in mind that it's being told by a guy who is a very hardline, hardass anti-communist. His idea of fun is to figure out new and better ways to kill Russians, and at the time this is happening he's in charge of an incredibly creative, brutal, and effective buildup of arms to kill those Russians in ever greater numbers. But even he thinks Perle and his pals are loons.
Here's the story:
Their idea was to encourage Soviet officers and soldiers to defect to the mujahideen. As [CIA chief Gust] Avrakotos derisively describes it, "The muj were supposed to set up loudspeakers in the mountains announcing such things as 'Lay down your arms, there is a passage to the West and to freedom.'" Once news of the program made its way through the Red Army, it was argued, there would be a flood of defectors.
....Avrakotos thought [Oliver] North and Perle were "cuckoos of the Far Right"...."What Russian in his right mind would defect to those fuckers all armed to the teeth?" Avrakotos said in frustration. "To begin with, anyone defecting to the Dushman would have to be a crook, a thief, or someone who wanted to get cornholed every day, because nine out of ten prisoners were dead within twenty-four hours and they were always turned into concubines by the mujahideen. I felt so sorry for them I wanted to have them all shot."
The meeting went very badly indeed. Gust accused North and Perle of being idiots....Avrakotos thought that would be the end of the...idea, but he greatly underestimated the political power and determination of this group, who went directly to Bill Casey.
....In spite of the angry complaints, Clair George and everyone else on the seventh floor agreed with Avrakotos' position. He says that Director Casey even privately told him, "I think your point is quite valid. What asshole would want to defect to these animals?"
But the issue wouldn't go away. Perle, [Walt] Raymond, and the others continued to insist that the Agency find and send back to the United States the many Russian defectors they seemed to believe...the mujahideen were harboring. They had visions of a great publicity campaign once these men reached America.
....Avrakotos describes what happened next with the kind of pleasure he feels only upon achieving revenge. It had been almost impossible to locate two prisoners, much less two defectors. The CIA found itself in the preposterous position of having to pony up $50,000 to bribe the Afghans to deliver two live ones. "These two guys were basket cases," says Avrakotos. "One had been fucked so many times he didn't know what was going on. The other was an alcoholic."
....At that point, Avrakotos says, he went to Perle to announce the good news that the Agency had twelve more willing to come over. "I turned the tables on them and demanded they take them all. And they didn't want to....In all I think we brought three or four more over. One guy ended up robbing a 7-Eleven in Vienna, Virgina."
How can you trust the judgment of someone who not only proposed an idea like this, but fought long and hard for it in the face of massive ground level evidence that it was absurd? Is it any surprise that someone who thought Russian soldiers would defect if we just set up loudspeakers in the mountains of Afghanistan might also think that governing postwar Iraq would be simple and easy?
Remember this the next time you hear Richard Perle say anything. And then give his opinions all the consideration they deserve.
-------- MILITARY
-------- asia
Japanese Army Team Leaves for Iraq Mission
By Isabel Reynolds
Reuters
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23655-2004Jan16.html
TOKYO, Jan. 16 -- A team of Japanese soldiers left for Iraq on Friday to take part in Japan's riskiest overseas military mission since World War II.
Police patrols, on alert for terrorist attacks, were stepped up at government offices, nuclear power plants, railway stations and airports.
After a series of send-off ceremonies in Tokyo, about 30 members of the Ground Self-Defense Force, as Japan's army is called, left for southeastern Iraq. It is an advance unit of a force that could include 1,000 troops.
"You're the pride of the Japanese people, the pride of the nation. I hope that you will complete your mission safely," Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba told 180 soldiers, including those leaving on Friday and others who will join them later. At times Ishiba appeared almost overcome by emotion.
The dispatch marks a historic shift from Japan's purely defensive postwar security policy and poses political risks for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has pushed for the deployment.
--------
U.S. Troops to Relocate From Seoul
January 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Military-SKorea.html
HONOLULU (AP) -- The United States will move all of its troops out of metropolitan Seoul over the next three years without reducing the total number of forces in South Korea, both countries have agreed.
Under a historic plan to end a U.S. presence in the capital dating to the end of the Korean War, about 7,000 U.S. forces and their families will be moved to an expanded facility about 45 miles south of Seoul, U.S. defense official Richard Lawless said.
Lawless and Lt. Gen. Cha Young-koo, South Korea's assistant defense minister for policy, announced the agreement Friday at a news conference ending a sixth round of joint talks on the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance.
Cha said the move, while it would not reduce the number of U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula, should defuse some anti-U.S. sentiments in the country.
On Saturday, South Korea's new foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, added that the atmosphere was ``maturing'' for a new round of six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons development and resolving the 16-month-old standoff. The first round of meetings involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas ended in August without much progress.
``The atmosphere is maturing for a second-round of six-nation talks,'' Ban said. ``North Korea expressing its will to abandon nuclear development and showing positive signs toward participating in talks, and under these circumstance, the participating countries will show more flexibility and try to find within the year a lead in resolving the issue.''
The nuclear dispute flared in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused North Korea of running a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 deal requiring the North to freeze its nuclear facilities.
North Korea has said it will freeze its nuclear programs as a first step in talks if Washington de-lists the communist country from its roster of terrorism sponsoring nations and provides economic aid. The United States says North Korea must first dismantle its nuclear programs before receiving any concessions.
In South Korea, Cha said in announcing the shift of U.S. troops out of Seoul that there had been no discussion of any reduction of U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula. The officials also said the United States has agreed to spend $11 billion over the next several years to improve U.S. readiness on the peninsula.
Cha said the South Koreans wanted to keep about 1,000 U.S. soldiers in Seoul but agreed to the relocation of all U.S. forces from the Yongsan Garrison in downtown Seoul. About 50 to 100 U.S. military liaison personnel would remain, said Lawless, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and Pacific affairs.
Lawless said the move is expected to be completed by the end of 2006, and units would not begin moving out until the end of next year.
Most South Koreans support the U.S. military presence in South Korea as a deterrent against communist North Korea. But residents of Seoul have complained that the base occupies prime real estate and worsens the city's chronic traffic congestion. Younger generations also see the foreign military presence in their capital as a slight to national pride.
-------- britain
I believe in conspiracies
John Laughland says the real nutters are those who believe in al-Qa'eda and weapons of mass destruction Believing in conspiracy theories is rather like having been to a grammar school: both are rather socially awkward to admit.
17 January 2004
Spectator.co.uk
http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec30.html
Although I once sat next to a sister-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk who agreed that you can't believe everything you read in the newspapers, conspiracy theories are generally considered a rather repellent form of intellectual low-life, and their theorists rightfully the object of scorn and snobbery. Writing in the Daily Mail last week, the columnist Melanie Phillips even attacked conspiracy theories as the consequence of a special pathology, of the collapse in religious belief, and of a 'descent into the irrational'. The implication is that those who oppose 'the West', or who think that governments are secretive and dishonest, might need psychiatric treatment.
In fact, it is the other way round. British and American foreign policy is itself based on a series of highly improbable conspiracy theories, the biggest of which is that an evil Saudi millionaire genius in a cave in the Hindu Kush controls a secret worldwide network of 'tens of thousands of terrorists' 'in more than 60 countries' (George Bush). News reports frequently tell us that terrorist organisations, such as those which have attacked Bali or Istanbul, have 'links' to al-Qa'eda, but we never learn quite what those 'links' are. According to two terrorism experts in California, Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud, this is because they do not exist. 'In the quest to define the enemy, the US and its allies have helped to blow al-Qa'eda out of proportion,' they write. They argue that the name 'al-Qa'eda' was invented in the West to designate what is, in reality, a highly disparate collection of otherwise independent groups with no central command structure and not even a logo. They claim that some terrorist organisations say they are affiliated to bin Laden simply to gain kudos and name-recognition for their entirely local grievances.
By the same token, the US-led invasion of Iraq was based on a fantasy that Saddam Hussein was in, or might one day enter into, a conspiracy with Osama bin Laden. This is as verifiable as the claim that MI6 used mind control to make Henri Paul crash Princess Diana's car into the 13th pillar of the tunnel under the Place de l'Alma. With similar mystic gnosis, Donald Rumsfeld has alleged that the failure to find 'weapons of mass distraction', as Tony Blair likes to call them, shows that they once existed but were destroyed. Indeed, London and Washington have shamelessly exploited people's fear of the unknown to get public opinion to believe their claim that Iraq had masses of anthrax and botulism. This played on a deep and ancient seam of fear about poison conspiracies which, in the Middle Ages, led to pogroms against Jews. And yet it is the anti-war people who continue to be branded paranoid, even though the British Prime Minister himself, his eyes staring wildly, said in September 2002, 'Saddam has got all these weapons ...and they're pointing at us!'
In contrast to such imaginings, it is perfectly reasonable to raise questions about the power of the secret services and armed forces of the world's most powerful states, especially those of the USA. These are not 'theories' at all; they are based on fact. The Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other US secret services spend more than $30,000,000,000 a year on espionage and covert operations. Do opponents of conspiracy theories think that this money is given to the Langley, Virginia Cats' Home? It would also be churlish to deny that the American military industry plays a very major role in the economics and politics of the US. Every day at 5 p.m., the Pentagon announces hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to arms manufacturers all over America - click on the Department of Defense's website for details - who in turn peddle influence through donations to politicians and opinion-formers.
It is also odd that opponents of conspiracy theories often allow that conspiracies have occurred in the past, but refuse to contemplate their existence in the present. For some reason, you are bordering on the bonkers if you wonder about the truth behind events like 9/11, when it is established as fact that in 1962 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman L. Lemnitzer, tried to convince President Kennedy to authorise an attack on John Glenn's rocket, or on a US navy vessel, to provide a pretext for invading Cuba. Two years later, a similar strategy was deployed in the faked Gulf of Tonkin incident, when US engagement in Vietnam was justified in the light of the false allegation that the North Vietnamese had launched an unprovoked attack on a US destroyer. Are such tactics confined to history? Paul O'Neill, George Bush's former Treasury Secretary, has just revealed that the White House decided to get rid of Saddam eight months before 9/11.
Indeed, one ought to speak of a 'conspir- acy of silence' about the role of secret services in politics. This is especially true of the events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It is the height of irresponsibility to discuss the post-communist transition without extensive reference to the role of the spooks, yet our media stick doggedly to the myth that their role is irrelevant. During the overthrow of the Georgian president, Eduard Shevardnadze, on 22 November 2003, the world's news outlets peddled a wonderful fairy-tale about a spontaneous uprising - 'the revolution of roses', CNN shlockily dubbed it - even though all the key actors have subsequently bragged that they were covertly funded and organised by the US.
Similarly, it is a matter of public record that the Americans pumped at least $100 million into Serbia in order to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and huge sums in the years before. (An election in Britain, whose population is eight times bigger than Yugoslavia's, costs about two thirds of this.) This money was used to fund and equip the Kosovo Liberation Army; to stuff international observer missions in Kosovo with hundreds of military intelligence officers; to pay off the opposition and the so-called 'independent' media; and to buy heavily-armed Mafia gangsters to come and smash up central Belgrade, so that the world's cameras could show a 'people's revolution'.
At every stage, the covert aid and organisation provided by the US and British intelligence agencies were decisive, as they had been on many occasions before and since, all over the world. Yet for some reason, it is acceptable to say, 'The CIA organised the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadeq in Iran in 1953', but not that it did it again in Belgrade in 2000 or Tbilisi in 2003. And in spite of the well-known subterfuge and deception practised, for instance, in the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, people experience an enormous psychological reluctance to accept that the British and American governments knowingly lied us into war in 2002 and 2003. To be sure, some conspiracy theories may be outlandish or wrong. But it seems to me that anyone who refuses to make simple empirical deductions ought to have his head examined.
-------- business
Halliburton Gets More Iraq Work
Subsidiary KBR Wins Previously No-Bid Job
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23647-2004Jan16.html
The U.S. government yesterday awarded a Halliburton subsidiary, under fire for how much it paid to import fuel into Iraq, a competitively bid contract worth as much as $1.2 billion to continue repairs to the country's oil facilities.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave KBR one of two contracts that replace a no-bid contract it was awarded last March. A joint venture between Pasadena-based Parsons Corp and its former division, Parsons Energy and Chemicals Group Inc., won the second contract, worth up to $800 million.
The announcement came in the week Pentagon auditors asked the Defense Department inspector general to investigate a deal between KBR and a Kuwaiti fuel supplier to import gasoline into Iraq as part of the first contract.
A draft audit report last month found that KBR may have overcharged the government $61 million for fuel from Kuwait. KBR has denied that it did anything wrong, and the Corps of Engineers said its audits have turned up nothing improper.
The new contracts, which were supposed to be awarded in late October, were delayed, in part, because of questions about the KBR fuel contract, said Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers, commander of the Corps of Engineers. The new KBR contract will not include further imports of fuel. Last month the Pentagon asked a military unit to take over that task.
Lt. Col. Roseanne Lynch, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said that the inspector general was still evaluating the referral from the Pentagon auditors. The inspector general could pass on the request for an investigation to another agency, conduct a separate audit or launch a preliminary inquiry. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and a leading critic of the KBR fuel contract, called the new award yesterday "mind-boggling."
"It's special treatment to reward the company with yet another contract in the face of all these unresolved questions," he said in a prepared statement.
David J. Lesar, chief executive of Halliburton, a position that Dick Cheney held from 1995 to 2000, said the new contract "validated" the work KBR has already done. KBR was awarded more than $2.2 billion under the no-bid contract.
"We were chosen because we were the best qualified with a proven track record of the ability to perform," Lesar said in a prepared statement.
Under the new contracts, KBR will be responsible for repairs to oil facilities in the south, and the Parsons joint venture will cover the north. "We're thrilled," said Erin Kuhlman, spokeswoman for Parsons Corp. "We've been waiting so long. We always thought we had a great team. We just didn't know how much not being an incumbent would hamper us."
--------
Halliburton wins big Iraqi contract
January 17, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040117-100616-5451r.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 -- U.S. officials awarded Halliburton, under fire for how much it charged to import fuel into Iraq, a competitively bid contract worth up to $1.2 billion.
The Army Corps of Engineers Friday awarded Halliburton unit KBR one of two contracts that replace a no-bid contract it was awarded last March, the Washington Post reported Saturday. A joint venture between Pasadena-based Parsons Corp. and its former division, Parsons Energy and Chemicals Group Inc., won the second contract, worth up to $800 million.
The announcement came as Pentagon auditors asked the Defense Department inspector general to investigate a deal between KBR and a Kuwaiti fuel supplier to import gasoline into Iraq as part of the first contract.
A draft audit report last month found KBR may have overcharged the government $61 million for fuel from Kuwait. KBR has denied it did anything wrong and an audit by the Corps found nothing improper.
Under the new contracts, KBR will be responsible for repairs to oil facilities in the south and the Parsons joint venture will cover the north.
-------- china
Taiwan's Leader Tones Down Referendum Opposed by Beijing
January 17, 2004
By KEITH BRADSHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/international/asia/17TAIW.html?pagewanted=all
HONG KONG, Jan. 16 - President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan on Friday toned down the questions he plans to pose in a referendum on March 20 after criticism from Washington that he was being too confrontational with Beijing.
Mr. Chen retreated from his previous plan for a referendum bluntly demanding that China renounce the use of force against Taiwan and immediately withdraw all ballistic missiles aimed at the island.
Instead, the main question will be: "Should mainland China refuse to withdraw the missiles it has targeted at Taiwan and to openly renounce the use of force against us, would you agree that the government should acquire more advanced antimissile weapons to strengthen Taiwan's self-defense capabilities?"
A second referendum question, clearly intended to attract moderate Taiwan voters, as well as allay concerns in Washington and Beijing, will be added, "Would you agree that our government should engage in negotiation with mainland China on the establishment of a `peace and stability' framework for cross-strait integrations in order to build consensus and for the welfare of the peoples on both sides?"
Mr. Chen said he would continue making plans to rewrite Taiwan's Constitution, which China bitterly opposes, fearing that he will delete sections of the document that suggest that Taiwan is part of China.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and a White House spokesman responded by saying they welcomed steps to lessen tensions across the Taiwan Strait. But they stopped short of explicitly endorsing the new phrasing of the questions, which are still likely to upset the Chinese.
Beijing opposes the holding of any referendums in Taiwan, fearing that the island's residents may someday vote to declare independence, an action that Beijing has promised would lead to war.
Taiwan has been politically separate from the mainland since the Nationalists retreated to the island in 1949 after losing China's civil war to the Communists. Beijing has regarded the island as a province run by dangerous separatists ever since.
China had no immediate reaction to the new language. Earlier Friday, Chinese security officials invited reporters in four mainland cities to see seven Taiwanese recently arrested and accused of spying. The accused, prompted by prison officials, blamed Mr. Chen for their problems.
The referendum is to be held on the same day as a presidential election in which Mr. Chen is seeking a second four-year term. He and his running mate, Annette Lu, are locked in a race that is regarded as too close to call against Lien Chan, the Nationalist Party presidential candidate, and James Soong, the leader of the affiliated People First Party, who is running for vice president on a single ticket with Mr. Lien.
Mr. Lien and Mr. Soong ran separately in the last presidential election, in 2000, and split the vote of those in Taiwan who favor closer relations with the mainland, allowing Mr. Chen to prevail.
Needing a majority of the vote to win this time, Mr. Chen has stepped up criticism of the mainland; Nationalist Party candidates tend to fare badly in elections during periods of tension across the Taiwan Strait.
Mr. Chen's question about acquiring antimissile technology comes as he has been struggling to find money in his budget to buy American military equipment that President Bush agreed to sell in 2001.
The delay has irritated American officials, who contend that Taiwan risks falling behind the mainland in military preparedness.
--------
Taiwan Alters Arms Referendum Language
By Tim Culpan and Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23616-2004Jan16.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Jan. 16 -- President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan on Friday changed the wording of a proposed referendum that has angered both the United States and China, offering to ask voters whether the island should buy more U.S.-made weapons and try to open talks with Beijing.
Chen said previously that he planned to ask whether Taiwan should demand that China redeploy the nearly 500 missiles it has aimed at the island.
The ballot questions appeared written to ease U.S. and Chinese concerns that the March 20 referendum would push the island toward independence. The Bush administration tentatively welcomed the changes, but analysts said China probably would not be satisfied.
In a televised address, Chen said the referendum would ask voters two questions: whether Taiwan should purchase more advanced anti-missile weapons if China refuses to withdraw missiles aimed at the island; and whether Taiwan should negotiate with China to establish a "peaceful and stable framework for cross-strait interactions."
Beijing has objected to Taiwan holding any referendum, arguing that it could pave the way for an island-wide vote on independence, and the Bush administration warned Chen last month not to go ahead with a vote because it would needlessly upset the delicate status quo in the region.
By rephrasing the question and asking whether Taiwan should buy more advanced anti-missile weapons, Chen appeared to be trying to address those concerns and win over the Bush administration. The Pentagon has complained that Taiwan has been slow to buy weapons from the United States that the island needs to defend itself, and the referendum could give the Taiwanese government a popular mandate to increase defense spending.
In his speech, Chen also repeated a promise not to declare independence or take other steps to change the status quo as long as "there is no intention" by China to attack Taiwan.
China contends Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to attack the self-governing island if it declares independence. Taiwan says it is already independent and a formal declaration is unnecessary.
In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration neither opposed nor supported Chen's proposed referendum. He added, "We understand, however, that there would be no relationship between the outcome of the proposed referendum and Taiwan's commitment to the status quo."
"We certainly welcome any statements that confirm Taiwan's commitment to the status quo now and in the years ahead," he said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV that while he was still studying Chen's statements, "I think President Chen has shown a little flexibility in the way those two questions have been worded."
There was no immediate comment from the Chinese government. Analysts said Beijing probably would not be satisfied.
"For China, there's still reason to worry," said Emile Sheng, a political science professor at Soochow University in Taipei. "This sets a precedent that the president has the power to call a referendum whenever he wants. The wording is safe now, but who knows what will happen in three months?"
Chinese officials are especially concerned that Chen will follow through with a plan to call a referendum in 2006 on a new constitution, which could define Taiwan as a nation separate from China. Though Chen has played down the plan in recent weeks, he promised on Friday to "continue the proposed reengineering of our constitution."
Su Chi, a senior official in the opposition Nationalist Party, said Chen's referendum proposal was unnecessary and had no basis in law. Under legislation passed last year, the president can call an emergency referendum if Taiwan faces a threat to its sovereignty. "We believe this is not the case," Su said. "Taiwan doesn't face a threat."
But Chen argued that China is "continuously increasing the deployment of missiles targeted at Taiwan and has been intensifying its military preparations for attack."
"China's purpose is unquestionably obvious, that is, they aim to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait through undemocratic and unpeaceful means," he said. "A peace referendum represents an effective preventive measure, as it will help increase people's awareness of and readiness for such threats."
The referendum is scheduled to take place on March 20, the same day as Taiwan's presidential election. Chen is in a close race against Nationalist Party leader Lien Chan and has been running an anti-China, pro-independence campaign that has helped him win support but has angered Beijing.
Last month, in an apparent bid to embarrass Chen, the Chinese government said it had arrested 24 Taiwanese spies. On Friday, the government paraded seven of the men before the news media.
Pan reported from Beijing.
-------- iraq
U.S. Willing to Alter Steps to Iraqi Self-Rule, Bremer Says
January 17, 2004
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/international/middleeast/17DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - The top American administrator for Iraq said Friday that the United States was willing to consider changes to the way Iraqis would select an interim government in an effort to reassure the powerful Shiite cleric whose objections have threatened to derail the American plan for a return to Iraqi sovereignty.
But the administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, and other Bush administration officials suggested that any changes would be limited and said the United States intended to stick by its basic approach of using caucuses rather than direct elections to choose interim rulers.
Mr. Bremer also said the administration remained committed to transferring the government back to Iraqis by June 30, a deadline that would allow the United States to begin reducing its profile in Iraq as the presidential campaign heats up at home.
The cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who holds considerable sway over Iraq's Shiite majority, has been pressing for direct elections, a step that administration officials have said would be logistically difficult to accomplish by June 30. His objections - and his ability to mobilize large demonstrations against the American-backed plan, as he did on Thursday - have left the administration scrambling two months after it settled on the approach after negotiations with the Iraqi Governing Council.
Some American officials have also expressed concern that elections this year could concentrate power with the Shiites, while the United States wants Iraq to adopt a constitution that guarantees the rights of the Kurdish and Sunni minorities.
The American-backed plan, which was agreed to on Nov. 15, calls for caucuses to be held this spring in all 18 of Iraq's states, some of which are predominantly populated by Sunnis or Kurds.
The caucuses would choose delegates to an interim national assembly, which would assume sovereignty from the American-led occupying force and sit while a permanent constitution is written. The plan calls for full elections in 2005.
After meeting with President Bush at the White House on Friday, Mr. Bremer said he would meet on Monday with the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. Administration officials said Mr. Bremer, accompanied by Adnan Pachachi, the chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council, would seek to persuade Mr. Annan to put the United Nations' expertise in monitoring elections and writing constitutions to work in Iraq, in part to give an international imprimatur to the administration's plan to gradually establish a permanent Iraqi government.
Administration officials said Mr. Bremer was likely to urge Mr. Annan to have the United Nations take a role in trying to persuade Ayatollah Sistani to agree to the American-backed plan, but they played down the chances of any specific agreement on how to proceed emerging from the meeting.
The ayatollah has refused to speak directly to American officials, leading to a search for ways to improve communication with him and his followers.
"I think the president is clear, as are we all, that we want to implement the timeline and the processes that were laid out in the Nov. 15th agreement, including the handing of sovereignty back to the Iraqis on June 30th," Mr. Bremer told reporters outside the White House after his meeting with Mr. Bush.
But Mr. Bremer signaled some flexibility on the mechanism by which the voting for the interim government would take place.
"We have said that we are prepared to seek clarifications in the process that was laid out in the Nov. 15th agreement, the ways in which the selection of the transitional assembly is carried forward, and I think that's obviously one of the areas that we will obviously be talking to the secretary general and his colleagues about," Mr. Bremer said.
Mr. Bremer declined to specify what types of changes could be made to the proposed caucuses, which would involve a process so complex that even some of its supporters have difficulty explaining it.
"There are, if you talk to experts in these matters, all kinds of ways to organize partial elections and caucuses," he said. "I'm not an election expert, so I don't want to go into the details. But we have always said we're willing to consider refinements, and that's something that we will be willing to discuss at the appropriate time."
It is not clear how much cooperation the United States will get from the United Nations. Mr. Annan pulled his personnel out of Iraq after the bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad last summer that killed 22 people, including the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and security remains a primary concern.
And despite the administration's insistence that it has always wanted the United Nations to play a "vital role" in Iraq, as Mr. Bush put it as the war was winding down last spring, the United States has so far been reluctant to cede any substantial authority over the occupation.
"We do think there is a role for the United Nations in this process," Mr. Bremer said. "The U.N. has a lot of expertise in organizing elections, electoral commissions, electoral laws; has a great deal of expertise it can bring to bear on the process of writing a constitution."
Administration officials said Ayatollah Sistani's call for direct popular elections was, among other problems, impractical, because Iraq lacks such basics as voter rolls. Conducting a fair national election in the next five and a half months, they said, could present insurmountable difficulties.
"We have doubts, as does the secretary general, that elections can in fact be called in the time frame of the return to sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30th," Mr. Bremer said.
-------- israel / palestine
Crackdown on soldiers questioning occupation
January 17, 2004
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/16/1073878027960.html
Despite public disapproval, the number of soldiers refusing to serve in Palestinian territories is growing, writes Ed O'Loughlin in Jerusalem.
Two weeks ago, 51-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Eitan Ronel did what no Israeli officer is believed to have done before.
A veteran of the Yom Kippur and Lebanon wars, Mr Ronel resigned his rank in the army reserve to protest at what he considers the army's "immoral conduct" in the occupied territories.
In a bitter open letter to chief of staff General Moshe Yaalon, Mr Ronel said his decision was sparked by a late December incident in which troops used live bullets against Israeli left-wing protesters attempting to cut through the controversial West Bank "separation fence", wounding one.
"A country in which the army disperses demonstrations of its citizens with live gunfire is not a democratic country," Mr Ronel wrote. " . . . I saw this deterioration, stage after stage: the blind eye that was turned to the abuse of detainees in violation of the army's orders; the blind eye that was turned to soldiers' gunfire on unarmed Palestinian civilians; the blind eye that was turned to the settlers' unlawful behaviour towards Palestinian civilians; the oppression of the population; the roadblocks; the curfew; the closure; the blind eye the army turned towards the humiliation and abuse . . ."
For Mr Ronel, giving up his hard-won high rank was painful, but the fact that he was discharged from active reserve duty two years ago means his protest is mainly symbolic. For several hundred of his junior comrades, the path of dissent is more difficult and dangerous.
Collectively known as "refusniks", these diverse groups of conscripts, reservists and draftees risk disgrace and imprisonment by openly saying they will no longer serve in the occupied territories. A minority say they will not serve at all.
The original group of 50 combat officers and soldiers who first signed the "Courage to Refuse" manifesto in January 2002 has since swelled to almost 600, despite widespread disapproval from Israel's militarised and predominantly right-of-centre society.
The controversy grew in September last year when 10 air force pilots said they were no longer prepared to carry out assassination strikes in the Palestinian territories.
Last month, 13 members of the SAS-style Sayeret Matkal (Headquarters Commando) also signed the manifesto.
Last night for the first time, the pilots and commandos were due to publicly join Courage to Refuse in a protest at Kissurim, the main point of entry into the Gaza Strip for hundreds of Jewish settlers.
"The message is that this is our border, that beyond this border we don't think Israeli citizens should live, and especially that Israeli soldiers shouldn't serve and be killed or kill for this stupid cause," said Itai Swirski, 29, a reserve lieutenant in the elite paratroop brigade and one of the original Courage to Refuse signatories.
Unlike some more left-wing and even anti-Israel fringe groups, mainstream refuseniks insist they are still proud Zionists and soldiers.
"By keeping up the occupation, we won't have a Jewish state," said Lieutenant Swirski. "If we don't put a normal border like any other state between us (and the Palestinians), eventually we will be one state, and in this state we will be minority."
Courage to Refuse says 327 serving refuseniks have received short terms in military prison - typically 21 to 28 days - for refusing to go to the territories. Some have subsequently been called for service within Israel and gone willingly.
Many refuseniks would rather serve jail terms than face the penalty now threatened against Sayeret Matkal commandos - outright dismissal from the Israeli Defence Force. At court-martial hearings next week, the 13 commandos are expected to contest what they see as unfair treatment compared to other refuseniks who retain their rank.
The crackdown comes at a time when senior members of the security establishment - including four retired heads of the Shin Bet spy service and General Yaalon - have publicly voiced similar concerns about the moral and practical damage the occupation is doing to Israeli and Palestinian society.
The authorities say, though, that whatever their personal opinions, it is the duty of all soldiers to stand against threats to Israel's existence.
"If the military were to allow soldiers to selectively refuse to serve, we wouldn't have an army," a military source told The Age. "Instead, there would be individual militias, each operating according to what it perceives to be its own interests and values."
----
We can share shrine with three faiths, says Wailing Wall liberator
By Toby Harnden in Tel Baruch
17/01/2004
Telegraph (UK)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$I3KIVBCIWERW5QFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2004/01/17/wall17.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/17/ixworld.html
If it means peace we should give them the whole Temple Mount, says Yitzhak Yifat, one of the Israeli paratroopers that liberated the Wailing Wall in 1967.
The photograph became the enduring image of the Six Day War and the young Israeli paratrooper gazing up in awe at the Wailing Wall after he had captured it with his comrades became a symbol of Jewish martial idealism.
Nearly 37 years later, Yitzhak Yifat, still occasionally recognised in the street as that 24-year-old from 1967, is now ready to hand the wall back to the Arabs. He wishes that what was viewed at the time as a noble war had never been fought.
"I used to want it to remain in our control for ever but if it means real peace, not just on paper, then we should give them the whole Temple Mount," he said. "Then we can share the holy sites between all three faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam."
The "Wailing" Wall - now known as the Western Wall - is believed to be the only remaining part of the Second Temple. Situated at the foot of the Temple Mount inside Jerusalem's Old City, it is the holiest site in Judaism. It is also a sacred place for Muslims, who call it Haram al-Sharif or the Noble Sanctuary.
At his gynaecology clinic in Tel Baruch, close to the city of Tel Aviv, Dr Yifat, 60, said the failure to sign a peace treaty with Arab states in the immediate aftermath of 1967 plunged his country into a state of perpetual conflict.
"Our leaders lacked the vision to see the future. They had no ideas about what to do next. It was not our decision to go to the wall or to conquer it. We were under siege and we acted morally. But if there had been more vision then we would not be facing the situation we are in today."
Dr Yifat said he had not known David Rubinger was taking the famous photograph but remembered the moment he reached the wall. "Suddenly, we saw these huge stones which encapsulated the history of the Jewish people.
"I felt part of the chain of events from the Hasmoneans, Judah the Maccabi, the Holocaust, the 1948 War of Independence. It was very emotional."
In the hours before, he had engaged in fierce, hand-to-hand combat with Jordanian troops. "One Arab soldier shot my friend and then he ran out of ammunition. As he was reloading his magazine, I kicked him between the legs and jumped on him.
"I grabbed the gun he had used to shoot my friend and I shot the Arab with it. I killed him." Dr Yifat still bears a scar on his nose from the bayonet on the Jordanian soldier's rifle, which he took and used in the rest of the battle on Ammunition Hill.
Over the years, Dr Yifat has seen the photograph being used in tourist brochures in New Zealand and, to his dismay, political campaigns by both Right and Left in Israel. Painted in bright colours, it was even used on a banner in a recent gay pride march.
The gynaecologist still serves in the Israel Defence Forces as a lieutenant colonel in the medical corps.
Like most Israelis, he is deeply pessimistic about the chances of peace at the moment, when the "wall" being talked about is not the Western Wall but the security barrier, parts of it deep inside the West Bank, being put up to stop suicide bombers.
"We don't want to do it but we have to prevent the terrorists coming into Israel," he said. "We have no intention to rule over another people but every time we release pressure on the Palestinians they explode another bus in our faces."
He has sympathy with the views of those who risk jail rather than serve in the occupied territories but disagrees with their methods. "Ideologically they are justified but they should not protest in front of the whole world. It should be dealt with within the unit."
If the friends who died in battle in 1967 had lived, he said, they would probably share his ambivalent feelings about what they achieved.
"And if they had known what the results would be today I bet they would have thought twice. We liberated Jerusalem, but at what cost?"
----
Aide Says Israel Will Step Up Efforts to Kill Hamas Founder
January 17, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/international/middleeast/17MIDE.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Jan. 16 - Israel's deputy defense minister has proclaimed the spiritual leader and founder of Hamas to be "marked for death," signaling that Israel will step up its campaign to kill the leadership of the militant group.
The threat followed a Hamas bombing in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday that killed four Israelis: two soldiers, a border policeman and a security guard.
The Hamas founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who attended prayers on Friday at a mosque near his home in Gaza City, said he would embrace "martyrdom" if it came his way.
Israel tried to kill Sheik Yassin on Sept. 6, dropping a 550-pound bomb on a Gaza City apartment building where he was meeting with other Hamas leaders. Sheik Yassin, a paraplegic, escaped with a light wound on his right hand. Israel said it had used too small a bomb, in an effort to avoid civilian casualties.
That strike was part of a series of Israeli attacks on Hamas leaders that followed a devastating Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem over the summer.
"We do not fear death threats," Sheik Yassin said Friday. "We are seekers of martyrdom."
He was reacting to comments by Zeev Boim, the Israeli deputy defense minister, who said that Sheik Yassin had made himself a target.
"Sheik Yassin is marked for death, and he should hide himself deep underground where he won't know the difference between day and night," Mr. Boim told Israeli Army Radio on Thursday night.
"And we will find him in the tunnels, and we will eliminate him."
Before Wednesday, Hamas had not conducted a suicide bombing in four months, in what seemed an undeclared cease-fire. Israel also appeared to stop hunting its leadership, though Israeli officials denied any change in strategy.
Israeli security officials credited attacks on the Hamas leaders with intimidating the group into quiescence, though most of the strikes failed to kill their targets.
Previously, Israel had in practice accepted a distinction made by Hamas between its "political" and "military" leaders. Israel did not try to kill political leaders like Sheik Yassin, who insists he does not direct suicide bombers. Israel now accuses him of involvement in the attacks.
Sheik Yassin said Friday that he had "nothing to do with military activity" by Hamas.
Though its suicide attacks had subsided before Wednesday, Hamas repeatedly rebuffed attempts by the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, and Egyptian mediators to arrive at a formal cease-fire among the Palestinian factions.
Hamas is officially committed to Israel's destruction. In recent interviews, Sheik Yassin suggested that the group would consider accepting some sort of temporary peace in exchange for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the territories Israel has occupied since 1967.
--------
'Marked' Founder of Hamas Vows More Attacks
Associated Press
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23736-2004Jan16.html
JERUSALEM, Jan. 16 -- The founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement brushed off warnings by a top Israeli official that he is "marked for death" and, in a defiant appearance Friday at a Gaza City mosque, said his group, known as Hamas, will continue to attack Israelis.
The exchange of threats followed a deadly Hamas bombing this week that further spoiled chances for a cease-fire, the starting point for a U.S.-backed peace plan.
Israeli security officials said targeted killings of senior Hamas members would likely resume after Wednesday's suicide bombing killed four Israeli border guards at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. Past Israeli strikes against Palestinian militants have triggered revenge bombings.
Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim initially told Israel Army Radio that Hamas's founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, would be targeted.
"Sheik Yassin is marked for death, and he should hide himself deep underground where he won't know the difference between day and night. And we will find him in the tunnels, and we will eliminate him," Boim said.
But Boim said later that high-level Defense Ministry discussions on a response to the Erez bombing did not include a specific decision to kill Yassin.
During the summer, Israel unleashed several airstrikes against leading Hamas figures. Yassin, 69, a quadriplegic, escaped the Sept. 6 bombing of a Gaza City building with minor injuries.
Israeli security officials said Yassin personally approved Wednesday's bombing and issued a religious ruling allowing women to carry out such attacks. Hamas recruited a 22-year-old woman for the Erez attack, a first for the fundamentalist group.
Appearing at a Gaza City mosque for Friday noon prayers, part of his weekly routine, Yassin denied he was involved in planning attacks. However, he said that "Israel will pay for its crimes" and that Hamas would continue resisting occupation, a phrase that generally refers to bombing and shooting attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza.
"We do not fear the threat of death," Yassin told reporters outside the mosque, sitting in his wheelchair and covered with a brown blanket. "We will not bow to pressure, and resistance will continue until the occupation is destroyed."
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani President Heckled in Speech to Parliament
January 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Musharraf.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- President Gen. Pervez Musharraf recently faced two assassination attempts and launched a historic peace process with nuclear-armed rival India, but opposition lawmakers offered no praise Saturday during his first-ever speech to Parliament, heckling him as a military dictator and demanding he resign.
The noisy disruption highlighted deep-seated resentment at the military's persistent involvement in politics and blunted Musharraf's efforts to portray himself as a legitimate ruler since seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Opposition members chanted ``go Musharraf, go Musharraf'' and ``friends of dictators are traitors'' throughout his 40-minute, nationally televised speech. Musharraf supporters countered by thumping tables in applause, at times making it difficult to hear him.
Meanwhile, two domestic flights were diverted, preventing at least three opposition legislators from attending the speech. Officials gave conflicting reasons for the diversions.
Security was extremely tight at Parliament, with armored personnel carriers patrolling, after the two attempts on the president's life last month. The two bombings were blamed on Islamic militants who despise the president for allying Pakistan to the United States in the war on terror.
In his speech, Musharraf spoke of the needs to crush terrorism, to keep Pakistan's nuclear weapons secure and to prevent proliferation of atomic arms. He also urged a resolution of the long-standing conflict with India over the divided territory of Kashmir.
``A few people are committing the curse of extremism in our society ... who want to impose their narrow-minded ideas on others,'' Musharraf told the special joint session of both houses of Parliament.
The address capped a highly charged two weeks. Musharraf struck a deal with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to start talks on the Kashmir standoff; the military has stepped up operations in tribal borderlands to hunt down al-Qaida fugitives; and a car bombing injured 15 people outside a church in the southern city of Karachi.
Amid accusations that Pakistani nuclear technology has proliferated to Iran, Libya and North Korea, Musharraf promised to strengthen Pakistan's deterrent while stressing the need to ``assure the world that we are a responsible nation and will not let nuclear weapons spread.''
Musharraf, swapping his army uniform for a traditional white jacket, concluded his speech with a salute and punching his fists in the air.
The opposition appeared less upset by anything Musharraf said than his presence in the seat of Pakistan's embattled democracy.
Three weeks ago, the president hatched a deal with hard-line, pro-Taliban groups that led to votes of confidence in his rule in Parliament and the four regional assemblies. Under the deal, Musharraf will quit his post as army chief at the end of this year but finish out his five-year term as president in 2007.
``The democratic opposition demonstrated in full force, and strongly, that an intruder and a stranger had entered the Parliament building, that a serving general of the army cannot be an elected president at the same time,'' said opposition Sen. Farhatulalh Babar.
Babar also urged an investigation into what he claimed was a ``hijacking by the regime'' when two domestic Pakistan International Airlines flights to Islamabad were diverted.
One of the planes, from the eastern city of Lahore, carried at least three opposition legislators who were prevented from attending the speech. The aircraft sat on the Islamabad airport's runway for 50 minutes without disembarking passengers, then flew to Peshawar.
A separate flight from the southern city of Karachi was forced to return without landing in Islamabad. There was no immediate indication that any opposition members were on board.
An airline official, Imran Gardezi, blamed the diversions on an airport bomb scare. But Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed cited ``technical reasons,'' while an airport official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said one plane was diverted because of poor weather.
Tehmina Daulatana, a vocal opponent, alleged that the government wanted to prevent her from attending the speech and told The Associated Press: ``What kind of general is he who is scared of a woman?''
The president remains deeply unpopular among partisans of former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both of whom are in exile. Musharraf overthrew Sharif's government in 1999 and dismissed Parliament.
In 2002, Musharraf complied with a Supreme Court order to hold elections -- but first made changes to the constitution to gain sweeping powers, including authority to dismiss Parliament and the prime minister.
-------- prisoners of war
Inquiry Ordered Into Reports of Prisoner Abuse
January 17, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/politics/17DETA.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - The top American commander in Iraq has ordered a criminal investigation into allegations that detainees at the sprawling Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad have been abused by American forces, military officials said Friday.
A statement by the military command in Baghdad gave no details about the scope or severity of the incidents, saying only that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American officer in Iraq, had directed an inquiry into the latest in a string of reported abuses of prisoners.
"The release of specific information concerning the incidents could hinder the investigation, which is in its early stages," the statement said.
A senior Pentagon official said authorities had been alerted to the possible abuse of detainees in the past few days and were taking the allegations "very seriously."
The American-led occupation is holding thousands of suspected insurgents and criminals at Abu Ghraib, a large prison west of Baghdad that was notorious during the rule of Saddam Hussein for overcrowded cells and torture chambers.
The inquiry ordered by General Sanchez is expected to add fuel to allegations by Amnesty International and many former detainees that the American captors have treated prisoners harshly or abused them in certain cases.
Earlier this month, three Army reservists were discharged for abusing prisoners at Camp Bucca, a detention center near Basra, in southern Iraq. In late December, Brig. Gen. Ennis Whitehead III determined that the three soldiers had kicked and punched prisoners or encouraged others to do so.
Late last year, Lt. Col. Allen B. West, a battalion commander in the Fourth Infantry Division, was allowed to resign from the Army after he fired a pistol near a suspected supporter of insurgents during an interrogation in August to frighten him into giving up information about impending attacks against allied soldiers near Tikrit. Colonel West has defended his actions as necessary to protect his troops.
In addition, the Marine Corps has charged eight Marine reservists in the death of an Iraqi prisoner near Nasiriya last June. Two of the eight marines face charges of negligent homicide, while others face lesser charges, Marine officials said.
-------- spies
Relying on the word of 'little birds'
January 17, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36641
A year ago, the Iraqis insisted that they didn't have a secret uranium-enrichment program or a nuke development program.
Did we believe the Iraqis? No.
A year ago, at the invitation of the Iraqis, the experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency had searched Iraq from stem to stern and reported that they could find no evidence that Iraq had a uranium-enrichment program or a nuke development program.
Did we believe the IAEA experts? No.
Why not?
Well, we had "intelligence" to the contrary.
You see, "little birds" had whispered in our ear, telling us the Iraqis were buying African uranium and aluminum tubes to make centrifuge rotors to enrich it, and stuff like that.
You now know the little birds lied to us. You also know what acting on hearsay from little birds cost us - the lives of more than 500 U.S. servicemembers and counting.
A year ago, the North Koreans insisted that they didn't have a secret uranium-enrichment program or a nuke development program.
Did we believe the North Koreans? No.
Why not?
Well, we have "intelligence" to the contrary.
Little birds claim they have "irrefutable evidence" that the North Koreans are importing sophisticated centrifuges, aluminum tubes and stuff for their uranium-enrichment program.
Worse still, in October 2001, an anonymous North Korean official is alleged to have acknowledged - in response to a charge made by an anonymous U.S. official at a cocktail party - that North Korea did indeed have a secret uranium-enrichment program.
And, last year, an anonymous high-level U.S. official - who wasn't actually at the Beijing conference - told the Associated Press that North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il had announced to the Russian, Japanese, U.S. and South Korean delegates at the Beijing conference that they actually had a nuke stockpile and would test one of them in the near future.
Now, the North Koreans deny all these allegations and the Russians, Chinese and Japanese suggest that U.S. officials must have misunderstood what the North Koreans actually said.
So, last week, a U.S. delegation - which included several diplomatic weenies, two congressional staffers and Sig Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory - visited the Yongbyon nuclear facilities compound, which includes the alleged nuke testing range.
Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan told the U.S. delegates emphatically and unequivocally that North Korea had neither a uranium-enrichment program nor a "nuclear warhead" development program.
[At this point it needs to be noted that if they do have a uranium-enrichment facility, neither the little birds nor the CIA have the foggiest notion where it is.]
Until a year ago, all these "nuclear" facilities were "frozen" under IAEA lock and key. The IAEA long ago estimated that there was enough weapons-grade plutonium contained in the "frozen" spent fuel to make a half-dozen Nagasaki-type nukes.
But a year ago, alarmed by what they correctly perceived to be the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq - allegedly because Iraq had a secret nuke program in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - North Korea withdrew from the NPT, kicked out the IAEA, announced it was restarting its plutonium-producing reactor and was resuming the recovery of weapons-grade plutonium from its spent fuel.
Why might North Korea want nukes? Well, on numerous occasions, President Bush has said that he would "not tolerate" Iraq, Iran or North Korea having nukes.
Well, as long as they were NPT signatories, the U.N. Security Council would not tolerate Iraq, Iran or North Korea having nukes, either.
Iraq insisted it didn't have nukes. That turned out to be true, but we didn't believe them.
Now North Korea insists it doesn't have nukes. That may or may not be true.
Having supplied the nuclear technology, the Russians don't doubt the Koreans now have the necessary weapons-grade plutonium to make nukes. But, they do doubt the Koreans have the technological capability to actually produce workable implosion nukes.
But haven't the Koreans admitted they are working on their "deterrent" against "nuke" attack? Doesn't that mean they are developing their own nukes?
Maybe not. At the Beijing conference Vice Foreign Minister Kim declared, "We have something stronger than a program with enriched uranium. We have stronger weapons, such as national solidarity."
But then, last week, the North Koreans showed the U.S. delegation a sample of their "deterrent" against U.S. invasion. It wasn't an example of their "national solidarity." It was a sample of weapons-grade plutonium
Presumably for sale to the highest bidder.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-------- un
U.N. Support Crucial in Iraq, U.S. Says
White House Plans To Appeal to Body To Send Envoys
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23674-2004Jan16.html
The United States plans to ask the United Nations on Monday to play an active role in virtually every aspect of the political transition in Iraq, from overseeing the selection of an Iraqi government and writing new laws to the transfer of power when the U.S. occupation ends on June 30, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.
The Bush administration and the Iraqi Governing Council will appeal Monday to the United Nations in New York to dispatch a team of envoys to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to convince him that holding fair elections is impossible in the limited time left, the officials said.
"We'd like to see the U.N. involved in everything -- the whole political process. The issue now is, will they do this, and then how do they do this," said a senior State Department official.
The U.S. governor of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, held a series of meetings in Washington yesterday with President Bush and the senior foreign policy team to work on the proposals. Afterward, Bremer told reporters that the United Nations knows how to organize elections and has "a great deal of expertise it can bring to bear on the process of writing a constitution. All of these things I'm sure are going to be discussed during the course of the day Monday."
Although the Bush administration says it has long sought greater U.N. involvement, the decision to rely so heavily on the world body is a notable turnaround after a year of rocky relations when the United Nations was relegated to the margins of Iraq policy. The current transition plan, signed Nov. 15 between the United States and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, mentions no role for the United Nations.
The United States is now particularly eager for new U.N. envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi to go to Baghdad, where U.S. officials hope he will become the chief broker to end the political impasse with Sistani and other Iraqi leaders. "Brahimi speaks Arabic. He's Muslim. He could be a persuasive interlocutor," a senior U.S. official said.
Added the senior State Department official: "Brahimi is very important. Brahimi in New York is good, but Brahimi in Iraq is even better. There's certainly no doubt that the Iraqi Governing Council wants the United Nations and Brahimi out there as soon as possible."
Washington faces an uphill battle in persuading the United Nations, U.S. officials concede, although Secretary General Kofi Annan has essentially backed the American plan for choosing an interim Iraqi government through a system of caucuses instead of elections. Annan has agreed there is not enough time for elections to be held before the U.S. occupation ends June 30.
The most divisive issue with the United Nations is likely to be U.S. insistence on controlling major decisions, even if the United Nations becomes a partner in the transition, U.S. and U.N. officials say.
"Our natural inclination will be to put parameters on how much the U.N. can or can't do. But to get the U.N. to buy into the process, we'll have to cede some level of control," said a well-placed U.S. official. "So this could be a problem."
A senior U.N. official said the world body remains "fairly reticent," particularly about a role in the controversial caucuses because the process provides little "scope" for a meaningful U.N. role. The Nov. 15 agreement outlines a complex plan for 18 regional caucuses to select a new national assembly by the end of May. The legislature would then elect a president or prime minister and cabinet in June before the U.S.-led occupation ends.
Yet U.N. officials did not rule out the possibility of acceding to the U.S. request to send a political team to Iraq to help break the impasse over the political transition.
Despite the growing momentum inside Iraq behind Sistani's call for elections, the Bush administration insisted yesterday that it can find common ground with the popular cleric, the most prominent leader of Shiite Muslims, the largest sector of Iraqi society.
"I have the greatest respect for Ayatollah Sistani. There is a great deal that we agree about with him: First of all, that Iraq should move now to a democratic form of government. Secondly, that the process by which that happens should be transparent and representative, involving all Iraqis," Bremer said yesterday.
Bremer noted that the United States is prepared to adjust the current transition plan through "refinements" and "clarifications." "There are, if you talk to experts in these matters, all kinds of ways to organize partial elections and caucuses," Bremer told reporters. "We're willing to consider refinements, and that's something that we will be willing to discuss at the appropriate time."
But Washington is unwilling to change the date for ending the occupation. "The Iraqi people are anxious to get sovereignty back, and we are not anxious to extend our period of occupation," Bremer told reporters.
For now, the Bush administration appears intent on trying to convince Sistani, rather than grant his demands.
"The Shiites are not against the Nov. 15 plan," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Dutch Network yesterday. "Their resistance and their concern is how we actually put in place, select, that transitional assembly. And we're in good conversations with the Shiite leadership, the Ayatollah Sistani, and we think the U.N. might be able to play a helpful role in these conversations."
The United Nations has a team in Baghdad looking over security arrangements if the world body sends back envoys, U.S. officials said. The world body pulled out its employees after two massive suicide bombs against former U.N. headquarters killed more than two dozen.
Staff writer Colum Lynch contributed to this report from the United Nations.
-------- us
Families stunned, angered by units' deployment extension past one year
By Steve Liewer,
Stars and Stripes European edition,
Saturday, January 17, 2004
http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=19099&archive=true
GIEBELSTADT, Germany - Tuesday night's e-mail spread the dreaded news quickly across the home front in Giebelstadt: one year from the date their husbands deployed to Iraq, the men of the 3rd Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment still will not be home.
"This is the worst news," said Jessica Corey, 29, whose husband flies Black Hawk helicopters for the unit. "Besides being absolutely stunned, we're completely heartbroken, too."
The Pentagon announced this week that 1,500 soldiers, National Guardsmen and reservists would be forced to stay in Iraq beyond their one-year rotation dates. About 1,000 of them come from Europe. More than 600 of those soldiers belong to two units from Giebelstadt: the 3/158 Aviation, a UH-60 Black Hawk unit; and the 7th Battalion, 159th Aviation Regiment, an aviation maintenance support unit.
"Everyone's having a hard time with this last bit of news," said Jennifer Groncki, 28, wife of a 3rd Battalion pilot. "People are very upset. They feel like the end was in sight. Now it's been taken away."
The 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion, which is headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany, is among the units being extended.
"They all seem to understand," said Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Joe Monroe, the 302nd rear detachment commander. "I think we have a great bunch of guys. They understand it's mission first."
The unit deployed down range in mid-to-late February 2003. The return date is still very much "a moving target," Monroe said.
Other U.S. Army Europe units from Germany affected include: the 19th Combat Support Center from Wiesbaden; the 27th Transportation Battalion, with units in Hanau and Bamberg; the 71st Corps Support Battalion, from Bamberg; and the 181st Transportation Battalion, from Mannheim. All of them deployed to Iraq between January and March 2003.
Thousands more soldiers just missed a similar fate. A Pentagon spokesman, who requested anonymity, said U.S. Central Command at first sought permission to extend at least 50 units beyond their first anniversary. The Department of Defense pared the list by more than three-fourths.
The Pentagon's efforts to limit the impact to a few units comes as little consolation to people like Valerie Belgrave, 30, who has spent only two months with her husband - Chief Warrant Officer 2 Benito Belgrave, also a 3rd Battalion Black Hawk pilot - in the past three years, through his 18 months of flight school and now one-year-plus in Iraq.
To their 2-year-old son, Nathaniel, Daddy is a stranger.
"[The boy] doesn't know my husband," Valerie Belgrave said. "He's like a visitor."
Carla Aikens, 34, and her 4-year-old daughter, Taylan, had been marking off the days on a calendar until March 20, when Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kevin Aikens finally would come home. Now, she doesn't know what to do.
"In the summer, we finally had a date," Aikens said. "This is very hard for [Taylan] to accept."
Rumors of the extension had flown around Giebelstadt the past several weeks, several wives said, but they followed the advice of both their Family Readiness Group leaders and their husbands to disregard them. As recently as last week, the battalion commander had e-mailed spouses assuring them that the March 20 return date still looked solid.
That's what made this week's news all the more stunning. The e-mail didn't explain why the troops would have to stay longer nor how long, though Pentagon officials have since said the units will stay between five and 60 extra days to bridge gaps caused by the enormous transfer of troops in and out of Iraq this spring.
"We deserve to be told the truth," Corey said. "We're big girls. We can handle it."
The wives said their husbands have accepted the news stoically. Steeped in the Army tradition of a soldier's duty, they are trying to do the same.
"Suck it up and drive on - if you're an Army spouse, that's what you've got to do," said Mena Sawyer, 30, also a 3rd Battalion pilot's wife. But, she added, "We were promised, more than once, that it would definitely not be more than 365 days. [The Army] always promises things, and they don't follow through."
Many wives can quote from memory U.S. Army Europe Commander Gen. B.B. Bell's pledge in one command message last August: "Soldiers and their families can count on no more than a 1-year deployment to [Iraq] for the current rotations."
"At least my husband is safe - relatively - and, eventually, he will come home," Corey said. "But I want to know that it won't happen again.
"The guys are just physically and mentally exhausted. That's not the way you treat your best assets.
"They need to come home."
--------
300 years for cleanup?
By John Heilprin
Associated Press
Saturday, January 17, 2004
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,590036753,00.html
WASHINGTON - Removing unexploded munitions and hazardous waste found so far on 15 million acres of shutdown U.S. military ranges could take more than 300 years, congressional auditors say.
In a report to Congress, the General Accounting Office said the Defense Department has yet to assess three-fifths of the 2,307 potentially contaminated sites identified as of September 2002 and has finished cleaning up only 1 percent of them. Some of the areas have been redeveloped for homes and parks.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press before its release, said the Pentagon "does not yet have a complete and viable plan" to guide its remaining cleanups. Assessments of the sites not yet examined in detail for possible explosive hazards, chemical warfare material and chronic health and environmental hazards won't be completed until 2012, the GAO said.
The department's latest estimate for the cleanups is anywhere from $8 billion to $35 billion. That's an increase from its previous estimate, little more than a year ago, of up to $20 billion.
At the current rate of annual spending - $106 million on average during the Bush administration - the cleanup "could take from 75 to 330 years to complete," the auditors said.
Defense officials say they have spent $25 billion over the past two decades on environmental restoration at more than 29,500 military sites, including ordnance testing and training ranges.
But the officials say they don't have a breakdown on how much of that was devoted to munitions cleanups. In recent years about 5 percent of the cleanup budget has been devoted to sites once associated with munitions.
Those sites represent at least 39 million acres in the United States where firing has resulted in either known or possible contamination.
They include actively used military installations, ranges being shut down and former defense training areas. Many have been redeveloped into parks, farms, schools and residential areas. For example, 8,810 acres along Morro Bay near San Luis Obispo, Calif., are now occupied by homes, farms, parks and a wildlife refuge.
In September 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency used military data to tally 126 incidents of civilians exposed to unexploded ordnance over the 83 previous years. The tally included 65 fatalities and 131 injuries.
Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Hilda Solis of California, two Democrats who requested the GAO report on the 15 million acres of closed military ranges, called the results troubling.
Defense officials are "failing miserably to meet the challenge of cleaning up its legacy of contamination," Dingell said.
Of the 2,307 sites identified two years ago, Pentagon officials said 362 required no cleanups based on an initial cursory evaluation. Of the 558 sites it has examined in more detail, it concluded that cleanups were needed in only 15 percent of them, the GAO said.
Solis said she's upset that analyses of the remaining 1,387 sites won't be completed until eight years from now. "It is almost as if they don't care, and what is more troubling is, they do not even have a plan for cleaning up the known areas," she said.
Pentagon officials had no immediate comment.
In a December response to GAO, Philip Grone, an assistant deputy defense secretary for environmental issues, said he agreed with the auditors' recommendation that Pentagon officials needed to work with Congress to develop budget proposals that would allow the department to finish cleanups "in a timely manner."
But there could be many more such sites with contamination, according to the GAO. Though the Navy and Air Force examined their sites, the Army had only looked at 14 percent of its installations, or 105 ranges, as of last year, the GAO said.
Moreover, among 9,181 formerly used defense sites with ranges that were transferred to private ownership, 1,691 have known or suspected contaminants. The GAO said the Army Corps of Engineers expects to add at least 75 more.
A government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Army plans to add at least 500 more sites later.
The biggest contaminants that have been found are TNT, RDX and HMX explosives, perchlorate used in rocket fuels and white phosphorus. TNT and RDX are possible human carcinogens; HMX causes potential liver and central nervous system damage, animal studies suggest; perchlorate can cause thyroid disorders; white phosphorus can damage reproductivity, the liver, heart and kidney.
In September 2002, the GAO estimated that more than one in three of the former defense sites that had been declared environmentally clean by the Army Corps of Engineers still contained unexploded weapons and other hazardous materials.
-------- propaganda wars
Are You Going To Get Mad?
by Charley Reese
January 17, 2004
http://antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=1717
It is now about as clear as it's going to get that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Colin Powell even contradicted himself (in his U.N. speech) by admitting recently that there is no evidence of any link between Saddam and al-Qaida.
Prior to the Iraq War, the Bush administration asserted as fact that Saddam had huge quantities of chemical and biological weapons and was actively pursuing nuclear weapons. Administration members ridiculed people who expressed any doubts. Today, after spending millions of dollars looking for the weapons, they haven't found anything. And every Iraqi official captured, none of whom has any reason at all to lie, has said the same thing: There are no weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, the Iraqis had been saying that for years, and the Bush administration replied, "You're lying." Now we have this situation. The facts on the ground prove that the Iraqis, whom President Bush called liars, were telling the truth. What does that make Bush? It makes Bush either very badly mistaken or a liar.
It seems to me that if Bush were merely mistaken, he would admit it. He would say to the American people: "Look, I thought Iraq had those weapons based on intelligence, but apparently the intelligence was wrong. I apologize for misleading you." But the president will not do that. He gets huffy and defensive when asked about weapons of mass destruction. Before the war, he never opened his mouth without talking about weapons of mass destruction. It might be that there is simply an arrogant gene in the Bush family. It might be that he was just lying.
It is true that the intelligence reports contained a lot of reservations, expressions of doubt and uncertainty, but when this came out of the political process, it was told to the American people as unquestionable fact without reservations. "Intelligence gathered by this government and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and to conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," Bush said on March 17. All the Bush people were asserting this to be a fact.
Now we have nearly 500 dead Americans who died to protect the United States from weapons that don't exist. And more will die, and for what reason? So Halliburton and other big corporations can make a lot of money? So Israel can feel safer? So we can have permanent military bases in Iraq? So the president can strut about and call himself the Conqueror of Iraq? One thing you can be sure of: They won't die defending the United States, because Iraq is not now and never was a threat to the United States.
It's no wonder Bush avoids military funerals and has barred the press from the airport where our dead come home. It's no wonder he has clamped a lid of secrecy on the search for weapons of mass destruction. What he ought to do is write a letter of apology to the families of every dead and wounded soldier. That'll be the day.
I don't know about you, but I'm damned angry that the president took this country to war on false pretenses. He has now dreamed up all these other reasons for going to war, but he sold this war to Congress and to the American people on the basis that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
This is far more serious than anything Bill Clinton did. He lied about dillydallying with a young girl. This president apparently lied about the reasons he wanted to take this country to war. He is, behind his facade of good old boy, apparently a man so arrogant that he does not think the American people deserve to be told the truth.
Maybe he's right. If the American people are not offended enough to throw him out of office, then apparently - in this country, anyway - the truth no longer matters.
----
French Minister Blasts Certain U.S. Ideas
Saturday January 17, 2004
AP
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/040117/ap/d80486dg0.html
France's Defense Minister criticized "certain radical neoconservative ideas" in the United States as harmful to U.S. relations with Europe.
While France remains a major partner of the United States, Minister Michele Alliot-Marie singled out on Friday what she called American aspirations for economic supremacy as well as assertions of cultural and political supremacy.
The French official did not identify whom she held responsible for asserting such views. "It is essential we recognize others' positions" as part of a trans-Atlantic discourse, she said.
In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private research group, Alliot-Marie emphasized that Europeans had "a different sensibility" from the United States toward the Arab-Muslim world.
Outlining the views of France, she said while terrorism is a great threat, its causes must be addressed, which she identified as "the sense of frustration in the face of injustice and poverty."
"The humiliation is exploited by fanatics," Alliot-Marie said, while urging "let us work together to eradicate blind violence, but also its roots."
France is neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Israel, the defense minister said, while implicitly holding Israel accountable. "We should be listening more to the Arab-Muslim world," she said.
"The sense of injustice and humiliation is really very widespread," she said.
Overall, Alliot-Marie's message was one of working together with the United States on international security.
"It is something of a paradox that France should sometimes be stigmatized in Washington as a strategic adversary of the United States," the minister said.
"To listen to some quarters, France is supposed to be trying to develop a counterweight to the United States, especially through European integration," she said. "Nothing strikes me as being further from reality."
France and the Bush administration have been at odds over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which France tried to block at the United Nations with calls for more weapons searches in preference to going to war.
But France has cooperated with the United States in promoting economic recovery in Afghanistan. "Faced with the difficulties the U.S. is encountering in certain parts of the world, it needs the support of its European allies," she said.
Later Friday, Alliot-Marie met with Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the United Nations in New York. Afterward, she told reporters it was clear from her meetings in Washington with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that the United States wanted to look to the future.
"It was very clearly expressed that there is a commitment now to turn the page ... and to turn to the future to see how we can carry out cooperation between France and the United States," Alliot-Marie said.
She said it is import for the international community to ensure a successful transition in Iraq to an Iraqi government from the current U.S. administration.
"France stated that it was ready to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq when there would be a legitimate Iraqi government that would have recovered its sovereignty ... and on the request of that government," she said.
"There will be no question," she said, "of sending French military personnel to Iraq."
----
Indian Filmmakers Feel Sting of Censorship
Growing Intolerance Blamed as Documentaries About Violence in Gujarat Are Banned
By Rama Lakshmi
The Washington Post
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23817-2004Jan16.html
NEW DELHI -- The camera closes in on a shy 6-year-old Muslim boy standing in his classroom. He tells the story of how his grandfather and aunt were killed by angry Hindu mobs in the Indian state of Gujarat almost two years ago.
"When my father went to save them, the Hindus chopped his fingers off," he says and stretches out his tiny fingers, enacting what he saw on that day.
The boy's story is the opening shot in "Final Solution," a documentary film about a deadly wave of religious violence in Gujarat. The four-part film details the atrocities directed at Muslims and the politics of Hindu fundamentalism that stoked the violence.
The film opened at a small private screening in New Delhi last week. As it ended with the boy vowing to become a soldier and kill Hindus, the shocked audience let out a collective gasp.
The film, made by Rakesh Sharma, has been invited to be shown at festivals in Berlin, Munich and Hong Kong this year but was rejected by the Bombay International Film Festival for documentary films, scheduled for next month.
Several documentaries that investigate the horrors of the brutal bloodshed that lasted for weeks in Gujarat in 2002 have been rejected by the film festival's organizers, banned by India's censorship board or faced threats from Hindu extremist groups.
Filmmakers claim that such instances raise important questions about freedom of expression and signal a growing intolerance in Indian democracy. They say their films about Gujarat are secular weapons in a fight against the rise of Hindu nationalism in mainstream Indian politics and national discourse in the past decade.
The Gujarat violence broke out in February 2002 when a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindu pilgrims and activists, killing nearly 60 Hindus. The incident sparked weeks of reprisals, including arson and murder by Hindu mobs that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. Human rights observers have charged the government of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat of looking the other way as Hindu mobs went on a rampage.
"I don't want our society to live in denial and silence about the horror of Gujarat violence. I want to generate a debate through my film. That is the only way we can ensure such events are never repeated," said Sharma, 39, a Bombay-based independent documentary filmmaker.
"But attempts at political censorship and intimidation by hate groups have deepened in the past five years," he said. "The only platform open for us is to show at international film festivals or at small private gatherings within India."
Sharma spent 18 months in Gujarat shooting the film. He said he faced an "atmosphere of fear and intimidation" after he was branded an Islamic militant and that police interrogated him and insisted on seeing his footage.
Another 20-minute film, "Anguish," by Ramesh Pimple, was banned last year by the censorship board on the grounds that the film "depicts violence and reminds the people about the Gujarat riots last year. It shows the government and the police in a bad light. The overall impact of the film is negative as it leads to communal hatred among the communities." His film was the first documentary to be banned in India by the board; he has appealed the decision in court.
"I need a censorship certificate to show my documentary to a larger public audience," Pimple said in a telephone interview from Bombay. "It also prevents the police from arbitrarily turning up to stop the screening or seizing the prints." His film contains a collection of narratives by survivors about their traumatic experiences. "I have not used any names, I have not named any political parties. I have not shown any gruesome images of burnt bodies and rape victims. Even then the film was banned."
Pimple's film, however, was screened at film festivals in Locarno, Switzerland, and Milan. He said he planned to make a fictional movie about the communal carnage as a protest against what he called the silence of Bombay popular cinema on the disturbing events in Gujarat.
The most recent incident of intimidation took place at a media screening in Gujarat of the film "Godhra Tak: A Terror Trail." Angry Hindu activists surrounded the filmmaker, Shubhradeep Chakravorty, and demanded an apology for making the film.
Chakravorty, 30, an independent filmmaker based in New Delhi, said that police later showed up and demanded to see his prints. He picked up the prints and fled the city. The 50-minute film investigates the incident that triggered the train fire that killed the Hindu passengers and raises questions about how the victims treated Muslims and how the train was torched. His film has been shown at festivals in Pakistan and Nepal.
"These documentary filmmakers are biased and want to defame Gujarat," said Jaideep Patel, a leader of the World Hindu Council in Gujarat. The council also produced a short film that focused exclusively on the Muslims setting fire to the train car. The film was shown extensively during the election campaign of the BJP in Gujarat, and the party swept the vote last year.
Documentary filmmakers say their films are a statement against the politics of hate and will not incite passion.
"We are living in intolerant times," said Gauhar Raza, whose private screenings of the film "Evil Stalks the Land" about Gujarat were disrupted by Hindu vigilante groups in Bombay and Goa. "Democracy offers space for opposition and dissent. Unfortunately that space is shrinking in India because of the right-wing turn in Indian politics."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Rumsfeld asks Supreme Court to overturn "enemy combatant" ruling
17 January 2004
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/66736/1/.html
WASHINGTON : US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked the US Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that an American citizen accused of plotting with al-Qaeda to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" could not be detained as an enemy combatant.
The White House last month slammed the lower court ruling in the case of Jose Padilla as flawed and the Justice Department said it would seek a stay and further judicial review of the case.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said President George W. Bush could not order an American seized on US soil to be detained as an enemy combatant. It said Padilla should be moved from a military to a civilian jurisdiction.
"We believe the Second Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said after the ruling.
On Friday, a brief filed by the Justice Department with the Supreme Court, listing Rumsfeld as sole petitioner, said the lower court ruling "undermines the constitutional authority of the Commander-in-Chief to protect the United States against additional enemy attacks launched within the nation's borders.
"Those concerns are particularly acute in the current conflict, waged against an enemy that operates in secret and plots surreptitious and large-scale attacks on civilian targets." In announcing its intention to appeal last month, the Justice Department said: "In times of war, the president must have the authority to act when an individual associated with our nation's enemies enters our country to endanger American lives."
Department spokesman Mark Corallo said that when Congress gave the president authority to act against al-Qaeda in a special resolution after the September 11, 2001 attacks, it clearly "recognised that al-Qaeda and those who now do its bidding are a continuing threat to the United States."
The department said Padilla "was closely associated with al-Qaeda and trained and worked under their direction."
In a two-to-one ruling, the three-judge appeals bench said Padilla, suspected of plotting a radioactive bomb attack on US soil with al-Qaeda, should be released from a Navy brig in South Carolina within 30 days.
Padilla, arrested May 8, 2002, had been held at the facility without formal charges since June of that year without access to legal counsel.
-----
Scalia and Opus Dei - Radicals on the High Court
By MIKE WHITNEY
January 17 / 18, 2004
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney01172004.html
"After I joined they gave me a barbed wire chain to wear on my leg for two hours a day and a whip to hit my buttocks with." - Sharon Clasen, former member of Opus Dei
"Blessed be pain. Loved be pain. Glorified be pain" - Josemarie Escriva, Founder, Opus Dei
(Commentary on Ron Grossman's article in the Chicago Tribune; Covert Catholics)
Whether or not an alleged member of Opus Dei, like Justice Antonin Scalia, enjoys a touch of the lash on his prodigious derriere from time to time, is certainly no business of ours. However, the affiliation of a Justice on the highest court in the land to an organization that, for all appearances, is nothing more than a right-wing cult should arouse not only suspicion, but an investigation.
Opus Dei is a clandestine Catholic organization based in Chicago, Ill. In size, it is insignificant, a mere 85,000 members (only 3,000 members in the US) compared to the one billion Catholics worldwide. But, its membership boasts of some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the country. The group catapulted to national attention when spymaster, Robert Hanson, was arrested and convicted in what turned out to be the greatest act of treachery in the history of the FBI. Hanson's arrest drew immediate and unwelcome notoriety to the secretive group.
Opus Dei came under the microscope again when it was featured rather unflatteringly in the popular mystery novel, The Da Vinci Code. The novel did a great deal to support the notion that the organization had a sinister underlying purpose. If their purpose, however, is to acquire as much power as possible within the Church, as many believe it is, then they have succeeded quite nicely. For one thing the Pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, is an active member, which indicates that a devoted party loyalist is as close as possible to the seat of authority in the Church.
The secrecy surrounding the group has generated widespread curiosity. "Former members claim it is a cult that pressures psychologically vulnerable college students into joining." opines Ron Grossman of the Chicago Times.
Grossman goes on to add, "Critics are put off because, as part of their devotional regimen, some Opus Dei members inflict pain on themselves that seems to border on masochism. Supporters respond that mortification of the flesh is an ancient and honorable Christian practice that puts them spiritually in touch with the great saints of the past."
One of the former members, Sharon Clasen remembers, "After I joined they gave me a barbed-wire chain to wear on my leg for two hours a day and a whip to hit my buttocks with." (Again, reported in the Ron Grossman article)
We can only wonder what the Senate hearings might have been like if they suspected that Scalia's attitudes towards self-inflicted punishment might be dramatically out of the mainstream? It certainly may have called his sense of judgment into question.
Grossman recounts some of the details related to Opus Dei's founder, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, who was a young priest in Spain during the 1930's. "Because the Church was identified with the ruling class, many priests were killed, a fate Escriva narrowly escaped by going into hiding. When Gen. Francisco Franco won the war, Escriva allied his movement with Franco's authoritarian regime, with several Opus Dei members occupying key positions in his government," avers Grossman.
What Mr. Grossman conveniently leaves out, is that he has just provided a detailed description of an ultra-conservative group that has its roots in European fascism.
Their ideology must have been attractive to the rightward-tilting Pope John Paul 2, who bestowed on the group a "personal prelature", which is tantamount to virtual autonomy. (Rather than being under the control of the regional Bishop) This suggests that Opus Dei operates independent of the traditional Church hierarchy and outside its conventional jurisdictions. If it is a cult, it is a cult that "marches to its own drummer".
And, there is much to imply that Opus Dei is a religious cult. Its members are targeted for recruitment, (preferably, impressionable college-age idealists) sworn to secrecy, told they are the "elite guard of God", trained in isolation, censored in their reading and, indoctrinated in the group ideology.
O, and did I mention those blissful evenings at home alone with the cat-o nine-tails?
It is precisely these bizarre rituals of physical abuse that elicit the most negative curiosity to Opus Dei. Apart from the self-inflicted whipping, (a practice that was apparently perfected by the founder, Escriva, who would lock himself in a small room until the blood was splattered on all four walls. Its doubtful that today's devotees practice with such unbridled zeal) members are expected to wear "cilices" (a necklace similar in character to two strands of barbed wire) around their upper thigh for two hours a day. The degree to which this accoutrement produces is pain depends on how tight the penitent fixes it to his leg. Somehow, this suffering is assumed to be pleasing to the Almighty.
Members are also required to sleep on rough-hewn boards, dress simply and avoid physical adornments; most of which is reasonably consistent with many of the monastic traditions.
The old saw, "Beat the body and train the mind" is a custom that is enthusiastically maintained throughout the ranks of Opus Dei. Or, as Escriva put it, "If you realize that your body is your enemy, and an enemy of God's glory, why do you treat it so softly?"
Why, indeed?
The larger issue surrounding the group, however, relates to its recruiting regimen. The aggressiveness of their approach has led some to refer to them as "Catholic Mormons". By situating their facilities around college campus's Opus Dei has a steady stream of young, idealistic candidates for potential enlisting. They target "attractive and impressionable" students, offering friendship, without revealing any ulterior motive. Then, when they suspect the time is right, (or when the candidate is most vulnerable) they make their pitch for them to engage in "God's Work", which is the meaning of Opus Dei in Latin.
The long-range affects of these recruitments has been varied. Members conform to a strict regimen while in the group so, a strong degree of dependency is formed. Control is exerted over everything from reading material (no Balzac or Marx) to hairstyle. Needless to say, the corrosive affects of coerced behavior can have some lasting affects.
Groups such as ONAN (Opus Dei Awareness Network) have sprung up to address the need for "de-programming" practitioners who require intervention to escape the group's emotional and psychological attachments. Their methods are not measurably different from those used to restore Moonies or Hare Krishna's to the warm embrace of planet earth. Their web site chronicles the disturbing stories of those who have broken the Opus Dei addiction. (Also check; "How Opus Dei is Cult-Like" by Sharon Clasen)
Our central question in this essay is to determine whether or not a Justice on the Supreme Court should be challenged on the basis of his alleged involvement in a religious cult. It is our belief that, however benign the goals of the organization may be, the public needs a full accounting the objectives of secret societies to evaluate if nominee's views are compatible with the workings of the justice system. Details of the group's activities and motives were absent from the Scalia hearings.
Our reading of the Constitution suggests that individuals should enjoy limitless freedom unless it threatens or harms someone else. We apply that same standard to Antonin Scalia regarding his life as a private citizen. The question is whether Scalia's understanding of the Constitution could be seriously maligned by his involvement in a religious cult. For this we need to determine whether his ability to arrive at an impartial rendering of the law is impaired by his commitment to a radical orthodoxy. As clever as Scalia's rulings are, they are entirely predictable, never veering from his narrow perspective. This implies that rather than being the result of a reasoned deliberation of the law, they are nothing more than the logical extension of a particular dogma. This guarantees that his rulings will be an upshot of his religious affectations instead of an unbiased reading of the facts. We see this as an illustration of his judgment being overshadowed by a competing ethic; an ethic that disparages our fundamental understanding of the law.
Moreover, the consistency of Scalia's rulings suggests that there is really no deliberation at all, just a summarizing of his personal ideology so it coincides with the details of a particular case. This alone, suggests that his position on the bench should be challenged. In everything from gay relations to defending the fundamental principle of democratic society, the counting of votes in a presidential election, Scalia has openly ignored the guidance of the law, choosing to stand firm in his doctrinal positions. Again, this indicates that his religious feelings precede the need for impartiality and evenhandedness.
The deleterious affects of cults on an individual's ability to think clearly cannot be overstated and should be part of the debate to determine whether Scalia is fit to serve on the court. If Scalia is not a member of this Byzantine group, let him say so publicly and dispel the rumors. Had he been properly vetted prior to his appointment, the allegations of his involvement in this clandestine organization would have generated much greater interest. Nominees need to come clean about the groups to which they belong, and the nature of those groups. This applies doubly to organizations like Opus Dei that are shrouded in secrecy. If a nominee refuses to be straightforward, he simply should not be considered.
We count on the Supreme Court to rule on basic issues of civil liberties and justice. If it's clear that one's judgment is impaired by extremism, he should either step down or be removed. We don't need radicals on the High Court.
Mike Whitney can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com
--------
High Court to Consider Detention Case
Justices to Decide if U.S. Can Indefinitely Imprison Criminal Illegal Immigrants
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23652-2004Jan16.html
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will decide whether the federal government may indefinitely imprison hundreds of Cubans and other illegal immigrants who have finished their sentences for crimes in the United States but whose home countries cannot or will not take them back.
In a brief order, the court said it would hear an appeal by Daniel Benitez, a convicted felon who came to the United States from Cuba during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift but was never given legal immigrant status. Benitez has been ordered out, but the Cuban government has refused to take him. He has been in U.S. custody for the past three years, with no end in sight.
In 2001, the Supreme Court interpreted a 1996 immigration law as denying the government authority to hold any legal immigrant felon for more than six months, if deportation proved impossible. It was silent on the issue of illegal immigrants.
Judith Rabinovitz, senior staff counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrant Rights Project, which supports Benitez, said the 2001 ruling should apply and that "he's being subjected to continued imprisonment without authority."
The Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled against Benitez, deepening a split on the issue among federal appeals courts. Thus, the Bush administration also sought a Supreme Court ruling to settle the question.
In his brief, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson urged the court not to apply the 2001 decision to Benitez, lest it create "an obvious gap in border security that could be exploited by hostile governments or organizations that seek to place persons in the United States for their own purposes."
Though Olson was alluding to the war on terrorism, the origins of Benitez's case do lie in an episode that Fidel Castro used to export some of Cuba's problems to the United States. The vast majority of the 125,000 Cubans who fled the island in 1980 did so in search of a better life. But once he saw that the exodus was unstoppable, Castro emptied Cuba's jails and mental institutions into the flow.
Under a 1984 agreement with the United States, Cuba agreed to take back 2,746 criminals and mentally ill people, of whom 1,646 have been returned so far.
A total of 2,269 illegal entrants to the country are in immigration custody -- more than half of whom have been held for more than six months, according to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The long-term detainees include 920 Mariel Cubans who were not subject to the 1984 agreement and who, like Benitez, were never granted legal residency but committed crimes in the United States.
A 1996 law gives the government the right to detain deportable immigrants beyond the usual 90-day "removal period" whenever the government determines they would endanger the community.
But the ambiguities in that law produced the 2001 case, in which the court interpreted the statute to forbid indefinite detention unless the government could show a "significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future."
The court added, though, that its decision would not cover terrorism-related offenses and that an illegal immigrant "would present a very different case."
Traditionally, U.S. law has treated illegal immigrants who have never legally been admitted to the country as if they were still standing at the border, seeking admission.
But Benitez's supporters say Mariel Cubans were granted "parolee" status when they arrived, which permitted them to live in the United States even if it is not technically the same as full legal residency.
"There will be a question whether that fiction is enough to say they can be locked up for the rest of their lives," Rabinovitz said.
Benitez was convicted of grand theft in Florida in 1983. As a result, he was denied an application for legal residence.
In April 1993, he pleaded guilty to armed robbery, armed burglary and weapons violations, accepting a sentence of 20 years. Released from state prison in 2001, he was transferred to immigration authorities.
The case is Benitez v. Wallis, 03-7434. The court ordered expedited consideration of the case, so oral arguments will take place in April and a decision is likely by July.
--------
Court May Hear Case of Terror Suspect
White House Fights Release Of Man in 'Dirty Bomb' Case
By Anne Gearan
Associated Press
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23638-2004Jan16.html
The Bush administration asked a federal court yesterday not to force the release of a U.S.-born suspected terrorist, and immediately appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
The administration wants the high court to take on the case of Jose Padilla, a former gang member and convert to Islam who was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 in connection with an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb."
If the Supreme Court agrees, it could combine the case with another that tests the legal rights of a U.S.-born terrorist suspect captured overseas. Together the cases could put the court on track to rule by summer on whether national security justifies detention of American citizens indefinitely and without charges.
The Justice Department filed a late request with a federal appeals court in New York, asking that a ruling ordering Padilla's release be put on hold.
"The court of appeals has issued an unprecedented decision ordering release of an individual whom the president, acting as commander in chief in a time of war, has determined poses a grave danger to the national security of the United States and should be detained as an enemy combatant," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson argued in a legal filing.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit "erroneously restricts the president's authority to prevent further attacks within the nation's borders," and should be reversed by the Supreme Court, Olson argued.
If the 2nd Circuit grants a reprieve, Padilla would not be released at least until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear the appeal.
The 2nd Circuit's ruling "not only overturns the president's determination that Padilla's custody by the military is necessary to protect the nation's security and prosecute the war, but also eliminates a critical aspect of the president's commander-in-chief authority," Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement wrote in asking the 2nd Circuit to put its order on hold.
Padilla's case is similar to that of Yaser Esam Hamdi, the U.S.-born suspected Taliban foot soldier captured in Afghanistan in November 2001. The high court will hear his case in April.
Lawyers for both men claim their treatment is unconstitutional. Hearing the cases together would address the rights of U.S. citizens captured abroad and at home.
The cases raise basic legal and constitutional questions about the breadth of executive power and the rights of terrorist suspects to defend themselves in court and represent the most significant civil liberties issue to reach the high court since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The case is Rumsfeld v. Padilla.
-------- police
Secret policing
The decision to allow federal arrests without due process is an assault on freedoms worth fighting for.
A St. Petersburg (FL) Times
Editorial
January 17, 2004
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/01/17/Opinion/Secret_policing.shtml
The U.S. Supreme Court this week gave the federal government the green light to detain people in this country without disclosing their identities, their whereabouts or the charges against them. Secret arrests might sound like the kind of thing that goes on in Zimbabwe or Cuba, but the Bush administration's insistence that the Bill of Rights can be ignored in pursuit of terror suspects now has the approval of the highest court. It is a chilling turn of the page in the war on terrorism.
Since the founding of this nation the public has had access to the names of people arrested as part of a criminal investigation. This access has been a vital check on the power of the executive branch - a way to monitor whether the government was abusing its extraordinary power to deprive someone of liberty. But the Bush administration, through a blanket secrecy policy, has refused to disclose the names of hundreds of detainees it swept up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Through dogged reporting by some news organizations and investigations by civil rights groups, some of the detainees' stories have come to light, such as that of Nabil Almarabh, a cab driver who was arrested on Sept. 18, 2001 as a terrorist suspect and material witness. It was May before he came before a judge for arraignment, and finally on Sept. 2002, the government admitted there was nothing linking him to terrorism.
According to the Justice Department's own inspector general, of the 762 immigrants who were detained on immigration charges as part of the post-9/11 investigation, and whose names have been kept secret, only Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," has been charged with having anything to do with al-Qaida. Even so, the department continues to claim that it needs to keep these names secret to keep al-Qaida off balance.
The case arose when the Center for National Security Studies and other organizations sued for information on the detainees under the Freedom of Information Act. Citing exemptions to the statute, the federal government refused to release the names or any of the other information requested, including the basis for the arrests. In August 2002, a trial court in Washington, D.C., directed the government to turn over the names. Federal District Judge Gladys Kessler said: "Secret arrests are "a concept odious to a democratic society.' " But her decision was overruled by the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling that took the government's national security arguments at face value.
The dissenting judge, David Tatel, said "the court's uncritical deference to the government's vague, poorly explained arguments ... eviscerates both FOIA itself and the principles of openness in government that FOIA embodies."
With the high court refusing to redress this wrong, the job falls to Congress. Since this information is not classified, the judiciary committees of the House and Senate could easily subpoena the names and then make them public. But the Republicans in charge of these committees have shown little interest in such disclosure. Congress also could amend FOIA to require, except in narrow circumstances, the federal government to disclose the names of anyone in its custody. At this point, however, no such legislation is pending.
Congress has as much duty as the courts do to defend the Constitution against the excesses of the Bush administration's "war" on terrorism. Lately, it has proven to have a bit more backbone than during its rush to pass the USA Patriot Act. However, lawmakers seem unwilling to stand against secret arrests in an election year. Is this the America we want for ourselves and future generations?
-------- prisons / prisoners
Justices to Rule on Holding Illegal Immigrants
January 17, 2004
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/national/17SCOT.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether foreigners who never had a legal right to enter the United States may be held indefinitely while immigration officials try to arrange their deportations.
The case presents a question raised but not directly answered by a decision by the court three years ago in a case concerning a German-born Lithuanian who entered the country legally as a child and who then compiled a long criminal record that made him deportable.
Neither Germany, Lithuania nor any other country would take the man, Kestutis Zadvydas, who remained in custody for three years before a federal judge ordered him released. The Supreme Court ruled in Mr. Zadvydas's favor, interpreting the statute governing detention before deportation to contain an implicit limitation of a "reasonable time," normally six months.
But the court observed that unlike Mr. Zadvydas, "aliens who have not yet gained initial admission to this country would present a very different question." Since then, the lower federal courts have divided over whether that different question should have a different answer.
The Bush administration urged the court to resolve the dispute, which has "great significance for the enforcement of the immigration laws, national security and public safety," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson said in the government brief.
Mr. Olson told the court that there were more than 1,000 people in this category, immigrants who were never lawfully admitted, had been found deportable and have been in detention for more than six months. Most are Cubans who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boatlift and whose return Cuba has refused to accept.
The case that the justices accepted is an appeal filed on behalf of one of the Mariel Cubans, Daniel Benítez. Like some 125,000 other Cubans who were formally denied entry at that time, Mr. Benítez was admitted a temporary parole that did not convey the status of legal residency. While in the United States, he compiled several criminal convictions that the old Immigration and Naturalization Service determined made him ineligible for lawful permanent residency. He was placed in immigration custody in October 2001.
As his detention approached six months, he filed a habeas corpus petition, arguing that he was entitled to release under the reasoning of the Zadvydas decision. Both the Federal District Court in Panama City, Fla., and the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, held that the Zadvydas ruling applied just to "resident aliens."
His appeal, Benítez v. Mata, No. 03-7434, argues that the statute that the court interpreted in the Zadvydas case makes no distinction between resident aliens and "excludable" ones like Mr. Benítez. Two other federal appeals courts, his lawyers pointed out, have held that the statute "cannot be interpreted one way for admitted aliens and another way for nonadmitted aliens."
In any event, the appeal maintains that "it is at least a serious question whether the Constitution permits the government to lock a nonadmitted alien in prison for the rest of his life because his home country will not take him back." For that reason, it says, the court should interpret the statute as it did in the Zadvydas case, to avoid what would otherwise be a substantial issue of due process.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer's majority opinion in that case said open-ended detention would pose a "serious constitutional threat" that the court should avoid by interpreting the statute to have a reasonable time limit.
While agreeing in the new case that the question needed resolution, the administration told the justices that the 11th Circuit limitation on the Zadvydas decision was correct.
--------
Bush Seeks Quick Ruling on U.S. Detainees
January 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Enemy-Combatant.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is asking the Supreme Court to decide by summer whether national security justifies detention of American citizens indefinitely and without charges.
The administration filed papers Friday asking the high court to take on the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam arrested in May 2002 in an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb.''
Padilla is closely associated with the al-Qaida terrorist network and ``represents a continuing, present and grave danger to the national security of the United States,'' Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote.
The government separately asked a federal appeals court in New York to suspend a court order for Padilla's release from a military brig where he is held incommunicado and without access to his lawyer.
The Supreme Court already has agreed to hear a similar case testing the legal rights of American citizens caught overseas in the war on terrorism. The Bush administration has asked that the two cases be combined.
Yaser Esam Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan, while Padilla was arrested on U.S. soil. Lawyers for both men claim their treatment is unconstitutional. Hearing the cases together would simultaneously address the rights of U.S. citizens captured abroad and at home.
The cases raise basic legal and constitutional questions about the breadth of executive power and the rights of terror suspects to defend themselves in court. They also represent the most significant civil liberties issue to reach the high court since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that President Bush does not have the authority to declare Padilla an enemy combatant and hold him in open-ended military custody.
The Dec. 18 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the government 30 days from the date of its final order to release Padilla or transfer him to civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges. The court's order is not final, so the clock has not yet begun to run.
If the 2nd Circuit grants a reprieve, Padilla would not be released at least until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear the appeal.
The ruling ``not only overturns the president's determination that Padilla's custody by the military is necessary to protect the nation's security and prosecute the war, but also eliminates a critical aspect of the president's commander-in-chief authority,'' Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement wrote in asking the 2nd Circuit to put its order on hold.
That aspect, he said, is ``the power to order the military to capture and detain enemy combatants, including United States' citizen enemy combatants, that enter the United States determined to conduct hostile and warlike acts.''
Unlike the Padilla case, the government has won its argument in lower courts that Hamdi may be held indefinitely without access to a lawyer or the U.S. court system.
Hamdi, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, was picked up while fighting with Taliban troops in November 2001 and held with other battlefield detainees at the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Authorities later transferred him to a U.S. naval brig in South Carolina after finding he was born in Louisiana. Padilla is locked up at the same prison.
Both men are classified as enemy combatants, a term the Bush administration contends means they are ineligible for ordinary legal protections. Both men have lawyers acting on their behalf, but one has never met his client and the other has not been allowed to see him for a year and a half.
The administration says it is reluctant to allow enemy combatants access to lawyers because that could greatly inhibit efforts to obtain information from them about potential terrorist operations.
The Supreme Court separately has agreed to consider the legal rights of other battlefield prisoners held as enemy combatants at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The case is Rumsfeld v. Padilla.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Thousands march in Paris anti-nuclear protest
Sat Jan 17,
(AFP)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NucNews/pending?view=1&msg=8537
PARIS - Up to 15,000 anti-nuclear protestors marched in Paris against a new generation of reactors, accusing police of stirring trouble by allowing a separate rally against a ban on religious headscarves in schools.
[Picture of one of the wasted protesters - http://tinyurl.com/2wg6w ]
The main target of the nuclear protests is the European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPWR), the first of which is to be built in Finland by a consortium including the French state-owned Areva group and German engineering giant Siemens at a cost of three billion euros (3.7 billion dollars).
France, which is one of the most nuclear energy-dependent countries in the world, is expected to give the reactors the green light in the near future to begin replacing some of the 58 plants that produce 80 percent of the country's electricity and are nearing the end of service.
"It is in fact a veritable revival of nuclear energy which is unfolding before us," said Stephane Lhomme, a spokesman for the group End Nuclear Network which organized the demonstration.
French Industry Minister Nicole Fontaine said energy policy was more complex than was portrayed by the activists.
"The fight against greenhouse gases and its effect on climate change is also a priority, and the nuclear option may be a way to help," she said in a statement, adding that an "objective debate" would be as useful as Saturday's demonstration.
Lhomme criticized police for allowing another rally to be held, starting from the same Paris site and at nearly the same time.
That rally, organized by the Party of French Muslims (PMF), drew thousands to protest government plans to ban the Islamic headscarf and other "conspicuous" religious insignia from schools.
"We have been preparing for our demonstration for three months and we announced what route we plan to take," Lhomme said, adding: "We are convinced that the interior ministry is looking for trouble." The interior ministry oversees police in French cities.
The demonstrators, who numbered more than 15,000 according to organizers and under 6,000 according to police, built a pyramid of tin cans in the square denouncing what they called the "radioactive waste scandal left for future generations".
They began their march to the ministry of finance and economy by walking backwards for the first kilometer (0.6 miles) "to symbolize the retrograde step in building the EPWR," Lhomme said.
Many wore protective suits emblazoned with the radioactive symbol and masks, and marched under the banner "No to new reactors, the future belongs to alternative energy!"
When it won the Finnish contract on December 18, Areva described the 1,600 megawatt reactor, due to become operational in 2009, as competitive, safe and environmentally friendly.
Anti-nuclear groups contest those claims, saying the EPWR will suffer from some of the same problems as the current types of reactors and produce more nuclear waste as it is to be larger.
"No matter how energy consumption develops the EPWR is of no use," said Greenpeace France director Michele Rivasi.
"The three billion euros dedicated in France to building a prototype could be spent instead on renewable energy (projects) which would produce twice as much electricity," she said.
Lhomme said "astronomical investments" would be required for a "project which carries all the risks associated with nuclear energy."
"Our goal is attainable: to warn the public about the dangers of a revival of nuclear energy," he said.
Members of dozens of environmental and anti-nuclear groups from across Europe took part in the demonstration.
"They want to use Finland because it has a reputation for being environmentally sensitive," Finnish anti-nuclear activist Ulla Kloetze charged.
The protestors have also denounced the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a 4.5-billion-euro project which France hopes to host.
The project partners, which include Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States are expected to announce their choice of site by mid-February.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1539&ncid=1539&e=11&u=/afp/20040117/sc_afp/france_nuclear_040117211017
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War protesters proud they got to jeer Bush
By JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
1/17/04
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/0104/17protesters.html
For two years, the antiwar movement in Atlanta has waited for the moment Thursday when President Bush's motorcade pulled up at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center.
"No protester has ever been that close to Bush," crowed organizer Kelli Potts on Friday afternoon as she recalled the Thursday protest when about 1,000 people shouted "Bush Go Home" and waved antiwar placards as the president laid a wreath beside the crypt of Martin Luther King Jr.
"They tried to move us back -- but there were just too many of us," said Potts. The group got within 100 yards of the president.
The solemn minute the president spent in silent prayer became a photo opportunity for not only the president but also those who opposed his policies.
It wasn't the biggest anti-Bush rally in recent months. In October 15,000 people marched in San Francisco demanding Bush pull American troops out of Iraq. But the Atlanta protest echoed nationally.
In Friday's New York Times, a picture of Bush laying the wreath ran above this headline: "Protesters Chant and Boo As Bush Honors Dr. King." USA Today's headline read: "Bush Gets Booed During His Visit to MLK's Grave." The Chicago Tribune reported: "Crowd jeers Bush at M.L. King's Tomb." Local TV stations and networks covered the protest.
State Senate Majority Leader Tom Price (R-Roswell) said Friday he recognized protesters' right to speak their minds, but, he added, the timing was suspect: "It was disappointing that people take that type of opportunity to tread on something that ought to be more solemn."
The protest bespoke the division between the city of Atlanta, historically Democrat and liberal, and the rest of Georgia, which last voted for a Democratic president in 1992, when Bill Clinton carried the state. In 2002 the state elected Sonny Perdue its first Republican governor in 130 years.
The organizers called the demonstration a strategic coup for their ability to rally so many on short notice.
They were able to do that, they said, because the wreath-laying united opponents of the war with civil rights groups who were offended by what they perceived as Bush's exploiting King's legacy.
"I thought it was tacky, and I thought if the president was sincere as other presidents have been who visited the grave site, he would have stayed a few hours, not just a few minutes as he did," said the Rev. Tim McDonald, chief organizer of the protest and president of the activist group Concerned Black Clergy.
Secret Service help
Organizers said they couldn't have done it without the Secret Service's help, because for two days, they didn't know the time of day Bush would lay the wreath.
"When the Secret Service said we had to be out of Ebenezer [Baptist Church] by 2 o'clock, we knew Bush would be there by 3 or 4," McDonald said.
Potts, an activist in several Atlanta anti-war groups, including the Georgia Peace And Justice Coalition, said they were alerted to Bush's visit by press reports last Saturday and began barraging members with e-mails on Sunday, working off a mail list of about 1,000 names.
The Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition has been protesting the Bush administration's war in Iraq since before the invasion. For a year and a half its members have demonstrated on Fridays in front of the Midtown offices of U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.)
"We pulled people together who where opposed to Bush's policies and who thought Bush's visit violated the spirit of Martin Luther King, who stood against hypocrisy," said Potts.
Radio raises support
McDonald said WAOK radio station interviewed him several times on the air, and disc jockeys drummed up support for the protest beginning last Monday.
McDonald's group got the King Center's permission to hold a news conference in front of King's crypt Wednesday, and then a member of the group had an idea.
"We thought laying our own wreath before the president laid his would send a real strong statement," he said.
With TV crews capturing the moment live, McDonald put a wreath at the front door of King's childhood home a block from the MLK Center.
On Thursday morning, the Atlanta branch of the NAACP held a news conference showing solidarity with the protesters. The group's president, R. L. White, denounced Bush's visit to the King grave as political expediency.
On Friday, White called the protest a success. "We wanted to make sure the president know how we feel," he said. "I think now he knows how we feel."
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Protests Held Against French Headscarf Ban
January 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-france-headscarves.html
PARIS (Reuters) - Chanting ``the veil is my choice,'' thousands of demonstrators marched through Paris on Saturday in protest at a looming ban on Islamic hijab headscarves in French state schools.
Muslims in the Middle East and London also challenged the ban. In Beirut, more than 2,000 women protested. Thousands of Palestinian women marched in Gaza City and the southern Gaza town of Rafah. ``Where is democracy,'' they chanted.
Mostly veiled women, flanked by men, protested in the French capital against the law proposed by President Jacques Chirac that would ban Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from state schools.
Though in their thousands, the protesters numbered far fewer than 10,000-20,000 police had thought might turn out. Police gave no immediate official figures.
``Our religion demands this, God says we should wear it,'' Nafouanta, from Paris, said of her veil. She declined to give her family name.
French government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope defended the ban on Friday as an effort to uphold France's commitment to keep church and state separate, and hit out at what he said were attempts to stir up radical opposition to the measure.
Many French politicians and voters support the planned law as a bulwark against Islamist influence among Muslim immigrants.
The protesters in Paris, who carried banners reading ``Secular fundamentalism is a danger for the Republic,'' said women should be free to choose to wear the veil.
``I am free to wear the veil or not,'' said Ilham, a Belgian woman, who was not wearing a veil. ``It's between me and God, but this is a personal liberty.''
In London, at least 700 people, chanting ``Stop Chirac's racist war'' and ``Hijab is our right. Hijab is our freedom,'' gathered outside the French embassy.
There were also protests in Jordan, Bahrain and in Bethlehem, where about 100 Palestinian women waving Palestinian and Islamic flags marched to Manger Square -- near the traditional birthplace of Jesus -- to protest.
The ban has divided opinion among France's five million Muslims, and been criticized by Muslims abroad.
Dalil Boubakeur, chairman of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), has described the planned march in Paris as a ``very dangerous'' measure that could frighten voters two months before regional elections are held across France.
Other Muslims feel unfairly targeted by Chirac's plan. A pro-headscarf march in Paris last month rallied more than 3,000 people, many of them veiled young women.
Chirac's center-right government wants to rush the anti-headscarf law through parliament so debate starts before the regional elections and the ban is effective by September.
Asked what she would do once the ban is introduced, one high school girl at the Paris protest said: ``We'll fight it, we'll fight it to the end.''
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Myanmar Releases 26 Opposition Prisoners
January 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/international/asia/17MYAN.html?pagewanted=all
BANGKOK, Jan. 16 - Military rulers in Myanmar have released 26 members of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy, the Information Ministry said Friday.
"They are all in good health and are back home together with their respective families," the ministry said in a statement. It did not give any names, and it was not clear whether the prisoners were arrested after clashes on May 30 between Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters and government backers. Party officials in Yangon, the capital, said they were unaware of the releases.
Last year, the government said it arrested 136 people, including Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, after the clashes, for which the United States blamed "government-affiliated thugs."
The United States, which has pressed for democratic change in Myanmar by insisting on the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and an end to restrictions on activities by the National League for Democracy, dismissed the government's move.
"Twenty-six out of the hundreds, if not 1,000 or more, that are in jail would be small," said Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman.
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Clerics Urge Shiites to Protest
Call for Iraqi Elections Carries Hint of Violence
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23581-2004Jan16?language=printer
KARBALA, Iraq, Jan. 16 -- Preachers in Shiite Muslim mosques appealed to their followers Friday to prepare for demonstrations, strikes and possible confrontations with occupation troops to back up demands for elections in advance of a transfer of authority from a U.S.-led administration to Iraqis.
The calls increased pressure on the Bush administration and its handpicked Iraqi Governing Council to satisfy demands by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most influential cleric, for elections. President Bush's chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and top Governing Council leaders are scheduled to meet in New York next week in hopes of enlisting U.N. help in changing Sistani's mind.
The United States and the council have fashioned a proposal to select a transitional assembly by July 1 through a complex system of regional caucuses. Sistani rejected the plan on the grounds it disenfranchises Iraqis and puts Iraq's future in the hands of the United States. Sistani's challenge was sharpened in Shiite mosques throughout Iraq on Friday, and the option of violence was made explicit.
"We should think seriously about the future and for the coming generation, and fashion it to keep our dignity," said Abdel-Madhi Salami, the chief cleric in Karbala, one of two Shiite holy cities in Iraq. "This will happen through serious participation in a peaceful protest, strikes and, as a last resort, possible confrontation with the occupying forces, because they plan to draw up colonial schemes."
Salami is a senior associate of Sistani. A similar appeal was made in the biggest Sunni mosque in Baghdad.
The relative calm that has prevailed among Iraq's Shiite majority since the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein last spring now hangs in the balance. Shiites, one of two major streams in Islam, make up at least 60 percent of the population. Unlike their Sunni Muslim counterparts, who make up about 20 percent of Iraqis and formed the backbone of support for Hussein, the Shiites largely welcomed the U.S.-led invasion of the country.
But the issue of Iraq's political future has put the relationship between the Shiites and the occupation authorities in question. Shiites consider Sistani, 73, a marja al-taqlid, or object of emulation, and his followers heed his words not only on religious matters but also on social and political issues. Despite hints of compromise emanating from U.S. and Iraqi officials, Sistani does not appear to be budging.
On Friday, Sistani met with tribal leaders at his offices in the holy city of Najaf, his home base. There were no reports of demonstrations. On Thursday, tens of thousands of Shiites marched in Basra, the country's second-largest city, to demand elections. Salami said that Basra was a sample of things to come.
"We want to convey to the people the importance of this case. Some people think it will take confrontation. Not for the present, we hope," Salami said in an interview.
Salami also suggested a way to avoid violence, repeating Sistani's demand for the United Nations to send a fact-finding team to Iraq and judge whether elections can be organized. When Sistani first called for a U.N. visit, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan sent a letter to the Governing Council saying elections could not be arranged properly before July 1.
"It was not correct for Kofi Annan to sit in New York and say it," Salami said. "We feel this was all a maneuver. If the commission came, investigated and said there is no way, then an alternative would have to be found."
He was evasive about whether Sistani would accept a U.N. judgment. "There is a lack of trust," he said.
Salami spoke dismissively of Bremer, with whom Sistani has refused to meet. "It's a feeling we will not get anything from Bremer. My evaluation is, there is no profit in a meeting with him," he said.
He spoke in his office at the edge of the Imam Hussein mosque, one of a matching pair in Karbala, each topped with a golden dome and gilt minarets set above an enclosure adorned with tiles in floral patterns.
Salami's appeal for protests was issued to thousands of worshipers gathered under a warm winter sun for Friday prayers. His speech made no mention of the United Nations.
Shiites in Karbala seemed to agree with his words. "There have been too many promises not kept," said Hameed Abu Sajjad, a hotel owner in Karbala. "The United States has lots of experience in organizing elections. Let them organize one for us."
Abdullah Ridha Abdul Mahdi, a plastics goods salesman, said: "Elections would make things clear. We would like it soon."
"I do not think our religious leaders want to cause problems. We just want our rights, which is the reason the Americans said they came here," said Amir Abbas, a retired laborer who was rummaging through a pile of sandals and shoes worshipers had shed before prayers, according to Islamic custom.
Iraqi officials fear that a U.N. commission would take a long time to investigate and would add to the aura of Sistani's authority, perhaps setting a precedent for clerical review of government decisions. Nonetheless, Adnan Pachachi, current president of the Governing Council under a rotation system, said the council would do what it could to "accommodate" Sistani by providing "transparency and inclusiveness."
But not elections. Pachachi will lead the Governing Council delegation to New York. He warned that the wrangling could derail the transition to Iraqi rule and prolong U.S. military occupation.
Elections would give the majority Shiites and, in all likelihood, the Shiite religious leadership a leg up on political rivals. The mosque is the most organized and well-financed institution in Iraq. The leadership is funded by donations from millions of the faithful.
Beneath the surface of the election dispute lies another issue dear to Sistani: enshrinement of Islam as Iraq's guiding ideology. Allowing a transitional assembly and government molded by U.S.-selected councils to take power would set Iraq onto a secular road, his followers contend.
"The issue is not just freedom. It is guaranteeing that laws be passed within the rules of Islam," Salami said.
He explained that Shiite leaders see the current situation through the prism of an Arab uprising in 1920 against British colonial rule. Then, Shiite clerics supported the revolt and later rejected a peace solution that involved installation by the British of an Arab monarch in Iraq. Effectively, the Shiites ceded control of Iraq to the minority Sunni population.
This time, the clerics want to ensure they have a deciding say in the creation of an Iraqi government, Salami said. "The people should benefit from the experience of the 1920 revolution. At that time, they lost their rights," he told worshipers at Imam Hussein mosque. "This time, the marja of Najaf is taking care about the transfer of authority from the occupiers. The people should wake up."
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