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NUCLEAR
Exploring the Drama of Science, Faithfully
Clan Resources Acquires Additional Uranium
China working to restart talks with North Korea, Powell says
Killing for Christ : the Destructive Power of Faith
Bush's foreign policy harms U.S., world
EU nuke offer could help Iran get arms - think-tank
Nuclear scientist remains in custody
Iran Hints at Suspending Nuke Activities
Iran Rejects Nuclear Plan as Imbalanced, Europe Is Told
Tonnes of Iraqi explosives missing: UN agency
Pentagon says its unclear if explosives disappeared after
White House plays down loss of explosives in Iraq
Earthquakes, Typhoons Raise Nuclear Fears
Powell Stresses 'Urgency' of Talks With North Korea
N. Korea Calls U.S. Exercises 'War Action'
Powell declares North Korea a 'terrorist state'
Not all weapons are created equal
Franz J. T. Lee: World terrorism and fascism ... QUO VADIS?
Nuclear plant security attacked
Bipartisan push is on for an end to N-funds
Los Alamos Hopes for Land Transfer
Nuclear fuel removed from Hanford basins
MILITARY
Of the Evil Empire
Karzai Effectively Wins Afghan Vote as Count Nears End
Karzai Is Clear Winner, Afghan Vote Results Show
Second round of Darfur peace talks begin
New Guerrilla Factions Arise in Sudan Ahead of Peace Talks
Pacifist leader claims victory in Kosovo elections
Biological threat greater than nuclear or chemical
Israeli companies tout security gear
Top Army Official Calls for a Halliburton Inquiry
Colin Powell's Agenda in China
Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
U.N.: Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq
Insurgents Massacre 49 Iraqi Recruits
New Violence Flares in Iraq, After Executions Leave 49 Dead
Terrorists massacre 50 Iraqi soldiers
Insurgents in Latifiyah eager to battle British
Sharon: Gaza Plan Only Way to Security
Sharon Opens Parliamentary Debate on Removal of Settlements
Sharon Wins Cabinet Vote for His Gaza Pullout Plan
Israel targets resistance fighters' kin
Colombia Destroys Stockpiled Land Mines
US to keep small force in Bosnia after NATO-EU handover
India's military commanders meet to revamp war doctrine
Abu Ghraib Guards Kept a Log Of Prison Conditions, Practices
U.N. tallies new security costs
Army Captain Granted Reprieve After Suing U.S. Gvt.
Military Fighter Jet Drops Errant Bomb
Veteran says modern draft would include elite
"Explosive" Revelations
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Slow Pace of Pentagon's Courts Set Off Friction at White House
Anti-War Protesters' Trial Is Thursday
Soldier who sued not required to report for duty
Senators Offer Intelligence Plan
Bush Asks Leaders of Congress to Pass a 9/11 Bill Quickly
POLITICS
Operation Desert Fraud
Security Council members deny meeting Kerry
Kerry says social justice would guide presidency
Breyer Cites Doubt About Impartiality of Election Vote
Paul Wolfowitz defends his war.
Carter Tells Paper Bush Exploited 9/11
Suppression, Fraud and Breakdown:
ENERGY
Schwarzenegger Opens Stop on 'Hydrogen Highway'
OTHER
Bush Administration Backs Solar Development on Public Lands
California Puts Stem Cells to a Popular Test
Illinois Governor Seeks Vaccine Abroad
ACTIVISTS
Protesters make their case outside court
Group Assists Anti-War Tax Protesters
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Exploring the Drama of Science, Faithfully
NPR Morning Edition,
October 25, 2004
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4122442
Science certainly isn't short of drama. But filmmakers and playwrights often duck out when it comes to showing science as it really is. They tend to prefer a cartoon version that rarely bears much resemblance to the real thing.
The plays of Paul Mullin are different. He believes it's possible -- and dramatically necessary -- to explore and explain the science that drives his characters' lives. His body of work includes Louis Slotin Sonata, about the last days of a Canadian physicist on the Manhattan Project. In May 1946, during an experiment involving a spherical plutonium bomb core, Slotin's hand slipped, exposing him to dangerous levels of radiation. He died nine days later.
"Everyone in the room knew that at least Slotin, who was closest to the apparatus, was a dead man," Mullin tells NPR's Joe Palca.
"There's something deeply theatrical, deeply dramatic about somebody who knows, in an instant, that they're dead," he says.
Among Mullin's other projects is a play called The Sequence, about the race to sequence the human genome.
-------- business
Clan Resources Acquires Additional Uranium
Properties in Wyoming and Arizona
(BUSINESS WIRE)
Oct. 25, 2004
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20041025005521&newsLang=en
VANCOUVER, British Columbia------Clan Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:CLU) ("Clan") announces that the Company's wholly owned subsidiary, Energy Metals Corp (US), has signed agreements with two separate vendors to acquire 56 uranium properties in the States of Wyoming and Arizona. Many of these properties have seen extensive drilling by previous operators. These acquisitions establish the Company's strategic position as a significant property holder in the State of Arizona as well as providing key property positions in all of the three principal uranium districts of the State of Wyoming. These include 2 state leases in the Powder River Basin area, 4 properties in the Shirley Basin area, 6 state leases and 7 properties in the Red Desert or Great Divide district. Coupled with the Company's earlier acquisitions in Utah and Oregon, on completion of this transaction Clan will have had established itself as one of the largest holders of uranium properties in the United States.
The following is a summary description of the properties.
Wyoming Uranium Properties
Red Desert-Great Divide District:
The Antelope uranium property is located in the Red Desert of Wyoming, approximately 18 miles south of Jeffrey City, Wyoming. According to information provided by the vendor, uranium mineralization occurs in several roll fronts within the Browns Park Formation. Extensive drilling by Newpark Resources and others in the 1970's defined a global resource as of October 1979 of 15mm pounds at a grade of .07% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable and relevant, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. The property was not drilled out at the time and little if any additional drilling has been done since. Preliminary evaluation suggests that parts of this resource may be amenable to ISL (in situ leaching) technology. This property was previously held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year when it was dropped at a time of prevailing low uranium prices. The Company is in the process of acquiring all historical exploration and technical report data.
The JAB uranium property is located 5 miles west of the Antelope property. According to historical summary reports, Union Carbide and others have drilled in excess of 300 holes on the property on 50 foot centers along a strike length of 2 miles. Based on this drilling the historic resource, as calculated by Union Carbide, is over 3 mm lbs grading 0.071% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. The summary information on the property suggests that the deposit may be at least partially suitable for ISL recovery. Negotiations are underway for the acquisition by the Company of the extensive drill, metallurgical, and recovery testing database. The property was last held by Yellowstone Fuels, a subsidiary of U.S. Energy, through the 2000 assessment year when it was dropped at a time of low uranium prices.
The 800 acre Cyclone property is located approximately 6 miles north of the JAB property. According to historical summary information at least 800 closely spaced holes have been drilled to intercept the Battle Spring Formation at depths between 300 and 800 feet. Approximately 432,000 feet of drilling has been completed. In 1978 Wold Resources reported a total resource of slightly over 2,000,000 pounds averaging 0.13% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable and relevant, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. Based on this summary information it is thought that the property may be amenable to ISL recovery. This property was held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year when it was dropped; again, during a period of low uranium price. As with the Antelope and Jab properties the Company is in the process of acquiring a complete package of the technical data on the property.
The Twin Buttes property is located 18 miles due east of the JAB property. The historical reports indicate that this 680 acre property has seen several hundred closely spaced drill holes drilled on it. The Western Sheep Mountain property, approximately 14 miles north of the Antelope property, encompasses 480 acres and is adjacent to past uranium producing properties. The 180 acre Battle Spring property and the 440 acre Rocky Draw property are also in the immediate area. The Western Sheep Mountain property was held through assessment year 2003 by U.S. Energy Corp. The Battle Spring, Twin Buttes, and Rocky Draw properties were all most recently held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year. The Battle Spring and the Rocky Draw have seen extensive close spaced drilling. As earlier mentioned with the above previously described properties, the Company is in the process to acquire data for these properties.
Shirley Basin District:
The 240 acre Midway and the 160 acre Moss Agate properties lie adjacent to past uranium producer properties within the heart of the Shirley Basin district. According to historical information close space drilling is present on both of these blocks.
The Laramie project is located about 20 miles southeast of the main production area of the Shirley Basin. This 500 acre project was held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year. Based on previous information, this property has seen over 100 drill holes drilled on it.
State of Wyoming Uranium Mining Leases:
In addition to the aforementioned mining properties the property package includes ten (10) separate State of Wyoming Uranium Mining Leases encompassing a total of 4760 acres. These Mining Leases have an initial term of 10 years, renewable thereafter with production. Data acquisition for these mining leases is underway.
Arizona Uranium Properties
On acquisition of 35 Arizona properties the Company believes that it will become one of the largest holders of uraniferous breccia pipes in the Arizona Strip district. Historically, these targets consist of pipe-shaped breccias generally less than 1000 feet in diameter extending to depths in excess of 2000 feet containing uraninite and associated sulfide and oxide minerals of copper, iron, zinc, lead, silver, nickel, cobalt and other metals. Due to their small surface expression and high grade deep roots, these pipes do not require a large land holding to control the deposits thereby greatly reducing holding costs. These pipes are often clustered with several pipes occurring within a few miles of one another offering certain economies of scale in terms of exploration, development and production. The historical information indicates that most, but not all, of the vended projects have at least one or two drill holes. They were held most recently by International Uranium Corp. who relinquished them between 1999 and 2002.
The claim package includes 11 separate properties on the South Rim consisting of approximately 1100 acres of unpatented mining claims. It also includes an additional 20 separate and distinct pipe targets on an area referred to as the North Rim covering a total of more than 3,350 acres. In addition to these unpatented mining claims, several State of Arizona properties are included in the package.
The Wate property is held by an Arizona State Mineral Exploration Permit issued to the vendor. Application has been made to the State of Arizona to transfer this permit along with the others described herein to the Company. According to historical summary reports the 640 acre Wate project has previously identified resources of 1.12 million pounds at an approximate grade of 0.8% U3O8. The estimate is considered to be reliable, but it does not use categories as defined in NI 43-101. RME Partners Ltd. had submitted a preliminary mining plan of operation to the State of Arizona in 1993. The Company has a copy of this plan and is in the process of acquiring the detailed drill logs.
The 4 1/2 property has been approved for an Arizona State Mineral Exploration Permit which will be issued to the vendor within the next 60 days. Immediately following receipt of the Permit, an application will be made to transfer this permit to the Company. This 320 acre project has 9 deep drill holes in and around a breccia pipe. According to the prior reports the best intercept by RME Partners Ltd. on the property is 48.5 feet of 1.411% uranium. Information is not available as to whether this intercept is representative. Nor is information available to indicate if this intercept reflects the mean, range, or distribution of sample values.
According to historical reports the 320 acre Rose pipe exploration permit hosts a mineralized breccia pipe. Energy Fuels has drilled one hole in excess of 1500 feet deep. The Company has the drill log and is currently reviewing it with intentions to develop plans for further offset drilling.
The 320 acre Anderson area permit is adjacent to the Anderson Ranch property and, based on historic information, is believed to contain a small portion of the Anderson Ranch deposit. The property has numerous drill holes. The Company is currently in the process of acquiring the relevant drill data.
All resource estimates quoted herein are based on prior data and reports obtained and prepared by previous operators and information provided by the vendor. The Company has not done the work necessary to verify the classification of the mineral resource estimates. The Company is not treating the mineral resource estimates as a National Instrument 43-101 defined resource verified by a qualified person. The historical estimates should not be relied upon. These properties will require considerable further evaluation which Clan's management and consultants intend to carry out in due course.
In acquiring 29 of these uranium properties, the Company exercised its right of first refusal under a July 19, 2004 property purchase agreement with William M. Sheriff ("Sheriff"), of Wylie, Texas. Mr. Sheriff, who currently beneficially owns 8.63% or more of the issued and outstanding capital of the Company, will receive 1,250,000 common shares of the Company as consideration for 29 of the uranium properties described in this release. The shares shall be issued in tranches of 750,000 shares by December 31, 2004, 250,000 shares by March 31, 2005 and 250,000 shares by January 31, 2006.
In a separate agreement with a different vendor, the Company has agreed to issue 500,000 common shares as consideration for 27 uranium properties. The shares will be issued in tranches of 300,000 shares by December 31, 2004, 100,000 shares by March 31, 2005 and 100,000 shares by January 31, 2006. The vendor is at arms length to the Company.
The property acquisitions are subject to regulatory acceptance.
Clan Resources Ltd is a Canadian listed company involved in the mineral resource sector. Clan has adopted a strategy which will see the company focus largely on the acquisition, exploration and development of uranium assets as part of its long-term strategy to take advantage of the growth in U.S. and world-wide electrical energy demand. This increasing demand is occurring at a time when mine supplies are dwindling and inventories are being depleted.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF CLAN RESOURCES LTD.
"signed" Per: James G. G. Watt President and Director
THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS PRESS RELEASE.
-------- china
China working to restart talks with North Korea, Powell says
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BY RENEE SCHOOF
Oct. 25, 2004
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/world/10012126.htm
BEIJING - (KRT) - China is actively engaged in efforts to get North Korea back to talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday after meeting China's top leaders in a one-day visit.
During the visit, Powell also urged China to keep an open mind about dialogue with Taiwan and announced that China and the United States would restart formal discussions on human rights.
China is reclusive North Korea's only significant ally and the host of talks among North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia on resolving the nuclear crisis. Powell visited Japan on Sunday and headed to South Korea later Monday to discuss ways of getting North Korea back to the negotiating table.
How to deal with North Korea has emerged as an issue in the U.S. presidential election, with Sen. John Kerry saying he'd hold direct as well as multilateral talks with North Korea, while President Bush says direct talks would undermine his six-party effort.
"China is a major provider of assistance to North Korea, both energy and other forms of assistance, and as a result of that I think China has considerable influence with North Korea," Powell said at a news conference. "What we agreed on today was the need for the six-party framework to continue, and for it to continue it has to meet."
Powell said he was confident that China was working to get the talks restarted. Senior Chinese and North Korean officials have met recently in Beijing and Pyongyang.
"I hope that as a result of our conversations today both of us will energize the other members of the six-party framework to resolve the outstanding issues that keep us from setting a date for a meeting," Powell said.
Powell met with President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. Senior State Department officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the Chinese leaders felt as strongly as the U.S. government did about the need to restart the talks quickly.
"Based on what we heard we expect China will be working to try to see that the six-party talks are resumed in the next few months," one of the officials said.
Li said China wanted the United States to "go further to adopt a flexible and practical attitude on the issue," the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
North Korea insisted last week that the United States drop its "hostile policy" and meet other conditions before it would go back to the talks. Powell rejected those demands Saturday, saying all of North Korea's concerns could be addressed in the multinational discussions.
U.S. intelligence experts think North Korea possibly had one or two nuclear weapons and recently could have reprocessed plutonium for several more.
Powell told reporters that he encouraged China's leaders to "keep an open mind" and seize every opportunity to talk to the independently ruled island of Taiwan. The two sides haven't talked in years.
In a speech Oct. 10, Taiwan's National Day, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian offered to hold talks with China, but also described his island as a sovereign country. China's leaders didn't find Chen's speech "to be that forthcoming," Powell said.
Although Taiwan has been governed separately since China's civil war ended in 1949, China sees it as part of its territory and has threatened to retake it by force if it formally declares independence. The United States also views Taiwan as part of China, but is obligated by law to help Taiwan defend itself.
Powell discussed China's record on human rights with China's top leaders and raised specific cases with the foreign minister.
Powell told reporters he asked Li to look into the case of New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, whom Chinese authorities detained last month and who faces unspecified charges. Powell said the U.S. government hoped Zhao could be released soon. Li replied that Zhao is a Chinese citizen and his case was being handled according to Chinese law.
Powell announced that the United States and China would restart formal discussions of human rights. He said China made progress in improving its protection of basic rights in 2002, but its rights violations increased last year. China broke off the talks earlier this year in anger over U.S. criticism.
Powell, who's visiting three countries in three days, took an unusual break for a little sightseeing. He visited the Song Dong An Plaza, a modern mall with such stores as Guess and a women's clothing store called Michael Klein Paris. He bought a small art set for one of his grandchildren and an inexpensive fountain pen.
Although the visit was supposed to be a chance to greet ordinary Chinese, plainclothes police surrounded him and kept most people away.
-------- depleted uranium
Killing for Christ : the Destructive Power of Faith
bellaciao.org
by WILLIAM A. COOK
25th October 2004
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3962
A pall hangs over this election, a shroud of darkness that oppresses the heart because its outcome guarantees no change, only the certainty of continued chaos if Bush should win and the unknown direction a Kerry victory might take, a direction that could continue the chaos America's mired in, a darkness, then, to appall. I read each day the crippling accounts of soldiers caught in a maelstrom of unseen death lurking on roof tops, in narrow alleys, behind cement walls and black windows, beneath tires littering the streets. I see pictures of burned out buses, sidewalks and curbs bathed with blood, faces twisted in pain, bits and pieces of flesh scattered about like fallen leaves, blown helter-skelter by the wind. Faces, I see suffering on so many faces, mothers weeping over their dying children, old women and men huddled in the debris left of their bulldozed home, medics carrying the lifeless body of a man whose hand rests beside his face held there by the torn shred of his sleeve, his arm gone, his body black with grime.
This is a world gone mad, a madness on all sides, the madness of greed that sees in oil the riches of Sultans and Kings, the madness of arrogant pseudo-philosophers who conjure beliefs of personal superiority that gives them license to conquer and enslave, the madness of ancient minds that dreamt of power and glory in covenants with gods, the madness of fanatics that fabricate fantasy out of indecipherable images lodged in pages of metaphors, the madness of little minds that grab onto faith as the golden ring that will bring them salvation, the madness of those born again to the child's world of impossible dreams forgoing in their new world the reality of this.
Today I read of depleted uranium, 1000 metric tons made from the deadly U238 isotope dropped on America's killing fields, that wafts on the wind like aerosol spray, a toxic death that sticks in human lungs, bringing a slow and painful death. I saw pictures of new born children bloated and bruised by scars, eyes missing, a nose of scar tissue and nostrils, no lips, the detritus of our advanced civilization scattered on hospital beds in Baghdad. I read of soldiers twisted in mind and spirit by no visible symptom except the phantom of our cursed nuclear waste that encircles them in their tank and haunts them the remainder of their lives. Our young return from this nightmare of devastation devastated themselves courtesy of our Commander in Chief. And I read today that 24,010 Americans have been evacuated with wounds and injuries from our "war" zones, that 37,000 innocent men, women, and children in Afghanistan and Iraq have died and more than 500,000 have suffered wounds. And I hear the silence, the deafening silence of indifference that our compassionate conservative leader offers to those who suffer the consequence of his acts, and feel with them the utter helplessness of their plight. And I wait for a word from Kerry that he, too, hears their pain, that he will stop the slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine ... and I wait in vain; there is no condemnation, no plan to end the conflicts, no recognition that states terrorize, no acceptance of the right of people to fight the oppressor, no confession of wrong waged against the innocent that had not the intention or the means to threaten America.
I have heard these men, both Bush and Kerry, attest to their deep rooted religious principles, the depth of their faith in the teachings of Jesus, comforting the citizenry that they are fit for the White House because they believe. But I see nothing of Jesus in their behavior, nothing of the compassion that attended his ministry, nothing of the inclusiveness of his teachings, nothing of the love he proffered as the binding source of peace throughout the world.
I look in vain for this Christ in the Christianity practiced by the right wing, fanatical sects that preach the Book of Revelation, reveling in the glory they perceive to be their reward if they destroy the enemies they identify as the enemies of God. I wonder where in this acclaimed Christian land of TV Evangelists and literalist ministers is there a man who acts as Christ would act? I see none. I see only a God forsaken Tele-Evangelist land of vitriol and bigotry where none could say I "love the Lord my God with my whole heart and mind and soul, and my neighbor as myself." They have buried the teachings of Jesus in the quagmire of a malevolent and malicious God of the Old Testament, a God that would order one Semitic tribe to exterminate another. We have not moved beyond the racist hatred that blotted the landscape 2500 years ago.
I would have thought the founding fathers' voices would have turned us against such barbarity, for they knew that such religions were anathema to the rights of the people and to the fledgling Democracy they desired to create. They expunged such organized zealots of religion from civil discourse precisely because they knew its inherent destructive nature. But, no, we have the airwaves turned into streams of venom that flow from the mouths of the heralded self-worshipers whose mantra is hatred for their fellow man, the likes of Pat Robertson, Pastor John Hagee, Franklin Graham, Hal Lindsey, and, now, even our blessed generals who defile the houses of worship not with coins but with cursed bigotry in the person of General Boykin.
I wonder how any person can stand against the tribes that follow these accursed men? What voice can reach the soul of men, if soul they still have after their life of crime, that has been lodged deep in their bloody wallets made fat with their racist hatred for their fellows whose only sin is their belief in a God different from their own? They mount their campaigns on fear, fear lodged in a word that defies definition because it slips and slides, nay, it slithers through meaning like molten lava over rock burying it beneath layers of hot and passionate rhetoric, a word without substance or sense, a word seething with diffidence, anxiety, suspicion, even horror, the word is faith. No word evokes more fear and mistrust; no word has caused more chaos and wanton destruction, as the Crusades and the Conquistadors, rampaging through Central America, attest; no word can put people in such a state of doubt that they acquiesce to prophets of doom century after century; no word has been and continues to be more destructive in the mouths of fanatics. That is the destructive power of blind faith!
Fanatics have a way, whether they be the Imams guiding Hamas or the robed ministers of Robertson's TV Club or the ultra right Zionists in Israel, with those who abdicate responsibility to think for themselves, those who hand over their minds and conscience to them as they thunder their prophetic curses in dramatic tirades, bathing their flocks in fear and loathing. These fanatics in America, who exist through the courtesy of a democratic secular system that tolerates their presence if not their message, fetter the minds of their laity with absolute truths generated out of myths, negating thereby the very semblance of democratic thought that is premised on individual responsibility; and the lambs they lead to slaughter do not know it. These fanatics defy the laws of the secular state by determining for their congregations what political party they must support, what candidates they must vote for, and what policies they must accept. And for this defiance they pay no taxes!
But it's worse than that. These same fanatics literally compel their congregants, on fear of eternal damnation in Hell's fire, to strap themselves in the swaddling clothes of death and bring that gift to all around them, to support terrorists in the occupied territories of Palestine, to proclaim an enemy identified in the Book of Revelation, an Arab enemy who worships in the Islamic faith. And for this incitement to murder they pay no taxes and suffer no incarceration. What else do we call it but killing for Christ, killing for Allah, killing for Yahweh!
This is our dilemma. We Americans pay the bill; they act in our name. How can we, who speak with the conviction of our conscience, hope to remove the hatred a Hagee or a Robertson breeds against God's creatures? The pictures I saw today of dead and dying children in Iraq, pictures too horrific to be put in main stream newspapers or shown on TV, pictures that cry to the human soul that the pain and suffering must stop also cry out to every true Christian that Jesus' teachings never allowed for such wanton slaughter. Yet these are the innocent victims of our fanatical dependence on the preaching of these men who sit safely ensconced on their splendid chairs amidst tall vases of flowers, smiling beatifically for the cameras.
How can we witness Bush's acceptance, indeed his encouragement, of Ariel Sharon's savagery and not condemn his acts as anathema to the teachings of the Christ he proclaims as his God? How can we suffer in silence the ferociousness of Sharon as he spreads his hatred and nihilism over the bloodied landscape of the unholy lands of ancient Palestine? Our indifference, our silence blessed the rape of Rafah in May, God's month of renewal; our indifference and our silence blessed a summer of slaughter in the season of God's increase; and today, our indifference and our silence acquiesce to a season of harvest that gathers in the dead and maimed in Gaza.
Where is the voice of America that should cry against these killing fields, these American supported killing fields, these murderous rampages that defile the love Jesus begged we have for our neighbor, a love equal to that we have for ourselves?
Where are the Priests, the Rabbis, the Imams, the quiet Buddha monks, all who claim to love humankind? Why does silence reign? Whose voice are we afraid of? Where are the voices of our leaders, where is Kerry, where is Dean, where is Edwards? Why do we hear words of condemnation when we witness the wanton slaughter in Beslan of children in school yet hear not a word when the IDF slaughters the children in the kindergarten in Jabaliya or our missiles miss their intended target and destroy the lives of innocent people? Does one mother's weeping reach our ear and another goes unheard? I would that every mother's cry would reach our ears as it rents the sky that we might know what Christ meant when he said, "Love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and mind and soul, and thy neighbor as thyself."
William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook10222004.html
-----
Bush's foreign policy harms U.S., world
Mike Pence Columbus, Indiana
Decatur Daily Democrat.
October 25, 2004
http://www.decaturdailydemocrat.com/articles/2004/10/25/news/opinion/editorial02.txt
President Bush's two main reasons for going to war in Iraq have proved bogus. Despite exhaustive searches for over a year, the U.S. has found no weapons of mass destruction, and even the administration admits they have no evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaida or 9/11 - although Vice President Cheney likes to hint otherwise, for obvious political reasons. So now the rationale has basically morphed into, "Well, Saddam was a brutal tyrant who abused and murdered his citizens. Besides, we really want to bring democracy to Iraq."
I would feel a lot better about both of those reasons if U.S. foreign policy had a more impressive track record in its dealings with Saddam and similar dictators.
In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Hussein in his war with Iran, despite his well-known abuse of his citizens' human rights. That's bad enough, but then we continued to support him even after he used chemical weapons ("almost daily," according to our own intelligence reports) against Iran, and President Reagan sent a special envoy - none other than current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - to Baghdad to shake hands with Hussein and reopen diplomatic relations.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. Department of Agriculture also provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans to Iraq for purchase of American commodities, allowing Hussein to put more of his resources into the war. What is even more reprehensible and unforgivable is that we still supported Hussein after his ruthless chemical attacks on the Iraqi Kurds in late 1987 and again in March of 1988 in the infamous murder of 5,000 villagers in Halabjah, the very attack that President Bush cited in justifying our invasion of Iraq.
Where did Iraq obtain these weapons of mass destruction? From the U.S., that's where. The Senate Banking Committee, in a 1994 investigation, found that in the 1980s, U.S. suppliers had shipped to Iraq, under Commerce Department license, dozens of chemical and biological agents, including anthrax, which the Pentagon later identified as key components of the Iraqi bio-warfare program. Why would we do such a thing? As usual, to further our own interests, not those of the people in the countries involved. Recently declassified documents show that U.S. priorities were "preserving access to oil and expanding our ability to project military power in the region" - the same goals of President Bush's current neo-con advisors, the guys who had designs on Iraq long before 9/11, according to several former Bush administration officials.
Many Bush supporters say that the current president had nothing to do with our policy in Iraq during the 1980s, and that's true. However, President Bush has appointed many of those involved in the debacle, like Rumsfeld, to positions of authority, so it's hard to believe that he disagreed with it. And what's worse is that President Bush has not learned anything from our experience of coddling brutal dictators. Right now we are following the same policy with the repressive regime in Azerbaijan. We give its government millions in military aid because it has oil and cooperates with us, allowing us to build bases and station troops. Meanwhile, its leaders oppress the people, conduct crooked elections, imprison and kill political opponents, and restrict religious freedom. The citizens can see that we support those who oppress them, so once again we breed hatred for American among the powerless in an oil-rich country. Sound familiar? Makes you wonder whether Azerbaijan will become tomorrow's Iraq.
The bottom line is that President Bush misled us into an unnecessary war that has cost the lives of more than 1,000 Americans and well over 13,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including children, who will die in the decades to come as a result of the radioactive depleted uranium we used in thousands of shells and bullets in both Gulf Wars.
You see, when the shells explode, the depleted uranium bursts into tiny particles, small enough to be inhaled. The highly toxic material contaminates the air and land of Iraq. Is it any wonder that cancer, miscarriage and deformity rates in Iraq skyrocketed after the first Gulf War? Or that thousands of U.S. soldiers suffer from the mysterious "Gulf War Syndrome?" The stuff remains radioactive for millennia. Innocent kids will die, and it's not a secret to the people of the Middle East.
I guess you could say the debacle hasn't done any good for our standing in the region or in the world. Neither has President Bush's program to invest billions in new nuclear weapons. It seems just a bit arrogant and hypocritical to spend that kind of money - which could more humanely be applied to insurance programs for 45 million uninsured Americans - to add to our massive stockpile of more than 10,000 nuclear warheads while we try to persuade Iran and North Korea to halt their nuclear programs.
It's all a result of a foreign policy that the decent citizens of this country would reject if they were consulted. Obviously those in power never consult us. Thank goodness we can vote them out.
Randy Hisner
Decatur
-------- europe
EU nuke offer could help Iran get arms - think-tank
Reuters
25 Oct 2004
By Louis Charbonneau
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25481486.htm
VIENNA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - The nuclear technology the European Union has offered Iran could help it make an atomic bomb, not prevent it, a Washington-based think-tank warned.
The EU's "Big Three" -- France, Britain and Germany -- have offered Iran reactor fuel and help developing light-water reactor (LWR) technology if Tehran stops uranium enrichment, a process which can be used to make nuclear arms.
"LWRs no longer should be considered to be safe for any nation that might divert the reactor's fresh lightly-enriched fuel or the plutonium-laden spent fuel to make bombs," Henry Sokolski, head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), wrote in the introduction to a 62-page report.
Sokolski, a former U.S. Pentagon official, said the report was prepared by "national authorities on nuclear chemistry, commercial nuclear power reactors, and nuclear weapons designs".
The United States believes Iran's nuclear programme is a front to make atomic weapons and has criticised the EU trio and Russia for engaging Iran on the issue. Instead it wants Tehran reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Iran says it needs nuclear reactors to generate electricity and strongly denies it is trying to develop an atomic arsenal.
HIDE AND SEEK
LWRs use low-enriched uranium. Although this cannot be used to fuel uranium-based weapons, which need very highly-enriched uranium, the used fuel contains bomb-grade plutonium, which can be separated from the other chemicals and used in weapons.
Sokolski said the EU was wrong to assume that such activities could not be hidden from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran hid its nuclear programme from the IAEA for nearly two decades.
"Nations can chemically separate out -- reprocess -- the plutonium contained in spent reactor fuel in relatively affordable facilities that can be quite small, as little as 65 square feet, and therefore be easily hidden," Sokolski said.
The IAEA was not immediately available for comment.
The EU offer was an attempt to avoid reporting Iran to the Security Council after a IAEA meeting at the end of November.
Tehran rejected the offer, saying it will not give up its enrichment programme, but officials from Iran and the EU's "Big Three" will still meet on Wednesday to discuss the offer.
Sokolski said under present IAEA inspection procedures, a country determined to divert fuel for weapons had ample opportunities to do so.
He said the IAEA does not conduct real-time camera monitoring of fresh or spent fuel storage sites, but reviews tapes every 90 days. The IAEA plans to extend the review interval to one year from 90 days were unwise, Sokolski added.
"The IAEA should tighten its rules and inspections (and) instead of extending the interval in between reviewing camera tapes of fresh and spent fuel storage sites, the IAEA should move toward real-time surveillance," he said.
-------- india / pakistan
Nuclear scientist remains in custody
BBC
25 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3950173.stm
Judges in Pakistan have ruled that a top scientist arrested last year for allegedly being involved in leaking nuclear technology should have his detention extended for a further three months.
The scientist, Mohammad Farooq, worked at the research laboratory headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Mr Khan is seen as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and has admitted selling the nation's nuclear secrets to other countries.
Mr Farooq is the only employee from the laboratory who remains in custody - more than 10 other scientists and officials originally held as part of the investigation have been released.
AQ Khan himself was pardoned earlier this year by the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf.
-------- iran
Iran Hints at Suspending Nuke Activities
October 25, 2004
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran indicated Monday it may suspend some unspecified nuclear activities after European powers offered a package of incentives in return for Tehran's agreement to permanently give up uranium enrichment.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, told state television the government was still considering its response to the offer last week by Britain, Germany and France that included civilian nuclear technology and a trade deal.
"We are trying to choose the best course of work," he said.
The United States contends Iran has a covert program to produce nuclear weapons and has been lobbying for the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions. The offer by the European powers was an attempt to head off a confrontation.
Iran has repeatedly said it will never abandon enrichment, a technology that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors as well as nuclear weapons. But on Monday Rowhani suggested some flexibility in the negotiations with the Europeans.
"Indefinite doesn't mean permanent," Rowhani said. "They (the Europeans) called for indefinite suspension as long as talks are under way. They say, for instance, that if negotiations are to last six or seven months, then Iran should not violate the suspension for that period."
He did not elaborate and it was not clear what Iran would suspend. The country is suspending the actual enrichment of uranium but is continuing with related activities, such as the building of nuclear centrifuges, despite the IAEA's request to stop it.
Iran insists its nuclear activities are peaceful and geared solely toward generating electric power.
Britain, Germany and France have warned most European countries would back Washington's call to refer Iran's nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council if Iran does not abandon all enrichment activities by Nov. 25, when the IAEA board of governors is due to meet in Vienna.
In London on Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the world would insist Iran complies with IAEA.
"I don't think dialogue has been exhausted on this," Blair said. "But we do need the Iranians to understand that the international community does not find it acceptable that they develop nuclear weapons."
Iran is due to resume talks with Europeans on Wednesday.
On Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi described the European proposal as "unbalanced," but said they had "chosen the correct path of dialogue."
Rowhani said Iran was cooperating with the IAEA to prove that America "lies."
"That we cooperate with the IAEA is not because of Europe, but to make clear to the world that the United States lied when it said Iran was covertly seeking nuclear weapons," Rowhani said. "When we cooperate with the agency, it becomes clear to the world that U.S. accusations have been baseless.
"No country can force any other country to stop an activity which is its legitimate right, even for one hour. Therefore suspension, of any extent and duration, will be a voluntary Iranian decision," said Rowhani, who is also secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said the Cabinet had approved a draft law banning the proliferation, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, and it will be sent to parliament.
--------
Iran Rejects Nuclear Plan as Imbalanced, Europe Is Told
October 25, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Oct. 24 - Iran on Sunday rejected a proposal by Britain, Germany and France to suspend its uranium enrichment program and urged those countries to offer a "more balanced" proposal.
During a meeting on Thursday in Vienna, the three European countries asked Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program in return for a guarantee to help Iran build a light-water power reactor and to provide a supply of reactor fuel.
"The European proposal is their preliminary proposition and is not definitive, but it is unbalanced," said Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Assefi. "We need to reach a balanced agreement, one that would eliminate Europeans' worries, if there are any, and one that would recognize our rights within the nonproliferation treaty.''
Mr. Assefi said Iran was negotiating with other countries over its nuclear program. "Each country has its role and power," he said. "We have not limited our negotiations to the three European countries, and we are and will be using diplomacy in the future with other countries."
But he said that negotiations with Britain, Germany and France would continue and that Iran would have its own counterproposal at its next meeting on Wednesday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has told Iran that it must halt its uranium enrichment program before Nov. 25, when the agency would make a determination whether it is cooperating.
The United States says Iran is hiding a nuclear weapons plan and has urged the I.A.E.A., the United Nations' monitoring agency, to send the case to the Security Council, where Iran could face sanctions.
Enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear bombs as well as fuel for nuclear reactors. Iran says it plans to make only fuel.
Mr. Assefi said that the Europeans had not asked for a permanent suspension of enrichment, but that if they did, it would be out of question.
Hossein Moussavian, one of Iran's top negotiators, told state-run television on Sunday that the Europeans' offer was positive but that Iran could not give up its enrichment program.
"The Islamic Republic cannot rely on the fuel the Europeans are offering, because they might withdraw it any time there are differences in relations," he said.
-------- iraq / inspections
Tonnes of Iraqi explosives missing: UN agency
CTV.ca News Staff
Oct. 25 2004
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1098706634615_57?hub=World
Enough explosives to fill almost 40 trucks are missing from a former Iraqi military facility, the UN nuclear agency confirmed Monday.
The explosives, which were used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons, are missing from a facility known as Al Qaqaa.
According to the New York Times, Al Qaqaa was supposed to be under American control, but had been picked over by looters as recently as Sunday.
The UN had monitored the facility for years, but the White House and Pentagon have acknowledged that the explosives went missing sometime after the American-led invasion of Iraq last year.
U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing, the report said. It's unclear if U.S. President George Bush was informed.
Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the Iraqis told the nuclear agency the materials had been stolen because of lack of security.
"We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted," she told The Associated Press.
Dangerous explosives
The explosives that have vanished are mainly HMX and RDX. They are worrisome because they can produce bombs strong enough to rip buildings apart and bring down planes.
Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1998 was destroyed by less than a pound of the same type of explosive.
UN nuclear experts are also worried about the fact that the explosives can also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. They can crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, acting as a catalyst for the nuclear explosion.
What is more troubling is the ease at which they can be transported. They can travel well because their stored energy is only released with a detonator, like a blasting cap. As well, their benign appearance makes it easy to pass them off as a harmless good.
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein acquired HMX and RDX in the late 1980s, in an effort to build a nuclear bomb.
IAEA
The UN nuclear agency was told on Oct. 10 that the explosives had gone missing, in a letter from the Iraqi ministry of Science and Technology.
The letter said 341.7 metric tonnes, or about 377 American tonnes, of HMX, RDX and PETN had gone missing.
On Oct. 15, the IAEA informed the multinational forces through the U.S. government, telling them to inform the international coalition in Iraq of the missing explosives.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the IAEA, will report the disappearance of the conventional explosives to the UN Security Council later Monday, Fleming said.
"Mr. ElBaradei wanted to give them some time to recover the explosives before reporting this loss to the Security Council, but since it's now out, ElBaradei plans to inform the Security Council today" in a letter to the council president, she said.
With just over a week left before American voters go to the polls, the news of the missing explosives could help boost the campaign led by Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
His camp is calling on the Bush adminstration to answer for "what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq."
"How did they fail to secure ... tons of known, deadly explosives despite clear warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency to do so?" senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart said in a statement.
--------
Pentagon says its unclear if explosives disappeared after Iraq site fell under US control
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041025185137.wtv8ut7t.html
A Pentagon spokesman said Monday it was unclear whether 380 tons of high explosives reported missing from a weapons facility in Iraq disappeared before or after it fell under control of US forces.
The Iraqi government this month reported the disappearance of 380 tons of HMX and RDX explosives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had monitored the explosives before the war because they could be used as a trigger for nuclear devices.
"This is a first report. We do not know when -- if those weapons did exist at that facility -- they were last seen, and under whose control they were last in," Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said.
"It's very possible -- certainly it's plausible -- that it was the Saddam Hussein regime that last had control of these things," he told AFP.
DiRita said US forces visited the Al-Qaqaa site several times after the US invasion of Iraq as part of a US-led search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related material.
But he said it is unclear whether the missing explosives were at the site during those visits.
"The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility. Some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals. They did find stuff there. They probably secured it or destroyed it," he said.
DiRita said Iraq was swimming in weapons and ammunition after the war. More than 500 weapons sites were identified after the war, and some 200,000 tons of ammunition have been destroyed by US forces.
"I'm told they (US forces) made several visits to that facility looking for WMD related (material), and obviously we need to learn more about exactly what it is they saw there," he said.
"There have been these reports that there is evidence this place has been looted. But I think that's something to be very careful about. That place was not in anybody's control but Saddam Hussein's from the beginning of the war until sometime in April," he said.
"It's just really difficult to say with any kind of certainty what happened to those weapons, and who were the last people who had control of them. But I think it's at least arguable that the last person who had control of them was the Saddam Hussein regime," he said.
-----
White House plays down loss of explosives in Iraq
Oct 25, 2004
GREELEY, Colorado (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041025193205.33jf3vao.html
The White House on Monday played down the loss of hundreds of tons of high explosives in Iraq saying that President George W. Bush knew of the disappearance but emphasising there was no nuclear risk.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush had been kept informed of the disappearance from an unguarded military installation for the past 10 days.
The explosives went missing "because of some looting that went on in Iraq toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or during and toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom," McClellan said.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors were informed because the munitions were considered dual-use materials and subject to monitoring, McClellan said.
"The first priority, from our standpoint, was to make sure that this wasn't a nuclear proliferation risk, which it is not," McClellan told reporters.
"These are conventional high explosives that we are talking about. And the president wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this."
The US Defense Department "directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi Survey Group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing," McClellan added.
The Iraqi interim government informed the IAEA on October 10 that some 350 tons of high explosives went missing from an ammunition dump in Al Qaqaa, south of Baghdad, said McClellan, traveling on Bush's re-election campaign.
IAEA officials in turn informed the US mission in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, on October 15.
National security councilor Condoleezza Rice was informed on October 15, and she informed Bush, the spokesman added.
The IAEA announced news of the missing material on Monday, confirming a report in the New York Times.
The Iraqi ministry of science and technology informed the IAEA of the disappearance of about 350 tons of mainly HMX and RDX explosive materiel, agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told AFP.
"It can be used in a nuclear explosion device, for the explosion," she said.
"That's why it was under IAEA verification and monitoring" before the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, she added.
The New York Times said the materiel "could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings."
-------- japan
Earthquakes, Typhoons Raise Nuclear Fears
October 25, 2004
TOKYO, Japan, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-25-02.asp
At least 25 people have lost their lives and more than 2,100 others have been injured in a string of powerful earthquakes that have rocked the northern coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, starting Saturday evening. Aftershocks are continuing this morning and the death toll continues to rise.
Felt across Niigata prefecture, the quakes have collapsed homes, opened large cracks in roads, and caused a bullet train to derail for the first time in its history, the Kyodo news agency said. No passengers were injured, but it could take weeks before the line is repaired. About 300,000 homes have been left without electricity.
The shaking has been felt as far away as Tokyo, 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the southeast.
Hundreds of aftershocks have come at short intervals since the initial quake, several jolts measuring above 6.0 in magnitude.
Across Niigata buildings have collapsed. (Photo courtesy IFRC) About 61,000 residents were evacuated throughout the rural prefecture, the prefectural government said. Many people spent the night outside, huddling around fires, others took refuge in emergency shelters.
The repeated quakes have broken water and sewage lines, uprooted trees and damaged bridges. Landslides across roads have cut off many communities. People are wandering the muddy roads with heavy bundles of their possessions seeking shelter.
Among the dead and injured are many children and elderly. An elderly Ojiya hospital patient died after the tremors dislodged an artificial respirator, and a second-floor supermarket crowded with customers collapsed. There is fear that further strong tremors could strike over the next few days.
Nagaoka Red Cross Hospital in Niigata treated 312 injured people and Tokyo, Saitama, Toyama, Niigata, Tochigi and Gunma chapters as well as the Japanese Red Cross medical centre at national headquarters deployed Red Cross hospital disaster relief teams.
Disaster Management Minister Yoshitaka Murata visited the stricken area on Sunday, and government relief workers have handed out bottled water and blankets.
This latest disaster comes hard on the heels of the country's deadliest typhoon in 25 years. Typhoon Tokage swept the archipelago on Wednesday, leaving at least 80 people dead, with 12 people still missing and over 340 injured.
Officials said the damage caused by the quakes was made worse because heavy rain from the typhoon loosened sections of the earth, which slid downhill when the temblors struck.
And on September 5, two earthquakes above a magnitude of 7.2 struck Honshu's southern coast. They are the sixth and seventh most powerful earthquakes anywhere in the world this year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Japan lies over four tectonic plates and is in one of the most earthquake active regions of the world.
Less than a week before that set of earthquakes, Typhoon Chaba sped across the archipelago causing 13 deaths, flooding homes, toppling trees and causing transport havoc.
In fact, 10 typhoons have hit the Japanese islands this summer and autumn, with devastating effects.
Amidst this destruction, Satomi Oba of the anti-nuclear advocacy group Plutonium Action Hiroshima fears far worse. There are seven nuclear reactors within 10 kilometers of the epicenter of the current earthquakes, Oba points out.
The most concerned nuclear power plant is Hamaoka, a boiling water reactor operated by the Chubu Electric Power Company, that Oba is trying to remind the government, is located almost on the border of the four moving plates. "Geologists warn that the area is the most likely to be hit by a tremendous earthquake in 30 years or so," says Oba.
Kashiwazaki nuclear power plant is close to the center of the ongoing earthquakes. (Photo courtesy Nuclear Safety Network) There are 52 nuclear reactors in Japan, which generate a little over 30 percent of its electricity. They are located in an area the size of California, many within 150 km of each other and almost all built along the coast where seawater is available to cool them.
In a special to the "Japan Times" in May, Leuren Moret wrote that many of Japan's reactors have been "negligently sited on active faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the Pacific coast, where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the Richter scale occur frequently."
Major earthquakes occur in Japan less than every 10 years. "There is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan - the third-ranked country in the world for nuclear reactors," Moret wrote.
Oba warns that the danger exists not just in the area of the current earthquake, but in many other places as well. "It is unthinkable," he writes, that on October 22 the Atomic Energy Commission decided continuing the national nuclear policy plan, which recommends reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rather than burying it."
The Rokkasho Nuclear Reprocessing Plant in Aomori Prefecture, located on the coast of the Pacific, is scheduled to start uranium testing shortly, and this plan frightens the anti-nuclear group. "Not far from the coast line of Rokkashomura, there is a huge active fault on the seabed that might cause a gigantic earthquake,"said Oba. "The Japanese citizens' groups are trying to stop the dangerous plan for reprocessing."
-------- korea
Powell Stresses 'Urgency' of Talks With North Korea
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58476-2004Oct24.html
TOYKO, Oct. 24 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in Asia to prod North Korea to return to talks on ending its nuclear programs, said that although there is still time to resolve the impasse, "there is a sense of urgency."
In a three-day swing through East Asian capitals, Powell is seeking to persuade U.S. allies to put additional pressure on North Korea. Japan's foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, told reporters after meeting with Powell that Japan would use a planned dialogue with North Korea next month on the subject of abducted citizens to urge its return to the bargaining table.
Even more critical to the effort is China, North Korea's main benefactor. Powell arrived in Beijing on Sunday evening to prepare for meetings with Chinese officials Monday.
Powell's deputy, Richard L. Armitage, bluntly told a Chinese official in Washington recently that China needed to view itself not as a mediator but as a participant in the effort against North Korea, according to an official familiar with the conversation.
In April, Vice President Cheney visited the region and declared that "time is not necessarily on our side" in dealing with the North Korean threat. He asserted that the Pyongyang government, given its record, could peddle nuclear technology to terrorist groups. Moreover, he warned that "we [may] have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia."
Asked Sunday about Cheney's statement, Powell said: "We are not out of time. . . . We are all pressing hard, there is a sense of urgency. But President Bush has made it clear that he intends to use diplomacy and political activity, working with our friends and neighbors in a multilateral way, to solve this problem."
Yet, in an interview later with Japanese journalists, Powell harshly criticized North Korea, calling it a "terrorist state" for abducting Japanese citizens and saying it "shows a disrespect for human rights."
Machimura said Japan was "very much concerned with reports and views that the North Koreans have possibly established a nuclear weapons program." But he rejected Cheney's notion of a nuclear arms race, saying Japan's commitment to not possessing nuclear weapons would not change, because the country is protected by a U.S.-Japan mutual security treaty. He added that "we have had some concrete discussions" about ballistic missile defense.
North Korea has refused to return to talks, last scheduled for September. Many analysts say they believe the Pyongyang government is waiting for the results of the U.S. presidential election. But North Korea has also cited what it calls the Bush administration's "hostile policy," pointing to a naval exercise this week off the coast of Japan and Bush's signing of a bill targeting North Korean human rights.
In the naval exercise, ships from the United States, Japan and other countries will practice halting a vessel as if it contained chemical weapons. The bill approved by Bush last week establishes a special envoy for North Korean human rights and calls on the administration to make human rights an issue in talks with the Pyongyang government.
North Korea has complained bitterly about both issues, saying U.S. actions have forced it to bolster its "nuclear deterrent."
Powell insisted that "neither of these actions are hostile actions."
--------
N. Korea Calls U.S. Exercises 'War Action'
October 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Nuclear.html?pagewanted=all
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Monday that prospects for talks on its nuclear weapons program are getting dimmer every day and it condemned U.S.-led naval exercises in Japanese waters as an ``ultimate war action.''
The comments, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, came only hours after Secretary of State Colin Powell blamed the communist country for the delay in holding new six-nation talks on its nuclear program.
KCNA said U.S. military maneuvers around the Korean peninsula show that Washington ``does not stand for a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue.''
Currently on a trip to Asia, Powell reiterated that Washington seeks a diplomatic end to the dispute with Pyongyang.
``The DPRK is compelled to serve a serious warning to the U.S., regarding the exercise as a move to implement the U.S. pre-emptive interception strategy aimed to isolate and stifle the DPRK internationally and an ultimate war action,'' KCNA said. DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The news agency was referring to eight-nation naval exercises in Japanese waters scheduled to begin this week.
Besides the United States and Japan, seven other countries will take part in the naval exercise, with 14 more serving as observers. The interdiction drill is part of an anti-proliferation security initiative in which allied forces can intercept ships or aircraft believed to be carrying missiles or equipment for unconventional weapons.
The initiative was begun last year primarily to deter North Korea's trade in missile and nuclear technology and components.
In Beijing, Powell urged North Korea to return to talks aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions. He said Beijing and Washington agree on the need to hold another round as soon as possible.
``All the parties are ready. It's the DPRK that has been showing reluctance to have the next round,'' Powell said at a news conference. ``But it's the only way forward.''
Powell spoke after meeting President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders.
North Korea said dialogue can never go together with ``war exercises.''
``The DPRK has warned more than once that naval blockade exercises targeted against it would not be favorable for the atmosphere of dialogue,'' KCNA said. ``These moves only make the prospect of the negotiations with it dimmer as the days go by.''
Participants in the six-nation talks -- which also include Japan, South Korea and Russia -- missed a September deadline for holding another round after North Korea refused to take part.
--------
Powell declares North Korea a 'terrorist state'
USA Today
Barbara Slavin
Oct. 25, 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1025powell25.html
BEIJING - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on a mission to restart talks on North Korea's nuclear program, on Sunday branded North Korea a "terrorist state" that shows "no respect whatsoever for human rights."
Powell arrived in China from Tokyo, where he told the news media that naval maneuvers beginning today off the Japanese coast and a new U.S. law intended to promote North Korean human rights were not meant as "hostile acts" against North Korea. Regarding talks to end the dispute over North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Powell said, "We are not out of time."
But in a meeting later with Japanese reporters, Powell used his harshest language to date to describe North Korea, a communist nation that may have as many as eight nuclear weapons.
Asked about North Korea's abduction of more than a dozen Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to serve as language teachers, Powell said, "A state did this, not terrorists. . . . A terrorist state did this." Also, noting that scores of North Koreans have fled their country in recent years, Powell said the refugees were trying to get away from poverty and a government that has "no respect whatsoever for human rights."
The Bush administration has urged North Korea to give up its nuclear program in exchange for aid from its neighbors and an eventual U.S. pledge not to attack the country. North Korea has attended three rounds of talks about its nuclear program with the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, but it is refusing to participate in a fourth round until after U.S. elections.
The crisis began in October 2002, when the North Koreans admitted having a secret program to enrich uranium, a fuel for bombs. The United States cut off fuel oil shipments provided under a 1994 agreement that was supposed to freeze the North Korean nuclear program.
North Korea responded by restarting a nuclear complex that yields plutonium, a bombmaking material.
In Beijing, Powell hopes to learn from the Chinese, who provide most of North Korea's food and fuel, North Korea's bottom line in the nuclear negotiations.
-------- terrorism
Not all weapons are created equal
centredaily.com
Oct. 25, 2004
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/10000117.htm
The possibility of another mass-destruction attack against the continental United States or on the territory of our major allies is the nightmare scenario that haunts U.S. policy-makers. It drove the Bush administration into Iraq despite the unfinished business lingering in Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders. Failure on the part of postwar inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq became a lightning rod for critics of the U.S. military intervention and postwar occupation.
Government officials and military experts talk publicly about "weapons of mass destruction" as if nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological weapons are equally dangerous or destabilizing. In private, they know better. What drives the sum of their fears is the possibility of a terrorist strike using nuclear weapons. The first reason is, in a word, "Russia," or Russian nukes; the second reason is "Khan," named for a prominent Pakistani scientist who became the father of that country's nuclear weapons program.
In Russia, the 1990s were marked by political instability and military uncertainty. Control over the vast nuclear arsenal of the Russian Federation and its nuclear storage sites rested upon the shoulders of a deteriorating military establishment and partly demobilized security services from the communist era.
The second reason for concern about a possible terrorist nuclear attack is that subversive networks of public officials and private entrepreneurs can serve as the midwives or expediters for the transfer of nuclear-related technologies and expertise.
A case in point is that of the Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, who used his influence and high position in the Pakistani nuclear scientific establishment to expedite the transfer of nuclear information and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Whether the chain of custody for information and technology in this shadow network also passed through terrorist hands is undocumented. But the states of concern in this case are so commingled with some terrorist groups that the worst possibilities cannot be ruled out.
On a global basis, acknowledged government seizures of illegal nuclear materials have not been large amounts of contraband leaking across borders. This gold standard for nuclear protection might suffice if we were worried about, say, enough fissile material to equip a small army or navy with tactical nukes. But terrorists need less plutonium or uranium if they can acquire the engineering skills and additional accouterments necessary to fabricate a crude, but effective, nuclear weapon not described here but, unfortunately, easily obtained via the Internet.
If Chechen separatists could acquire some fissile material from Russian leakage, they could pass it along to their al-Qaida fraternal freedom fighters. And it would not take a great deal of ingenuity for the components of a nuclear device to find their way through U.S. customs and across American borders into our major metropolitan areas. Even now, it is not inconceivable that some partly assembled weapons are sitting in garages or underground storage areas, awaiting the arrival of additional parts and fissile material.
Finally, if nobody else will provide the crown jewels of nuclear apocalypse to terrorist fanatics, the Iranians, once they become a nuclear power, certainly will. A nuclear-capable Iran realizes the Bush administration fears mistakenly attributed to Iraq: We are the Iranian ayatollahs' "great Satan" and their designated ground zero. And Iran's collaboration with al-Qaida is documented beyond doubt. Stephen J. Cimbala is a distinguished professor of political science at Penn State's Delaware County campus. He is the author of 27 books on international politics, the state of the American military and nuclear arms. The opinion of the columnist does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the university.
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Franz J. T. Lee: World terrorism and fascism ... QUO VADIS?
October 25, 2004
Franz J. T. Lee,
lundi, cmaq.net
http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=18630 vheadline.com http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=23214
University of Los Andes (ULA) professor Franz J. T. Lee writes:
What really is World Terrorism? Who are the current Global Fascists?
Let the historic, historical "facts" speak for themselves! We're not studying them with formal logic ... that is, because they are "true" or "false," "right" or "wrong," because we "agree" or "disagree" with them ... but simply and objectively because they reflect neither the one nor the other, since they transcend contemporary "full spectrum dominance," lies, ideology, "double-think," "newspeak," "wars of ideas," disinformation campaigns and info-war ... in nuance, they concern the abominable consequences of current global terrorism and fascism...
They indicate a specific, horrendous Quo Vadis? for Humanity, for Life on this planet.
The true terrorists and real fascists go scot free; on TV, clad in expensive white collars and silk ties, they give global "democratic and civilized" speeches when, in reality, they are the worst war criminals the world has ever experienced.
Physical and mental terrorism are not new "discoveries" of our age; they are simply millennia-old, inherent realities of our world system of labor and capital, that exploits, dominates, discriminates, militarizes and alienates whole continents, whole nations.
Hence, within this context, practically and theoretically, the immediate tasks of any world revolution concern the detonation of all the myths around world "terrorism" and "fascism," must logically be aimed at the unraveling of the age-old mental holocaust that simply erased the very autochthonous ideas, indigenous thoughts and natural existence of millions and millions of slaves, serfs, peasants, workers and intellectuals, especially of the so-called "Third World" ... in brief, these revolutionary endeavors concern the eradication of all global, objective, subjective and "transjective" master-slave relations.
The above, in general, concerns the myths of the "Happy End," of the "best democracy, constitution or laws" in the universe, of the "civilized nature" of Europeans and Americans, of the inexorable "forward" march towards "development." "progress," of "humanity," "human rights," freedom, equality, fraternity, patriotism, justice, peace, nirvana, heaven, etc.
In the last analysis, the historic truth is, that across the last millennia, billions of chattel and wage slaves never ever enjoyed any one of them. Current Afghanistan and Iraq reveal the fascist, terrorist reality of the world capitalist system across the ages. In reality, if things develop further along their current course, like anything else in the "homeland," in the "fatherland," then, as a result of competition, monopoly, concentration, corporatism, especially of new world wars, we all will find ourselves on the Genocidal Highway, on the Via Crucis towards Galactic Golgotha!
If we really and truly, scientifically and philosophically, want to know anything about the current Quo Vadis? of Humanity, then, we just need to activate our historic class consciousness, to study very carefully our own global, slave-holding, feudalist and capitalist labor history, across the last millennia, that is, we just need to become conscious of its perverse, fascist essence and its terrorist, violent social existence.
Hence, Venezuela and Latin America, only in this way it will become as clear as broad daylight what is happening now ... and what will soon occur on planet Earth. Also, what we could expect from Washington in the near future.
In reality, within the world alienated labor process in "democracy," ever since the Conquest, the French and American Revolutions and even long before, conspiracy, sabotage, murder, corruption, bureaucracy, theft, fraud, lies, character assassination, all happened so many times already; nowadays, in capitalism in agony, they have just become more open, bare-faced, blatant and brutal, more contradictory and violent ... that is, more Orwellian, more fascist and terrorist.
Of course, there are some "nice" things to enjoy in capitalism, especially for consumer bees ... but these are rather the exceptions that prove the golden rule of global, merciless exploitation of billions of toiling "drones."
Any serious study of real, true political history could verify the above very easily.
All serious social revolutionary attempts to change this state of affairs were heinously nipped in the bud -- see Algeria, Vietnam, Chile, Guinea-Bissau, Yugoslavia, etc. Currently, among a few others, mainly Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, are bravely resisting fascist world terror with all their human might.
Concerning the above, let us just refresh our historic memory a little.
We do not need much scientific evidence, to prove that the ancient slave-owning ruling classes of the Mediterranean region, from Egypt to Hellas, were socially terrorizing their "speaking-tools" and "barbarians." Also we know about the ancient slave and colonial revolts, and how brutally they were suppressed, "pacified."
We need not repeat the ruling class horror and terror meted out by Nero, Caligula, the arrogant nobility and ignorant clergy against the women, heretics, serfs and "scientists"; the Inquisition, the burning at the stake, exorcism by the Dominican Order, the Thousand Years' War, the Crusades against Bin Laden's forefathers, etc.; that was the Quo vadis?, the "future" of Pericles' "Golden Age"!
Furthermore, we should not forget Robespierre, Danton, Maria Antoinette, the guillotine, the "Reign of Terror," to verify how this bourgeois world order was born. It is not necessary to explain how Europe treated the "Blackamoors," the Jews, the African slaves, the pagans, natives, savages, indigenas of the colonial world.
According to Marx, in his major work "Capital," referring to the original accumulation of capital, this is how capitalism, its fascist, terrorist essence, was born: "dripping from head to foot, in blood and dirt." Togliatti said it: "It concerns the system." This was the "future," the Quo vadis? of the absolutist, feudalist "Dark Ages"!
Finally, we should just recollect all the intra-imperialist wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the horror and terror that resulted ... the millions who had to believe in "civilization" and "christianity," in "real socialism," "national socialism," "fascism," in liberal and monopoly capitalism. This was the "future," the Quo vadis? of the "French Revolution," the "American Revolution" and the "Industrial Revolution!"
What we explained above is the trans-historic algebra of the "American Dream," of the "Happy End," of the "Great Society," of the "Classless Society," of "Democracy," of "Globalization," of "World Peace."
In reality, it is the historic, macabre reflection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of "gulags" and "concentration camps," of Workuta and Auschwitz, of the genocide in Vietnam and Indonesia; more recently, of Afghanistan and Iraq; of AIDS, of HAARP, of the mother of all bombs of depleted uranium, of arsenals of weapons of mass destruction.
All these already now launch the future Quo Vadis? of either Bush or Kerry, of the identical imperialist twins of Corporate America.
Now, we have a slight notion what fascism and terrorism are all about, but Venezuela and Latin America, "What is To Be Done?" (Lenin). Such a question can only occur to someone who is doing nothing.
The arch-imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes, sitting somewhere on the Matopo Hills, near current Harare, before his death, exclaimed: "So much to do, so little done ... if I could, I would annex the planets!"
Well, especially here in Venezuela over the last five years, we have reached out for the stars and planets ... not only did we, Venezuelans, discover "Jayś," a small planet revolving at the outskirts of our solar system, beyond Pluto, between April 11 and 13, 2002 ... we have also defeated Yankee fascism and terrorism, aided by local lackeys, within 47 hours.
Hence, we have to continue deepening our revolution, to globalize it, to make it a permanent world revolution, to carry forward the revolution in the revolution, against global fascism.
Franz John Tennyson Lee, Ph. D (University of Frankfurt), Author, Professor Titular & Chairholder of Philosophy and Political Science, University of The Andes, Merida (Venezuela) -- http://www.franzjutta.com ; http://www.franz-lee.org ; http://www.geocities.com/juttafranz/publications00001.html
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Nuclear plant security attacked And report echoes Utah concerns about risks from N-wastes
October 25, 2004
Deseret Morning News
By Donna Kemp Spangler and Jerry D. Spangler
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595100697,00.html
WASHINGTON - The watchdog group Public Citizen is taking the Bush administration to task over inadequate security at the nation's nuclear power plants, including the potential catastrophe from a terrorist attack on spent nuclear fuel - the same waste that some utilities want to store in above-ground casks on Goshute tribal lands in Tooele County.
The report notes that "lightly protected spent-fuel pools are situated outside containment areas" and are subject to terrorist attack. The same holds true for the above-ground casks at the nation's nuclear power plants and potentially those that would be stored in Tooele County far outside any containment area.
Those same concerns have been raised by Utah officials for years.
"Instead of getting straight answers, we get platitudes and feel-good letters," said Dianne Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. "We are being told there's no problem, that it's safe. But we don't believe that is the case."
Utah officials have argued before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Atomic Safety Licensing Board that spent fuel rods in above-ground casks are an inviting target for terrorist attacks, as is the shipment of the waste from nuclear power plants scattered around the nation.
The nuclear industry insists it has beefed up security at nuclear power plants to the tune of $1 billion since 2001. The number of security officers at 64 plants has risen by 60 percent to 8,000, and "physical improvements at sites include additional protection against vehicle bombs as well as additional protective measures against various types of terrorist threats," according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
"Those claims have been discredited time and again," added institute spokesman Mitch Singer of the Public Citizen study.
But the Public Citizen report observed that security improvements are a closely guarded secret, and the public has no way of knowing if the improvements are sufficient.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has thrown a shroud of secrecy over security deliberations," the report states.
The NRC has assured state officials that security measures in place to protect nuclear power plants would be sufficient to protect nuclear-waste casks in Utah.
The Public Citizen report highlights the potential terrorist threats at nuclear power plants, not the risk of storing the waste in the Utah desert.
But it also highlights the risks of transporting wastes, criticizing the administration's support for a plan to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, Nev. If enacted, it "would result in tens of thousands of rail and truck shipments of highly radioactive spent fuel - all potential terrorist targets - from reactors to a massive nuclear waste site."
Singer responded that it has been recognized since the 1950s that it is safer to have "one place buried 1,000 feet deep that borders on a military installation" for the nation's stockpile of nuclear waste. "It would be the Fort Knox of nuclear waste storage."
The Nuclear Energy Institute has not taken a position on the proposal to store waste in Utah.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of mostly Eastern nuclear power utilities, tired of waiting for the Yucca Mountain facility that is still years away, are awaiting final license approval for a temporary storage site on Goshute lands in Skull Valley.
The plan calls for up to 40,000 tons of highly radioactive waste to be stored in rows of casks on the valley floor about 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The waste could remain above ground for 20 years with the possibility of another 20-year lease after that.
The state has opposed the storage of spent nuclear fuel in Utah but has so far failed in its arguments to block PFS from obtaining the federal license for a temporary waste facility. The license application is still pending, and a ruling on a separate state claim is expected in January.
The state has also failed to stop the project through other avenues of litigation and legislation.
PFS project manager Scott Northard did not return calls.
The Public Citizen report cites one study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that estimated the loss of tens of thousands of lives within 500 miles, and a Brookhaven National Laboratory report that predicted a contamination of 188 square miles in the event of burning radioactive wastes.
The report also criticizes the Bush administration for its cozy relationship with the nuclear industry, pointing out that Bush and the Republican National Committee have received $19.9 million in campaign contributions from the industry since 2000.
Another study in 2002 by a Washington, D.C., newspaper found the industry spent $51.2 million lobbying Congress. Another $149 million was spent lobbying the White House and executive branch agencies, the study reported.
The result, says Public Citizen, is that "three years after 9/11, Congress still has not enacted any legislation to reduce the terrorist threat at nuclear power plants, and the Bush appointees at the NRC have resisted using their regulatory powers to respond to the terrorism threat.
"For the administration and their close friends in the nuclear industry, the concern that increased security expenses could drive up the cost of nuclear power - and threaten industry profits - apparently trumps national security," it adds.
Not so, the industry responds.
"U.S. nuclear power plants are widely acknowledged by independent experts as the most secure facilities in the nation's industrial infrastructure," according to a Nuclear Energy Institute statement.
And the casks used to store the waste are concrete and rebar that have been tested "time and again" to withstand explosives and airplane crashes.
"Given the tight security around nuclear power plants and the technology of the safety measures, terrorists are going to go after an easier target," Singer said.
The Public Citizen report is available at www.homelandunsecured.org.
E-mail: donna@desnews.com; spang@desnews.com
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bipartisan push is on for an end to N-funds
No deterrent: They say the U.S. arsenal hasn't stopped terrorist efforts
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Christopher Smith
10/25/2004
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2432232
Underground nuclear tests aren't foolproof: A detonation at the Nevada Test Site in 1970 shot radioactive debris 10,000 feet into the air. (Nevada Division of Environmental Protection file photo)
WASHINGTON - With U.S. forces entrenched in an overseas war that is increasingly short on money, a bipartisan group in Congress wants to quit spending billions of dollars annually to maintain and expand America's nuclear weapons arsenal.
Their argument: The thousands of nuclear missiles holstered by the United States haven't deterred terrorists and haven't stopped rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea from developing their own nuclear programs.
Because of the conflicting presence in the American West of federal weapons laboratories and "downwinder" citizens who harbor a Cold War distrust of the long-term health impacts from nuclear testing, there is a heightened interest in the region on America's future strategic arms policy.
It also is a case where conservative Western Republicans increasingly find themselves at odds with party colleagues.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House subcommittee that funds defense programs, is leading the fight to shrink the program that keeps U.S. nuclear weapons at the ready and put an end to studies on new "mini-nukes" and bunker-buster bombs.
"What is the point of threatening a terrorist with an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon?" Hobson asked in an August speech to the National Academies of Science that still is resonating in nuclear policy circles.
"Part of the argument is to hold every target at risk so that there is no safe haven for a terrorist," he said. "But as we have seen over the past three years, holding terrorist targets at risk has little to do with being able to kill them once they have been found."
With the support of Utah's three congressmen last month, Hobson easily pushed through a spending bill that provided no money for studying low-yield battlefield nukes and the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" bunker-buster warhead. It also zeroed out funding a new plutonium "pit" facility to make warhead triggers and eliminated money for enhancing readiness at the Nevada Test Site, while boosting funding for weapons dismantlement and security in the weapons complex.
Republican members of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that also funds the nuclear weapons program see things differently. Behind the chairmanship of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., they have consistently sided with Bush administration requests to boost spending on maintaining the stockpile and studying new variations of nuclear weapons.
"Hobson's comments in today's world are very reasonable, but as I try to look into the future I can foresee a set of circumstances where there is a nation-state threat by some dictator who has a very deep bunker from which he is operating," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, a subcommittee member.
"I'd like to say to him, 'Your bunker does not give you sanctuary. We've never taken a first strike posture but if you do [fire first], it's not just going to be heavy casualties above ground, we're going to get you too,' " Bennett said.
There is disagreement among scientists whether a burrowing warhead could go deep enough before exploding, and whether tens of thousands of tons of airborne radioactive debris from a subsurface detonation would spread harm far beyond the battlefield. Bennett says those questions merit research and, armed with multiple assurances from the Bush administration that studies won't lead to testing, he supports investigating new delivery methods for existing warheads.
Idaho, New Mexico and Nevada all have major Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities that are a lucrative source of federal jobs and research contracts. Utah, however, has no such DOE presence and is ground zero for downwinder claims.
Bennett has tried to offset his support of nuclear weapons programs with legislation setting higher safety hurdles for resumed testing. And he is vowing to provide a more stable source of funding for the ever-expanding and nearly bankrupt compensation program for downwinders, those who blame illnesses on fallout from above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada.
The last such test was in 1961, and "anybody born since 1962 has had no exposure," Bennett said. "You say that in southern Utah and they don't like to hear it, because it is a very emotional issue. I do believe clearly prior to 1962 there were downwinders, but after that, scientifically it's harder to make a case for anybody who's 42 years or older."
Robert Norris, senior researcher on nuclear policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, agrees the possibility of atmospheric contamination was greatly reduced when tests were moved underground. And while his organization lobbies against the Bush administration's nuclear weapons buildup, Norris says westerners' fears of resuming live tests in Nevada may be driven more by emotion than political reality.
"Under the Comprehensive Test Ban [Treaty], it would be almost impossible to resume testing and I don't see how it could really happen," Norris said. "Perhaps North Korea could help ease the way if they tested, but absent any sort of external provocation, we would just be doing it on our own initiative and that would cause worldwide outrage."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos Hopes for Land Transfer
Albuquerque Journal
By Adam Rankin
October 25, 2004
http://www.abqjournal.com/north/248471north_news10-25-04.htm?tease
Los Alamos County and its school system are hoping a U.S. Energy Department land transfer will give them space for a new warehouse and administrative offices.
That would free up their current location in Los Alamos for economic development while providing the school system and Los Alamos County with a long-term revenue source.
But first, the state Environment Department needs to clear the once-contaminated parcels for business and commercial use.
The land was originally intended for the county, but an amendment offered by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to the 2005 Defense Authorization Bill directs DOE to transfer the land to the Los Alamos Public School system instead.
"Los Alamos desperately needs more commercial development," Domenici was quoted as saying while announcing the deal approved Oct. 8 by a House and Senate conference committee.
Congress then approved the bill, which awaits only President Bush's signature to become law.
In vacating their current 13-acre space in downtown Los Alamos, the county and school system would free up one of the last remaining lots of significant size for commercial development in the downtown area. Office and retail space are at a premium there.
At the same time, the school system would acquire money-making commercial space and the county would gain revenue from property and gross receipts taxes.
The transfer includes two parcels in LANL Technical Area 21, a former plutonium processing facility before that work was shipped to Rocky Flats, Colo., near Denver.
The smaller parcel, called A-15 and about 8 acres in size, would be leased for economic and business development. A county analysis estimates the school system could generate from $50,000 to $300,000 a year from leasing the parcel.
"The county wins either way, but if we didn't have the property the county wouldn't get anything (in gross receipts taxes)," Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Jim Anderson said.
Rent from the A-15 parcel would be "money that we sorely need in our operational budget," he said.
Los Alamos schools also get an $8 million boost to their revenue each year from the government in order to make working at the laboratory attractive for prospective scientists.
That additional money- eyed jealously by poorer school districts in the region- had to be approved on a year-to-year basis. But a separate Domenici defense bill amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., makes that additional $8 million in funding a certainty each year, payable beginning in 2005 by whomever operates the laboratory.
Because the federal assistance is not adjusted for inflation, county and school officials are concerned federal funding will be devalued over time and that other income sources, such as the A-15 parcel, will become necessary.
The larger parcel, A-8, is about 25 acres and will be used to house shared school and county warehouses and physical operations facilities to streamline and cut costs, Anderson said.
But the New Mexico Environment Department still must certify that the land is safe for its intended use.
LANL spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said the two sites in question have been cleaned by DOE and the laboratory to residential standards, a cleaner standard than necessary for light industrial use.
At the request of the state, LANL and DOE have undertaken another round of studies this summer, she said. A report on the status of the two parcels is due to the Environment Department soon, she said.
The sites held septic tanks and leach fields, and A-15 was used as a construction dump site for such things as concrete, lumber and rebar, DeLucas said.
"As far as the concerns about the cleanup, that is one of those things that has to be worked out with (the Environment Department) because it has to be usable," said Los Alamos County spokeswoman Julie Habiger.
Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a LANL watchdog, said portions of both sites abut a dump site where about 750,000 cubic feet of radioactive, chemical and solid waste is buried.
Jon Goldstein, a spokesman for the Environment Department, said the state is aware of previous releases on the sites of heavy metals, such as lead, mercury and zinc, as well as radionuclides.
"Obviously, the county has an interest in these sites, but we want to make sure the folks in the county aren't left holding the bag in any way if there are any problems," he said.
He added that DOE and the laboratory would remain responsible if any contamination is discovered after the transfer.
"Once we get that final report back from DOE, we will be able to say for sure how clean these parcels are," he said.
-------- us nuc waste
Nuclear fuel removed from Hanford basins
The Associated Press
By SHANNON DININNY
October 25, 2004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002071958_hanford25m.html
YAKIMA - Workers and federal agencies handling cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation have celebrated a milestone - the removal of all the spent nuclear fuel from two leak-prone pools of water just 400 yards from the Columbia River.
The project was one of three critical cleanup problems identified at Hanford to reduce risk to the public and the environment, and the second such problem to be addressed this year.
In February, workers completed a project to stabilize and package 4.4 tons of plutonium from the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal.
Hanford was created as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.
The spent fuel in the two pools, known as the K East and K West basins, represented 80 percent of the U.S. Department of Energy's nationwide inventory and one of the largest sources of radioactivity at Hanford. So far, basin cleanup has cost $1.7 billion.
"The Columbia River and surrounding communities are safer today because of the success of this project," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said.
Nick Ceto, manager of Hanford cleanup for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, called the project completion a "monumental achievement."
The two basins were built in the 1950s to hold irradiated fuel from the site's nuclear reactors and later stored excess spent fuel from the N Reactor, which was used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
In 1992, the federal government chose to permanently close a plant that extracted plutonium from the spent fuel, stranding about 2,300 tons of spent fuel in the basins. The spent fuel rods then corroded during the underwater storage, making their removal more difficult.
In addition, the K East basin leaked about 15 million gallons of contaminated water and sludge into the soil in the 1980s and 1990s, threatening the river. The pools only had a planned use of 20 years, and in the mid-1990s, the Energy Department declared the K East basin a top cleanup priority nationwide.
Workers removed the first fuel in December 2000. They missed the July 2004 deadline to remove all of it because the last fuel to be removed was the most corroded and presented new technological challenges, said Pete Knollmeyer, vice president for Fluor Hanford, the contractor hired to complete the project.
The 3-foot fuel rods are thermally hot and intensely radioactive. They were covered with 17 feet of water in the pools, both to cool them and shield workers from radioactivity.
Only about half of the 105,000 spent fuel assemblies were intact, with the rest being highly degraded or corroded.
Crews removed the last canister of spent fuel from K East basin in July. The final canister of spent fuel was removed from the K West basin earlier this week, ending the risk from 50 million curies of radioactivity near the river, said Keith Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland Operations Office.
"As recently as four years ago, still no fuel had been moved, and numerous skeptics doubted it ever would," Klein said.
The fuel has been secured in canisters and transferred to an underground storage facility at the site pending eventual transfer to a nuclear-waste repository.
Still to be addressed at the basins is the removal of millions of gallons of contaminated water, sludge and debris. Each pool holds about 1.2 million gallons of water.
Work on removing sludge from the K East basin began in June, followed by removal of some contaminated water in August.
Crews remove water as cement is poured into the basins. Eventually, plans call for cutting the cement-filled basins into sections for long-term disposal and removing the contaminated soil underneath.
All fuel, debris and water will be taken out of the K East basin, and the basin itself will be removed by March 31, 2007. The K West basin will be removed by spring 2009.
The third major cleanup priority at the site involves removing 53 million gallons of toxic and highly radioactive waste from 177 underground tanks. The most dangerous waste is to be turned into glasslike logs for long-term disposal at a nuclear-waste repository. Work on the tank cleanup continues.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
-------- MILITARY
Of the Evil Empire
bellaciao.org
By Manuel Valenzuela
25th October 2004
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3954
Let us for a few moments put aside our lavish lifestyles of fortuitous endowment and providence that have made us blind to the realities of billions of our fellow humans. Let us ignore our plasma televisions, our DVDs, our two-story cookie cutter homes and gas-guzzling SUVs. Let us promise to not open our overstocked pantries and refrigerators, or to go out and eat at one of many corporate controlled franchise restaurants offering vast assortments of gargantuan meals. We should ignore the opulence of our society that dwells permanently in our minds that makes us forget the severe indigence and suffering that transpires beyond our shores and borders.
In short, we should come out of our luxurious bubble that has shielded us from the evils inflicted on billions of humans that have not been as privy to a life of safety and security. Let us traverse the road of reality, sojourning through history and through mirages of hidden truths. Let us dive into the making of the Evil Empire so that we may see what our government has and continues to do in our name. The road ahead will not be easy to swallow or comprehend, yet we must open our minds to the possibility that what has happened is real and what is occurring is not fiction. Only then will we understand why our hands are smeared in the blood of tens of millions of human cadavers and countless more whose lives and futures have been devastated at the hands of the United States of America. Only by knowing who and what we are can we correct ourselves.
Our society is ingrained with an appetite for violence. It is apparent in the over 11,000 murders by firearm per year. It is apparent in Hollywood's gratuitous assembly-line of blood and gore, violence, devastation and death. It is visible in the ever-growing number of video games sold to our children depicting egregious violence, killings and bloodletting. Our society celebrates violence, be it through football, hockey or boxing, television, cartoons and music. Even Disney cartoon movies have as a main theme battles of good versus evil and the plethora of violence, destruction and death associated with them. The US military industrial complex supplies the world with 45 percent of all weapons for sale on the market.
Yet without public demand for violence none of the above would exist. It is the citizenry - with complicit help from government and corporate media - that drives the engine that conditions us toward accepting and participating in our violent society.
Violence in America is today a manifestation of our society and history, of a never ending thirst for blood, conquest, oppression and death that sprung from the first moment of Puritan arrival. Before and after the Revolutionary war Americans participated in one of the greatest acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing the world has ever witnessed. Millions upon millions of native Indians were slaughtered, raped and cleansed from the lands of North America. Manifest destiny ransacked from Atlantic to Pacific like a devastating hurricane, destroying everything native people thought precious and sacred. Wars against native populations extinguishing the energies of men, women, children and elderly alike. The American thirst for violence had been born. The addiction for blood would become insatiable and never ending.
Native peoples' lands were taken from them; lies, manipulations and betrayals erased their tribes from the homes they once knew and cherished. Replanted into hellholes called reservations, Indians were left to rot away their existence, given only the evil of Firewater to wash away their inner demons and scars in a land both alien and inhospitable. Hidden from the voracious Anglo onslaught, Indians of talent and ability were left to dwell on a future lost through the disappearance of opportunity. Disease, depression, lack of education and incessant poverty soon followed. Demons of a life wasted and opportunity lost consumed those who escaped the barrel of a gun and the virus of the white man.
Entire ethnicities, tribes, languages and cultures were eviscerated from the face of the Earth by those whose importance of property and ownership superceded the respect for human life. Beautiful peoples took with them to the grave lives living free, roaming pristine and untouched forests, deserts and prairies, being one with nature, respecting everything that breathed and a spirituality that has much to offer our capitalistic civilization. Advanced civilizations in wisdom and spirituality, yet seen as savages to the "more sophisticated" European people, native peoples' way of life was vanished, never to fully flourish again. Millions ethnically cleansed, millions whose lives were made barren, all making way for the destructive bulldozer ravaging land and man. The Evil Empire had sprung to life, a trail of victims visible everywhere the giant walked.
Not satisfied with the killing of millions of native peoples, the citizens of America next decided to unleash hell onto each other. As a result the American Civil War of the latter part of the 19th century killed more than 600,000 people, leaving the United States mourning for brothers and sons, fathers and grandfathers. Graveyards littered the landscape; battlefields were transformed into fields of death and devastation. Divided a prospering nation stood, soaked in blood and agony, splitting apart families, creating widows and orphans. In the end, hundreds of thousands lay dead, many more maimed and wounded, all to quench the voracious appetite for violence, death and destruction.
The Evil Empire's cannibalism was only the beginning of a much greater disease.
Lands and People of Asia
As the Empire grew stronger so too did its addiction for expansion. War with Spain commencing in 1898 brought forth new lands, colonies and treasure. Yet it also brought forth death and destruction. American violence had not dissipated; it had only evolved, with new forms of warfare and destruction arising with the passage of time. Tens of thousands died on both sides. In the end, the United States had conquered both man and land, thereby increasing its power and prestige. The Empire was growing, prospering and learning that force was the means by which to achieve its ends. Force was weapons, intimidation, violence and war. It was victory and imperialism. It was the means to becoming the most powerful nation on the planet. The Evil Empire had grown up, as the Philippines would soon learn.
In 1899 Filipino forces seeking independence from Spain confronted in armed struggle American forces intent on maintaining the colonization of the nation. A ruthless war of attrition between the two forces began. For the next three years tens of thousands of native resistance fighters died at the hands of the much more technologically sophisticated and economically powerful American military. Numerous war crimes were committed by American soldiers. Destruction and looting of property, shooting of captives, rapes of women, torture of prisoners and civilians, devastation of the environment and the forced social engineering of the people were thrust upon the nation in an orgy of occupier lawlessness.
In addition, over 200,000 civilians perished due to the brutal scorched earth policy implemented by the US military that destroyed agriculture, fertile land and villages. In addition, many thousands died from cholera arising out of economic devastation of infrastructure. The harsh subjugation of the Filipino people was a form of collective punishment that America used as a weapon of war in order to pacify the independently minded population. The American intervention in the Philippines indiscriminately erased from the face of the Earth hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This is called genocide, and the Evil Empire got exceedingly good at it.
The reality of what happened over 100 years ago is comfortably hidden away from us today. The American war in the Philippines is today but an asterisk in our history books, yet the gravity of the malevolence cannot be forgotten. It certainly is not included in the educational material of our children, or in those of our own childhood, however. Why is this? What the US government does in our name cannot be made known lest the population rage in anger at the wickedness that America exports abroad. Genocide, collective punishment, scorched earth policy and ethnic cleansing leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings is not something to be proud of. Not when Stalin, Hitler and the Nazis did the exact same thing.
In the Philippines the Evil Empire was only getting warmed up. For the next 100 years it controlled all aspects of the Philippine government. The US installed minions and puppets that kept the populace in dire poverty, robbing the nation blind and fostering an era of inept and corrupt leaders handpicked by America. Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled as dictator of the beleaguered nation from 1965 until his ouster in 1986, is the best example of American complicity in the utter devastation of both the people and economy of the Philippines.
Marcos ruled with extreme harshness, subverting democracy, robbing the nation blind (some estimates have him stealing anywhere from $3 to $30 billion dollars) and killing thousands of dissenters and opposition members who dared speak out against the injustices and inequalities. He brought onto the nation's masses untold suffering, indigence and slave labor, wages and conditions. Hundreds of thousands have died form malnourishment, disease, poverty and exploitation. The nation's debt amassed under Marcos is today responsible for the dire circumstances of the population, and is a reason for the growth of Muslim and Marxist revolutionary groups prospering and threatening the government.
The beneficiary of the evil spawned by Marcos you may ask? The Evil Empire, which established military bases that helped expand the Empire geopolitically, collected hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, exploited slave labor for the manufacture of cheap products sold back in the US and controlled a subjugated populace through neo-liberal economic policies that privatized and made available to American corporations national industries and utilities. The Evil Empire and the Corporate Leviathan are one and the same, after all, their interests not mutually exclusive.
The Evil Empire's claws of incessant violence soon expanded to other nations of Southeast Asia. When its addiction for destruction was not satisfied with the firebombing of Tokyo that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, it turned to that most evil of human creations: the atomic bomb. After becoming the only nation to ever use atomic weapons on innocent populated areas, killing hundreds of thousands and unleashing utter devastation on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America soon launched its appetite for blood in the Korean Peninsula after it entered the war, creating vast killing fields of both soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on all sides perished along with upwards of three million Koreans (North and South) who were caught in the crossfire of ideologies and human wickedness. Following the Korean War America soon found itself immersed in yet another war, this time in Vietnam. Decades of war led to the death of 58,000 American soldiers, over 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and close to one million North Vietnamese soldiers. Estimates place the number of civilian deaths at anywhere from 400,000 to two million. If the illegal American bombing of Cambodia and Laos orchestrated by Henry Kissinger is considered, in which civilian targets were selected and bombed, upwards of two million more Southeast Asians can be added to the Evil Empire's macabre statistics. Furthermore, many more died as a result of the total devastation of land and infrastructure the bombings and war created, including the continued death and disease of land and man due to the lingering effects of Agent Orange and through the enormous amount of unexploded bombs and ordinance still littering the ground.
Indonesia is another nation that, through the American imposed and supported dictator Mohamed Suharto, suffered tremendously thanks to the meddling by the Evil Empire. Under Suharto's watch, anywhere from 500,000 to two million people were killed in a 1965 alleged coup attempt, most of them dissenters, leftists, communists or opposition members. In 1975, with American blessings and weaponry, Suharto invaded East Timor in order to stop an insurrection by the native people, killing 250,000 people out of a population of 650,000. During Suharto's stay in power he detained and executed hundreds of thousands of Indonesian opposition members. His reign ended in 1998. During this time corruption was endemic, as was the subversion of democracy, freedoms and rights. In 1999 it was found that the Suharto family fortune totaled $15 billion, most of it coming from those government funds created thanks to international loans and the labor of the masses.
Lands and People of Latin America
The Evil Empire's omnipotent reach has had devastating effects in Latin America as well. The US government has interfered with the internal governance of several Central and South American nations in its quest to maintain its form of democracy and capitalism. The US has meddled in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Brazil, not to mention Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. The Evil Empire has imposed coups and US friendly dictatorships and leaders in many of the above mentioned nations. In Central America it supplied death squads with military support and logistics. In Chile, Argentina and Brazil, dictators, with the consent of their American masters, initiated a war against leftist dissenters and opponents, leading to the disappearance of thousands of men and women. In Panama, Manuel Noriega, a former CIA puppet, betrayed his American masters and hell was unleashed on Panama City by the US military. Anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 civilians died as the Evil Empire pursued the capture of one man.
Today, the Evil Empire is once more interfering in the destabilization of Latin American nations. Haiti is but the latest but by no means the last country to be burned by the searing claws of America's might. President Aristide, a champion of the poor and a seeker of equality and justice, stepped on US shoes with his defiance of neo-liberal threats imposed on him by Haiti's elite and the Bush administration. In essence, he sealed his own fate, and the clandestine coup sponsored by the US removed Aristide from office. As a result, Haiti, which has been the slave shop for US corporations for decades, will remain poor and exploited, a cesspool of poverty and hopelessness for its citizens.
Colombia has, thanks to the US, become a militarized zone where hundreds of people are killed on a yearly basis. Civil war has ensnarled the nation, instability runs amok and the livelihood of rural peasants has been destroyed by the coca eradication program enacted the America that has ruined arable land. With the potential of large oil reserves present under the nation's lands and the already discovered exploitable natural resources prevalent throughout the countryside, Colombia has become a target for US interests. Oil and energy companies, along with their growing infrastructure, are already protected by the US military as they continue their exploitation of the nation.
Meanwhile, the Evil Empire already has its sites set on destabilizing Venezuela and a harsh critic of the US, Hugo Chavez. Forces now at work, supported and maintained by the US, are slowly setting in motion mechanisms that, it is hoped, will unseat Chavez from office, whether by force or other means, thereby installing a friendly US pro-neo-liberal puppet that will allow for the pilfering of Venezuelan oil by the Evil Empire. A coup, assassination and or invasion are not out of the realm of possibilities, especially when black gold is involved.
What the Evil Empire has done to Latin America and its hundreds of millions of people is the imposition - by its proctors in high office and its bullying threats involving capital - of market colonialism that has had the effect of imprisoning and enslaving the masses. Neo-liberal ideology has indebted most "third-world" nations, not simply those of Latin America, and it has furthered indigence, lack of education, the corrosive caste system upon which millions are born into, inequality, injustice, hunger, disease, suffering, loss of opportunity and death.
Latin American nations have been made worse off since the inception of neo-liberal economic models forcefully imposed by the Evil Empire. As a result, labor has been made cheaper for US corporations, translating into cheaper goods for its citizens. Through the back-breaking slave labor, conditions and wages Latin Americans are exploited so that we in the rich north can consume to our hearts content. Yet millions upon millions live in squalor, surviving day to day, usually earning less than two dollars a day, living in feeble conditions and without the chance of ever improving their lives due to the non-existence of opportunity.
The Evil Empire's domination of Latin America (for more detail please see my January 12th article, Not in Our Backyard) has resulted in the mass migration towards our borders. When mechanisms such as NAFTA and neo-liberal tools are put in place in countries such as Mexico, only the elite benefit and profit. Everyone else is made worse off; jobs are meager, scarce and dehumanizing. US subsidies to agriculture have devastated rural farmers and workers in Latin America. When these people leave for the cities they find that employment is non-existent and life unbearable. The push to migrate north, where natives no longer perform the jobs of hard labor, is tremendous.
Thus, today we see millions of undocumented workers living in the US. It is the Evil Empire's imposed economic models and trade mechanisms that have created the eruption of Latin slave labor in our nation. Is it any coincidence that the mass migration north began after NAFTA was imposed on the region? The only entities that have benefited from NAFTA, both in the US and Mexico, are the corporations and the few ruling elite. Everyone else has been thrust into the realm of exploitation and failure.
The near enslavement of Latin America for the benefit of the Evil Empire has devastated millions of lives, talent and ability. It has created colonized economies, based on US crony capitalism that has exploited both man and land. Public companies and utilities have been privatized and subjugated to fit the Leviathan's goals. The rich have become richer while the poor poorer, and this has led to the greatest disparity in wealth the region has ever seen.
The Evil Empire has created a region that has for the last fifty years been subservient to the US. Its many puppets and proctors have helped devastate lives and subjugate the masses. Democracy has historically been an illusion. Fraud, coups, assassinations, destabilization, dictatorships and a state of perpetual wretchedness have been used by the Evil Empire as tools to control Latin America. When the will of the people triumphs, such as in Chile with Allende, Venezuela with Chavez or Haiti with Aristide, the Evil Empire imposes its will in order to decimate democracy and maintain a system that benefits the US, it