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NUCLEAR
Hope Creek refueling halted as worker's fingers crushed
Plutonium Headed For France Concerns Environmentalists
China open to discussions about US-led arms control initiative
China's foreign minister to visit Iran, nuclear program on agenda
Letter: Halt use of carcinogen
'Troops Left in Dark About Depleted Uranium Risks'
Britain, wary of Gulf War illness, tests health
Report: Troops Watched Al-Qaqaa Looting
Japan quake death toll reaches 39 as fresh tremor shuts nuclear reactor
Seoul urges Pyongyang to take bold step on nuclear drive
Airborne Laser faces `do-or-die' tests
British Nuclear Fuels Spends 50 Million Pounds to Foil Terror
IAEA starts third round of inspections
U.N. Nuke Report on Iran May Weaken U.S. Case, Say Diplomats
New Mexico Bars High-Level Waste From Carlsbad Salt Caverns
Bush victory keeps light green for Yucca Mountain
MILITARY
Karzai Officially Declared Winner
Karzai Vows Crackdown on Warlords, Drugs
Sudanese Troops Attack and Destroy Camp in Darfur
Liberia Disperses Warring Factions but Violence Persists in Capital
Weapons of microelectronic destruction
Don't extend GSDF's Iraq aid mission, most in poll say
EADS more than doubles net profit, raises forecasts
WMC Expects Other Mining Companies to Consider Bids
Civil Unrest Challenges China's Party Leadership
German Papers Grasping the Second Coming of Bush
EU plans mission, aid in Iraq
Hungary Joins Others in Pulling Troops From Iraq
U.S.-Led Coalition Could See Desertions
A Volley of Fire From a Fast-Moving Target
U.S. Forces Pound Parts of Fallujah
Bomber Hits Near Baghdad Airport
Stubborn Violence Shadows Buildup to Falluja Invasion
Rising Concerns About Insurgents' Weaponry
Iraqis say U.S. should talk more, shoot less
Iraq calls on 'spectators' to act
MSF aid agency ends work in Iraq
Israeli military commander of Gaza quits
Sharon Wins Approval to Fund Pullout but Is Set Back on Budget
Questions Grow About Arafat's Health and Palestinian Leaders
U.S. Grant to Aid Removal of Land Mines
NATO chief to meet with Georgian leader during visit
Planned talks with Muslims on track despite clashes
Russia Test-Launches Two Ballistic Missiles
Annan Urges Security Council to Act on Growing Violence in Sudan
U.S. Deserter Took Plea Bargain
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Fruit drink boxes contained heroin
Rebirth of the Potion That Made Val-de-Travers Famous
Arizonans spread hopes for moves against illegals
POLITICS
Congress is under pressure to raise debt ceiling
Philippine investigators to visit US to gather evidence against general
Iraqi Journalists Prepare for Front Lines in Fallujah
Boobus Americanus
How the Far Right Built a Media Empire to Manufacture Consent
More than 4,500 North Carolina votes lost
Team Bush...with a Few New Faces
Kerry Concedes, Bush Wins Presidency
Christian Evangelicals Proclaim "Now Comes the Revolution"
How the GOP Took Control of the White House
ENERGY
Concentrating Solar Power Systems Funded for Western States
OTHER
U.S. Wants No Warming Proposal
Fewer Monitors Proposed by Waste-Site Regulators
California group sues wind companies over bird deaths
Sperm Stem Cells Are Grown Outside Body
Defying Bush Administration
Flu Shots Skin Injection Might Stretch Supply of It
ACTIVISTS
Aid Group to Leave Iraq, Fearing Extreme Risk
Gimme Some Truth
Blunkett changes law to evict Commons anti-war protester
57 Arrested in San Francisco Protest
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Hope Creek refueling halted as worker's fingers crushed
Bridgeton News
November 04, 2004
http://www.nj.com/news/bridgeton/local/index.ssf?/base/news-9/109956363692140.xml
LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK TWP. -- A worker had two of his fingers crushed early Wednesday in an accident that took place during refueling operations at the Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station here, officials said.
The accident took place at 2:56 a.m.
The worker's gloved right hand became entangled in a moving piece of equipment used to move fuel rod assemblies, officials said. Other workers saw what occurred and helped free the man's hand and refueling operations were halted.
The unidentified man was escorted out of the area by PSEG Nuclear radiation protection and site medical personnel, officials said. He was then transported to the emergency room at The Memorial Hospital of Salem County, Mannington Township, and admitted for treatment of his hand injuries.
The worker's glove received "very minor exposure" to radiation, according to Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency which oversees the operation of the nation's nuclear power plants.
Sheehan said the glove received less than 2 millirems of radiation. To put this exposure in perspective, Sheehan said the average person receive about 360 millirems of radiation from the environment each year. Nuclear industry standards say it is safe for workers to receive up to 5,000 millirems of radiation exposure per year.
Skip Sindoni, a spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, said refueling operations were halted for about 12 hours and the accident was investigated.
"Necessary controls were put in place to prevent any reoccurrence of such an incident during fuel movement," Sindoni said.
Officials did not release the identity of the man who they said was a contract worker. His condition was not available.
--------
Plutonium Headed For France Concerns Environmentalists
(AP)
11-4-2004
http://www.chiefengineer.org/content/content_display.cfm/seqnumber_content/1795.htm
PARIS - Plutonium from U.S. nuclear warheads - enough to make nearly 20 Hiroshima-style bombs - is headed for France aboard armed freighters and a new life as commercial fuel that will ultimately light American homes.
But environmentalists fearful of terrorist attacks, accidents and the fuel itself, known as MOX, want to stop the shipment - a test run for a larger post-Cold War program to help the United States and Russia disarm.
Ironically, France will reap the first benefits of the project to turn nuclear weapons-grade plutonium into MOX, a fuel used to fire nuclear reactors, as Washington and paris mend ties made prickly by differences over Iraq.
France's state-of-the-art nuclear technology is being used to help fulfill the terms of a September 2000 U.S.-Russia disarmament accord under which both countries promised to destroy 34 tons of military plutonium each.
Radioactive material has been shipped to France in the past for conversion into MOX fuel, but this is the first time weapons-grade plutonium is being used.
The U.S. portion of the project is worth $250 million to $300 million to French state-run nuclear company Areva, which will start by turning 308 pounds of plutonium into MOX, a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide.
The environmental organization Greenpeace opposes the use of MOX to run reactors, saying it becomes hotter and more radioactive than the enriched uranium used to fuel most reactors.
The weapons-grade plutonium left for France from Charleston, SC aboard the armed ships Pacific Teal and Pacific Pintail, Areva said. About 20 demonstrators waved signs and banners along the Charleston waterfront to protest the shipment.
For anti-nuclear activists, MOX presents a danger at every turn.
"What you have is material that can be used in nuclear weapons unfortunately being traded in as if you were moving bananas around," said Shaun Burnie, nuclear campaign coordinator of Greenpeace International. Security, he claimed, "is an afterthought."
The U.S. Energy Department must ship the plutonium overseas for conversion because there isn't a plant in the United States that can do it.
After unloading at the French port of Cherbourg, the plutonium will corss about 620 miles of France in an armed convoy to factories in the sough, where it will be converted into four rods of MOX.
or security reasons, neither U.S. nor Areva officials would give an expected arrival date.
The MOX is to be shipped back to the United States in early 2005 for burning at South Carolina's Catawba Nuclear Station. Special security measures will be in place for that trip, too.
After this first test run, U.S. officials plan to build a MOX factory with French help at the Savannah River nuclear site, near Aiken, SC., to dispose of the rest of the plutonium the United States agreed to destroy. Another MOX factory would be built, likely with Areva help, in Russia.
"Everyone is getting the payoff in this in that we're reducing and getting rid of dangerous material that could be used to make thousands of nuclear weapons," said Bryan Wilkes of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington.
"We're confident this material will be fully protected every step of the way," he added. The armed ships have a specialized guard force. The people that are doing this have a lot of experience doing this. They're not shipping oranges."
An alternative to using French technology would have been to bury the plutonium - a solution environmentalists also find troubling.
MOX is made only in France and Britain, with France having most of the market. Some 80 percent of France's electricity is generated by nuclear reactors - 20 of them using MOX. In the United States, there are no reactors that currently run on MOX and U.S. reactors will have to be adapted to use the fuel.
France stamped itself as a nuclear upstart in the 1960s when then-President Charles de Gualle - intent on ensuring his country's independence from the mighty U.S. military umbrella - decided to develop atomic weapons.
France's nuclear arsenal quickly became a source of contention with the United States and other Atlantic alliance partners. De Gaulle pulled France out of NATO's military wing in 1966 and shut down U.S. bases here.
However, in today's post-Cold War world, the stakes have changed and U.S. bitterness over France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq appears to be diminishing.
Greenpeace accuses the United States and France of arrogance for organizaing the plutonium trip even while pressuring other countries not to use technology or materials that could make nuclear weapons.
-------- china
China open to discussions about US-led arms control initiative
BEIJING (AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104120933.g2jj1dt8.html
China said Thursday it continued to have reservations about a US-led arms control initiative but was willing to hold talks with countries involved.
China last month refused to participate in a non-proliferation drill in Japanese waters on seizing smuggled weapons, the first exercise of the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to be held in Asia.
"We support PSI's objective of fighting terrorism, further restricting and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ... but at the same time, we have reservations about taking relevant PSI actions that are possibly outside international law," foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.
"But we're willing to have dialogue and exchanges of views with parties concerned," Zhang added in a regular briefing.
The three-day drills, in which 19 countries took part, were aimed mostly as a signal to nearby North Korea to stop trafficking weapons.
China was seen as reluctant to take part in the activities because they targetted its longtime ally Pyongyang.
Beijing had also objected to the fact that the initiative would involve making military interceptions of shipments on the high seas or in international airspace.
US under secretary of state for arms control John Bolton called on China last month to join the efforts while accusing Beijing of also proliferating weapons.
"We have tried at various times to answer questions that China has had about PSI," said Bolton.
"We have more work to do with China, which itself is a country that engages in proliferation."
Zhang Thursday defended China's record, saying the government has stepped up measures and passed laws in recent years to stop the export of weapons of mass destruction.
"China has adopted strict measures in this area not only in terms of regulation but enforcement to ensure implementation of relevant procedures," Zhang said.
Missile proliferation has been a stumbling block in Sino-US relations and Beijing has made repeated assurances it has stepped up monitoring to prevent the trafficking of such technologies.
-----
China's foreign minister to visit Iran, nuclear program on agenda
BEIJING (AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104133846.viu1jucz.html
China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing will visit Iran this week and will hold talks about its nuclear program, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
During the two-day visit beginning Saturday, Li will discuss Iran's alleged uranium enrichment program, said ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue.
Iran is coming under pressure from the United States to come clean on an alleged program to develop nuclear weapons and to suspend all activities to enrich uranium.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment in October 2003 as a confidence-building measure. But it has continued to carry out support activities such as building the centrifuges that refine the uranium despite pledges to Britain, France and Germany to halt that work.
Iran insists its program is for civilian energy purposes but the United States maintains that it hides nuclear weapons development.
"We hope this issue will be handled within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency," Zhang told a regular briefing.
China is also looking to Iran to supply natural gas to help feed its insatiable hunger for energy.
The two countries last month signed a preliminary accord under which China would buy 10 million tonnes a year of liquefied natural gas for 25 years from Iran in a deal worth 100 billion dollars.
Iran's Deputy Oil Minister Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian was quoted by Iranian media as saying the deal could eventually reach 15 to 20 million tonnes a year, taking the total value to as much as 200 billion dollars.
The memorandum of understanding also grants to Chinese oil giant Sinopec the right to exploit the Yadavaran oil field on a buy-back basis in cooperation with a major international oil company.
-------- depleted uranium
Letter: Halt use of carcinogen
Concord Journal
November 4, 2004
http://www2.townonline.com/concord/opinion/view.bg?articleid=118754
On Saturday, Nov. 6 members of Grassroots Actions for Peace will join people in Japan, Great Britain, Brussels and Italy in an International Day of Action to ban depleted uranium weapons.
What's the problem with depleted uranium weapons? Depleted uranium is a misnomer. Weapons made with depleted uranium are 60 percent as radioactive as pure uranium and equal in chemical toxicity. Depleted uranium is carcinogenic and can cause cancer. There's evidence that birth defects have increased in areas where depleted uranium was used, and in the children of British and American Gulf War veterans.
The Pentagon has covered up the known effects of uranium weapons, and not warned many soldiers about the hazards of breathing depleted uranium dust.
The U.S. lobbied successfully to stop a World Health Organization Study of depleted uranium weapons.
Three hundred tons of depleted uranium were used in the first Gulf War, mostly against tanks in the desert. It's estimated that one thousand tons have been used in the present Iraq War, much of it in urban areas. Where depleted uranium weapons are used it will continue be a contaminant forever - 4.5 billion years.
By signing the petition we are circulating, you will add your voice to a growing international movement to halt the use of these carcinogenic and toxic weapons and clean up sites contaminated with depleted uranium, like Starmet Corporation in Concord.
Carol Dwyer Main Street
-----
'Troops Left in Dark About Depleted Uranium Risks'
PA News
By Tom Whitehead,
4 Nov 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3717200
More could have been done to allay soldiers' fears over exposure to depleted uranium during the first Gulf War, the Government admitted today.
But defence officials claimed there was no reliable evidence to link such exposure to ill-health.
Depleted uranium (DU) is used by British forces in anti-armour munitions and contact with dust particles has been the source of grave health concerns by some soldiers.
It has also been cited as one possible cause for so-called "Gulf War Syndrome".
A report into health lessons learnt from the 1990/91 conflict, published by the Ministry of Defence today, said there could have been better communication to put troops at ease.
The paper, The 1990-1991 Gulf Conflict: Health and Personnel Related Lessons Identified, said: "With hindsight, more could have been done to anticipate that their use might precipitate worries about ill-health and to communicate the minimal health risks more effectively.
"Some advice was available within the US chain of command, and some was passed through the UK medical chain of command into theatre, but in both cases the information arrived late and was not widely disseminated, nor adequately communicated to the front line commands before the conflict.
"This led to the situation where some UK forces potentially could have been exposed to DU dust (which is chemically toxic and weakly radioactive) during clean-up activities or unauthorised 'sight-seeing'."
But the report goes on: "However, there is no scientific or medical evidence to link DU with ill-health."
It said several independent reports had been produced and more studies were under way, but "none of this research has found widespread DU contamination sufficient to impact on the health of the general population or deployed personnel".
The Depleted Uranium Oversight Board was set up by the MoD in September 2001 to develop voluntary DU screening for veterans.
Defence officials said 350 people have been tested so far of which "only a small number" have been found to be excreting DU in their urine.
They were all involved in "friendly fire" incidents or hit by shrapnel, sources said.
A pilot study of general population urine uranium levels is now under way to establish what "normal" levels are.
Sources said "sensible precautions" are now in place to protect soldiers who may come in to contact with DU.
That includes routine training and instruction and personal dose meters for those who are in regular contact with tanks, which use DU in their shells.
-----
Britain, wary of Gulf War illness, tests health of troops returning from Iraq
(AP)
November 4, 2004
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/Iraq/2004/11/04/700580-ap.html
LONDON - Britain is testing the health of thousands of soldiers who fought in Iraq, defence officials said Thursday, as research into Gulf War illnesses continues.
The Ministry of Defence has commissioned specialists to survey 7,700 soldiers who took part in the March 2003 Iraq invasion. The troops have been asked to fill out detailed questionnaires on their physical and psychological health, and will be compared against a control group of 10,000 soldiers who did not take part in the invasion.
A preliminary report by the King's Centre for Military Health Research is expected in April 2005.
Officials are also studying the effects of exposure to depleted uranium, used by the U.S. and British armies in armour-piercing shells. They intend to carry out a study of 1,000 civilians in Britain to establish the normal levels of uranium in the body, providing a benchmark against which to measure troops.
The government said it is continuing research into the health of veterans of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war, but repeated that no evidence has so far emerged of a specific illness caused by the war.
Thousands of veterans of that war, sparked by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, have complained of suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, the collective name for a wide array of unexplained symptoms including headaches, depression, asthma and chronic fatigue.
Some veterans blame their ill-health on the potent cocktail of vaccines they were given to ward off potential Iraqi chemical and biological weapons attacks. Others allege the symptoms may be linked to exposure during the conflict to depleted uranium or organo-phosphate pesticides.
"We have always accepted that some of the 1990/1991 Gulf veterans have become ill and that many believe this ill health is unusual and related to their Gulf experience," the Ministry of Defence said in briefing notes given to journalists Thursday.
"While we acknowledge that the phrase Gulf War Syndrome has become quite widespread in popular usage, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific and medical community is that there are too many different symptoms reported for this ill health to be characterized as a syndrome in medical terms," the statement said.
Nevertheless, defence officials say there are still medical lessons to be learned from the war, and the ministry released a report Thursday detailing how procedures have now changed.
They include avoiding multiple vaccinations for troops already in the area of conflict, better information for soldiers about the anthrax vaccine and more detailed medical records.
"Inevitably, in the heat of battle there will always be some things that do not go as intended," said Armed Forces Minister Ivor Caplin, releasing the report titled The 1990-1991 Gulf Conflict: Health and Personnel Related Lessons Identified.
"The aim of this paper is not to seek to attribute blame but to identify how the Ministry of Defence can do better in future," he added.
An independent inquiry, led by retired judge Lord Lloyd of Berwick, who examined the ill health of thousands of Gulf veterans, is due to report within the next two weeks.
A report is also due to be released next week by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses.
-------- iraq / inspections
Report: Troops Watched Al-Qaqaa Looting
November 4, 2004
(AP)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WEAPONS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LOS ANGELES -- Explosives were looted from the Al-Qaqaa ammunitions site in Iraq while outnumbered U.S. soldiers assigned to guard the materials watched helplessly, soldiers told the Los Angeles Times.
About a dozen U.S. troops were guarding the sprawling facility in the weeks after the April 2003 fall of Baghdad when Iraqi looters raided the site, the newspaper quoted a group of unidentified soldiers as saying. U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen witnessed the looting and some soldiers sent messages to commanders in Baghdad requesting help, but received no reply, they said.
"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," one officer said.
The eyewitness accounts reported by the Times are the first provided by U.S. soldiers and bolster claims that the U.S. military had failed to safeguard the powerful explosives, the newspaper said.
Iraqi officials told the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency last month that about 380 tons of high-grade explosives, a type powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon, had been taken from the Al-Qaqaa facility.
Soldiers who belong to two different units described how Iraqis snatched explosives from unsecured bunkers and drove off with them in pickup trucks.
The soldiers who spoke to the Times asked to remain unidentified, saying they feared retaliation from the Pentagon.
The soldiers said they could not confirm that looters took the particularly powerful explosives known as HMX and RDX. One soldier, however, said U.S. forces saw looters load trucks with bags marked "hexamine," which is a key ingredient for HMX.
One senior noncommissioned officer said troops "were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out" and that at least 100 vehicles were at the site waiting for the military to leave so that they could loot the munitions.
The Pentagon has offered accounts that suggest the explosives were removed before the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and not during the chaos following the fall of Baghdad.
A Pentagon statement last week said the removal of the explosives would have required dozens of heavy trucks moving along the same roads as U.S. combat divisions.
The missing explosives became a campaign issue with Sen. John Kerry claiming it was further evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war.
Four soldiers who are members of the Germany-based 317th Support Center and the 258th Rear Area Operations Center, an Arizona-based Army National Guard unit, said the looting happened over several weeks in late April and early May 2003.
Asked about the soldiers' accounts, Pentagon spokeswoman Rose-Ann Lynch told the newspaper: "We take the report of missing munitions very seriously. And we are looking into the facts and circumstances of this incident."
-------- japan
Japan quake death toll reaches 39 as fresh tremor shuts nuclear reactor
TOKYO (AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104113016.31c5d2r9.html
A strong earthquake shut down a nuclear reactor Thursday in central Japan, where the toll from an earthquake last month rose to 39, officials said.
The quake measuring 5.2 percent on the Richter scale occurred 20 kilometres (12 miles) underground in Niigata prefecture, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of Tokyo, the Meteorological Agency said.
The rice-growing region was hit by a 6.8 magnitude quake on October 23, followed by hundreds of aftershocks which have forced more than 50,000 people to abandon their homes for temporary shelters.
In the town of Tochio, 71-year-old shopowner Yokichi Tamura died at a hospital from a heart attack caused by the "stress" of 11 days in a shelter, prefectural police said.
At least 3,183 people were also injured in last month's quakes, the National Police Agency said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said a reactor at the seaside Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant automatically shut down when Thursday's tremor hit.
The reactor was down for hours but there was no radioactive leak, a company spokesman said. Five other reactors at the plant continued operations with another reactor closed for regular check-ups.
A bullet train linking Niigata with Tokyo ground to a halt during the quake but no passengers were injured.
The Meteorological Agency warned residents to brace themselves for more strong quakes.
"They need to be on the alert at least for the coming month," said Masahiro Yamamoto, who heads the earthquakes division of the agency.
-------- korea
Seoul urges Pyongyang to take bold step on nuclear drive
SEOUL (AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104041758.32ysl48r.html
South Korea is to urge North Korea to respond to the re-election of US President George W. Bush by abandoning its nuclear weapons drive, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said Thursday.
"At the next round of six-party talks, we will strongly urge North Korea to make a bold decision concerning the issue of the uranium-enrichment programme and the dismantlement of its nuclear programmes," Ban said in testimony to the National Assembly.
He said participants in the six-party talks will press North Korea to return at an early date to the dialogue aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programme now that the US presidential election has been decided.
But the South Korean foreign minister said he had no grounds for believing North Korea was about to rejoin the talks any time soon given the fact that Pyongyang had not shifted its precondition for Washington to change its "hostile" policy toward the communist state.
South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun will meet with Bush on the sidelines of the APEC (Asia-pacific Economic Cooperation) summit in Chile later this month for coordinating policies toward North Korea and bilateral ties, he said.
Ban said Bush was expected to step up efforts to resolve the stand-off and push for an early resumption of the six-party talks as the North Korean nuclear issue emerged as a key pending issue during the US election campaign. "I expect the second Bush administration will continue with its foreign policy of giving priority to the war against terrorism and the prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Ban said.
"However, there is a possibility that it may give more thought to securing international cooperation in light of the criticism during the election campaign (over its unilateralism)," Ban said.
Pyongyang failed to turn up for a fourth round of six-nation talks scheduled for last month, which includes the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia.
The confrontation began in October 2002 when US officials said North Korea had admitted in a bilateral meeting to pursuing a covert uranium-enrichment programme.
North Korea, however, has since denied running such a programme, and has demanded food and energy aid and diplomatic concessions in return for refreezing an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms programme.
-------- missile defense
Airborne Laser faces `do-or-die' tests
Nov. 04, 2004
The Orlando Sentinel
BY MICHAEL CABBAGE
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/10097825.htm
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - (KRT) - Near the remote desert airfield where test pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, engineers are working on a high-tech missile-defense system that could make Yeager's accomplishment look modest in comparison.
A gleaming new 747 jumbo jet sits inside a cramped hangar, the revolving turret on its nose a clear sign the plane will not be hauling tourists on long-distance flights. Instead, dozens of technicians are outfitting it with a sophisticated array of lasers designed to shoot down ballistic missiles from hundreds of miles away shortly after they lift off.
Program managers insist the Airborne Laser, or ABL, "will be as revolutionary to warfare as the advent of the atomic bomb" on the day it works. A growing number of critics argue that day will never come.
Of the many pieces of the Bush administration's plans for a layered missile defense, none has proved as technically challenging as the ABL. None has fallen as chronically behind schedule or seen its estimated costs double - to $5.1 billion and rising - with so little progress. And none has been as harshly criticized.
"The program has never really had a fundamental physics and chemistry understanding of how those systems will behave under combat conditions," said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's former director of weapons testing and evaluation. "They are way out in front of their headlights in terms of trying to deploy something in an aircraft before they really understand the technology."
Program analysts at the Pentagon interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel said they tried unsuccessfully to cancel the project every year from 1998 to 2001, only to have it kept alive by senior Defense Department officials. After the Bush administration took office, ABL was one of several programs exempted from traditional Pentagon oversight in 2002.
Although the project survived, the Pentagon's initial plans for seven planes have shrunk to one, with an order for a second jet delayed. The program was restructured in February, and a planned test facility at Edwards was put on hold. Even so, a May report by the independent Government Accountability Office continued to question not only ABL's progress and cost but also its military usefulness.
Now, eight years after the program officially began, the project is at a crossroads. It faces two critical tests during the next three months that many have characterized as "do or die." There is shrinking optimism outside the program - particularly on Capitol Hill - that the tests will succeed. If they do not, congressional sources in both parties say, the program likely will be radically scaled back or killed by the end of 2005.
"I do believe the team I've got will make this weapons system work," said Air Force Col. Ellen Pawlikowski, ABL's program director. "My personal challenge is to give the team enough resources and allow them to stay focused to do it in time to keep our decision makers satisfied."
The idea of putting a laser on an airplane to destroy missiles dates to the 1970s. An Air Force cargo jet equipped with an experimental laser system shot down an unmanned drone and Sidewinder missiles during tests that ended in 1983. Dubbed the Airborne Laser Laboratory, the project was abandoned largely because its laser was too bulky and its lethal range too short. Twenty years later, similar issues, along with a host of new ones, are dogging the ABL program.
If the ABL becomes a reality, the plane will fly figure-eight patrols at 40,000 feet near hostile countries, such as North Korea.
Six heat-detecting infrared sensors on the jet's exterior will search in all directions for telltale signs of a missile's launch or exhaust plume. When a launch is spotted, the sensors and a ranging laser atop the jet will relay the data to a tracking laser that targets a spot just below the missile's nose.
Next, another laser bounces a beam off the missile to measure the atmospheric distortion between the plane and the target. A complex set of flexible mirrors adjusts to compensate for the distortion. Then, a megawatt-class chemical version fires a three-second or so beam.
"It essentially heats up the pressurized fuel tank of the missile, causing it to burst," said Scott Fancher, ABL program manager for prime contractor Boeing.
Most of ABL's exotic technologies already have been proved in pristine, controlled laboratory conditions. But moving them out of the laboratory and into a real-world weapons system has proved to be an engineering nightmare.
Engineers still are developing the 3 million lines of incredibly complicated computer code for the software that operates the system. And six large chemical-laser modules must be seamlessly linked together to produce enough power. Just fitting all of the systems into the plane is a huge challenge.
Each of the jet's dozens of lenses and mirrors must be perfectly aligned as lasers are fired and routed throughout the aircraft. A slight misalignment not only could disable the laser but could prove catastrophic for the plane and its crew of six to eight people.
Clouds of exhaust from the chemical laser will spew from the plane's belly during flight. The exhaust contributes to a phenomenon called jitter - vibrations the jet encounters while flying and operating its systems - that makes it tough to keep the chemical laser focused on targets hundreds of miles away. Jitter is considered the biggest technical threat facing ABL.
"Unfortunately, it's one of the few risks that will be with us all the way through the program, and we've been very upfront with our supporters about that," Fancher said. "You don't know the airborne environment until you fly in it with the configured weapons system."
With no actual flight tests to measure jitter, engineers are using computer models to check their designs and minimize the problem. Models also are being employed to determine whether the chemical laser's estimated power output and range, a classified distance reportedly about 400 miles, are realistic.
Precipitation or clouds could significantly reduce that range. To increase ABL's effectiveness, engineers have discussed such far-out ideas as bouncing the laser off a mirror on a blimp to minimize atmospheric interference. Critics say those sorts of schemes show just how desperate the program has gotten.
The May report by the independent Government Accountability Office indicates many fundamental questions about the system will not be answered anytime soon.
"Predictions of the military utility of the initial ABL aircraft are still highly uncertain because these forecasts are not based on any demonstrated capability of the system but rather on modeling, simulations and analysis," the report said.
As a huge, highly visible target, ABL would require extensive protection and support by other aircraft while patrolling, at a cost as high as $92,000 per hour. The jet also must periodically return to its base for fuel, maintenance and huge quantities of chemicals needed to keep the lasers working. That means at least three planes would be required for around-the-clock protection, or an enemy could simply wait until the jet landed to launch missiles.
ABL's development costs have more than doubled from an original estimate of $2.2 billion to a projected $5.1 billion through 2009. When the program began in 1996, ABL was scheduled to shoot down its first missile by 2002 and have an operational aircraft flying by 2006. Now, the missile engagements are not likely to happen before 2006 at the earliest.
Program managers face two critical hurdles by the end of the year. The six chemical-laser modules must be linked up to generate the power needed to kill a missile. Long-delayed ground tests are scheduled for November or December.
If the laser works and checks out over a several-month period, it would be moved to ABL by the end of 2005.
Engineers already are installing the targeting lasers aboard ABL. Flight tests are planned before January to see whether the plane's beam control and fire control behave the same in the air as on the ground.
"We basically told the contractors they had to achieve those milestones or their future would be uncertain with respect to the continuation and scope of the program," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency. "That has been a key to why in the last several months they have made remarkable progress."
One thing seems certain: ABL will be remembered either as one of the most spectacular breakthroughs or one of the biggest boondoggles in Pentagon history. Many experts, including some in the Pentagon, have little doubt which legacy it will be.
"To my knowledge, this is one of the biggest turkeys the Defense Department has ever embarked on," said a senior Pentagon analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "There have been others, but this is way up there."
-------- terrorism
British Nuclear Fuels Spends 50 Million Pounds to Foil Terror
(Bloomberg)
Nov. 4, 2004
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&sid=axvXwn1xMWGY&refer=uk
-- British Nuclear Fuels Plc will spend about 50 million pounds ($92 million) this year on measures including armed police patrols to prevent terrorist attacks, a BNFL executive said.
Security guards and armed police patrols run by the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary make up about half the cost, said Roger Howsley, BNFL's director of security, safeguards and international affairs.
The security expenditure, about the same as last year, is up from about 30 million pounds a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. State-owned BNFL has built concrete walls seven meters (30 feet) thick to protect nuclear fuel plants at Sellafield, U.K., from side impacts by planes.
``BNFL has spent some 20 million pounds on physical security enhancements, including these walls which can withstand impacts by the next generation of (passenger) aircraft,'' Howsley said.
Reactor cores are amongst the ``most impenetrable structures'' on earth because they're built to protect workers from radiation and are relatively small targets for a plane to hit, he said at a conference in London on energy security.
The other three police-protected BNFL sites are Chapelcross, Capenhurst and Springfields. The UKAEA Constabulary protects those four sites, plus Harwell and Dounreay, Scotland, and escorts nuclear fuel shipments to and from the facilities. It has 600 police officers, 70 percent of whom carry firearms, Deputy Chief Constable Patrick Crossan said in an interview.
The force hasn't yet encountered a terrorist attack on a nuclear site, Crossan said. Most of the 97 reported crimes in the past year involved theft. It has an annual budget of about 27 million pounds and will be renamed the Civil Nuclear Constabulary in April.
Nuclear Liabilities
That same month, BNFL's U.K. power stations, and their future nuclear liabilities and decommissioning costs, will be transferred to the state-owned Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. BNFL will remain a commercial company seeking decommissioning or reprocessing contracts.
Terrorism experts attending the London conference, including Tamara Makarenko, a fellow at the University of St. Andrew, Scotland, said terrorists are more likely to target oil and gas installations, such as refineries, which have less protection, rather than U.K. nuclear sites.
U.K. policy papers on energy strategy, including a publication last month, said the government ``does not rule out the possibility'' of building more nuclear power stations in the future. Nuclear industry officials doubt the government will make any decision before the next general election, which is expected next year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Voss in London sev@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tim Coulter at tcoulter@bloomberg.net
-------- u.n.
IAEA starts third round of inspections
The Korea Herald
November 4, 2004
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/11/04/200411040022.asp
A five-member inspection team from the U.N. nuclear watchdog launched the third round of inspections in South Korea on Wednesday (November 03) related to South Korea's past nuclear material experiments.
The five-member team from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, South Korea's main nuclear research center, in Daejeon, at around 9:20 in the morning.
This is the third round of inspections so far for the International Atomic Energy Agency since the country acknowledged in early September that its scientists extracted or enriched small amounts of plutonium and uranium, the two key ingredients of atomic bombs, in 1982 and 2000.
Officials of South Korea said the two laboratory experiments were purely scientific and isolated incidents that were unrelated to any weapons program. The inspections will carry on until Sunday during which the IAEA officials will visit a research center in Gongneung-dong in northern Seoul.
Korea's director-general of the Nuclear Bureau at the Science and Technology Ministry, Cho Chung-won, said that it will probably be the last step by the IAEA for preparation of a final report to its 35-nation board of governors, which is to meet on Nov. 25.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon reiterated South Korea's innocence on the experiments. The minister also expressed confidence that the IAEA would deal fairly with Korea's case so it can be settled as soon as possible.
--------
U.N. Nuke Report on Iran May Weaken U.S. Case, Say Diplomats
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau
November 04, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=302
VIENNA, Austria - A new report on U.N. nuclear inspections in Iran may be worded in a way that undermines the U.S. case for reporting Tehran to the Security Council this month, diplomats said on Wednesday.
United Nations nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei is due to present a report next week summarizing his agency's two-year investigation of Iran's nuclear program, which Washington says is a front to develop atomic weapons.
Tehran insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to electricity generation.
"ElBaradei plans to say in his November report on Iran that the agency has so far found no evidence of diversion (to a nuclear weapons program)," said a diplomat who follows the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe. "But he will balance that by saying that Iran's fuel cycle activities would appear to be out of proportion with the other parts of its nuclear program," the diplomat added, referring to Iran's controversial uranium enrichment activities.
Diplomats said ElBaradei had told the Iranians he would be able to pen a positive report if there was a constructive atmosphere in their talks on Friday with European counterparts who want Tehran to freeze its enrichment program.
The IAEA report will be crucial in the U.S. push to have Iran reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions when the watchdog's board meets on Nov. 25.
While the agency has uncovered many previously concealed parts of Iran's nuclear program, it has found no "smoking gun" clearly proving the U.S. allegations.
Several diplomats said a statement that there was no hard proof of diversion would remove a key legal ground for reporting Iran to the Security Council but would not make it impossible.
An IAEA spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the report was still being drafted. Tehran's pursuit of enriched uranium fuel is the most controversial aspect its nuclear program because it could potentially be used to produce material for atomic weapons.
ElBaradei is trying to encourage Iran to accept an E.U. offer of peaceful nuclear technology and other political and economic incentives in exchange for an end to its enrichment program.
"ElBaradei told the Iranians that if the atmosphere in the E.U. three talks is positive, then his report on Iran will also be positive," a diplomat said. "That is quite a carrot for Iran."
Friday's talks with French, German, and British officials will be held in Paris.
If no deal is struck ahead of the Nov. 25 IAEA meeting, the E.U. is expected to support a referral to the Security Council. Diplomats in Vienna say they expect Iran will agree to a temporary suspension of enrichment soon to avoid being referred to the Security Council. However, they said a deal was unlikely to be struck at Friday's meeting.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
New Mexico Bars High-Level Waste From Carlsbad Salt Caverns
November 4, 2004
SANTA FE, New Mexico, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-04-03.asp
The state of New Mexico is setting watchmen in place to ensure that no high-level radioactive waste enters the federal government's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) at Carlsbad. The facility accepts radioactive transuranic waste from across the United States for permanent storage in the Carlsbad salt caverns deep beneath the Earth's surface.
The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) will formally reopen its Carlsbad operations office on Monday, stationing four employees there to conduct environmental monitoring of the Department of Energy's WIPP facility.
The Carlsbad office of NMED's Department of Energy Oversight Bureau has been closed since 1996 due to federal funding cuts.
"These personnel could not have started at a better time," said NMED Secretary Ron Curry. "The problems WIPP have been experiencing lately with the disposal of unapproved waste highlights the need for improved oversight of DOE's operations in Carlsbad."
Secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department Ron Curry (Photo courtesy NMED) Documents obtained by the "Albuquerque Journal" and reported Tuesday show that the DOE shipped at least 602 drums of plutonium waste to New Mexico in violation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules.
The shipments to WIPP from the DOE's Hanford nuclear site violated an August 2003 EPA directive that said the waste should not be shipped because of questions about whether it had been properly tested. It is the second similar incident this year and the fourth since WIPP opened in 1999.
EPA and DOE officials declined to answer questions on the matter, but an internal EPA document obtained by the Journal shows that officials are considering a complete shutdown of all shipments from Hanford to WIPP.
On October 29, in a move designed to bar the disposal of high-level radioactive tank sludges at WIPP, which was permitted only for transuranic waste, Curry signed a WIPP permit modification. "This action gives New Mexico the clear authority to prevent any high-level sludge from coming to WIPP," said Curry.
NMED's actions on this issue began with an October 2003 directive from Governor Bill Richardson to address this issue. This action followed efforts by the Department of Energy to reclassify high-level wastes, possibly making them eligible for WIPP disposal.
In October, Congress approved a change to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, allowing the Department of Energy to reclassify high-level radioactive waste in South Carolina as "waste incidental to reprocessing." The change trumps a 2003 federal court ruling that prohibited DOE from reclassifying high-level radioactive waste.
Curry's modification to WIPP's permit ensures that WIPP remains devoted to the disposal of transuranic waste and does not accept high-level waste.
By modifying the permit, any reclassified high-level waste, as well as tank sludge currently at DOE's Hanford, Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Laboratory (INEEL) and Savannah River facilities, will remain prohibited from WIPP disposal unless the Energy Department proves that the waste is not now and never has been high-level waste. This showing would occur through a subsequent permit modification, Curry said.
High-level waste is highly radioactive waste material that results from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, including liquid waste produced in reprocessing and any solid waste derived from the liquid that contains a combination of transuranic waste and fission products in concentrations requiring permanent isolation.
Transuranic waste stored at WIPP for permanent disposal (Photo courtesy Radiochemistry Society) Transuranic waste contains elements with an atomic number greater than that of uranium such as plutonium, americium, curium and neptunium. Some transuranic elements are used in the production of nuclear weapons, spacecraft batteries, and consumer products such as smoke detectors and soil moisture gauges. Transuranic waste includes not only the transuranic elements themselves, but also ordinary items contaminated with transuranic elements: tools, gloves, protective suits, tarpaulins, soil and sludge.
This modification was submitted to NMED by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on July 2, 2004. It was also subject to a 60-day public comment period. The permit modification signed October 29 was modified from the original DOE proposal to include a public suggestion to more clearly delineate which waste streams are prohibited.
"This is a perfect example of how the permit modification process should work," said Curry. "The public's suggestion to include a concise list of the prohibited high-level waste tanks at DOE's Hanford, INEEL and Savannah River facilities was a good one. Free and open public comment has made this a stronger permit."
"Having these oversight personnel on the ground in Carlsbad is going to benefit both NMED and the citizens of New Mexico," said Curry. "Local oversight will give New Mexicans better environmental protections. These new NMED employees will do vital work, looking over WIPP's shoulder and making sure that this operation is run safely and properly."
-------- us nuc waste
Bush victory keeps light green for Yucca Mountain
Professor: Issue was oversold as election weapon
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By STEVE TETREAULT
November 04, 2004
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Nov-04-Thu-2004/news/25173939.html
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's re-election keeps alive the federal government's effort to bury nuclear waste in Nevada, although the project still faces daunting financial and technical problems, officials said Wednesday.
Critics of the Yucca Mountain Project missed an opportunity to deliver a crushing blow when Bush defeated Democrat John Kerry on Tuesday. Kerry had campaigned in Nevada on a promise to shelve the proposed repository and study alternatives.
Project supporters, including those within the Energy Department, were breathing easier Wednesday, particularly when Bush won Nevada 50 percent to 48 percent on his way to re-election.
"The best outcome was Bush winning, and Bush winning Nevada," said an energy industry executive who said he spoke with DOE officials this week. "At the department, the sword of Damocles was lifted. There had been a cloud of uncertainty and they certainly were expecting the worst."
Former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan of Nevada said Kerry's defeat "clearly is a devastating loss for Nevada because Kerry would have put the whole program on hold and clearly Bush will accelerate it."
Energy Department officials did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment in light of the election results. They have said they want to complete a repository license application by the end of the year, although they also are evaluating their timetables in light of legal and budget setbacks this summer.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said it will be difficult to combat the project when opponents know that Nevada voted for Bush even after he recommended Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste in February 2002 and signed the declaration into law four months later.
"It's becoming increasingly more difficult when the people from the state of Nevada have just handed a mandate to the very person who has vowed to turn the state into a nuclear dump," she said.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's possible ascension to become the Senate's Democratic leader will be Nevada's "ace hole card," with powers to block Yucca legislation, Bryan said.
But an industry executive who asked not to be identified noted Reid already had free rein in the Senate on Yucca matters. "I don't see how much more damage he can do," he said.
Kerry stumped on his Yucca Mountain promise during his seven trips to Nevada, and Reid spotlighted the contender's stance in a television commercial that ran late in the campaign.
Exit polls showed two-thirds of voters considered Yucca Mountain important to their decision making, according to The Associated Press.
But the issue failed to be a silver bullet.
U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Yucca Mountain helped Kerry to some extent.
"Without this issue, I think Nevada would have gone for Bush by 10 points," Ensign said. "There's no question that a Massachusetts liberal is not going to get within three points in Nevada without this issue."
Ensign said Kerry's pressure also forced Bush to promise he would abide by court rulings and decisions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the project.
Erik Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Yucca Mountain was oversold as a potent election weapon.
"Bush won the state by 20,000 votes four years ago and he won the state by 20,000 votes this time," Herzik said. Democrats "tried to push (Yucca Mountain) in a big way and it just wasn't there.
"This was as clear a referendum on the issue as you can find, and Yucca lost," Herzik said.
With the dust settling on the election, the Energy Department is in the same position it was in before: striving to develop a repository that is in financial distress on Capitol Hill and lacking a radiation safety standard that was thrown out by a federal court in July, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
"I don't think it makes things any easier for DOE," Loux said.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, said key lawmakers supporting Yucca Mountain are working with the Bush administration to solve a funding shortfall that might be passed during the congressional lame duck session later this month.
Hobson, chairman of the House energy and water subcommittee, said lawmakers are focusing on an amount between the $577 million DOE received last year for Yucca Mountain and $880 million the administration has requested for fiscal 2005. He would not disclose the amount.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai Officially Declared Winner
Outcome of Afghanistan's Election Overshadowed by Hostage Drama
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23521-2004Nov3.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 3 -- President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday was officially declared the winner of Afghanistan's first-ever democratic presidential election more than three weeks after votes were cast, giving him a five-year mandate to try to steer this country out of a quarter-century of civil war and strife.
The announcement was made by officials of the Joint Electoral Management Body, a U.N. and Afghan agency that organized the Oct. 9 vote, after a team investigating allegations of election day voting fraud concluded that the irregularities that existed were insufficient to overturn Karzai's commanding lead.
"This was a commendable election, particularly given the challenging circumstances," an investigating panel of three foreign experts concluded. The panel acknowledged that "there were shortcomings" but said that "these concerns could not have materially affected the overall result of the election."
So Karzai, who had strong support from the Bush administration and was long considered the front-runner after being appointed as the interim leader, was officially named the winner with 55.4 percent of the vote -- an overall majority and enough to avoid a runoff. He was more than 39 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, Yonus Qanooni, his former interior and education minister.
The conclusion to the election, however, was overshadowed by the ongoing drama over three foreign U.N. election workers kidnapped last Thursday by insurgents linked to the ousted Taliban government. It was the first such kidnapping of foreigners in the capital, Kabul, and immediately raised fears that militants might be adopting a technique used by insurgents in Iraq.
The kidnappers had originally threatened to kill the hostages by midday Wednesday if their demands were not met. The demands included the release of all Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners from U.S. military detention facilities here and in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. But a spokesman for the Army of Muslims, the group officials believe is holding the hostages, told news agencies that the deadline had been extended for an unspecified period and that negotiations were continuing between the group and a government mediator. The government appealed on television Wednesday night for information about the hostages.
Afghan and U.N. officials declined to discuss the details of the negotiations, but security experts said they believed that contact had been made with the hostage-takers and the Army of Muslims, a small, radical faction that broke away from the Taliban movement headed by Mohammad Omar, who is being pursued by U.S. forces.
The kidnappings of other foreigners in Afghanistan, most of them Indian and Turkish contract workers employed by a firm rebuilding a road between Kabul and Kandahar, have been resolved with the payment of ransom.
On Tuesday, Afghan religious leaders, through the Afghan Ulema Council, issued a statement saying the kidnappings "can only defame Islam and have no other result." The statement said the council "asks those who have taken these people hostage to release them."
--------
Karzai Vows Crackdown on Warlords, Drugs
November 4, 2004
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_ELECTION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Hamid Karzai pledged Thursday to use his five-year term as Afghanistan's first elected president to crack down on warlords and the country's booming drug economy.
Accepting his victory in the historic Oct. 9 ballot, Karzai also appealed to his rivals hours after they conceded defeat despite lingering fraud allegations.
"The Afghan people have placed their trust in us, for which we are very grateful," Karzai said at his Presidential Palace, flanked by his two smiling running-mates. "It will be hard to live up to, but we will do our best."
Karzai has said smashing Afghanistan's opium and heroin smugglers will be his top priority and the key to reining in warlords resisting the feeble authority of the central government.
He has also pledged to clear his Cabinet of faction leaders who helped the United States oust the Taliban three years ago but have proved to be deadweights in office.
Asked if any warlords or figures believed to profit from drugs would survive the purge, Karzai said: "There will not be any private militia forces in Afghanistan."
"There will definitely, definitely not be any drug thing in Afghanistan," he said. "We're going to be dedicated, strong in working against that."
Election officials declared Karzai the winner Wednesday after more than three weeks of laborious counting and arguments about whether Karzai had cheated his way to victory.
Yunus Qanooni, who finished second with 16 percent compared to Karzai's 55 percent, accepted the result just hours before Karzai made his televised acceptance speech.
"For me, Afghanistan's national interests are the most important," said Qanooni, Karzai's former education minister. "If we didn't accept the result, the country would go toward a crisis."
Ethnic Hazara chieftain Mohammed Mohaqeq and ethnic Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum followed suit.
A boycott could have undermined Karzai's chances of extending his authority across a country still riven with factional and ethnic tensions, and soured the atmosphere for parliamentary elections slated for the spring.
A panel of foreign experts that examined the allegations said it found a string of irregularities, including ballot-stuffing, but said they couldn't have changed the result.
Karzai, who is to be inaugurated in early December, has vowed to accelerate the slow rebuilding of a country, shattered by war and drought, with the goal of doubling the income of ordinary Afghans by 2009.
But any attempt to focus on the economy will be complicated by the challenge of confronting warlords, drug traffickers and Taliban militants all at the same time.
The country's insecurity also has been highlighted by an ongoing hostage crisis involving three foreign election helpers.
The abductions last week have been claimed by a splinter group of the Taliban, but officials also suspect the involvement of militia leaders resisting Karzai's growing authority.
-------- africa
Sudanese Troops Attack and Destroy Camp in Darfur
Refugees Fear Relocation Campaign
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23520-2004Nov3?language=printer
AL-JEER SUREAF, Sudan, Nov. 3 -- Gripping a pair of pliers, a doctor pried a bullet from Amina Kharim's swollen and bleeding left arm. Eight hours earlier, at dawn Tuesday, she had been asleep in a shelter of grass and sticks when government soldiers and police stormed into this camp of 5,000 in South Darfur.
Residents and relief workers said the troops burned shelters, smashed water pipes, fired tear gas and beat people as they fled half-asleep from their huts. Within five hours, they said, the camp was reduced to ashes and about 100 residents were crammed into the makeshift clinic, seeking first aid for gunshot wounds, burns and bruises.
"I saw the military coming and heard some shots. Then I felt pain and saw my arm bleeding. Now, my heart is burning with anger," said Kharim, 26, gripping her arm to steady it while the doctor worked in the shade of the mud-and-straw clinic. "There was a lot of blood, and then they started burning my hut. The world is not doing enough to protect us. We are so tired. Can someone please come help us?"
With violence still raging in Darfur's 20-month conflict between African rebels and pro-government forces, aid workers and camp residents said they feared Tuesday's pre-dawn assault was the beginning of a campaign to force displaced people back to villages where they could be vulnerable to further attack by Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.
Within a few hours of the attack, camp residents said, 250 families were placed in government trucks and moved under armed guard to an area 25 miles south. And at a nearby camp, Otash, officials removed an unknown number of residents and blocked access to aid workers.
"This was not supposed to have happened. This is forced relocation," complained Brig. Gen. Festus Okonkwo, a Nigerian officer from the African Union mission in Darfur. Okonkwo's team of 19 civilian monitors and 56 protective troops is based just eight miles from here, but he said news of the attack took him completely by surprise.
"They tried to remove them and they didn't want to go, so still they bulldoze the houses. No one was aware this was happening," he said.
At the United Nations, Jan Pronk, the U.N. envoy to Sudan, said there were "strong indications that war crimes and crimes against humanity have occurred in Darfur on a large and systematic scale," according to the Associated Press." In a report to the U.N. Security Council, he accused Sudan's government of failing to "end impunity" and bring to justice the perpetrators of widespread killings, rapes, looting and village burnings.
In Washington, the State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration "stands with the international community in holding the government of the Sudan responsible for the violations and requests immediate return" of the camp residents who were moved Tuesday.
Local officials defended the assault on al-Jeer Sureaf, saying they had been asked by the Sudanese government to remove people from the camps who had been stealing food from nearby communities. Some relief workers acknowledged that outsiders had been entering the camps to receive food and medical aid intended for residents displaced by war.
"The African leaders asked us to remove these people," said Mohammed Abdel Osman, an assistant to the governor of South Darfur in the nearby city of Nyala. "We did that service for them." But officials in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, said they knew nothing about the incident and were investigating it.
Aid officials said they were puzzled by the officials' explanation, because the pre-dawn attack appeared aimed not at outside visitors but at the huts of camp residents who have fled war in other parts of Darfur. Some of those whose huts were torched Tuesday said they had escaped from villages that were attacked and burned by the Janjaweed.
As security conditions worsened, the United Nations halted food delivery operations in parts of South Darfur on Tuesday, cutting off aid to about 160,000 refugees in western Darfur. The United Nations also airlifted 88 aid workers out of South Darfur on Monday as a safety precaution.
"The space that we have for humanitarian activity is shrinking. It's a general trend downward, and it's very disturbing," said Barry Came, a spokesman for the World Food Program, a U.N. agency. "The security situation just continues to deteriorate."
The residents of al-Jeer Sureaf are among about 1.5 million Africans who live in squalid tent cities across Darfur after being driven from their farms by the fighting, which broke out in February 2003 when African tribes rebelled against the Arab-led government.
In retaliation, the United Nations says, the government has bombed villages and armed the Janjaweed militias. Tens of thousands of people have died from hunger, disease and violence; the Bush administration has described the crisis as genocide.
Worries over security have increased significantly since last month, when two aid workers from Save the Children were killed by a land mine. U.N. officials have blamed one of several African rebel groups for the attack. Tensions also increased when African Union monitors reported that 18 Sudanese of Arab origin were taken hostage while traveling on a bus last week.
Rebel groups deny setting the mines; they have also accused the Janjaweed of forcing 30 ethnic Africans from a bus on Sunday and shooting them. The African Union said it was investigating.
Pronk, of the United Nations, blamed rebels for stepping up attacks, harassing aid workers and stealing food from convoys. Some refugees said they believed the government assault here might be retaliation for stepped-up rebel actions.
"The incident of the mine is a very big concern. People who lay mines are cowards," Pronk said. "This kind of behavior has to stop because insecurity and violence [are] escalating. We are in a dilemma of increasing difficulties on the ground, increasing fighting, increasing number of people fleeing. But it's more difficult to help them because of the violence."
As camp residents here tended to their wounds and salvaged their belongings from smoldering huts, they described the ordeal that began at 3 a.m. when the troops entered their sleeping settlement. A midwife at the clinic said she had tied the beds of the maternity ward together and armed herself with knife.
Lying on a metal cot with several broken ribs, Taja Ibrahim, 28, writhed in pain and took gulps of air, her whole body heaving as she struggled to breathe. She said that the government troops had beaten her with sticks and guns but that she was too afraid of the Janjaweed to return home.
Nearby, Halima Hassan Adam, 21, cradled her newborn baby in her arms as she sat disconsolately outside their former home, now just a pile of singed straw. Her 3-year-old son's eyes still stung from the tear gas. The young mother bent down and searched the ground, hoping to save a few beans that had been crushed in the attack.
"I delivered my baby here 22 days ago," she said. "This was the only home we had. Now since yesterday, we have had no food or water. I am so scared. I am just holding my children tight and praying."
In the scorched camp, lizards scurried over charred blankets and donkeys nosed through the remains of shelters. But by dusk, women were starting to rebuild their homes, knotting vines of grass to long tree branches to make circular shelters. Meanwhile, aid workers filtered back into the community, surveying the ruins with horror.
"It makes you so angry you want to cry," said one worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's like the government wants to get rid of people in the town and send them to the desert where they are closer to death."
Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
--------
Liberia Disperses Warring Factions but Violence Persists in Capital
November 4, 2004
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/africa/04liberia.html?pagewanted=all
MONROVIA, Liberia, Nov. 3 - Liberia said it had finished dismantling its warring factions on Wednesday in an effort to end 14 years of war. Yet the announcement came against a backdrop of new violence in the capital and concerns that promises to rehabilitate ex-combatants have yet to be fulfilled.
"We have dismantled a critical component of the war machine but it will be meaningless unless we create opportunities," said Moses Jarbo, chairman of the National Disarmament Commission.
Since the United Nations disarmament program resumed in April after a disastrous start last December, more than 96,000 men, women and children have enrolled, handing in some 27,000 weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition, according to the latest United Nations statistics.
"I would like to take this moment to declare our organization, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, officially dissolved," said Sekou Conneh, chairman of the group that took up arms in 1999 against former President Charles Taylor, setting off Liberia's second civil war since 1989.
But severe underfinancing of the rehabilitation and reintegration phase has left most ex-combatants without work and without prospects in a country with an unemployment rate estimated at 80 percent.
"The thousands of young fighters are now the responsibility of the transitional government and will look up to you for leadership," said Lewis Brown, who was foreign minister under Mr. Taylor.
The disarmament ceremony at the presidential mansion occurred against a backdrop of tighter security. Riots last week left at least 18 people dead and hundreds of properties burned to the ground, including mosques, churches and religious schools.
Ethnic tensions between the mostly Muslim Mandingos and Liberia's other, mainly Christian ethnic groups helped fuel the violence, along with mounting frustration at the dire living conditions here.
An emergency curfew has been in force in Monrovia since Friday, and security considerations prevented six West African heads of state from attending Wednesday's event.
"We knew there would be setbacks but we will not be derailed by a coalition of the unwilling," the United Nations special envoy, Jacques Klein, said in his address.
While the disarmament operation gets under way, reports are rampant of arms caches in Liberia and across its porous borders with Guinea and Ivory Coast, both potential flashpoints.
"This is a new chance for Liberia," said a former Nigerian president, Abdu Salami Abubakar, the chief mediator for the Economic Community of West African States in the Liberian peace effort. "I hope you do not blow it up."
-------- arms
Weapons of microelectronic destruction
Last of four parts In an age of global terrorism, directed energy may represent the kind of adaptive technology Defence R&D Canada needs. Find out where it might appear outside the military
11/4/2004
itbusiness.ca
by Fawzia Sheikh
http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&lid=1&sid=57221
A shoulder-fired missile threat last year forced an Israeli El Al flight from Toronto's Pearson International Airport to divert twice from its destination of Los Angeles and land in Hamilton, Ont. and then Montreal. The airline later installed an anti-missile system on some of its aircraft.
Not only does this mechanism save lives and planes, it may save airlines that are "flying on the brink of bankruptcy," argued Philip Twardawa, acting chief scientist at Defence R&D Canada-Valcartier (DRDC) in Val-Bélair, Quebec.
"If you're at an airport and you see the aircraft ahead of you knocked down out of the sky by a missile, chances are you're going to cancel your ticket. This is the type of threat becoming prevalent. Given new threats, we're adapting defensive technologies."
The agency is winding down expensive projects from the 1980s revolving around the Cold War's well-defined threat of sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now it's focusing on attacks from underground terrorist groups using cruder weapons like improvised explosive devices -- cheap home-made bombs with a detonator activated by cell phone that Twardawa said are "bothering a lot of our military in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Scientists believe directed-energy weapons are one of the methods of choice to face off against this new threat. Laser weapons positioned on commercial aircraft that destroy the optics of heat-seeking missiles and introduce false guidance systems represent a use of directed energy devices outside of the military.
Other civilian uses can be seen in Tasers, police weapons connected to an electrical signal that shoot probes at people and that are marketed to women for self-defence.
Among this crop of weapons are also high-powered microwave devices, systems that "fry" on-board electronics of an incoming vehicle and force it to stop without harming civilians, explained Twardawa.
That said, "nothing is guaranteed. What is non-lethal for one person might be lethal for another person.
"For example, if somebody has a pacemaker in his heart, the high-powered microwave might do some damage," he said, adding aggressors may be held liable for using these weapons. (In fact, several Canadian deaths at the hands of police using Tasers have generated criticism about the supposedly non-lethal nature of the weapons.)
The government still has its fair share of fine-tuning to do, since these weapons are relatively new, Twardawa said. The Directional Infrared Countermeasures, a system protecting aircraft from heat-seeking missiles developed by Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp., is being used by both the UK and American militaries. On the market for five years, it's considered by Twardawa to be the first generation.
At home, analysts are hard-pressed to name a local company working on directed-energy weapons for the military, blaming a dearth of information about the subject here. DRDC added it's not working with contractors yet for its work in directed energy.
Not only is there still a mythology surrounding this science-fiction world of Star Trek-era phasers and ray guns, research on the weapons is highly sensitive and classified, explained Rob Huebert, assistant director, Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
Huebert said directed-energy weapons are cloaked in secrecy because they have tremendous potential to change the notion of a deadly projectile, as high-powered beams reduce traditional problems associated with locking on to targets.
"What I've seen seems to suggest that the biggest challenge that is faced in terms of directed-energy weapons is the power source. If it's X-ray, if it's particle, whatever you're shooting through the directed energy, how do you build enough energy that it becomes meaningful?"
This is why he believes researchers are trying to cut the power requirement, though he admits it's hard to find accurate information.
The U.S., not surprisingly, invests more capital in the research and production of directed-energy weapons. But Canada is keeping its ear to the ground on advances occurring south of the border, and knows the technology also exists in "terrorist countries or countries of questionable political regimes," Twardawa explained.
Nick Papiccio, vice-president of development at Oerlikon Contraves Inc. in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., a solution provider for defence systems, doubted Canada will ever be involved in a multibillion-dollar industry of high-energy microwave or particle-beam weapons.
Canada is, however, exploring directed energy from a "tactical-operational level" to protect vehicles from bombs like rocket-propelled grenades, Papiccio said.
But the scarcity of directed-energy weapons in the armed forces is of little concern to the Canadian public, according to Howie Marsh, senior defence analyst at the Conference of Defence Associations in Ottawa.
"We're a nation of people who believe that peace comes through education and sharing wealth. We don't want to do weaponization of space. We don't want to do ballistic missile defence. I'm sure we don't want to do directed-energy weapons (to use against) either solids (equipment) or liquids (humans).
"So our directed-energy weapons will be in magnetic resonance imaging machines in hospitals, as opposed to (on) platforms on 747s flying above."
-------- asia
Don't extend GSDF's Iraq aid mission, most in poll say
Nov. 4, 2004
The Japan Times
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20041104a5.htm
A majority of people surveyed Wednesday by Kyodo News said they oppose extending the Ground Self-Defense Force troops' humanitarian aid mission in Iraq beyond the Dec. 14 deadline.
Of the 1,022 randomly selected people responding to a telephone poll, 63.3 percent said the GSDF's one-year mission in the southern Iraq city of Samawah should not be extended when it expires in December, while 30.6 percent replied that the mission should be extended.
Government leaders have earlier indicated that Japan plans to extend the mission unless the local security situation deteriorates.
Earlier this week, Tokyo confirmed that a rocket fired Sunday night at the GSDF camp in Samawah damaged a structure but did not explode. The incident marks the first time an enemy weapon has caused any damage since roughly 600 GSDF troops began their mission in January.
Among people who support Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, 47.5 percent said they back extending the GSDF mission, compared with 44.2 percent who opposed the extension.
But among supporters of the LDP's ruling coalition partner, New Komeito, 49.8 percent opposed the extension of the GSDF mission, compared with 49.0 percent who supported an extension.
The poll was taken in the wake of the grisly beheading of Japanese hostage Shosei Koda by Islamic gunmen who had demanded the pullout of the GSDF troops from Iraq.
According to the survey, 58.6 percent of the respondents said it was appropriate for Koizumi to reject the demand by Koda's captors, while 35.1 percent said the decision was inappropriate.
Also, 64.2 percent of the respondents said Koizumi should rethink his position of following the U.S. policy on Iraq, compared with 31.2 percent who said Japan should continue it.
-------- business
EADS more than doubles net profit, raises forecasts
PARIS (AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104112015.ru0n8cf2.html
The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company reported Thursday that its nine-month net profit more than doubled, thanks largely to sales of Airbus aircraft, and raised its full-year forecast.
"With the good results from Airbus and a pickup in space activities we can confirm an improvement in prospects for 2004 and beyond," EADS co-chief executive Philippe Camus told reporters accompanying him on a trip to Thailand.
He said the group, which holds an 80 percent stake in Boeing's chief rival Airbus, expected operating profit to reach 2.2 billion euros (2.9 billion dollars) this year on sales of 32 billion.
EADS had previously forecast operating earnings before interest and taxation of 2.1 billion euros and sales of 31 billion.
Camus also voiced confidence in the outcome of talks with the British government on a 13-billion-pound (18.8-billion-euro, 24-billion-dollar) contract to supply the Royal Air Force with air tankers.
"Negotiations are going very positively and I am convinced we are close to a favorable conclusion," he said.
A source familiar with the matter said Wednesday discussions on the deal with a consortium led by EADS has seen "substantial elements" agreed since September, adding that a deal could be struck by late December at the earliest.
EADS earlier in the day reported net profit of 597 million euros in the first nine months of the year, up from 242 million in the same period last year, on sales that rose 16 percent to 21.5 billion euros.
At the operating level earnings before interest and taxation shot up to 1.5 billion euros from 784 million a year earlier.
Camus made it clear that the healthy performance this year was due to a stronger demand in the civil aviation sector.
"We see air traffic recovering and plan to deliver at least 315 Airbus planes this year," he said, adding that in 2005 he expected "double-digit growth" in Airbus deliveries from the 2004 figure.
Airbus in the first nine months delivered 224 planes, compared with 199 in the January-September period of 2004. The company reported 305 deliveries in
The Airbus unit, also 20 percent owned by BAE Systems of Britain, had operating profit of 1.382 billion euros in the first nine months from 701 million in the same period of 2003.
EADS said its overall orders were down 58 percent to 20.603 billion euros in the first nine months. Camus stressed that the decline reflected an exceptional performance last year, notably 20 billion euros' worth of orders for the future Airbus military aircraft, the A400M, and 21 orders for the superjumbo A380 civilian airliner.
EADS said a decline in the value of Airbus orders in the fist nine months, from 37.028 billion euros last year to 10.547 billion, was offset by an increase in orders received by the group's space and defense divisions.
Overall EADS orders in the period edged up to 179.7 billion euros from 179.3 billion in the first nine months of 2003.
In the space division, losses in the first nine months were cut to five million euros from 184 million last year. But in the third quarter the unit managed to turn a profit of six million euros.
"We will see a positive contribution from space activities this year," Camus said.
EADS shares were slightly lower in mid-morning trading here, down 0.91 percent at 22.78 euros on a generally weaker market.
Traders, who welcomed the group's financial results, said the slide reflected profit taking and a weaker dollar.
-----
WMC Expects Other Mining Companies to Consider Bids (Update3)
(Bloomberg)
Nov. 4, 2004
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000081&sid=aOBnJk_bcCe0&refer=australia
-- WMC Resources Ltd., which rejected a A$7.4 billion ($5.5 billion) approach from Xstrata Plc, is probably a target for other miners, Chief Financial Officer Bruce Brook said. It hasn't received other approaches for information.
Melbourne-based WMC Resources, the world's fifth-largest nickel metal producer, said Oct. 28 Xstrata's A$6.35-a-share cash bid was too low. The stock rose after the Australian said Xstrata may make a formal A$6.85 offer. WMC Resources hasn't received a higher bid, Brook said.
BHP Billiton or Rio Tinto Group may also try and buy WMC Resources, betting metals demand in China will continue to rise, investors and traders have said. Xstrata last year acquired Australia's M.I.M. Holdings Ltd. for $2.3 billion, while Rio in 2000 bought Melbourne-based North Ltd., also for $2.3 billion.
``Xstrata has placed in a bid at the top of the commodities cycle, and that may have caught the other miners by surprise and caused the delay in counter bids,'' said Mark Pervan, head of research at Daiwa Securities SMBC in Melbourne. ``WMC is one of the few mid-cap high quality stocks left, and it has always been a takeover target.''
The shares of WMC Resources rose 9 cents, or 1.3 percent, to A$6.94 on the Australian Stock Exchange, after rising as much as 2 percent.
WMC Resources has said the Xstrata offer doesn't reflect the potential value of its assets, and Brook today called the offer a ``steal''. The company, which gets 87 percent of its pretax profit from nickel, expects new technology will help it boost nickel production by another 25 percent.
`Great Strategic Value'
``It's now pretty clear that we're on the radar screen of every major resources company,'' Brook said in an interview in Singapore. ``We do have great strategic value.'' Other companies are ``welcome to ask for information, but they are not at this stage,'' he said.
BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have both declined to comment on the speculation.
``We haven't and that's news to me,'' Brook said, when asked whether the company had received a formal offer of A$6.85 from Xstrata. Xstrata Copper's spokeswoman Sue Sara declined to comment on the Australian newspaper report.
WMC Resources also owns the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia, which sits atop the world's eighth-largest copper deposit. The mine may become the world's largest uranium producer if expansion plans went ahead, WMC Resources has said.
The company today said it appointed UBS AG and Citigroup Inc. as its advisers.
Copper and nickel prices this year reached their highest in more than a decade as global economic growth bolstered metals demand and depleted inventories.
-------- china
Civil Unrest Challenges China's Party Leadership
Protests Growing Larger, More Frequent, Violent
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23519-2004Nov3?language=printer
BEIJING, Nov. 3 -- As police battled to suppress deadly ethnic clashes last week in central China, tens of thousands of rice farmers fighting a dam project staged a huge protest in the western part of the country. The same day, authorities crushed a strike involving 7,000 textile workers.
A week earlier, a large crowd of retirees demanding pension payments blocked traffic for days in a city in the east; nearly a thousand workers demonstrated outside a newly privatized department store in the northeast; and police used rubber bullets and tear gas to quell a giant mob of anti-government rioters in a western city.
The string of disturbances, described by local journalists, witnesses and participants, highlights the daily challenge that civil unrest now poses to the ruling Communist Party. Despite historic economic growth that has lifted millions out of poverty, protests and riots in the world's most populous country are occurring with increasing frequency, growing in size and ending more often in violence.
This expansion of social strife has yet to shake the party's authoritarian grip on power. But the trend, evident in the government's own police statistics, has prompted alarm at the highest levels of the Chinese leadership, which has repeatedly declared social stability its top priority.
The Communist Party has indicated it is worried that these outbursts of discontent might coalesce into large-scale, organized opposition to its rule. The concern was apparent in a report by its Central Committee in September urging officials to improve governance and warning that "the life and death of the party" was at stake.
"The Soviet Union used to be the world's number one socialist country, but overnight the country broke up and political power collapsed," Vice President Zeng Qinghong wrote last month in the People's Daily, the party's flagship newspaper. "One important reason was that in their long time in power, their system of governing became rigid, their ability to govern declined, people were dissatisfied with what the officials accomplished, and the officials became seriously isolated from the masses."
There were more than 58,000 major incidents of social unrest in the country last year, about 160 per day on average, according to the party magazine Outlook. That was an increase of 15 percent over 2002 and nearly seven times the figure reported by the government just a decade ago. Another study of police statistics, by Murray Scot Tanner, a scholar at the U.S.-based Rand Corp., concluded the demonstrations were growing in size while violence, including attacks on party and state officials, was also on the rise.
"Research institutes like our center are working on this issue day and night, and so is the government," said He Zengke, executive director of the China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics in Beijing. "We all know the importance and urgency of the problem."
The incidents that erupted over the past two weeks illustrate the wide variety of factors behind this wave of unrest: tensions between the Han ethnic majority and ethnic and religious minorities such as the Muslim Hui; a widening wealth gap and persistent government corruption; the seizure of farmland for development; and layoffs associated with the transition from socialism to capitalism.
The party once blamed domestic unrest on subversives and foreign agents, but it now acknowledges that many taking part in these protests have legitimate grievances. Officials also recognize that protests are inevitable in a rapidly changing country and can serve as a safety valve for pent-up public anger.
Wang Yukai, a professor at the National School of Administration, which trains government officials, said most protesters were among the poor who have suffered in the transition to a market economy and have been unable to protect their rights through approved channels. He said the party's recent call to improve governance is an attempt to address this problem by making officials more responsive to the public and less corrupt.
But the party, under the leadership of President Hu Jintao, has ruled out democratic reform as an option, choosing instead to experiment with broadening its base and making leaders more accountable to party members. It has also adopted a carrot-and-stick approach toward protests, giving in to some demands while arresting activists and taking firm steps to prevent demonstrations from spreading.
One of the party's key weapons is the control of information; officials restrict or bar news reporting of all social unrest. But with the growing use the Internet and e-mail, widening access to overseas news media and the prevalence of cell phones and text messaging, censorship is becoming more difficult.
Word of a traffic dispute between Han and Hui villagers in central Henan province spread so quickly last week that thousands rioted before police could respond. More worrisome for the authorities, residents reported that hundreds if not thousands of Hui from other parts of China learned of the clashes by telephone and rushed to the region.
Similarly, an altercation a week earlier in the western city of Chongqing between a deliveryman and a fruit market worker attracted a crowd of thousands within hours because the worker passed himself off as a government official and threatened to use his influence to resolve the dispute. The incident sparked a riot in which residents set fire to police cars and looted government offices. Local authorities attempted to impose a news blackout, but photos and accounts of the riot quickly appeared on the Internet.
The efforts of party censors sometimes help fuel unrest by allowing rumors to fly without challenge. In Henan, residents reported hearing inflammatory and contradictory accounts of what sparked the violence. Meanwhile, in western Sichuan province, farmers who massed at the site of a proposed dam and staged one of China's largest rural protests in recent years gave differing versions about demonstrators being beaten to death by police.
Many farmers said they were among a crowd of more than 60,000 that carried the body of a colleague to a government building in Hanyuan County in protest. But Gao Qiansheng, 38, one of the farmer activists, said the body was that of a young farmer who died in a motorcycle accident on the way to the protest. He said no one was beaten to death, though at least two people were injured in a scuffle with police.
The government's response to that protest and the other recent incidents illustrates its growing sophistication at managing civil unrest.
Gao said tens of thousands of farmers whose land would be flooded by the dam were protesting the meager relocation and compensation package offered by the government. The demonstration began Wednesday at the dam site and continued until Friday, when senior local officials persuaded the farmers to return home by pledging not to begin construction until their concerns were addressed.
Meanwhile, authorities in Xianyang, a mid-sized city in Shaanxi province, succeeded in ending a labor strike that had lasted seven weeks, the longest known to have occurred in China in recent years. Police had refrained from violence at the former state textile mill, worried about sparking a riot, and chose instead to slowly identify worker activists and arrest them one by one, witnesses said. The authorities then offered partial concessions to the 7,000 workers, persuading most of them to return to the factory on Sunday.
Residents said authorities also promised concessions to defuse two large labor protests in other cities a week earlier. But the party's approach -- some officials call it "buying stability" -- sends the message that protests are the most effective way to seek redress from the government, and the more people involved the better. After the farmers protesting the dam in Sichuan disbanded, they worried that local officials were breaking their promises. On Wednesday, witnesses said, more than 10,000 protesters returned to the site.
Researchers Jin Ling, Zhang Jing and Vivian Zhang contributed to this report.
-------- europe
German Papers Grasping the Second Coming of Bush
SPIEGEL ONLINE
November 4, 2004
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,326425,00.html
Europe can hardly believe it. How could the Americans re-elect President George W. Bush? Some German papers attempt to answer that question. Others just throw up their hands in frustration.
The German press is obsessed on Thursday. Major newspapers across the country focus almost exclusively on President George W. Bush's re-election. All papers lead with the story -- here's a round-up of headlines:
Die Zeit: "Why Him Again?" Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "Bush Stays President" Sueddeutsche Zeitung: "Bush Remains President of the USA" Financial Times Deutschland: "Bush Achieves a Clear Victory over Kerry" Tageszeitung: "Oops -- They Did it Again" Die Welt: "Bush Stays in the White House" Handelsblatt: "US President Bush Strengthened Entering Second Term"
Exhaustive reporting characterized the coverage by all newspapers with most devoting at least six pages to the US election, with the relatively small-sized Tageszeitung including a 12-page dossier. The editorialists likewise focus their attention on the US with a number of clear themes emerging.
The first comes out of Germans' complete disbelief that Bush could have been re-elected. How, many are openly wondering, could this have happened? Some editorialists have an answer to that question: Germans, and indeed Europeans, just don't understand the United States. The conservative Die Welt addresses this issue in its lead editorial, entitled "The End of Wishful Thinking." Europeans, the piece argues, must jettison their desire for the United States to think and act more like the old continent. "Europeans misunderstand their Atlantic partner from time to time, especially because we can't imagine how Americans think and act in the moment of democratic decision-making." Referring also to Europe's lack of understanding for the tremendous shock caused by the Sept. 11 attacks, the paper concludes that the US should not give up on Europe. "That will be difficult for the USA, though, especially when (Europe) continues to give itself over to wishful thinking, fear of power and its anti-American obsession."
The financial daily Financial Times Deutschland echoes this same theme, pointing out that Europe's inability to understand Bush's victory, stems in large part from not understanding the role fear continues to play in American politics. "In the most powerful country in the world," it writes, "an unconscious feeling has become accepted: fear. It is only possible to explain Bush's re-election with the irrational-appearing need for security with which the majority of Americans are obsessed."
A number of papers warn that this misunderstanding could easily transform Europe's simmering anti-Bushism into outright anti-Americanism. After all, US voters have now re-elected the guy. In discussing this problem, the right-of-center Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warns that to avoid the problem, America needs to stop trying to split Europe, and Europe needs to avoid the over-the-top moralizing it has shown in the past four years. Noting the extreme differences that split the United States and the clear geography of that separation, the paper also discusses whether we might be witnessing a culture war in America. It is shocking, it writes, to see "the degree of contempt with which Bible Belt Christians and down-home conservatives look down at their 'liberal' fellow citizens."
One paper, the left-leaning Tageszeitung, seems to have already veered down the path of anti-Americanism. While their coverage of the elections is among the most comprehensive on Thursday, it publishes a piece by Austrian author Robert Misik that is almost celebratory in its condemnation. "This election is a unilateral action," he writes. "The entire world hoped for a John F. Kerry victory, but the rednecks, the Bible-thumpers and other riff-raff from White America weren't terribly interested by that." He also points out that the majority of Americans have voted for "an intellectual midget, fanatic and dried-out alcoholic," and warns his readers that Bush voters are "the dark underside of the American dream. We should get used to seeing the true face of America in people like Private Lynndie England."
Another editorial in Thursday's TAZ can be found under the headline, "Bush Belongs in front of the War Crimes Tribunal -- Not in the White House." The piece makes a point not-uncommon in Europe -- namely that the US invasion of Iraq was undertaken against the wishes of 95 percent of the world's countries. "The lies and manipulations with which the Bush administration justified his (Iraq) policy to Congress, the US population and the world are much worse than even those of President Richard Nixon.... The prerequisites necessary for impeachment hearings have been clearly fulfilled."
An additional theme in Thursday's papers is that Bush's victory this time around was, in contrast to 2000, quite decisive. He won by 3.5 million in the popular vote, the Republican majority in the Senate was confirmed loud and clear and, most importantly, there were no drawn-out recounts. Thus, writes the Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, "the president has cleansed the stain (from 2000). ... Bush won't just be a short episode in history, rather he represents the majority (in a split country)," a position echoed by many other papers. Yet while Bush may have a strong mandate, he has to be careful what he does with it warns the financial daily Handelsblatt. "Bush's clear victory should not obscure the fact that the difficult campaign has left behind a divided country.... Bush, therefore, should rein in any triumphalism." Writing that Bush has an opportunity for a new beginning, the paper continues, "He can only dull the polarization in the US and with foreign partners if he follows the course he promised way back in 2000: to reconcile instead of to divide."
The Handelsblatt also runs a far-reaching editorial by Andrei Markovits, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Michigan, that takes a close look at Bush's meaning for the European Union. The title says it all, "European Crocodile Tears." He argues that Europe should actually be glad that Bush was re-elected. After all, the widespread anti-Americanism -- propelled by European-wide disgust with Bush -- that people in Europe feel is really the only thing uniting them at the moment. He steers clear of supporting anti-American viewpoints, but does write, "If at some point in 50 or 100 years, the statues of the most important EU founders are erected in Strasbourg or Brussels, ... George W. Bush should receive a place of honor.
Finally, the influential weekly Die Zeit weighs in with an appeal to President Bush. While arguing that Kerry's weakness was a significant factor in Bush's victory, the paper also writes, "we need to hope that Bush stops being Bush. That means: Less heavy-handed and self-righteous, with more of a tendency to listen and this in America's own interest. After all, whatever America does in the next four years, it requires reliable, helpful friends -- friends who not only want to be heard but also want respect."
----
EU plans mission, aid in Iraq
November 04, 2004
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041103-090133-2144r.htm
The European Union plans to open a mission in Iraq after the country's first free elections slated for January, to help train police, legal officials and administrators, EU foreign ministers said yesterday.
The 25-nation bloc will discuss its proposal with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is expected to visit Brussels tomorrow. It is part of an aid and cooperation package that includes about $38 million to help the election process, as well as the prospect of a trade agreement.
"An expert team should be sent by the end of November 2004 ... to start initial planning for a possible integrated police, rule of law and civilian administration mission, which is expected to start after the January 2005 elections," EU foreign ministers decided at a meeting earlier this week.
They said, however, that "all security concerns need to be appropriately addressed before any decision ... could be taken."
"Prime Minister Allawi's attendance at the Nov. 5 European Council will present the union with an opportunity to further deepen and broaden its political dialogue with Iraq," the ministers said in a statement.
"Iraq will be given the perspective of an agreement between the EU and Iraq to reflect the mutual interest in developing a partnership and to promote political and trade cooperation," they said.
The $38 million in aid for the elections is an addition to nearly $400 million that the European Union had pledged for Iraqi reconstruction.
Individual member states are ready to make "substantial" contributions to the financing of the U.N. Protection Force in Iraq, after a request by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the ministers also said.
U.S. officials welcomed the new initiatives.
"They are a clear indication that the EU understands the importance of Iraq and the upcoming elections," a State Department official said.
Although the ministers' decisions were taken before President Bush's re-election, both American and European officials expressed hope that the new EU plans for Iraq would help to overcome the prewar rift between Washington and some European countries.
"Europe is definitely working with us in coming up with support for Iraq, not only for the elections but for the reconstruction of Iraq," Rockwell Schnabel, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying.
Mr. Schnabel said Europe and the United States will work in a "new spirit" on trade, counterterrorism measures and security in hot spots such as the Balkans and Afghanistan.
There is even room for cooperation on climate change, despite Mr. Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, he said.
"There is no question that this president is very interested in relations with Europe and recognizes also that we have some work to do to get them back to where they used to be some time ago," Mr. Schnabel said.
--------
ALLIES
Hungary Joins Others in Pulling Troops From Iraq
November 4, 2004
By JUDY DEMPSEY,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/europe/04hungary.html?pagewanted=all
BERLIN, Nov. 3 - Hungary announced Wednesday that it would withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq, becoming the latest country in United States-led coalition to bow to public pressure and prepare to bring its soldiers home.
Speaking at a ceremony for the end of military conscription, the newly appointed prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, said Hungary was obliged to stay until the Iraqi elections scheduled for January, but would withdraw the troops by March.
"To stay longer is an impossibility," said Mr. Gyurcsany (pronounced JOR-chahn-ee).
The United States had persuaded 32 countries to provide 22,000 soldiers as part of the multinational force established to stabilize postwar Iraq. But over the last few months, a number of countries have withdrawn, some citing the cost but others concerned about security, and many governments face increasing public opposition to the war.
Spain's Socialist government withdrew its 1,300 troops after it swept into power last March, reversing the commitment of the prior center-right government of Prime Minister José María Aznar. The Dominican Republic withdrew 302 soldiers, Nicaragua 115 and Honduras 370. The Philippines withdrew its 51 in July, a month early, after insurgents took hostage a Filipino truck driver working for a Saudi company. Norway withdrew 155 military engineers, keeping only 15 staff members to help NATO train and equip the Iraqi security forces.
Two large contributors to the international force - Britain, with 12,000 troops, and Italy, with more than 3,100 - have insisted they will not withdraw. But Poland, the fourth-largest contributor, with 2,400 troops, says it intends to withdraw by the end of next year, and the Netherlands, with 1,400 troops, said this week that the latest rotation of troops would be its last contribution to Iraq.
New Zealand is withdrawing its 60 engineers and Thailand said it wanted to bring home its 450 troops. Singapore has reduced its contingent to 33, from 191; Moldova has trimmed its force to 12, from 42. On Wednesday Bulgaria's Defense Ministry said it would reduce its 483 troops to 430 next month, Reuters reported.
Iraq's interim government had asked Hungary to keep its troops in the country for another year. But Peter Matyuc, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said in a statement that the government would ask Parliament on Monday to extend the troops' mandate by only three months.
"By March 31, 2005, we will bring our troops back from Iraq," Mr. Gyurcsany said. "From then on, the existence of a stable democratic and safe Iraq has to be created by different means, above all political means.''
In a letter signed in January 2003, Hungary joined ranks with Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and Britain in endorsing the Bush administration's willingness to use force to disarm Iraq, a move that deepened Europe's divisions over Iraq. A ninth country, Slovakia, signed the letter later. That first letter was followed by another signed by 10 more countries.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld added to the divisions by describing those governments that opposed military intervention - notably France and Germany - as Old Europe and those who supported Washington as New Europe.
-------- iraq
U.S.-Led Coalition Could See Desertions
Nov 4, 2004
Associated Press
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=5&u=/ap/20041104/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_coalition_jitters_1
BUDAPEST, Hungary - President Bush (news - web sites)'s "coalition of the willing" in Iraq (news - web sites) isn't quite so willing any more, even though its largest members - Britain and Italy - are standing firm.
In a blow to U.S. efforts to keep countries from deserting the multinational force, Hungary said this week it won't keep troops there beyond March 31. The Czechs plan to pull out by the end of February, the Dutch soon afterward. And Japan is feeling pressure to withdraw.
There could be even more troop pullouts after Iraq holds elections in January and nations feel their obligations have ended. The United States has about 142,000 troops in Iraq.
"We should never have sent troops to Iraq. Bringing them back now is already too late," said Janos Fekete, a Budapest shopkeeper.
Key allies said this week their troops were staying. Britain said Hungary's decision would not prompt a withdrawal of its 8,500 troops, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said his country's 3,000 troops would remain for as long as the Iraqi government wants. Berlusconi said it was part of Italy's duty in "defending democracy in the world."
Denmark said its 501 troops in the southern Iraqi city of Basra will stay as long as needed, and Romania is considering bolstering its 730-member force for the elections.
Nevertheless, Hungary's announcement that it won't keep its 300 non-combat soldiers in Iraq beyond the end of March dealt a blow to the coalition.
The ex-communist country and many of its neighbors have been steadfast in their commitment, in part out of gratitude for U.S. support during the Cold War and help in joining the European Union (news - web sites) and NATO (news - web sites). Early last year, Hungary declared it would stay in Iraq through the end of 2004 as a message to the insurgents targeting U.S.-led forces.
Hungary's new prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, says he doesn't believe in pre-emptive war and has been receptive to public calls for a withdrawal. Polls show 60 percent of Hungarians want them home now.
"The intention of our government is to bring back our troops and complete the mission," Gyurcsany said Thursday.
Parliament next week will debate his proposal to extend the troops' mandate, which expires Dec. 31, by three months. But that requires a two-thirds majority vote, and the country's main opposition party has said it will consider an extension only if the troops are given a U.N. mandate.
"Right now, we feel there are more arguments in favor of bringing the troops home," Mihaly Varga, an opposition leader and former finance minister, told The Associated Press.
If lawmakers reject the extension, which seems likely, Hungary's troops could be on their way home by New Year's Day.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher played down the threat of significant drawdowns or pullouts. The Bush administration has worked to preserve and expand the coalition since Spain withdrew its 1,300 troops this year.
"It's too early now to start predicting a mass exodus or departure," Boucher said. "There are a number of countries that have stepped up. There are number of countries going down ... We have always felt that the situation on the ground should determine how people stay and how they work."
Later Thursday, he announced that Georgia was boosting its troop deployment in Iraq, from 159 to 850, to provide security for U.N. officials.
"The United States warmly welcomes this deployment," Boucher said. "It underscores Georgia's commitment to partnership with the people of Iraq and their friends around the world in pursuit of peace, prosperity and democracy in Iraq.
For many Japanese, mourning the beheading of a 24-year-old Japanese backpacker slain by militants in Iraq, the situation is simply too dangerous.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has been beset by calls for a pullout of his country's 500 troops, with the opposition blaming his pro-U.S. policy for the slaying. Koizumi hasn't said whether the forces will extend their aid mission beyond mid-December.
Lawmakers in the Czech Republic voted Thursday to keep 100 military police in Iraq through Feb. 28, but Czech leaders have made it clear they see the Iraqi elections as a logical end to their commitment.
Bulgaria said this week it may "slightly reduce" its contingent of 480 infantry soldiers next year. The Netherlands said its 1,400 troops will finish their mission in March. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all plan to stay through June.
Dutch Defense Ministry spokesman Joop Veen said the country is pulling its troops mainly because it has paid its dues. "We think that other countries who didn't have forces in Iraq should pick up the responsibility," he said.
Portugal's 120 police in Iraq are set to end their current tour Nov. 12. The government was expected to decide Friday whether to keep them there, and Foreign Minister Antonio Monteiro hinted that it would.
"Are we going to give Iraq a chance at sovereignty, or are we going to say `no' and leave them at the mercy of people with guns?" Monteiro asked.
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A Volley of Fire From a Fast-Moving Target
November 4, 2004
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/middleeast/04ramadi.html
FORWARD OPERATING BASE RAMADI, Iraq, Nov. 3 - For most American soldiers and marines here, it was hard to tell which was louder: the 10 enemy rockets and mortars that rained down just before dinnertime with ear-splitting detonations that wounded two people and sent others diving to the ground, or what came next.
Less than a minute after the enemy barrage, a battery of Paladin howitzers began "counterfiring" a burst of eight shots that required the rare use of a "red bag" of propellant. This, according to the men who operate the big guns, is the largest sack of the powder, which can send a 90-pound shell out of the Paladin's 155-millimeter barrel at nearly 700 miles an hour for up to 18 miles.
The shots on Monday were so uncharacteristically loud that a group of marines who had taken cover on a second-floor barracks near where rockets and mortars had landed assumed it was another incoming enemy volley.
In fact, the blasts were being produced by Staff Sgt. Terry Cornwell and the three others in his artillery crew. Most of the time, their shots miss the attackers no matter how quickly and accurately they return fire, because the insurgents who attack this camp each day have a reliable routine.
They fire a quick volley, throw their mortar tubes and rocket launchers into the back of their truck and drive away fast - fast enough to escape before radar operators at the Ramadi base feed the attackers' coordinates, gleaned from tracking their launches, down to the Paladin crews near the edge of the base.
This day was different. "They said we got two of them," said Sergeant Cornwell, 37, of Tulsa, Okla.
For the soldiers and marines here - awaiting all-out warfare in the 30-mile corridor between Ramadi and the insurgent stronghold of Falluja - suicide car bombers, street gunfights and ambushes at traffic checkpoints are only part of the threat. On the base, they dodge mortars, rockets and an unusually talented sniper who has killed three men in the past month from hidden lairs on the western fringe of this city of 400,000.
The Americans fight back with varied success. The enemy mortar and rocket attacks are fewer and much less accurate, the soldiers believe, because of a two-pronged defense: artillery teams that immediately shower attackers with shells, and ground assault teams in armored Humvees that hide until they are radioed the location of insurgent mortarmen nearby.
Even if the mortarmen are not hurt - which is usually the case - this is because the insurgents take only the time needed to fire once or twice and make a dash for it before the retaliation. As Sgt. Anselmo De La Cruz, a 25-year-old from the Bronx who oversees one of the Paladins during a 12-hour overnight shift, put it, "They know what's coming."
As a result, the insurgents are denied vital minutes in which they could adjust fire and take deadlier aim at the base.
But the sniper, who remains at large, is another matter. Base officials and soldiers said the shooter is highly accurate and might be operating at a range of as many as 800 yards. Sergeant Cornwell said one soldier wounded by the sniper told him later that he believed he had survived only because he had just turned his head to look at something when the shot was fired. That movement, the soldier said, shifted his head out of the way and caused the sniper's bullet to puncture his upper back.
"For all this skill the guy has shooting, he had to have been trained in the military," said Specialist Michael Erkan, 20, of Oswego, N.Y. and a member of Sergeant Cornwell's crew.
Hiding in buildings on the outskirts of Ramadi, near the eastern end of the base, the sniper remains a threat for anyone who ventures out of the gate. Teams have tried to take down the sniper, so far to no avail, a base official said.
So far, the roughly 5,500 men and women of the Second Brigade Combat Team have suffered 22 fatalities since they arrived at this base two months ago. In addition to the three sniper victims, Capt. Eric L. Allton, 34, died from mortar fire. All four victims were part of the Second Battalion of the 17th Field Artillery, one of several battalions based here.
One recent morning Sergeant Floyd helped lead a team of soldiers on an ambush mission to take out mortarmen caught firing at the base. Before the mission he admonished the younger soldiers: "Hostile intent, kill them dead, O.K.? Don't try to detain them. Kill them dead. Any questions?"
The mortarmen still active around Ramadi are very good, said Capt. Andre Takacs, 29, who led the mission. "You're probably looking at military Darwinism," he said. "The guys that didn't know what they were doing are probably dead by now."
The mission yielded nothing. Yet for the crew of the Paladin that Sergeant De La Cruz and Sergeant Cornwell each command during separate 12-hour shifts, the counterfiring on Monday added up to "one of our better days," said Specialist Erkan. The most lethal day so far, he said, came a few weeks ago when mortar-bearing insurgents approached to within a few hundred yards of a gate on the other side of the base. The Paladins were ordered to unleash. "It was real gruesome," Specialist Erkan said.
Usually when the Paladin's radio crackles with the call for counterfire, the shots are aborted because commanders at another part of the base decide the fire might hit civilians or American soldiers in the field. The shells have a wide kill zone, the men say - anything in a 50-yard diameter of where it detonates will be killed instantly.
The enemy mortarmen, the soldiers say, have figured out that the Americans are unlikely to launch retaliatory shots if they set up near civilian buildings.
But this is not always the case, and it was not for the insurgents killed and wounded by the Paladin's Monday afternoon broadside, aimed at insurgents a few blocks away from a school, Sergeant Cornwell said.
"They tried to use the school as cover," he said, adding that commanders almost aborted the mission. "They were hesitant in giving us clearance, but they figured we'd hit the target."
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U.S. Forces Pound Parts of Fallujah
November 4, 2004
By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces pounded parts of Fallujah from the air and ground Thursday, targeting insurgents in a city where American forces were said to be gearing up for a major offensive.
Al-Jazeera television broadcast a threat by an unspecified armed group to strike oil installations and government buildings if Americans launch an all-out assault on Fallujah. The report was accompanied by a videotape showing about 20 armed men brandishing various weapons, including a truck-mounted machine gun.
Early Thursday, U.S. aircraft fired on several barricaded militant positions in northeast and southeastern Fallujah, the military said. Later in the day, U.S. artillery batteries fired two to three dozen 155mm shells at insurgent bastions in the city, the military said.
Insurgents and U.S. forces also clashed briefly Thursday in Ramadi, west of Fallujah, but there were no U.S. casualties, the military added.
The fresh action followed overnight fighting on the southeastern outskirts of Fallujah after insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at Marines. Two insurgents were killed while no U.S. casualties were reported, said Lt. Nathan Braden, of 1st Marine Division. Hospital officials in Fallujah reported three civilians were injured in the overnight shelling.
U.S. forces are preparing for a major offensive in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and other Sunni militant strongholds in hopes of curbing the insurgency ahead of January's election.
An Iraqi National Guard patrol was hit Thursday by a car bomb in Iskandariyah, an insurgent hot spot 30 miles south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 15, Iraqi hospital officials said.
A suicide car bomber killed three and wounded nine others when his explosive-laden vehicle barreled into the city government offices in Dujail, 46 miles north of the capital, police said.
On Wednesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing 12 miles south of the capital. A suicide driver detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint near Baghdad airport, injuring nine Iraqis and forcing U.S. troops to close the main route for hours.
Gunmen killed a senior Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, after he left his house in the Yarmouk district of western Baghdad, police said. Al-Fattal was the general manager of a state-owned company that distributes petroleum byproducts.
The violence served as a grim reminder of Iraq's rapidly deteriorating security situation, which President Bush must address now that he has been re-elected.
On Thursday, Al-Jazeera aired video of three Jordanian truck drivers taken hostage by a militant group calling itself Jaish al-Islam, or Army of Islam. The men appealed to their country to warn its citizens against working with coalition forces in Iraq, Al-Jazeera said, although their voices were not audible on the tape.
They were part of a convoy of seven truckers who came under attack Tuesday near Fallujah, according to an official at the Jordanian Truckers Association. One of the drivers was killed in the attack, two others are still missing and a fourth man escaped, he said.
More than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped and more than 30 of them - including three Americans and a Briton - killed in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003. At least six of the foreigners were beheaded by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who has sworn allegiance to al-Qaida.
Another militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, posted a videotape on a Web site showing the beheading of man it said was an Iraqi army major captured in Mosul. The group called Maj. Hussein Shanoun an "apostate" and said he confessed to participating in attacks against insurgents.
Just before his death, Shanoun warned Iraqi soldiers and police against "dealing with the infidel troops," meaning the Americans.
Insurgents have stepped up attacks on Iraq's U.S.-trained security forces, who the Americans hope will assume greater responsibility to enable Washington to begin drawing down its forces - now at their highest levels since summer 2003.
More than 85 percent of the estimated 165,700 multinational troops in Iraq are Americans, despite U.S. efforts to encourage other countries to share the burden.
In other developments Thursday:
- Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi reaffirmed that Italy would keep its 3,000 troops in Iraq for as long as the Iraqi government wanted. His comments, following a meeting with Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, came a day after Hungary said it would withdraw its 300 non-combat troops from Iraq by March 31, undercutting Bush's effort to hold the multinational force together.
- The Czech parliament voted to extend the mandate of about 100 Czech troops in Iraq by two months, to Feb. 28, 2005.
- Allawi received encouragement from Pope John Paul II, a staunch opponent of the war, for building democratic institutions in Iraq. John Paul received Allawi at the Vatican and in a brief speech read for the frail pontiff by an aide said he was praying "for all the victims of terrorism and wanton violence" and for those working for the reconstruction of Iraq.
- Iraqis who live outside the country will be allowed to vote in the January national balloting, the Iraqi election commission said. Commission spokesman Fareed Ayar said the government planned to establish voting centers in countries with large Iraqi populations.
- The body of a Kurdish contractor missing for three months was found in a deserted area outside Kirkuk, an Iraqi official said. Youssef Ahmed, who did business with the interim Iraqi government, was found shot in the head with his hands bound behind his back, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed of the Iraqi National Guard.
- The international medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres said in Belgium it was pulling out of Iraq because of the escalating violence and targeting of aid workers. The organization is also known as Doctors Without Borders.
- Iraq's first group of security officials were in Norway for weeklong training at NATO's elite Joint Warfare Center.
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Bomber Hits Near Baghdad Airport
Lebanese American Kidnapped in Violence Around Capital
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23407-2004Nov3.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 3 -- A car bomb exploded at an airport checkpoint, a Lebanese American was reported kidnapped from his home, three headless bodies were found under a bridge and a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb as violence continued in and around the Iraqi capital Wednesday.
Hungary, meanwhile, announced that it would withdraw its 300 troops from the country by the end of March, after Iraqi elections planned for January.
"It is an obligation to stay until the end of the election, while staying much longer is impossible," the Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, told reporters in Budapest, the capital. "From then on, the existence of a stable, secure and democratic Iraq must be ensured by other, mainly political means."
Hungary, a member of NATO since 1999, is among 29 countries participating in the U.S.-led military occupation, almost all of which maintain only small forces in Iraq. The Hungarians have carried out aid operations from their base in Hilla, a usually quiet city south of Baghdad.
Bulgaria, another coalition member, announced that it would trim its force of 483 soldiers by 10 percent next month after moving from Karbala, about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad, to Diwaniyah, also south of the capital.
The car bomb detonated at a checkpoint leading to Baghdad's heavily fortified international airport. When a guard approached an SUV and asked the driver to produce identification, the man at the wheel shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" -- or "God is Great!" -- and the vehicle exploded, said Mais Naib, 38, one of several Iraqi Airways employees waiting at the checkpoint.
"There were no Americans nearby," she said. "We are in real danger. I do not know what to do. Shall I sit home and stop coming to work? That is exactly what they want us to do -- they do not want to see Iraq raise up again. I do not know what to do."
Reports of casualties varied. The Reuters news agency, citing witnesses and hospital staff members, said an Iraqi security guard was killed and seven civilians were injured.
A member of the Army's 1st Infantry Division was killed and another soldier was injured when a roadside bomb exploded beside their combat patrol about 10 miles southeast of the capital near Salman Pak. The dead soldier was not identified because his next of kin had not been notified.
The kidnapped Lebanese American was identified by the Associated Press as Radim Sadeq, an employee of a cell phone company. He was abducted after answering the front door to his house in Baghdad's Mansour district, the same prosperous neighborhood where an unidentified U.S. citizen and four other people were kidnapped two days earlier, and where two Americans and a Briton were abducted last month. Those three were later beheaded.
Also Wednesday, three beheadings were shown on a tape received by the Arab satellite news channel al-Jazeera. A group calling itself the Brigades of the Iraqi Honorables asserted responsibility for killing the three men, who were identified as members of the Iraqi National Guard. Three bodies believed to be theirs were found under the 14th of July Bridge, an emblem of the U.S. presence in Iraq because it is reserved for travelers cleared to cross the Tigris River into the fortified Green Zone, which is guarded by U.S. forces.
A fourth decapitation was posted on a Web site by the Ansar al-Sunna Army, a group that has boasted of several beheadings. In a statement, the group identified the victim as Maj. Hussein Shanoun, an officer in the nascent Iraqi army being trained by U.S. forces. Four Jordanian truck drivers were reported kidnapped Wednesday, a government spokeswoman said from Amman, the Jordanian capital, according to the Associated Press.
More than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since insurgent attacks intensified in April, the one-year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. At least 30 of the victims were subsequently killed.
Iraqi and U.S. officials have said they expect abductions and other attacks across Iraq to rise further if U.S. forces lead an offensive against Fallujah, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad that local and foreign fighters have controlled since April.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday urged insurgents to lay down their weapons and negotiate the peaceful return of the city to Iraq's interim government. But Marine, Army and Iraqi forces continued preparations for a major assault, and U.S. warplanes bombed what a military statement said was an insurgent command post in the city.
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.
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INSURGENCY
Stubborn Violence Shadows Buildup to Falluja Invasion
November 4, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/middleeast/04iraq.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 3 - In the latest attack on Iraq's oil industry, gunmen killed a senior Oil Ministry official as he was commuting to work on Wednesday morning, a ministry spokesman said.
The shooting came on a day punctuated by violence, as Iraqis and American soldiers followed the results of the American presidential election and braced for an expected invasion of the insurgent bastion in Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad.
In other incidents on Wednesday, a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint near Baghdad International Airport, killing a British security contractor and injuring at least nine Iraqis, Western security advisers and hospital officials said.
In the north, at Salman Pak, a roadside bomb hit an American military patrol, killing one soldier and wounding another, military officials said.
Insurgents also sent a video to Al Jazeera, the Arab-language satellite news station, showing three Iraqi National Guardsmen being beheaded, and posted another on the Internet of the decapitation of an Iraqi Army officer.
Late Tuesday, a Lebanese-American man was kidnapped from his home in an affluent neighborhood in Baghdad.
With Senator John Kerry's concession to President Bush, many people here predicted that it was only a matter of days before Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and the American military would order an all-out assault on Falluja, a city of 300,000, in an effort to break the back of the insurgency, even though the prime minister says he is trying to hold talks with the city's leaders. American warplanes were reported to have struck at targets in the northeastern and southern parts of Falluja.
The killing of the Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fatal, took place as he was leaving his home in the Yarmouk neighborhood in western Baghdad to go to the ministry, said Asim Jihad, a ministry spokesman. Mr. Fatal was the head of the Oil Product Distribution Company, a state-run enterprise.
His death came one day after insurgents sabotaged a northern pipeline that exports crude oil from the Kirkuk area to Ceyhan, a port in Turkey. The explosion forced a shutdown of the pipeline. Since September, the ministry has been trying to pump 200,000 to 400,000 barrels of crude oil a day through the pipeline, which is the target of frequent sabotage, said Walid Khadduri, an Iraqi oil analyst based in Cyprus.
Mr. Jihad said that the pipeline fire had been put out and that it would take three to four days to repair the damaged area. An official with the North Oil Company, based in Kirkuk, told Agence France-Presse that repairs would probably take 10 days.
The market price of crude oil has risen past $50 a barrel, and Iraqi and American officials are relying on exports to help revive the country's stagnant economy. The northern pipeline accounts for, at best, just under one-fifth of current exports. Saboteurs have also staged attacks on southern pipelines near the oil fields in Basra.
Early Wednesday, the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of the most militant groups in Iraq, posted an video on the Internet showing the beheading of an Iraqi Army officer named Maj. Hussein Shanoon. The group said it had captured Major Shanoon near Mosul, a northern city that is quickly tumbling into chaos. "With God's will, this will be the fate of anyone who thinks of supporting the occupying Crusader troops," the group said in a separate Internet message.
Later, a group calling itself the Brigades of the Iraqi Honorables sent a video to Al Jazeera that showed militants beheading three Iraqi National Guardsmen accused of spying for the American forces, the television network reported.
An Interior Ministry official said gunmen stormed a home in the upscale neighborhood of Mansour, in western Baghdad, late Tuesday and abducted Radim Sadiq, a Lebanese-American who was working here. The United States Embassy did not immediately confirm the abduction, and it was unclear how Mr. Sadiq was employed.
It was the second abduction in the neighborhood this week. On Monday, an American who has yet to be identified was seized with five other men, including a Nepali, a Filipino and three Iraqi guards. Two of the guards were released on Tuesday.
In September, gunmen raided another home in Mansour and captured two American engineers and a Briton. Those three men soon surfaced in a video from the militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The group beheaded all three men after American officials refused to meet the group's demands.
More than 160 foreigners have been kidnapped so far this year in Iraq. Last Saturday, the body of a Japanese backpacker who had been abducted and decapitated was found in Baghdad. On Wednesday, Japanese officials denied a statement by his captors, members of a group called Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, that the Japanese government had offered "millions of dollars" for his release.
The suicide car bomb at the Baghdad airport checkpoint exploded around 8:30 a.m., as a long line of cars was waiting to enter the airport, witnesses said. An Iraqi Airways employee, Wisam Muhammad, said he saw a sport utility vehicle try to speed up around the line of cars and ram into a group of American soldiers and Iraqi security officers at the checkpoint. Another witness, a man with a blood-streaked face in Yarmouk Hospital, said the driver was bearded and wearing traditional gray robes and a skullcap.
A former member of the British Royal Marines who was working as a guard at the checkpoint was killed in the blast, said two Western security advisers in Baghdad who knew the man. Hospital officials said at least nine Iraqis were wounded. The American military said it had suffered no casualties.
In preparation for the country's first democratic elections, scheduled for January, Iraqis arriving to collect their November rations at several food centers in Baghdad were handed voter registration forms. The Iraqi electoral commission began distributing the sheets on Monday and will continue doing so through sometime next month.
"I hope the election process will be conducted safely and in a guaranteed way," Abdul Zahra Muhammad, 71, said as he collected his rations and voter sheets at a center in Mansour. "I'm worried about how people will go to the elections. I'm very worried about car bombs. And does the government have enough control over security to hold a successful election?"
Khalid al-Ansary and Layla Isitfancontributed reporting for this article.
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Rising Concerns About Insurgents' Weaponry
Antiwar.com
by Jim Lobe
November 4, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3903
More evidence of a major failure by the Bush administration to adequately prepare for the possibility of insurgency in postwar Iraq has surfaced amid claims by some rebels that they have acquired chemical weapons and are preparing to use them against U.S. forces in the besieged Sunni stronghold of Fallujah.
The claims, which come on the heels of the worst one-day losses for U.S. soldiers in more than six months, suggested that chemical-weapons specialists are lending their expertise to the guerrillas, a development that is causing growing anxiety in Washington.
Such a possibility was noted in the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA ) Duelfer Report last month, which detailed in an annex that a group of insurgents, called the "Al-Abud Network," had worked with a civilian Iraqi chemist to build chemical weapons for use against coalition forces.
The report, which was noted by Michael Roston at Columbia University in a paper published by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) last week, said U.S.-led troops had nipped the plot in the bud, but that al-Abud "was not the only group planning or attempting to produce CBW [chemical or biological weapons] agents."
"[A]vailability of chemicals and materials dispersed throughout the country, and intellectual capital from the former WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs increases [sic] the future threat to Coalition Forces," according to the annex.
That possibility looms large as U.S. Marines prepare a major assault on Fallujah, where up to 3,000 insurgents are believed to be holed up. It was just outside the city that nine Marines were reportedly killed Saturday when a suicide bomber drove his truck into their convoy.
Since last week's revelation that some 380 tons of high explosives - just a few pounds of which can blow up an airplane - that had been sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the former nuclear site of al-Qaqaa south of Baghdad, concern has grown over the likelihood that that stockpile was only a small fraction of as much as 250,000 tons of munitions that remain unaccounted for.
The al-Qaqaa discovery has fueled charges by the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry that the Pentagon had made a major strategic error in not sending into Iraq nearly enough troops to secure Iraq's well-stocked arsenal, some of which is now almost certainly being used to kill U.S. and coalition forces.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Friday that it had repeatedly given U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq detailed information about enormous stockpiles of unsecured explosives and munitions located throughout the country, but that coalition forces had taken little or no action at all to secure them.
"Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, our researchers were finding massive stockpiles of weapons and explosives throughout Iraq," said Kenneth Roth, HRW's director. "But when we informed coalition forces, they told us they just didn't have enough troops to secure these sites."
In May 2003, for example, a HRW researcher found a huge stockpile of warheads, anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines, and other weaponry that was being looted at the Second Military College located on the main road between Baghdad and Baquba. Included in the weaponry were hundreds of high-explosive surface-to-surface warheads.
He immediately provided the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad the precise GPS coordinates of the sites, as well as photographs of the looting, and followed up with several trips there over the following days. But U.S. and coalition forces never secured the site, and the road has since become one of the main locations for suicide attacks and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against passing military convoys.
In the same month, when clashes had already broken out between U.S. forces and Fallujah. residents, HRW reported that weapons markets in the city were operating openly with buyers testing all manner of assault weapons and machine guns by firing them in the air. When the researchers asked U.S. intelligence officers about the markets, they were unaware of their existence.
"While the U.S.-led coalition deployed more than 1,000 people to search for WMD, they weren't organized to neutralize the threat of conventional weapons right under their noses," Roth said. "Now, Iraqi civilians are paying a deadly price for the failure to secure the vast weapons stocks in Iraq during and after the invasion."
Similarly, the International Herald Tribune reported last week that a French journalist who visited the al-Qaqaa site more than six months after the fall of Saddam Hussein had seen "vast supplies of explosives" being looted from bunkers.
"I was utterly stupefied to see that a place like that was pretty much unguarded and that insurgents could help themselves for months on end," Sarah Daniel was quoted as telling the Tribune. She added that the looters who were loading truckloads of material from what had been the biggest explosives factory in the Middle East admitted that they too were surprised that no effort had been made by the coalition forces to close it off.
The situation regarding Iraqi unconventional weapons scientists is even more puzzling, according to Columbia's Roston, if only because the administration itself appeared to be aware of the threat posed by their expertise being shared with insurgents or terrorist groups.
In early June 2003, for example, Undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, warned in Congressional testimony that "The biggest threat that we now face from Iraq's defunct WMD program is ... that other rogue states or terrorist organizations will hire and offer refuge to these WMD experts."
But according to Roston, it was Bolton's fellow hawks in the Pentagon who ignored pre-war State Department recommendations to quickly hire Iraq's WMD specialists to ensure that they did not go elsewhere for work.
In his article, Roston cited the CIA's former chief weapons-hunter, David Kay, as blaming the government's failure to launch such a program on "some of the worst [and] most pointless inter-agency wrangling I've ever seen."
Since then, the State Department, which has tried to wrest control over the $18 billion in reconstruction money that Congress approved for the Pentagon one year ago, has found only $2 million from an unrelated non-proliferation budget in funding to put Iraqi weapons scientists to work.
"The shortsightedness of this policy," according to Roston, "is only making it more likely that the worst of America's fears about WMD in Iraq will finally come true."
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Iraqis say U.S. should talk more, shoot less
04 Nov 2004
Reuters By
Khaled Yacoub Oweis
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/OWE476983.htm
BAGHDAD, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Leading Iraqi politicians called on re-elected President George W. Bush on Thursday to rely more on talks and less on the gun to solve Iraq's problems.
The United States should stop acting like an occupier, hand more control to Iraqis and stop backing a security apparatus that could start resembling that of Saddam Hussein, they said.
"American use of unchecked force will not work. Look at the security forces that have multiplied in the past few months. The result has been less security, not more, said Haidar al-Ubadi," a senior official in the Shi'ite Al-Dawa party, which worked with U.S. and British forces after last year's Iraq war to peacefully stabilise several Iraqi cities.
"There cannot be two democratic standards, one for America and one for the Third World," he said. "Bush's policy of relying on the military and allowing former ruling Baath party members back is stifling society."
Although Iraq's government has been trying to co-opt former Saddam loyalists by offering them jobs, it has failed to convince former Baathists in Sunni regions such as Falluja west of Baghdad to lay down their arms.
Officials say followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are also in Falluja.
CIVILIAN DEATHS
Iraq's Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid al-Bayati said the insurgency was partly due to mistakes Bush made earlier.
"Using force that kills civilians on a large scale is a mistake. The logic of occupation must end. Bush's main mistake was not to let an Iraqi provisional government take power after Saddam was toppled," he said.
"The resistance operations were seen coming as soon as the United States kept acting as an occupier. The solution now must include the Americans lessening their presence on the streets."
Iraq's Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said force must be used against those who have attacked civilians and want power through violence. Hundreds of civilians have also died in U.S. attacks on Falluja and other cities this year.
Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari said he understood Bush's view that the country had to be secure before Iraqis could assume more control, but that loss of civilian lives could undermine this position.
"We now look forward for Mr Bush and the international community to realise their promises on sovereignty, prosperity and stability," Jaafari told Reuters.
"Force is the last option, and it has to be confined (to being used) against those who are callously killing Iraqis."
Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who was sidelined after opposing U.S. attacks to crush Shi'ite rebels in the holy city of Najaf three months ago, said Iraqis have to take of their share of the blame for the chaos.
"Iraq is George Bush's baby and I think he remains committed to a federal, democratic Iraq," he said, "The performance of the interim government is worrying."
---------
Iraq calls on 'spectators' to act
bbc
4 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3982247.stm
The interim Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, has urged what he called spectator countries to get involved in the rebuilding of Iraq.
Mr Allawi made the comments after a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome.
Mr Berlusconi confirmed Italy's commitment to keep its 3,000 troops in Iraq as long as requested.
Mr Allawi, who is beginning a European tour, met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican later on Thursday.
"To the countries which up to now have been spectators, I turn to them and ask for their help to create a better Iraq in the future," Mr Allawi said.
Christian targets
Mr Allawi had a private audience with the ailing Pope, a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq.
In a statement read out by an aide, the pontiff assured Mr Allawi of his closeness to the people of Iraq and "all the victims of terrorism and wanton violence".
The Vatican has expressed concern at recent reports of the targeting of churches by Islamic militants in Baghdad.
Christians make up 3% of Iraq's population.
Thousands have left country since the start of the war, and more are thought to be preparing to do so.
On Friday, Mr Allawi will attend the European Union summit in Brussels, and meet Nato officials.
EU leaders are expected to offer more aid for the reconstruction of Iraq.
-----
MSF aid agency ends work in Iraq
bbc
4 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3982689.stm
The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says it is pulling out of Iraq because of "escalating violence".
MSF said it had become impossible "to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, be they foreign or Iraqi".
Several aid workers have been kidnapped in Iraq - including Margaret Hassan of Care International, who is still being held by her captors.
Care has stopped its operations in Iraq and appealed for Mrs Hassan's release.
MSF has 90 Iraqi staff. Its foreign workers left Iraq a month ago for Jordan.
Marc Joolen, MSF's coordinator for Iraq, said the group was considering how best to end its operation.
"It should be a matter of days," he told Reuters news agency.
An MSF statement released on Thursday said: "We deeply regret the fact that we will no longer be able to provide much needed medical help to the Iraqi people."
The group said it did not want to expose staff to the "extreme risks" run by aid workers in Iraq.
It lamented that "the warring parties [in Iraq] have repeatedly shown their disrespect for independent humanitarian assistance".
War and aid
The agency has been involved in some of Iraq's most dangerous areas, including the cities of Falluja, Najaf and Karbala.
MSF said it had also carried out 100,000 consultations this year in the Sadr City district of Baghdad alone.
The Nobel prize-winning agency also pulled out of Afghanistan in July, after 24 years of continuous service.
It complained then that because of humanitarian works by the US, it was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between armed forces and aid agencies.
Five of its staff had been killed in Afghanistan. The Taleban said it carried out the attack because MSF staff were working for American interests.
Mr Joolen said the decision to leave Iraq had been taken for similar reasons.
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to operate as an international NGO - non-governmental organisation - in a situation ruled by the 'war on terror'," he said.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli military commander of Gaza quits
November 04, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041104-122728-8717r.htm
Jerusalem, Israel, Nov. 4 -- Israel's military commander of the Gaza Strip area, Brig.-Gen. Shmuel Zakai, announced his resignation Thursday amid a leaked media report scandal.
Zakai was displeased he was under suspicion of leaking information to the Haaretz newspaper about a month ago regarding a dispute between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the army over the course of Operation Days of Penitence, a major army raid aimed at curbing Hamas launching Qassam rocket in the northern strip.
At the time, Haaretz reported army authorities recommended pulling IDF forces out of the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp, while Sharon believed the military presence in the camp should continue.
Zakai told his officers Thursday he was not involved in leaking information to the press, and said as long as doubts are cast on his credibility, he found it difficult to command his division.
--------
Sharon Wins Approval to Fund Pullout but Is Set Back on Budget
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22510-2004Nov3.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 3 -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won a critical vote in Israel's parliament Wednesday for his plan to withdraw Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip. But in a sign that his government and policies still face significant opposition, Sharon delayed the first vote on his proposed budget, fearing that its defeat could collapse his minority coalition.
With the backing of parties that usually oppose him, Sharon won a 64-to-44 vote to fund the evacuation, resettlement and redeployment of Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from Gaza beginning next summer as part of his disengagement plan. Nine lawmakers abstained, and three were not present.
The plan to withdraw 8,150 settlers from 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and about 470 residents from four settlements in the northern West Bank was approved in concept last week during a stormy session of Israel's parliament, the Knesset. Before it is fully enacted, the proposal still faces legislative hurdles in the Knesset and cabinet this year and next. The bill approved Wednesday provides funding for the plan, estimated to cost between $450 million and $650 million.
Sharon's Likud Party is deeply divided over his withdrawal plan, and 17 of its 40 Knesset members refused to back the funding bill. They were joined by other traditional allies of Sharon from ultranationalist and religious parties. As happened last week, Sharon was supported by more dovish segments of the Knesset -- notably the main opposition Labor Party, whose 19 members unanimously backed the bill.
But Sharon pulled his $60 billion budget proposal for 2005, which was scheduled for a vote Wednesday, when it appeared that it did not have enough support to pass. Although its failure would not automatically bring down the government, Sharon has said that he would consider the bill's defeat a vote of no confidence, which could force the formation of a new government or early elections.
A new vote on the budget was not scheduled, allowing Sharon some time to solicit more support.
"He needs a majority, enough votes to pass it, and he didn't want to fail on the first roll call," said Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin. "Eventually he will get the support he needs, but he needs more negotiation and talks. As soon as possible, the vote will be rescheduled."
The developments offered a preview of what life could be like for Sharon for the foreseeable future. His minority coalition has about 58 members in the 120-seat Knesset, a number that could drop to 55 next week if the National Religious Party follows through on its threat to resign over the disengagement plan. Sharon would have to rely on new political parties, and focus on different issues, to keep his government from falling.
Sharon has faced more than 59 no-confidence motions since proposing his disengagement plan last December. Political analysts question how long he can continue his political balancing act, and whether opposition parties will remain so committed to the disengagement plan that they will continue to prop up Sharon despite significant ideological differences.
Among other issues, the disengagement funding bill established how much settler families will be compensated for leaving the Gaza Strip, based on factors such as the size of their home, the location of their new one, the number of family members and whether they own a business in Gaza. In general, families will be eligible for between about $100,000 to $500,000, although the amount is expected to increase as the government seeks the support of more lawmakers. Israeli news reports said this week that the maximum payment had ballooned to about $750,000.
--------
Questions Grow About Arafat's Health and Palestinian Leaders
November 4, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/middleeast/04cnd-araf.html?hp&ex=1099630800&en=f555eeb18000a48e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Conflicting reports over the condition of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat put the spotlight today on the future leadership of the Palestinian Authority and on its potential impact on any resumption of Middle East peace negotiations with Israel.
Some news agency reports from Europe said Mr. Arafat had died in a French military hospital where he had been receiving treatment for an undisclosed ailment since last week. But officials at the French hospital, as well as the Palestinian prime minister, were quoted today as denying those reports and asserting that Mr. Arafat was still alive.
"Mr. Arafat has not died,'' Col. Christian Estripeau, a spokesman for the French military hospital treating the Palestinian, told reporters. And the prime minister of Luxembourg, who earlier today told reporters in Brussels that Mr. Arafat was dead, later retracted his statement, according to news agencies.
Still, the speculation about Mr. Arafat's fate was fueled when a reporter at a televised news conference in Washington, apparently relying on the unconfirmed news reports of the Palestinian leader's death, asked President Bush for his reaction.
"God bless his soul," Mr. Bush said. He did not make any remarks to indicate that he was confirming Mr. Arafat's death.
The president added, "We will continue to work for a free Palestinian state that's at peace with Israel."
Mr. Arafat had been flown out of the West Bank city of Ramallah last week for an undisclosed ailment and was receiving treatment at a military hospital in the southwest suburbs of Paris.
Speculation about the health of the Palestinian leader, a towering symbol for his people of their aspirations for statehood, raised questions about the future leadership and succession in the territories where his Palestinian Authority had governed.
Senior Palestinian officials convened meetings in the West Bank earlier today in response to the reports ofthe declining health of Mr. Arafat. The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, called a meeting of the security services in Ramallah, which is due to be held this evening.
Members of the central committee of Fatah, Mr. Arafat's power base in the Palestinian government, had held talks in the West Bank city of Ramallah to discuss the current situation with regard to his health, said an assistant deputy at the Palestinian information ministry, Mohammad Sulaiman, in a brief telephone interview.
"The Palestinian people here are very preoccupied with this," Mr. Sulaiman said. "Mr. Arafat is more than a political figure for them. He is a symbol for his people."
The 75-year-old former guerrilla has been a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for statehood since the 1960's. In 1993 he signed interim peace accords on the White House lawn with the Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, but he has since been largely sidelined by the United States and Israel for not doing enough to stop the violence.
Throughout the four-year-old Palestinian uprising, Mr. Arafat has denied accusations of inciting violence. He has been confined to his Ramallah headquarters by Israel for more than two years after attacks by Palestinian militant groups.
Today, news agencies reported from France that Mr. Arafat had lapsed into a coma after being rushed to the intensive care unit at the Percy Military Training Hospital following a sharp deterioration in his health.
French hospital officials would not comment earlier today. But later, President Jacques Chirac of French paid a visit to the hospital where Mr. Arafat was being treated, according to news agency reports.
Mr. Arafat, in a statement conveyed through an aide on Wednesday, had congratulated President Bush after his election win and urged him to become "more engaged" in fostering progress toward peace in the Middle East.
Today, the Bush administration promised a new push in the efforts for Middle East peace but a spokesman, in remarks to reporters' questions, did not specifically comment on the health of Mr. Arafat.
"We have a new opportunity before us to move forward on the 'road map' and get to the two-state vision that the president outlined," said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan. "We will remain actively engaged working with the parties to accomplish that goal."
Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, said today on the CBS "Early Show" that there would be a power struggle among the Palestinian leadership but that the prospects for the peace process and negotiations were good.
"There's a mafia-like atmosphere there," he said. "But in the long run, I think, in all due respect to Yasir Arafat's illnesses and his family, the fact is that Yasir Arafat has steadfastly refused to enter serious negotiations with Republican or Democrat presidents.
"So you may see an emergence of a leadership that will be wanting to make some progress, because the Palestinians have suffered," he said.The official Palestinian news agency WAFA had shed little light on the Palestinian leader's condition, issuing reports that he had received letters from well-wishers and that his condition was generating international interest.
-------- landmines
U.S. Grant to Aid Removal of Land Mines
Los Angeles Times
November 4, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes379.htm
Vietnam received a $5-million grant from the United States to help the communist country remove land mines and unexploded ordnance that continue to kill people nearly 30 years after the Vietnam War ended, officials said.
More than half of the grant will be used to expand a program in the central province of Quang Tri near the former demilitarized zone, where the greatest casualties occur.
The money also will be used for mine education programs.
-------- nato
NATO chief to meet with Georgian leader during visit
TBILISI (AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104115429.pg3fmvn9.html
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is due Thursday to visit Georgia, a strategic former Soviet republic in the Caucasus whose youthful leader has vowed to join the alliance within four years.
De Hoop Scheffer's visit is part of a Caucasus tour and comes days after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization decided to extend an Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) to the country.
"Georgia's integration into NATO is inevitable," President Mikhail Saakashvili, with whom de Hoop Scheffer is expected to meet during his stay, said last week as he hailed the decision.
Saakashvili, a 36-year-old US-educated lawyer, has repeatedly vowed to turn westward his small country that lies in what has traditionally been considered Russia's sphere of influence, the Caucasus.
The adoption of the IPAP shows that "Georgia has entered the final stretch of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization," Irakly Aladashvili, a military analyst in Tbilisi, told AFP.
"We have actively conducted reforms according to NATO standards," Defense Minister Georgy Baramidze said Wednesday.
Georgia, a nation of less than five million people nestled in the Caucausus mountains, treads a delicate line with its NATO ambitions -- Moscow has been the traditional power broker in the region and is wary of pro-Western Saakashvili.
Washington has been vying with Russia for influence over Georgia that hosts a vital oil pipeline due to take Caspian Sea oil to Western markets.
NATO spread up to the borders of Russia earlier this year when it admitted the former Soviet republics in the Baltics and the Kremlin frowns upon the alliance reaching its southern border as well.
Saakashvili has repeatedly sought to reassure Kremlin concerns, insisting that Georgia will not play host to foreign bases even in the event it does join NATO.
"NATO integration does not mean that we will have to host foreign military bases on Georgian territory," he said last week.
"We are surprised the sensitive reaction in Russia to Georgia's aim to be closer to the European Union and NATO," Nino Burjanadze, speaker of parliament, said while on a visit to Moscow last week.
"Our aim is membership in the EU and NATO, but not to the detriment of Russia," she said.
The question of military bases has a special resonance with Tbilisi, as Russia still has two bases on Georgian territory from Soviet times.
Although it has agreed to vacate the installations, Moscow has dragged its feet, saying the logistics of withdrawal could take up to 10 years.
"The question of Georgian integration into NATO is all the more important in light of relations between Russia and Georgia," said Irakly Aladashvili, an analyst.
"First of all, Georgian adhesion to... NATO means the inevitability that Russia will have to withdraw its bases," he explained.
-------- philippines
Planned talks with Muslims on track despite clashes: Philippine military
(AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104071439.iowuvj8c.html
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines - Planned peace talks with Muslim separatist guerrillas are on track despite clashes with Philippine troops that left four people dead, the armed forces chief said Thursday.
Lieutenant General Efren Abu said members of an international team monitoring the peace process immediately intervened and prevented an escalation of clashes on southern Mindanao island on Wednesday.
The fighting, which breached a two-year-old ceasefire, apparently was triggered by a long-standing family feud between members of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and pro-government militiamen that got out of hand, Abu said.
"The monitoring team went to the area and discovered that the incident was between the two feuding groups," Abu said. "This has not affected the peace talks. We are in full support here (of the peace process)."
A group of MILF fighters used mortars in attacking an army detachment manned by pro-government militiamen on Wednesday. The resulting gunbattle left four MILF rebels dead and three militiamen wounded.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu also stressed that the rebel leadership had not sanctioned any attack, noting that those who took part in the encounters were relatives of some members of the MILF.
The MILF has been waging a separatist rebellion in the south since 1978 but has opened peace talks with the government. The next round of talks is supposed to start after Islam's holy month of Ramadan this month and to be hosted by Malaysia.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia Test-Launches Two Ballistic Missiles
Moscow (XNA)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-04zzr.html
The Russian military successfully test-launched two ballistic missiles on Tuesday, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
In the first test launch Tuesday, the RS-12M Topol missile fired from Plesetsk space launching area hit a set target on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East.
The launch was part of an effort to test the possible extensionof the service life of the Soviet-built ballistic missiles, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces said in a statement after the test.
Meanwhile, another missile was fired by St. George nuclear submarine from under water in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Pacific Ocean, the other from the northwestern Plesetsk cosmodrome, according to the report.
A Defense Ministry official was quoted as saying that the missile launched from the submarine successfully hit a designated target in northern Russia, adding it is the first launch of the ballistic missile by the Russian Pacific Fleet in 2004.
The successful firing of the missile shows the ability and readiness of Russian sea-based strategic nuclear forces, Igor Dygalo, commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy was cited by saying.
-------- un
Annan Urges Security Council to Act on Growing Violence in Sudan
November 4, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/africa/04nations.html?pagewanted=all
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 3 - Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council on Wednesday to take swift action in the Darfur region of Sudan, where he said violence was on the rise, the number of refugees was growing and the government was making little progress in disarming fighters responsible for the mayhem and intimidation that have displaced about 1.6 million people and resulted in more than 50,000 deaths.
"There are strong indications that war crimes and crimes against humanity have occurred in Darfur on a large and systematic scale," he said in a monthly progress report to the Security Council. "In what appears to be a general drift toward lawlessness, cases of banditry and abduction dramatically increased in October."
The Council has passed two resolutions threatening Sudan's leaders and its oil industry with penalties if conditions do not improve, and Mr. Annan said it should now "consider creative and prompt action to ensure effective implementation of the demands set out in its earlier resolutions."
Darfur has been in conflict since February 2003 when rebel groups, accusing the Khartoum government of neglect, took up arms, and the government retaliated by equipping Arab militias known as the janjaweed who conducted a campaign of pillage, rape and massacre against ethnic African villagers that the United States has labeled genocide.
Mr. Annan said the Sudanese government had done the bare minimum to honor its commitment to the United Nations to arrest and prosecute the leaders of the marauding militias.
"Although concrete action to end impunity seems to be occurring, these cases represent a pinprick," he said. He added that the police were not trusted and that security officials in camps were often the perpetrators of crimes themselves.
Describing the cycle that was entrapping villagers in the face of government inaction, he said, "Without an end to impunity, no group will agree to disarm, so the fighting goes on. Without an end to impunity, no displaced person or refugee dares to return home, so the dreadful situation in the camps continues."
Mr. Annan listed a number of incidents in October, including the killing, robbing and abduction of civilians, the rape of women pilgrims, a market massacre that killed 14 people, attacks on villages by armed men on horses and camels, the use of planes and helicopters on reported bombing runs, the intimidation of refugees and the looting of their meager possessions, the kidnapping of 18 bus passengers and the frequent harassment of relief workers. He also faulted rebel forces, saying they had repeatedly attacked police posts, killing at least nine officers.
"Neither side is refraining from conducting attacks against the other or exercising restraint when attacked," he said.
Darfur, in Western Sudan, is the subject of negotiations in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, that Mr. Annan complained were stalled by distrust and lacked any sense of urgency. Meanwhile, a decades-old separate conflict in the south of Sudan is the focus of talks in Kenya that Mr. Annan said could be completed this year and serve as a template for a solution in Darfur.
The Security Council is moving its meetings to Nairobi on Nov. 18 and 19 in an effort to speed the talks.
-------- us
U.S. Deserter Took Plea Bargain
Leniency for Soldier Who Fled to N. Korea Appeases Japan
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23518-2004Nov3.html
TOKYO, Nov. 3 -- A U.S. Army sergeant's decision to plead guilty on Wednesday to deserting to North Korea in 1965 was part of a plea bargain in a Cold War-era case that effectively settled a dispute between Japan and the United States.
Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins, 64, appeared before a U.S. military judge and acknowledged abandoning his post in South Korea and crossing the Demilitarized Zone into the North. The North Carolina native, who at one time faced the possibility of life in prison, was sentenced to 30 days in a military jail and a dishonorable discharge, but the judge, Col. Denise Vowell, recommended the jail term be suspended. Jenkins is expected to provide U.S. officials with information about his 38 years in North Korea.
The Japanese government had intervened on behalf of Jenkins, whose wife, Hitomi Soga, is a Japanese citizen who was abducted by North Korean spies in 1978. She was repatriated in late 2002 following diplomatic overtures by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Japan had asked U.S. officials to be lenient in the case after winning Jenkins's release from North Korea last July. Jenkins and Soga have two daughters whom the North Koreans also released last summer.
The story of Jenkins and his family has captured much news media attention in Japan, where they are likely to resettle.
"I only hope that the small happiness we have as a family will grow bigger and bigger," Soga told the judge on Wednesday.
Jenkins, who was in uniform, told the court he had planned his desertion over 10 days and tied a white T-shirt to his rifle to signal his surrender to the North Koreans.
He said he feared his hazardous duty assignment on the tense Korean Peninsula and wanted to avoid being redeployed to Vietnam. He said he made his decision after being depressed for many days.
"I walked away from my squad . . . for the purpose of going to North Korea," Jenkins told the court.
Close to tears, Jenkins added "it was Christmastime. It was also cold and dark. I started to drink alcohol. I never had drunk so much alcohol."
Jenkins, who was raised in poverty and did not attend high school, said he had intended to travel to the Soviet Union and turn himself in at the U.S. Embassy there. But the North Koreans did not allow him to leave. "I knew 100 percent what I was doing, but I didn't know the consequences behind it," he said. "I didn't know that North Korea was going to keep me."
Jenkins acknowledged a charge of "aiding the enemy" by teaching English in North Korea during the 1980s. But he denied that his participation in at least one North Korean propaganda movie -- in which he played a sinister CIA agent -- amounted to an additional charge of making disloyal statements against the United States.
Besides participating in propaganda films, Jenkins is also believed to have taught at a North Korean spy school.
Jenkins said he cooperated with the North Korean government because he wanted to protect Soga and their two daughters. He said his relationship with Soga helped him to survive emotionally.
"Our mutual hate for North Korea brought us together and kept us together for 24 years," he said. "Marriage to my wife brought me happiness."
After arriving in Japan via Jakarta in July, Jenkins surrendered to U.S. authorities at Camp Zama. He faced a maximum penalty of life in prison, but prosecutors originally sought a sentence of nine months in jail. Hiroyuki Hosoda, Koizumi's top spokesman, thanked the United States on Wednesday for its "consideration" in the Jenkins case.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
Fruit drink boxes contained heroin
(UPI)
November 04, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041104-114616-9542r.htm
Miami, FL, Nov. 4 -- A shipment of 100 six-ounce boxes of "Hit Fruit Drink" actually contained about $1.7 million worth of liquefied heroin, authorities in Miami said.
The boxes, shipped next to other legitimate juice containers, were among five pallets traced back to Colombia, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Thursday.
Investigators with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they found the shipment as the result of an anonymous tip.
They said they are still investigating so would not reveal where the discovery was made or when. They said it did not look as though the cargo was likely to reach general markets.
"It was basically a way to disguise the drugs. It doesn't look like there was a chance of it getting into the general consumers' hands," said Nina Pruneda an ICE spokeswoman.
Police say it is not unusual to find heroin in a liquid form because it's easier to ship. The liquid is then cooked into a paste and sold to addicts.
--------
COUVET JOURNAL
Rebirth of the Potion That Made Val-de-Travers Famous
November 4, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/europe/04absinthe.html
COUVET, Switzerland, Nov. 1 - For three years Claude-Alain Bugnon has competed with his wife for space in the unfinished concrete basement of their home here, she to do laundry, he to make absinthe.
Armed with plastic containers of dried herbs, tubs of pharmaceutical ethanol, a homemade still and a secret recipe from a friend's grandmother, Mr. Bugnon has used his skills as an oil refinery technician to produce the powerful herbal elixir long blamed for driving people mad.
In January a new law takes effect in Switzerland aimed at rehabilitating the reputation of absinthe, whose distillation, distribution and sale were banned after an absinthe-besotted factory worker killed his wife and children nearly a century ago.
The new law will allow Mr. Bugnon and dozens of other underground absinthe makers to "come out," as one Swiss newspaper put it, seek amnesty and produce absinthe legally.
"Absinthe is good for your health and I drink it almost every day," said Mr. Bugnon, filling glasses with his still illegal beverage. "My kids are growing up with its smell. Of course, I still have to be a bit careful. Until the end of the year I could be denounced by an enemy and turned in."
For Swiss distillers like Mr. Bugnon, the goal is to produce top quality, high-octane, government-approved absinthe produced from Artemisia absinthium, or wormwood, a plant native to the Val-de-Travers, the region in western Switzerland where the drink was invented.
If all goes well the distillers hope to obtain an official governmental "appellation" declaring that the region produces the only real absinthe in the world. Legalization will help the Swiss cash in on the rising global market for absinthe, which can be bought easily, and often illegally, over the Internet. There are Internet sites offering absinthe recipes and sources for wormwood seed.
In addition to prodigious amounts of alcohol, absinthe contains thujone, a toxic chemical found in wormwood that was used to treat stomach ailments as far back as ancient times but can cause tremors, hallucinations, paralysis and brain damage in large enough doses.
Absinthe with a low level of thujone is already sold legally in countries including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Austria, Japan, Sweden, Italy and Britain, but not the United States. The Netherlands lifted its ban last July.
Nicknamed "the Green Fairy," "the green curse of France" and "the milk of the Jura," absinthe was associated with the writers, painters, prostitutes and anarchists of the belle epoque. Oscar Wilde claimed to have seen tulips growing from the tile floor of a bar where he had been drinking absinthe. Toulouse-Lautrec mixed it with cognac instead of water and called it the "Earthquake."
Its seductive powers have been featured in a flurry of films in recent years, from "Moulin Rouge," in which a song is dedicated to the drink, to "From Hell," in which Johnny Depp plays a troubled, absinthe drinking police inspector.
Mr. Bugnon is still tinkering with the right mix of herbs (among them fennel, coriander, mint and anise) for a substance that will have 53 percent alcohol content and turn creamy and slightly bluish when diluted with water. It will contain 30 to 35 milligrams per liter of thujone, less than the concoctions of a century ago.
Mr. Bugnon has received a small metal license plate from the Swiss government that has been soldered to his still. An Italian illustrator has designed an elegant green label. A German importer wants to take his product abroad.
Even though Mr. Bugnon has proven is that it does not take much to make a great absinthe, he faces formidable competition.
Two miles away in the village of Môtiers is the headquarters of the Blackmint Distillery, owned by Yves Kübler, a former electrical technician whose great-grandfather was a regional absinthe producer.
Four years ago the absinthe ban was eased to allow Mr. Kübler to legally distill and sell, locally and abroad, an "extract of absinthe," a 90-proof liqueur with 10 milligrams of thujone per liter. With the local agriculture department, he helped persuade farmers to cultivate wormwood again so he could produce an authentic regional absinthe.
He has already begun to package $35 boxed Christmas gift packages with half-liter bottles of absinthe, two monogrammed glasses and a perforated spoon in the shape of an wormwood leaf for those who like to filter their drink through a sugar cube.
He now plans to make a new, more powerful absinthe that he says will have "a more elegant, refined taste than the one I'm making now."
"It's like the difference between toilet water and a fine perfume," he said.
There is even stiffer competition a few miles away in the French village of Pontarlier, where production began after France relaxed its ban in 1988, allowing producers to make a drink with less than 10 milligrams of thujone per liter.
Absinthe, after all, was first produced commercially in 1797 by Henri-Louis Pernod, a Frenchman whose father-in-law bought the recipe from its inventor, Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor living in Couvet.
Complicating the market outlook, Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic have never banned absinthe production, although their absinthes are much rougher than Swiss and French brands.
Not everyone in the Val-de-Travers is sanguine about legalization in Switzerland. For Pierre André Delachaux, a high school teacher and author of several books on absinthe, the move will destroy the mystique that came with the ban.
"I want to preserve the myth that comes with keeping absinthe forbidden and clandestine," said Mr. Delachaux, who is also the curator of a small museum in Môtiers with a special absinthe section.
"The myth is the thrill of breaking the law and not getting caught," he said. "The myth is offering as much money as you can and maybe still not finding what you're looking for. Next year you'll find absinthe in all the supermarkets. We're going to have the absinthe of the bazaar."
-------- immigration / refugees
Arizonans spread hopes for moves against illegals
November 04, 2004
By Valerie Richardson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041103-112145-6599r.htm
DENVER - Arizona voters defied their political leadership Tuesday by approving Proposition 200, a measure against illegal immigration, in a move that could fuel similar grass-roots movements across the West.
With 99 percent of the vote counted, Proposition 200 had 56 percent support. The initiative requires voters to show proof of citizenship and those receiving state welfare benefits to present proof of residency or citizenship.
Randy Pullen, chairman of the Yes on 200 committee, predicted yesterday that the victory would inspire similar efforts in other Western states and draw the attention of state and national lawmakers.
"When you have the governor, your senators and your congressional delegation against it, you're outspent 5-to-1, and you still win ... it's a pretty clear message that people want something done," Mr. Pullen said.
Before Proposition 200 can take effect, however, it likely will have to pass judicial muster. Steve Roman, spokesman for the No on 200 committee, said yesterday he expects to see a court challenge within 30 days.
Proposition 200 already has overcome a series of obstacles. The measure started more than a year ago as a grass-roots effort by Arizonans fed up with the growing financial and social costs of unchecked immigration from Mexico.
The proposal immediately drew powerful opposition, led by Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, and Sen. John McCain, a Republican, and included the state's Democratic Party, the congressional delegation and labor unions.
Infighting among the measure's supporters eventually resulted in a split between the original group, Protect Arizona Now, and Yes on 200.
The No on 200 committee spent more than $1 million to campaign against the measure, arguing instead for "real immigration reform." Television and radio ads said Proposition 200 would cost the state millions of dollars to implement, and warned that the initiative could require Arizonans to produce proof of citizenship before receiving police and fire service.
The pro-200 forces denied these charges but ran no television spots. It didn't matter. Support for the measure ran as high as 75 percent and never dropped below a majority.
Bruce Merrill, who conducted polling on the measure at Arizona State University, said voter anger over illegal immigration propelled the measure to victory.
"The issue became a symbolic way to take out frustration on illegal immigration in the Southwest," Mr. Merrill said. "I think Arizonans are frustrated that the feds don't do anything about it, the state doesn't do anything about it, so this was a way to send a message."
Miss Napolitano said yesterday that she would abide by the will of Arizonans, said her spokeswoman, Jeanine L'Ecuyer.
"She's disappointed, but not surprised," Miss L'Ecuyer said. "Her job is to implement the law as passed by the voters."
The measure drew comparisons to California's Proposition 187, which passed handily in 1994, although courts later struck down some provisions. Democrats said the measure's chief contribution was to invigorate Hispanic political participation, which later resulted in devastating losses for the state Republican Party.
Mr. Merrill warned that Proposition 200 could produce a similar scenario.
"The strategy in Arizona with the Hispanic population is to let sleeping dogs lie," he said. "If you're a conservative, religious-right voter, you don't want them to vote."
At the same time, he said, his pre-election polling found that 40 percent of Hispanics favored the measure.
Other states, including California and Colorado, are launching similar initiatives for the next election, Mr. Pullen said.
"This is a start," he said. "We just want to see it keep moving forward."
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Congress is under pressure to raise debt ceiling
November 04, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041103-112143-5496r.htm
The Bush administration announced yesterday that it will run out of maneuvering room to manage the government's massive borrowing needs in two weeks, putting more pressure on Congress to raise the debt ceiling when it convenes for a special postelection session.
Treasury Department officials announced that they will be able to conduct a scheduled series of debt auctions next week to raise $51 billion. However, an auction of four-week Treasury bills scheduled to be completed on Nov. 18 will have to be postponed unless Congress acts before then to raise the debt ceiling.
"Due to debt-limit constraints, we currently do not have the capacity to settle our four-week bill auction scheduled to settle on Nov. 18," Timothy Bitsberger, acting assistant Treasury secretary for financial markets, said in a statement.
Congress is scheduled to return for a lame-duck session beginning Nov. 16 to deal with the debt ceiling, an omnibus spending plan for the rest of this budget year and other matters.
The Republican-controlled Congress put off dealing with the debt ceiling before adjourning in October, preferring not to force members to vote on the politically sensitive issue of adding to the national debt before the November elections.
The government hit the current debt ceiling of $7.384 trillion on Oct. 14, forcing the Treasury to begin a series of bookkeeping maneuvers to keep financing the government's normal operations without breaching the debt ceiling. But Treasury Secretary John W. Snow has warned that those special measures would last only until mid-November.
The Treasury Department's actions have included reducing the amount of debt in government trust funds to free up room for further borrowing from the public. The nonpublic debt then is replaced in the trust funds once the debt ceiling is increased along with any lost interest payments.
Republicans have proposed that the debt ceiling be raised by $690 billion to $8.074 trillion, an amount that would get the government through September, when the 2005 budget year ends.
The need to raise the debt ceiling reflects the record budget deficits of the past two years. The deficit for the 2004 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, was an all-time high of $413 billion, surpassing the old mark, in dollar terms, of $377 billion in 2003.
Democrats blame the surging deficits on Mr. Bush's tax cuts, while the administration contends that the tax cuts provided critical economic stimulus to help lift the economy out of the 2001 recession.
The administration says the president has a plan to cut the deficit in half by 2009, but critics contend that the real problems will come in later years as retiring baby boomers put unprecedented strains on Social Security and Medicare.
In its announcement yesterday, the Treasury said it will sell $51 billion in new securities next week, including $22 billion in three-year notes on Monday, $15 billion in five-year notes on Tuesday and $14 billion in 10-year bonds on Wednesday.
-------- corruption
Philippine investigators to visit US to gather evidence against general
MANILA (AFP)
Nov 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041104090517.djkfwpp7.html
Philippine investigators will soon leave for the United States to secure more evidence against a general who is accused of salting away almost a million dollars in corruption proceeds in the US.
The investigators are expected to coordinate with US authorities who tipped off Manila about Major General Carlos Garcia's unexplained wealth, Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo told reporters Thursday.
"Their travel documents are still being arranged. They might be able to leave next week. We will send them to secure evidence," Marcelo said.
Garcia is facing court martial for unbecoming conduct and for alleged false declarations of his assets. He and his family are accused of bringing nearly a million dollars into the US over 10 years while he was only earning about 7,200 dollars a year.
One of his sons was detained at a US airport last year for carrying up to 100,000 dollars in cash without declaring it to customs.
Marcelo said members of the team leaving for the US will also serve as witnesses against Garcia when a separate civilian case is filed against him in a special anti-graft court.
Earlier Thursday President Gloria Arroyo told reporters there was an urgent need to end "entrenched corruption" within the military.
Last year Arroyo survived a rebellion by 300 junior officers and men who accused their senior officers of massive graft.
-------- propaganda wars
Iraqi Journalists Prepare for Front Lines in Fallujah
Reporters to Embed With Marines, National Forces if Battle Starts in Insurgent-Held City
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 4, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23534-2004Nov3?language=printer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 3 -- His two wives and three children cried when he left Baghdad the night before. Now he was kneeling on a flattened piece of cardboard to pray outside the dirt-floor tent where he slept in his clothes under a scratchy green blanket donated by the U.S. Marines.
But someone had to be here, Muddhir Karim Zhary said in English, as he straightened his blue sweater vest and dusted off his trousers. Zhary, a correspondent with al-Sabah, a U.S.-funded newspaper in Iraq, translated his words into Arabic, and the five men standing with him around a large wooden cable spool, their makeshift breakfast table, nodded in agreement.
Zhary was one of six Iraqi journalists who signed up to follow the Marines and Iraqi security forces if they go into battle in the insurgent-held city of Fallujah.
None of the six had embedded before with the U.S. military, and they had no idea what to expect.
They had arrived at this military outpost near the city on Monday night without sleeping bags, boots, flashlights or bug spray -- some of the items on the gear list the Marines sent out to journalists embedding with the military for the potential offensive.
The Iraqis brought only their Army-issued flak jackets and helmets. On Tuesday morning, they emerged from their tents in full battle gear with questions about how to connect to the Internet, where to get breakfast, how to fix a pair of broken glasses and where to plug in their cell phones.
"Of course it will be dangerous," said Zhary, who was a journalist under the deposed Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. "There will be killing. But I am ready for anything. I want to take the truth from Fallujah to the people."
Khadher Zen Aibedir, a cameraman for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. whom the others called "officer" because he was in the Iraqi army for more than two decades, said Hussein invited journalists to embed with his military but did not allow them to take photos or shoot video. And when they traveled to military camps, they stayed in first-class accommodations, Aibedir said.
In other words, they did not eat prepackaged rations.
So in one of the first orders of business Tuesday, the Iraqi journalists learned how to heat their meals-ready-to-eat by pouring water into a green plastic bag and massaging the food package against the chemical heat packet to warm it evenly.
They picked through packages of chicken in Thai sauce, beef stew and chili macaroni until they found the candy and fruit bars.
Two private contractors traveled with the journalists to help them settle at the Marine camp but declined to say who they worked for or if they were under contract with the U.S. government.
When pressed, one of the two, Chuck Fowler, said that they had been hired by an Iraqi media organization.
"My job is to facilitate these guys getting here," said Fowler, who spoke in the manner of a diplomat. "The Iraqi people need information from someone other than the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian or American media. They need their own people to report what's going on."
Back at the breakfast spool, Hakim Ateah Jaber, who studied film at Baghdad University and has a law degree, nibbled cautiously on a cracker and then put it back in the package. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head.
Asked why he had wanted to be so close to a military offensive, Jaber, a correspondent with al-Iraqiya television, another U.S.-funded outlet, said he loved war.
Asked if he was prepared to get close to the action, when Marines and insurgents would likely engage in a fierce gun battle, Jaber's eyes widened.
"I love peace," he said, before rattling off a list of words in English to emphasize his point. "I believe in peace. Democracy, authority, government, system."
Later in the afternoon, while lounging on their neatly made cots, with Marine-issued blankets stretched tightly across them, the journalists debated the merits of U.S. and Iraqi military forces going into Fallujah to battle the insurgents and foreign fighters who have controlled the city for six months.
Zhary said he had faith in Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister. U.S. military leaders said Allawi would ultimately decide whether to launch a combat operation in the city, and when.
Mohammed Mohammed, a correspondent with the privately owned Iraqi TV network al-Diyar, interrupted Zhary. Mohammed is from Fallujah, a point Zhary was quick to point out when he first introduced the group to the Western press pool by jokingly calling his colleague a "terrorist." The quip made them both laugh.
"Ayad Allawi is a sand dog," Mohammed said, as the others tried to hush him. "He wanted to kill the people of Fallujah. The people of Fallujah always wanted peace, but he refused."
Three of the Iraqi journalists will be assigned to U.S. military units and two to Iraqi security forces who are supposed to take part in the offensive. One man will stay behind to coordinate their reports and make sure they get sent to Baghdad.
First Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said it was important to allow the Iraqi journalists to cover any upcoming offensive in their own style and manner.
"The hope is that in the end, as much as possible, they will be able to take information they get here and inform their publics," he said.
--------
Boobus Americanus
Al-Jazeerah
By Sam Hamod
November 4, 2004
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/November/4%20o/Boobus%20Americanus%20By%20Sam%20Hamod.htm
H.L. Mencken said it years ago, the American public is best called, "Boobus Americanus."
Several things happened in this election, and I'm sure there are things outside my ken that happened as well. Let me list some of the things that I thought allowed Bush to "win":
A person cannot overlook the continued lying by Cheney, Bush and the talk radio and TV shows. As one Pew poll showed, Fox had skewed the news so much that there was little semblance to reality in their "information." It also pointed out that those who watched Fox on a consistent basis were very much out of touch with the political realities of the world. This did not mean that these people were dumb, it was just that they were believing Fox even though Fox was misinforming them and they didn't realize it. The Cheney lies were so outrageous, his continual saying that "Saddam was in league with Bin Laden" (when in fact they were enemies; but, old Baathists now may become in league with Bin Laden to exact revenge on America wherever and whenever they can as well as many moderate Muslims who have now been radicalized); he continued saying, "There are WMDs and were in Iraq and they were an imminent threat to the U.S." and other such canards. Ralph Nader said it plainly from the beginning, that Kucinich was right on target, that Kerry should differentiate himself from Bush and say, "Bring our troops home," "Make clear there is no connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam and never was," "Make clear how you are going to stop this war in Iraq, not continue it," "Make clear that you were lied to and if you'd known the truth, you would never have voted for the war and that you are going to do what Eisenhower did in Korea, make a peace and pull out," etc. Nader talked to Kerry several times and would have supported him and been a great ally against Bush, but when he saw that Kerry wanted to play the same old "Play it safe game, don't do anything very different from Bush," he finally gave up and said he'd stay in the race and that Kerry would probably lose. Nader preferred Kerry over Bush, but they could never come to an agreement. If Nader had been allowed into the debates, he would have destroyed George W. Bush, but Kerry would not stand and fight to get Nader nto the debates; Kerry was so weak he felt he was lucky to get GW Bush to debate at all! As Nader pointed out, the "National Commission on the Presidential Debates " is run by the Democratic and Republican Parties, not a neutral group like the League of Women Voters who originally sheparded, organized and ran the early very ethical and honest debates. As Nader pointed out, "These debates are a charade." So true, so true. The ease with which the American people can be deceived and settle for a man of no intelligence, ethics or morals, all the time wearing the costume of these ideals, is amazing-GW Bush put on a costume and people believed him. For example, he did waver, continually, and while it's true he never changed his course in Iraq, it is a disaster that will continue with countless hundreds more thousands of Iraqis and more thousands of Americans being killed for nothing but greed, oil and power in the Middle East in the service of American multinational corporations and yes, Israel, who helped the corporations and themselves with this unnecessary and evil massacre. I can no longer call it a war because a war is when there is at least some parity between the two sides of the battle; in this case, the Iraqis have low level weapons, at about level 1.5 and the Americans have level 10, the most sophisticated weapons in the world. Yet death will come to both sides, just that the numbers will be outrageous in terms of Iraqi civilians because of our air raids with F 16s on civilian areas, and our soldiers will die by primitive AK 47, RPGs and will be poisoned for life by the Depleted Uranium poison that has been spread all over Iraq by U.S. weaponry. This is an unending disaster because throughout the world, Muslims and Arabs will hate America further; they will be frustrated by this election, but after a while they will regroup and many will die in suicide raids that will be called "terrorism" by our U.S. media, but "honor" and "martyrdom" and "the only wage to fight back," by those who opposed the Bush/corporate/pro-Israeli war machine. Finally, because the Democratic Party and Kerry did not have the courage to question some of the clear fraud in Florida and Ohio when people were turned away, machines broke down, the knowledge that the Diebold and other machines could be hacked or numbers changed (as could easily have happened when the Election Commission Building in Florida had to be "evacuated " for hours, during the days before the election in Florida) or codes changed on the machines-and they were overseen by none other than Bush's brother's people not federal officials or outside neutral people-WE WILL NEVER KNOW WHO TRULY WON THIS RACE. In Ohio, Blackwell, in charge of voting was another Kathryn Harris-a one-eyed jack, a joker in the pack. No one has any idea what shenanigans he may have, and probably did, pull. BUT, AGAIN, JUST AS WITH GORE, NEITHER THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOR KERRY HAD THE COURAGE TO STAND UP AND NOT CONCEDE THIS ELECTION. THEY SHOULD HAVE DEMANDED A FULL INVESTIGATION A BI-PARTIAN CONGRESSIONAL AND SENATORIAL COMMITTEE TO ASCERTAIN WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. ONLY THEN, AND IF IT TOOK WEEKS OR MONTHS, THEN SO BE IT, ONLY THEN SHOULD THEY HAVE EITHER CLAIMED VICTORY OR CONCEDED DEFEAT. BUT ONCE AGAIN, IT APPEARS THAT NADER WAS RIGHT, " THIS IS ONE PARTY WITH TWO NAMES" (echoing Jasse Jackson's comments when he ran for president many years ago.)
I could go on, but this enough. This is a most depressing day. Once again, the most honest, the clearest- minded, the most moral man in the whole presidential race, Ralph Nader, a man who created the "consumer movement" in America and who tried to offer a real alternative to Bush and Kerry ("Bush lite"), said it best, "George Bush is nothing but a corporation masquerading as a man."
--
Sam Hamod often writes on American and world politics. At this point, he's disgusted and feels that Bush is taking America down the road to disaster. He thanks Ralph Nader and all the honest people of all political parties from left to right in America who fought hard and decently in this campaign; he condemns those who cheated, lied and corrupted the process of our democracy. He is also clearly upset at how dumb the majority of the American people have become; though he admits, they may have been this dumb for a while ala Mencken's comments-but he always had more hope for them than Mencken did. He may be reached at shamod@cox.net
--------
How the Far Right Built a Media Empire to Manufacture Consent
democracynow.org
November 4th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/04/1621202
We speak with veteran investigative journalist Robert Parry about how the far right "intimidates mainstream journalists and news executives who will bend over backwards and cater to the conservative side." [includes rush transcript] We speak with veteran investigative journalist Robert Parry who writes in his latest article:
George W. Bush's electoral victory is chilling proof that the conservatives have achieved dominance over the flow of information to the American people and that even a well-run Democratic campaign stands virtually no chance for national success without major changes in how the news media operates.
It is not an exaggeration to say today that the most powerful nation on earth is in the grip of an ideological administration - backed by a vast network of right-wing think tanks, media outlets and attack groups - that can neutralize any political enemy with smears, such as the Swift boat ads against John Kerry's war record, or convince large numbers of people that clearly false notions are true, like Saddam Hussein's link to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The outcome of Election 2004 also highlights perhaps the greatest failure of the Democratic/liberal side in American politics: a refusal to invest in the development of a comparable system for distributing information that can counter the Right's potent media infrastructure. Democrats and liberals have refused to learn from the lessons of the Republican/conservative success.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about the media infrastructure that some say facilitated this, and bring Robert Parry into this conversation, former Newsweek and Associated Press reporter, who did some of the pioneering groundbreaking exposés on the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980's. Bob Parry's latest piece, "Too Little, Too Late," says: "George W. Bush's electoral victory is chilling proof that the conservatives have achieved dominance over the flow of information to the American people, and that even a well-run Democratic campaign stands virtually no chance for national success without major changes in how the news media operates." Robert Parry, you can expand on this?
ROBERT PARRY: Well, Amy, really, for the past quarter century or so, the conservatives and Republicans had been working very assiduously to build their own media infrastructure. Much of that came out of the bitterness they felt after the Watergate ouster of Richard Nixon, the defeat in Vietnam, which they blamed in some part on elements of the American public that had turned against the war. So, the conservatives went out, very -- (and we know their -- we have their thinking and their writings on this) to build their own establishment and in large part to build their own media. They began with money from conservative foundations, later on Reverend Moon stepped in with hundreds of millions of dollars that he brought in for the Washington Times and other publications. Later on, the talk radio came into this, and eventually FOX news. So it's really almost a -- a vertically integrated media infrastructure that the conservatives now have, and it reaches across the country. It reaches into many of these smaller towns, in agro -- in these rural areas where -- where much of what we have been talking about has happened. And a big part of what the conservative media has done is to demonize liberals, to make liberals simply something that Americans don't want to be near- at least many Americans. So, that's been the goal, and it's been very successful. By contrast on the liberal Democratic side, there's been a lot less investment in media. Not that there isn't any, but it's much, much less and the focus has been much different. So the conservatives have really achieved a tremendous success, I think, because they have invested over time, over a long period of time, assiduously in year-in-year-out media-not something that's put together for the campaign, but put together for constant working their messages, getting their messages to their base, recruiting new people and demonizing their enemies.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But Bob, the argument that many of these conservative media outlets constantly espouse and many of their listeners also repeat is that the liberals have their own media in the so-called national press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS and ABC and so forth. And that they are constantly -- in fact, you can't find probably people who criticize the, quote, national media, as much as they do those from the conservative movement in the United States.
ROBERT PARRY: Right. But it's largely a myth. What you have in the corporate or mainstream media is not a liberal media. It's only liberal, I suppose, from the context that if you put it up against some of the hard right positions; but the position of the major media has been to try to be centrist. When I was at Newsweek there was -- it would be -- we'd talk about how the goal of Newsweek was to be in the center. Now, obviously, that means that as things move to the right, your journalism moves to the right. If you wanted to stay in the center. So what we've seen is this phenomenon of the mainstream press, which is definitely afraid of being called liberal, and this is true not just for organizations, but for individual journalists. They're afraid of being called liberal because it damages their careers. So they have moved also more to the right in trying to finesse this development. To consider the mainstream press liberal is I think -- is just mythical. It's not -- it doesn't exist; and there are obviously liberals in the media, but overall, the mainstream press it tries to be centrist, whatever that means.
AMY GOODMAN: Bob Parry, you said the investment in the non-right-wing media goes in different places. What do you mean by that?
ROBERT PARRY: Well, overall, the Democrats and the liberals have not seen media as their priority. They've invested more in either activism or in things like projects like buying up endangered wetlands or helping to support AIDS research. Certainly, worthy causes, but they have not invested in the way the conservatives have in this sort of -- this sort of strategic approach toward media. That is if you build a strong media that makes your points, puts your arguments before the people, recruits more, that that will help you ultimately get control of the government. There's been more of a stopgap approach on the left. As we saw during the -- during this campaign period, there were groups that were set up just for the 2004 campaign that raised money for advertisements, and those advertisements went on on mainstream corporate media. They were paid for and then after that was done, it disappears. There's no residual effect, whereas the conservatives have built institutions that continue day in and day out, year in, year out, putting their message across, being consistent and being out there so the American people can listen to them.
AMY GOODMAN: It's interesting, the University of Maryland just came out with a study, American Public on International Issues, found that seventy-five percent of Bush supporters continue to believe Iraq was providing substantial report -- support to Al Qaeda, and that the majority, again, still believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
ROBERT PARRY: Well, that makes sense, because what the people are hearing across the country when they tune in their AM dial and they're on a long drive or they're a truck driver and they're out working that way, they're going to be hearing these kinds of messages constantly being presented; and when there is honest reporting in the mainstream press, it can be disparaged as liberal and not to be believed. So, you have a large number of Americans who have really reached that point that they believe the propaganda that they get from the conservative media. And that has changed American politics dramatically.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Parry, I want to thank you for being with us. Bob Parry is author of the book, Secrecy and Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It's a new book. Esther Kaplan is author of With God on Their Side.
-------- us politics
More than 4,500 North Carolina votes lost because of mistake in voting machine capacity
(AP)
11/4/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/2004-11-04-votes-lost_x.htm
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - More than 4,500 votes have been lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Scattered other problems may change results in races around the state.
Officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.
Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during the early voting period. "If we had known, we would have had the units to handle the votes," said Sue Verdon, secretary of the county election board.
Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost.
Jack Gerbel, president and owner of Dublin, Calif.-based UniLect, said Thursday that the county's elections board was given incorrect information. There is no way to retrieve the missing data, he said.
"That is the situation and it's definitely terrible," he said.
In a letter to county officials, he blamed the mistake on confusion over which model of the voting machines was in use in Carteret County. But he also noted that the machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots.
"Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked," he wrote.
County election officials were meeting with State Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett on Thursday and did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.
The loss of the votes didn't appear to change the outcome of county races, but that wasn't the issue for Alecia Williams, who voted on one of the final days of the early voting period.
"The point is not whether the votes would have changed things, it's that they didn't get counted at all," Williams said.
Two statewide races remained undecided Thursday, for superintendent of public instruction, where the two candidates are about 6,700 votes apart, and agriculture commissioner, where they are only hundreds of votes apart.
How those two races might be affected by problems in individual counties was uncertain. The state still must tally more than 73,000 provisional ballots, plus those from four counties that have not yet submitted their provisionals, said Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the state elections board.
Nationwide, only scattered problems were reported in electronic voting, though roughly 40 million people cast digital ballots, voting equipment company executives had said.
----
Team Bush...with a Few New Faces
The President isn't likely to clear the decks.
Here are the people who may go and their likely replacements
businessweek
By Amy Borrus,
NOVEMBER 4, 2004
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov2004/nf2004114_4363_db016.htm
Never known as a man who says "I goofed," George W. Bush made headlines in the second Presidential debate when he reluctantly admitted: "I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them." This President rarely sacrifices a besieged ally -- as long as his or her fealty to Team Bush is not in question. So the President who won reelection by proclaiming his stay-the-course determination isn't likely to clear the decks. K Street lobbyists and Republican operatives mostly are speculating about who's too burned out to soldier on.
Any shifts will probably be concentrated in the foreign policy team. After their mammoth clashes over Iraq policy, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appear to be playing a game of chicken: Neither wants to be the first to walk and leave the field to his rival.
POWELL: FED UP. But insiders now are betting that Rumsfeld will be first to go. Rumsfeld, 72, may not be ready to leave just yet. He doesn't want to be remembered for failing to foresee the Iraqi insurgency or for fostering the climate that led to abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. He also is eager to finish his modernization of the military. But blunders in Iraq have undermined confidence in him to the point where he will have to go fairly soon, GOP advisers say.
A leading contender for the Pentagon chief's job would be National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who spearheaded a White House effort a year ago to take command of the faltering U.S. occupation. The assumption in Washington is that she wants out of her job as head of the National Security Council. Rice, a Soviet affairs expert, oversaw budgets and academic programs as provost of Stanford University prior to joining the Administration. But running a sprawling government bureaucracy would test her mettle. Other candidates include Sean O'Keefe, head of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, and Navy Secretary Gordon England.
With Rumsfeld's star in decline, Powell could reclaim lost ground. But senior advisers say he's fed up with the turf battles and isn't likely to stick around for long either. Rice would be a front-runner for Powell's post, too. Bush insiders also are talking up two recently appointed ambassadors, John C. Danforth at the U.N. and John D. Negroponte at the U.S. mission in Baghdad, for the top State job.
TIRELESS BUSHONOMICS SALESMAN. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is believed to be headed for the door after a tough slog in a post with little authority. Under Secretary Asa Hutchinson may well get the job, unless Bush prefers to reward former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, who campaigned vigorously for him. Kerik's business partner, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, would appear a shoo-in, but he's looking for a higher-profile post as a spring-board for a possible White House run in 2008.
The economic team is the only place where Bush has ever cleaned house. But that's not going to happen this time. Any departures are likely to be voluntary. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, who has been in the job less than two years, is a tireless traveling salesman for Bushonomics and stays relentlessly on-message. He'll probably stick around.
But Wall Street veteran Stephen Friedman, director of the National Economic Council for two years, may want to move on from that behind-the-scenes post. The leading candidate to succeed him is Tim Adams, Bush's campaign policy director and a former top Treasury aide. Adams, a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, is said to favor tax reform and deficit reduction to boost the savings rate.
ASHCROFT'S SUCCESSOR? Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan isn't expected to leave before his term expires in January, 2006. When he does, the leading candidate to succeed him is Harvard University professor Martin S. Feldstein, a respected economist who would be tough on inflation.
At the Office of Management & Budget, director Joshua B. Bolten may be asked to jump over to the White House. Bolten has the inside track to succeed White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. After four years in the grueling post, Card wants out. Bolten would retain a major role in budget policy, especially if he's followed at OMB by deputy Joel D. Kaplan. Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans is said to want to move back to Texas. That could mean an opportunity for Mercer Reynolds III, the Republican entrepreneur from Ohio who chaired the Bush-Cheney reelection effort and helped the Prez shatter fund-raising records.
Among domestic posts, the biggest headline-grabber will likely be the departure of Attorney General John Ashcroft, a too-controversial darling of conservatives. The favorites to succeed him start with Larry D. Thompson, Ashcroft's former deputy, who recently became general counsel at PepsiCo. Thompson, a distinguished lawyer respected by both Democrats and Republicans, would become the first African-American AG. White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales also is on the short list. Or Gonzales could realize his dreams of becoming the first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court.
CENTER SEAT. Indeed, even before Bush sealed his victory, speculation was mounting on Court appointments. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is being treated for thyroid cancer, may soon retire. Besides Gonzales, contenders for the nation's top court include J. Harvie Wilkinson III and J. Michael Luttig, both judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; Edith H. Jones, also a federal appeals court judge; and Thompson. With a stronger majority in the Senate, Bush may test whether he can promote hard-line conservative Justice Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court's center seat.
Scholars say that a second-term shake-up can energize a Presidency. But Bush isn't the type to make wholesale changes. Familiar faces could be the rule for four more years.
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Kerry Concedes, Bush Wins Presidency
democracynow.org
November 4th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/04/1620234
Sen. John Kerry conceded in a phone call to President Bush ending the 2004 presidential race. We hear Kerry's concession speech followed by Bush's acceptance speech. [includes rush transcript] The presidential race is over. Senator John Kerry conceded in a phone call to President Bush yesterday morning ending the 2004 race.
Bush held a victory rally at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington and appeared on stage with his family and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bush enters his second term after winning the popular vote by 3.5 million. He is the first president to win more than 50 percent of the vote in 16 years. And the Republicans have strengthened its control of both the House and the Senate.
The Kerry campaign had vowed not to concede until every vote was counted in Ohio, but the Massachusetts Senator conceded yesterday after determining there were not enough uncounted voters to make up the difference.
At 11 a.m. Kerry called Bush and then addressed supporters a couple hours later in Boston. Kerry called on the nation to "begin the healing." Speaking at his victory rally, Bush said, "America has spoken and I'm humbled by the trust and confidence of my fellow citizens. With that trust comes a duty to serve all Americans and I will do my best to fulfill that duty every day as your president."
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yesterday afternoon, Senator Kerry conceded in a speech before supporters in Boston.
JOHN KERRY: You may not understand completely in what ways, but it is true when I say to you that you have taught me and you have tested me, and you have lifted me up, and you have made me stronger. I did my best to express my vision and my hopes for America. We worked hard, and we fought hard, and I wish that things had turned out a little differently, but in an American election, there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as Americans. And that -- [ applause ] -- that is the greatest privilege and the most remarkable good fortune that can come to us on earth. With that gift also comes obligation. We are required now to work together for the good of our country. In the days ahead, we must find common cause, We must join in common effort without remorse or recrimination without anger or rancor. America is in need of unity, and longing for a larger measure of compassion. I hope President Bush will advance those values in the coming years. I pledge to do my part, to try to bridge the partisan divide. I know this is a difficult time for my supporters, but I ask them, all of you, to join me in doing that. Now more than ever with our soldiers in harm's way, we must stand together and succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror. I will also do everything in my power to insure that my party, a proud Democratic Party, stands true to our best hopes and ideals. I believe that what we started in this campaign will not end here. And I know -- [applause] -- our fight goes on to put America back to work and make our economy a great engine of job growth. Our fight goes on to make affordable health care a -- an accessible right for all Americans, not a privilege. Our fight goes on to protect the environment, to achieve equality to push the frontiers of science and discovery, and to restore America's reputation in the world. I believe that all of this will happen, and sooner than we may think, because we're America and America always moves forward.
AMY GOODMAN: A defeated senator John Kerry speaking at annual hall in Boston. Soon after, President Bush in Washington, D.C., held his victory party at the Ronald Reagan building.
GEORGE W. BUSH: Because we have done the hard work, we are entering a season of hope. We will continue our economic progress. We will reform our outdated tax code. We will strengthen the social security for the next generation. We will make public schools all they can be. And we will uphold our deepest values of family and faith. We will help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan. [ cheers and applause ] so they can -- so they can grow in strength, and defend their freedom, and then our service men and women will come home with the honor they have earned. [ cheers and applause ] With good allies at our side, we will fight this war on terror with every resource in our national power so our children can live in freedom, and in peace. Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans. So today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one constitution, and one future that binds us. And when we come together, and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America. Let me close with a word to the people of the state of Texas -- [ cheers and applause ] we have known each other the longest, and you have started me on this journey. On the open plains of Texas, I first learned the character of our country, sturdy and honest, and as hopeful as the break of day. I will always be grateful to the good people of my state, and whatever the road that lies ahead, that road will take me home. A campaign has ended and the United States of America goes forward with confidence and faith. I see a great day coming for our country, and I am eager for the work ahead. God bless you, and may God bless America. AMY GOODMAN: President Bush speaking yesterday in Washington, D.C. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Juan, you have been doing a lot of looking at the numbers, at the votes around the country.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. I think that it's very important in elections like this to try to really get a sense of what was happening on the ground. There's a tendency often to look at the overall numbers, but anyone who has actually been involved in elections processes knows that what happens at the precinct level really determines pretty much what your picture of this election was. Some of the things that I have looked around the country yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time looking at the numbers, a few things struck me. Number one is the enormous consolidation of the African American vote, not only in terms of numbers, but in terms of percentages against the Republican Party. Washington, D.C., for instance, a much higher percentage of people voting for the Democrats, and larger numbers than last time. Duval county, the infamous Duval county in Jacksonville -
AMY GOODMAN: In Florida.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In Jacksonville, Florida. Huge turnouts in the black community, but also huge turnouts among whites in Duval county as well. So that there was a 44% increase in the black -- in the Democratic turnout and a 42% increase in the Republican turnout. Enormous increases. At the same time, the other thing is the enormous problems with our electoral system. It's unbelievable -- it's astounding that people had to wait ten hours in some places in Ohio to vote. One fellow reporter of mine at the New York Daily News spent five-and-a-half hours on line in eastern Pennsylvania when he went home in the evening to vote. It's unbelievable that in a country as advanced as we are, that people have to virtually spend a whole day to vote in some of these urban areas. Then, of course, voting being like -- making sausage, when you see the actual numbers, I think Greg Palast mentioned a little bit about New Mexico, but I took a closer look at New Mexico yesterday, and I'm astounded at the vote results. There's no way that you can tell what happened in New Mexico right now. Just to give you an example in Taos county in just one -- one electoral district that the state posted the returns on yesterday, out of 505 people who voted, according to the county, and that just that one precinct, only 359 votes have been tallied. 146 are missing. At least there's no apparent indication of how 30% of the people in that one precinct voted. In other precincts, hundreds of votes more than the number of people who the state says actually voted.
AMY GOODMAN: In the example of Taos, and you say 30%. You don't even know how they voted. How about the others? How did they skew?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, overwhelmingly, there's about, from what I can tell in New Mexico there's about 7,000 unaccounted for votes that people who actually voted and supposedly the votes are in, but when you add up the presidential candidates votes and everyone under that, none of them totaled the same number, so you are looking at maybe 7,000 who just either for some reason or other, their votes were discounted, or they don't appear. And -- so, I would say that given the fact that it's about 13,000, I think that the difference is there, that's very, very hard to tell what is happening in New Mexico in terms of who will be eventually declared the winner.
AMY GOODMAN: What's interesting about Taos is that it's probably one of the most democratically concentrated areas of New Mexico.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes it's also -- for instance, San Juan County in New Mexico, that's 52% native American and Latino, but yet somehow turned up 65% for Cheney and Bush, and 823 votes there are missing in that county. And so that there are quite a few places throughout New Mexico where I think there has to be a closer look. And I think in Ohio, one of the things that amazed me about the results posted by the state so far, is that they're only at the county level. They're not at the precinct level. You really don't know what's happened in Ohio yet, until you see the precinct level votes, which is how most people identify, you know, their communities and their neighborhoods, you can get a better idea. So, I think that the -- as I spoke to quite a few returning New Yorkers, who were in New Mexico and Ohio, who are on their way back now, one of the - I remember one particular person who grew up in southern Ohio and spent months there during this past year in Cincinnati trying to turn out the Democratic vote, he told me, and this is a -- a white labor activist here in New York, he told me, you know, I know southern Ohio. And ultimately, it's about -- it was about race. Race was the one question -- the one thing that was not talked about in this election, but the -- the Democratic Party has become the party of black people in America. And many -- and of Hispanics and immigrants. Many of the people who were voting know that, and came out in large numbers, and that increasingly, the -- this conservative and racist -- racist vote, which in large measure, it is, has consolidated itself in its opposition to the Democratic Party and the party of black people. That explains the enormous consolidation of the Republican rule in the south. It used to be that the Democratic Party had all of the racist Dixiecrats in it. Now all of the Dixiecrats have left the Democratic Party. I guess the last one was -- what's his name that's escaping me now at the Republican convention -- the --
AMY GOODMAN: Zell Miller.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Zell Miller was one of the last of the Dixiecrats who finally moved over, but essentially, all of the Dixiecrats and their constituents in the south have moved into the Republican Party. That's created the enormous consolidated vote, Republican Party vote in the South.
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Christian Evangelicals Proclaim "Now Comes the Revolution"
democracynow.org
November 4th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/04/1620249
Conservative Christian leader Richard Viguerie said yesterday "Now comes the revolution." We speak with Esther Kaplan, author of the new book With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W Bush's White House. [includes rush transcript] Tuesday's election saw the participation a record number of Americans. An estimated 120 million voters cast ballots, fifteen million more than in the 2000 Presidential race. About sixty percent of eligible Americans voted, the highest level of participation since 1968. And although the Democratic party received a boost as record numbers of young voters, African Americans, and Latinos headed to polls, their influence was more than offset as self-identified Evangelicals voted in record numbers.
Bush won three-quarters of white, born-again Christian voters, who are now one of every five American voters. More than half of Bush voters said "moral issues" were most important to them. State initiatives prohibiting gay marriage in eleven states may helped Bush record a victory, as evangelicals and conservative Christians cast ballots both for the ban, and for George W. Bush.
Esther Kaplan, author of the new book With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W Bush's White House.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: One of the people who is a rising star in the Republican Party in the Senate is a doctor, Dr. Coburn from Oklahoma, who just won the Senate seat there. Can you talk about his story, and how that gives us a picture of the increasing Christian conservative power right now?
ESTHER KAPLAN: Well, Coburn, he'll be a freshman in the Senate, but I think he's certainly someone to watch. He's a very effective politician. He actually came in as a congressman during the Gingrich revolution, but after a couple of terms he went home. That was part of the Gingrich platform was term limits, so he kind of stayed true and went back to Oklahoma to work as an OB/GYN again, after that became a board member of the Family Research Council, which is one of the most important Christian-right organizations in Washington. I've interviewed him before. He's proudly and openly anti-gay. I think people may know he's famously, in the past not so recently, called for the death penalty for abortionists. There was a scandal during his campaign --
AMY GOODMAN: He's an obstetrician?
ESTHER KAPLAN: He is. He is. That he had sterilized one of his patients without her consent-something that ended up in court. Despite all that, he won handily in Oklahoma. He actually wasn't even expected to get the Republican nomination there, let alone win. But James Dobson, who's the head of Focus on the Family, who actually took a leave from his non-profit position in order to really dig in politically to this campaign, worked very hard for George Bush and very hard for Tom Coburn.
AMY GOODMAN: James Dobson's Focus on the Family based in Colorado Springs?
ESTHER KAPLAN: Exactly. One of the most massive Christian media empires, and he --
AMY GOODMAN: How many radio stations do they own? More than 700?
ESTHER KAPLAN: Well, they're syndicated but -- but, yeah, I mean, he reaches -- his broadcasts reach millions, and he also has a publishing house and et cetera. But he -- From the moment Tom Coburn's website went up, there was a letter of endorsement from James Dobson on it. I think his victory is a kind of example of the way that these anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives really influenced turnout in key states. There was one on the ballot in Oklahoma. It was a wipeout in opposition to gay marriage; and I think that that combination of turning out for Coburn, turning out for Bush, turning out against gay marriage, really brought the evangelical vote--
AMY GOODMAN: All eleven states where gay marriage bans were on the ballot they --
ESTHER KAPLAN: Won decisively.
AMY GOODMAN: -- won.
ESTHER KAPLAN: I think the lowest was around sixty percent. In Mississippi it was -- I think it might have been higher than eighty-five percent. Now, this is -- you know, all the polls show that this is something that's only going to work to the right's advantage for ten or twenty years, cause there's a real generation gap on the issue; but for now, it was extremely effective. I think that when we look at Ohio and Bush's victory in Ohio, I mean, we'll see when all of the numbers sort out; but I actually think that the turnout for the ballot initiatives against gay marriage, completely exempted from campaign financing limits, that turnout effort led by the grassroots Christian right probably was decisive in Ohio for Bush, too.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And of course, it is a tactic that the -- of using referendum to -- at critical junctures inflate or change the nature of the vote that the Democratic party has not been very good at using in any event -- in any of its races. But I 'd like to ask you, in terms of this whole issue of Christian fundamentalism. This is a continuing theme throughout American history. I mean, if you go back to -- from going back to the battles between the -- those who were more followers of puritanism among the founding fathers over the role of the church within -- within our government versus the Jeffersonians, Madison and Franklin and those who were more of the Enlightenment strain; but it seems to have definitely grabbed hold at this particular time again, because there have been periods in American history where the fundamentalist vote has arisen. Why now has it arisen again?
ESTHER KAPLAN: Well, it's interesting when you bring up the history, because it was actually very significant on the progressive side at another point in our history. Fueling the abolition movement and -- and some of the social reforms around the turn of the century and so on. There was in this case, starting with the defeat of Goldwater in 1964, a concerted effort to peel off this group which was really in political retreat. Still a significant movement within the United States, but really had divorced itself from political life, from public life. There was a concerted effort to recruit that movement into the Republican party and it took thirty years, but it really worked. And that began with the organizations that cropped up in the 1970's: the National Right to Life Committee, the Eagle Forum, Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. All of this was kind of called into being by Republican operatives like Richard Viguerie, like Paul Wyrick who really saw this as the way for the Republicans to regain a majority; and it looks like after all of their hard work it's really panned out. We don't know the numbers exactly, but Karl Rove famously after 2000 said, "You know, we lost the popular vote because evangelical conservatives did not turn out in the numbers we wanted." He vowed to turn them out in greater numbers. The early indications are that that probably worked. The poll -- the exit polling questions were phrased very differently in 2000 and 2004 so that direct comparisons are tough; but it looks like at least a few percentage points, maybe even more, bump up in the turnout, and that really helped contribute to, not just the electoral a college victory, but the popular vote victory.
AMY GOODMAN: Interesting comment of Fareed Zakaria on ABC news. He said, "This is what really divides the U.S. from other industrial democracies: Gods, gays and guns, if you will. If you were to take a sampling of public opinion in countries all around the world," and this has been done by the Pew foundation, "you'd find that the United States on most of the core cultural issues is much closer to Nigeria and Saudi Arabia than to Europe and Japan."
ESTHER KAPLAN: Well, that's a sad comment, but it's true. We're completely out of step with other industrialized democracies.
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How the GOP Took Control of the White House, the Senate, the House, the Judiciary, State Governorships and Legislatures
democracynow.org
November 4th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/04/1620244
We speak with American University law professor Jamie Raskin about the Electoral College and how the Republican party took control of all branches of the U.S. government: the White House, the Senate, the House, the Judiciary, State Governorships and Legislatures. [includes rush transcript]
Jamie Raskin, American University law professor.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the telephone -- rather, in the studio in Washington by Jamie Raskin of American University, law professor. Jamie, right now, we're looking at Republican consolidation of power over not only the presidency, Supreme Court, Senate, House, federal judiciary the majority of governorships and state legislatures. Can you talk about the significance of this, and the structural underpinnings?
JAMIE RASKIN: Well, I think that Juan put his finger on what's going on here, which is that our political institutions were structured by a determination to protect slavery in the South. And so, all of our political institutions have a pro-Southern tilt to them. The Electoral College can only be understood as being intertwined with the history of slavery and white supremacy in the country. The Southern states were looking for a way to combine the disproportionate power they got through the US Senate with the House of Representatives where they got disproportionate power through the three-fifths clause, counting the slaves, 60% of the slaves, to inflate the power of the slave masters in their congressional delegations. So the Electoral College worked like a dream for the southern states. Four out of the five first presidents were slave masters. The electoral college, all the way up through the 20th century and today, has operated to give disproportionate power to the South and specifically the most conservative backward forces in the South. We just saw that play out again yesterday. In the 20th century, there were a number of conservative Dixiecrats who left the Democratic Party in presidential elections like George Wallace, like Harry Byrd, like Strom Thurmond and ran for president as independents to send a message to the Democratic Party about how the civil rights movement should not be joined and should not be supported. The Electoral College has always been a lever against civil rights progress. Today is now acts to support the most conservative forces in the country that want to increase corporate power, that don't want to deal with issues like health care for the people, that don't want to deal with environmental protection and so on. And we're getting a kind of one party lockup of the political system through the Republican party control of the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court, the federal judiciary, and the different levers of power going to reinforce one another as we saw in 2000 when five-justice majority all appointed by Republicans on the Supreme Court moved to hand Bush a victory in the Electoral College, despite the fact that he was town 500,000 votes. They have been able to use the last four years with their control over the federal budget, with their control over the federal government, with their support in the corporate media, to consolidate their political power. So, if you believe the central insight of our founders about checks and balances, we're in a dangerous situation to have one party control over all of our major political institutions.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask you, also, because I will never forget the conversation I had many years ago with Ruben Frankel, who at that time was head of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund as he was on a train to Washington to the Justice Department to argue over redistricting. This was in the early 1990's. His lawyer was Rudy Giuliani, who was very much in favor of supporting the creation of a new Latino district in New York. And in essence, the Republicans, strategically, in the early 1990's, made a decision to support the creation of these -- some of these minority districts in the country. They were basically appeasing the African-American and Latino upper classes in seeking to get more seats, but in essence diluted the minority vote in the rest of the country by compacting it into the 80% minority districts, 60% minority districts which would guarantee the Charlie Rangel and other political representatives of the world perpetual seats, but would in essence create opportunities for the Republicans throughout the rest of the country. And obviously, this is what DeLay just did in Texas, to forestall the new majority that's developing in Texas by rearranging the seats there, and being responsible primarily for the big Republican gain this time around.
JAMIE RASKIN: Right. Well, I mean, that's an enormously complex issue. On one hand, the Rehnquist court in Shaw v. Reno and in Miller v. Johnson were saying that it's unconstitutional to create majority black and Hispanic districts that have a bizarre configuration or bizarre perimeter to them. On the other hand the Republicans were pushing to back as many racial minorities, i.e., Democrats, into districts as possible to create extremely Democratic districts and in effect bleach or whiten the neighboring districts. Ultimately, the Supreme Court exceeded to that Republican strategy. But the big problem here, and this is where I think we have to keep our eyes on, is the way that politicians get to choose their own voters through the legislative redistricting process. We saw that happen in Texas where the DeLay-engineered re-gerrymandering of the congressional districts led to a wipeout of four white Texas democrats in this election. But you know, outside of Texas, only three congressional incumbents of either party lost in the entire country. That's because gerrymandering has been perfected as a computerized art now, where the members of congress through their friends in the state legislatures can design and custom make their own congressional districts. Well, that also given the current political configuration, is a recipe for frozen republican control of the House of Representatives. One of the rays of light in this campaign is the development of instant runoff voting in San Francisco. It was adopted in Burlington, Vermont, and I think a couple of other places. The democrats and progressives in this country have got to begin to challenge the frozen institutional underpinnings of monopoly republican power over our politics.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about Jamie Raskin, a law professor at American University, about the consolidation of republican power in this country after the elections. Jamie, I was just reading a quote in the news headlines of Richard Viguerie. He is a leading conservative Christian, who said now comes the revolution. If you don't implement a conservative agenda now, when do you? In a memo sent to other conservative Christians, Viguerie wrote, "Make no mistake, conservative Christians and values voters won this election for George W. Bush and Republicans in congress." He went on from there and talking about how this is the moment. Can you respond?
JAMIE RASKIN: Well, obviously, the Republicans did well, appealing to their religious base in the country. It's clearly a numerical minority in the country, and yet they do have decisive power in the Republican Party, which means that we have sort of a minority ideological agenda driving the entire train of government, and I'm hoping that this is what does cause a backlash in this race. I was puzzled along the way in the election how the Republicans continually invoked abortion, specifically talking about so-called partial birth abortion and Kerry and Edwards did not emphasize the pro-choice, which I think does appeal to millions of independent and Republican women voters in the suburbs. They didn't appeal to the values of the liberal base in the country to try to bring those voters over. So, they sort of let them wander on the sort of security-mom cluster of appeals that the Republicans were making. I do think there's a pro-choice majority in the country. The Republicans very cleverly developed an issue out of thin air, this partial birth abortion issue, which relates only to several hundred medical cases in the entire country every year. It's a freakishly unusual procedure, and yet somehow, the Democrats have been cornered on that, and the fundamental issue of a woman's right to choose has been lost in the process. I think the rhetoric of values has got to be turned around. Everybody has values. The idea that some people voted on the war, some peopled voted on the economy and some people voted on the values is just absurd. Everyone has values, and everyone brings values to the understanding of these different issues. And the thing that frightens me is the way that an eroding public school system and very powerful religion in some parts of the country and television on all over the place is leading to a steady dumbing down of the American public and a corrosion of basic critical thinking in the population.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the issue of the Electoral College? There was obviously hope among many people that if there had been a second consecutive skewing of the popular vote versus the Electoral College vote, there might finally begin to develop a movement to get rid of the Electoral College, which right now is rendering certainly some of the major states like New York and California, with so much population, but basically are irrelevant to the national political scene.
JAMIE RASKIN: Yeah, the Electoral College radically depresses turnout. It renders millions of votes irrelevant to the process. There could have been, again, a difference in the popular and in the Electoral College votes. Imagine if Kerry had gotten 300,000 votes more in Ohio. He would have won Ohio. He would have won the election, although Bush would have had a couple of million votes more because of the inflated totals coming out of the southern states. But the bottom line is that until we move to a direct popular vote, we're never really going to know where the majority of the people are, because the campaigns take place in the swing states, and we somehow have become accustomed to the idea that the people of 40 states are going to sit back and be television spectators to the presidential campaign that takes place in ten states where the campaigns design their appeals to swing blocks of voters in a handful of the swing states. That's not -- that's not a popular way of electing a president.
AMY GOODMAN: For the lay person, Jamie Raskin, can you explain why it works that way? Why does it come down to these few states, and why does the Electoral College determine that strategy?
JAMIE RASKIN: Right now, we know who's going to win in the vast majority of states. So, we knew that Kerry was going to take New York and Connecticut and Rhode Island and California. And we knew that Bush was going to take everywhere in the South -- except for Florida, that may have been up for grabs -- Texas and Utah and Alaska. So, it's a simple waste of money for the campaigns to put any money, any energy or resources into those states when the money has to go to the so-called swing states -- Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Oregon. And that's where all of the attention goes, and the turnout rate in those states is much higher.
AMY GOODMAN: But why is that determined by the Electoral College?
JAMIE RASKIN: Well, each state gets a number of electors equal to the number of people it has in its house delegation, plus the two senators. This was the system that was engineered at the time of the writing of the constitution, specifically by the small states by the white power brokers in the Southern states, who pushed for the Electoral College system. By the way, if there's a failure in the Electoral College. If there's a tie, then the presidential election is thrown into the House of Representatives where the states vote, but not according to population, with each state casting one vote. So, New York and California would each get one vote, but so would Utah and South Carolina and Alabama and so on. So, you see the way in which there's a kind of structural rigging of the process that goes back to the very beginning. What we really need to be doing is talking about constitutional reforms. The problem is that the disease of this disproportionate concentration of political power kills the cure because it's the people who are in power now that get to decide. We need a two-thirds vote in the house and senate and three-quarters of the state to ratify any constitutional change. Even a very basic one such as constitutionalizing the right to vote, which the Supreme Court, in Bush versus Gore, told us in 2000, is not part of the constitution. The court said it's not the right of the people to vote in each state, it's the power of the legislators to appoint the electors. The Florida legislature had threatened to disregard the popular vote if the Florida Supreme Court succeeded in getting them counted and appointing the electors for Bush. The Supreme Court said that was fine. So, I think that we have to acknowledge that although we talk about democracy, democracy is always channeled and structured in particular ways. Those are ways now that are benefiting the Republican Party and the Republican Party has figured out how to manipulate the levers of power.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamie Raskin, as we wrap up, a final comment and observation, conclusions as we come out of this victory for president George W. Bush.
JAMIE RASKIN: Well, I had a professor in college who taught me that politics is the art of doing the same thing over and over again until one day is works, and that it sort of looks like a miracle. The progressive forces should have their eyes open about what we're up against in terms of the structure of the government. And yet, I think through popular education about the nature of the government and popular education about the threats to the civil rights and civil liberties, we can reach across the political spectrum to other people who are unnatural allies like libertarians who I think have every reason to be freaked out about the Orwellian, big-business, militarist, imperialist direction of the Bush administration, to create new allies, new formations, no coalitions, to be creative and to use the fact that Bush has to try to solve the crises of his own making in Iraq and in our economy, and we have the opportunity to go out and educate.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamie Raskin, thank you very much for joining us, law professor at American University.
JAMIE RASKIN: My pleasure.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Concentrating Solar Power Systems Funded for Western States
November 4, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-04-09.asp#anchor3
In an effort to tap the solar energy resources of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, Texas and Colorado, the U.S. Department of Energy will support efforts to install a total of 1000 MW of concentrating solar power (CSP) systems over the next several years.
"This exciting initiative will provide a substantial engine for economic development, job creation, air quality improvements and new, non-polluting sources of electricity supply for the region," Acting Under Secretary of Energy David Garman said.
"The federal long-term goal is to lower the cost of CSP technology to 7 cents/kilowatt-hour from the current cost of 12-14 cents/kilowatt-hour," Garman said.
There are three main types of concentrating solar power systems: parabolic-trough, dish/engine, and power tower.
Parabolic-trough systems concentrate the sun's energy through long rectangular, curved U-shaped mirrors. The mirrors are tilted toward the sun, focusing sunlight on a pipe that runs down the center of the trough. This heats the oil flowing through the pipe. The hot oil then is used to boil water in a conventional steam generator to produce electricity.
A dish/engine system uses a mirrored dish, similar to a very large satellite dish. The dish-shaped surface collects and concentrates the sun's heat onto a receiver, which absorbs the heat and transfers it to fluid within the engine. The heat causes the fluid to expand against a piston or turbine to produce mechanical power. The mechanical power is then used to run a generator or alternator to produce electricity.
A power tower system uses a large field of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto the top of a tower, where a receiver sits. This heats molten salt flowing through the receiver. Then, the salt's heat is used to generate electricity through a conventional steam generator. Molten salt retains heat efficiently, so it can be stored for days before being converted into electricity. That means electricity can be produced on cloudy days or even several hours after sunset.
Through a five year cooperative, cost-shared agreement first proposed by the Western Governor's Association (WGA), the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will provide $90,000 for the first year along with the expertise and technical information about CSP systems. The states and the WGA will contribute $61,690.
The project seeks to fulfill the Western Governor's Association's goal of new power purchase agreements for 1000 megawatts (MW) of concentrating solar power - enough energy to power 150,000 homes each year - in the southwestern states by 2010.
During the first year of the project, activities will include establishment of a stakeholder group, development of the process by which stakeholders in the region can achieve the 1000 MW goal, and possibly the formation of a utility consortium.
This agreement supports on-going state projects that include a 1 MW trough plant being built in Arizona, a 50 MW trough plant in Nevada that will be built in 2005, a task force in New Mexico to determine the most appropriate CSP technology for the state, and a task force that is developing a solar strategy to include a wide range of solar technologies for the state of California.
The agreement grew out of a resolution passed by the Western Governor's Association during their annual meeting in June 2004. The resolution calls for the development of 30 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy - renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements - in the West by 2015. One GW of this is to be provided by concentrating solar power.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
U.S. Wants No Warming Proposal
Administration Aims to Prevent Arctic Council Suggestions
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23541-2004Nov3.html
The Bush administration has been working for months to keep an upcoming eight-nation report from endorsing broad policies aimed at curbing global warming, according to domestic and foreign participants, despite the group's conclusion that Arctic latitudes are facing historic increases in temperature, glacial melting and abrupt weather changes.
State Department representatives have argued that the group, which has spent four years examining Arctic climate fluctuations, lacks the evidence to prepare detailed policy proposals. But several participants in the negotiations, all of whom requested anonymity for fear of derailing the Nov. 24 report, said officials from the eight nations and six indigenous tribes involved in the effort had ample science on which to draft policy.
The recommendations are based on a study, which was leaked last week, that concludes the Arctic is warming much faster than other areas of the world and that much of this change is linked to human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment -- produced by a council of nations with Arctic territory that includes the United States, Canada, Russia and several Nordic countries -- reflects the work of more than 300 scientists.
Several individuals close to the negotiations said the Bush administration -- which opposes mandatory cuts in carbon emissions on the grounds that they will cost American jobs -- had repeatedly resisted even mild language that would endorse the report's scientific findings or call for mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.
An early draft of the policy statement -- which is set to be issued two weeks after the 144-page scientific overview is released Monday -- included a paragraph saying that to achieve the goals set under a 1992 international climate change treaty known as the Rio Accord, the "Arctic Council urges the member states to individually and when appropriate, jointly, adopt climate change strategies across relevant sectors. These strategies should aim at the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases."
The administration has pushed to drop that section. As one senior State Department official who asked not to be identified put it, "We're bound by the administration's position. We're not going to make global climate policy at the Arctic Council."
The World Wildlife Fund's Arctic Program director Samantha Smith said the council's scientific conclusions, which said temperature increases in some parts of the Arctic increased tenfold compared with the last century's worldwide average rise of 1 degree Fahrenheit, justified immediate action.
"This is the first full-scale assessment of climate change in the Arctic and it shows dramatic changes in the region, with worse to come if we don't cut emissions," said Smith, an observer at the negotiations. "We challenge the Arctic governments to come up with a real response to the science, before the foreign ministers meet in Iceland in November."
Administration officials said they are hesitant to endorse policy recommendations before examining the full 1,200-page scientific report on the Arctic.
Paula Dobriansky, the undersecretary of state for global affairs who will be leading the U.S. delegation to Reykjavik, Iceland, later this month, said that "the report has not been finalized or released to governments."
U.S. officials have received regular briefings on the full report, according to Arctic Council officials, and have submitted comprehensive comments on it over the past 18 months.
Some council participants have begun to grumble about U.S. resistance to articulating a global climate policy. One European negotiator said the administration is trying to "sidetrack the whole process so it is not confronted with the question, 'Do you believe in climate change, or don't you?' " He added that while the other member nations will try to press the United States on the matter in the final talks, "I cannot see any solution to this unless [the administration] clearly changes its position."
And Sheila Watt-Cloutier, head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and an Arctic Council representative, wrote council chairman Gunnar Palsson of Iceland in August that a recent draft of the report "tries and often fails to be all things to all people and in so doing shies away from policy recommendations, the one thing it was designed to do."
Some Senate Republicans, including Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (Ariz.) and fellow committee member Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), are also lobbying the administration to back a strong policy document. In late September they and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) wrote to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell saying, "In order to fulfill our responsibilities to the American people, it is critical that we, as policymakers, have access to the latest scientific information and associated policy recommendations."
Dobriansky said the administration supports publication of the policy report this month. "Allegations that the United States is seeking to suppress the policy recommendations are simply not true," she said.
Palsson said in an interview that the public controversy over the U.S. climate position was complicating his efforts to achieve a consensus among top ministers, who are supposed to sign off on the policy findings within a matter of weeks.
"This is such a highly sensitive political issue," he said. "Ministers have to be able to sort these things out behind closed doors."
--------
Fewer Monitors Proposed by Waste-Site Regulators
November 4, 2004
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/nyregion/04enviro.html
WHITE PLAINS, Nov. 3 - State environmental regulators have proposed eliminating a longstanding policy requiring state monitors at most hazardous waste sites.
The change would also allow the owners of most of the sites where monitoring would still be required to hire private inspectors.
The proposal by the Department of Environmental Conservation has worried some environmental groups, which contend that the proposed change would gravely weaken the policing of the state's worst polluters and jeopardize natural resources and the health of residents.
"Are they saying that facilities that violated the law on a regular basis are safe and don't require monitoring?" asked Mike Schade, the western New York director of the Citizens' Environmental Coalition, a group based in Albany. "We're talking about facilities that can pose an incredible threat to surrounding communities."
The current policy, which has been in effect for at least 15 years, specifies a range of sites and activities that require monitoring by on-site inspectors from the Department of Environmental Conservation, including commercial hazardous waste landfills, commercial hazard waste incinerators, hazardous waste sites undergoing cleanup and sites that process and treat hazardous waste.
Under the policy change, state monitors would be required only at commercial hazardous waste landfills. Monitoring would no longer be required at the other sites, though state regulators could order it. In addition, in cases where the agency has required a site to undergo inspection, the new policy would permit the owner or operator of the site to hire private monitors who would report to the Department of Environmental Conservation.
A spokesman for the agency said on Wednesday that the proposal did not amount to a weakening of the current policy. "It's less restrictive and provides us with greater flexibility," said the spokesman, Michael J. Fraser.
Mr. Fraser said the agency did not plan to remove its monitors from sites where they were already present, and all private monitors allowed under the proposed policy would be subject to the same standards of review and accountability as agency monitors.
About 70 state monitors currently work at about 300 waste sites around the state, he said. Their job is to make sure that site operators meet the requirements of their operating permits.
Mr. Fraser said he did not know whether the proposal would result in cost savings for the agency.
Under the current policy, site operators are required to reimburse the agency for the cost of the monitors.
Opponents of the proposal - a group that includes environmental activists and citizen groups, legislators and the Public Employees Federation, the union that represents the Department of Environmental Conservation's scientists and technicians, including its monitors - contend that private monitors hired by site operators would be subject to coercion by their employers.
"It strains credulity to believe that a monitor paid by the violator would be as objective or as vigilant as an employee" of the Department of Environmental Conservation, Stephen T. Connolly, a researcher for the Public Employees Federation, wrote in a letter to the environmental agency. Leaving it to the state to decide whether a site needs on-site monitoring, he added, "exposes important environmental decisions to political pressure."
State Senator George D. Maziarz, who represents all of Orleans County and part of Monroe and Niagara Counties, said in a letter to Commissioner Erin M. Crotty of the Department of Environmental Conservation that state monitors provide "psychological comfort" to nearby communities.
"Anything less," he said, "will fracture any trust between these communities and your agency."
A five-week public comment period ends on Friday, but some opponents have complained that the period is too short and have requested additional time.
Assemblyman Thomas P. DiNapoli, chairman of the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee, urged the agency in a letter to hold hearings in each of its administrative regions because of "the substantial public interest in this proposal."
---------
California group sues wind companies over bird deaths
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
November 4, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27998/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - A California environmental group has sued to force the operators of one of North America's largest windmill farms to take steps to reduce the number of birds killed in the turbines' propellers, court papers showed.
The Center for Biological Diversity charges the windmills have killed thousands of golden eagles, western burrowing owls and red-tailed hawks which flock to the wind-swept canyon along Altamont pass some 50 miles east of San Francisco.
"We are an environmental group and absolutely support alternative energy. It is just in this case it is the worst location in North America in terms of killing birds of prey," said spokesman Jeff Miller.
The farm is located along a migratory route and boasts one of the highest concentrations of birds of prey in the world - making it critical to cut down on the bird deaths, he said.
The lawsuit charges the bird kills violate state Fish and Game Code provisions and names FPL Energy (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , GREP, Green Ridge Power, Altamont Power, Enxco, Seawest Windpower, Windworks, Altamont Winds and Pacific Winds.
FPL Energy spokesman Steve Stengel said he had no comment because his company - the nation's largest operator of wind turbines - had not yet seen the lawsuit. Seawest Windpower had no comment while the other companies could not immediately be reached.
The environmental group, which filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Monday, estimates about 8,000 birds are killed each year, including some 880 to 1,300 raptors such as hawks, owls, falcons, eagles and kestrels.
The lawsuit seeks compensation for past bird deaths to fund new wildlife habitat and it calls on the companies to install newer-turbines and to take other steps to reduce the number of birds killed.
-------- genetics
Sperm Stem Cells Are Grown Outside Body
November 4, 2004
By NICHOLAS WADE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/science/04sperm.html
A male achievement that is perhaps insufficiently celebrated is that with every heartbeat a man generates 1,000 sperm, each of which has taken two months to produce. In a step that brings closer the possibility of making inheritable genetic changes in humans, scientists have succeeded in growing outside the body the special stem cells that direct the remarkably prolific process of sperm production.
Although the method now works just for mice, it may well apply to human cells, since they use the same genetic signals as mouse cells.
Cultivation of the sperm production cells has been a 10-year goal of Dr. Ralph L. Brinster, a reproductive biologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. The ability to culture the cells is a first step that leads in a number of possible directions. One is correcting the sperm of infertile men. Another, if ethically acceptable, would be genetic engineering in humans. A third is generating embryonic stem cells without the controversial step of making an embryo.
The new method was developed by Dr. Brinster and his colleagues Hiroshi Kubota and Mary R. Avarbock and is reported in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The ability to cultivate the sperm production cells in large numbers would make it possible to try swapping mutated genes in the cells for normal or improved versions. With infertile men, the sperm production cells could be removed, genetically treated, and put back in the testis, where they should produce normal sperm.
Dr. Brinster said he hoped to learn how to make the sperm production cells produce sperm outside the body. Genetically altered sperm could then be used directly for in vitro fertilization. The technique could be useful in animal breeding; whether it would be considered ethical in human reproduction is likely to be a matter of debate.
The technique may also provide an alternative route for generating embryonic stem cells for use in repairing the body's tissues. The sperm production cells are adult stem cells, which are specialized, self-renewing cells, each type of which is dedicated to repairing or maintaining a specific body tissue. All are descended from embryonic stem cells, the all-purpose cells from which the body is made.
At present, embryonic stem cells are taken from the surplus embryos generated in fertility clinics. The sperm production cells have many of the same characteristics of embryonic stem cells and, Dr. Brinster believes, are only a couple of developmental steps away from them. It may be possible to walk them backward into being embryonic stem cells. These could then be converted into the specialized cell types needed to repair damaged organs.
The new technique "will fuel a major advance in genetic modification for farm animals, endangered species and primates, including humans," Martin M. Matzuk, a reproductive biologist at the Baylor College of Medicine, said in a written commentary.
John Gearhart, a stem cell biologist at Johns Hopkins University, said Dr. Brinster's achievement lay in showing how to grow sperm production cells in a reproducible way.
--------
INITIATIVES
Defying Bush Administration,
Voters in California Approve $3 Billion for Stem Cell Research
November 4, 2004
By DEAN E. MURPHY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/politics/campaign/04stem.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 3 - California voters approved a ballot measure on Tuesday to spend $3 billion over the next 10 years on research of human embryonic stem cells, the largest state-run scientific research effort in the country.
Unofficial results showed the measure passed with 59 percent of the vote.
The measure, Proposition 71, was backed by an assortment of wealthy business people, Hollywood personalities, scientists and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, who broke ranks with President Bush and the California Republican Party on the contentious issue.
The Bush administration has placed restrictions on using public money for research on embryonic stem cells, citing opposition to the destruction of human embryos. Last year, the federal government spent $25 million on stem cell studies; with the passage of Proposition 71, California will spend $300 million a year beginning in 2005.
The measure calls for the establishment of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which is expected to become the nation's incubator for stem cell studies. The state will pay for the effort by issuing $3 billion in general obligation bonds at an estimated cost of $6 billion over the next 30 years.
Though there is disagreement over the use of human embryos for research, many scientists and patient advocacy groups say they believe stem cells have great potential for deriving therapies and cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Voters in California, where legislating by initiative has been a long established practice, had 15 other measures on the ballot, the most of any state. They covered such subjects as relaxing the state's "three strikes" law for repeat offenders and establishing a mandatory "pay or play" system of health coverage for certain employers. Both measures were defeated.
Nationwide, voters in 34 states considered a total of 163 statewide ballot measures, approving or rejecting new laws on taxation, gambling, hunting, health care, immigration, election reform and a host of other subjects.
In Arizona, immigration was the topic of a fiercely contested measure that was approved with 56 percent of the vote. The measure, Proposition 200, requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote and denies certain state and local benefits to illegal immigrants.
Opponents are expected to mount legal challenges to the law. That was the case in California, when a similar measure passed 10 years ago but was struck down in the courts.
Several states had ballot measures dealing with marijuana. Montana voted to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, and Oregon turned down a proposal to expand its uses of medical marijuana. In Alaska, voters rejected a measure that would have legalized marijuana use for those over 21, with 57 percent opposed. Hunting and sportsmen groups fought back efforts in both Alaska and Maine to place restrictions on the use of bait in bear hunting.
In Florida, a constitutional amendment related to abortion and teenage pregnancy won handily with 65 percent of the vote. The law limits the privacy rights of girls under 18, paving the way for parental notification before a minor has an abortion.
Several states had measures dealing with election changes. In Arkansas, voters rejected Amendment 1, which called for extending term limits for state legislators to 12 years from 6 years. In California, voters turned down a measure that would have replaced party primaries with open primaries, while voters in Washington approved a modified open primary system.
Mr. Schwarzenegger took a particular interest in 10 of the California initiatives, though he was not the author of any of them, unlike the budget-related measures on the ballot in March.
The governor spent the final days before the election traversing the state, with his stated priority the defeat of two competing measures that would allow the expansion of casino-style gambling. The two measures were defeated by big margins.
On crime, Californians defeated a measure that would have limited the state's three-strikes law.
-------- health
Flu Shots Skin Injection Might Stretch Supply of It
November 4, 2004
By DENISE GRADY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/health/04flu.html?hp&ex=1099630800&en=62f599728023ee1e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
It may be possible to stretch the supply of flu vaccine by giving some people reduced doses that are injected into the skin instead of the usual site, a muscle, researchers are reporting.
Two research teams tested the idea - using 40 percent of the normal dose in one study, 20 percent in the other - and found that in healthy adults up to age 60, smaller doses in the skin worked just as well as full-sized ones shot into muscle. But in people older than 60, the technique, called an intradermal injection, was less successful. They probably need larger doses, researchers found.
The two studies, to be published on Nov. 25 in The New England Journal of Medicine, have been posted on the journal's Web site, www.nejm.org, ahead of time because of "potential public health implications," the editors said.
Though the findings may sound like a solution to the current vaccine shortage, researchers said they would actually be of limited use.
"I think it would be premature to start using an intradermal approach," said Dr. Mitchell L. Cohen, an infectious disease expert at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The studies are very promising but need to be repeated in larger populations."
Combined, the studies included only 338 people. And researchers used blood tests, not cases of influenza, to measure how the immune system responded to the vaccine.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, "Is this going to bail us out this year? Unlikely."
Dr. Fauci, who wrote an editorial accompanying the two studies, said low doses were most likely to be least effective in some of the people who need vaccine most: the elderly and those with H.I.V. or chronic diseases that affect the immune system.
But he also said that low doses would probably work in others who should be vaccinated, like people who have asthma but are otherwise well, and healthy people who take care of infants or high-risk patients.
"There is no doubt in my mind that physicians who are frustrated that they have very few doses are going to read these papers and take it upon themselves" to split vaccine doses among their patients, Dr. Fauci said.
"There will be physicians who will make that judgment call," he said. " 'I have 200 patients and 75 doses, I have to do something about that.' "
Even though flu vaccine is approved only for intramuscular injections at full strength, it would not be illegal for doctors to split doses and inject them under the skin, because once a drug is on the market, doctors can use it in ways and for conditions for which it was not approved or labeled. Such "off-label" use is common with many drugs, and Dr. Fauci said he would be "astounded" if any regulator tried to interfere with doctors who tried to stretch their vaccine supplies by dividing doses.
The advantage of injecting the vaccine into the skin is that the skin has a rich supply of dendritic cells, a type of white blood cell that can initiate a powerful immune response.
"The skin is an important immunological organ, and if we inject flu vaccine into the skin you can get a really good immune response with a very small amount of vaccine," said Dr. Robert B. Belshe, director of the center for vaccine development at Saint Louis University and the leader of one of the studies.
The other study was conducted by researchers at the Iomai Corporation in Gaithersburg, Md., a company that specializes in delivering vaccines to the skin.
Dr. Fauci said the intradermal technique was so promising that it should be studied further and might ultimately prove to be the best way to provoke a vigorous immune response in chronically ill people, whose immune systems sometimes fail to react strongly enough to derive protection from vaccines.
Doctors may need lessons in how to give intradermal shots. The technique is the same one used to inject substances into the skin to test for allergies.
"It takes a little bit of training, but we teach medical students to do it in 15 minutes," Dr. Belshe said.
Intradermal shots are given with a shorter, finer needle than are intramuscular shots. The needle is inserted between the layers of the skin, and when the vaccine is injected it forms a blisterlike bubble.
"You can see it, and you know when you've done it right," Dr. Belshe said.
The injection itself hurts less than an intramuscular shot, but the site of the intradermal shot gets redder, a sign of the robust immune response, he said, adding that the redness is trivial.
Dr. Belshe said researchers should do the studies needed to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration for low-dose, intradermal flu shots for some patients.
"We are in an era of increasing need for influenza vaccine," he said, "so this is an area that we need to pursue quickly."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Aid Group to Leave Iraq, Fearing Extreme Risk
November 4, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/international/middleeast/05DOCTORScnd.html?hp&ex=1099630800&en=021b85edd0e10b19&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 4 - Faced with a wave of savage kidnappings and beheadings, the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders announced today that it was ending its operations in Iraq.
The move came after the latest video appeal by Margaret Hassan, the director of operations in Iraq for CARE International, whose captors said on Tuesday that they would turn her over to the militant group led by the Jordanan terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi within 48 hours if Great Britain did not withdraw its troops from Iraq.
"For us, it is a very painful situation that we feel forced into due to the security situation, and the risk that that entails," said Arjan Hehenkamp, operational director for the group in Iraq. "We're not at all happy having to pull out of Iraq," he said.
Mr. Hehenkamp declined to comment directly on Ms. Hassan, citing continuing efforts to win her release, but he said that "the kidnappings generally and the fact that they seem to be directed at humanitarian workers was a factor in it."
The group's non-Iraqi international staff had already left Iraq and has been in Amman, Jordan, for four to five weeks, Mr. Hehenkamp said. Now, the Iraqis who have remained will essentially have to be let go.
--------
Gimme Some Truth
nyartsmagazine
By Daniel Rothbart
November 04, 2004
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/articles.php?aid=769
For a second year, artist / activist Yoko Ono voices her desire for change in the Middle East through the LennonOno Peace Prize. Israeli artist Zvi Goldstein and Palestinian artist Khalil Rabah were the inaugural recipients of the prize in 2003 when each received a $50,000 grant. Ono believes artwork can further cultural understanding and lay the groundwork for peace. But in the wake of an intensely violent year and a war that has claimed over 1,000 American and some 14,000 Iraqi civilian lives, Ms. Ono has awarded the 2004 prize to non-artists. The first honoree is investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who received the prize in recognition of his reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal for the New Yorker magazine. Ono awarded the second grant to Israeli Nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed Israel's policy of stockpiling nuclear weapons.
By way of her choices, Ms. Ono affirms the need for integrity and transparency on the part of democratic governments even during wartime. Ono's first honoree, Seymour Hersh, has been calling the government to account for its actions since the sixties when he broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and its subsequent cover-up. The dark days of the Nixon presidency (tricky Dick of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth") have returned with a vengeance. While Bush and Nixon share a dangerous hubris, Hersh believes that Bush is motivated by the sincere, deep-rooted conviction that he is doing the right thing. During a recent talk at Berkeley, Hersh stated that Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and the other neocons are, "idealists, you could call them utopians."
At the LennonOno Grant awards ceremony, Hersh described a call that he received from a first lieutenant who was in command of a unit between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His unit was stationed in an agricultural area, and the men hired 30 local Iraqis to guard a granary. Over several weeks the lieutenant and his men became friendly with these guards. Then orders came from Baghdad for the village to be cleared. Another platoon from the lieutenant's company arrived and summarily shot all the granary guards. Men from his unit, along with the villagers, were outraged. The lieutenant demanded an explanation from the captain who said, in his own defense, "No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?" Hersh stressed the similarity of this war to Vietnam with its body counts. In response to the lieutenant, Hersh said, "Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."
Ono's second honoree is Mordechai Vanunu, a Morrocan-born Jew who immigrated to Israel with his family in 1963. After serving in the Israeli military, Vanunu got a job working at the Dimona Nuclear Research Center in the Negev Desert, near his home in Beersheba. The center actually housed a secret, underground plutonium separation plant, and Vanunu realized that his work was contributing to Israel's nuclear weapon program. Before leaving his employment at Dimona, Mordechai took numerous photographs of the facility. Vanunu subsequently left Israel, traveled throughout Asia, and ultimately arrived in Sydney Australia where he converted to Christianity and was baptized in the Anglican faith.
A reporter from the London Sunday Times got wind of Vanunu's story and sent a reporter to Sydney to get more information. The Times then flew Vanunu to London where his story was corroborated by British nuclear experts and the newspaper ran its story in October 1986. Israel had previously adhered to a policy of strategic ambiguity with regard to nuclear weapons, refraining from affirmations and denials. The Vanunu article paints Israel as a major nuclear weapons power with an arsenal of as many as 200 advanced nuclear warheads.
Prior to the publication of Vanunu's story, the whistle-blower was kidnapped by Israeli agents and flown to Tel Aviv where he stood trial for espionage and treason. He was imprisoned and served the first 11 1/2 years in near solitary confinement, softened by occasional visits from guards, his siblings, his lawyer, and a priest. In 1998 he was allowed contact with some other prisoners and granted visits from Nicholas and Mary Eoloff, an American couple from Saint Paul, Minnesota, who had adopted him a year earlier. Vanunu was released from prison in April 2004 but is still subject to restrictions. He is not permitted to leave Israel, so the Eoloffs accepted the LennonOno Grant for Peace on his behalf.
At first I was troubled by Ono's choice of Vanunu as one of the grant recipients. I understand that Israel has been surrounded by enemies since her inception, and wish to see her protected from any form of attack. Yet Ono, unlike most Americans, was directly touched by the suffering of Japanese civilians in the aftermath of America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear war is unthinkable in humanistic terms, and nuclear stockpiling is a problem that transcends politics. Unfortunately we Americans have been among the worst culprits when it comes to nuclear stockpiling. Eleven nuclear bombs were lost by the American military during the Cold War, and sappers are still looking for a hydrogen bomb that was jettisoned off the coast of Georgia in the late 50s. The problem is by no means specific to Israel and regards the danger of hoarding nuclear weapons in the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, and Pakistan.
President Bush insists that we are living in dangerous times. Yoko Ono by way of the LennonOno Grant for Peace, illuminates human rights abuses and cover-ups that pose a more insidious danger to democratic societies than terrorism. In a democracy, people have the basic right to know what their leaders are up to, and what acts are being committed in their name. Rule of law must prevail in the treatment of prisoners of war and Israeli citizens need to be privy to decision making with regard to nuclear policy. Ms. Ono described the 2004 recipients as "people who have spoken out for the benefit of the human race by overcoming extreme personal difficulties and, in doing so, have allowed the truth to prevail." Dissenters like Hersh and Vanunu force the public to confront uncomfortable issues and take a position, debunking the fraudulent secrecy of politicians and shaping policy.
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Blunkett changes law to evict Commons anti-war protester
independent.co.uk
By Colin Brown
04 November 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=579240
Britain's most persistent anti-war protester yesterday shouted defiance through his megaphone at the Commons after MPs were told a new Act of Parliament will be used to outlaw his one-man demonstration.
The Leader of the House, Peter Hain, said that the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, would introduce a clause in the Organised Crime Bill designed to evict Brian Haw, 55, from the spot he has occupied for three years, outside the main gates of the Houses of Parliament. The Bill will ban permanent daytime demonstrations and megaphones in Parliament Square. It will be a criminal offence to defy the law.
Yesterday, Mr Haw gave his reply through his megaphone. "It's not a crime to be crying out outside our Parliament gates," he shouted. "You would make me a criminal? I am a Godfather? This is my weapon of mass information. Blunkett wants an Act of Parliament to deal with serious organised crime. The FBI have a public enemy number in America and Blunkett has decided I am Britain's public enemy number one. And his evidence: I have megaphone. And this display: it is the Westminster United Nations Art Gallery."
Mr Haw has kept up his vigil in all weathers. His voice has cut through the increasing security around Westminster to the annoyance of cabinet ministers and many MPs. In a break from haranguing the MPs, he said: "US Senator Edward Kennedy's son was here and he told me 'This is about love, Brian'. Antony Gormley the artist was here and he was in awe at what he saw. He recognised art, and the expressions of the heart, and the love and the hopes of people all over the world, expressed in 30 languages, expressed in their own beautiful words."
Mr Haw, an evangelical Christian, who went to Cambodia to protest against the killing fields before the rise of Pol Pot, has spent 1,250 days at Westminster, acting as the public conscience for the war on Iraq. His relentless chant, "45 minutes Mr B-liar" left MPs on all sides demanding his removal. But the High Court threw out previous attempts to evict him.
"Judge Moses and Judge Gray, two High Court judges of our land, said this protest was legal. 'There is no pressing social reason to interfere with Mr Brian Haw's display', Judge Gray said." There was another attempt to remove him in May when police destroyed his placards and peace banners before the state visit of the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao.
"The police failed in their duty," Mr Haw said. "They were not to interfere in this right of human expression. It was turned into a pile of garbage to save Mr Blair's face when the Chinese Premier was here, because Mr Blair wanted to scold him about human rights abuses in China. We British, don't we love to take the piss. There are human rights abuses in China but Tony Blair is not the one to lecture."
Mr Haw has been visited by well-wishers from around the world, including Afghanistan, and has helpers, including an Asian man with a military bearing who stands silently with a protest sign every Tuesday morning. The women arrive on Wednesday evenings, and there are his special friends, including Zenab, an Iraqi girl who lost a leg in a bomb blast in Basra.
He has paid a heavy price for his vigil. His wife, Kay, divorced him and he misses his family in Redditch, Worcestershire. He regrets not being there for his son Peter's 18th birthday, and his graduation day (he has a sports degree). One daughter phoned him to say she missed him.
"It strikes a dagger through my heart," he said. Then he turned back to the blank windows of the Commons with his megaphone. "Yes Mr Blunkett, I will cry out against genocide. I will not give way."
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57 Arrested in San Francisco Protest
(AP)
November 4, 2004
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=2522980&nav=5D7lSlkC
SAN FRANCISCO -- Police arrested 57 people Wednesday as nearly 2,000 protesters decried the re-election of George W. Bush and the continuing war in Iraq.
San Francisco police said the large demonstration that started around 5 p.m. was peaceful, but a smaller group of about 150 later splintered and marched through Civic Center and the Tenderloin.
Fifty six were cited and released and one protester was arrested for assaulting an officer.
Officer Maria Oropeza said the protester was seen throwing a glass bottle at officers. Shards of glass from the shattered bottle flew at officers but did not cause any injuries, she said.
Raucous demonstrators chanted "We're going to beat back the Bush attack, get the troops out of Iraq."
Anti-Bush signs were in abundance, proclaiming "Nov. 2, 2004 -- a sad day" and "Overthrow King Bush." One man held a sign that said "Stop mad cowboy disease."
"I want Bush to know that just because he won the election he doesn't have a mandate and needs to listen to other perspectives," Liz Farinella, 35 of Oakland, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
A large truck carrying drummers in orange T-shirts led the procession down the Market Street.
About a dozen Bush supporters, wielding signs that read "The silent majority has spoken" also showed up and marched behind the crowd.
"I'm in this to promote the fact that we won," said Victor Tracey, 20, a San Francisco State University student.
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